Are there enough carbon based energy reserves to increase CO2 to 2X the preindustrial era levels?

Question

I have seen this raised more than once by some sources that many find to be sketchy. I ask, not because I want to support them, but because it seems to be a logical question.

Can we actually do what it is said we are going to do (double CO2 concentrations by 2100 via fossil fuel usage)?

Dana, Bob, Tomcat-->

I understand that we could get there in 80 to 90 years at current rates. That is not my question.

How many gigatons of CO2 are held in currently known reserves? Is this enough CO2 to double atmospheric concentrations of CO2?

Bob-->

I may have missed it, but I did not see any numbers for the gigatons of CO2 available in fossil fuel sources.

Its a trivial matter, I just wanted to know if it had calculated it out.

The guys are Bellamy and Barrett, two guys that are not well received by the AGW crowd. The work appeared in a CivE journal. They indicate that they think we do not have enough fossil fuel reserves to even create enough CO2 to reach 570 ppm. I am not sure that I even believe the numbes they present as known reserves of oil, gas, and coal.

Link:

http://www.atypon-link.com/TELF/doi/pdf/10.1680/cien.2007.160.2.66

Answer 1

Sure. Look at where it went from 1960 to now:

http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/graphics_gallery/mauna_loa_record/mlo_record.html

That represents something less than half the world's oil (I'd ballpark it at 25%), and way less than half of the natural gas and coal.

That's my amateur take. Here are the pros. Here's a good reference for you. A key sentence (emphasis added): "The composition of energy supply is determined by ESTIMATED RESERVES of fossil fuel and the availability, relative efficiency, and cost of supply technologies."

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc/emission/114.htm

Also see:

http://www.ipcc.ch/meet/washington.pdf

for an example of how thoroughly they're considering this.

Did you think hundreds, if not thousands of scientists, missed this one? Once again it's very clear that the work by the IPCC is vastly superior in scope and quality to the work of the "skeptics". I presume you got this concern from "some sources" that are skeptics.

EDIT - I think, if you sort through the IPCC stuff you'll find it. But here's something else:

"We suggest that, if estimates of oil and gas reserves by the Energy Information Administration are realistic, it is feasible to keep atmospheric CO2 from exceeding approximately 450 ppm, provided that future exploitation of the huge reservoirs of coal and unconventional fossil fuels incorporates carbon capture and sequestration. Existing coal-fired power plants, without sequestration, must be phased out before mid-century to achieve this limit on atmospheric CO2. "

In other words, limited reserves of oil and gas could keep us below 450 IF we stop burning coal and don't exploit resources such as Canada's tar sands. Obviously keeping burning coal and making oil from tar sands or shale dumps us over the doubling mark.

http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.2782

Basically, I think a little research on coal and tar sand (some of the the unconventional stuff referred to above) reserves would show you they're wrong.

Answer 2

We have used up about half of the easy oil, there is about 3 trillion barrels of tar sands. There is enough coal alone to last the world for 100 years. natural gas reserves somewhere between 100 - 200 years. And then there is always methane hydrate, I have not heard any estimates but I am sure the deposits are vast. So yes there is enough to more than double CO2.

EDIT:
Here is a link were a guy has done some work on your question.

http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/1/26/0299/33391
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Answer 3

The theory of fossil fuels is kind of ridiculous in my opinion. The better theory is that most fossil fuels are actually produced by outgasing of methane that is from the original cold-accreted earth. This methane encountered a deep hot biosphere. This zone of methane eating bacteria turned much of the methane to petroleum. When it outgased into the deep oceans, methane hydrate deposits were formed. When it reached reducing environments in suitable environments anthrocite coal was formed. The bottom line; If this theory is correct and I believe it probably is, then we have only literally scratched the surface on the available deposits. It is not a popular theory yet with many American geologists.

I would also point out that carbonates precipitate in the ocean when it warms. The sands of Bermuda are made of Oolites of calcium carbonate. This certainly could also put a dent in the increased CO2 in the atmosphere. It becomes extremely difficult to determine how much humans have emitted and how much comes from elsewhere because it is a cycle that is extremely complex. Those that pretend to know all about it know the least.

Answer 4

Much of the world's carbon reserves are tied up in a little some called methane clathrates. And there's far more than enough to double atmospheric CO2.

