Climate change study says most of Canada’s oil reserves should be left underground
Evan Dyer, CBC News
Most of the Earth’s fossil fuels will have to be left in the ground if the world is to avoid catastrophic global warming, according to a new study published in the scientific journal Nature. And Canada’s oil patch would have to be left mostly unexploited if the world is to avoid a rise in average temperature of two degrees or more, as almost every country in the world has committed to do….
Why leaving fossil fuels in the ground is good for everyone
George Monbiot, The Guardian
As a new report is published on the need to limit fossil fuel production to stop dangerous global warming, the UK is poised to pass an act committing governments to extracting as much oil out of the ground as possible…
Pope Francis Calls for Action on Climate Change & Capitalism on a Planet "Exploited by Human Greed"
Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
Pope Francis is set to make history by issuing the first-ever comprehensive Vatican teachings on climate change, which will urge 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide to take action. The document will be sent to the world’s 5,000 Catholic bishops and 400,000 priests who will distribute it to their parishioners. Given the sheer number of people who identify as Catholics worldwide, the pope’s clarion call to tackle climate change could reach far more people than even the largest environmental groups. "The document will take a position in favor of the scientific consensus that climate change is real … and link the deforestation and destruction of the natural environment to the particular economic model of which Pope Francis has been a critic," says our guest, Austen Ivereigh, author of a new biography called "The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope." The pope also plans to address the United Nations General Assembly and convene a summit of the world’s main religions in hopes of bolstering next year’s crucial U.N. climate meeting in Paris…
The Real Cause Of Low Oil Prices: Interview With Arthur Berman
James Stafford, Oilprice.com
Energy expert Arthur Berman explores:
- How the oil price situation came about and what was really behind OPEC’s decision
- What the future really holds in store for U.S. shale
- Why the U.S. oil exports debate is nonsensical for many reasons
- What lessons can be learnt from the U.S. shale boom
- Why technology doesn’t have as much of an influence on oil prices as you might think
- How the global energy mix is likely to change but not in the way many might have hoped
The Next Decade Will Decide Peak Oil Outcome
Ron Patterson, Oilprice.com
The most attention-grabbing attempts to predict oil futures have come from geologists and environmental activists, who tend to look solely at production. An overlooked doctoral thesis by Christophe McGlade, Uncertainties in the outlook for oil and gas, in contrast, focuses on how both supply and demand might be constrained in the coming decades. Peak oil researchers should take note of McGlade’s thesis because he predicted, in November 2013, that oil prices would sink, and that they will stay low throughout the second half of this decade. I found this paper on Google Scholar and have no connection with the author, but I appreciate his careful consideration of peak oil arguments, and his ability to distance himself from the more narrow-minded aspects of both economic and geological thinking. Here’s a representative quote from the middle of the thesis, p. 216:
The focus of much of the discussion of peak oil is on the maximum rates of conventional oil production. Apart from issues over how this term is defined, results suggest that focusing on an exclusive or narrow definition of oil belies the true complexity of oil production and can lead to somewhat misleading conclusions. The more narrow the definition of oil that is considered (e.g. by excluding certain categories of oil such as light tight oil or Arctic oil), the more likely it is that this will reach a peak and subsequent decline, but the less relevant such an event would be…
The initial result of McGlade’s model, in both the NPS and LCS scenarios defined above, is a prediction that oil prices will actually sink in the second half of the 2010s (p. 247). I think this is quite notable as an accurate prediction made more than a year in advance; no other model seems to have accounted for the effects of shale and tar sands on supply so successfully. However, the price numbers that begin in the 2020s are not so pleasant, and would certainly upset the likes of Krugman…
As Gas Prices Fall, So Does Fuel Economy: Consumers Flock To Trucks When They See Low Prices At The Pump
Angelo Young, International Business Times
It might seem counterintuitive to buy a gas-guzzling vehicle that will last for years based on a temporary drop in gas prices. But consumers have proven time and again they’re willing to pay more for gasoline over the life of the cars they buy if prices are low on the day they visit the dealership.
Why the US rig count recorded its biggest crash since April 2009
Alex Chamberlin, Market Realist
According to oilfield service company Baker Hughes (BHI), there were 1,840 active oil and gas rigs in the US during the week ending December 26. That’s 35 fewer than in the week ending December 19. This was the biggest decline in the US rig count since April 17, 2009.
The US rig count has generally been on an uptrend in 2014, marred by the occasional decline. But a straight fall for three consecutive weeks shows that US rigs are losing strength. This was the seventh rig count decrease in the past 13 weeks. Also, this was the lowest US rig count since April 25…
How Many Rigs Have To Be Removed From The US Shale Oil Fields To Balance Supply And Demand In The Oil Market?
Hollywood Popcorn, Seeking Alpha
Summary
- At current rig count, oil production at both Bakken and Eagle Ford shale plays will increase in 2015, adding to the oversupply in the oil market.
