Guest post by David Archibald
The fate of all carbon is Davy Jones’ locker. Following the post on the imminent decline in world oil production and the effect that would have on agricultural operating costs at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/27/peak-oil-now-for-the-downslope/,
let’s have a look at what total peak fossil fuel production looks like and the effect that will have on climate. It will look something like this:
Figure 1: World Fossil Fuel Production 1800 – 2300
The figure is in millions of barrels of oil and its equivalent in energy content per annum. Peak production is in 2025. Coal production keeps rising until about 2050 but that is more than offset by the declines in oil and natural gas. China has the largest coal reserves on the planet of about one trillion tonnes. The United States is next with about 250 billion tonnes.
Figure 2: Fossil Fuel Production scaled against rate of increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide
There is high quality data on atmospheric carbon dioxide from 1959 from the Mauna Loa observatory. Plotted against the historic fossil fuel production profile, there is a good match fuel burned and what remained in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide has a half life in the atmosphere of about five years. It is very rapidly exchanged with the biosphere and the top 100 metres of the ocean. There is almost no exchange between the atmosphere and the ocean below 100 metres. The oceans have fifty times as much carbon dioxide as the atmosphere and eventually the atmosphere will be in equilibrium with the whole ocean column instead of the top 100 metres. Note the dip in the rate of increase in 1992 associated with the cooling caused by Mt Pinatubo. Similarly, the current solar-driven cooling will be associated with a flatlining of the atmospheric carbon dioxide level as the cooling oceans will absorb more carbon dioxide.
Figure 3: Projected atmospheric carbon dioxide level 1800 – 3300
The oceans turn over every eight hundred years. So at one end of the oceanic conveyor, water in equilibrium with the current atmospheric carbon dioxide level is sinking towards Antarctica and at the other end, water in equilibrium with the pre-industrial level of carbon dioxide of about 300 ppm is coming to the surface and immediately taking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to become in equilibrium with the current carbon dioxide level. The sum of these two effects is to take 0.25% of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and dissolve it in the oceans. If it weren’t for this effect, burning all the rocks we could economically burn would take the atmospheric carbon dioxide level to about 600 ppm. With it, the peak is going to be about 522 ppm in 2130.
From the current level of 390 ppm and with the heating effect of carbon dioxide being 0.1°C per 100 ppm, the consequential increase in atmospheric temperature will can look forward to may be another 0.15°C. This will simply be lost in the noise of the climate system. There is a far greater benefit. The extra 130 ppm-odd from the current level will increase agricultural productivity by 23%. So instead of the world producing 2.2 billion tonnes of grain, the same land area and water will be able to produce a further 500 million tonnes of grain. That increase would be able to sustain about 1,200 million people. Perhaps that is not a sustainable thing because the oceanic turnover will subsequently bury that aerial fertiliser in the deep oceans.
This figure also shows why higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have such a dramatic effect on plant growth. Plants can’t operate against the partial pressure differential between their cells and the atmosphere when the atmospheric content is below 150 ppm of carbon dioxide. During the depths of the glacials during the current ice age, which is three million years long so far, the atmospheric carbon dioxide level got as low at 172 ppm. Life above sea level came within a hair’s breadth of extinction due to lack of carbon dioxide. At the pre-industrial level of about 300 ppm, only 150 ppm was available to plants. At the expected atmospheric concentration of 522 ppm in 2130, that will be a 150% increase in useable carbon dioxide.
Figure 4: Energy Density per Litre
The next question is,”When carbon becomes rare and expensive, what will we be driving?” The future doesn’t look too bleak in that regard. As a fuel, ammonia has about half the energy density of LPG and handles like LPG in terms of the pressures and temperatures of storage. Ammonia is better than having no liquid fuel at all and can be made from nitrogen and hydrogen produced by electrolysis. The cost of electric power determines the production cost. There are credible attempts being made to produce ammonia from wind power. Electrolysis could handle the swings in power output from wind which electric grids are ill-suited to.
