[Lore]

As dissident wrote, this is another one of those wishful thinking scenarios that disregards the science behind what we know about greenhouse gases. Even if we stopped emitting all the human side of CO2 tomorrow, not gonna happen, we still have centuries of warming from feed backs to look forward to before the planet stabilizes at what will likely be a higher new normal.

[dissident]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Subjectivist', '
')Do you have any links to the papers by Dr. Archer? I have watched some o his online lectures, he seems to know what he is talking about.

[dissident]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('GHung', 'W')hat happens to global temps when/if humans slow/stop adding gigatons of particulates to the air? It's been posited that a feedback loop of warming will occur due to a clearer atmosphere, while the greenhouse gasses remain. Do particulate emissions help hold global warming in check to some extent?

[dissident]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dissident', 'T')he IPCC is grossly underestimating CH4 emissions from natural sources induced by warming. So far there is no indication of CO2 emissions decline and in fact it has accelerated in the last several years. Even if peak fossil fuels is sharp and severe, it will take centuries for the CO2 levels in the atmosphere to decline. So there will not be any sustained cooling before 2100 and the locked-in warming from existing CO2 levels (which are still increasing) will continue. The e-folding rate for CO2 often thrown around as being 100 years is BS (It is not a simple exponential since the sinks are functions of the temperature history, see David Archer's papers for more.)

And, as ROCKMAN points out, coal burning is not going to stop any time soon.

[dohboi]

I have seen these charts before. Whatever year they are produced is predicted to be the year of the peak of all energy resources. When I saw the title, I assumed that was the meaning--the shark-fin-looking charts have gotten so common over the years that they've eaten themselves.

Or maybe that PO has finally jumped the shark?

Look, even if all burning of ff's stopped today, CO2 levels and global temperatures would likely increase for a long time just because of feedbacks that are already kicking in and the general inertia of the system.

There are huge quantities of ever-dirtier and ever-lower-EROEI fossil fuels out there that some one will always try to exploit one way or the other, no matter the cost to local or global viability. Surely this should have been the lesson to all PO-ers when the main event everyone was waiting for--the peak of conventional, land-based, light sweet crude in the oughts--happened and mostly the world just kept on rolling, spewing ever more CO2 from ever more extracted carbon.

Waiting for PO to get us out of AGW is lazy, is a gross miscalculation, and is I suspect in some cases disingenuous.

ETA: This has to be the first time that dor has brought up the threat of clathrates before I did! I must be getting old and slow on the draw.

[evilgenius]

I think the chart is more borne out of a pervasive fear that, should the weak economic recovery succumb to a recession, the world will go right back to where it was in 2008 than it is of some secret knowledge of natural resource conditions. The bad news is that we are headed for a recession. The news out of China demonstrates that. The potentially good news is that it should be just a business cycle determined event.

The fly in the ointment is deflation. When too much investment has been placed in the financial sector, and not into the real economy, then people lose their ability to react to changes brought about by recessions. When they cannot react in ways that address economic uncertainty and circumstances because of onerous independent contractor wage death or pervasive wage theft through paycheck cards and overtime reclassification etc., then the pool of money available to the economy by means of those affected people's collective actions is lost. All by itself these poorest of people are not, even collectively, enough to tip the scales, though. The problem is that those who own small businesses for whom those people are a percentage of their clientele and those whose jobs are therefore related to their plight have also not had the level of investment occur directed at them, and their local economies, sufficiently enough to raise their prospects for success in the face of economic trouble. What they would count on normally, compelling them in new creative directions, to fill the gap may not be there. The second line may not hold in the coming recession. When, if, it doesn't the faith of the people will be challenged.

The faith of the people is what counts when dealing with recessions. If people fear they reduce spending. If those reductions last too long or are aimed at the wrong targets because people don't have the options available to them to aim their cutbacks at the right targets, just look at how corporations protect themselves by lobbying for protections society ought not to give them, then the changes brought about by a recession can become counter-productive rather than creatively destructive. This disconnect has the ability to throw a lot of people out of work very quickly, like the shoe drop that occurred when upwards of $5.00 per gallon gas suddenly throttled the economy. People fought to pay those high prices and keep their things going for a while, they had few other choices, but at a certain point it all fell apart. Collectively they could no longer pay to keep every rich guy going as well as themselves. The poorest of them let their mortgages slide. They comprised enough of a group to make a difference that reverberated throughout the economy, taking down those above them quickly. Oh, at first no pundit looking at it was willing to say that the sub-prime defaults were going to be that serious, but within a few months they all changed their tune.

