Peak Oil and Global Warming: Issues related by solutions

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Peak Oil and Global Warming Issues related by
solutions?
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Quick Definitions

• Peak Oil (PO) when demand for oil exceeds
  production rate
• Global Warming (GW) increase in Earths average
  air temperature over a period of several
  centuries
• Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) proportion
  of GW caused by human interference in Geocycles
• 0 ? 100 ? 30 ? 70 ? .?

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Weird Weather?

• 1/11 First snow in Baghdad in a century

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What happens to the inside of your car on sunny
day when you have the windows shut?
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Greenhouse Effect

• Sunlight passes through clear atmosphere with
  little interference, it hits Earths surface,
  then

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Greenhouse Effect

• A portion of it is reflected back (albedo),
  passes back through atmosphere and into space,
  but
• The rest is absorbed, which warms the surface
  and this heat is given off as infrared radiation
  (IR)

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Greenhouse Effect

• Some of the IR doesnt pass through the
  atmosphere back into space but instead gets
  scattered by Greenhouse gases (H2O and CO2
  mainly), which then warms the atmosphere.

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Greenhouse Effect
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The Greenhouse Effect

• Is a good thing
• Life as we know it couldnt survive without it!

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But too much of good thing is a bad thing

• An enhanced Greenhouse Effect caused by excess
  Greenhouse gases
• We need to leave the windows cracked at bit! ?

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Carbon Dioxide

• Is the most variable of the Greenhouse gases
• and the one that human activities can
  (possibly) influence
• Back to this in few minutes

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Global Climate Change has occurred over Earths
History

• Some of this change is secular, and some is cyclic

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The Last 100 Ma Secular Cooling
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Last six million years Cyclical warm-cool
patterns with overall secular cooling
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Last million years Cyclical Pattern with Ice
Ages lt---gt Warm Periods

• Note Were in a warm interglacial period now

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What causes these cyclic changes in temperature?

• Milankovic Cycles (reading!) 10s of thousands
  of years time frame
• Solar output variation both short long term
• Solar cycles, sunspots, decades
• Increased core fusion Secular, over millions of
  years
• A lot to still be learned - remember scientists
  dont everything about everything, and
  uncertainty is always part of the game - but
  this doesnt mean theyre making it up!

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Annual Layers in Ice Cores Like Tree Rings

• This is from the Greenland ice sheet and records
  38 years about 16 Ka ago
• Air bubbles are also trapped in the layers ? can
  analyze ancient atmospheric gases

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Correlation of CO2 with Ice Ages and Warm Periods
geology chemistry
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Recent CO2 changes
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Very Recent CO2 Data
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Climate change can also be rapid a warning
for us?

• The Younger Dryas event 12,000 years ago - a
  very rapid global cooling over 1,300 years
• 27 oC drop in average temp

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Other indicators that GW is occurring

• Physical evidence, rather than computer models

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Excess Greenland Glacial Retreat
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Surface Temperature Anomalies
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Large Storm Systems
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IPCC Computer Models

• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
• These models are controversial and vary greatly,
  but their estimates for global warming in this
  century are
• Minimum 1.1 oC
• Maximum 6.4 oC

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What Human activities might increase atmospheric
CO2 (and thus cause AGW) ?

• Among other things
• Burning fossil carbon and
• Destroying ecosystems that absorb CO2

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Is Human Activity contributing to this recent
increase in atmospheric CO2 ?

• Is AGW significant???
• If so, what should we do about it?

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Reducing Carbon fuel use is part of the AGW
solution

• But this fits perfectly with another nasty (and
  more imminent) problem Peak Oil!

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Peak Oil

• What is it?
• What does it have to do with Global Warming?

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Recent news1/16/8

• Bush hopes OPEC will raise production
• Whats production?
• OPEC accounts for 40 of oil production

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Theres always more

• Isnt there?
• Conservation Psychology
• Dr. Seely, April 16

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What is Oil?

• Also know as crude oil or Petroleum, rock oil
• Its a type of fossil fuel
• A non-renewable resource

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Terminology

• Resource
• Renewable, Potentially Renewable, Non-Renewable
• Oil is non-renewable
• Reserves
• Discovery
• Production

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Reserves

• Natural resources have reserves that is the
  amount that is available for extraction with
  current technology at a profit
• For oil, profit also means both a monetary profit
  and an energy profit

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Economic issues are involved in reserves

• Two types of ROI (Return On Investment)
• Monetary ROI (do you make a profit?)
• EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested)
• Oil averages about 5 to 1 right now
• Corn alcohol is about 1.6 to 1

