Climate May Be Less Sensitive To CO2 Than Previously Thought 413
a_hanso writes "A new study suggests that the effects of rising levels of carbon dioxide on temperature may be less significant than previously thought. 'The new models predict that given a doubling in CO2 levels from pre-industrial levels, the Earth's surface temperatures will rise by 1.7 to 2.6 degrees C. That is a much tighter range than suggested by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 report, which suggested a rise of between 2 to 4.5 degrees C."
Excellent... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Excellent... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
But having to change is scary! Can't you just tell me a nice, comforting story about how we can all keep burning oil, gas, and coal forever?
How about I tell you a nice comforting story about how wind and solar power will solve all our problems instead?
Re: (Score:3)
Sounds great, I'll light the candles.
Re: (Score:2)
comforting story about how we can all keep burning oil, gas, and coal forever?
You mean it's never going to run out, ending all this debate once and for all? OMG I better get drilling, I need to tap into this infinite fossil fuel reserve that we're not halfway through.
Re: (Score:2)
(Oblig. climate-discussion disclaimer: No representation is made as to whether this oil and gas ought to be drilled and burned, or as to the direct and indirect environmental consequences - oil spills, global warming, aquifer contamination, good old-fashioned soot, etc. Void where prohibited, and in the Volunteer State. Do not pas
Re:Excellent... (Score:4, Informative)
Yep, there is a lot of oil left. Now, how do you get it out of the ground - that's the rub. Even in a totally depleted, water soaked oil field, there is a metric shitload of oil under the surface. Just no way to economically bring it to the surface.
Same with Ultradeep oil in the Gulf of Mexico (and elsewhere). You stick a $2 billion dollar rig on surface, spend a long time drilling (and oopsie occasionally - dry holes and the unavoidable blowout) and you get a couple more million barrels for a few years (Deepwater plays tend to be smaller fields that go flat pretty fast because of the pressures and the geology). Keep doing that and you've driven the price of oil up to like $100 / barrel. Add increasing growth of Homo Industrialis and now oil is $150 / barrel. Fine, that gives the folks with the billion dollar oil rigs more economic room to drill in Godknowswhereistan (or Cleveland) but that brings home heating oil up to $5 / gallon. Fine, you say, just insulate. Oopsie, my income stream has been flat to going backwards over the past several years because the economy (which is only happy at constant to accelerating growth) isn't growing.
Get's complicated. There will always be oil (which is good - petrochemicals are wonderfully useful) but cheap energy may be a thing of the past.
And cheap energy is what has driven the Industrial Revolution so far.
Now, back to the original subject - we might have a few more years of breathing room. Maybe.
Re: (Score:2)
If you really want to be depressed: For a 1%er ... if getting a solar installation subsidy cost them even an hour of their time talking to their congresscritter, it would be a losing proposition.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, how scientific ARE the results? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is the kind of thing [forbes.com] that tends to get the skeptics -- and those the GW proponents call "deniers" -- going.
Clearly, the process has problems; the data isn't as nailed down as many claim; the temperature rises not as predicted; the models flawed; the entire thing politicized to a notable degree. It certainly all seems worthy of paying attention to, when taken together.
Re:Excellent... (Score:5, Insightful)
How can there be a debate about scientific results? This always confuses me. One can have a debate about moral or ethical issues, but not about scientific results.
Then I would say your understanding of how science works is somewhat limited. We could have a debate about: a) whether the assumptions made at the outset were good assumptions, b) whether the data was collected in a reasonable way, c) whether the statistics were chosen and applied correctly, d) whether you've done a good enough job controlling other variables and excluding competing hypotheses, e) the magnitude and directionality of various sources of error, and whether they could confound the data, etc.
Not saying that these are problems with the study in question, but I've read studies in which each of the above (among other things) were certainly open for debate!
