EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
- German Official Warns of Immediate 'Revolution' if EU Adopts US Model
- Eve of Destruction (or How to Destroy a Planet Without Really Trying)
- President Obama Uses a Sledgehammer Against Dissent
- We’re Being Watched: How Corporations and Law Enforcement Are Spying on Environmentalists
- 'Masters of Austerity' Targeted as Blockupy Activists Shut Down European Central Bank
- Eve of Destruction (or How to Destroy a Planet Without Really Trying)
- We’re Being Watched: How Corporations and Law Enforcement Are Spying on Environmentalists
- Is Enbridge Building a Secret Keystone Pipeline?
- German Official Warns of Immediate 'Revolution' if EU Adopts US Model
- President Obama Uses a Sledgehammer Against Dissent
Popular content
Today's Top News
How Much Should We Leave in the Ground?
The two papers on carbon emissions published in Nature last week were ground-breaking: they show us how much carbon dioxide we can produce if we're to have a reasonable chance of preventing two degrees of global warming. It's a completely different approach from the UN's and national governments'. They set targets for reductions by a certain date but have nothing to say about the total amount of carbon we can release.
One of the papers, by Myles Allen and others(1), suggests that we can burn, at most, another 400-500 billion tonnes of carbon at any time between now and the extinction of humanity if we want to avoid two degrees of warming. The other, by Malte Meinshausen and others(2), suggests that producing 1000 billion tonnes of CO2 between 2000-2050 would give us a 25% chance of exceeding two degrees. That's a lot less than Allen's estimate, as one tonne of carbon produces 3.667 tonnes of CO2 when it's burnt: 1000 billion tonnes of CO2 arises from 273 billion tonnes of carbon.
But let's err on the side of valour and use Allen's figures. Moreover, let's disregard all other greenhouse gases (which, he suggests, should reduce the total CO2 budget to under 400 billion tonnes). How does his maximum allowance of carbon compare with known reserves of fossil fuel?
Let me make two things clear before I make this calculation. First, reserves are not the same as resources. A resource is the total amount of a mineral found in the earth's crust. A reserve is the part of the resource which has been identified, quantified and is cost-effective to exploit. In most cases this is likely to be a small percentage of the total resource.
Secondly, there is some controversy over the official figures for fossil fuel reserves. This is especially the case for oil, as the members of OPEC are extremely secretive about how much they possess. But for the sake of argument, let's take them at face value.
According to the World Energy Council:
global reserves of coal amount to 848 billion tonnes(3)
global reserves of natural gas are 177,000 billion cubic metres(4)
global reserves of crude oil are 162 billion tonnes(5)
Because the calculations are much harder and the quantities involved less certain, I am ignoring unconventional sources of fossil fuel, such as tar sands, oil shales, bitumens and methane hydrates, as well as liquid natural gas resources.
On average, one tonne of coal contains 746 kg carbon(6)
One cubic metre of natural gas contains 0.49 kg carbon(7)
The figure for oil is less certain, because not all of its refinery products are burnt. But the rough calculation here(8) suggests that the use of a barrel of oil releases 317kg of CO2. Depending on the density of the oil, there are roughly 7 barrels to the tonne, giving an approximation of 2219kg CO2, or 605kg of carbon.
So the carbon content of official known reserves of coal, gas and oil amounts to:
848 x 0.746 = 633
+
177,000 x 0.00049 = 87
+
162 x 0.605 = 98
Total conventional fossil fuel reserves therefore contain 818 billion tonnes of carbon.
Even ignoring all unconventional sources and all other greenhouse gases and taking the most optimistic of the figures in the two Nature papers, we can afford to burn only 61% of known fossil fuel reserves between now and eternity.
Or, using Meinshausen's figure, we can burn only 33% between now and 2050. Sorry - 33% minus however much we have burnt between 2000 and today.
So the question which arises is this: which fossil fuel reserves will we decide not to extract and burn? There is, as I have argued before(9), no point in seeking to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels unless we also seek to reduce their production. Yet, apart from the members of OPEC (who do it only to shore up the price), no government is attempting to limit the amount of fuel extracted. Far from it; they all pursue the same strategy as the United Kingdom: to "maximise economic recovery"(10).
The test of all governments' commitment to stopping climate breakdown is this: whether they are prepared to impose a limit on the use of the reserves already discovered, and a permanent moratorium on prospecting for new reserves. Otherwise it's all hot air.