- For oil production at Bakken and Eagle Ford to decline meaningfully to correct the oil supply, rig count at each play has to decline substantially.
- To achieve a 30% decline in Bakken’s oil production, oil rig count at Bakken has to drop from 170 or so in December 2014 to 38, a decline of 132.
- For Eagle Ford’s oil production to drop by 15%, oil rig count at Eagle Ford has to drop from about 274 in December 2014 to 106, a decline of 168.
- Taken together, more than 60% of oil rigs may have to be removed from Bakken and Eagle Ford before the oil glut is fixed.
America By Numbers: Native American Boom Town
Maria Hinojosa, PBS
The Bakken Oil Boom is bringing billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs to North Dakota. But most people don’t know that a substantial part of the state’s oil production is concentrated on an Indian reservation. Fort Berthold Reservation’s 1,000-plus oil wells have brought in money and jobs for some. But the oil has also brought danger—organized crime, hard drugs, traffic fatalities—and other problems. We speak to tribal members about the benefits—and consequences—of the boom.
Delaware-sized gas plume over West illustrates the cost of leaking methane
Joby Warwick, Washington Post
The methane that leaks from 40,000 gas wells near this desert trading post may be colorless and odorless, but it’s not invisible. It can be seen from space.
Satellites that sweep over energy-rich northern New Mexico can spot the gas as it escapes from drilling rigs, compressors and miles of pipeline snaking across the badlands. In the air it forms a giant plume: a permanent, Delaware-sized methane cloud, so vast that scientists questioned their own data when they first studied it three years ago. “We couldn’t be sure that the signal was real,” said NASA researcher Christian Frankenberg.
The country’s biggest methane “hot spot,” verified by NASA and University of Michigan scientists in October, is only the most dramatic example of what scientists describe as a $2 billion leak problem…
Republicans push Keystone bill, White House threatens veto
Timothy Gardner and Richard Cowan, Reuters
Republican senators kicked off the new U.S. Congress with legislation to approve the Keystone XL pipeline to bring oil from Canada, but the White House promptly threatened a veto…
They believe that the public spotlight on Keystone will pressure President Barack Obama to eventually approve the project.
The White House was adamant that Obama would not sign the Keystone bill…
Thermodynamic analysis reveals large overlooked role of oil and other energy sources in the economy
Lisa Zyga, Phys.org
The laws of thermodynamics are best known for dealing with energy in the context of physics, but a new study suggests the same concepts could help improve economic growth models by accounting for energy in the economic sphere.
In neoclassical growth models, there are two main contributing factors to economic growth: labor and capital. However, these models are far from perfect, accounting for less than half of actual economic growth. The rest of the growth is accounted for by the Solow residual, which is thought to be attributed to the difficult-to-quantify factor of "technological progress."…
In a new study published in the New Journal of Physics, Professor Reiner Kümmel at the University of Würzburg and Dr. Dietmar Lindenberger at the University of Cologne argue that the missing ingredient represented by the Solow residual consists primarily of energy. They show that, for thermodynamic reasons, energy should be taken into account as a third production factor, on an equal footing with the traditional factors capital and labor…
To test their model on reality, Kümmel and Lindenberger applied it to reproduce the economic growth of Germany, Japan, and the US from the 1960s to 2000, paying particular attention to the two oil crises. In neoclassical models, reductions of energy inputs by 7%, as observed during the first energy crisis in 1973-1975, should have caused total economic output reductions of only 0.35%, whereas observed reductions were up to an order of magnitude larger. By using the larger weight of energy, the new model can explain a much larger portion of the total output reductions during this time.
If correct, their findings have major implications. First, the new model doesn’t require the Solow residual at all; this residual disappears from the graphs that show the empirical and the theoretical growth curves. Energy, along with the addition of a smaller "human creativity" factor, accounts for all of the growth that neoclassical models attribute to technological progress… Link to report
2014 Was The Hottest Year On Record Globally By Far
Joe Romm, Think Progress
The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) has announced that 2014 was the hottest year in more than 120 years of record-keeping — by far. NOAA is expected to make a similar call in a couple of weeks and so is NASA.
As the JMA graph shows, there has been no “hiatus” or “pause” in warming. In fact, there has not even been a slowdown. Yes, in JMA’s ranking of hottest years, 1998 is in (a distant) second place — but 1998 was an outlier as the graph shows. In fact, 1998 was boosted above the trendline by an unusual super-El Niño. It is usually the combination of the underlying long-term warming trend and the regional El Niño warming pattern that leads to new global temperature records.
