Another must-read from Sharon Astyk

[GliderGuider]

In this one she tackles global warming and our preparations for fossil energy depletion in light of James Hansen's assessment that we need to go to zero carbon emissions immediately. One of the things that I never considered was that if we are over the climate tipping point and zero emissions are essential, that puts a massive constraint on the ginormous build-out of solar and wind that was going to save us all.

Our Tails Get In the Way: The Problems and Principles of Energy Descent

Why do we have to come down? Well, there are two compelling reasons, which will be entirely familiar to my regular readers, but perhaps are worth rehashing. The first is this. We can’t keep burning fossil fuels - period. And we have very, very little time to make our choices. The evidence for this has been building up steadily over the last two years, but the paper that James Hansen presented a few weeks ago pretty much put the final nail in the coffin (and, for the record, confirmed the arguments that this writer has been making for a year or more) - the old targets for carbon reduction are far too high, and we are going to essentially have to reduce industrial emissions to near 0, and very, very soon.

There is a great deal of talk about the potential of this renewable technology or another, about how if we just do this and this and this, we can get carbon emissions down, or help people adapt. Generally speaking, these plans fail to take into account several factors. They are:

1. The sheer scope of the problem. This is partly denial and partly the fact that the science has changed so rapidly. Eight months ago, the narrative was still 550 or 450 ppm. Achieving those levels was extraordinarily difficult, but easy compared to achieving 350 ppm - and as Hansen notes, it may be necessary to drop the levels further. Most thinkers still haven’t caught up to the sheer depth of change needed - which would involve pretty much 0 industrial emissions, according to U Victoria researchers. Zero - that is, none. That’s the number that stabilized the climate in their research.

(snip)

4. The costs of the solutions. Most build out analyses don’t contain a full, fair analysis of their climate implications, a gaping hole in analysis that must be filled. That is, a build out that gets our emissions way down but does so with an emissions cost that enables more loss of methane from the permafrost is an unacceptable choice. The odds are very good that most build-out strategies will simply turn out to be far too carbon intensive to keep up anything like our present life. I did one very broad version of this calculation here, but anything that gets *worldwide* emissions down radically is likley to raise up emissions rates - making it that much more likely that nature will take over the global warming situation, past our ability to help.

(snip)

Renewable energies will be built, but they must be built at a pace that doesn’t put the climate over the edge, and that allows for the fact that future generations may want to use a bit of fossil energy too. That is, we cannot blow any limits doing this - our build out will almost certainly have to be gradual, and probably comparatively slow until the total density of renewables is great enough to power regeneratively - that is, until/if we have enough renewable energies to actually power the construction of more renewables - not in theory, but in reality.

There's lots more. It's a long article, but like most of Sharon's work, it's insightful and rewarding as hell.

[depakid]

1. The second point is also very telling:

2. The scope of all the problems put together. Nearly everyone doing this work is completely out of their fields on some level (certainly not excluding yours truly). Climate scientists are usually not petroleum geologists, and vice versa. Neither are usually economists (which is often to the good, but has its downside), and thus expert on how global economic crisis is likely to impact what we can expect to do. Nor are economists, climate scientists or geologists usually ethicists, or experts in issues of justice, or political scientists.

It would not be inaccurate to say that no one fully understands what I like to call the “Crisis Ourobouros” that is, the disaster that is always swallowing its own tail. And because no one full understands it, and most people are experts only in one area, it is very hard to come to a clear analysis, say, of how a growing financial collapse and massive rises in energy prices will constrain a future build out. The feedback loops don’t just exist within climate change and peak oil, but in the whole of our present situation.

Although James Hansen and Richard Heinberg respectively have done compelling analyses of how climate change and peak oil are likely to impact one another, they have barely begun to look at the giant iceberg of what faces us.

[tom_paine]

2. Great article. Thanx! n/t