Main climate threat from CO2 sources yet to be built
From press release Stanford, CA— Scientists have warned that avoiding dangerous climate change this century will require steep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions. New energy-efficient or carbon-free technologies can help, but what about the power plants, cars, trucks, and other fossil-fuel-burning devices already in operation? Unless forced into early retirement, they will emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for decades to come. Will their emissions push carbon dioxide levels beyond prescribed limits, regardless of what we build next? Is there already too much inertia in the system to curb climate change?
Not just yet, say scientists Steven Davis and Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology. But to avoid the worst impacts we need to get busy building the next generation of clean energy technologies.
Davis and Caldeira, with colleague Damon Matthews of Concordia University in Montreal, calculated the amount of carbon dioxide expected to be released from existing energy infrastructure worldwide, and then used a global climate model to project its effect on the Earth’s atmosphere and climate.
“The problem of climate change has tremendous inertia,” says Davis. “Some of this inertia relates to the natural carbon cycle, but there is also inertia in the manmade infrastructure that emits CO2 and other greenhouse gases. We asked a hypothetical question: what if we never built another CO2-emitting device, but the ones already in existence lived out their normal lives?”
For a coal-fired power plant a “normal life” is about 40 years. For a late-model passenger vehicle in the United States it is about 17 years. After compiling data on lifetimes and emissions rates for the full range of fossil-fuel burning devices worldwide, the researchers found that that between the years 2010 to 2060 the total projected emissions would amount to about 500 billion tons of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere. To gauge the impact, they turned to the climate model. The researchers found that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 would stabilize at less than 430 parts per million (ppm) and the increase of global mean temperatures since preindustrial time would be less than 1.3°C (2.3°F).
“The answer surprised us,” says Davis. “Going into this study, we thought that existing sources of CO2 emissions would be enough to push us beyond 450 ppm and 2°C warming.” In light of common benchmarks of 450 ppm and 2°C, these results indicate that the devices whose emissions will cause the worst impacts have yet to be built.
But the authors caution that while existing infrastructure is less of a threat to climate than they had expected, this does not minimize the threat of future emissions. “Because most of the threat from climate change will come from energy infrastructure we have yet to build, it is critically important that we build the right stuff now – that is, low carbon emission energy technologies,” says Caldeira. He adds that other factors besides devices that directly emit carbon dioxide might also contribute to the system’s inertia. “We have a gas station infrastructure but not a battery recharging infrastructure,” he says. “This makes it easier to sell new gasoline powered cars than new electric cars. Thus there are infrastructural commitments that go beyond our calculation of future CO2 emissions embodied in existing devices.”
“In our earlier work we found that every increment of carbon dioxide emission produces another increment of warming,” says Caldeira. “We cannot be complacent just because we haven’t yet reached a point of no return.”
The study is published in the September 10, 2010, issue of Science.
NOTE: The study was not provided with the press release
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Supplementary graph:
Graph shows projected decline of carbon dioxide emissions in gigatons (billions of tons) from existing energy and transportation infrastructure (multicolored wedge) over the next 50 years, compared to three emissions scenarios (dotted lines) from the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Colors within the wedge indicate projected emissions by various countries and regions. Non energy emissions shown are global emissions projected under the SRES A2 scenario. High, middle, and low emissions projections correspond to the SRES A1G-FI, A2, and B1 scenarios, respectively.
Big Boys are starting to say the truth
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1310860/Ryanair-boss-Michael-OLeary-says-global-warming-doesnt-exist.html
The mandatory “although the study indicates in is not so bad, it is really really bad because everyone else says so”
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TAKE BACK THE COUNTRY on Nov 2nd.
Check out http://concordproject.org/
Dear study authors:
Please explain how your computer models show correlation between CO2 concentration and global temperature. Please refer to this document http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/2005-08-18/dioxide.htm that clearly shows no correlation between CO2 and global temperature in the geologic past of this planet, even though CO2 levels have been several times higher than today.
