Turn Down the Heat 3

The latest report in the series from the World Bank indicates that the world is already "locked in" to 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming above the pre-industrial level by mid-century.  There's a 40 percent chance of exceeding 4 degrees of warming by 2100.

Current warming is at 0.8°C above pre-industrial levels. CO2 emissions are now 60 percent higher than in 1990, growing at about 2.5 percent per year. If emissions
continue at this rate, atmospheric CO2 concentrations in line with a likely chance of limiting warming to 2°C would be exceeded within just three decades.

Large scale, irreversible changes in the Earth’s systems have the potential to transform whole regions. Examples of risks that are increasing rapidly with warming include degradation of the Amazon rainforest with the potential for large emissions of CO2 due to self-amplifying feedbacks, disintegration of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets with multi-meter sea-level rise over centuries to millennia, and large-scale releases of methane from melting permafrost substantially amplifying warming. Recent peer reviewed science shows that a substantial part of the West Antarctic ice sheet, containing about one meter of sea-level rise equivalent in ice, is now in irreversible, unstable retreat.

The buildup of carbon intensive, fossil-fuel-based infrastructure is locking us into a future of CO2 emissions. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned, and numerous energy system modelling exercises have confirmed, that unless urgent action is taken very soon, it will become extremely costly to reduce emissions fast enough to hold warming below 2°C.

Gap vs GOP

The Emissions Gap Report 2014 from the United Nations Environment Programme sets a deadline of 2070 for net carbon dioxide emissions to reach zero and stay within the 2 degree Celsius limit on atmospheric warming.

Since 1990, global emissions have grown by more than 45 per cent and were approximately 54 Gt CO2e in 2012. Looking to the future, scientists have produced business-as-usual scenarios as benchmarks to see what emission levels would be like in the absence of additional climate policies, also assuming country pledges would not be implemented. Under these scenarios, global greenhouse gas emissions would rise to about 59 Gt CO2e in 2020, 68 Gt CO2e in 2030 and 87 Gt CO2e in 2050. It is clear that global emissions are not expected to peak unless additional emission reduction policies are introduced.

But, as Michael Klare points out, the new Congress isn't likely to pass any emission reduction policies.

With Republicans now in control, pro-carbon initiatives will be the order of the day in Congress. [F]or each modest step forward on climate stabilization, the latest election ensures that Americans are destined to march several steps backward when it comes to reliance on climate-altering fossil fuels. It’s a recipe for good times for Big Energy and its congressional supporters and bad times for the rest of us.

IEA Report

Oil prices always seem a bit of a mystery-even low prices can be a problem.  While some market manipulation goes on (previous post), a New York Times editorial indicates that several commodities are down in price due to slower economic growth.  U.S. consumers benefit now, but another world recession may be coming.

This year's report from the International Energy Association expects oil prices to continue to fall through 2015.  But Nick Cunningham notices that the long-term prospects are not so good. Demand for oil in 2040 is projected to be 104 million barrels per day (up from 90 million now) while oil shale and tar sands production is only expected to last about ten more years.  That puts the burden for increased production back on the Middle East--and Iraq was expected to pick up much of that.

IEA says oil and coal production will plateau by 2040 when energy supply will be roughly equal among low-carbon sources, gas, oil and coal.  Renewable sources are growing rapidly, but it doesn't seem like they could make up for any oil production shortfall.

“A well-supplied oil market in the short-term should not disguise the challenges that lie ahead, as the world is set to rely more heavily on a relatively small number of producing countries,” said IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol. “The apparent breathing space provided by rising output in the Americas over the next decade provides little reassurance, given the long lead times of new upstream projects.”

Climate Strutting

The climate agreement between China and the United States might amount to something.  It's certainly a good way to tick off Republicans.  But Patrick Smith suspects that President Obama needed to show some kind of success at the summit.  This agreement helped overshadow the news of Chinese-Russian energy contracts--in the face of U.S. efforts to tank the Russian economy by getting the Saudis to increase oil production and lower prices.  Smith sees a lack of vision on the part of the U.S. regarding the decline of American dominance.

We can start to connect the stars . . . and identify the costs of a consistent pattern of destructive behavior on Washington’s part . . . [but being] [n]ostalgic for the period of primacy known as the American Century, the U.S. cannot accept its passing.

Update (November 28):  I suppose many factors are behind the drop in oil prices.  A Russian oil executive says the OPEC decision to maintain production in the face of dropping prices is an effort to drive American shale oil producers out of business.

Update (December 1):  This discussion suggests the Saudis may be trying to hurt both Russian and American producers--anyone with high marginal costs.

Update (December 4):  Russia is in a recession and more about the impact of falling oil prices.

Update (December 6):  The fracking boom may be coming to an end.

Update (December 13):  An Australian shale drilling company has gone bankrupt.

Update (December 15):  Winners and losers in the oil price drop.

Update (December 17):  The Russian ruble is crashing.

Update (December 18):  Apparently the ruble is stabilizing, but the Russian economy is heading for a recession.

