[clif]

Doesn't look so rosy for the future of fracking helping out either;

http://www.thenation.com/article/global ... chemistry/

Global Warming’s Terrifying New Chemistry

Our leaders thought fracking would save our climate. They were wrong. Very wrong.

In February, Harvard researchers published an explosive paper in Geophysical Research Letters. Using satellite data and ground observations, they concluded that the nation as a whole is leaking methane in massive quantities. Between 2002 and 2014, the data showed that US methane emissions increased by more than 30 percent, accounting for 30 to 60 percent of an enormous spike in methane in the entire planet’s atmosphere.

[onlooker]

well here are scientists who are not afraid of telling it like it is.
World unlikely to hold temps below 2C. goal.

http://today.tamu.edu/2016/03/23/goal-t ... will-fail/

[Tanada]

well here are scientists who are not afraid of telling it like it is.
World unlikely to hold temps below 2C. goal.

http://today.tamu.edu/2016/03/23/goal-t ... will-fail/

Not exactly a news flash O, some of us have been shouting this from the rooftops to no avail. Humanity has now IMO passed the last offramp to leave the fossil fuel highway to self reinforcing climate change. The only way to stabilize would be to take a massive world wide approach to eliminate fossil fuels from our energy production system. Every time we have the chance to do so we turn away because in the very short term they are cheap and convenient.

However a quote from your link that needs to be pounded into peoples brains until they absorb it,

Jones and Warner point out that every hour of every day:

3.7 million barrels of oil are extracted from the Earth
932,000 tons of coal are removed from Earth
395 million cubic meters of natural gas are removed from Earth
4.1 million tons of carbon dioxide are put into the Earth’s atmosphere
9,300 more people inhabit the Earth

These facts make it very difficult to change and very easy to just coast along doing as we have done for the last few generations and the heck with the consequences down the road a bit. When those consequences rise up and slap us silly most will be stunned and amazed. That doesn't mean anything effective can be done at that point.

[onlooker]

Yes T, I am afraid we are like a locomotive train speeding on a railroad track unable to even slow down much less stop given our choice of primary energy and huge population. So all the alarm bells sounding will not stop this train from crashing into the remorseless Entropy of physics and reality which is the only thing that is going to stop this train. Still good to see scientists showing integrity and voicing the reality of the matter.

[onlooker]

Just saw this story and it crystallizes why 2C is a fantasy. Rex Tillerson says climate change exists but the ability to gauge effects is very limited. Well at least he admitted it exists but this alluding to how difficult to assess effects is absurd. If nothing more the cautionary principle dictates that we should have and should assume the worse. But instead climate negotiations come and go and nothing and an administration is coming into office that is openly skeptical of climate change. So where does that leave humanity? Hanging by an increasingly tenuous branch. http://www.post-gazette.com/early-retur ... 1701110124

[Subjectivist]

Just saw this story and it crystallizes why 2C is a fantasy. Rex Tillerson says climate change exists but the ability to gauge effects is very limited. Well at least he admitted it exists but this alluding to how difficult to assess effects is absurd. If nothing more the cautionary principle dictates that we should have and should assume the worse. But instead climate negotiations come and go and nothing and an administration is coming into office that is openly skeptical of climate change. So where does that leave humanity? Hanging by an increasingly tenuous branch. http://www.post-gazette.com/early-retur ... 1701110124

It was a fantasy long before that! At least as far back as when Copenhagen fell through. You even admitted aweek or so ago that the Paris agreement is nothing but a sham. Trying to turn it into all Trumps fault is silly, or are you planning to convert to fundamentalist Amish practices and turn off your electricity running water and central heating?

[onlooker]

No, Sub, my intention was not to sound partisan. The blames is enough to go around the planet and to everyone on it. Just observing how with signs now of true destabilization of the climate system in areas like the Arctic, someone in the position of Rex can just casually say oh well hard to know the effects. Well, should not that itself be an alert to assume perhaps the worse just in case.

[Newfie]

Onlooker,

Not to take from your point, Tillerson is clearly not the guy we want running our cc agenda.

However, Kerry seems to be pretty outspoken abroad, but not at home. Seems he has been stifled, maybe? So even a vocal SOS needs a voice in Anerica. (I also wonder how he felt about the warthogs attacking Saudi troops in support of ISIS and wrecking his hard fought peace plan).

On the plus side we are hiring Tillerson to be SOS. Now some of his portfolio is cc, but most is not.

What is MUCH more important is where Trump lands in the issue. We may need up to 18 months to sort that out.

[Revi]

We're cooked.

