Peak
oil "solved"? That's a new one on me. They are
certainly capable of frying the planet in the desperate attempt to
extract energy from any source possible.
"4
C warmer by 2030 means human extinction"
Guy
McPherson
Peak
Oil solved, but climate will fry:
BP report
29
January, 2013
BP's
recently released "BP
Energy Outlook 2030"
report claims that a dramatic rise in new unconventional sources of
oil -- tight oil, tar sands and NGLs -- will solve the "peak
oil" problem. These new sources of "oil" are primed to
gush forth and allow the world to burn lots more oil for decades to
come. BP's chief executive Bob Dudley said
bluntly:
"Fears
over oil running out – to which BP has never subscribed – appear
increasingly groundless."
And
it's not just oil. According to BP, a combination of powerful new
extraction technologies, growing populations
and extremely weak climate policies mean humanity is on track to
excavate and burn lots more fossil fuels of all kinds by 2030: 15%
more oil, 26% more coal and 46% more methane (aka natural gas). In
fact, policies still so strongly favour fossil fuels that BP predicts
that two-thirds of all new
energy over the next two decades will be supplied by increased fossil
fuel burning.
Off
the climate cliff
Unfortunately
for just about everyone, this "most likely" energy comes
with one very big downside. If we do burn that much fossil fuel we
will crank
the global thermostat up 4OC.
And
that, scientists say, will inflict climate misery on humanity for
thousands of years. Out of the peak oil frying pan and into the
raging climate fire. Sorry kids.
How
bad is 4OC?
So
far the world has warmed around 0.8OC.
Already dramatic climate changes are emerging, often decades ahead of
worst-case expectations. Extreme droughts, deluges, flooding, storms,
crop losses, heat, forest die-off, coral death and ice melting are
already well underway. The polar jet stream is weakening and getting
"stuck" more often causing unusual storm tracks and
long-lasting droughts.
The
consensus of the climate science is that all these things get worse
and new extremes will emerge as the world warms. Beyond 2
OC
however the changes grow in seriousness and tipping points are likely
to be crossed. Nearly every nation on earth has pledged to avoid
crossing this 2OC
barrier because of the dire threats to civilization that are expected
to emerge.
Unfortunately,
hitting 4OC
seems to be where our fossil fueled energy system is leading humanity
even if everyone keeps all our best climate promises so far.
The
World Bank calls 4OC
both "devastating"
and exactly where we are heading. They are so concerned about this
that they recently published a report titled: "Turn
Down the Heat:
Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided" with the hope that it
would "shock us into action." It warns "the world is
barreling down a path to heat up by 4 degrees at the end of the
century if the global community fails to act on climate change,
triggering a cascade of cataclysmic changes" including "extreme
heat-waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and
biodiversity, and life-threatening sea level rise." World Bank
President Jim Yong Kim recently wrote
in the Washington Post that:
"the
world needs a bold global approach to help avoid the climate
catastrophe it faces today … If there is no action soon, the future
will become bleak … With every investment we make and every action
we take, we should have in mind the threat of an even warmer world …
"
Lord
Nicholas Stern who authored the groundbreaking UK government report
in 2006 now
says
he "got it wrong on climate change – it's far, far worse"
and now the world is clearly hurtling toward 4OC
or even 5OC:
"This
is potentially so dangerous that we have to act strongly. Do we want
to play Russian roulette with two bullets or one? These risks for
many people are existential."
And
now, for the first time I've ever seen, a global fossil fuel
corporation is releasing its emissions analysis that confirms our
"most likely" future is indeed a devastating 4OC.
Of all the dire warning that are pouring forth these days the most
unsettling to me is the fact that a purveyor of climate pollution is
admitting we are in deep, deep trouble.
Just
to be clear, BP's predicted emissions come out of their global
economic energy model's "most
likely" energy path. This
is based on the world's various new technologies, energy policies and
climate efforts. This is definitely not
a worst-case scenario or even business as usual. In fact their
models:
"assume
continued tightening in policies to address climate change."
A
4OC
disaster is what humanity ends up with if everyone keeps all their
announced climate promises. Guess what? Very few nations have managed
to keep their climate promises so far.