Re: (Score:3)
Methodology, interpretation, cause. Having scientific results that aren't open for debate would be astonishing, unless it's as simple as "dropping something out the window on Earth causes it to fall." Hell, I can already spot several things wrong with that statement (what about lighter than air objects?)
All scientific results have uncertainties, in measurements and in conclusions. Causation is always extremely tricky, and requires you to interpret the results in light of a certain scientific (and philosop
Re: (Score:2)
One can have a debate about either the accuracy of the results, or the interpretation of them.
Re: (Score:3)
I guess the Sun revolving around the Earth shouldn't have been debated either. It's a scientific result, Aristoteles said so!
Re: (Score:2)
Really? That's sort of how science works. Experimentalists get raw data compare it with existing theories predictions, say that it either confirms or contradicts various theories. Theorists debate how to modify their models to conform to the new data and/or the set up of the experiment itself. There is a lot of debate in science and always has been.
Re: (Score:3)
Ah, one of those are you. Yes, there are scientists on both sides, as well as politicians, and pro capital propaganda machines masquerading as *green* organizations.
As to scientific method, the very foundation of scientific method is skepticism. Scientists come up with a theory and then other scientists immediately try to poke holes in it. Yet, the climate change group immediately demonize anyone that points to the flaws rather than finding ways to get better data.
So...where is the warming that your scienti
Re: (Score:3)
The data is pretty sound, and only those who don't know the difference continue to act like it is the data, not their ignorance, that doesn't make sense.
When all of the surgeons say to use aseptic technique, the nurse who doesn't understand the microbial infections are expected to follow anyway and spend some personal effor at learning why if they don't understand. I defer to the best minds, as you do. The difference being that you only do it when they agree with you and you hold to miniscule, yet exagger
Nuclear (Score:5, Insightful)
We should be switching to nuclear anyway, it's not about global warming, it's about the eventuality of the end of the age of oil. It will happen so it's better to be thinking about it now.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
There are energy sources besides nuclear.and fossil fuels. And there are huge market distortions, so it's not clear that the energy providers' prosperity is due to the merits of their company or product.
For example, the barriers to entry in those techs are huge, such that small businesses are locked out. Also, uneven subsidies corrupt the pricing and warp the balancing effects a free market would naturally have.
We should develop every technology we can, drop subsidies (or at least phase them out as their t
Re:Nuclear (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, we should be working on energy efficiency.
Nuclear may be relatively safe but, when things do go wrong, we have to live with the consequences for a wee bit longer.
Re: (Score:3)
We cannot ever be efficient enough to not need to find more energy. Energy is still consumed with increased efficiency, just at a lower rate. That means that we will still run out of oil. Running out of oil means a need for a replacement energy source. The only energy source that can currently compete will fossil based fuels right now is nuclear power. The "alternative" energy sources right now remain alternative because they cost many times more. If they could compete with nuclear and fossil energy t
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
About 600 million [shipvehicles.com] vehicles running headlights, radios, fans, etc., beg to disagree.
More about oil re power generation (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, so does every gasoline and diesel fueled generator in the world, and that's probably a pretty hefty number.
See the thing is, if the gasoline and diesel burned in individual vehicles was instead burned in power plants, and fed to the vehicles as electricity, there would be a lot less consumption of gasoline and diesel overall, because those larger generation systems are a lot more efficient at getting power to the wheels, even given transmission line losses, charging losses, etc.
And, if the vehicles are electric, they become power-agnostic: you can "burn" anything.... oil, coal, nuclear, sunshine, hydro, congresscritters, and the cars don't have to change at all.
Ok, clearly, burning congresscritters would really be polluting, but the other stuff...
EVs make great sense. manufacturing them such that they serve us well in the roles we like to use them... we're not quite there. Soon, though, clearly.
