Dirty energy makes climate change worse

Melting ice in Antarctica.

Global climate change is arguably the biggest environmental threat facing our planet.

Human activity, largely from burning fossil fuels, has been increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution began.

Climate change's consequences

Dirty Energy production and consumption will exacerbate the effects of this heat-trapping blanket of gas –

• raising surface temperatures,
  
• melting glaciers and causing seas levels around the globe to rise,
• throwing ecosystems and habitats out of balance,
  
• increasing extreme weather events, drought and flooding,
  
• increasing the spread of life-threatening diseases, and
• potentially creating geopolitical tensions.

The Earth is very close if not already at the tipping point of global warming, after which it will be near impossible to reverse the impacts on climate change caused by using Dirty Energy sources.

How climate change works

Heat-trapping 'greenhouse gases' in the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide, let through short-wave radiation from the sun but absorb the long-wave heat radiation coming back from the earth’s surface and re-radiate it.

The Earth's natural greenhouse blanket is necessary, providing us with a good balance between the extremes of our neighbors. But too much greenhouse gas build-up and we end up like our neighbor Venus, trapped in a dense blanket of hot carbon dioxide.

The problem with a warmer planet

The United States National Academy of Sciences has stated, "greenhouse warming and other human alterations of the earth system may increase the possibility of large, abrupt, and unwelcome regional or global climatic events. . . . Future abrupt changes cannot be predicted with confidence, and climate surprises are to be expected."

Warming increases evaporation and precipitation, and both aggregate rainfall and occurrences of ‘heavy precipitation events’ -- the principal cause of flooding -- in northern mid-latitudes (e.g. Europe and the US) have increased in recent decades. In tropical regions, the potential for more intense hurricanes and typhoons increases in a warmer world.

Dirty Energy exacerbates climate change

Dirty energy impacts on greenhouse gas emissions -- LOW greenhouse gas scenario

The production and burning of all fossil fuels releases greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. But production of the dirtiest forms of energy is dramatically more energy intensive -- for one thing, it takes a great deal of energy, mainly produced by burning fossil fuels, to get dirty energy out of the ground. Additionally, it takes more energy to clean-up and convert the dirty energy sources into forms that consumers can use.

Rather than use fossil fuels to dig out and process dirty energy, we should leave the dirtiest energy forms in the ground, use what’s left of the conventional fossil fuels more frugally, and focus on transitioning to less harmful energy sources.

Dirty energy production at least doubles greenhouse gas emissions.

Dirty energy impacts on greenhouse gas emissions -- HIGH greenhouse gas scenario

Researchers at UC Berkeley have gathered data from a number of sources and come up with low and high estimates of the increase in greenhouse gas emissions likely to occur during the production of dirty energy sources like tar sands, oil shale and coal-to-liquids. As seen from the graphs below, creating using UC Berkeley data, the greenhouse gas emissions from producing 1 MJ of fuel from tar sands, shale and coal-to-liquids (CTL) are anywhere from 2 to 5 times the emissions that result from producing conventional oil (in the low emissions scenario) and 3 to 9 times that of conventional oil in the high emissions scenario.

Emissions from oil shale are highly uncertain, but if anything, they are on the low side (it is likely that there will be added carbon emissions due to the breakdown of carbon-containing minerals in the oil shale rocks). These estimates also assume the extraction of the most easily accessible, highest-grade resources. As these become depleted, it will take even more energy to eke out a barrel of oil from these dirty sources.

For More Information

• NDE: How tar sands oil production exacerbates climate change

• Union of Concerned Scientists:

  Visit the UCS website for more on the science and effects of climate change.

• UC Berkeley Energy and Resources Group:

  PhD candidate Adam Brandt researches the environmental consequences of a transition to low-quality hydrocarbon resources.

• Pembina Institute:

  Their Oilsandswatch site has numerous publications related to the environmental costs of tar sands.

• Natural Resources Defense Council:

  Publication Driving It Home explores the full scale of the damage done by attempts to extract oil from liquid coal, oil shale, and tar sands.

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