Peak oil may solve climate change

Congress has recently passed legislation that would cap carbon emissions. The Administration strongly supports such controls. The EPA finds that CO2 endangers public health and welfare. Many studies postulate severe global consequences if CO2 concentrations are not constrained.

Most climate change models assume that future CO2 emissions will grow exponentially over this century. Intuitively, anyone who recognises the practical limitations on fossil energy supply knows emissions will not rise exponentially for another century, as portrayed by the IPCC and the US Global Climate Change Research Program (Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, Thomas R. Karl, Jerry M. Melillo, and Thomas C. Peterson).

The exponent – about 1.4 per cent per year – on average, is not very large, but compounded over the next century it would suggest that by 2100 we would be consuming more than three times more fossil energy than we consume today. In the meantime, according to these figures, we will have consumed about 15 trillion barrels-of-oil-equivalent (boe).

Fifteen trillion boe is an astounding number considering we only have about 13 trillion boe on earth in oil, gas, coal, oil sands, heavy oil and oil shale combined. And only a portion of this total, probably no more than one-third, can ultimately be recovered under reasonable economic conditions. This disparity, between IPCC projections and fossil fuel reality, is sufficient to call into question all the conclusions of the climate change models, as future CO2 concentrations are the principal input to the model that drives all the outputs.

The fact is, oil is peaking about now, gas will probably peak within a decade, and coal within a couple of decades. Unconventionals like oil sands and oil shale will likely make up only a few million barrels per day when global energy peaks. Unconventionals can take away some of the pain on the tail, but realistically these resources can