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
=========================================
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.
I cannot believe that with all the information available nowadays these morons can’t pull there heads out of the sand far enough to see reality. I’m moving to Mars…….
VY 73
NeilT says:
September 10, 2010 at 6:22 pm
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.
=======================================================
Neil, what negates the science is the simple fact that we don’t know enough to know what it is or is not doing.
If the ‘science’ did know, it would not have been a travesty.
It would have been predicted and explained.
You know that CO2 levels have been “forced” much higher in the past.
What forced them? Do you know?
When CO2 were much higher and levels fell, why did the fall? Do you know?
Heads up – there is something horribly slow about trying to type comments into the Tips and Notes section. I’m not having the same problem typing this.
Sorry this is completely OT but I’ve been following the Greenland ice island that broke off a glacier about 1 month ago and was reported here. Well it finally made it’s way into the Nares Strait and broke apart. Unfortunately the much sexier AQUA and TERRA images are obsured by cloud ATM so the ASAR will have to do. Enjoy!
06 Sept 2010
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/images/MODIS/Kennedy/201009061557.ASAR.jpg
09 Sept 2010
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/images/MODIS/Kennedy/201009091604.ASAR.jpg
TomRude, you say
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…
No, it’s more nefarious than that, more subtle. You see these people don’t want to give up there good life, either. Hence, they don’t want to destroy wealth creation for now, just put a slow tracheal squeeze on it, ‘for our children’. In fact, they are just nihilists but don’t have the murderous courage of their hero Lenin. All social-democratic organizations want to destroy by stealth what Lenin, explicitly stated, what should be destroyed, ‘bourgeois capitalism’ ie what we call civilization (in their world, don’t have a pair of glasses!). We should all read our history. But I think Lenin’s inheritors think we don’t. We do and, sometimes, better than they do.
Btw, I’m just old enough to remember what Lubos Mutol (spic) knows as tyranny!
Funny how they always ignore the other 770 or so Gigatonnes of CO2 emitted each year by other sources in the carbon cycle when drawing up such graphs.
Stack the above figures on top of that base line and it doesn’t look quite as scary does it?
The biggest mistake the Catastrophic AGW pushers made, was, underestimating the intelligence/data access of the masses.
Lewis: September 10, 2010 at 6:59 pm
To my last knowledge the Koch brothers from Kansas own one of U.S.’s largest privately owned corporation, energy based, heard years ago it’s bigger than the former GM, maybe even GE. You ought to look up some more recent info on Koch Industries, Inc. Have influence, you bet.
I reject the entire article.
By 2012/13 nobody will talk about Anthropogenic CO2 induced Global Warming anymore because the doctrine will be dead. Hopefully we will be able to prevent the intended power grab cloaked by the AGW scam.
New technologies will emerge and hopefully free competing markets and free people will decide which technologies will prevail instead of power hungry politicians, gold diggers and scare crows.
Step 1 – do not strand $100 trillion in energy generation investment because of a supercomputer output.
Step 2 – replace all the energy-hog supercomputers with CFL lightbulbs (especially the climate model ones).
Step 3 – retirement parties for those that programmed these supercomputers.
Step 4 – a second and third round of retirement parties.
Step 5 – free golf memberships for those previously involved in programming supercomputers.
Step 6 – reschedule November UN climate meetings from Cancun to Iqaluit.
Step 7 – do away with “Environmental Science” departments in all non-engineering university programs.
Step 8 – redefine “green” to mean “wasteful and illogical” in Oxford’s Dictionary.
Step 9 – Al Gore chairs UN climate meetings in his new permanent location in Iqaluit.
Step 10 – Develop template for Steps 11 through 121.
You can only replace the old when there is a ginning economy. Solar panels and windmills won’t cut it and they may even destroy the chance to ever replace.
I see now we desperatly need something better, like thorium (LFTR) reactors, and right now to span the next hundred years until maybe fusion can become a reality (it is terribly expensive research and may never happen). Solar collectors to heat homes and water, the biggest domestic energy uses of them all, that’s a good item too, just glass and something black inside + vacuum. To run the the refrigerators and air conditioners however, we need electricity. Add electric cars, we need even more.
Is anybody getting real yet? Not really. It’s the rampant corruption that may bring us all down, environmentalists and politicians leading the parade off the cliff.
Wayne, I hate to go trolling around google – I’d rather take someones word for it – are they that influential, do they (I’m joking now) have a bug in my brain? Isn’t it just infantile argument, attributing influence and motive, without addressing issue? My best bet, is to support the whole socialist gangbang because I’m temporarily out of pocket and am taking money from the state!
Lewis and Tom Rude.
Lets just hope that one of these twisted idealists isn’t the guy that sits at our smart meter supply switch and decides to play God during the big freeze. Hmmmnn too many monkeys (humans) to feed out there, lets get rid of………………………..!!
yeah, watch those smart meters!! Technology of master control!!