References:
1. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7242/full/nature08019.html
2. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7242/full/nature08017.html
3. http://www.worldenergy.org/publications/survey_of_energy_resources_2007/coal/627.asp
4. http://www.worldenergy.org/publications/survey_of_energy_resources_2007/natural_gas/664.asp
5. http://www.worldenergy.org/publications/survey_of_energy_resources_2007/crude_oil_and_natural_gas_liquids/638.asp
6. http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/energy_conv.html
7. http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/energy_conv.html
8. http://numero57.net/?p=255
9. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/12/11/rigged/
10. http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file39387.pdf
- Posted in
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
20 Comments so far
Show AllClearly, the answer is coal, which is responsible for 3/4 of the carbon output.
It is also the easiest to minimize since it is exclusively used to generate electricity, for which there are cheaper and cleaner alternatives, such as the Atmospheric Vortex Engine. http://vortexengine.ca
The AVE uses the same source of energy that powers thunderstorms--that being Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE), provided by the sun each day and stored temporarily in the atmosphere. If the atmosphere in any location is low in CAPE, it can be enriched in CAPE by transferring so-called "waste heat" to it, generated from industrial activities, warm bodies of water, or geothermal sources.
Ding-Dong, the Wicked Witch of Coal will soon be dead--Long Live the AVE-Force who will do her in.
Coal use definitely needs to be reduced. But that is a longer term strategy which
involves alternative energy sources like solar, wind, geothermal, hydro and more energy efficient buildings and appliances which take a number of years to build.
The easiest to cut CO2 in a short amount of time is oil- since 63% of oil usage
is wasted on cars, trucks and airplanes a shift to OPERATING and using the mass transit we already have can cut oil usage dramatically. For 2008 gasoline consumption
dropped 8% as gas prices hit $4 per gallon. Mass transit ridership increased 5%.
This is without building much of anything just having the high price of gas force people out of their cars onto existing mass transit.
This is only the beginning of what is possible in short order since some people got right back into their cars when gas prices sank back to $2 per gallon.
If gas prices had stayed at $4 per gallon gasoline consumption might well have dropped by 10 or 12% with nothing more than people using mass transit.
Instead of leveraging this positive environmental progress in a matter of months by increasing gas taxes and using the funds to expand mass transit operations
mass transit systems everywhere have been cut or threatened with cuts.
The NYC MTA is facing a budget crisis and major service cuts, New Jersey Transit has
cut operations by 17%, mass transit systems around the country are facing cuts
to EXISTING services:
http://t4america.org/transitcuts
Where are the "Green New Dealers" protesting these cuts and proposing gas tax increases to continue cutting gasoline consumption and increasing mass transit?
Where is the Sierra Club? Where is Al Gore?
Environmentalists want to convert to electric potentially fueled by alternative energy? Guess what? Many train systems are already electric.
And it is not just gasoline/energy consumption of mass transit vs cars it is the total carbon footprint of the auto addiction which is immense.
Highways require constant maintenance and new asphalt to fix potholes every year over immense swaths of what used to be, or could be green space or usable urban space.
In a single lane of a highway you can run 2 train tracks capable of carrying thousands of people. In comparison we continue mindlessly adding ever more lanes to already wasteful 4, 6, 8 lane highways with huge amounts of asphalt and maintenance for those acres and acres of wasted space.
A "Green New Deal"?
Start with increasing State and Federal gas taxes to fund OPERATIONS of existing mass transit which would also provide permanent fulltime jobs which will not end once construction ends.
Help struggling car makers by buying fleets of minibuses and shuttle buses to
connect people to existing mass transit options.
Run the trains at all times including off-peak, nights and weekends instead of having them sit there doing nothing.
Then convert the miles of unused rail tracks we still have all over this country from the glory days when we had the greatest rail system in the world,
and bring them up to code and being running trains or light rail on them to connect
as many points as possible.
This could bring results as 2008 demonstrated within months and a few years not decades to reduce fossil fuel consumption.
As far as "quick response" reductions are concerned, I agree that we also need to attack the transportation system, which is hopelessly inefficient.
In the US, which uses (read wastes) 25% of the energy supply, we need to increase taxes on both gas/diesel consumption AND electricity consumption immediately.
Unfortunately, under the current political system, taxation won't be allowed due to the perceived "third-rail" effect, where politicians pander to short term consumer "wailing" without taking into account the needs of the yet unborn. The "squeaky wheel" always gets the grease. Until this changes there is "no chance" that there will be any changes, at least from the political end of the equation.
That's why our only hope is new technology that "so economic" that it will "displace everything else" as well as take the global warming "back-and-forth" out of the discussion.