In other words, how is it that in the past there is no correlation between CO2 and temperature, yet you assert that there will be in the future?
Thank you.
“Ok ma, make sure you can keep a straight furrow! Giddyup!”
Been reading Ken Follett’s “Pillars of the Earth” about the
medieval building of the great cathedrals. Two things.
One, a low carbon,low technology, civilization really sucks.
Two the religious/political/scientific machinations of the day
are eerily similar. What next how many carbon atoms can dance
on the head of AlGore?…
“compared to three emissions scenarios”
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uh oh, where have we seen that before?
These people are so out of the main stream, they have no idea how tired people are of all this doom and gloom. No wonder people have lost faith in science and scientists.
You would think just once in a while, they would say “gee, the coral reefs are coming back nicely”, “we have more manatees than we thought”, “ok, we got a little too excited about that last pandemic”, or even “sorry, we really did not think that pill would do that”………………….
Does the black bit at the bottom of the second graph represent the resparation of all non-plant life on Earth plus all of the geologically vented CO2 and all the CO2 released by the melting of whatever captured it?
Seems a bit small.
Isn’t non-plant reparation part of a energy releasing function, so should it have been included in the black bit?
“We have a gas station infrastructure but not a battery recharging infrastructure,” he says. “This makes it easier to sell new gasoline powered cars than new electric cars.”
Here all this time I was laboring under the delusion that the reason was that gasoline powered cars actually work and are practical and affordable whereas electric cars don’t and aren’t.
“Not just yet, say scientists Steven Davis and Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology. But to avoid the worst impacts we need to get busy building the next generation of clean energy technologies.”
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I see, we should invest our tax money in the latest bubble.
It will defer our guilt, our money, and our future to the sacred guardians of the earth.
Power and greed.
History suggests, a bad outcome.
There is just so much Carbon and Oxygen on Earth.
Even if all the fossil fuels were burned, and released all the C02, Earth will still be in a state where it has been in the past wherein life flourished.
This concept of ‘adding’ C02 and other greenhouse gases completely misses the mark.
Recycling is what Earth does, and it does it through the biosphere.
Once geology gets ahold of it and turns it to mineral stone, it’s locked up. Only volcanoes and lower life forms can unlock it.
The plan to terraform Mars in the early 80’s got put on hold over possible indigineous life.
That plan needs to be revisited. Some of our descendants may need to get off this planet, and if not, at least give the plants and microbes a chance.
Oh, that’s not the half of it.
Between 2050-2100, there’s a 63.45% chance, according to my model, that someone will build an army of AIs that will march on countries with automated deathmobiles, turning us into their slaves until we rise up and form a technology free agrarian society that heals the planet in 2200.
By then the climate will start recovering from the impact of our mechanical overlords. But mostly our greed. Greed and deathmobiles.
“ . . . these results indicate that the devices whose emissions will cause the worst impacts have yet to be built. ”
I’ve asked this before, Can’t any of these folks write well enough that they can be understood?
My first thought was that they expected someone or some corporation to introduce a highly polluting machine of some unknown sort. But that can’t be what they mean. They must mean all the new cars and trucks that will be built or the power plants that will churn out the electrons to power all the electric vehicles, or the new plants that will make the concrete, steel, and fiberglass for the wind towers. Or maybe all the new biomass burning including those using small wood stoves.
The bottom line is they proved to themselves that there really isn’t anything to this catastrophic human caused global warming thing but they are willing to spend a bunch more of our money looking for something to get excited about.
“In our earlier work we found that every increment of carbon dioxide emission produces another increment of warming,” says Caldeira.
That sort of spin statement doesn’t inspire confidence in the science.!! Of course the “increment” as such can be based on different data and statistical size for the given amount of carbon dioxide emmission, and the increment of warming, its just a matter of stretching one (adjusting, homogenizing?) or compacting the other so it spins like they match. That one has a causal link to the other lies then, in mythical conscensus.
