Scientists say that to have even a two-thirds chance of staying below a global increase of two degrees Celsius, we can release 800 gigatons more CO2 into the atmosphere. But the Rystad data shows coal mines and oil and gas wells currently in operation worldwide contain 942 gigatons worth of CO2. So the math problem is simple, and it goes like this:
942 > 800
“What we found is that if you burn up all the carbon that’s in the currently operating fields and mines, you’re already above two degrees,” says Stephen Kretzmann, OCI’s executive director.
And two degrees is no longer the red line anyway.
Two degrees Celsius used to be the red line. But scientists now believe the upper limit is much lower. We’ve already raised the world’s temperature by one degree—enough to melt almost half the ice in the Arctic, kill off huge swaths of the world’s coral, and unleash lethal floods and drought. July and August tied for the hottest months ever recorded on our planet, and scientists think they were almost certainly the hottest in the history of human civilization.
In some places it approached too hot for humans to survive.
So last year, when the world’s leaders met in Paris, they set a new number: Every effort, they said, would be made to keep the global temperature rise to less than 1.5 degrees. And to have even a 50–50 chance of meeting that goal, we can only release about 353 gigatons more CO2. So let’s do the math again:
942 > 353
A lot greater. To have just a break-even chance of meeting that 1.5 degree goal we solemnly set in Paris, we’ll need to close all of the coal mines and some of the oil and gas fields we’re currently operating long before they’re exhausted.
I’m so glad I don’t have kids. And so sorry for young people today. It’s going to get scary very soon, of course– we will get some of the brunt of climate change. But the main burden is being passed forward.
Jim, I don’t know if you’re trying to derail or you actually believe that.
As Amory Lovins pointed out back in the 1980s, generating power using nuclear energy is like cutting butter with a chainsaw.
Further, nuclear power generates massive quantities of CO2 during mining, processing, building the power plants (cement-making is one of the biggest contributors to atmospheric CO2 levels), and, ultimately waste processing, transfer and storage.
They also require fairly cool water for cooling. Nuclear power plants have had to be shut down in a number of areas when river water temperatures rose unexpectedly high. (Thanks, climate change.)
That’s not even getting into the problem of waste. Almost all the nuclear power plant waste is currently stored in “temporary” pools on site because there’s no place to put it.
The worst of it? It’s totally unnecessary to drag that nuclear ball and chain. Solar and wind can more than meet the need without all that baggage. If we wanted to, it can be done in a carbon neutral budget. A fairly well known pdf from Stanford scientists laid it all out in 2011. Solar has only gotten cheaper and more efficient since then.
Like every antinuclear argument I’ve looked into the ones you list each turn out to be somewhere between a misleading half truth and a lie.
The half truths are generally in the form of making a fuss about a minor issue with nuclear while ignoring the greater problems with other energy sources.
Re: CO2 from construction etc. You are ignoring the CO2 emitted in the course of making steel & concrete for windmills etc. which turns out to to be at about as much per kwh as nuclear & both tiny compared to using fossil fuels for generation. However the unreliables (solar & wind) need something else to be turned on during calm nights, usually natural gas.
Waste: Unlike the waste from other energy sources nuclear ‘waste’ is small enough to be stored on site, & most of it could be used in next generation reactors, so it is not waste. Look up breeder reactor.
I suppose I will have to read the link you quoted to see whether his solution to unreliability is something better than handwaving.
Once we discovered the concentrated energy of fire and cleared forests for farming (remember the cedars of Lebanon? Isaiah 2:13) to support increasing populations in cities, the path was set. Other than fire (biomass, coal, oil), nuclear fission (interestingly Monbiot has been an advocate of nuclear) has collateral side products which, while “small enough to be stored on site” (Jim Baerg#4), have life times greater than life times of societies and so far net production from fusion has not been achieved. Not all generating utilities want to store on site; recently Ontario Power Generation wanted to move nuclear waste off site shipping through the Great Lakes but, so far, was rebuffed. In the U.K. the cleanup of Sellafield, the cleanup of the North Sea base of Russian nuclear submarines, the difficulty in finding sites for storage in the U.s. and elsewhere (NIMBY) is challenging. And, ahem, there have been ‘significant events’ as one generating facility refers to them (TMI, Chernobyl, Fukushima). Green electricity production based on solar and wind can be stored (batteries, hydraulic, compressed air) off peak. There are high upper limits on extraction from wind before circulation is affected.
Of course CO2 removal does not address issues from melting of permafrost and methane clathrates: methane and reactivation of anthrax spores.
Changes in society may make economic solutions (carbon pricing …) irrelevant. Changes in societies in response to climate raise other issues. Some people see society sustained locally as the future; Ellen LaConte is an interesting thinker in this context.
Research into and building new reactor designs based on thorium salts would actually allow the reuse of “spent” fuel from the current and past fission reactors to generate power in a safer plant which could not go into chain reaction during failure, and the end by-product would be much less radioactive. There are ways to improve fission.
I’m so glad I don’t have kids. And so sorry for young people today. It’s going to get scary very soon, of course– we will get some of the brunt of climate change. But the main burden is being passed forward.