For
example, Prime Minister Stephen Harper promised that Canada would cut
emissions 17 percent by 2020. But his own government projections say
we will miss that target by a long ways. The primary reason is the
rapid expansion of the Alberta tar sands which still have no
effective climate pollution limitations of any kind on their
pollution.
So,
if we want to be honest with ourselves, 4OC
is looking optimistic.
When "catastrophe" is your optimistic future one has to
wonder. I have volunteered years of my life now to try to raise
awareness of the looming the climate crisis for exactly this reason:
at the provincial, national and international levels we are off the
rails and heading for disaster.
If
you want to see a
"business as usual" scenario,
the IEA publishes one. They say it leads to 6OC
"catastrophe." That
is a world of science fiction misery with collapsing ecosystems and
food supply.
And
that isn't even a worst-case scenario where humanity dials back on
climate action in the face of economic hardships. That leads to an
unimaginable 8OC
or worse.
The
shifting climate psychology
To
me, one of the most fascinating aspects of the new BP report is
watching a fossil fuel corporation come to grips with their own data
showing their industry is creating a long-term catastrophe for
humanity.
I
suppose it is a sign of just how out-of-control we have let the
climate threat become that a major oil company is now publishing
their internal confirmation that we are hurtling off a disastrous 4OC
climate cliff. And yet despite making the choice to publish the raw
data, BP struggles to say anything meaningful about it.
For
example, you won't find anywhere in the BP report just what kind of
world their emissions data points to. To determine that it points to
a 4OC
hotter future requires a climate geek -- like me -- to compare BP's
raw data to the International Energy Agency's (IEA) 4OC
scenario.
It is almost as if the critical page in their report fell out on the
printing room floor. Here is my version of the "missing page"
from the BP report:
The
folks at BP know this but apparently couldn't bring themselves to say
the simple truth: "we are most likely on track for 4OC
of warming."
Instead
they resort to a few vague hints about what is coming. For example,
after pages and pages and pages of colourful charts about all aspects
of global energy they literally wait until the very last page (pg 78)
to provide their climate pollution data. They provide a drab-grey
line chart of global climate pollution through 2030. (Spoiler alert:
up, up, up). I had to use a ruler to determine that they expect
emissions to hit 39 billion tonnes of CO2 in 2030. The chart did come
with this explanation however:
"Carbon
emissions from energy use continue to grow, increasing by 26% … We
assume continued tightening in policies to address climate change,
yet emissions remain well above the required path to stabilise the
concentration of greenhouse gases at the level recommended by
scientists (450 ppm)."
My
guess is that most readers, if they get that far, will not have a
good grasp of how things like "450 ppm" or "39 GtCO2"
or "increasing by 26%" translates into disastrous climate
change.
BP
does end their report saying that climate change remains one of the
two great "challenges" and that they support "the
widespread pricing of carbon emissions."
Unconventional
liquid fuels vs. peak oil
On
the issue of "peak oil" the BP analysis does seems to show
a plateau -- if not peak -- in conventional oil. On top of this
plateau they say a surge in "unconventional oil" is primed
to pile on and so allow a 15 per cent increase in oil burning. Here
is info from one of BP's charts that I re-arranged to focus on just
the predicted change in fossil fuel oil supplies:
The
chart shows that the increase in conventional oil production out of
Iraq and OPEC nations will barely keep up with declining supplies
elsewhere. This appears to be a sort of conventional oil "plateau"
in supply.
On
top of this, three forms of "unconventional oil" are
predicted to make up almost all the increase in liquid fossil fuel
supply through 2030:
Tight
oil. This
new source is predicted to surge to prominence and account for about
half the increase in global fossil oil supply by 2030. Tight oil is
extracted by fracking shale to release the trapped oil, similar to
the growth in fracking to produce fossil methane (aka "natural
gas"). The center of the "tight oil" industry is in
the USA. The methane flares from these fields can be seen from space.
Oil
sands. Explosive
growth in excavating carbon out of tar sands deposits is predicted to
supply another big chunk.
NLG.
Increases
in Natural Gas Liquids (NGLs) are predicted to make up the final
wallop of increased fossil oil supplies.
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