Modeling AGW Post Peak

Posted by Dave Ewoldt on May 13th, 2008 at 11:03 pm | 2 Replies

On 13 May 2008 at 21:41, jcbradford wrote:

> Now James Hansen and a colleague have done what I wanted to do...incorporate a
> model of fossil fuel depletion into thinking about future greenhouse gas
> concentrations. This has been accepted for publication:

Hey Jason... what I'd like to see one of the modelers do is account for at least the major contributors to die-off if the project of industrialization continues unabated.

While I don't doubt in the least that Peak Oil will lessen atmospheric CO2 as people drive less and long-haul trucking declines, if all the efforts to protect economic growth go forward, I don't see much actual net change.

Coal use will increase, at least until it peaks too in a couple of decades. But, to protect growing economies as more people continue eating higher on the food chain, cattle ranching increases, which means further deforestation, which means less natural ability to sequester carbon.

Most of the chemicals and fertilizers currently made from fossil fuels can be made, just more expensively and less efficiently, from organic material. This would mean the oceans continue to become more acidic from pollution, and less able to absorb carbon.

Battery technology takes a giant leap forward, everyone switches to electric cars, and we increase the amount of the Earth covered by concrete by another 10% or so as we continue sprawling, which increases the warming due to the heat island effect. Peat bogs continue drying, tundra continues thawing, and more methane accumulates in the atmosphere.

Etc, etc.

My hope is that Peak Oil will have enough of an effect on the economy that there isn't time to switch industrial processes over to organic oils, and global population decides they'd really rather have dinner than a new iPod and an additional cellphone anyway, and hey, while we're at it maybe we should ask the neighbors to borrow their pruning shears instead of buying our own, and just offer to pay to have them sharpened, which we can do a couple of blocks away over at a single mom who started a sharpening service powered by a PV array in her garage, and whose roommate makes tinctures and salves from the community garden which are going to help with the strained back from hauling all the clippings to either the compost pile or community dry storage for fuel for rocket stoves.

And, since no one would feed those arrogant bastards with last names like Rockefeller or Rothschild, there's no longer a central bank to go into debt to, and the limited local currencies won't tolerate waste and excess, so CO2 concentrations drop to about 350 ppm, and over the next century get down below 300 as the microclimate in equatorial regions stabilizes and the rainforests start regenerating as people realize an occasional rabbit or chicken, combined with fruits, nuts and vegetables free of poison, both taste good and make one feel better.

That's my fantasy for the day.

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aangel
May 14th, 2008

Re: Modeling AGW Post Peak

Hi, Dave. I like your fantasy, btw :-). As for your assumptions regarding CO2 emissions not changing due to peak oil, I think they are way off.

"While I don't doubt in the least that Peak Oil will lessen atmospheric CO2 as people drive less and long-haul trucking declines, if all the efforts to protect economic growth go forward, I don't see much actual net change."

In my modeling, I see an enormous change in the amount of CO2 emitted. I assume that as oil declines, world GDP will decline in lockstep (see Hirsch, 2008).

It's true that we'll turn to dirtier sources to some extent but I don't see much substitution actually occurring. Will we biogassify all the forests? Probably not, although the forests will be cut down to grow food as crop yields decline because fertilizer gets more expensive and other reasons. Less forest means a larger climate forcing from land use change, but not from CO2 necessarily. Will we heat our homes more with wood? Probably.

Are those increases going to make up for the decline of a worldwide economy, fueled on fossil fuels, making less goods and delivering less services? My guess is no and I don't think it's even close.

Peak oil == peak coal fired electricity == peak natural gas fired electricity == peak transportation fuels

See Global Final Energy Consumption (attached), which shows the new EC method for primary energy use by consumption (www.ren21.org), and the simple CO2 difference calculation I made due to a declining economy just from oil alone (attached). The net difference is ~16.5 billion tons of CO2 from oil alone in that 22 year period.

With the second graph, one could easily add coal and natural gas (the 79% in the first graph) and see that as the economy declines, it's hard to imagine any substitution that would make up for the amount of CO2 we will no longer be emitting. We truly are using fantastic amounts of fossil fuels.

Thus we can safely add:

Peak oil == peak CO2 emissions from human sources

Now, if the Boreal forests of Canada and Russia (and the Amazon) start burning and can't be put out, all bets are off. Same with the methane coming from undersea and the permafrost. At that time it would be wise to plan on being one of the few breeding pairs Lovelock mentions and make a land claim in the Arctic to start growing vegetables.

-Andre'

On May 13, 2008, at 11:04 PM, Dave Ewoldt wrote:

On 13 May 2008 at 21:41, jcbradford wrote:

> Now James Hansen and a colleague have done what I wanted to do...incorporate a
> model of fossil fuel depletion into thinking about future greenhouse gas
> concentrations. This has been accepted for publication:

Hey Jason... what I'd like to see one of the modelers do is account for at least the major contributors to die-off if the project of industrialization continues unabated.

While I don't doubt in the least that Peak Oil will lessen atmospheric CO2 as people drive less and long-haul trucking declines, if all the efforts to protect economic growth go forward, I don't see much actual net change.

Coal use will increase, at least until it peaks too in a couple of decades. But, to protect growing economies as more people continue eating higher on the food chain, cattle ranching increases, which means further deforestation, which means less natural ability to sequester carbon.

Most of the chemicals and fertilizers currently made from fossil fuels can be made, just more expensively and less efficiently, from organic material. This would mean the oceans continue to become more acidic from pollution, and less able to absorb carbon.

