Here’s the frightening implication of a landmark study on carbon emissions: By 2018, no new cars, homes, schools, factories, or electrical power plants should be built anywhere in the world, ever again, unless they’re either replacements for old ones or carbon neutral. Otherwise greenhouse gas emissions will push global warming past 2˚C of temperature rise worldwide, threatening the survival of many people currently living on the planet.
Every climate expert will tell you we’re on a tight carbon budget as it is—that only so many tons of carbon dioxide can be pumped into the atmosphere before the global climate will overheat. We’ve already warmed temperatures 0.85˚C from pre-industrial levels, and the number rises every year. While no one thinks 2˚ C is safe, per se, it’s safer than going even higher and running the risk that global warming will spiral out of our control completely.
Last year, the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report established a global carbon budget for the first time. It essentially stated that starting in 2014, the carbon we can afford is up to around 1,000 billion tons of CO2. In other words, our cars, factories, and power plants can only emit 1,000 billion tons (1,000 Gt, or gigatons) of CO2 into the atmosphere if we want to have a greater than 50/50 chance of keeping our climate below 2˚C of warming.
Even considering that humanity pumped 36 gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere last year alone, 1,000 Gt still seems like a big budget. It might even seem like we have room to spare.
Maybe not.
New research shows that we may not have been paying attention to the entire CO2 emissions picture. We’ve only been counting annual emissions, and not the fact that building a new coal or gas power plant is in reality a commitment to pumping out CO2 for the lifespan of a given plant—which usually ranges from 40 to 60 years. These future emissions are known as a carbon commitment.
A new study has tallied the carbon commitments from all existing coal and gas power plants by looking at their annual CO2 emissions and current age. The study assumes an operating life of 40 years. A 38-year old coal plant will have far smaller future CO2 emissions, and thus smaller carbon commitment than one built today. The study, “Commitment accounting of CO2 emissions,” determined that most new power plants that went online in 2012 have a very large carbon commitment—19 Gt of CO2.
Read the rest here (if you dare)
Update: belated h/t to Steve Mosher.
So the usual “If we just live in teepees like our Neolithic ancestors we’ll be happy” hippie stuff. Bull.
Yes, this is the culmination most of the Baby Boomer attitudes and philosophies; but just remember almost every one here is a Boomer – so don’t expect too much gratitude for pointing out the source. (:
ignorant and terrified is now way to go thru life …
Makes a convenient political point therefore its a ” landmark study”. LOL
Well so let’s start and use the next 5 years to build all the power plants and cars we’ll need til the year 2100; should be doable. It’s a bit silly but if we gotta do it for the climate I guess we have no other choice. Just build 500% overcapacity.
Are the researchers willing to stake their lives on this study? Because their policy rec would condemn millions of people to death.
Was it not the Soviet Union that perfected “The Five Year Plan“. Maybe we can look to history for some lessons regarding this approach.
Jus’ sayin’
We could convert all our coal plants to biomass even though the latest UK Department for Energy and Climate Change has concluded that the burning of wood generates more CO2 than the coal it replaces. It is very expensive though. The subsidies amount to hundreds of millions (to INCREASE carbon emissions!!!!). Still the ignorant consumer has a deep pocket.
I swear, it’s tulip-mania all over again. “Carbon”. “Forcing”. “Deniers”. Hysteria. It’s quite literally insane.
“Five Year Plan” reminds me of a joke from the communist era. A legend said that Good King Wenceslas would return in the hour of his county’s direst need. When he was seen returning, someone told him about the new five year plan, whereupon he turned around to leave and said, “I’ll be back at the end of the five years.”
Reading the referenced article by Leahy at “motherboard” made me curious and ask “exactly how CO2 are we going to put in the air if we burn ALL the fossil fuel PROVED reserves?
To answer the question I looked up the reserves (BP fact book), converted them to CO2 (my reference library cross checked with the EPA), and estimated the total: 3 510 gigatons. If 50 % of the CO2 is taken from the air by the carbon cycle then 1 755 gigatons will be the total added to the atmosphere when we run out of PROVED reserves. This is equivalent to 223 ppm, which yields 623 ppm total CO2 concentration.
This is 2.25 times pre industrial. Or double the content in the 1960’s. So the question in my mind is fairly straightforward: what’s the transient response to doubling? If the figure is 1.5 degrees C, the implications are very interesting. If TCR is 1 then we don’t seem to have such a huge crisis regarding emissions. I’ll let the experts debate TCR over the next 20 years and wait to see what happens to the figure.
If you want to I can put the excel sheet in table format in my blog.
Regarding the ability to expand oil and gas reserves above proved…I think we have some. However, as you know I’m really worried about the oil reserves.
Another thought …
Anytime I hear from someone that I must hurry to do something, my alarm bells are set off. Someone’s trying to drain my wallet … don’t think, do as we say, there’s no time, hurry and save the planet.
So, environmentalists do in fact have a communications problem … they’re increasingly sounding like con men.
I should have quit reading at “landmark” study…. I hate that word, right up there with “unprecedented” and “models”.