And we can thank everyone who opposed nuclear power for making it much worse that it would otherwise have been.
Jim, I don’t know if you’re trying to derail or you actually believe that.
As Amory Lovins pointed out back in the 1980s, generating power using nuclear energy is like cutting butter with a chainsaw.
Further, nuclear power generates massive quantities of CO2 during mining, processing, building the power plants (cement-making is one of the biggest contributors to atmospheric CO2 levels), and, ultimately waste processing, transfer and storage.
They also require fairly cool water for cooling. Nuclear power plants have had to be shut down in a number of areas when river water temperatures rose unexpectedly high. (Thanks, climate change.)
That’s not even getting into the problem of waste. Almost all the nuclear power plant waste is currently stored in “temporary” pools on site because there’s no place to put it.
The worst of it? It’s totally unnecessary to drag that nuclear ball and chain. Solar and wind can more than meet the need without all that baggage. If we wanted to, it can be done in a carbon neutral budget. A fairly well known pdf from Stanford scientists laid it all out in 2011. Solar has only gotten cheaper and more efficient since then.
Like every antinuclear argument I’ve looked into the ones you list each turn out to be somewhere between a misleading half truth and a lie.
The half truths are generally in the form of making a fuss about a minor issue with nuclear while ignoring the greater problems with other energy sources.
Re: CO2 from construction etc. You are ignoring the CO2 emitted in the course of making steel & concrete for windmills etc. which turns out to to be at about as much per kwh as nuclear & both tiny compared to using fossil fuels for generation. However the unreliables (solar & wind) need something else to be turned on during calm nights, usually natural gas.
Cooling water
https://bravenewclimate.com/2009/11/20/tcase6/
Waste: Unlike the waste from other energy sources nuclear ‘waste’ is small enough to be stored on site, & most of it could be used in next generation reactors, so it is not waste. Look up breeder reactor.
I suppose I will have to read the link you quoted to see whether his solution to unreliability is something better than handwaving.
Once we discovered the concentrated energy of fire and cleared forests for farming (remember the cedars of Lebanon? Isaiah 2:13) to support increasing populations in cities, the path was set. Other than fire (biomass, coal, oil), nuclear fission (interestingly Monbiot has been an advocate of nuclear) has collateral side products which, while “small enough to be stored on site” (Jim Baerg#4), have life times greater than life times of societies and so far net production from fusion has not been achieved. Not all generating utilities want to store on site; recently Ontario Power Generation wanted to move nuclear waste off site shipping through the Great Lakes but, so far, was rebuffed. In the U.K. the cleanup of Sellafield, the cleanup of the North Sea base of Russian nuclear submarines, the difficulty in finding sites for storage in the U.s. and elsewhere (NIMBY) is challenging. And, ahem, there have been ‘significant events’ as one generating facility refers to them (TMI, Chernobyl, Fukushima). Green electricity production based on solar and wind can be stored (batteries, hydraulic, compressed air) off peak. There are high upper limits on extraction from wind before circulation is affected.
“damage control” Blood Knight in Sour Armor#7 at http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2016/bye-world/
There are technologies to remove CO2 directly from the atmosphere. Whether they are effective, e.g. economically, enough (much better at source, say coal plant, than ambient) is an open question. Hansen et al (section 9 of “Young People’s Burden” http://arxiv.org/abs/1609.05878) review options for “negative CO2 emissions” such as reforestration and technologies for ambient CO2 capture that are being prototyped in pilot plants. Nicola Jones has a good review article (http://e360.yale.edu/feature/can_pulling_carbon_from_air_make_a_difference_on_climate/2938/). Rowena Ball (https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/ball-rv) has some good technical analysis of the similar Endex process (http://www.ccsassociation.org/about-us/our-members/calix/) and carbon capture generally. These technologies are viewed by some with optimism (e.g. Bruce Melton, We Can Have a Healthy Climate With Zero Warming in Our Lifetimes, http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/37394-we-can-have-a-healthy-climate-with-zero-warming-in-our-lifetimes). This is 19th century science (more or less explaining use of fire) and 20th century technology.
Of course CO2 removal does not address issues from melting of permafrost and methane clathrates: methane and reactivation of anthrax spores.
Changes in society may make economic solutions (carbon pricing …) irrelevant. Changes in societies in response to climate raise other issues. Some people see society sustained locally as the future; Ellen LaConte is an interesting thinker in this context.
Yeah. We’re fucked. That’s if Trump doesn’t turn the planet into a cinder first.
2016 is not turning out to be such a good year…
Research into and building new reactor designs based on thorium salts would actually allow the reuse of “spent” fuel from the current and past fission reactors to generate power in a safer plant which could not go into chain reaction during failure, and the end by-product would be much less radioactive. There are ways to improve fission.
Now that I have a bit of time to come back to this discussion.
John Wasson #5 “And, ahem, there have been ‘significant events’ as one generating facility refers to them (TMI, Chernobyl, Fukushima)”
Regarding the dangers of various energy sources
http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/06/update-of-death-per-terawatt-hour-by.html
Note where nuclear sits on the list