Update (December 21):  Richard Heinberg gives his take--that demand is softening and low prices for oil should not be mistaken for resource abundance.

Update (December 31):  Dan Steffens speculates that Saudi Arabia may be putting pressure on Iran to end their nuclear enrichment program.  But eventually, low oil prices will hurt us all if it leads to supply shortages.  Also, Tom Whipple reminds us that peak oil hasn't gone away.

Update (January 10, 2015):  Robert James Parsons seems to suggest the China-U.S. climate agreement is essentially smoke and mirrors.

Update (January 11, 2015):  More speculation about why oil prices are dropping.

Update (January 28, 2015):  India and the United States also have a climate agreement.

Update (February 3, 2015):  Amid fracking industry layoffs due to falling oil prices, workers represented by the United Steelworkers Union have gone on strike.

Update (February 8, 2015):  The strike expands.

Update (February 9, 2015):  Michael Klare examines the prospects for continued low oil prices.

Update (September 12, 2015):  Fracking production is going down and it seems OPEC is succeeding in driving those producers toward bankruptcy.

Update (September 27, 2015):  More on the "fracking bubble".

Update (December 21, 2015):  Crude oil prices reach an eleven year low.

Update (December 30, 2015):  Maybe the Saudi strategy of trying to drive out high-cost oil producers isn't working so well.

Update (January 3, 2016):  From the podcast On Point, a discussion about oil prices. A new idea for me is the thought that if the Saudi's think oil might not be worth much in the future due to the need to move away from fossil fuels, then they have an incentive to produce as much oil as they can now for whatever price they can get. That's not to say there still aren't other motivations. I'm wondering if pushing other producers out of the market makes the development of alternatives even more urgent.

Update (January 16, 2016):  Michael Klare agrees that the Saudis are trying to drive unconventional oil producers out of the market and yet U.S. production is 9.2 million barrels per day--higher than a year ago. Klare describes the notion of peak demand for oil as the world shifts to renewable sources of energy. He expects the decline of oil to be accompanied by political turmoil.

Update (January 20, 2016):  David Dayen and Gail Tverberg examine the impact of collapsing oil prices.

Update (March 5, 2016):  Ben Walsh cites James Rowe re-enforcing the idea that the Saudis are selling what they can to avoid ending up with "stranded assets".

Update (March 9, 2016):  More from Michael Klare about the declining oil industry.

Update (September 15, 2016):  Angelo Young reports that at least 58 U.S. oil companies have gone bankrupt this year.

Update (September 28, 2016):  Looks like Saudi Arabia is changing course and plans to cut oil production to try to raise prices.

The decision at this week’s meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in Algiers to cut production was necessitated by Saudi Arabia’s tattered finances. The kingdom has the highest budget deficit among the world’s 20 biggest economies, it’s enduring a delay in its first international bond issue and now faces fresh legal uncertainty as the U.S. Congress voted Wednesday to allow Americans to sue the country for its involvement in 9/11.

Update (July 1, 2018):  Looks like Dear Leader thought he had an easy deal with Saudi Arabia to increase oil production by as much as 2 million barrels per day because "Prices to (sic) high!" But

A White House statement said instead that while King Salman bin Abdulaziz confirmed his country has the extra production capacity, the Saudis will “prudently” use it “if and when necessary to ensure market balance and stability, and in coordination with its producer partners, to respond to any eventuality.”

Ocean Acidity

Taro Takahashi of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University has published the most comprehensive map of ocean pH levels.  And according to a report from the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity, the acidity of the ocean surface has increased about 26 percent since pre-industrial times.  The cost in lost ecosystem services could reach $3 trillion per year by 2100.

Do elections matter?  Only if you are concerned about the future of life on the planet.

Update (November 15):  An interview with author Gaia Vince about "the uncertain future of life on Earth".

Top Tenth Equals Bottom Ninety

A paper by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman documents the declining share of wealth by the bottom ninety percent of U.S. families over the past thirty years while the top one tenth of one percent is now nearly an equal share.

Update (November 11):  The Saez/Zucman paper also finds wealth thresholds, averages, and share for segments of the population.

Aftermath

Any election is a mixed bag.  I'm reminded of the thought that unrealistic expectations are the major cause of unhappiness.  Analyses consider the roles of low voter turnout, bungled Democratic strategy, Republican manipulation, the record-breaking use of "dark money". Progress appears more likely at the local level.  Nationally, we are stuck in a cycle for who's in and who's out.  Andrew O'Hehir considers ways of breaking the cycle, but doesn't like what he sees.