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Discovery of a resource

• Definition is pretty obvious

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Discovery of a resource

• Requires investment in exploration
• Unless youre Jed Clampett

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Production

• Amount of resource extracted from Earth, per day
  or per year
• Oil is measured in barrels (bbl)
• 1 bbl 42 gallons
• Global oil production was 82.5 million bbl per
  day in 2005
• 63 million in 1980
• 65.5 million in 1990
• 76 million in 2000

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How Oil Forms
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How oil forms

• Dead plankton accumulate on the ocean floor
  during times when the oceanic circulation stops
  and the bottom of the ocean goes anoxic
• Thousands of feet of this material accumulates
• Then it is buried by other sediments

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How oil forms

• As the sediment is buried deeper, the temperature
  rises cooking the organic rich shales, like the
  oil shales in the Rockies
• This cooking releases oil from the rock

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How oil forms

• Pressure fractures the source rock allowing the
  oil to float up because oil is less dense than
  water
• The oil will float up until it hits a place where
  some impermeable upper rock layer or cap won't
  let it pass the overall structure is called a
  trap.

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Geology of a typical oil deposit
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M. King Hubbert

• He was a geophysicist who in the 1950s
• Predicted an absolute maximum or peak in oil
  production around 2004-2008 often referred to
  as Hubberts Peak
• Heres his model

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Hubberts Production Peak
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Peak Oil

• Occurs when the demand (consumption) for oil
  equals or exceeds peak production

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Oily Facts

• Global oil consumption was 83.6 million barrels
  per day in 2005
• 20 million bbl/day in 1960
• 60 million bbl/day in 1980
• At current rate of increase, will be 120 million
  in 2020
• So far, production has been able to meet demand
  can this continue???
• See figure 1 in the Morton article

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Discovery Trends
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Global Oil Production

• Will eventually reach a maximum
• At which time, demand for oil will equal
  production rate ( Peak Oil)
• The result?
• Very high prices, and even more importantly
• Shortages ask your parents about 1973
• Ultimately this will lead to economic recession

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The four most productive oil fields

• Al Ghawar, Saudi Arabia 4.5 million barrels/day
  (5 global total)
• Cantarell, Mexico 2.1 million (2)
• Burgan, Kuwait 1 million (1)
• Da Qing, China 1 million (1)
• Only one of these was discovered after 1960 ---
  Cantarell in 1976

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New Oil exploration?

• The annual exploration cost for the 10 companies
  as a group exceeded the estimated value of annual
  new discoveries made in both 2001 and 2002 a
  reversal from previous years
• In spite of high prices, Big Oil companies have
  cut their exploration budgets
• This would be bizarre from a pure business
  standpoint, UNLESS they thought there was little
  chance of finding large deposits

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Oil found by exploration drill bit (billions of
barrels)

• 1997 4.5
• 1998 5.8
• 1999 9.5
• 2000 13.05
• 2001 4.02
• 2002 3.34
• Bear in mind that we consume (demand) over 30
  billion per year!

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Is ANWR the solution?
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Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

• Has been a political football for over a decade
• Should its oil supply be exploited or not?
• Environmental damage vs. U.S oil independence
  Environmentalists vs. the Economy Ye Olde
  Warfare model

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ANWRs Reserve Estimates

• Low estimate 4.3 billion barrels (95
  probability)
• High estimate 11.8 billion barrels (5
  probability)
• The high estimate is a bit more than the U.S.
  consumes in one year!
• Well, its nice that its there, but it doesnt
  seem to be a long-term solution to U.S. energy
  independence

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Peak Oil Analogy

• Production Rate and Inheriting a Fortune

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Analogy

• Suppose you were given a billion dollars in
  special bank account, but
• Could withdraw only 100 a day indefinitely
• Would you still be a billionaire?
• Analogous to oil --- maybe a trillion barrels of
  molecules left in ground (resource), but
• Theres a maximum rate that it can be withdrawn
  (produced)

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Epilogue page 1

• The oil crisis and AGW have a similar solution
  replacing carbon fuels with potentially renewable
  energy resources

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Epilogue page 2

• This solution will entail some compromises,
  including personal energy conservation and even
  (shudder) nuclear fission which is the only
  energy source that can replace the sheer amount
  of energy of oil in the short term

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Epilogue page 3

• Ultimately, we need to mimic the way the Sun
  makes its energy - Hydrogen fusion
• At the present there is no technology to do this,
  and maybe there will never be
• And Hydrogen bombs dont count, remember Core 5

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Websites

• www.oilcrisis.com/summary.htm
• www.theoildrum.com
• The most comprehensive source for the Peak Oil
  issue
• Glenn Mortons pages