[shortonoil]

A cap on an oil well is made of concrete. The cap prevents the well from leaking (fluids and gasses such methane, radon, sulfur dioxide, etc). The concrete breaks down from the acids in the environment. Oil well caps last about 20 years before they deteriorate enough to start leaking. Re-capping a well can run from $20,000 to $200,00. Over our 158 year energy binge there have been over 2 million drilled. The state of Pennsylvania tried to recap its old wells (it has a lot of them, and people were getting sick) and promptly went broke. They, as promptly, gave up on the idea.

One million of those wells are in the US.

[Tanada]

A cap on an oil well is made of concrete. The cap prevents the well from leaking (fluids and gasses such methane, radon, sulfur dioxide, etc). The concrete breaks down from the acids in the environment. Oil well caps last about 20 years before they deteriorate enough to start leaking. Re-capping a well can run from $20,000 to $200,00. Over our 158 year energy binge there have been over 2 million drilled. The state of Pennsylvania tried to recap its old wells (it has a lot of them, and people were getting sick) and promptly went broke. They, as promptly, gave up on the idea.

One million of those wells are in the US.

I made this same point a couple years ago. Human drilled wells break through the geological cap rock with a metal tube and cement it closed after it is no longer economical to produce methane/petroleum from that well. What are the odds that the well casing and cement are going to last centuries or millennia, let alone many millions of years like the original geological strata did? IOW leaks are assured, maybe in 10 years maybe in 100, but sooner or later they will all be leakers. Just because the pressure gradient was too low to be 'economic' does not mean there is no pressure at all, in fact after being capped for even a few years most of them will have regained at least a little of the geological pressure they had when first tapped. Deep aquifers will move up to occupy pore spaces left empty by extracted fluids and over several or many years they deep fluid movement will replace lost pressure. That in turn will put pressure on the bottom side of the cement plug job and the mild steel casing of the well bore. Corrosion from saline water or a minor crack is all it takes for the methane to start leaking, and if it was a petroleum well seeps wouldn't surprise me in the least.

[dohboi]

Another reason we are assured of a long, long warming, not just decades or centuries...

[Plantagenet]

NASA just released their data on 2016----its the warmest year on record. In fact, it is 1.78° above the average temperature of the last century.

nasa-noaa-data-show-2016-warmest-year-on-record-globally

Obama and the other morons who put together the Paris Climate Accords almost picked 1.5° as the limit they would allow the earth to warm to. That number is now officially exceed, just 2 years after the Paris Accords were implemented.


CO2 emissions reductions required under Obama's Paris accords? Zero. Absolutely nada. Zilch.

At the current rate of warming the upper limit of 2°C they set at Paris will be passed in a few more years. Hopefully by then the world will be ready to chuck out the phony Paris accords and switch tracks back to the original plan for a UN Climate Treaty that requires CO2 reductions.

Cheers!

[jedrider]

We're cooked.

+1

[KaiserJeep]

But don't forget that it's NOT UP TO US. Let us speculate for a moment that the USA makes an all-out effort to eliminate the burning of fossil fuels for energy, and in some incredibly short time such as 10 years, does so. What would be the result?

1) The 20% of the world's petroleum that the US consumes would be bought and burned by somebody else, very probably in a set of ICE vehicles that are less efficient and much dirtier than the current generation of US computer-managed, catalyzed, relatively clean ICE vehicles. The carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and hydrocarbons in our atmosphere would thus INCREASE.

2) The coal we don't burn will be exported and burned in power plants that are a lot dirtier than ours. Just as we today export the "dirtiest" coal that we dig here, because it's too expensive to "scrub" the stack emissions to meet US EPA air quality standards. So we export it where it is burned by other people without any air quality standards whatsoever, and again the atmosphere is dirtier than before.

Admit it, no single country or group of countries can solve fossil fuel emissions. The whole world could do so collectively, if we had the will. But what would represent an economic slump and serious inconvenience in the developed nations, would result in the deliberate starvation of about 6 billion people in the 3rd World.

That should not happen, we must do everything we can do to avoid it. Dig the coal, pump the oil and the gas, and burn it all. There still exists the slim chance that we can find replacement energy sources and/or escape from the overcrowded, dirty, warming world.

If we cannot escape, then there will be a period where our species evolves more rapidly than we otherwise might. Consider it evolution in action.

But stop blaming people or countries for a problem that only the world as a whole can solve. The only difference between Obama and Trump when it comes to FF emissions vis-à-vis the Paris Accords is that you will hear more truth from Trump than Obama told you.