Less Sensitive No Problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Let the informed battles begin (Score:4, Insightful)
Warmist: World is still getting warmer, which means we will all die
Skeptic: These are all extrapolations which are barely worth the paper they are written on
Denier: We need to stop with the environmental programs, they are killing the economy
Warmist: We need to stop polluting, the world is in jeopardy
Denier: It will cost trillion to "save" the world, and it might not even be saved. Anyone who wants to spend that kind of money on a crapshoot is an idiot
Warmist: Can we afford to take a chance? Our choice is trillions now, or quadrillions later. If you don't agree with me, then you are an idiot.
Skeptic: Anybody who wants to take drastic action on the currently available data is an idiot.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Let the informed battles begin (Score:5, Interesting)
Pollution is what's saving the planet from global warming.
See the Global Dimming [wikipedia.org] article on Wikipedia. There was also a NOVA episode [pbs.org] on the subject.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Let the informed battles begin (Score:5, Insightful)
There are climate deniers, who think nothing should be done, and then there are economy deniers, who don't actually believe that their policies have economic cost (and may in fact praise them for "creating jobs").
If you're not one of the irrational extremists, you have to deal with them both (and will probably be called one when dealing with the other). It kinda sucks.
Re: (Score:2)
Funny. Remember the talking heads saying that the science is settled? Yet here comes along yet another study saying that the science is indeed not settled. To a point what I think bothers most opponents of the AGW theory is the belief that "we know all" rather than "we don't know enough." Global warming as it is, is akin to bridge building. You know the science about why something will or won't collapse, you don't take a guess on a wood bridge and watch as the first car going across plummets 150m into
Re:Let the informed battles begin (Score:4, Interesting)
Yet Richard Branson alone has donated over $3 billion to the study of AGW.
As I say: you can debate the exact amounts, but which side is spending more -- a lot more -- is hardly in question.
Re:Let the informed battles begin (Score:5, Insightful)
economy deniers, who don't actually believe that their policies have economic cost (and may in fact praise them for "creating jobs").
Fair enough, but the "economy deniers" I hear are usually on the other side of the debate though.
The Republicans in particular spout this meme that environmental policy is bad for the economy. It is a frustrating one because it is only true in the short term. In the long run, such R&D is usually good. Ask Toyota if making the Prius was a mistake. They developed it back when Ford, GM, and Chrysler were complaining to the Bush administration that raising the fuel efficiency standards would cost a million jobs. That was only true because they hadn't invested in the technology.
Keeping clean air and waterways helps the fishing and tourism industries. It reduces health care costs. It raises worker productivity.
(and may in fact praise them for "creating jobs").
True that they don't directly "create jobs." But companies not investing in tech means they fall behind and lose those jobs eventually.
Re: (Score:3)
What is the label for the person that points that the estimated values are actualy the same? None of your personas (and the article writter) understand what an error bar is?
Re:Let the informed battles begin (Score:4, Insightful)
Scientist: Here are the assumptions in the models we used, and here are the sensitivities of the outputs to these assumptions and the statistical variations depending on the numerical seeds.
At this point, about 1% of the way through the paper, the Denier, Skeptic and Warmist all stop listening and want to know which cities will be flooded, and get unhappy if the answer doesn't match what they were given by the last scientist they talked to.
The climate is a fantastically complex system.There has been a lot of progress in climate modeling, but it isn't like predicting where a cannon ball will land if you know the starting trajectory.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm from Alaska. There, global warming is not theoretical, it is quite visible.
The nice thing about anecdotes is that they are a good substitute for variable-controlled science, with a much smaller pricetag.
Speaking of anecdotes being more useful than science, I've heard that the polar bear population is doing well. Apparently, the Inuit hunters have seen a lot of bears, which is pretty much conclusive.
http://www.researchandpractice.com/articles/2-2/dowsley-1.pdf [researchandpractice.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Treating RealClimate as though it were some kind of unbiased source is rather like treating BP as though it were an unbiased source of oil drilling information.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Let the informed battles begin (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Continued global warming "skepticism" is a proper and a necessary part of the scientific process. The Wall St. Journal Op-Ed by one of us (Muller) seemed to take the opposite view with its title and subtitle: "The Case Against Global-Warming Skepticism -- There were good reasons for doubt, until now." But those words were not written by Muller. The title and the subtitle of the submitted Op-Ed were "Cooling the Warming Debate - Are you a global warming skeptic? If not, perhaps you should be. Let me explain
Re: (Score:3)
Ooh, let me try.
