Planet-roasting with fossil fuels

Warming from fossil fuels

Ken Caldeira (Carnegie Institution; kcaldeira@carnegie.stanford.edu)
Martin I. Hoffert (New York University; marty.hoffert@nyu.edu)

Abstract.

Carbon cycle models have been used to estimate the rate of change in atmospheric CO2 concentration with time. Climate models have been used to estimate the radiative forcing of climate from CO2 additions to the atmosphere. From these two results, we calculate the time integrated radiative forcing of the climate system from an emission of carbon dioxide. We estimate this time integrated radiative forcing to be about 4.5 x 1010 J per mol of CO2 emitted. The direct warming from the burning of organic carbon is about 4.8 x 105 J per mol CO2 released. Thus the burning of organic carbon warms the Earth about 100,000 times more from climate effects than it does through the release of chemical energy in combustion.

see entire paper at Climate Progress

Uh, what? OK, here is a way to get what they just said. Let's say you put one gallon of gasoline in you car and drive it a grocery store and back again. The store is twelve miles away and your vehicle gets 24 mpg on the journey and runs out of gas just as you're re-entering the driveway. How much heat did you release into the atmosphere? Well, you might say, about a third of the energy went into the motion of the vehicle and the other two-thirds went into the atmosphere as waste heat. So, being scientifically minded, you start calculating, or if you are lazy like me, you look up the chemical energy contained in a gallon of gasoline as the answer: 38,000 kcal, which is a lot, which is why we use it. It's about three weeks worth of human labor.

But these scientists are not talking about that. They're saying that the carbon dioxide released from the fossil fuel combustion, which can remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years, will in its time as part of the atmosphere trap 100,000 times as much heat, from solar radiation, as was originally released by the grocery trip from the chemical reaction.

So your trip to the grocery store will ultimately cause 3,800,000,000,000 calories of global warming, if I got that right. My (solar) calculator overflowed while checking my figures.

It cannot wait

Reporting from Washington - Governments must act now to ward off catastrophic climate change or face additional costs of $500 billion per year of delay, according to a report released Tuesday by the International Energy Agency.

"Saving the planet cannot wait," said the report by the 28-nation intergovernmental organization. "For every year that passes, the window for action on emissions . . . becomes narrower, and the costs of transforming the energy sector increase."

more at LA Times

Just the opposite of what some people will tell you. But almost all peer-reviewed science agrees with this report.

Plug pulled

Chart from The Oil Drum by way of Powering Down

The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying.

The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog [agency] to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.

The allegations raise serious questions about the accuracy of the organisation's latest World Energy Outlook on oil demand and supply to be published tomorrow – which is used by the British and many other governments to help guide their wider energy and climate change policies.

More must-read at The Guardian (UK)

Sea ice in Arctic sets record low for this date

September ice extent from 1979 to 2009 shows a continued decline. The September rate of sea ice decline since 1979 has now increased to 11.2 percent per decade. Sea Ice Index data.

National Snow and Ice Data Center. Seen at Climate Progress.

Put that burger down!

Climate change emissions from meat production are far higher than currently estimated, according to a controversial new study that will fuel the debate on whether people should eat fewer animal products to help the environment.

In a paper published by a respected US thinktank, the Worldwatch Institute, two World Bank environmental advisers claim that instead of 18 per cent of global emissions being caused by meat, the true figure is 51 per cent....

"If this argument is right," write Goodland and Anhang, "it implies that replacing livestock products with better alternatives would be the best strategy for reversing climate change.

"In fact, this approach would have far more rapid effects on greenhouse gas emissions and their atmospheric concentrations than actions to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy."

Their call to move to meat substitutes accords with the views of the chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, who has described eating less meat as "the most attractive opportunity" for making immediate changes to climate change.

more at The Independent (UK); seen at Casaubon's Book.

Digging in for climate change

After studying five decades of rain gauge data for central India, Goswami and his colleagues concluded that although the amount of rainfall has not changed, it is coming in shorter, more intense bursts, with fewer spells of light rain between, mirroring a larger pattern of extreme weather worldwide.

Groundwater has helped some farmers cope with erratic rains. But India's water tables are dropping precipitously, as farmers who now have access to electric pumps withdraw water faster than the monsoon can replenish it. According to the International Water Management Institute, based in Sri Lanka, half the wells once used in western India no longer function. "Thirty years ago we could strike water by digging 30 feet," said the village chief in Khandarmal, a dusty settlement of about 3,000 people perched on a ridge about 20 miles from Satichiwadi. "Now we have to go to 400 feet." Even that is chancy. Over the years the villagers have drilled a total of 500 wells. Ninety percent of them, he estimated, have gone dry....

