Guest Post by Thomas Fuller
The choices we make about energy, the environment and climate will be limited by The Three Chinas.
The Real China
1. One of the Chinas is very real and familiar. It has a population of 1.4 billion.
2. China is developing quickly, trying to do in 50 years what America did in 100. As a result, they have doubled their energy use since 2000, becoming the largest energy user in the world.
3. China’s energy use may well double again by 2020. (The figures in the report did not match reality, but their estimate of 7.5% annual growth looks fairly okay).
4. Coal currently provides 70% of China’s energy. That may drop to 65% by 2020. It may not.
5. If China doubles its energy use (to 200 quads) and 65% of it comes from coal, that will be 130 quadrillion BTUs generated from burning coal, in China, in 2020.
6. China’s coal plants are much dirtier than those used in the developed world.
The Second China
This very real China will be replicated by the natural growth of the human population to 8.5 billion by 2035, and 9.1 billion at its peak later this century. That’s more than the entire population of China. As many of them will actually be born in China, and many more will form part of our third ‘imaginary’ China, it is appropriate to limit the Second China to the size of the real one.
7. Most of these new humans will be born into developing countries.
8. But these developing countries are, in fact, developing now. Their energy use is increasing dramatically–if not as dramatically as China’s. The Second China will spring forth from countries whose energy use is growing by 3.3% per year.
9. And although their use of coal is not as intense as China’s, their reliance on fossil fuels is fairly close (Fig. 2)
The Third China
While China is developing quickly, so is the rest of the developing world. As countries develop, the people living in them get richer. They buy cars, appliances, computers, and begin to use more energy. Again, to avoid double counting (China will be one of the countries talked about, and many of the new middle class will consist of people not yet born), it is correct to think of this as about the size of the current China.
10. Two billion people may join the middle class by 2030.
11. By 2050, countries which are now developing quickly will be called ‘middle-income’ and may account for 60% of GDP.
12. Goldman Sachs believes that China’s per capita income will be $50,000 in 2050 (p.5), and that their per capita GDP will be $70,000. But they also project that Turkey and Mexico will have higher incomes per capita, and that Brazil will almost match China.
13. Mexico currently consumes 69 million BTUs per person per year (Table 1.8). Their average income is $14,000. If their incomes triple, so will their energy usage. The same is true for Indonesia, Turkey, the Philippines, China, India and more.
Discussion
I have written here frequently that I believe current estimates of future energy consumption are flawed. I hope the information provided above shows why. As I have written before, extending current consumption and development trends over a short period of time shows a doubling and perhaps a tripling of energy use over the medium term. That could see global demand for energy reaching 2,000 quads per year by 2035.
I do not know what the sensitivity of the atmosphere is to a doubling of concentrations of CO2 is, and despite pronouncements from partisans on either side of that argument, I don’t think anybody else knows, either.
I do not know what cycles of earth, moon, sun and stars will combine to push or pull global temperatures one way or another, and despite pronouncements from partisans on either side, I don’t think anybody else knows, either.
Recent human history makes it fairly easy to contemplate economic growth and energy usage for the very near future. It is an order of magnitude easier than trying to analyse the factors that influence the climate.
We do not have to guess about the effects of massive coal consumption by developing countries–we have our own history to guide us, from London in 1952 to Manchester a century before, from burning rivers in Ohio to dead lakes nearby.
Commenters to my recent pieces asked why I characterise our situation as an energy crisis. I have tried to provide an answer here. I’m happy to discuss this with any and all. Because I think this is a conversation we can have without referring to magical numbers and thinking, pixie dust or moonbeams.
I personally think that this level of intense development will indeed have an effect on our climate, due not only to CO2, but also deforestation, aquifer depletion and other factors described ably by Roger Pielke Sr. But I don’t know how much and I don’t know what percentages to assign to each.
So let’s talk about energy and why what is described above signals a crisis–or not.