Scientist: Hmm, that's interesting. My measurements of global temperature have been trending upwards by X. It seems that the atmosphere works like a greenhouse and keeps the surface temperature higher than it would otherwise be. Compare Mars, Venus, and Mercury. It seems we've been releasing a lot of CO2, and my other study here shows that CO2 can increase the greenhouse effect by Y.
Warmist: The sky is falling! We're raping the planet! See! We should all be subsistence farmers li
Statistics (Score:5, Insightful)
Models are based on insufficient data (Score:5, Insightful)
There are hundreds of things changing the temperature contantly and it's very hard to isolate the changes CO2 caused.
Re: (Score:2)
Wait. I thought the science was settled. How can what you said be true? /sarc
A few points... (Score:5, Informative)
It's an interesting piece of work. There are two issues to bear in mind:
- They are calculating climate sensitivity at the last glacial maximum. Climate sensitivity varies with temperature, so the sensitivity now may not be the same as the sensitivity at the LGM. It is entirely possible that both this study, and all the studies which put a higher value on current sensitivity, are both correct.
- Even their most likely value of 2.3C only gives us about 15 years extra breathing space to sort out our emissions.
- The UVic model they use is rather simplistic, and I'm not sure it reproduces 20thC climate that well. It would be interesting to see this work repeated with a model ensemble.
In other news... (Score:2)
...Warmists actually publicly acknowledge the existence of hard ice core and geological data which shows a steady level of atmospheric CO2 over the last 15 million years which kinda trumps their six-month data spans - the data also shows midtide sea levels back then over a hundred feet higher than they are now [sciencemag.org].
Here's The Thing. (Score:2, Insightful)
Hey, AGW people? Here's the bottom line. Read this carefully. Let it nourish your thought processes. You want to know why the general public hasn't panicked and fallen behind you in your crusade? Here it is.
Lets say we have many, many skilled scientists working on not one, but DOZENS of models that are constantly being refined and tinkered with. This has been going on for DECADES. They feed these models with thousands and thousands of hard, verifiable data points -- measurements from buoys, satellites, even
Re: (Score:3)
As a motorsports analogy, I can't predicted who is going to win the first MotoGP race of 2012, but I can confidently say that the lap times will be faster than 2011.
Specific outcomes are always harder to predict than trends and averages.
You can't predict this, so you can't predict that! (Score:5, Insightful)
So we're back to the argument, "Nobody can reliably predict the outcome of a single spin of a roulette wheel, so it is crazy to think that anybody can predict the average of thousands of spins!"
And meanwhile, the casinos continue to make money.
Strong candidate for the single dumbest argument against global warming.
Re: (Score:3)
Actually, your example is quite poor: A casino can predict the long term trends of a roulette wheel with better than 2% accuracy. Climatologists wish they could say the same about the climate - but even this report has a variance of 1.35 to 4.65 C - a range of 340%.
The single biggest problem (aside from the politics of creating winners and losers in the climate game) with getting people onboard is that an honest skeptic would have very serious misgivings about basing public policy on a discipline with s
Re: (Score:3)
You don't know the difference between weather and climate.
You also apparently don't know that increased temperatures due to greenhouse gases are a (nearly 100 year old, before the advent of computers) prediction of physics . The models simply try to guess how much.
It's hard not to treat you in
Re: (Score:3)
The A means anthropogenic, basically "caused by humans".
Therefore the "AGW crowd" is the people who think that global warming is happening and is caused by human activities.
Non-paywalled version of the paper (Score:4, Informative)
The manuscript is freely available here [princeton.edu].