Given this history many don't believe that a new recession can be tolerated. Too much of the recovery investment spent has gone into financial institutions they say. Too many people are locked into serving this or that master, and won't be able to change their economic behavior in the event of a downturn. What I don't get is how these same people fear inflation. Sure, fear of inflation was pretty much all pervasive for much of the 20th Century, but you need appreciable growth to sustain it, or some corresponding communal lack of faith, such as that wrought against the currency of Zimbabwe. Armed with this attitude they excoriate the Fed for providing stimulus. Little do they realize that without that stimulus their broader fears would become reality. Instead they argue here and there that the opposite would happen, and that the Fed is actually causing the problems. This causes them to climb onto the backs of those who condemn the Fed and call loudly for an end to QE this and that. These people could find themselves walking seemingly quite happily into renewed deflation, all the while blind to it as they continue to harp endlessly about the dangers of hyperinflation.

Yeah, the graph is possible, if the wrong things happen. It's possible because under a deflationary economic environment energy companies are locked into capital investment that occurred under prior period conditions. The value of those prior investments becomes leveraged against them when new money is suddenly worth more than old money. They have a choice to find new investment, enough to overcome the leverage, or to quit. History tells us that often times companies in this situation do elect to quit.

[vtsnowedin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '[')wish.

[Lore]

I'd like to get my hands on those nascent nicads to do that, if you get my drift!

[vtsnowedin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '[')wish.

[Subjectivist]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '[')wish.

[vtsnowedin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '.') No more nervous striving. Zen. Buddha. Navel gazing. Epicurious delights. Art. Sex. Drugs. Staying still.

[ROCKMAN]

pstarr - "Coal is not a transport fuel." Not to any meaningful level today. But some think e-cars will be the solution to PO. Gotta burn something to make that e-. In Texas well have a fair bit of nuke, NG and wind e-. Even without e-cars the Texas demand for e- is expected to increase by 30% in the next couple of decades. We are also the biggest coal burning state today and have plans to stay so. About to do one of the biggest sequestering projects in the country pulling CO2 from the second largest single source of GHG in the country.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '
')
Another critical point is that our consumer society is a waste society. We really don't need the jobs that virtually everyone is engaged. Driving to offices, pounding keyboards, talking on the phone, selling stuff at the mall. Flying off to face-to-face meeting. Shopping at the mall, going to movies. Fun stuff. Is not necessary. We will learn how to live on warmth, food, and security . . . mostly supplied by few hardy men/women working in hardy places. While the rest of us sit still. Not moving. No more nervous striving. Zen. Buddha. Navel gazing. Epicurious delights. Art. Sex. Drugs. Staying still.

[Paulo1]

What? And back to steam powered locis to haul logs? Oxen? I live about 6 km from a dryland sort. They have loaders so big they can lift the entire log load from a 16' bunk off-highway truck, in one shot. They then back up with the load at 10-15 km/hr, and quickly spread them out where two 988s descend on the load like bees and sort them to bundlers where they are dropped into the chuck and boomed up for transport by tug. All diesel. It takes minutes. I suppose the tug could coal up, but nothing else could in this operation. Fallers go back to hand saws and axes? Without affordable diesel most industry that must be portable will simply stop, and wage earners now making a good living will go back to hand-to-mouth existence. The good old days wern't as good as these days if you work with your muscles to make a living. It could take an entire day for two people to drop a large west coast tree. Now, one man can do it in twenty minutes....and that's doing it safely.

I don't think Gail is correct in her level of doom, to get back to the original post. I understand her reasoning, but choose to believe that we will simply get poorer. As more and more become disenfranchised there will be more and more unrest....upheavel. People will wonder what the hell is going on and be caught up in individual stories and events, and fail to see the downward trend. Politicians will be blamed and there will be a lot of one termers. I will be interested to see the transition to smaller stores. I buy a lot of building materials and tools. I wonder if the large lumber yards will morph down to the smaller neighbourhood yards that were around when I was a kid. In 1980 we had one lumber yard. It closed on Sundays and Mondays so employees would have two days off and yet saturdays were still available for the customers who worked mon-fri. Now there are huge 7 day per week operations like Home Depot. One day I expect to see them sell cans of tuna and toilet paper. And one day I expect to see them close.

PO limiting global warming? Maybe, but before that we will have coal to liquids, peat and wood pellets for more heating applications, and garbage and bio waste electrical generation. There will be lots of smoke and bad air and poor people. People will turn their lights off and forgo the toys. Not seeing it yet, though. I still see kids from families on welfare with smart phones and gaming stations. Everyone seems to have a big tv and electric stove. Conveniences are still considered to be necessities and entitlements.

When a Miami is washed away we might see some action, but until then no one in power will be brave enough to speak the truth. They will choose to remain ignorant in order to keep feathering their nest.

Paulo

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'G')ail, being the PO doomer that we all know and love, has a new post which argues that GW will not exceed the IPCCs lowest estimate simply because collapse, in the form of the sharkfin plot below, will provide the ultimate carbon reduction program.