Posts
The
Keystone Pipeline, Arctic Methane Eruptions, and Why Human Fossil
Fuel Burning Must Swiftly Halt
15
August, 2014
Human
fossil fuel emissions heating the Earth’s airs, waters, and ice.
From
historic droughts around the world and in
places like California, Syria, Brazil and Iran to inexorably
increasing glacial melt; from an
expanding blight of fish killing and water poisoning algae blooms in
lakes, rivers and oceans to
a growing
rash of global record rainfall events; and from
record Arctic sea ice volume losses approaching 80 percent at the end
of the summer of 2012 to
a rapidly
thawing permafrost zone explosively emitting an ever-increasing
amount of methane and CO2, it’s already a disastrous
train-wreck.
Since
the 1880s, humans have emitted nearly 600 billion tons of carbon into
the atmosphere. This
vast emission has spiked atmospheric CO2 and CO2e (when all other
heat trapping gasses are included) levels to above 400 parts per
million and 481 parts per million respectively. According to
climate sensitivity and paleoclimate science, these volumes are
already enough to increase global temperatures by between 1.5 to 2 C
this century and 3-4 C long term.
At
the current carbon emissions rate of more than 10 billion tons each
year and growing at around 2 percent, humans will have emitted a
trillion tons of carbon by 2041. Under business as usual fossil
fuel burning, more than 2.5 trillion tons of greenhouse gas trapping
carbon will hit the atmosphere before the end of this century. It’s
a terrible blow we will sorely want to avoid. And one we can only
circumvent if we start working to radically curtail carbon emissions
now.
Already,
we can see instances of emissions-driven climate change and related
harm. But what we see now is minor compared to what the future holds
in store. We’ve warmed the Earth by more than 0.8 degrees Celsius
since the 1880s, and if human emissions do not swiftly come to a
halt, we could easily see warming of 4, 5, 7 C or more by the end of
this century alone.
(Probability of exceeding 2 C warming this Century [equilibrium climate sensitivity] given a certain level of human greenhouse gas forcing. Note that this study did not include feedbacks from Arctic carbon stores. Also note that current CO2 equivalent forcing without aerosols is around 481 CO2e and with the aerosol negative feedback is around 425 CO2e. Also note that equilibrium climate sensitivity is about half that implied by Earth Systems Sensitivity over the long term [many centuries]. For a final note, consider that the aerosol negative feedback is temporary. Image source: IPCC.)
What Does Warming Look Like If We Continue To Burn Fossil Fuels?
We
talk about warming in terms of degrees Celsius and gigatons of carbon
burned. But what does it all really mean?
Droughts
rampaging through the lower to mid latitudes as the US, Southern
Europe, India, the Middle East, Brazil, Australia, the Sahel and
sections of China rapidly turn to desert.
Stratified
oceans turning into extinction engines for fish and marine life,
fresh water poisoning due to toxic algae blooms, oceans emitting
increasing volumes of poisonous hydrogen sulfide gas into the
air. Fires
the likes of which we have never seen in the far north as
the permafrost burns and methane leaks and explodes from the thawing
earth. Floods
raging from an atmosphere whose moisture cycling has increased by 30
percent or more. Sea
level rise rapid enough to swallow cities and coastlines over the
course of decades.
Devastating
storms emerging from the regions closest to large glacial melt events
bordering Greenland and West Antarctica. And all around, more and
more people migrating, trying to find a place that is not being
gobbled up by desert, incessantly burning, ravaged by storms,
flooded, or poisoned by toxic air and water.
(Very large bloom of micro-organisms north of Scandinavia in Arctic waters on August 14, 2014. Arctic waters are rich in nutrients. As they warm and as the sea ice retreats, larger areas are freed for invasion by major blooms of algae and other microbes. Large enough blooms can rob the ocean of oxygen, produce harmful toxins, result in large fish kills, and in the end create dangerous bottom conditions favoring microbial hydrogen sulfide production. Image source: LANCE-MODIS.)
That’s
the dark future we inch closer to with every 0.1 C degree of further
warming, with each additional megaton of fossil fuel and industrial
carbon hitting the atmosphere.
And
it is in this context that we must judge our actions and those of our
leaders in reducing or in failing to reduce a nightmare that now
grows in intensity with each passing year. A nightmare we create and
continue to contribute to each time we light a fossil fuel driven
fire.
Quibbling
over Keystone Carbon Emissions When Tar Sands is the Real Issue
50
billion tons. That’s the amount of extractable, burnable carbon
that likely sits beneath what were once the green forests of Alberta
and are now little more than a sprawling waste of smoking pits
covering tens of square miles. It’s more than 8 percent of the
carbon we’ve already dumped into the atmosphere and it’s a volume
of carbon we simply cannot afford to burn.
1.7
million barrels of crude oil per day now comes out of a place that
Tolkien would likely describe as a mechanized orc warren. Keystone
would boost that total to 2.2 million barrels per day, enrich the pit
owners, and lay the groundwork for an ever-more-rapid exploitation of
this dangerous pile of atmospheric heat-venom.
