The Carbon Budget

[Try2B_Comprehensive]

While AGW remains something of a controversy, it seems to be turning into a ‘controversy’ like Creationism or UFOs- sure, there’s two sides if you ask enough people, but the people who know what they’re talking about tend to collect on one side of the debate. So let’s not spend the thread arguing that one, there will be another thread about it soon enough.

Here I’m asking about the implications of ‘the carbon budget’. A few months ago I read some articles citing Al Gore on this topic, but being the internet, the commentary consisted mostly of, “Al Gore, what a commie! He hates oil! He can’t be trusted! He’s a hypocrite!!!” and so on, ad nauseum (look at the comments section here. I just backed away slowly…)

Well, lately I’ve been seeing some Al Gore-free articles about The Carbon Budget. Here is one, here’s the gist:

-The Potsdam Institute calculates that in order to reduce the risk of exceeding 2 degrees Celsius warming to a 20 percent chance (not all that comforting), the global carbon budget for 2000 – 2050 cannot exceed 886 GtC02. Minus emissions in the first decade of the century, this leaves a budget of 565 GtC02 over the next 40 years.

-Total “proved” fossil fuel reserves listed on public company balance sheets and State reported reserves is estimated at 2795 GtC02, nearly 5 times the remaining budget, implying 80 percent of these reserves should be left in the ground.

-Seventy four percent of these reserves are State owned (Russia, China, Saudi, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, etc.) or owned by private companies, 26 percent are owned by the 200 largest public energy companies.

The conclusion is that 80% of today’s proven fossil fuel reserves can never be burned if we want to keep global warming within a manageable range. Among other things, this means a $27 trillion write-off for the world’s energy companies, state owned or no. For Al Gore it meant “avoid oil stocks”.

For other sources, well, it gets a little breathless:

The risk of systemic collapse of an already fragile, interconnected global economy is high if we incur a write off of this magnitude. Fossil fuel intensive economies and investors would be severely damaged, no doubt triggering a deep and prolonged recession while the losses were absorbed. Some, like Saudi Arabia where energy represents 75% of government revenues, and Venezuela (50% of government revenues) would face economic devastation leading to widespread social unrest.

and concludes with this:

It’s time for true leadership around shared sacrifice. This must start with the richest half billion people, less than 10% of the human race, whose consumption and investment decisions will determine the fate of civilization. It’s time we awaken to the burden we bear. Seeking justice, our children will ask – What did you do, once you knew?

Again, I don’t doubt the progress of AGW, but OTOH I don’t know what to think of analyses that go on about ‘the fate of civilization’. The notion of not burning all known reserves makes sense, but, well, it also makes sense that most of that energy would have to be made up by other sources and the $27 trillion write-off would be assumed by the rising value of the industries that replace the fossil fuel industry.

Of course, ‘replacing the fossil fuel industry’ is no simple thing, maybe not possible at all to the degree ‘required’ by 2050. So, what are the true consequences of this predicament? Does Venezuela turn into a banana republic? Do oil companies around the world drag down the markets and spark a new global recession? Will the world just shrug and charge headlong into a ruinous, climate altered future? Or is the $27 trillion write off something that makes accountants panic but isn’t really going to effect everyone else’s world?

[GIGObuster]

Can not find the source but one metaphor I saw once used the example of using a cocaine addict.

Imagine that a cocaine user has a table with 100 grams of cocaine.

Looking at info from centers that deal with addiction a usual dose weights 1/2 a gram.

In the current binge the human has it has already consumed enough to risk damage to its health, and there is still 50 to 80 percent left on the table.

Depending on the friends that human has he will get the recommendation to continue or to stop and seek help.

Unfortunately there are many powerful interests dedicated to tell the human in the example to continue to pass even the levels were he/she would face permanent damage (based on an average human life time) or even risk death.

[Great_Antibob]

At the very least, the consequences are a lot of people go hungry and die.

By that, I mean that while the vast majority of fossil fuel money goes to the top, the little bit that goes elsewhere feeds, clothes, and cares for a lot of people in not particularly good parts of the world. Also, that little bit of money goes further there than in the developed world.

And maybe that’s an unavoidable short term price we’ll have to pay to achieve long term goals. I just hope nobody thinks it’s just going to be some balance sheet thing where there’s no pain. Everybody wants to be the good guy, but in the real world sometimes being the good guy means innocent bystanders take a hit.

[Try2B_Comprehensive]

I don’t think the comparison to cocaine abuse holds up. Recreational drug use is superfluous at best. In contrast, exploiting an energy source is, at best, the height of pragmatism.

A person with a misguided sense of pragmatism could be led to believe that drug-induced psychological relief cures what ails them, but drugs don’t keep one warm. Drugs don’t (directly) power a transportation infrastructure, nor do they (directly) keep factories running. An airplane is definitely not powered by drugs.

Sure, both drugs and fossil fuels can be hard to stop using. They both can be bad for one’s health, finances, career, culture, reputation, etc. Still, I think my subject has enough richness to stand alone without metaphors, especially ones like this which don’t lead us closer to the truth.

