Study - Full Fossil-Fuel Exploitation Will Produce Damage Lasting For Millenia - CanWest News

Burning all known reserves of fossil fuels, from Alberta's tar sands to China's vast stores of coal, would have much graver long-term consequences than previously thought, according to climate scientists who have peered far into the future. "Not only are we going to mess up our kids' and grandkids' lives, we are going to be interfering with the way the planet works for thousands of years," says climate scientist Alvaro Montenegro, noting that much of the carbon emissions would persist in the atmosphere more than 5,000 years and drive up global temperatures for millennia.

Using sophisticated computer models, Montenegro and colleagues at the University of Victoria and the University of Chicago assessed the impact of consuming all known reserves of fossil fuels until they run out in 2300. Their simulations assume that the carbon dioxide producing by burning the fuel would waft into the atmosphere as it does today.

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The scenario developed by Montenegro's group followed the UN panel's "business as usual" emissions path. According to that projection, oil, gas and coal consumption would continue on its current trajectory until 2100, then taper off over 200 years as supplies dwindle. Some 5,134 billion tonnes of carbon, locked underground for millions of years, would wind up in the global atmosphere.

Supercomputers ran the models for almost three months to calculate how the climate would respond in the 4,500 years after the emissions finally stop. The scientists concluded that average temperatures around the globe would soar 6-8 C and would remain at least five degrees higher than pre-industrial levels for more than 5,000 years. About 75 per cent of CO2 emissions released by burning all fossil fuels would persist in the atmosphere for an average of 1,800 years before being soaked up by forests, crops or the oceans, the Victoria study reports. The rest could take much longer than 5,000 years to be absorbed.


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http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=d9829a2d-72c0-4a12-a93f-285a50d79b1d&k=42282

Any survivors of the 21st century will be either GHG neutral, or there will be no survivors.

Somebody needs to talk to these guys about Peak Oil and Gas. They will need to do some hasty tweaking to their models starting in about a year. Of course if coal use ramps up as gas and oil decline it may not make one whole hell of a lot of difference to the outcome

What would save the planet of course is a massive economic crash in about 10 years that triggers by a human die-back. Fortunately for the remaining species, that occurrence has a non-zero probability.

including turning it into liquid fuels (or using it to generate hydrogen or electricity for transport), but it releases huge amounts of CO2.

An estimate a few days ago reckoned that a rough doubling of oil prices (with accompanying rise in natural gas prices) would only see a 3% decrease in the CO2 emissions, because of substitution with coal - see http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=97220&mesg_id=97322

Is it just me but it seems stunningly obvious that the consequences of extracting all possible reserves from Alberta's tar sands and burning all the coal in China would be stunningly disastrous.

Silly me!

we are so fucked.

Given that scientists are running backwards & forwards to try and get
any model to match the existing conditions (i.e., the impact of the
last few centuries on the underlying natural cycles) and that they
are failing at every single hurdle - hence the standing joke that
something is happening "faster than expected" - just *what* is the
point in fucking about with finger-in-the-air blatant guesses about
potential events a few thousand years in the future?

:wtf:

Is this some kind of "creation science" to distract people from the crisis
that we are in NOW?

Is it an unconscious sop to the "well it's all in the future so let's just
enjoy today" crowd?

WHY waste money and time on shit that has so many unknown variables that
the scope of the result will be bigger than any error bar that can be
placed beyond the next half century?

Whilst it's nice to see that the folks at Victoria & Chicago universities
managed to get funding, computer time and the opportunity to do some work,
it is a crying shame that they wasted it on an updated version of the old
"how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" debate instead of doing
something worthwhile and necessary.

:rant:
(Yes, I'm in a foul mood and crap like this really doesn't help!)