What a difference a year can make in the World Energy Outlook (PDF). Released just last week, the International Energy Agency's press release led with an attention-grabbing clarion cry:
"The World is Locking Itself into an Unsustainable Energy Future Which Would Have Far-Reaching Consequences..."
What consequences do they mean? To start with, they warn that the window to limiting global temperature rise to 2°C -- the threshold at which catastrophic climate change may become inevitable -- is rapidly closing.
Compare that to the headline of the press release for the 2010 report (PDF): "Recent Policy Moves a Start, but Much Stronger Action Is Needed to Accelerate the Transformation of the Global Energy System, Says the IEA's Latest World Energy Outlook."
It's as if this year the IEA wanted to grab us by the shoulders and give us a good shake. And coming from an institution that was long considered a cheerleader for the fossil and nuclear industries, we would do well to pay attention.
This point about "lock-in" is crucial. The costs of building new coal-fired power plants, or extracting oil from harder to reach places, are enormous. So investing in these high-carbon projects means we will need to use them for a very, very long time. Otherwise investors will not get their expected returns -- and after all, isn't that what they're doing it for?
Building a conventional 500 MW coal-fired power plant, for example, costs more than $1 billion these days. It's profitable because the plant is expected to be around for a good 50 years. Think of it like moving to a new city and buying a high-priced house. You wouldn't do it unless you were planning to stay put for a while.
The same thing goes for the Alberta tar sands. According to Shell, which has a 60% stake in the Athabasca project (PDF):
Oil sands mining projects are designed to produce [for] around 40 years, and this very long asset life provides cash flows for returns to shareholders, and to recoup the up front development cost, the on-going operating cost, and the cost of environmental remediation throughout and at the end of the project life.
It has been estimated that $120-220 billion in capital investments will be needed over the next 20 years to produce the oil from Alberta's tar sands. This isn't like building a house, it's more like building a 160-story skyscraper.
But averting runaway climate change is going to force us to pack up and move much sooner than we think, maybe even, as the IEA report suggests, in the next five years.
We desperately need to prevent the kind of infrastructure lock-in that will kill current efforts to reign in climate change. If we don't, our children's future will be in jeopardy. Here are some of the major "lock-in" flashpoints we should be very concerned about:
Coal/South Africa: Greenpeace campaigners were arrested last week for dropping a banner at the construction site of Eskom's Kusile coal plant. Eskom's other mega coal project -- Medupi -- is being funded by the World Bank (read developed country taxpayers) to the tune of $3.75 billion. South Africa already generates 93% of its electricity from coal, so why are they investing in more when renewables could do the job?
Tar Sands/Canada: Despite the Keystone XL pipeline victory last week, it's no time to get complacent. Another proposed pipeline -- the Northern Gateway -- would carry petroleum from Alberta to a new oil tanker port at Kitimat, British Columbia for transport onwards to Asia. According to news reports, the $6.6 billion project has already secured some of the needed funding from Chinese investors.
Coal/USA: Grassroots campaigning to dethrone King Coal is racking up victory after victory. 150 plants have already been stopped, but there is still another 500 to go. Check out this cool map posted by the Sierra Club.
Coal/India: The World Energy Outlook projects that India will double its use of coal by 2035, and will displace the US as the world's second-largest coal consuming country by 2025. A recent report by the Sierra Club and Bank information Center (PDF) says, "India has enough plants in the pipeline to expand its coal-fired capacity a jaw dropping 600 percent over the next two decades."
Deepwater Oil Drilling: From the Arctic to New Zealand, activists around the world are protesting the expansion of offshore drilling into deeper and more treacherous waters. Analysts believe that the Arctic, Gulf of Mexico and areas off of Brazil and West Africa represent the most important new deepwater frontiers. One analyst forecasts that by 2015, $126 billion will be invested to get at the oil off of Brazil and West Africa alone.
And lest we forget, China is the world's leading producer as well as consumer of coal. It is likely to be responsible for more than half of the growth in global demand for coal through 2020 according to the IEA.
I could go on. But as the Agency's Chief Economist Fatih Birol says:
As each year passes without clear signals to drive investment in clean energy, the "lock-in" of high carbon infrastructure is making it harder and more expensive to meet our energy security and climate goals.