Figure 5: Competitive Price Ranges of Nitrogenous Fertiliser Feedstocks
It is said that half the World’s protein consumption comes from synthetically produced ammonia. Until recently, the most competitive feedstock has been natural gas. But with the natural gas price internationally linked to the oil price through the LNG market, it is being displaced by coal as the preferred feedstock. Coal-based urea plants have twice the capex of natural gas-based ones. The oil price that triggers a switch to coal is about $50 per barrel in energy equivalent terms. Above that level, coal is the preferred feedstock up to about $200 per barrel at which point wind energy may be viable and the coal has a high value use as feedstock for liquid fuels.
In the longer term, the cost of nuclear power will be the main determinant of transport and agricultural operating costs.
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Crosspatch at 11/13/1104pm has got it perfect… Nuclear is the answer..! Go up and read it!
Again…
So let’s get on to GenIV research, which will make energy much cheaper, but also allow
H2 production, cheaply, and also high-heat flow. High-heat can take the form of a helium
Stream into an oil refinery, at say 800 degrees centigrade, to replace furnaces. Hydrogen
can start cell-fuel automobiles; the car companies are ready.
How acidic will this much carbon make the oceans?
Peak oil will undoubtedly occur, and it will only be recognized in retrospect, at which point it will be no big deal, because the peak will be the result of other energy sources having become paramount. People did not cease burning whale oil because of “peak whale”; rather “peak whale” occurred because a cheaper source of lamp oil became available.
On another matter, some commenters like to slag oil from the Alberta Oil Sands by suggesting it is a waste of “high value” natural gas to upgrade the oil. But just as the hydrogen from the gas is added to the oil molecules to upgrade them, we could invert that to say that carbon from the heavy oil is added to the natural gas to upgrade it into light crude, precursor of valuable liquid motor fuels. Process heat is really incidental. I would take no issue with using nuclear reactors for process heat, as long as it could be done cheaply enough. But the environmentalist NIMBYS will certainly take issue.
G. Karst says:
November 14, 2011 at 9:36 am
jrwakefield says:
November 14, 2011 at 9:04 am
These unconvensional sources will only mean that that slow production will last longer.
Isn’t that exactly the goal of developing unconventional sources?
——
Unlike the anti-oil people I feel we need to exploit as much of the black gold we can. The problems we will face as a civilization will be two fold. Dwindling resources, and not just because of declining supply for geological reasons, but also declining supply to importing countries because of geopolitical reasons. Oil producing countries are also seeing an increase in their own consumption of their own oil. All it has to take is for one or more of these exporting nations to decide they will keep what is in the ground for their own future, and that means less available for importing countries, which means less flow on the global stage. It could also be used as a weapon. Imagine a mid-east country changing regimes (popular today) being run by radical extremists who decide to cut the west off as a means of crushing them economically.
The second big problem with unconvensional sources will be credit. If we go into a prolonged economic credit crisis, lasting decades, like the 1930’s, there won’t be the capital needed to produce from these non-convensional sources.
Oil won’t go to $200 a barrel, because below that triggers recessions, which drops demand, and lowers the price.
So peak oil, the rate of flow, has a number of factors affecting it. High consumption Importing nations, like the US and the EU/UK are suseptable more than anyone.
The US needs to take a leadership role, not possible with this administration, and move to LFTR as fast as they can. Or should the US import that technology from China too?
Important caviet. I make no pronouncements on what the future will be. Then there is Iran, the nuclear wild card.
@jrwakefield says:
>…It doesn’t even matter if oil is abiotic (which has been well refuted http://static.scribd.com/docs/j79lhbgbjbqrb.pdf).
+++++++++
Don’t tell the Russians! 50% of their present oil exports are reputed to be because they have given up on the old fossil fuel idea and now explore on the basis of its being abiotic, for example east of the Caucasus. They even went to Vietnam (where hope was zero) and found oil based on the abiotic source idea.