[XT]

@GIGObuster

Can not find the source but one metaphor I saw once used the example of using a cocaine addict.

Imagine that a cocaine user has a table with 100 grams of cocaine.

Looking at info from centers that deal with addiction a usual dose weights 1/2 a gram.

In the current binge the human has it has already consumed enough to risk damage to its health, and there is still 50 to 80 percent left on the table.

Depending on the friends that human has he will get the recommendation to continue or to stop and seek help.

Unfortunately there are many powerful interests dedicated to tell the human in the example to continue to pass even the levels were he/she would face permanent damage (based on an average human life time) or even risk death.

It’s a good analogy, except for one small problem…the person doesn’t need cocaine to live. Unfortunately, at this time in our history, we NEED fossil fuels to continue to our current civilization. One has to simply posit…what happens if suddenly there was no fossil fuels (i.e. you wave a magical wand and all the oil, natural gas, coal etc goes away)? Easy…our entire civilization would completely collapse and literally billions would die. Ok, that’s extreme…what happens if we cut our usage down to what’s proposed in the article? Is it even possible? I’m guessing the answer is no, since it would entail a massive switchover to another power generation system for both generation of electricity and for transportation which (even if we assume it’s possible) will entail a large expenditure of CO2 to make happen. And it would have to be everyone, since China and India are now major CO2 producers…and there is no way you are going to be able to tell them to slow down their economies and take the fiscal hit it would require for them to switch over.

And, of course, that brings us to the key point…how would we do it even if you could simply order it to happen? I don’t believe the Europeans, probably the best at doing this sort of thing, have lowered their own emissions (even in their relatively small and modest countries) down to the target levels for Kyoto, which are not as low as that in the OP. Assuming I’m right about that, if THEY can’t do it how will anyone else? And how would we do it? Nuclear seems to be off the table. Solar and wind simply won’t scale to meet the needs of a large nation like the US (who is already dropping in it’s CO2 emissions, though slowly). And what would we do about the cars? All electric simply isn’t ready, it’s unrealistic to think folks are going to give up their cars and start using public transportation (where it’s even available), and according to some, hydrogen is impossible from an engineering perspective (personally, I disagree, but then I’m a network engineer, not a rocket scientist…and I DO agree that it’s got issues). So, I think the important thing to focus on is the how, because I’ve never seen anything close to reality that shows how we get there from here…at least not on the time table we are talking about. A hundred years from now I would guess we’ll be there or at least on the path…but right now? Or in the next 20-50 years? :dubious:

[GIGObuster]

Well Try2B Comprehensive, that is missing the point of why a metaphor is done, true, no metaphor will fit all aspects of the reality, the main focus of that metaphor is related to the current state of affairs of having powerful “friends” recommending everyone to continue with the binge.

Naomi Oreskes investigation of the Merchants of Doubt:
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2010/07/14/206422/merchants-of-doubt-naomi-oreskes-review/

Climate of Doubt, Frontline’s investigation on the machinery of the contrarians, and how they are affecting even American democracy: (Transcript)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/environment/climate-of-doubt/transcript-31/

[GIGObuster]

One thing that makes me hopeful (even though it is only one piece of what should be part of the larger effort) is that the solar industry, despite being so maligned, is currently being so successful that now the groups that are part of those merchants of doubt are getting busy now trying to stop what is the development of an industry that is making economical sense now after only having made just ecological sense in the past:

ALEC calls for penalties on 'freerider' homeowners in assault on clean energy

ALEC calls for penalties on ‘freerider’ homeowners in assault on clean energy
• Documents reveal conservative group’s anti-green agenda
• Strategy to charge people who install their own solar panels
• Environmentalists accuse Alec of protecting utility firms’ profits

[Try2B_Comprehensive]

I’ll answer you guys in a little while, but for now I want to point out that this is one question that can be reduced to numbers.

We should start with how much carbon is emitted now, x. How soon will we reach 565gtCO2 emitted at this rate?

Every gigawatt of solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, geothermal, piezoelectric and I dunno, donkey turbines represents a ‘wedge’ of carbon emissions removed from today’s pace. You know, 1 ton removed this year, 2 after two years, 5 after 5 years and so on. The sooner we install carbon-free power generation sources (or deploy electric cars and boats &etc), the more carbon is removed within our 40-year time frame. We can model various configurations of wedges that keep us under 565gtCO2 and ask if there is a snowball’s chance in hell at achieving any of them in the real world.

If we succeed, how much carbon can we emit annually after 2050? I don’t think anyone expects it to be zero, heck, even cavemen had fires. But for massive 21st century public power consumption at least, surely we can do better.

If I can get the time I’ll try to do the numbers myself for you all.

[kanicbird]

Are we in a transition process, using fossil fuels to get to something better, or are we on a dead end road? If the former we need to make that next jump, and that requires fossil fuels for now, if the latter then it really does not matter as we will eventually run out and there will be mass suffering then, or, if curtailed, along the way.

Only the first case really matters, and that is the one to focus on, using thr tools we have now to build a better tomorrow. And yes that can include leaving this planet, so back to yours UFO claim, we better hope they exist as they are our future.