"We are not doomed!" ... "Oh wait ..." (Score:3)
We are just doomed a little later.
If this research is more accurate than previous studies then the climate change is progressing slower as expected. That is great news, as we wasted so much time. If the previous estimates are correct we are in big trouble. According to the new study we will be in big trouble a little later or if we act fast we still could make it and only face medium trouble.
I honestly do not understand why anti climate change honchos gloat over that news. It is like visiting the doctor and he tell you that his last diagnosis was a little too drastic and he has good news: You will not die next week, but in two weeks. So celebrate!
For a minute, then a greater menace will emerge (Score:5, Funny)
Did you hear how Mother Earth is creating a new island [earthweek.com] in the canaries?
She's got it in for us, I swear. Nothing like putting a blowtorch [dailymail.co.uk] in the hidden depths of your oceans to screw with those gnats on the surface: "They think they're so important, I'll show them."
Re:For a minute, then a greater menace will emerge (Score:5, Funny)
Did you hear how Mother Earth is creating a new island [earthweek.com] in the canaries?
Quick, scout that island for mineral resources. Will a coal mine survive in the Canaries..?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Because I am tired of "I told you so" people, when it is all based on theory and only good can come out of reducing CO2 by a few percentages.
Re:saved! (Score:5, Insightful)
Only good can come?
Are you sure of that?
Because I can see many things wrong with your statement.
Many bad and not so good things can come from Reducing CO2.
Cars cost more, jobs pay less, food and gas cost more.
Some businesses are getting seriously hurt. (Try making cement in California)
I can understand 5 year olds thinking that all is good and nice. You though are presumably an adult.
try some critical thinking.
Are the benefits realized by these reductions worth the cost?
I do not know. I think that further reductions may in fact not be worth the cost.
But of this I am sure.
Not only good comes from the reduction of CO2.
Re:saved! (Score:5, Insightful)
What if a reduction in CO2 means a reduction in consumption of fossil fuels, and therefore a significant cost reduction, especially if oil-prices go up? What exactly will prevent another (possibly lasting) oil crisis? The oil is slowly but surely running dry, and certain (oil-dependent) countries are ready to fight over oil or use it as a weapon (just look at Iran; they are currently threatening to cut off the Strait of Hormuz, thus blocking not just their own but many other Middle-east countries oil export). It may be cheaper to rely on oil and gas at this very moment, but other energy sources, may well become cheaper in the (very near) future.
Re: (Score:3)
FYI MTBE didn't particularly poison the ground water.
The problem with MTBE is it is detectable it the P.P.B. level by the human nose.
So MTBE let you know your well had been contaminated by gasoline for an unknown time.
Removing the MTBE returned the situation to the status quo. Now you don't know if you water is contaminated.
A thoughtful environmentalist (I know, oxymoron, they FEEL) would want MTBE to be required.
Re:saved! (Score:4, Insightful)
Cars cost more, jobs pay less, food and gas cost more.
Some businesses are getting seriously hurt. (Try making cement in California)
Yes, because pushing the cost of doing business onto the people living around your factory, farm or the users of your products is a god-given right in the Free Market. You're subsidizing businesses if you allow them to destroy the health and environment that people live and work in.
Re:saved! (Score:5, Funny)
Like I keep repeating - there's only 40 years of oil left.
While I find your argument of proof by repetitive assertion convincing, I think that 20 years ago there was only 30 years oil left. In another 40 years it may have reach 80 years left. Maybe there's more people repeating the opposite to you and it's actually driving the oil supplies upwards?
Re:saved! (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that 20 years ago there was only 30 years oil left.
We're digging 20,000 feet under ocean beds for oil now. Exactly how much oil do you expect there to be in the mantle?
Re:saved! (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
And someone else doesn't understand 'once you take pricing effects in consideration'. Not that is stopped him from demonstrating his ignorance.