By 2017, the IEA projects that all of the CO2 we can afford to emit will already be locked-in. That means building no new CO2-emitting infrastructure after that, or we will need to start dismantling the existing stuff.
In other words, not only are we planning to build the skyscraper, we do so knowing full well that it will need to be torn down in just a few years time. Call it dumb. Call it insane... why would any banker in his right mind finance these outlandish and dangerous propositions?
Don't answer that...
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"In 1976, scientists at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory spearheaded a project called CLIMAP (Climate: Long-range Investigation Mapping and Prediction) to map the history of the oceans and climate. They discovered that ice ages begin or end, almost like clockwork, every 11,500 years. It's a dependable, predictable, natural cycle. Pacemaker of the Ice Ages, they called it.
" They drew up a chart of the cycle which shows sharp peaks every 100,000 years or so. Each peak marks the abrupt end of a period of warmth similar to today's and the catastrophic beginning of a new ice age."
http://www.iceagenow.com/Pacemaker.htm
What we do concerning CO2 will have no effect on when the plunge takes place and one doesn't have to be "Right Wing" to understand reality.
Your 1976 graph merely describes the Milankovitch cycles. These are well known to science. They take thousands of years to switch the climate back and forth between the icy state and the normal state.
Google Milankovich cycles for the science of it. And you'll also find an updated graph.
Modern warming is sudden in geological terms. It does not correlate with these cycles. What it does correlate with is the rise in CO2 concentration. The earth is not about to plunge into an ice age, not for thousands of years.
Global warming continues. The early signs are all the extreme weather seen all over the planet. This is only the beginning. It will continue to ratchet up very slowly, very relentlessly.
if there is enough ice melt from the poles then ocean density changes and the deep ocean current may switch off and you have something pretty close to an ice age in Europe quickly. Without the transport of thermal energy toward the poles a fairly rapid switch to cooling could occur in the higher latitudes.
I believe there is research on how quickly the deep ocean current can turn off that is correlated to ice age historical data. not sure where I saw it though.
this is just a footnote not a contradiction.
While efficiency and conservation gains are possible their net positive effect, given the growth focused nature of our economy is doubtful. Building efficiency net result over the last decade is that we are consuming roughly twice the power.
There are 2 options left :
1) create a fossil competitive clean (or renewable non-combustion) energy source within the next 10 - 15 years. None of the existing large-resource renewables are on a path to do this. In almost every case their cost reduction is in exponential decay. this would involve new areas of research and a heavier emphasis on small modular nuclear or fusion.
2) aftermarket all the existing fossil and the additional coal and NG that is going into the ground through 2050 with carbon capture and storage. we do not have the technology right now to do this on a large scale.
Either of these solutions would require a massive investment in these areas of research. At the moment the vast majority of available funds are being applied to incremental improvements existing technologies such as PV solar or wind.
We are on the slow road to nowhere.
Regarding the cascade of climate effects that we are liable to start seeing soon, here is what it is like in the Northwest US. Two weeks ago, the extended growing season left trees with their leaves on right into the start of snow season. The result was catastrophic tree damage nearly everywhere as snow covered leaves broke massive limbs off of trees.
Today, the frogs in my frog pond are sitting around in droves, apparently looking for bugs, when they should be hibernating. But it is too warm today to hibernate. And the bugs have already gone through their life cycles and are nowhere to be found.
So are these frogs going to make it through the winter or are they going to starve between now and spring? If they don't survive, can we expect an explosion of mosquitoes in the spring because their main predator is missing?
Little things like this are what are going to add up and start getting people's attention.
BTW, for those clowns who think that this is a big joke and that the effects are 5, 50, or 100 years away, they should take a look around. They should observe. The effects are starting, and all the prevarication from the oil industry about weak science is the really evil behavior.
The reality remains that the climate is changing. The change is going to keep worsening. Science is in agreement about this. The rest of us can see it happening around us.
Meanwhile, the fossil fuel funded deniers attempt to keep up their facade. They are perfectly transparent. They're the ones who never can provide credible science to back up their claims.