As for the declining rate of flow of new oil discoveries, you mean like the Deep Water Horizon strike and the huge one in Cuban waters that preceeded it? DWH was flowing at 100,000 bbl per day while half choked with a broken valve, bent pipe and stuffed with shrapnel. BP tried to keep it quiet for weeks refusing video coverage to hide the enormity of the strike (bad for business to tell people there is a lot of oil). The rumour is that there will be similar strikes just off the coast of Haiti. Oh, that too based on an abiotic genesis emerging through cracks at the edge of crustal plates. It is an idea probably worth considering even if it undermines the idea that it is fossil, limited and doomed to stop flowing soon.
The idea that natural gas is NOT manufactured in the crust is silly. There is too much carbon down there not to generate a lot of methane. It is an unavoidable consequence of thermal decomposition of carbonaceous materials under high pressure. Finis and klaar.
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 14, 2011 at 11:03 am
Jon says:
November 14, 2011 at 9:42 am
your quote refers to a shortage of barrels at the advent of drilling.
So? Shortages come and go. At the point I was referring to, the number of barrels was a limiting factor, at other times it is political factors, at other times something else. When was there actually a shortage of oil? rather than other factors being the real limitation at any one time.
————
1) 1970’s US. before then the US exported oil, then became an importer due entirely to decline from producing fields, which has NEVER recovered from including with the introduction of new technology. The oil crisis of the 1970’s was due to a mere 5% loss of flow vs demand. Example, the once hyped Hibernia field off Newfoundland, claimed to make the east coast of Canada oil self-sufficient is now in terminal decline since 2004 http://www.cnlopb.nl.ca/pdfs/graph_hib.pdf
2) The collapse of the USSR is thought to be linked to their loss of flow rates during that period. Technology was the problem, they didn’t have it. Now they have recovered, but appears to have now peaked in total production in Russia.
Wow. Went looking for info on China’s coal reserves, got some seriously mixed Green and Warming messages at the Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/mar/08/china-coal-new-middle-east
(bold added)
China will be pursuing Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)?
There’s Dave Springer’s China coal reserves figure, at least. But all coal is not the same. Anthracite is nearly all carbon thus is very energy dense, and commands a premium price compared to other coals. If those massive Chinese reserves are even lower grade than lignite, common brown coal, it’s little better than burning peat. Indeed, by the Wikipedia coal entry there is no coal ranked lower than lignite but peat is listed as considered a coal precursor.
Thus while the Chinese coal reserves may be vast, it’s the crappy “use it last” stuff thus the effective quantity is far less. Which might explain the next bit:
Thus higher-quality US coal will be used instead of the Chinese coal in China.
The mentioned CCS support is interesting:
1. Due to the energy required for CCS, using the tech will increase coal use, thus increasing coal sales.
2. Coal will be an important energy source of the future, at least for several decades to come. That’s an unavoidable economics fact. If it has to be made “Green” to be acceptable, then that’s what will happen. Which will result in someone raking in profits from what will likely become government-mandated, provided that enough or the right people don’t realize and accept it is madness.
But in what looks to be confusing, while giving lip service to “clean” coal, Peabody Energy is busy fighting the EPA’s “greenhouse gas” endangerment finding. And with that:
So CCS is a great technology to pursue, feel free to pay more for your energy if you want to be Green, but the government shouldn’t mandate anything that could lead to a de facto shutdown of coal use.
And the Guardian said the Climategate emails were “illegally released” instead of stolen. Is that progress?
jrwakefield says:
November 14, 2011 at 1:05 pm
“Example, the once hyped Hibernia field off Newfoundland, claimed to make the east coast of Canada oil self-sufficient is now in terminal decline since 2004”
Yes, of course, individual oil fields become depleted after years of exploitation. That is beside the point. New exploration opens up new fields. Since the 1970’s, we have A) by law, put a large portion of unexplored regions out of reach and B) been able to get oil cheaper from elsewhere. It does not mean we do not have the resources, any more than the fact that most of our consumer electronics come from Asia means we have forgotten how to build electronic hardware. It just means it is currently cheaper and more accessible from elsewhere.