Re:saved! (Score:5, Informative)
Like I keep repeating - there's only 40 years of oil left.
While I find your argument of proof by repetitive assertion convincing, I think that 20 years ago there was only 30 years oil left. In another 40 years it may have reach 80 years left. Maybe there's more people repeating the opposite to you and it's actually driving the oil supplies upwards?
We have certainly reached "Peak Oil" - we are not increasing oil production in the face of increasing oil demand. We are going after harder to extract oil (oil sands, deep water oil), we ARE improving fractional production from existing wells through horizontal drilling and fracking and other methods but this serves more to make a long tail type of decline.
"Running out" of oil (or petrochemicals in general) is a more complex issue than can be stuffed in a sound bite. We will never run completely out of oil - there are thousands of 'stripper wells' pulling out a couple of barrels of crude oil per day and will do so for hundreds of years. But you can't run a major industrial economy on stripper wells. It will depend on a number of inter related issues - economic growth, conservation, solar / wind / hydro / nuc power, wars, etc.
But we;re already beyond 'cheap oil' - if that's any consolation to the planet.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You mean, pointing that oil is finite? That's all you need to prove your argument is false. Of course, you can dismiss the knowledge that oil is finite for how long you want. It is just a theory after all.
Also, that isn't proof that peak oil is now. The way things are going, nobody will ever be able to prove "peak oil is now", whenever "now" is.
Re:saved! (Score:5, Informative)
Oil is always going to be available. Whether or not it will be available at prices that allow for stable economies around the globe is the question. If oil hits, for example, $500 / gallon and thus gasoline prices are $15 / gallon "business as usual" (aka the economy) has big issues. Big issues.
1) China's and India's economies have been expanding at an insane pace in the last 10 years. More people in those countries drive cars now than every before. The demand has continually been increasing.
And the oil exporters in the Middle East, understanding they have a limited supply of oil in the ground are NOT increasing output much, if at all. The US / Canada in a mad attempt to keep up has been utilizing every drilling rig available for the past 5 years and we are just barely keeping pace with output reductions from the older fields.
So, if Chindia keeps munching on the fossil fuels and we keep doing the same AND production INCREASES don't keep up, you have, wait for it, Peak Oil.
2) Developed nations (most notably the U.S. and Canada) have politically decided that oil is "dirty" and entire industries have been prevented from expanded production of oil in these 2 nations (which have vast tracks of land, full of oil), this is to say nothing of the rest of the world, which seemed quite content to just let the monopoly OPEC exist and just deal with them.
Well, aside from the implication that the Sierra Club and Greenpeace are running things (you might want to tell them), we are, as I mentioned, punching holes through our 'vast tracts of land' and not keeping up with the big increases. Hint - go look up the geology of future North American 'conventional' oil reserves. The USGS keeps dropping that number every year. And a lot of geologists think that the official USGS figures are still overstated.
You have an funny definition of 'monopoly' - Oil is probably the most decentralized power supply on the planet. OPEC / Brazil / China / US / USSR / whateverstan / Non OPEC Middle East - it's everywhere. We've just sucked out the easy stuff.
Now it gets as Johnny Depp would say, complicated.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:saved! (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, the definition of 'peak oil' can be complicated. Absolute production is one metric, and of course, we will never know when that happens. The production curve has been pretty flat [theoildrum.com] for a while (warning: complex, lots of graphs, don't just grab a number an run).
But just looking at production only shows part of the problem. If various economies are price sensitive to energy (which they appear to be) and economic growth is considered a 'good thing', then if demand increases significantly past production (which is our current situation), then you have a problem, Houston.
Re: (Score:3)
We already know how to make all the chemical feed stocks from other sources. We use oil because it is still the cheapest.
Re:saved! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Now this one really does require a citation
I know it's hard [googleityoulazyfuck.com] to live in the information age [cia.gov] and even harder to use a calculator and even harder when big numbers are involved, but there you go. Also remember China is growing 9% a year. That adds the demand of a country the size of Australia, every year. And that's just China.