How we might possibly get out of this mess has been the subject of considerable magical thinking on all sides. I’ll take these propositions one at a time, but here are the four big ones I see. First, there’s the idea that we’ll elect some president so charismatic and large-spirited and post-partisan that he or she will heal our wounds, reach from one fortified bunker to another and forge a new way of consensus or compromise. Yes, it’s the “transformational figure” fantasy, and you can stop laughing now. Or is that crying? Then there’s the alluring notion, extensively indulged in online comments forums, that one party will conclusively win the ideological debate and banish the other to near-permanent secondary status. (This sounds comical now, but remember that when Republicans won the House in 1994 they ended 40 uninterrupted years of Democratic majorities.) Next comes the allied but distinct notion that demographic change will doom one party to irrelevance, or force it to change into something unrecognizably different. (You get only one guess.) Finally, if we conclude that none of those things is likely to happen any time soon, we introduce a fourth possibility, the big unforeseen event that leads to implosion, collapse, transformation or revolution. That one sounds the most far-fetched, but it’s a little like Nietzsche’s proverb about the abyss: The longer you look at it, the more irresistible it becomes.

All those far-fetched possibilities, taken together, add up to a not-impossible medium-term future in which the United States either ceases to exist – an event, sad to say, that would be widely celebrated around the world – or becomes something very different from what it is now. If such a thing happened, it could go in all sorts of dreadful directions. But I’m honestly not sure it would be worse than the more plausible disaster scenario, the world-historical transformation that is already well underway.

That’s the one in which the United States is slowly bankrupted into permanent dependency by endless, secret foreign wars while tiny cadres of the ultra-rich squabble over control of the economy. Electoral politics is angrily contested over a narrow but contentious range of lifestyle issues, and drives away all but the most committed culture warriors on either side. Nothing is done about the warming climate, the poisoning of the air, water and soil, the elimination of biodiversity or the mass extinction of other species. Lost in our 14-hour workdays and our consumer bubbles of pretend affluence, we don’t really pay attention, although we’re sad about the pandas and the polar bears and we hope somebody will do something about it eventually. In due course the political stalemate between Republicans and Democrats stops mattering, stops existing and is gone with the wind.

Update (November 12):  It must be nice to get elected by running against all the problems you helped to create.

Update (November 23):  The prospects for future elections looks rather dismal.  One imagines that the lowest turnout in 72 years must be considered a great success by the party who benefits. Lynn Stuart Parramore considers how so many people are traumatized by modern life in America.

Trauma is not just about experiencing wars and sexual violence, though there is plenty of that. Psychology researchers have discussed trauma as something intense that happens in your life that you can’t adequately respond to, and which causes you long-lasting negative effects. It’s something that leaves you fixated and stuck, acting out your unresolved feelings over and over.

Trauma occupies a space much bigger than our individual neurons: it’s political. If your parents lost their jobs, their home or their sense of security in the wake of the financial crisis, you will carry those wounds with you, even if conditions improve. Budget cuts to education and the social safety net produce trauma. Falling income produces trauma. Job insecurity produces trauma.

What then, are we supposed to do with our anguish? Part of our despair comes from participating in a system that is so damaging to so many, so brutal to our natures, both the physical environment and our internal selves. I eat a tomato knowing that the person who picked it may well have been an abused undocumented immigrant. I use products like Google knowing that my personal information is being used for purposes of profit and control. I vote for a candidate knowing that inaction and betrayal are the likely outcomes of putting this person in power. I can’t get away from it.

I think we all have many selves, and I know that I have a self that is so angry and disgusted it simply wants to numb out, to immerse itself in the distractions of shallow consumer culture and look away from things it feels helpless to change.

In the act of writing to myself and to you, I am reminded that we are bound, and that even if a dark age is looming, we can still pass the light between us. I can't fool myself into thinking that the ogre is not coming — but walking to meet him together is much better than standing alone.

Update (December 6):  Anat Shenker-Osorio and Jeffery Parcher urge what might be called evidence-based activism.

We have a choice. We can continue to lament election results and the seeming lack of active constituency to make America less plutocratic or we can learn from hard data and reorient our efforts along lines we know will activate our base, persuade Americans in the middle, and call out those who profited from plunging us into recession and fight to keep clutching the spoils.

Update (January 4, 2015):  Sean McElwee says that a liberal resurgence requires the mass mobilization of voters, a stable of progressive leaders, and getting money out of politics.

Update (January 16, 2015):  People outside the United States are inclined to ask, "Is this country crazy?"  Yes.

Update (February 8, 2015):  Bill Curry says a progressive movement is more important than winning elections.

Groundwater Crisis

An article in Nature Climate Change describes the growing depletion of aquifers worldwide. Exceeding the rate of replenishment, in some cases due to drought, threatens agricultural production.

The ongoing California drought is evident in these maps of dry season (Sept–Nov) total water storage anomalies (in millimeter equivalent water height; anomalies with respect to 2005–2010). California’s Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins have lost roughly 15 km3 of total water per year since 2011 — more water than all 38 million Californians use for domestic and municipal supplies annually — over half of which is due to groundwater pumping in the Central Valley.

Changes in groundwater mass are tracked by NASA's GRACE satellite.

Update (June 28, 2016):  A study from Stanford shows nearly three times as much ground water in California's Central Valley than previously estimated. But it may be threatened with contamination from oil and gas drilling.