Burning All Fossil Fuels Would Scorch Earth, Says Study (phys.org)

mspohr quotes a report from Phys.Org: A new study published in the Journal Nature Climate Change shows our precarious climate condition: "Using up all known fossil fuel reserves would render Earth even more unlivable than scientists had previously projected, researchers said on Monday. Average temperatures would climb by up to 9.5 degrees Celsius (17 degrees Fahrenheit) -- five times the cap on global warming set at climate talks in Paris in December, they reported. In the Arctic region -- already heating at more than double the global average -- the thermometer would rise an unimaginable 15 C to 20 C." This would make most of Earth uninhabitable to humans (although the dinosaurs seemed to do fine with it 65 million years ago). The report also stated that if fossil fuel trends go unchanged, ten times the 540 billion tons of carbon emitted since the start of industrialization would be reached near the end of the 22nd century. For comparison, "older models had projected that depleting fossil fuel reserves entirely would heat the planet by 4.3 C to 8.4 C. The new study revises this to between 6.4 C and 9.5 C," writes Phys.Org.

Comments

Re:of course it will burn.... IF

[ssam]

" In the absence of global mitigation actions, five trillion tonnes of carbon (5 EgC), corresponding to the lower end of the range of estimates of the total fossil fuel resource" i.e. assuming we take no action and keep burning fossil fuels at the current rates. From the time scales talked about on the first page, it looks like they assume burning it over the next couple of hundred years. Maybe some one want to give the full article a read?

Re:of course it will burn.... IF

[Yoda222]

The article makes absolutely NO MENTION of time frame

Absolutely no mention, except for the six mentions of time frame in the article: "by year 2300", "in 2300" (twice), "during the 2100-2300 period" (twice), "to the year 2300", plus 3 mentions of the 2100 time frame. And I stopped to count before even reaching the end of the first page (out of 6)

Re:of course it will burn.... IF

[stealth_finger]

It also says in the summary

ten times the 540 billion tons of carbon emitted since the start of industrialization would be reached near the end of the 22nd century.

Re:Circle Of Life

[Marxist Hacker 42]

300-400 million years to form supposedly. The Oregon Rainforest Coal Deposits tell a different story- they're only a few feet down, possibly two or three millenia old, and are constantly replenished by the living forest sitting on top of them.

Re:of course it will burn.... IF

[jellomizer]

The environment is a complex thing. While we have forces creating carbon and other pollutants into the atmosphere (Humans and Volcanos). There are other forces that take them out (Plants and Oceans). Now there is also a problem with deforestation and water pollutants where we are double hindering our carbon footprint by polluting and removing things that can clean the pollutants.

So if we were to slow down our rate of pollution and increase forest growth than over time we could burn all the fossil fuels and not raise the temperature to obscene levels. As the carbon in the air will be absorbed to the mass of vegetation.

Re:of course it will burn.... IF

[AlterEager]

Secondly,

An approximately linear relationship between global warming and cumulative CO2 emissions is known to hold up to 2 EgC emissions on decadal to centennial timescales7, 8, 9, 10, 11; however, in some simple climate models the predicted warming at higher cumulative emissions is less than that predicted by such a linear relationship8. The climate response to five trillion tonnes of carbon

Every other modeler since Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier, and especialy Svante Arrhenius uses logarithmic relationship

if the quantity of carbonic acid [CO2] increases in geometric progression, the augmentation of the temperature will increase nearly in arithmetic progression.Svante Arrhenius

These guys are claiming the entire body of Climatological "Settled Science" is wrong and they are just throwing it out there like a bunch of assholes trolling click-bait; at least on Facebook the click-bait trolls give you some side-boob or camel-toed yoga-pants.

You're confusing two different things -- Fourier and Arrhenius (and everyone else) say that there is a logarithmic relationship between the increase in CO2 concentration and the increase in temperature.

This paper (as do many others) claims that there is a (near) linear relationship between emissions and temperature.

That's because doubling the amount we emit will more than double the atmospheric concentration, as the oceans will be taking up a smaller part of what we emit. Look for articles that talk about the TCRE "transient climate response to cumulative carbon emissions", e.g. Le Duc et al 2015

Headline and summary is sensationalistic.

[XXongo]

The summary is much more sensationalistic than the article. The actual article doesn't include phrases like "render Earth even more unlivable than scientists had previously projected" nor "uninhabitable to humans " nor ""will scorch Earth". The most sensationalistic words in the abstract are "could ultimately result in considerably more profound climate changes than previously suggested." You could call that a little bit sensationalistic, I suppose, but it's not nearly as doom as "will scorch Earth" as the headline says.

(Also, by the way, the highest temperatures in the Jurassic were about 10 warmer than the current era. So, 15-20C would, in fact, be higher than temperatures in the era of dinosaurs.)

Re:of course it will burn....

[MightyMartian]

The point of the pseudo-skepticism is put off that day as long as possible. There are great fortunes founded on fossil fuels, and those that have those fortunes want to maximize profits. Of course, they have a lot of witless mindless soldiers who they've convinced that climatology is really a communist fantasy, and those brainless idiots run around the intertubes with oft-repeated memes and a near total ignorance of the actual science (though some of these people are a little more capable and thus have rehearsed a somewhat more complex version of the pseudo-scientific drivel).

But make no mistake, when Saudi Arabia is creating the largest sovereign wealth fund in history, it's not because it sees a bright future for oil.

Some other sources

[XXongo]

This article summary is insanely sensationalistic.The article itself is nowhere near this sensational.

Here is the press release from the University of Victoria:
www.communications.uvic.ca/releases/tip.php?date=23052016

and here are some sources that discuss the paper without quite as much in the way of scare words and hype:
www.reportingclimatescience.com/2016/05/23/unmitigated-emissions/
www.metronews.ca/news/vancouver/2016/05/23/uvic-researcher-models-worst-case-climate-change.html

Re:of course it will burn.... IF

[Sique]

I can't see any support for your argument that Germany was increasing coal sourcing.

By 2015, the growing share of renewable energy in the national electricity market (26% in 2014, up from 4% in 1990) and the government's mandated CO2 emission reduction targets (40% below 1990 levels by 2020; 80% below 1990 levels by 2050) have increasingly curtailed previous plans for new, expanded coal power capacity.

... taken verbatim from the source you cite.

A few month ago I looked through all available data for Germany's coal plants, and I found that since 1997, no new coal plant has been licensed, and all coal plants that are under construction now were already licensed before 1997. And all of the current coal plants under construction are to replace older coal plants, but will not increase total capacity.

Re:Why believe the models?

[phantomfive]

I know there's been this contrarian myth circulating claiming that climate models predicted warming that never occurred. There's a nice, well-referenced debunking of it here [skepticalscience.com].

I see your ancient blog debunking, and raise you actual science:

Overestimating Global Warming Over the Past 20 Years
"much work remains before we can model hydroclimate variability accurately".

And here's a graph because pictures are fun!