Re: (Score:2)
Just send them over to The Oil Drum [theoildrum.com] - a nice peak oil site with equations, graphs, charts and a reasonable amount of common sense.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
“We are looking at more than four and a half trillion barrels of potentially recoverable oil. That number translates into 140 years of oil at current rates of consumption, or to put it anther way, the world has only consumed about 18 percent of its conventional oil potential.
Re:saved! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:saved! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Be careful about posting a single citation that is contrary to the thinking of pretty much everybody else (except the abiogenesis folks). Your article's nice handwaving is trying to create the argument that 'estimated reserves' all over the world are much higher than everybody else believes.
But nobody in the business believes the reserves are high because those numbers are basically fairy tales. They are for political, not scientific consumption. It is incredibly difficult to figure out what an economica
Re:saved! (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:saved! (Score:4, Insightful)
There are the tar sands in Canada that hold an immense amount of oil.
Extracting that oil is glacially slow (we're getting maybe 1.5 million barrels per day. that's less than 1/10th of the US' current usage alone. Every oil company in Alberta is running balls out to expand that, but capacity is only expanding at about 200,000 barrels/day/year), expensive (The cheapest most accessible stuff costs $40/barrel to extract and upgrade), and messy as hell.
Re:saved! (Score:5, Informative)
Now this one really does require a citation. And oil doesn't just have to be pumped in the traditional manner.
Unfortunately the assertion that there is x numbers of oil left is based on a number of observations. So where to start.. We can start with the observation that for any given well or field supply/production follows a bell curve. Production increases until it hits a peak and then declines. Advancing technologies gives the bell curve a long tail but peak production is only hit once. If you add the curves for each well it will create a curve for each field. Add each field together and you get a curve for each region. Keep going and you will get a curve for each continent. At some point there will be a curve for the earth as a whole.
.5 trillion to as much as 2 trillion. Personally I think 2 trillion is wishful thinking as we have been looking for oil for a century now.
Now that's not all of it of course. There are undiscovered reserves. For any given region there is a bell curve for discovery. We discover more and more and then less and less. The discovery curve will tend to peak about 10 (give or take 5 year) before the supply curve. As an example we can look at the continental U.S. In 1956 Hubbert predicted peak oil for the continental in the United States to occur around 1970. He was correct. In the 30 years since continental oil production peaked, oil production has been on a gradual decline. Matching predictions made over 50 years ago. Note, the continental U.S. is just that it does not include Alaska and off shore oil but is an example of how peak production occurs in a given area and follows peak discovery.
Of course we need to know more to make an estimate for peak oil for the world. We need to know how much oil we've already used and how much we know about that is left and how much we don't know about that is left. For the first part we know we've used about 1 trillion barrels of oil so far. For the second part we know a range that geologist use. P10, P50 and P90 number provide 10%, 50%, and 90% probabilities of reserves. We use P90 numbers to denote proven reserves meaning there is a 90% chance that it is how much we have left. According to the oil industry proven reserves are between 1.1 and 1.3 trillion barrels in 2007. Adjusting for the last 4 years and that proven reserves are 90% sure not 100% lets just call it an even 1 trillion.
Ok so 1 trillion used and 1 trillion in proven reserves but of course there's the undiscovered oil too. Now we have to rely on speculation but we can take some things into consideration. For instance we have seen peak discovery in some areas so we can extrapolate what is left to be discovered by looking at the curves. We can further argue that larger fields are easier to find than smaller ones in much the same way we could say there are still undiscovered islands in the ocean but it is unlikely there are undiscovered continents. There is a lot of speculation when it comes to estimating what we haven't discovered. Some based on optimistic numbers and some based on pessimistic ones. It ranges from
But Ok, I'll give 2 trillion barrels of undiscovered oil. So now we can say total oil is around 4 trillion. We've used 1 trillion and have 3 trillion left in proven and undiscovered oil. The world uses ~80 million barrels/day or about 30 billion a year. If demand stays constant (there is no reason to believe it will, everything indicates it will rise) We can safely say we will use 1 trillion barrels in 33 years. So in 33 years we will have used 2 trillion bbls total and have 2 trillion left. This is the optimistic number for peak oil. Now for peak liquid oil (excluding tar sands and such) many estimates for peak liquid oil are put at sometime in the last 3 years. Probably around 2008. That year when gas in the U.S. went over $4/gallon and then dropped under $2 as the economy crashed and demand went down.
