You have shown that demand for energy, and particularly transport fuels is quickly rising and the prospects for oil production look bleak. Therefore substitutes are being found and pressed into service to satisfy the demands for liquid transportation fuels as well as energy. Coal is a resource that can and is being quickly exploited toward this end, especially in the expanding industries of the East. Using coal locks us into even more rapid increases in CO2 emissions, leading to faster and more severe climate change.
Ways to reduce CO2 emission might be higher efficiency or carbon sequestration. However I doubt that either will help on the scale required. As shown in the presentation, energy demand is set to increase by 37% over the next decade and a half. Today, five parts in six of our total energy production comes today from fossil fuel. I am afraid this fraction will increase. And I see no realistic prospect that efficiencies will increase by anywhere near enough to balance out the increasing use of coal. Carbon sequestration has been mentioned as a solution to the CO2 problem, but I am unimpressed. The proponents of carbon sequestration seem to have very little idea of the enormous volumes of CO2 that would have to be captured and stored. As a crude estimate, consider that every mole (12 grams) of carbon produces a mole (44 gi, 22.4 liter at room temperature and pressure) of CO2. We burn approximately 10 petagrams of coal a year, which turns into 37 petagram of CO2 (18 petaliters of CO2). Capture of any appreciable fraction of this CO2 is not economically or energetically feasible today, and perhaps not ever. We understand thermodynamics and carbon chemistry rather well, so I do not think that there will be any technical breakthroughs in this matter.
I do not think the global economy will grind to a halt due to lack of liquid transport fuels. Rather, we will mine coal, burn it and turn it into gasoline, for another thirty years, until this warming earth passes to our children.
I do not really see a way for the world out of this trap. As has been pointed out by others, any large scale program of CO2 control will require a change in attitudes of a large fraction of the peoples of the world. I see no such change occurring in this generation. The next generations may be wiser than we, but they will pay for our profligacy for centuries.
I have some other thoughts on the situation, but this comment is already too long. I would welcome any ideas that might show ways out of this timeline. In particular, how can we break attitudes bred through a century and a half of dependence on fossil fuel, in less than a generation?
sidd
In the past few years I've noticed a tendency for people to assume that a hydrogen economy would save us (but where do we get the energy on a scale big enough to make the quantity of H2 that would be required?), that fuel cells would save us (that technology is progressing but, again, when will we get to a large scale?), and that carbon sequestration is the simple answer to the gigantic contribution coal combustion makes to global warming.
An article in the June 11 NY Times discusses the vast amounts of pollutants coal combustion in China produces. There it causes 400,000 premature deaths per year. Burning all that coal has given more people more electricity, so they are leading better lives--a tradeoff the growing Chinese middle class is more than willing to make.
If the US starts turning coal into liquid automotive fuel, our 200 years of coal reserves will rapidly shrink to a matter of decades.
Plan9 on Mon Jun 12th, 2006 at 10:26:44 AM EDT wrote
"I usually see carbon emissions measured in tons. What would be the annual total of CO2 requiring sequestration in tons?"
A metric ton is one million grams. A Petagram is a million metric tons. So 37 petagram CO2 is 37 million metric tons. For every ton of coal we mine, we have to bury 3.7 tons if CO2 in such a manner as to isolate it from the atmosphere for hundreds of years.
"In the past few years I've noticed a tendency for people to assume that a hydrogen economy would save us (but where do we get the energy on a scale big enough to make the quantity of H2 that would be required?), that fuel cells would save us (that technology is progressing but, again, when will we get to a large scale?),..."
We must make the energy to make hydrogen for the fuel cells, and I am afraid that increasing portions of our energy will come from coal.
"...and that carbon sequestration is the simple answer to the gigantic contribution coal combustion makes to global warming"
I see no serious possibility today of effectively burying several tens of millions of metric tons of CO2 per year.
"An article in the June 11 NY Times discusses the vast amounts of pollutants coal combustion in China produces. There it causes 400,000 premature deaths per year. Burning all that coal has given more people more electricity, so they are leading better lives--a tradeoff the growing Chinese middle class is more than willing to make."
Perhaps, until they run out of clean air and fresh water.
"If the US starts turning coal into liquid automotive fuel, our 200 years of coal reserves will rapidly shrink to a matter of decades."
I think this will happen, worldwide, implying for example, that 10 million Bangladeshis must relocate every decade. Not to speak of more disastrous effects.
