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Posted on 10/05/2003 11:23:23 AM PDT by realpatriot
Oil and gas will run out too fast for doomsday global warming scenarios to materialise, according to a controversial analysis presented this week at the University of Uppsala in Sweden. The authors warn that all the fuel will be burnt before there is enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to realise predictions of melting ice caps and searing temperatures.
Defending their predictions, scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say they considered a range of estimates of oil and gas reserves, and point out that coal-burning could easily make up the shortfall. But all agree that burning coal would be even worse for the planet.
The IPCC's predictions of global meltdown provided the impetus for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, an agreement obliging signatory nations to cut CO2 emissions. The IPCC considered a range of future scenarios, from profligate burning of fossil-fuels to a fast transition towards greener energy sources.
Energy discrepancy But geologists Anders Sivertsson, Kjell Aleklett and Colin Campbell of Uppsala University say there is not enough oil and gas left for even the most conservative of the 40 IPCC scenarios to come to pass (see graphic).
Billions of barrels
Although estimates of oil and gas reserves vary widely, the researchers are part of a growing group of experts who believe that oil supplies will peak as soon as 2010, and gas soon after (New Scientist print edition, 2 August 2003).
Their analysis suggests that oil and gas reserves combined amount to the equivalent of about 3500 billion barrels of oil considerably less than the 5000 billion barrels estimated in the most optimistic model envisaged by the IPCC.
The worst-case scenario sees 18,000 billion barrels of oil and gas being burnt five times the amount the researchers believe is left. "That's completely unrealistic," says Aleklett. Even the average forecast of about 8000 billion barrels is more than twice the Swedish estimate of the world's remaining reserves.
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Related Stories
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Climatologists give waterworld warning for Earth 26 April 2003
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For more related stories search the print edition Archive
Weblinks
Geology, University of Uppsala
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Economics University of Vienna
Kyoto Protocol
Nebojsa Nakicenovic, an energy economist at the University of Vienna, Austria who headed the 80-strong IPCC team that produced the forecasts, says the panel's work still stands. He says they factored in a much broader and internationally accepted range of oil and gas estimates than the "conservative" Swedes.
Even if oil and gas run out, "there's a huge amount of coal underground that could be exploited", he says. Aleklett agrees that burning coal could make the IPCC scenarios come true, but points out that such a switch would be disastrous.
Coal is dirtier than oil or gas and produces more CO2 for each unit of energy, as well as releasing large amounts of particulates. He says the latest analysis is a "shot across the bows" for policy makers.
Sorry for the fomatting, if it's distracting go to the source.
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Finally! A study that excercises a little common sense.
Planet Earth didn't experience runaway searing temperatures the last time this carbon was free in the atmosphere. (Afterall, that's where it had to be BEFORE it was locked up by fossilization). And no matter how much we burn and release, it STILL doesn't even begin to touch the vast amounts of carbon that is locked up as fossilized Calcium Carbonate: stone! limestone, marble, etc. etc.
It is impossible to have a runaway greenhouse effect because there was never too much carbon to begin with!!!
Geez - almost as scary as the day that FR's address was messed up in the 'DNS system' ...
All of it?
How come no other element except carbon has undergone such 'fossilization'?
CURRENT THINKING is that carbon, just like so many minerals on earth, are placed/and found where they curently are due to the same forces that made HUGE localized deposits of the other materials we find in abundance (with a few minor changes) ...
How come no other element except carbon has undergone such 'fossilization'?
They have, the generic term is "metamorphisis". Generally consists of the replacement or chemcal change of one mineral into another by geologic processes such as hydrothermal activity or other mechanism.
Fossilization implies some form of preservation from a previous geologic age.
Since all life on Earth is carbon-based, carbon is the major element that is locked up in fossils. But that does not mean that other elements aren't locked up as well. Calcium (from bones/shells) is also locked up, as are oxygen and hydrogen. Probably other elements as well. But carbon is the main element that we think of because all life is carbon-based.
WHAT I want to address is the misconception about *all* carbon soures (esp coal and oil) that we use as having been the product of life forces here on earth -
- plant life animan life whatever, as the means by which coal and oil may *now* be found on earth; my point is - newer theories do not have it occuring quite that way. Nor do we attribute *other* findings of deposits of minerals to such life forces as so-called 'fossil fuels' are ...
Actually, even coal doesn't lock up enough CO2 to cause the "catastrophic" scenarios either. The total of coal and oil reserves is much less than the total carbon content that has been in the atmosphere, most is now locked up in carbonates at the bottom of oceans in the form of lime & limestone in sedimentary deposits.
CO2 has never been the main factor of the greenhouse effect on earth, Water is the dominant factor by far. That is why there is no geologic c.rrelation between earth's surface temperature and CO2 concentration. At most there is evidence change in short term CO2 concentrations in response to Climate changes, but not as a causitive factor in determining temperature.