When supply peaks demand will be constr
Re: (Score:3)
Not as much as you'd think. I ran the numbers.
3.3tn barrels of oil, at 2:1 EROEI works out to 1.65tn net barrels of oil. This is more than has ever been extracted in all of human history. And yet, at our current rate of use (30bn/yr) and growth (1.8%), we'll be out in 37 years. If it were ten times as much oil, it would still only last us just over 100 years.
Re: (Score:2)
Like I keep repeating - there's only 40 years of oil left. That's a generous estimate that does not take into account growth. So drill baby drill can drill all they want, the total CO2 released from fossil fuels is just going to reach equilibrium faster. When the oil/coal is gone, it's gone forever.
Well, unless the proponents of abiotic oil theories are correct...
Re:saved! (Score:4, Interesting)
And only if their theories successfully predict new classes of oil traps where commercial quantities of crude can be extracted at reasonable rates and costs -- and it is my understanding that they haven't done that yet. There is no practical difference between "Diffuse oil from organic sources has been concentrated over millions of years in sedimentary rock structures with specific characteristics" and "Diffuse oil formed deep in the mantle has been concentrated over millions of years in sedimentary rock structures with specific characteristics." We're not finding new volumes with the proper characteristics at anything near historic rates, or even at rates that match our current extractions.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:saved! (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
(if oil prices were increased to $1000/barrel today, would you still say there are 40 years left?)
No, I would say that from an industrial perspective, it has ceased to exist already.
- that the quantity of all the oil in existence in known (hint: it's not - exploration and finds continue)
I take it you have never looked at an asymptotic function, have you? Or have looked at what kinds of oil finds are being made?
Re:saved! (Score:5, Informative)
Here is an interview with the author of the paper: http://newscience.planet3.org/2011/11/24/interview-with-nathan-urban-on-his-new-paper-climate-sensitivity-estimated-from-temperature-reconstructions-of-the-last-glacial-maximum/ [planet3.org]
Q. It’s a little funny, to me, that your paper was receiving such positive comments from skeptics while many of those same skeptics also support claims by Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer purporting to find an essentially insensitive (~1C or less) or self-stabilizing climate. Does your paper support such incredibly low values for ECS?
Our analysis found a lower bound of 1.35 C for climate sensitivity (less than 5% probability of being below this bound). We tried a range of statistical and physical assumptions, and found sensitivities as low as 1.15 C, and as high as 4.65 C (if we analyze the land data). I don’t think sensitivities lower than our bound are consistent with either our study or paleoclimatic evidence in general.
Q: Any other thoughts on the skeptics’ reception of your paper?
One blog did surprise me. World Climate Report doctored our paper’s main figure when reporting on our study. This manipulated version of our figure was copied widely on other blogs. They deleted the data and legends for the land and ocean estimates of climate sensitivity, and presented only our combined land+ocean curve:
Re:well if this pans out (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually 1.7 to 2.6 due to a doubling of CO2 is fantastic. It means with the current trajectory we're only going to get the "expected" unavoidable warming (2 degrees C) even if we do nothing till 2050 or later.
Basically, we let Peak Oil kill off the internal-combustion engine automobile and ride out solar/battery improvements for stationary energy. It changes a lot.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Or a little more time to collect evidence. With all the effort going into climate research, 50 years from now we will have a pretty good guess of what's really happening.