Battery technology takes a giant leap forward, everyone switches to electric cars, and we increase the amount of the Earth covered by concrete by another 10% or so as we continue sprawling, which increases the warming due to the heat island effect. Peat bogs continue drying, tundra continues thawing, and more methane accumulates in the atmosphere.

Etc, etc.

My hope is that Peak Oil will have enough of an effect on the economy that there isn't time to switch industrial processes over to organic oils, and global population decides they'd really rather have dinner than a new iPod and an additional cellphone anyway, and hey, while we're at it maybe we should ask the neighbors to borrow their pruning shears instead of buying our own, and just offer to pay to have them sharpened, which we can do a couple of blocks away over at a single mom who started a sharpening service powered by a PV array in her garage, and whose roommate makes tinctures and salves from the community garden which are going to help with the strained back from hauling all the clippings to either the compost pile or community dry storage for fuel for rocket stoves.

And, since no one would feed those arrogant bastards with last names like Rockefeller or Rothschild, there's no longer a central bank to go into debt to, and the limited local currencies won't tolerate waste and excess, so CO2 concentrations drop to about 350 ppm, and over the next century get down below 300 as the microclimate in equatorial regions stabilizes and the rainforests start regenerating as people realize an occasional rabbit or chicken, combined with fruits, nuts and vegetables free of poison, both taste good and make one feel better.

That's my fantasy for the day.

Attachment	Size
00FA03F9-1058-498A-A3CB-CA731770D392_GlobalFinalEnergyConsumption.pdf	42.46 KB
00FA03F9-1058-498A-A3CB-CA731770D392_EmissionLoss.png	47.56 KB

mporemba
May 14th, 2008

Re: Modeling AGW Post Peak

Fantasy, indeed. One fear I have is that climate change, resource depletion, global pollution, and overpopulation will become deeply understood as catastrophic problems leading towards irreversible changes to the delicate global ecology. And that the military types will start to seriously consider the one techno-fix that we already have in place: the other nuclear option.

Global thermonuclear war is the only techno-fix that's been implemented and is ready to go. We're just one push of the button away from solving so many problems. Yes, it does create quite a mess, but at some point someone may think that the nuclear mess looks a lot smaller than the other messes already unfolding.

This 2007 paper discusses how large-scale nuclear conflict would likely result in global cooling far greater than the anthropogenic warming we've observed to date:

http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/7/2003/2007/acp-7-2003-2007.pdf

A key quote:

The cooling in the decade following our 5 Tg injection is almost twice as large as the global warming of the past century

(about 0.7 C) (Fig. 9) and would lead to temperatures cooler

than the pre-industrial Little Ice Age (Fig. 10).

World population could greatly decrease due to direct impacts to large cities, the resulting fires, regional conflicts, radiation, changes to precipitation, and years of starvation from crop declines.

Notch down global warming and notch down the global population--just push the button. This techno-fix is already paid for, in place, and ready to go. How long before the nut jobs in power decide this solution is easier than stopping our societal tendancies to grow, consume, and pollute?

--Michael in San Francisco

--- On Tue, 5/13/08, Dave Ewoldt <dave@> wrote:

From: Dave Ewoldt <dave@>
Subject: CoordinatorHUB Modeling AGW Post Peak
To: "Coordinator HUB" <coordinate@>
Date: Tuesday, May 13, 2008, 11:04 PM

On 13 May 2008 at 21:41, jcbradford wrote:

> Now James Hansen and a colleague have done what I wanted to do...incorporate a
> model of fossil fuel depletion into thinking about future greenhouse gas
> concentrations. This has been accepted for publication:

Hey Jason... what I'd like to see one of the modelers do is account for at least the major contributors to die-off if the project of industrialization continues unabated.

While I don't doubt in the least that Peak Oil will lessen atmospheric CO2 as people drive less and long-haul trucking declines, if all the efforts to protect economic growth go forward, I don't see much actual net change.

Coal use will increase, at least until it peaks too in a couple of decades. But, to protect growing economies as more people continue eating higher on the food chain, cattle ranching increases, which means further deforestation, which means less natural ability to sequester carbon.

Most of the chemicals and fertilizers currently made from fossil fuels can be made, just more expensively and less efficiently, from organic material. This would mean the oceans continue to become more acidic from pollution, and less able to absorb carbon.

Battery technology takes a giant leap forward, everyone switches to electric cars, and we increase the amount of the Earth covered by concrete by another 10% or so as we continue sprawling, which increases the warming due to the heat island effect. Peat bogs continue drying, tundra continues thawing, and more methane accumulates in the atmosphere.

Etc, etc.

My hope is that Peak Oil will have enough of an effect on the economy that there isn't time to switch industrial processes over to organic oils, and global population decides they'd really rather have dinner than a new iPod and an additional cellphone anyway, and hey, while we're at it maybe we should ask the neighbors to borrow their pruning shears instead of buying our own, and just offer to pay to have them sharpened, which we can do a couple of blocks away over at a single mom who started a sharpening service powered by a PV array in her garage, and whose roommate makes tinctures and salves from the community garden which are going to help with the strained back from hauling all the clippings to either the compost pile or community dry storage for fuel for rocket stoves.

And, since no one would feed those arrogant bastards with last names like Rockefeller or Rothschild, there's no longer a central bank to go into debt to, and the limited local currencies won't tolerate waste and excess, so CO2 concentrations drop to about 350 ppm, and over the next century get down below 300 as the microclimate in equatorial regions stabilizes and the rainforests start regenerating as people realize an occasional rabbit or chicken, combined with fruits, nuts and vegetables free of poison, both taste good and make one feel better.

That's my fantasy for the day.

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