“Pristine” and preserving “forever.”
“We Have Five Years to Stop Building Coal Plants and Gas-Powered Cars”
The only existing carbon free energy source that could operate at the necessary scale would be nuclear.
It would be physically and financially impossible to build enough nuclear power plants fast enough to eliminate all coal fired power plants and gas powered vehicles in five years even if you could eliminate all environmental regulations and other political/regulatory/legal red tape yesterday.
Are they saying the entire 0.85˚C was caused by man as we came out of the Little Ice Age? So we did cause most of the 1910 to 1940 warming. I never knew, this is news to me.
I think that a 2˚ C rise is safe, and will be net beneficial.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/image/j/l/warmingtrend.gif
Why do all these deadlines always moving forward keep coming and going? I find it all so boring now.
Well, I already have a car. My wife does too. So go ahead and put out a ban on new gas-powered vehicles unless they are a replacement. Same with power stations. We have so many coal plants that we can replace the old ones with newer, more powerful plants to emit much less.
We’ve got ours, you try and get yours. What about the world’s poor? What about the people with no electricity, no running water, no hospitals? People living on subsistence farming? Too f’ing bad for them, I guess.
If it gets warmer (the omens are it’s geting colder anyway), one thing is sure: it won’t be because of CO2:
http://cleanenergypundit.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/eating-sun-fourth-estatelondon-2009.html
More apocalyptic claptrap from the climate kooks.
I am reading a book covering the history of apocalyptic movements. The climate obsession movement is following nearly every step of the traditional apocalyptic movement. It is now in the blow-off, true believer rant phase, long past the stage where people actually believed the prophecies.
Some simple arithmetic.
Oh Lordy mine, somebody discovered exponential functions.
The standard response is of course
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
and, Adam Smith, The Wealth Of Nations.
(Hint: Free markets; supply and demand)
The only practical solution is for enviroloons, er, noble greens like Stephen Leahy to sacrifice themselves so that others may live. I would suggest sticking their heads in a big bubble of CO2 as a last gasp attempt to sequester some carbon. The rest of us will no doubt be better off thereafter.
If we don’t make it in 5 years, they’ll give us another 5 years. Or 11. Or 3. Or whatever.
not paying attention? WTF
“New research shows that we may not have been paying attention to the entire CO2 emissions picture”.
It appears that is ALL scientists at the CSIRO ARE “paying attention to” Try to get a paper on what their charter and salaries are actually paid for – yeah good luck with that.
All you see are papers on CC utter bloody nonsense.
During the week i thought there would be all the normal excellent exhaustive research on the wood Paulownia – NOT A BLOODY SCRAP . It seems the only thing these august, well paid and well equipped public servants are churning out is more CC diatribe.
Note to Tony Abbott, tell these boofheads to Get BACK to the WORK you are paid for, or pink slip ’em on Monday…
The referenced Motherboard site claims “Surprisingly, it appears the Australia is a pioneer here, despite recently rolling back its pioneering carbon tax. Thanks to wide-spread adoption of solar energy on homes and business the country’s electricity use is in steep decline. ”
I am an Australian. I can read many searches that show that only a few % of Australian electricity comes from solar and wind. Yes, the % is increasing with massive subsidies, but the present extent is way, way too small to influence oversupply directly. The oversupply at present is more than 10%.
There is an oversupply partly because consumption has dropped as prices have shot up. This is for several reasons. a. Large industry like aluminium smelting is packing up and going elsewhere. b. Home and small business consumption has dropped because domestic electricity bills have risen 10% p.a. over the past 8 years. c. There has been a carbon tax adding some $550 p.a. to the average household. d. Electricity suppliers have invested hugely in gold-plated poles and wires to accommodate the dirty quality of electricity from scattered weasel sources like solar and wind. e, Prices have risen because of the subsidised cost of renewables, which are performing poorly at about 7 times the cost of electricity from coal. f. Supply availability is artificially high because of backup fossil capacity needed to replace renewables when they do not work.
Fortunately, people have now gained a better ability to see drivel for what it is, namely, like the junk that is on this Motherboard site.
I have only disdain for the suckers who go for heavily subsidised rooftop solar. They are bludging on their non-solar mates by accepting subsidies.
Five Year Plans were carried out in China under Mao’s Great Leap.
The supposed shift to a “low carbon economy” has been called “The Great Transformation.” So when we see it must be done in Five Years, that’s a clue.
Top-down transformations of the economy, and of agriculture, are known historically to cause incredible disruption and death. Also, there are known Maoists in the EU and the UN.
Remember that organic agriculture only supplies 1% of the food in the US, because it is so expensive and unreliable. The USDA and the EU from have signed agreements with China to shift to organic and “sustainable agriculture” over the next Five Years. Now why would any one sign agricultural agreements, for Five Year plans, with a country that does not admit or permit discussion of the real causes of the starvation of 45+ million people during the Great Leap Forward?!
Keep your eyes and ears open for the next “thing” that will bring the apocalypse. It should be available any day soon…