That is my hope for the AVE (http://vortexengine.ca)
Scientists and economists need to learn how subtract in order to balance their equations...
Or better yet, junk the linear reductionist model altogether...
Keynsian economists externalize any cost to greater society through terminology like "non-source pollution" & "the invisible hand"...
Natural resources are free for the taking... A commodification of complex systems reduced to raw materials and products... The only costs considered are for the labor and technology for the extraction, manufacture, distribution, sales, and service of goods... Environmental and human rights are secondary considerations to the holy "bottom line" profit margin... Exploitation of laborers and managers is institutional through salary and wage controls, and health & safety issues are viewed as impeding competitiveness...
Once Capitalists learn to integrate all inputs & outputs from their economic models, then they will recognize the true worth of the planet and humanity far exceeds whatever can be exploited for human profit...
While the author of this article was trying to prove a point about our total energy reserves in relation to climate change... He utterly fails to acknowledge that CO2 is also being absorbed constantly by the forests and algae pools, and deforestation is the evil twin of fossil fuels, as forests are cleared for mining, roads & parking lots, biofuel plantations, and development... The burning of fossil fuels must be reduced and phased out, as it is a better source material for building with than burning... I recognize that the author was referring to the "net gain" of co2 in the atmosphere, yet nowhere does he explain that there is a carbon cycle... However bad it is now, we can off set the problem by reforesting and mitigating polluted urban and rural areas, rehabilitate streams and lakes, and shift away from the WWII monocrop petrochemical agriculture model we have now, and develop localized organic food systems...
"He utterly fails to acknowledge that CO2 is also being absorbed constantly by the forests and algae pools, and deforestation is the evil twin of fossil fuels..."
The natural processes that permanently put carbon back into the earth - formation of coal seams, and reduction of planktonic life to oil and gas, are vastly, vastly slower than the carbon is being released. All the oil and coal on earth has been stored away over a period ranging between about 350 million years ago and prhaps 10 million years ago. It is all being burned over a period of three hundred years or about a million times faster than it took to form. All the reforstation and ocean-absorbtion is miniscule compared to this.
Now excuse me while I get to a meeting where we are going to approve a new WV coal mine (underground) and procesing plant.
Thanks for the clarification...
"While the author of this article was trying to prove a point about our total energy reserves in relation to climate change... He utterly fails to acknowledge that CO2 is also being absorbed constantly by the forests and algae pools ..."
George Monbiot didn't mention this but the authors of the studies he cites no-doubt did.
If we take carbon out of the ground,
It will be in our atmosphere, or it will be in our forests until they burn down, which always happens, and it goes back in our atmosphere.
Or some of the carbon dioxide goes into our oceans, turning the oceans acidic, killing much of the marine life, reducing the ocean's capacity to convert carbon dioxide into hydrocarbons.
And if we let the arctic melt, that carbon deposited for millions of years is gasified and comes up automatically, via microbes.
So the answer is, if we take carbon out of the ground, it stays out of the ground essentially forever in our generation's time scale upon the earth, unless someone volunteers to somehow put it back into the ground.
Don't build a house without a septic system. Don't take carbon out of the ground without knowing how you will put it back in the ground.
"The Myth of The Oil Crisis" by Robin M. Mills brings some new perspectives to this debate. For example, pumping Co2 into wells extracts more oil from various rock formations than other kinds of injections like water or polymers. Coal can be efficiently gasified in ground, thus reducing the carbon footprint of its use. Various extraction, refining and energy generating facilities can be coordinated to reduce emissions and increase energy outputs. Heavy oils previously unuseable can now be extracted. Oil shale and tar sand development as well as offshore and wilderness drilling can be accomplished at far less risk than is generally understood. Gas reserves world-wide remain largely unexploited or wasted.
Of course there are problems with "sustainable" alternatives-production of photo-voltaic solar panels use dangerous heavy metals and toxic solvents as do most batteries. Wind farms sufficient to replace any but a tiny fraction of current electrical demand would consume vast tracts of land.
Mills work accepts the global warming hypothesis and pressing need to cut carbom emissions so it represents a positive development in this debate and raises the possibility of pragmatical solutions to energy and environmental problems.
"Adopting sub-optimal solutions today merely because they are "sustainable"* makes us poorer without any compensating gain"
The question is do we have the political will and maturity to solve these problems?
I'm not sure if the opinion on renewables are yours or Mr. Mills, but there is little fact in them.