Anthropogenic (man-made) Contribution to the "Greenhouse
Effect," expressed as % of Total (water vapor INCLUDED)
| Based on concentrations (ppb) adjusted for heat retention characteristics | % of All Greenhouse Gases |
% Natural |
% Man-made |
| Water vapor | 95.000% |
94.999% |
0.001% |
| Carbon Dioxide (CO2) | 3.618% |
3.502% |
0.117% |
| Methane (CH4) | 0.360% |
0.294% |
0.066% |
| Nitrous Oxide (N2O) | 0.950% |
0.903% |
0.047% |
| Misc. gases ( CFC's, etc.) | 0.072% |
0.025% |
0.047% |
| Total | 100.00% |
99.72 |
0.28% |
- "(1) correlation does not prove causation, (2) cause must precede effect, and (3) when attempting to evaluate claims of causal relationships between different parameters, it is important to have as much data as possible in order to weed out spurious correlations.
***
Consider, for example, the study of Fischer et al. (1999), who examined trends of atmospheric CO2 and air temperature derived from Antarctic ice core data that extended back in time a quarter of a million years. Over this extended period, the three most dramatic warming events experienced on earth were those associated with the terminations of the last three ice ages; and for each of these climatic transitions, earth's air temperature rose well in advance of any increase in atmospheric CO2. In fact, the air's CO2 content did not begin to rise until 400 to 1,000 years after the planet began to warm. Such findings have been corroborated by Mudelsee (2001), who examined the leads/lags of atmospheric CO2 concentration and air temperature over an even longer time period, finding that variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration lagged behind variations in air temperature by 1,300 to 5,000 years over the past 420,000 years."[ see also: Indermuhle et al. (2000), Monnin et al. (2001), Yokoyama et al. (2000), Clark and Mix (2000) ]
- "Other studies periodically demonstrate a complete uncoupling of CO2 and temperature "
[see: Petit et al. (1999), Staufer et al. (1998), Cheddadi et al., (1998), Raymo et al., 1998, Pagani et al. (1999), Pearson and Palmer (1999), Pearson and Palmer, (2000) ]
- "Considered in their entirety, these several results present a truly chaotic picture with respect to any possible effect that variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration may have on global temperature. Clearly, atmospheric CO2 is not the all-important driver of global climate change the climate alarmists make it out to be."
Global warming and global dioxide emission and concentration:
a Granger causality analysis
- "We find, in opposition to previous studies, that there is no evidence of Granger causality from global carbon dioxide emission to global surface temperature. Further, we could not find robust empirical evidence for the causal nexus from global carbon dioxide concentration to global surface temperature."
"Carbon dioxide, the main culprit in the alleged greenhouse-gas warming, is not a "driver" of climate change at all. Indeed, in earlier research Jan Veizer, of the University of Ottawa and one of the co-authors of the GSA Today article, established that rather than forcing climate change, CO2 levels actually lag behind climatic temperatures, suggesting that global warming may cause carbon dioxide rather than the other way around."
***
"Veizer and Shaviv's greatest contribution is their time scale. They have examined the relationship of cosmic rays, solar activity and CO2, and climate change going back through thousands of major and minor coolings and warmings. They found a strong -- very strong -- correlation between cosmic rays, solar activity and climate change, but almost none between carbon dioxide and global temperature increases."
More on CO2 & Global Temperatures:
|
Global Temperature and Atmospheric CO2 over Geologic Time
Late Carboniferous to Early Permian time (315 mya -- 270 mya) is the only time period in the last 600 million years when both atmospheric CO2 and temperatures were as low as they are today (Quaternary Period ). Temperature after C.R. Scotese
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--Boris
The term 'fossilization', as used here, would refer, I'm presuming, to the 'fossilization' of that 'carbon' found on then *surface* of the planet due to life forms and eventually finding it's way back 'below ground' to be discovered as oil or gas eons after it was intially taken in by a plant after which it was eaten by a dinosaur ... a chain of events I do not wholly subscribe to, as, it overlooks other forces that were at work when the earth was being formed and influenced most other minerals that we discover in abundance in certain strata of rock in certain parts of the world ...
The ultimate JIT (Just In Time) delivery system.
I don't buy it ... we find *no* other mineral that is deposited/created the same. Carbon is one of the more abundant minerals on earth YET the 'claim' constantly made (assumed) is that the coal and oil we find is due to 'biological action'.
Do you know where the 'myth' that started attributing coal oil and gas to organic processes started (yes, this is a loaded question) originated?
http://www.earth.rochester.edu/ees201/Conrad/connradk2.html
Formation Processes
of Oil and Gas
Petroleum, commonly referred to as crude oil, forms after the burial of marine organic matter (plankton). It is almost always accompanied by natural gas, a mixture of lightweight hydrocarbons. Petroleum is composed of hydrocarbons, along with small amounts of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and sulfur. For it to form, the organic material must not be oxidized. Its accumulation depends on very specific temperature and pressure conditions. The deposit cannot get too hot (only about 200ƒ C) or be buried too deeply.
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