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Steve says:
October 21, 2010 at 6:08 pm
“Paul Birch says: “Actually, answer = 4kg for the zero phosphorus mix specified (read what you wrote). But of course the real answer is that we would only “have” to mine 100kg of crust to get 100g of phosphorus if we needed ~1e20 kg of it. For any lesser amount we have the option of mining more concentrated deposits. For the scenario being discussed the total amount of phosphorus required is only ~1e12 kg; even the silly peak phosphorus theory claims reserves of three times that figure.”
Well I did make a typo and a conversion error, but your 4 kg answer is complete nonsense – care to show your math? ”
10% potassium (K) at 2.5% crustal abundance w/w requires 10%/2.5% kg/kg = 4. Or a bit less if you go by K2O.
“And yes, I understand that more concentrated sources reduces the amount of crust that needs to be mined. They are called phosphate rock mines”
No, those are only some of the most concentrated sources. There are much larger amounts in somewhat less concentrated deposits (for example ~40 GT in peat, at ~1%, which is a ten-fold concentration factor over the crustal average). You might look up Lasky’s Law, particularly in its generalised or extended form.
“Which is why I asked if your 1,000 ppm figure includes those phosphate rock sources that we are already depleting (mines being considered part of the Earth’s crust). Because once those are gone, the amount of crust mined elsewhere will require much more than 83.3 kg per 1 kg of 0-10-0 fertilizer.”
It’s irrelevant. 3e9kg versus 1e20kg. Even if the extracted phosphorus were lost to the Earth – which of course it isn’t – it would amount to less than a billionth of the total. The 1000 ppm crustal average would be reduced to 999.999 9997 ppm. The difference is negligible.
“And what do you mean by “for the scenario being discussed, the total amount of phosphorus is only ~~1e12 kg?” What scenario, and where is your math? ”
The Julian Simon scenario you were attacking; 500 billion people supported by phytoculture.. Allowing a conservative 2kg P/person that’s 1e12kg. There’s ~0.6-1.0kg P in the human body, the fast-breeding cells of phytoculture require an additional biomass considerably less than that of the animal it is feeding, and the wet oxidative recyling of waste to nutrient would take rather less than a day, so the 2kg inventory assumed is more than adequate.
“A “convenient example for explanatory purposes” with absolutely no calculations to back it up is called a “guess” in polite circles. ”
No, it’s an expository example. An existence proof. And there are calculations aplenty throughout Simon’s work, and the extensive references he cites therein.
“Do you really think that the United States imports phosphorus from Morocco but it has a massive pile of unused, cheap detritus that it could be using instead?”
Of course it has. Equivalent to several hundred thousand tonnes of phosphorus a year. But mined and imported phosphorus is so cheap that it is not currently considered worth the capital investment needed to recycle it.
“Even Julian Simon’s philosophy states that peaks exist!”
No, it doesn’t. It states that they are economic nonsense. You cannot equate the economic good with the rate of physical extraction. In a free market the latter will be whatever maximises the economic efficiency overall. It might rise and fall, displaying an apparent “peak”, but if so it will be for economic and political reasons, not physical ones.
“Simon’s optimistic philosophy trusts that between the hordes of the ignorant individuals who cannot solve the oncoming problem, either because they can’t see it, they don’t want to see it or they don’t have the knowledge to overcome it, there will always be enough shining minds who see the problem and solve it before it becomes a Malthusian catastrophe.”
There is no need to “solve” these non-problems, because numerous technological solutions are already known, and more solutions froth up continuously. It is Malthusians like you who worry about these things, and promote alarm and despondancy, because you don’t understand economics and are ignorant of the huge and ever-expanding range of options we already have in reserve, already sufficient for many, many, many orders of magnitude increase in human consumption. The only major problems are political – the propensity of politicians to wreck the economy for the sake of their socialist ideologies. Unfortunately, they can all to easily create shortages where none exist (and that’s about all they can create). You may deny it, but it is plain to see that your underlying world view is an essentially Malthusian one. Remember, Malthus had “solutions” too, and they too involved the use of force to keep the immiserated peasants under control, or war to trim their numbers.
Sorry, that should have been 3e12kg versus 1e20kg, 30 billionths, and 999.999 997 ppm.