An Interesting Take On Climate Change

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woodgeek said:
Let's try a different tack TM.

Consider the idea of the 'Carbon Bubble'. Here is one link: http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_a...ill_the_carbon_bubble_burst_your_pension.html
there are many others.

I suppose that you don't like economy-crashing, financial-crisis-inducing bubbles any more than I do. What IF the science of AGW is not settled today, and we continue to make investments in FF infrastructure for the next decade or more, assuming plant costs will be amortized over the usual 20-40 years of plant life, inefficient auto fleets will get driven for 15 years, etc. Then a decade or more from now, the AGW science comes in and it is compelling and bad (worse for us waiting a decade) and a global consensus emerges that we need to reduce carbon emissions FAST. All of those FF infrastructure investments we made....those oil pipelines are now 'bridges to nowhere'. All the grannies investing their life savings in safe high-dividend utility bonds.....wiped out. The largest companies on the planet, whose valuation is based largely on subterranean assets of astronomical theoretical future value....that value is now wiped out as the C stays in the ground. They are the next round of 'too big to fail' companies.

Why not see a major 'diversification' of energy sources and a big push for efficiency, during a time of declining gas and oil stocks (fracking sources are expected to peak in the next few years, perhaps sooner with the collapse in oil prices) as a financially prudent move for the economy? In addition to being a new economic sector that creates more jobs than it displaces, and one that is good for your health?
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The carbon bubble doesn't exist. What the author fails to realize is that the value of these companies is because they produce something people want.

The mistake is to think that government can drive such diversification. Every time it tries you end up with very bad consequences.

The mistake is to push for political solutions based on incomplete science or even bad science.
 
TM, Exxon and other the major oil cos appear to disagree with you.

They are all including a carbon price in their long term future economic projections, and have been for a few years now. They (like the tobacco companies 40 yrs ago) know the science is not on their side, and it is just a matter of time until some regulation comes along that hits their bottom line. Good business men, they don't plan to fold up shop and go home, but rather to survive the hit and keep going. Of course they will be selling some oil for decades more, but the profitability and future volume of that business are not assured.

Another funny thing about those oil majors....they are all keeping out of fracking too. The oil service cos are selling to the frackers, and the majors might be refining their product, but the upfront money and risk are all held by smaller, independent operators, who were collectively under water even when oil cost $100/barrel. It seems to me that if there was lots of risk-free money to be made there, the majors would be all in. Instead, they appear to be happy to make money around the edges of the business, but don't want to be left holding the (debt-filled) bag when the party is over. It would seem that that they would know best about the relevant geology, fracking tech, oil econ, etc....and they have all chosen the 10 foot pole approach to that business.

So, yeah, we all want oil now, and will need some oil for a long time. But the market value of that oil IS related to global perceptions of its safety (declining), the availability of alternatives (cheaper and growing exponentially), and the $$ and social costs of oil (bad and getting worse). Oil could be necessary but largely hated in a few years, as coal is now, and by then a lot of the future profit and current valuation will be written down.

IOW, all markets start with public opinion, and the handwriting is on the wall for fossil fuels:

http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/11/21/the-generation-gap-on-global-warming/

Folks on the left support regulating greenhouse gases by about 75 to 25%. Among folks on the right, those under 49 support regulation about 60 to 40%. The only hold outs are those on the right 50 and older, and even they are evenly divided.
 
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I don't have a problem with CCS....low carbon emission coal power....it just doesn't exist right now. We have a few very expensive demo plants being built on govt dimes. It remans an open question whether it can be cost effective in the future, presumably only in a future world with a stiff carbon price, allowing it to compete with conventional coal, or a high-RE future world that still has some regional/seasonal loads (like New England in winter) that are hard to serve with RE (and thus the RE would be more expensive, shipped in long distance, etc).

Folks get excited because they think this is a retrofit on existing plants, implying rapid adoption, but I am v skeptical of that. Many of the processes I have seen have the plants running on O2 enriched air, to improve eff and to facilitate the CO2 removal later....not gonna retrofit that on a 40 yo plant.
 
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Sure. But the CCS folks have a product with an unknown price, and they have a lot of catching up to do to compete with (much bigger and more proven) wind and solar. In places where there is a big CO2 customer, like for oil recovery, I suspect you can make the economics work today. How many of those niches exist? We don't know yet.
 
begreen said:
I suspect in 30-40 yrs neither of us will be around to see if that is right or just one of the factors. Models show a significant warming of the sw over the next 50 yrs. inclusive of pdo. Warmer will also mean the snow that does accumulate will melt faster. Models point to less moisture there in the future at current rate of emissions.
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maybe a moderate el nino is coming after a long wait. huge rains predicted for at least 1/2 the state late week and next. if the rains come and the EN pops more natural forces at work.[Hearth.com] An Interesting Take On Climate Change
 
The World Bank will invest heavily in clean energy and only fund coal projects in “circumstances of extreme need” because climate change will undermine efforts to eliminate extreme poverty, says its President Jim Yong Kim.
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Ditch Coal
 
Looks like there is an emerging global effort called the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project, which consists of teams in different countries, each trying to design a development pathway to a lower-carbon future that keeps the world on a 2°C warming limit and which tries to 'spread the pain' evenly across countries.

That team has targeted an 80% gross, 90% net CO2 reduction for the US by 2050. The full report is a fun, wonky read:
http://unsdsn.org/what-we-do/deep-decarbonization-pathways/

A nice summary of the results is:
http://grist.org/climate-energy/yes-the-u-s-can-reduce-emissions-80-by-2050-in-six-graphs/

Briefly, all residential energy is electric space heat, HPWH, and somewhat more eff appliances than currently. Light vehicles are a mix of battery EVs and Hydrogen Fuel Cell vehicles. I think they assume renewable energy grid-storage on day timescales, but H2 production using excess RE energy for seasonal storage....and a fleet of FCEVs to eat up that supply. They also consider, high RE, nuke and coal CCS variants.

Costs come in at 1±1% of US GDP, mostly in the 2040s, not including savings from externalities like public health. So if you include those, it is v likely a net negative cost.

Oh, and it says that the existing EPA CO2 reduction plan conforms well to the most pressing changes that need to be done in the next decade to realize this 2050 pathway. This consists mostly of avoiding investments in long-lived fossil fuel infrastructure in the next 10 years, and working out the kinks in present technology.

Dave Roberts pokes his holes (at link above) mostly on the economic growth projections, but I think it is a nice effort. Their RE portfolio is skewed heavily to wind, presumably due to current costs, whereas I think PV will get much bigger. I also worry about retrofitting existing housing stock, but overall, the maths seems to work ok.
 
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