That’s a great plan! I would add to #7: ecologists.
The nations of the world have murdered millions of people to gain control of these very resources. The League of Nations was used as a pretext for doing this in the 1920’s as the IPCC is being used for that same purpose now. What’s a little fraud and intimidation? After all, it’s publish or perish. Seems to me the best way to publish is to warn of immanent climate disaster. What would you do.
I think the world owes Anthony Watts and Steven McIntyre a debt of gratitude. Nonetheless the agenda continues, unabated buy facts like the geological record.
Step 11. Send Michael Mann ( and the rest of that gang of global grifters) down to Antarctica (for ten years) where they can do some real climate research.
Ugh. Another one of these graphs. Hansen’s ‘scenario A’ pops to mind. But hey, is there a graph that overlays their temperature scenarios on top of these? Or is it too ridiculous to show it in that light?
And this is a scientist Joe Romm was defending, as a guy that SuperFreakanomic misquoted/lied about. Wonder what he will have to say about this.
“But to avoid the worst impacts we need to get busy building the next generation of clean energy technologies”
I am very happy with that as long as there is no carbon TAX.
Lewis: September 10, 2010 at 7:21 pm
Got you now, i misread your comment. Let me guess, Revkins readers were less than pleased ☺.
All of this doom and gloom regardless of the fact that we are cooling. So, who is it who’s into denial now?
With the PDO in its cooling phase and the Sun doing a Dalton Minimum 2.0, this cooling is going to last for decades and be cooler than a simple PDO cooling phase. Of course, the cooling deniers will say that any cooling is temporary and warming will eventually resume, big time. They have absolutely no basis for these predictions, but they KNOW they will, they have faith.
Warming will resume in 30 years or so. Otherwise, to prove these clowns wrong, the planet would have to continue cooling, into the next really big ice age. That’s probably the only thing that would shut them up.
The development of truly useful and affordable replacement energy will take time. It is wrong to force its development by government stimulus and green investments as this strategy consistently puts money in the wrong places, in their great lack of wisdom, and has the effect of slowing development.
Free enterprise will do its job. To think that we will continue doing the same things we are today for the next 100 years is foolish as we never done this before—why would be start now? We love to progress and do things better and more efficiently. As the alternatives become affordable, they will be exploited; that’s a given. We need to have faith in ourselves.
A priori logic, questionable assumptions, unreliable numeric models and uncertain hypothesize do not equate to science. They equate to propaganda. The results of studies such as this one are not worth a pinch of coon shit.
So, how many volcanos have been included in this ridiculous scenario, sub-sea, or otherwise? Predicting carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere is a nonsense, and to anticipate a specific increase utilising a spurious anthropogenic computer model is nothing short of bigoted idiocy.
Here’s a graph:
http://regmedia.co.uk/2010/09/07/ice_melt.jpg
“We have concluded that the Greenland and West Antarctica ice caps are melting at approximately half the speed originally predicted.”
Or, in other words, only wrong by 100%.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/07/revised_ice_loss_estimates/
NeilT,
Neil, PLEASE READ!
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/173/3992/138
Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate
S. I. Rasool 1 and S. H. Schneider 1 1
Institute for Space Studies, Goddard Space Flight Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, New York 10025
Effects on the global temperature of large increases in carbon dioxide and aerosol densities in the atmosphere of Earth have been computed. It is found that, although the addition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does increase the surface temperature, the rate of temperature increase diminishes with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. For aerosols, however, the net effect of increase in density is to reduce the surface temperature of Earth. Because of the exponential dependence of the backscattering, the rate of temperature decrease is augmented with increasing aerosol content. An increase by only a factor of 4 in global aerosol background concentration may be sufficient to reduce the surface temperature by as much as 3.5 ° K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease over the whole globe is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age.
http://www.pnas.org/content/101/17/6341.full
Evidence has been accumulating for decades that volcanic eruptions can perturb climate and possibly affect it on long timescales…
http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/find_eruptions.cfm
Type in the years around Pinatubo (1991) up to the present and tell me if you think the VEI volume has increased or not? Good place to start is 1980 or before.
I think we have had enough volcanic forcing to perturb climate for about a little over a decade now. I just pray that the numerous big boys that are percolating presently don’t cause a very real catastrophic cooling disaster in the near future.
Another good read…
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timetable_of_major_worldwide_volcanic_eruptions
You appear pretty stubborn, but maybe someone will benefit from my time.
Interesting study.
Hmmm … how to describe it … try delusional.
Just look at that supplementary graph with China’s CO2 emissions held steady for twenty years before decreasing. This is the planner’s delusion … give us the power to control things and here’s the rosy future we have in mind for you. China’s CO2 emissions will keep on increasing as they continue their rush to develop. In a generation they may reach a state of affluence sufficient to cause their population to press for environmental improvements by reducing not CO2 but the soot and smog they’ll be confronting. To a lesser degree this will also be happening in other developing countries (India and Brazil come to mind).