In an effort to lessen their dependence on the monsoon, the village's residents had signed on to an ambitious, three-year watershed program designed to make more efficient use of what little rain does fall. The program was facilitated by a nonprofit group called the Watershed Organization Trust (WOTR), but the work—a major relandscaping of much of the valley—was being done by the villagers themselves. Teams of farmers spent an average of five days a week digging, moving soil, and planting seedlings along the ridgelines. WOTR, which has led similar projects in more than 200 villages in central India, paid the villagers for roughly 80 percent of the hours worked but also required every family to contribute free labor to the project every month—a deliberate move to get everyone invested.

more by Sara Corbett at the National Geographic

Ostriching

Heads in the Sand: Governments Ignore the Oil Supply Crunch and Threaten the Climate

Report – 20/10/2009

This report argues that governments have failed to acknowledge a looming oil supply crunch. Their collective failure means we have lost a decade in which action could have been taken. Recognition of the oil supply crunch would also have injected a sense of urgency and increased ambition into climate change negotiations.

Downloads

Download the report (high res)
Download the report (low res)

found at Global Witness

The weight of scientific opinion

The American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Chemical Society, American Geophysical Union, American Institute of Biological Sciences, American Meteorological Society, American Society of Agronomy, American Society of Plant Biologists, American Statistical Association, Association of Ecosystem Research Centers, Botanical Society of America, Crop Science Society of America, Ecological Society of America, Natural Science Collections, Alliance Organization of Biological Field Stations, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Society of Systematic Biologists, Soil Science Society of America, and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research have sent a letter to the United States Senate.

Are they decrying climate legislation as a boondoggle crafted to enrich Al Gore?

No, they are not.

They are warning of the danger posed by rising levels of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, and urging effective legislation to bring the emission levels down.

"Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver.

"These conclusions are based on multiple independent lines of evidence, and contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of peer-reviewed science. Moreover, there is strong evidence that ongoing climate change will have broad impacts on society, including the global economy and on the environment. For the United States, climate change impacts include sea level rise for coastal states, greater threats of extreme weather events, and increased risk of regional water scarcity, urban heat waves, western wildfires, and the disturbance of biological systems throughout the country. The severity of climate change impacts is expected to increase substantially in the coming decades."

Hmm. Y'think maybe they could be right?

more from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. (PDF). Seen at Climate Progress.

Beware of the blob, the blob, the blob

As sea temperatures have risen in recent decades, enormous sheets of a mucus-like material have begun forming more often, oozing into new regions, and lasting longer, a new Mediterranean Sea study says (sea "mucus" blob pictures).

And the blobs may be more than just unpleasant.

Up to 124 miles (200 kilometers) long, the mucilages appear naturally, usually near Mediterranean coasts in summer. The season's warm weather makes seawater more stable, which facilitates the bonding of the organic matter that makes up the blobs (Mediterranean map).

Now, due to warmer temperatures, the mucilages are forming in winter too—and lasting for months....

Mucilages aren't a concern for just the Mediterranean, Danovaro added. Recent studies tentatively suggest that mucus may be spreading throughout oceans from the North Sea (map) to Australia, perhaps because of rising temperatures, he said.

"It's a good example [of what will happen if] we don't do something to stop climate warming," Danovaro said. "There are consequences [if] we continue to deny the scientific evidence."

Beyond warm temperatures, it's still not exactly clear what drives the blobs' formation, Scripps' Azam pointed out. For instance, no one knows why the dead marine matter in the blobs doesn't decompose.

"It's important we do find out" what's driving the rise of the blobs, Azam said, "for the sake of the rest of the worlds' oceans."

more from National Geographic

Four degrees will kill more, proportionally, than the Black Death

Eighteen months ago, no one dared imagine humanity pushing the climate beyond an additional two degrees C of heating, but rising carbon emissions and inability to agree on cuts has meant science must now consider the previously unthinkable.

"Two degrees C is already gone as a target," said Chris West of the University of Oxford's UK Climate Impacts Programme.

"Four degrees C is definitely possible...This is the biggest challenge in our history," West told participants at the "4 Degrees and Beyond, International Climate Science Conference" at the University of Oxford last week.

A four-degree C overall increase means a world where temperatures will be two degrees warmer in some places, 12 degrees and more in others, making them uninhabitable.

It is a world with a one- to two-metre sea level rise by 2100, leaving hundreds of millions homeless. This will head to 12 metres in the coming centuries as the Greenland and Western Antarctic ice sheets melt, according to papers presented at the conference in Oxford.

Four degrees of warming would be hotter than any time in the last 30 million years, and it could happen as soon as 2060 to 2070.

more at IPS News