What makes setting the record for hottest year in 2014 doubly impressive is that it occurred despite the fact we’re still waiting for the start of El Niño. But this is what happens when a species keeps spewing record amounts of heat-trapping carbon pollution into the air, driving CO2 to levels in the air not seen for millions of years, when the planet was far hotter and sea levels tens of feet higher…
Global carbon emissions to rise 2.5% in 2015 – PwC
Sophie Yeo, RTCC
Global greenhouse gas emissions could rise by around 2.5% in 2015, an increase on 2013 levels but lower than the average over the past decade, according to analysts at consultancy firm PwC.
Economic momentum around the world is expected to pick up over the coming 12 months, with PwC and the International Monetary Fund predicting growth of 3.5-3.8%, compared to 3.3% in 2014…
Maximum warming occurs about one decade after a carbon dioxide emission
Katharine L Ricke and Ken Caldeira, IOP Science
It is known that carbon dioxide emissions cause the Earth to warm, but no previous study has focused on examining how long it takes to reach maximum warming following a particular CO2 emission. Using conjoined results of carbon-cycle and physical-climate model intercomparison projects (Taylor et al 2012, Joos et al 2013), we find the median time between an emission and maximum warming is 10.1 years, with a 90% probability range of 6.6–30.7 years. We evaluate uncertainties in timing and amount of warming, partitioning them into three contributing factors: carbon cycle, climate sensitivity and ocean thermal inertia. If uncertainty in any one factor is reduced to zero without reducing uncertainty in the other factors, the majority of overall uncertainty remains. Thus, narrowing uncertainty in century-scale warming depends on narrowing uncertainty in all contributing factors. Our results indicate that benefit from avoided climate damage from avoided CO2 emissions will be manifested within the lifetimes of people who acted to avoid that emission. While such avoidance could be expected to benefit future generations, there is potential for emissions avoidance to provide substantial benefit to current generations…
Why a Denver Suburb Has Gone All-In for Farming
Anna Bergren Miller, CityLab
Wheat Ridge, Colorado, is experiencing an agricultural renaissance. Once known informally as Carnation City, the Denver suburb built its economy on a foundation of flower nurseries, apple orchards, and assorted vegetable crops. But by the time Wheat Ridge incorporated in 1969, residential and commercial development had eaten up much of the town’s farmland.
Five decades later, when city leaders sat down to rewrite the community’s comprehensive plan, they identified urban agriculture as a focal point. "We wanted to move the city forward and encourage investment, but we didn’t want to lose its unique charm, which is largely based on our agricultural history," says Ken Johnstone, director of community development for Wheat Ridge.
"On top of that, we’re not blind," Johnstone adds. "We weren’t the only city getting grassroots interest in local farming and food production. We saw it as an opportunity to brand ourselves."…
The urban environment: Clean-up time
Christian Oliver, Financial Times
Policy makers from around the world are flocking to study the ‘Copenhagen model’ of heating cities…
Is Feldheim off-grid?
Craig Morris, Renewables International
Repeatedly, we read that the German village of Feldheim has “left the national grid.” The statement is misleading. The grid was the big enabler in Germany. It is in Feldheim as well.
One of the most fascinating aspects of reporting on other countries is seeing how cultural expectations are transferred. In the Anglo world, going “off grid” has long been the dream – because connecting your renewable energy generator to the grid was either illegal or not profitable, as I explained nearly 7 years ago in my most critical piece on net-metering.
In Germany, the grid has enabled everything. Because people were able to sell excess electricity to the grid profitably and purchase power back when they needed it without any further penalties, Germany now has a combined solar and wind capacity roughly equal to its peak demand. No other country even comes close…
The story of storage — and where we go from here
Zachary Davies Boren, Greenpeace
We may be generating more energy than ever from our increasingly efficient wind turbines and solar panels, but without a means of storing surplus the dream (or nightmare) of a 100% renewables power sector will remain just that.
Real deal storage would do away with the need for capacity market auctions, and constraint payments to wind farms that are producing more energy than the grid knows what to do with.
A storage solution is key in the development of a modern energy system that also features reflexive generation, interconnection and demand side management — and scientists are finally on the verge of cracking it…
Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit
David Graeber, The Baffler
A secret question hovers over us, a sense of disappointment, a broken promise we were given as children about what our adult world was supposed to be like. I am referring not to the standard false promises that children are always given (about how the world is fair, or how those who work hard shall be rewarded), but to a particular generational promise—given to those who were children in the fifties, sixties, seventies, or eighties—one that was never quite articulated as a promise but rather as a set of assumptions about what our adult world would be like. And since it was never quite promised, now that it has failed to come true, we’re left confused: indignant, but at the same time, embarrassed at our own indignation, ashamed we were ever so silly to believe our elders to begin with.
Where, in short, are the flying cars? Where are the force fields, tractor beams, teleportation pods, antigravity sleds, tricorders, immortality drugs, colonies on Mars, and all the other technological wonders any child growing up in the mid-to-late twentieth century assumed would exist by now? Even those inventions that seemed ready to emerge—like cloning or cryogenics—ended up betraying their lofty promises. What happened to them?…