Mind you I have no problem with the idea of making anything more efficient and emitting less. That is and has been a desirable objective, to clean up the air and environment, something that has been ongoing for years. (at least in Australia) Unfortunately those with short memory and green zeal, don’t give any credit at all for the capacity of Industry to keep continually upgrading for better efficiencies and environmental responsibility as new technology becomes available.
Industry and commerce provides the economic wealth and government stability provides the partnership in the process, with incentive for industry to avail themselves of that new technology.
Its a win, win situation, but for some reason the left of green, now want, everything yesterday to crush and wreck the economy of developed nations, a notion that gives no credit for what has been accomplished and one that will surely undermine capacity to achieve, build, invent, and in the end both nurture the planet and its inhabitants.
Science needs to look hard at the advocacy nature of these papers as they tend to undermine those creative economies that have an established track record of improvement and innovation.
This re-direction of science is counter productive with potential to create great harm to the world environment and the present capacity these stronger economies have to come to the aid of others, whether bereft by way of natural disaster, or chaotic economies.
If they are relying on the UN as some super non indulgent, uncorrupted honest broker , they only have to look at the present poor track record of dishonesty, lies and outright, snouts in the trough chaos.
Exactly where is the electricity to power up these electric cars going to come from, once there are charging stations? The carpet of windmills, 1 megawatt at a time, that is planned to cover the Great Plains, or that solar power plant in the Mojave Desert that environmental activists don’t want? Or are we going to do a 180 on our national policy against nuclear power? That is a 20 year proposition, if we start now. Electric cars or gasoline powered, we are going to see a significant carbon based infrastructure for a long time to come. Or we will sit home in the dark and be cold (or hot).
“We have a gas station infrastructure but not a battery recharging infrastructure,”
The nation actually has a massive mobile battery recharging infrastructure.
Alternators, one in every car.
Do to the economic structure we have created, ANY fantastically new technology WILL NOT put into production due to the profit factor of manufacturing many when technology available only needs a few.
The understanding of motion totally incorrect to ACTUAL PHYSICAL EVIDENCE.
First, their premise is dead wrong.
Then they compound it by somehow NOT including the time frames to “build” a replacement power plant.
Cement plants are replaced by ???? You have to heat up and burn that crushed rock somehow to make cement to make concrete to make the replacement power plants for the coal plants they are assuming are demolished and repalced with ????
Steel production and oil refining and plastic production now using energy are replaced by ????
Transportation (using oil products) is replaced with ??? (Sure, they mention – with a wave of the hand at electric cars – private, commuter-length drives over short distances NOT requiring heat or AC to be livable – but what powers trucks? Trains? Ships? Barges? … Oh, those are replaced by the (newly built) non-coal powered power plants. What powers the stuff to build the stuff to ship the stuff to build the new non-coal-powered power plants?)
Coal powered plants (US and Europe) are a 4-6 year permitting process required by the same people who don’t even want to put solar panels in the (unpopulated, wasteland) deserts where nothing but sand grows. And that sand is growing a lot of nothing a long way away from people. Today, at fall 2010, that BEGINS new construction of these hypothetical/mythical power plants 2016 – and allows the FIRST new plants to come on line in early 2020. Their curves are already dropping considerably that 2020 date!
Nuclear maybe? Figure 10 year permitting process and 4-6 year construction process. And remember to build those enrichment plants FIRST – well before you need the new fuel for the power plants. Our existing sources of ex-Soviet nuclear bomb mateial are just about out, and new mines, new enrichment facilities, and new processing plants are forbidden. By these same zealots for CAGW.
rbateman says:
September 10, 2010 at 5:42 pm
…. The plan to terraform Mars in the early 80′s got put on hold over possible indignant [?] life.
That plan needs to be revisited. Some of our descendants may need to get off this planet, and if not, at least give the plants and microbes a chance.
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Won’t work. They will probably just end up bringing some liberals with that first wave that starts exploring Mars. Can we somehow “breed out” the liberal class from the reproductive group?
Of course its all just conjecture.
All just a waste of time and funding.
Education, as a business model.
But, we do, and continue to prove we are the best there is.
