Climate Isn’t the Only Thing That’s Changing

In 1990, in its very first Assessment Report on climate change, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted the earth would warm by 3°C by 2100. Five years later, in its second assessment, it reduced the anticipated warming to 2°C. The reduction in the forecast conforms to what has actually happened temperature-wise over the last 40 years. The earth has incontestably warmed, but not so much as the models devised by climate scientists predicted:

(UAH and RSS show the actual temperature record; the other lines, climate model predictions).

Even so-called global warming “deniers” agree that the earth is getting warmer; the issue is by how much and what are the consequences. According to the record of the earth’s mean temperature as calculated from weather satellite data by a former NASA climate scientist (who has been labelled a “denier”), the earth has warmed at an overall rate of 0.14°C per decade (1.4°C per century) since 1979 (when the satellite data first became available.

Today, the soothsayers of climate change call for limiting global warming not by any particular date, usually 2100, but now and forever to a rise of no more than 1.5°C above what the earth’s temperature was in “pre-industrial times” (roughly pre-1850). The change in timeframe is occasioned by two considerations. Should the forecast increase in temperature by 2100 be lowered once again—based on what has actually happened—to 1.4°C, people might wonder if it won’t be down to 0°C by the time of the IPCC’s next Assessment Report, causing them to conclude doing anything about climate change is unnecessary (making that Assessment the last!). By resetting the goal to limiting the future and ultimate temperature of the earth to 1.4°C higher than that in pre-industrial days, it lends urgency to the task before us as the earth’s temperature has already risen a degree since fossil-fueled factories, cars, and homes started spewing CO₂ into the atmosphere

It is not just with regard to temperature that the earth is not behaving as the climate change alarmists would like it to. Sea level is rising, but that trend goes back to before the Industrial Revolution. Ice in the Arctic Ocean stubbornly refuses to disappear in summertime, as many have predicted it would. Despite all the howling about “most destructive ever” each time a hurricane (even a balmy class 2) hits our shores, the IPCC admitted in its last Assessment, “Trends in tropical cyclone (hurricane) frequency and intensity are difficult to discern because of the lack of long-term, consistent observational data,”, and in its current Assessment it judges the possibility of future hurricanes being more violent or more frequent as only “Likely”, a confidence level just above “More likely than not” (i.e., 50%, or a coin toss). Contrary to popular belief, the earth is getting greener (more vegetated, less desertified) thanks to all that CO₂ in the atmosphere (CO₂ is plant food, after all). I could go on.

If you’re thinking I’m arguing the threat from global warming is overblown, you’d be right. But why would responsible, informed leaders around the world dedicate so much attention to dealing with it if such is the case. I think for some it’s because they realize the Age of Petroleum is coming to an end—not because alternative, renewable energy sources are becoming competitive, not because other forms of energy are less polluting, and certainly not because of some extinction threat from global warming.

The era of cheap energy—the onetime blessing of millions of years of sunshine being captured in plants which were buried deep in the earth and compressed into wondrous energizers in slid, liquid, and gaseous form—is over. There was only so much of this black gold in the ground originally and there is less left with each passing year. Every non-renewable energy source is destined to be exhausted eventually; and, while half of the total which existed primordially is still in the ground, it is becoming increasingly difficult to exploit.

When Edwin Drake poked a hole in the ground in Pennsylvania in 1859, oil came spurting out. Oil production using essentially the same technique as Drake (known as “conventional” means) peaked globally in 2011.

As can be seen, oil produced by “unconventional” means now accounts for over half of global oil production. The same is true for natural gas. The primary unconventional production method is hydraulic fracturing—“fracking”, for short. Were it not for fracking, the world would have faced an acute energy crisis a decade ago. But even though our clever petroleum engineers have devised methods to extract “tight oil”, as it is called, enabling global liquid fossil fuel production to rise by 15-20 million barrels per day since conventional production peaked, the cost to produce those extra barrels does not bode well for our future wellbeing. (Note: The number of bipedal energy consumers increased by a billion over the same period.)

Fracking requires potent chemicals and large amounts of specialized sand and clean water, and it creates an ecological mess. All this makes fracked oil and gas expensive. The energy returned on (energy) invested (EROI) for fracked oil and gas is much less than is the case with oil and gas produced by conventional means. Moreover, fracked wells do not remain productive for nearly so long as conventionally drilled wells, so new wells must be drilled at a blistering pace. One expert estimates 106,000 wells needed to be drilled last year—a 35% increase over 2013—to maintain the 17% increase in output over the 2013-2021 period.

Wise, knowledgeable, responsible leaders are aware of the dilemma we face in obtaining the power we need to support the way we live, and so they echo the climate change mantra and support mitigation and adaptation efforts, e.g., renewable energy (so long as the efforts do not impose too much of a burden on themselves*). By hyping a climate change emergency, a morale-sapping negative (resource exhaustion) becomes an inspiring positive (saving the planet). Others, more petty-minded, climb on the climate change bandwagon because they see money to be made from subsidized ingenious innovations or pie-in-the-sky boondoggles (e.g., carbon capture). The nasty-minded seek to foist carbon emission-reducing requirements on poor countries—denying to them the cheapest energy source available—so there will be more of the dwindling supply of fossil fuels to sustain their comfortable lifestyle.**    

The threat of a decline in global living standards from the increasing cost of the energy we depend on is more immediate than and just as potentially devastating as that from climate change. The societal upheavals caused by the end of cheap energy—mass starvation, disease-related pandemics, widespread political revolutions—could usher in a new Dark Age, no matter how the remaining supply of fossil fuels is divvied up amongst humankind. To avoid such an inglorious end to the amazing technological progress of the last 170 years demands an international effort more cooperative and more determined than anything likely to come out of the 26^th  “Conference of the Parties” (COP) on Climate Change.

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* China’s grandstanding commitment to no longer build coal-fired power plants in other countries, while continuing to build such plants lickety-split in China itself, is emblematic.

** Again, China, the world’s largest importer of coal, comes to mind.