Seeker Blog

In June 2007, Prof. Dave Rutledge contributed a lengthy, well-argued guest post at The Oil Drum positing that the IPCC scenarios overstated potential temperature peaks because the scenarios were built on overstated hydrocarbon reserves — particularly coal reserves. This is serious work, with many links to the source data, spreadsheets, etc. that you can use for your own analysis. BTW, credential-wise, Dave is Chairman of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science at Caltech. AFAIK, this work has not yet been peer-review-published.

Extensive discussion followed, some of it well-informed, adding many more technical references. One of these was a better summary of Prof. Rutledge’s post than his own: “I should have asked you to write the conclusions. You did a great job, better than I did. — Dave”. This summary follows.

Thanks Prof. Rutledge for this excellent article. Here are the remarkable conclusions I draw:

1. Coal reserves are far less than thought.

2. Coal is going to run out more-or-less alongside petroleum/NG.

3. While “there will always be oil, it will just get more expensive”, for practical purposes (such as running an advanced industrial civilization) fossil fuels will disappear.

4. We can argue timing, but essentially oil, coal, NG are gone 100 years from now +/- 50 years.

5. Fossil fuel contribution to future CO2 in IPCC models is quite on the high side. The IPCC models need to be redone with better estimates of available fossil fuels — and run for well beyond 2100 to see the full temp effect.

6. If we only slow the rate of fossil fuel use (the Super Kyoto plan), the temp rise still occurs, just a few years later (its an integral!).

7. The only real way to prevent CO2 release is sequestration or better yet keep the fossil fuels in the ground (good luck with that!).

8. Absent some crash programs for renewables (or temporary reprieve via unconventional fossil fuels), civilization must get by on a small fraction of the energy it now uses (and in far less convenient forms).

Personally I draw the additional conclusion that

9. Global warming / climate change could be a red herring, causing us to focus on the wrong problem (see #6 above).

Looked at in the right way however, global warming and peak oil should both lead to the same conclusion, ie. #8 above…

I would like to believe Prof. Rutledge is fundamentally correct w/r/t the magnitude of maximum possible coal contribution to the future temperature peak. I confess I’m not yet persuaded that it is possible to forecast future reserves based exclusively upon statistical fitting of historical production rates.

What we are really after is future rates of production, which are a consequence of geology, price and technology. Unless I’ve missed it, all of the Rutledge projections exclude both price and technology factors. My experience in the oil industry leaves me with a strong belief that future production [i.e., economic reserves] is highly price-elastic, due to unforeseeable technology developments enabled by higher prices. These technology surprises effect both discovery [reserves] and production techniques [economically recoverable reserves].

Further I doubt that actual hydrocarbon production experience will approach the levels requiring ridiculously high prices. Because, and perhaps due simply to optimism, my forecast is that society will gradually adapt to the unfolding reality of climate change by imposing sufficient price signals on carbon to stimulate low-carbon energy production. Particularly nuclear fission, and probably enhanced solar and geothermal. BTW, by “unfolding reality” I mean just that — we should not forget that in 10 or 200 years our focus may turn out to be on cooling, rather than warming.