Dan
“Dear study authors:
Please explain how your computer models show correlation between CO2 concentration and global temperature. Please refer to this document http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/2005-08-18/dioxide.htm that clearly shows no correlation between CO2 and global temperature in the geologic past of this planet”
I don’t recall any dinosaurs being resposible for digging up and burning the carbon sinks in a “geological second”. Or did I miss something?
CO2 forces climate warming when CO2 leads warming. In natural cycles CO2 “follows” warming as a result of the natural warming.
What is happening right now is not natural. It’s being forced. By US. So I would not expect to see anything like it in the geological record. That doesn’t negate the science at all.
You are comparing apples with golf balls.
Batteries, energy intensive to mine the ores neccessary, energy intensive to manufacture, energy intensive to charge, energy intensive to recycle. Now never mind the pollution, batteries as a motive energy source suck,massive weight for miniscule output. There is a reason the electric car never was able to compete. And as for the article, computer modelling again, so thats the science in this sciency press release?
I agree 100% with the study’s authors. We need to take the billions wasted on things like ‘Global Ecology’ research and ‘Climate Change’ research and put it towards fusion research instead.
Total Paul Ehrlich crap: We’re ALL gonna die!
It assumes – as Ehrlich and Malthus did – that our human ingenuity will fail to come up with any improvements.
Here is something I am certain will happen:
1. The major increases in technology – heavy and light – will be in Asia.
2. The vast majority of pollution increases will be in Asia.
3. Since necessity is a mother – which usually leads to invention – it will be in Asia where the future improvements in handling the negatives of Asian increases in, well, the negatives that come with higher standards of living.
4. The BRIC countries will predominate for the next century. They have or have the best access to raw materials, and THEY are focusing on producing GOODS with which to improve the lives of their people. So THEY will have the motivation to solve the problems that come up.
5. WILL a warming globe be something they can’t deal with? Not in the slightest.
6. Will their actions make OUR side of the globe warmer, to some degree we can’t handle? That is a two-part question. First, OUR side of the globe (the U.S.) hasn’t shown any real warming – certainly not something that has so far caused us any grief. No one is boiling, no cities inundated by rising sea levels – and most of the U.S. has shown little or no warming. And that is with China and India and Russia growing by leaps and bounds. If those grow at the same “leaps and bounds” for the next 90 years, my money is that whatever warming happens HERE will be able to be dealt with by advances made THERE to solve their problems (IF they actually happen).
So, basically, it is Paul Ehrlich Redux: A hyper-ventilating alarmist or two tells us the sky is falling. Whoop dee freaking doo. There WILL be advances that completely overwhelm any problems that may arise, so this is all Much Ado About Nothing. We have been here before. Nothing to see here. Move along…
In order to create a green market you have to retire every existing car, infrastructure, plant, appliances etc… this way you people instead of spending the cash you generate with your work on whatever you’d like, you will be forced into spending it on their items. Green slavery and no time to think: you have also to manage your smart meters…
The idea that we need to start building the right stuff now is wrong, if it ever becomes clear that we need different technology to save the world the time to build it is after it has been invented, not before. Right now there are no real good alternatives to fossil fuels, except nuclear. If we rush to replace fossil fuels with inferior technology all we will be doing is spending money on technology that will have to be replaced by superior technology in the future. Far better to use what works now until something better comes along.
Andy Revkin had a rather anomalous article recently, which wished to attribute every ‘weather event’ to man but knew it couldn’t, but well still, probabilities – er, no read Pielke passim – etc.
Anyway, I said my piece and it seemed the discussion had become quite reasonable. But the more I looked, the more I noticed a certain meme. Who are the ‘Koch brothers’ ?- I’ve never heard of them but they seem a new way to beet us over the head with a water melon!
My last comment to Andy Revkin was just that:
Could someone please tell me who these nefarious Koch brothers are and how they have the supposed baleful influence? It’s such a funny idea, if it wasn’t dangerously sad, that some still believe in, again, a ‘Protocol’.