As for conventional stuff, we may have already hit peak production of oil, but we still have plenty of coal, especially low grade coals. Once we use up the high quality stuff, it will be cost-effective to use special technique to wring the energy out of the lower grade stuff.

The only thing we are running out of is oil. Methane and Coal will last through the century.

Answer 5

A better question is how much will it cool when the Gorians have had their way with us. Your sites are bogus! their either environmentalist sites, BBC, or they say right in them that these scientists aren't sure. That large discrepancies exist in their findings. You probably should try to find a new major. You are not objective enough to be a scientist, and you let your emotions cloud your judgment. Even if we quit altogether, don't use any more petroleum products, the glaciers aren't coming back, the permafrost is not going to refreeze. The Methane is going to be released at an alarming rate until the job is done. The Sun is causing the warming and that pisses you off!

Answer 6

Certainly.

In about 150 years we've increased the atmospheric CO2 concentrations from 280 ppmv to 387 ppmv. The current rate of change has the concentration increasing by ~10 ppmv in about 5 years, and is accelerating slightly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mauna_Loa_Carbon_Dioxide.png

So to increase the concentration to ~560 ppmv, we'd need a further ~175 ppmv increase, which corresponds to about 80-90 years at our current rate of CO2 emissions.

So if we can slow our emissions, we may be able to avoid doubling the concentrations this century. However, this does not take into account the possibility of various feedbacks increasing the rate of overall CO2 emissions.

Answer 7

It's certainly debatable and really depends on who you ask. Some sources say we'll be out of oil in as soon as 50 years, out of gas in as soon as 100 years.

One factor often not taken into account is the fact that the greater the CO2 concentrations, the greater the rate of photosynthesis and the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere. This means to maintain the same rate of CO2 increases, we would need to constantly increase our CO2 production. What this means is that once we pass peak fossil fuel production, the rate of CO2 concentration increases will fall sharply.

It should also be noted that it isn't fully understood how things such as the oceans act as sinks and sources of CO2, and how they are going to behave over the next 100 years regardless of human actions.

Answer 8

There are technically close to enough reserves, but there are several issues that aren't accounted for in the numbers. As far as numbers the following is a rough estimate, but should give you an idea.
We currently emit about 27 billion tonnes of CO2 a year, figure with growth rates over 100 years we have averaged about 15 billion tonnes a year or 1.5 trillion tonnes since 1907.

Now there are three major carbon based sources of energy, coal, oil, and natural gas. Coal emits 25.4 tonnes of CO2 per terajoule. Reserves are estimated at 27 billion terajoules or equal to 685 billion tonnes of CO2. Oil emits 19.9 tonnes of CO2 per terajoule. Reserves are estimated at 1.3 trillion barrels of oil which is equivalent to 8 billion terajoules equal to 160 billion tonnes of CO2. Natural gas emits 14.4 tonnes of CO2 per terajoule. Reserves are estimated at 511,000 trillion cubic meters of gas which equals 19 billion terajoules or 273 billion tonnes of CO2. The total comes to 1.1 trillion tonnes of CO2, which is a bit less than the total emitted over the last 100 years.

The issue with these figures are that oil and gas reserves are very unreliable. In the 70's OPEC countries changed the way they counted their reserves and suddenly they had billions of barrels more than before. A lot of this accounting change was the fact that instead of counting just proven reserves, which are known and measured, they added probable reserves and possible reserves. The same has happened with natural gas reserves. Many countires are counting unproven reserves in their totals which may or may not prove out. If coal amounts were counted the same way the total would go over 1.5 trillion tonnes of CO2.

One other thing to keep in mind is that CO2 emissions from one unit of energy are steady, but as technology increases efficiency we get more work out of the same amount of energy, which makes it incredibly doubtful that we would actually need or be able to use all of our coal, oil, and natural gas reserves in the next 100 years.

Answer 9

Even without actually increasing carbon dioxide to those levels, we could get equivalent *heating* with much smaller amounts of more potent "greenhouse gases". These include methane, older refrigerants, and some kind of recently discovered sulfer hexafloride breakdown product.

Water vapor is a greenhouse gas too, but is usually left out of the equation.

Answer 10

CO2 is naturally used to form complex organic molecules, but it hapens very slowly. If CO2 is created faster than it is used up, then yes the levels could rise that high.