Hide the decline!….Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr 🙂
“gbaikie, what nuclear waste? The vast bulk of it, all of the U238 and the various plutonium transuranics are all just new fuel waiting to be reprocessed. Why would we ever throw away all that useful, high energy density fuel? Dumping it on the moon is the most useless and most hazardous thing we can do with it.”
If it’s valuable who is buying it?
Maybe it would worth more on the moon and they out bid any future earth buyers.
It the moment it seems reactor fuel is fairly cheap, and therefore it’s common for parties to consider it cheaper to store nuclear waste.
If the govt permitted certain qualified companies to be able take all nuclear waste. Because they were not going to store them anywhere on Earth but would have an easily veritable system that ensued all nuclear material was actually transported to the Moon. Would such a company have a market. In other words whatever the price [because it requires a market to determine a price of anything] and what I talking about creating a market where none exists. Are there parties that are more interested in not storing their nuclear waste? Would such a service be useful- would it lower their costs.
This could include the waste from decommissioned reactor
By his own claims, Rossi’s E-Cat produces low-pressure steam and hot water. Not useless, but not suitable for driving steam turbines (or super-critical CO2 turbines either), so it’s not going to be an electrical power producer.
We were all ready to start re-processing our “spent” nuclear fuel (SNF), when Pres. Carter shut down the facility with an executive order. Some nonsense about “setting an example”. Which no one else followed, surprise, surprise. Politics has blocked the waste repository (which the feds are obligated to provide) for decades, blocking it is part of the anti-nukes strategy for killing nuclear power. At this point, the best way to “dispose” of SNF is to use it up in molten salt reactors, do it on site so there is no transportation issue.
The polywell and Deep Focus Fusion projects are still going, so far, neither have his any show stoppers.
Bart says:
November 14, 2011 at 1:52 pm
jrwakefield says:
November 14, 2011 at 1:05 pm
“Example, the once hyped Hibernia field off Newfoundland, claimed to make the east coast of Canada oil self-sufficient is now in terminal decline since 2004″
Yes, of course, individual oil fields become depleted after years of exploitation. That is beside the point. New exploration opens up new fields. Since the 1970′s, we have A) by law, put a large portion of unexplored regions out of reach and B) been able to get oil cheaper from elsewhere. It does not mean we do not have the resources, any more than the fact that most of our consumer electronics come from Asia means we have forgotten how to build electronic hardware. It just means it is currently cheaper and more accessible from elsewhere.
—–
All true, but has nothing to do with peak oil. All new fields will do is prolong the length of time for the over all decline. None of the new oil fields, including those yet to be tapped off shore of the US, will stop the world wide decline of supply rates because those new fields won’t be able to flow fast enough to keep up with the decline of old fields. The addition of the east coast won’t even replace what the US imports, some 10mb/day.
This will also be a serious problem going forward: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8526
Can some adress this simply. I am a beer brewer and the last thing I do is carbonate the beer. To get the same CO2 density in beer at 60F requires 23.1 PSI of CO2 and at 70F requires 28.8 PSI of CO2. 1 thing is quite obvious from this simple fact. CO2 changes will always follow climate change as the ocean releases way more CO2 than people. The ocean is the driver of CO2 levels.
Colin said on November 14, 2011 at 5:25 am:
Because dumping spent nuke fuel on the Moon was an essential plot element of Space: 1999, which some find to be a bold and largely-realistic visage of human space exploration, highlighting mankind’s strengths in the face of cosmic adversity, and a preferable “everyone working together” (*cough*communist*cough*) society.
While set more than 25 years in the future at production, it may well be another 40 to 50 years until such a Grand Wonderful Future for Humanity could come about. And to bring it about, of course a lunar repository of Earth’s spent nuke fuel is required, therefore…
Leif … you say “so?” The fact is, you were incorrect … in 1862, the limiting factor was not a shortage of whiskey barrels.