[KaiserJeep]

The USA is a world leader in all things whether we like it or not. To use the rest of the world as an excuse to do nothing is pitiful. We should take the lead and force everyone else to follow. Like don't burn FFs and don't dig them up to sell to someone else.

I have very little faith that even the US can come to their senses about the climate but that doesn't stop me from doing everything I can do personally. I will lead in the right direction regardless of who follows.

Bold text inserted by me. How would the USA "force" anybody to do anything? We don't really attempt to control FF emissions, and could not make the Middle East stop selling oil if we tried. But we are not going to try - instead we go to war when somebody else like Saddam Hussein threatens ME oil sales. Nor does the government even attempt to curtail fossil fuels within the USA - they sell mining leases and oil leases and impose safety standards on coal mines and oil fields. You cannot make any credible claim that reducing FF emissions is part of US Government policy. The statement above would be Fascist if I could even believe it was serious, but it's not serious, pretty obviously, when one thinks about what the government actually does, versus the lies that come out of politicians mouths.

Your argument is no good in the 3rd world, either, where mechanized agriculture has produced enough food to swell populations by 4+ billion people in the last 5 decades. Try to persuade 4+ billion to considerately starve to death so that your privileged 1st world lifestyle is not inconvenienced.

Move North and buy an air conditioner which you will power with fossil fuels. Except I would guess you already own an A/C, don't you? Do you also own a car with a fuel tank? (It is probably air conditioned, as well.) Are you attached to the electric grid? How serious can you be about your professed beliefs on climate change, given the way you behave?

[Plantagenet]

But don't forget that it's NOT UP TO US. Let us speculate for a moment that the USA makes an all-out effort to eliminate the burning of fossil fuels for energy, and in some incredibly short time such as 10 years, does so. What would be the result?

1) The 20% of the world's petroleum that the US consumes would be bought and burned by somebody else, very probably in a set of ICE vehicles that are less efficient and much dirtier than the current generation of US computer-managed, catalyzed, relatively clean ICE vehicles. The carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and hydrocarbons in our atmosphere would thus INCREASE.

2) The coal we don't burn will be exported and burned in power plants that are a lot dirtier than ours. Just as we today export the "dirtiest" coal that we dig here, because it's too expensive to "scrub" the stack emissions to meet US EPA air quality standards. So we export it where it is burned by other people without any air quality standards whatsoever, and again the atmosphere is dirtier than before.

Admit it, no single country or group of countries can solve fossil fuel emissions. The whole world could do so collectively, if we had the will.

Of course. Thats absolutely correct.

Thats precisely why the UN set up the UN climate treaty process 25 years ago to produce a global treaty to mandate global reductions in CO2 emissions.

Thats why I kvetch so much about Obama betraying the entire purpose of the UN climate treaty process with his idiotic Paris Accords. The world already agreed 25 years ago that we need a global treaty to reduce CO2 emissions. Thats what the whole Kyoto process was about---first the "trainer treaty" signed in Kyoto and then the mandatory treaty to reduce CO2 emissions that would'e been signed in Copenhagen in 2009 if obama hadn't screwed it up.

Then after he screwed up the treaty signing planned for Copenhagen Obama has betrayed the entire Kyoto process by diverting the UN climate treaty process from progress toward mandatory CO2 reductions to a goal of having countries agree the global temperature shouldn't go up. WTF is that all about? What exactly is accomplished by having countries agree that the world can't warm more than 2° C?

We need to go repeal the Paris Accords and get away from targeting temperature increase numbers and get back to the Kyoto Accords process that targeted CO2 emissions reduction numbers. Thats the only way we've got a chance of stopping or even slowing global warming.

Cheers!

[Newfie]

Careful Plant, I think you are mixing °F and °C.

Globally-averaged temperatures in 2016 were 1.78 degrees Fahrenheit (0.99 degrees Celsius) warmer than the mid-20th century mean. This makes 2016 the third year in a row to set a new record for global average surface temperatures.

None he less I take your point and agree.

[ROCKMAN]

KJ - "The coal we don't burn will be exported and burned in power plants that are a lot dirtier than ours." Will be exported??? I suspect you have an idea of how much coal the US has been exporting. But some details: according to the EIA in 2012 the US exported 248 BILLION POUNDS OF COAL. Yes: the largest amount of US coal exported in one year happened under the "greenest" POTUS in history. And though exports have declined the USA is still the 4th largest coal exporter.

And no: no one on the planet has the authority to "mandate" any actions by any countrty with respect to fossil fuel consumption or climate matters.