The Canadian oil sands enterprise is one of the worst ecological projects in the entire world...one that's bound to destroy the boreal forest in an area the size of Florida, devour hundreds of millions of cubic meters of fresh water and 600 million cubic feet of natural gas every day, and dramatically increase the emissions of carbon dioxide while yielding a relatively low energy return on investment (EROI).
One should also note that US corn-based yields an EROI of about 1.25:1 (one unit of energy consumed to produce 1.25 unit of energy) -- and that calculation doesn't even take into account the economic and environmental costs of the Gulf of Mexico dead zone generated by fertilizer run-off from corn-producing Midwest agribusiness through the Mississippi River...or the dramatic rise in the price of food stuffs, which has so negatively impacted our neighbors in Mexico.
Global warming is ongoing. Arguing about exactly when it becomes a crisis is an excuse to do nothing until it is too late. Also, the science is clear on causation and makes accurate predictions all the time.
The science is sound. The effects are real and serious. Nearly everyone can perceive it, except for the deniers of course.
Nuclear waste is being safely managed NOW. It is a solid, a mineral that will behave in a geologically predictable way in burial and will be only barely radioactive in a few hundred years time.
If you are serious about addressing climate change - support building nuclear power. Thorium sure, when its ready, and I'm glad to see your flexibility on that, but uranium right now because it's what we have.
Population growth drops to net zero when health care, education and women's rights are adequate, and contraception is freely available.
Of course, mosquitoes do carry Yellow Fever, and Malaria, and a whole host of other ills.
We can vaccinate against diseases, and kill mosquitoes, but the science deniers just refuse to go away. No medicine can cure that plague, no amount of mere facts can shake their hide-bound addiction to some bizarre conspiracy theory.
It is too late to stop the coming calamity. The simple power of inertia will carry us over the edge, if it has not done so already. While scientists should continue to study the phenomena which are emerging, ordinary people should get on with their lives, and try to safeguard their families by moving out of the worst affected areas.
If you want to try and save the world, vote the straight Democratic ticket every chance you get. The Democratic candidates are not necessarily more intelligent or enlightened that the GOPs but at least they haven't sold their souls to Grover Norquist and the Koch brothers. There is a chance they will listen to the scientists and do the right thing.
Rooftop solar, offshore wind and waste bio char bio fuels are the ONLY solution on the map.
ONLY waste bio char using the char as fertilizer can actually reverse atmospheric CO2 in any major way, profitably, producing energy and fuels to back up solar and wind.
Solar is about the same price are nuclear or Clean coal. 15 cents per KWH. Don't believe the 3 cent worldnuclear lie.
Wind is half that cost, and waste bio char and bio fuels are half again.
solar wind and waste as above, is 24/7, forever, safe, clean, growing fast now, fast enough to replace nearly all fossil and nukes within 7-15 years.
Vote for the Warren, Kucinich, Grayson CPC progressive in the primaries over the blue dog DLC DINOs,
vote for the Dems including Obama in the general since the GOP/Tea are anti republic, anti democracy, anti environment, anti green TORIES.
The cycles of nature are getting mashed up against rapid atmospheric change caused by human monkies.
The Ronald Reagan, GE myth of happiness through fossil fuel fire powered appliances is going to come crashing down quite soon if the human monkies don't get their act together.
The present situation is unsustainable. We can chose what to replace it with, or just go on as if nothing is happening and get crushed.
Check out food prices. Let me know when they start coming down.
It's also explicit in laying out that the rise in impacts we've seen from extreme weather events cannot be laid at the door of greenhouse gas emissions: "Increasing exposure of people and economic assets is the major cause of the long-term changes in economic disaster losses (high confidence).
"Long-term trends in normalized economic disaster losses cannot be reliably attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change."
(from the draft IPCC report circulating now)
For example, Texas does have hot summers, but what if the temperature hit 120 degrees. I think that might wake some people up especially if the air conditioners can't keep up with the heat and the power grid goes down. There would be many heat related deaths. There is nothing like the fear of death to get people moving. By then it will be too late and I bet it will take over a century to cool things down if possible.