How long have we seen these ‘peak oil’ and ‘peak energy’ predictions…each one out 20 or 30 years, each one passing without the peak actually …well….peaking? I’ve been reading newspapers and science magazines and journals for more than 50 years, and have seen what seems to have been at least a dozen of these doomsday cycles.
Such predictions are always accompanied by logical sounding calculations on how the peak is unavoidable and how ‘the signs are obvious even now’….its just that the production just refuses to peak as predicted.
Can anyone tell me why this one is different than the rest?
“The oceans turn over every eight hundred years.”
Does that mean that it takes eight hundred years for water to move from the surface of the ocean to the bottom, and vice versa, or that every eight hundred years the oceans leap up into the air and flip over like a wet pancake?
If the latter, we’re doomed.
@ur momisugly An alternative view?
@ur momisuglyCrispin in Waterloo
http://www.kth.se/aktuellt/lattare-att-hitta-olja-1.43372
Vladimir Kutcherov at the Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan in Stockholm has, he claims, proved that dead diatoms are not necessary for oil production, and that we are a long way from peak oil.
But we’re still doomed.
It’s about time we had some polls at WUWT. Who here believes PO_isNow? Anyone independantly discovered the PO_isNow cult, got involved, and then found it to be a fraud?
I read about peakoil_is_now back in 2006. It’s compelling. Once your a peaker, you get very involved in it’s material, like you’re in a cult. You have to dig quite deep to find that it’s a fraud, designed to play on the same society is about to collapse and it’s our fault mentality as AGW is.
By 2008 I’d seen that peakoil is still a way off, and we aren’t as mortally dependant of fossil fuels as peakers will say ( nulcear power saves us, with its thousands of years worth of reserves ) but trying tell the others in the peak oil cult was impossible. x-peakers see peakers as a religious sect, just like AGWers.
And like the AGW religion, PO_isNow is quietly propped up by big businesses who’re in positions to gain from rumours of scarce fossil fuels.
I hope David will come round to seeing PO_isNow for the fraud it is. But a the mo his graphs have peak oil around 2010, which is wrong. I’ve been monitoring PO_isNow for long enough to have seen similar graphs, all have PO about the time when the graph was produced. There’s been graphs like this from the PO_isNow lot for decades.
The simularity with AGWer graphs with the global temp flying off at around the time the graph was produced is no coincidence. They are both results from ‘world ends tomorrow’ cults.
ugh… that is not true.
CO2 is the source or C AND O. Water is only the source of H. The extra O that the water molecule has is dumped into the atmosphere as O2.
That is why the atmosphere is 21% O2 nowadays. It is the result of O2 being thrown away by photosynthetic organisms since the begining of life on Earth.
‘Peak oil’ is a myth.
When theorized by Hubbert in 1956, peak oil was valid. It is valid today. It will be valid for decades to come, because new discoveries are keeping up with increasing demand. Will it be valid next millenium? Who knows, and who cares!
ugh… that is not true.
CO2 is the source of C AND O. Water is only the source of H. The extra O the water molecule has is dumped into the atmosphere as O2.
That is why the atmosphere is nowadays 21% O2. It is the result of photosynthetic organisms dumping O2 into the atmosphere.
Jon says:
November 14, 2011 at 3:15 pm
Leif … you say “so?” The fact is, you were incorrect … in 1862, the limiting factor was not a shortage of whiskey barrels.
Go tell Yergin: “the only shortage now was of whiskey barrels”. With more barrels, the price would have dropped even further.
Don’t forget that the greenies are upping the pressure on EPA to do something about fracking. It will be stopped for the same reason we haven’t drilled ANWR and the Keystone pipeline has been stopped: The left doesn’t want us to have any access to energy and desperately desires what success in that endeavor would bring. As for Jack Barnes’ question, China is so flush with cash, they have to spend some of it on whatever they can find to spend it on. Why would people who are building skyscrapers and then tearing them down and re-building them, whole cities worth, not import coal instead of mine their own? They have so much of our money it’s probably cheaper to import coal with it than to build places to keep the money.