This
week, a recent study out of Stockholm’s Environment Institute
found that
the pipeline itself would result in at least 4 times the carbon
emissions currently estimated by the US State Department. This,
well-duh, assessment, came as pit mining cheerleaders such as the
American Petroleum Institute and Canadian Industry groups marshaled
yet another effort to ram the pipeline through and boost global
carbon emissions all in one go.
(Athabasca’s sprawling tar sands operation as seen from space in 2009. The brown ribbon cutting through center frame is the Athabasca river. Image source: NASA’s Earth Observatory.)
In
the end, all fossil fuels are terrible, adding to the global
nightmare described above. But tar sands are between 12 and 20
percent more carbon intensive than even regular oil, especially when
burning of the, worse than coal, coke bi-product is taken into
account.
Arctic
Methane Explosions — A Result of Human Warming
On
the other side of the Arctic from the smoking fossil fuel pits of
Alberta, nature is in the process of excavating a new, and no less
terrifying, kind of pit. For from the Siberian tundra this summer
were discovered three gaping wounds in the earth. Black holes shaped
by impressive charges of methane blasting up from beneath the thawing
permafrost.
All
around the holes were ejected material. A kind of reverse meteor
strike or methane volcano in which frozen methane trapped in
clathrate beneath the thawing permafrost warmed enough to
destabilize. The thawed methane built up in pressure pockets 250 feet
or more below ground. Eventually, the pressure became too great and
the permafrost overburden erupted, ejecting both earth and methane
into the air above.
Eyewitnesses
described eruption scenes where the Earth at first began to smoke.
The smoke continued to bleed from the ground. Then, there was a loud
flash and bang. When the smoke cleared, the methane eruption craters
were plainly visible — a rim of sloped and ejected earth
surrounding a black, gun-barrel like structure tunneling deep into
the ground.
Scientists
investigating the sites of these explosions found methane readings of
9.8% at the bottoms of the holes. These
are high enough levels to burn if exposed to an ignition source —
an
atmospheric reading 50,000 times the current and already highly
elevated ‘normal’ level.
(One of three freakish craters caused by eruptions of methane from Siberia’s thawing tundra. Image source: Moscow Times.)
The
Arctic permafrost alone contains about 1.5 trillion tons of carbon.
And when it thaws, a portion of that carbon is bound to be released.
It will be broken down by microbes and turned into methane in wet
soil. In drier soil, it will form a peat like underburden that will
slowly release CO2 by decay or, in more violent instances, by burning
in one of the ever more powerful wildfires raging through the Arctic
during the increasingly hot summers.
Beneath
the icy permafrost layer are pockets of frozen methane in the form of
clathrates. These structures are not included in the 1.5 trillion ton
carbon estimate for permafrost. They are an addition of likely
billions more tons of carbon. And, this year, we can now see a
physical mechanism for their continued release — warming and thaw
of the permafrost overburden.
The
Human-Arctic Feedback Link: Why We Absolutely Must Stop Burning
Fossil Fuels, And Swiftly
It
is estimated that 1.5-2 degrees Celsius worth of global warming (5-8
C Arctic warming) is enough to thaw all the permafrost and eventually
release a substantial portion of the carbon stored in and beneath it.
For the Arctic warms much faster than the globe as a whole. In tundra
regions, rates of warming over the past three decades have been 0.5
degrees Celsius per decade or more. In the region where the methane
craters were discovered, recent temperatures at 5 degrees Celsius
above average, during summer heatwaves in 2013 and 2014, have been
reported.
As
a result of past and current human greenhouse gas emissions, we have
already locked in a substantial and significant rate of Arctic carbon
emission feedback. And the speed of the Arctic carbon store release
will likely determine how rapidly and whether other global carbon
stores also respond.
A
2011 survey of 41 Arctic researchers found that rapidly reducing
human greenhouse emissions would limit the volume of carbon feedback
from the Arctic to 10% of the annual current human emission (or
about 1 billion tons of carbon per year) by the end of the 21rst
Century, but continue that emission for centuries to come (current
Arctic carbon emissions are likely in the range of 30 million tons of
methane and 100 million tons of CO2 each year). This is bad news. For
we have already burned enough fossil fuel to keep warming on the
trajectory to hit 1.5 to 2.5 C this century and 3-5 C or somewhat
more long term — a bad result, and one that would likely require
extensive human deployment of atmospheric carbon capture
technologies. But it is far better than the alternative.
For
continued fossil fuel burning would be enough to force a release of
Arctic carbon stores equal to 35% or more of the human annual
emission, or about 3.5 to 4 gigatons of carbon each year. By
itself, this emission would easily represent a mini-runaway pushing
the business as usual burning level of 800 ppm CO2 and 1,000 ppm CO2e
by end century to 1,400 ppm CO2 + over the course of centuries and
likely resulting in 4-7 C + warming this century and 12-14 C + worth
of warming long term. A hothouse extinction event to rival or
potentially exceed the worst seen in the geological record.
We
simply must stop fossil fuel burning as it risks triggering ever
greater carbon releases from stores around the globe and especially
in the Arctic. In this way, stopping fossil fuel burning or failing
to stop that burning is directly related to the ferocity and
intensity of the Earth systems response we set off. And halting the
Keystone Pipeline is a good approach to curtailing future carbon
emission increases. A good start to a long, hard road ahead.
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