A quarter of the surface area of North Dakota, which is a big piece of land, but probably not much more land area than the US has already inundated under man-made lakes, has the wind resources to produce all the electric power the US is currently consuming. Do the calculation yourself if you like.
Lithium-iron phosphate cells have no toxic materials in them and most of their materials are recyclable. Lead acid batteries are already almost 100% recycled.
The alternatives you named particularly in-situ coal gassification create all the same amounts of CO2 and organic compound pollutants as the traditional Fisher-Tropsch process. This would require the still uneconomical if not unfeasible carbon capture and storage.
Meanwhile, major wind projects are under construction or in planning in many parts of the US, this suggests that there is nothing sub-optimal about them.
And I'm not sure how frugality in energy use makes anyone "poorer". There are plenty of ways to make and spend money that doesn't involve profligate oil and coal-energy usage. Instead of spending your money on an SUV or one of those awful ATV's why not spend it on your local Symphony, Opera, or other cultural activity of your choice - and use public transit to get there - it's fun!
All we need, for the first time in history, is for all humans to agree on something, then work to prevent said something.
There's a first for everything, right?...
If someone in the Universe is listening, HAAALP!
They do not WANT cheap renewable energy. Capitalism fails when supplies of energy are cheap and renewable.
They can not figure out a way to charge you for the wind or the sun yet.
It is that simple.
But "they" have--concentrating solar thermal plants and wind farms. (As opposed to household solar and wind generation--passive solar, solar water heating, PV and small wind turbines, all combined with conservation.) So I guess it's not quite that simple. We need to look beyond simple answers and include nuance and complexity in our reach for solutions, or we are just another screaming part of the problem.
mr. monbiot asks: "which fossil fuel reserves will we decide not to extract and burn?"
although their formula is not as detailed as yours, mr. monbiot, all area stations/stores that sell gasoline did this, sometime between 7pm this past monday, and 9am yesterday (tuesday): raised their price per gallon of gas anywhere from 15 to 18 cents. per gallon. in less than 15 hours.
it's really so not about leaving anything in the ground. it's a business. and it's big. in case you haven't been paying attention, most of these oil companies have been posting record after record after record profit for, say the last seven years or so.
otherwise, a very informative piece.
and the "extinction of humanity" is so much closer than many could ever imagine.
"Instead of spending your money on an SUV or one of those awful ATV's why not spend it on your local Symphony, Opera, or other cultural activity of your choice - and use public transit to get there - it's fun."
I keep being pressured to buy a car and really would rather not have one. I feel I can get by without a vehicle, but many people need a car to get to where they need to go.
Public transit is being cut left and right in my area. The symphony and opera 'aint exactly cheap.
But even if we all stop using gasoline and eating meat, will that be enough? I keep getting the feeling that we're going to have to adjust the thermostat by hand if you catch my drift. Can it be done? Will we have to geoengineer our way out of this?
There are several very good reasons to stop burning fossil fuels and stop eating meat. Besides the CO2 savings, plenty of other pollutants are avoided, and there are other health benefits. Then it's great to know we're starving the elites. It gets even better, though. The people's emancipation from slavery to elites gives the people dignity. Umm lessee, this enhances happiness, fulfillment, creativity, productivity, peace, prosperity, cooperation, solidarity. Also, to be frugal, not gluttonous and to be aware, not ignorant. Do these have benefits? Umm duh!
So the lesson is to avoid all opiates dispensed by elites and thereby live happily ever after. There is room for a small, people-scale biofuels and meat industries providing something like one sunday drive per week, and one hog jowl per week. This is sustainable.
I just don't see the possibility of much of anything happening to stave off dramatic problems. There is simply not the "energy" to do all of the organization necessary to make the corrections that need to be made. Classic problem of expanding entropy ... and I constantly wonder why people who think and write in the realm of energy do not see the connection to classic entropy (both environmental and social).
As we say when we watch the trailers to a new movie with a dog featured in it, "This dog's gonna die".
Solving climate change is our generation's greatest challenge. A revenue-neutral carbon tax is the cheapest, simplest, most effective and most progressive way to do it.
Join GreenChange.org in calling on President Obama and our elected representatives to support a revenue-neutral carbon tax:
http://tinyurl.com/neutralCO2tax
"...no government is attempting to limit the amount of fuel extracted. Far from it; they all pursue the same strategy as the United Kingdom: to "maximise economic recovery" "
Judging by the rest of the actions of those in power in every country, it is not about economic recovery. Looked at one way, it is the Tragedy of the Commons, and we need to look to historical precedents and creative structural and psychological solutions to find the solutions.