The NDP and unburnable carbon

[Oscar]

The NDP and unburnable carbon

[ http://park4wsc.ca/2015/08/the-ndp-and- ... le-carbon/ ]

Linda McQuaig’s moment of truthiness about unburnable carbon

Winnipeg August 11th, 2015

High profile NDP candidate Linda McQuaig has caused hissy fits among Tory politicians with her off-script statement that “a lot of the oil sands oil may have to stay in the ground.” [ http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada- ... -1.3184704 ]

Now, this would be strange if we were only discussing the factual basis for McQuaig’s comments. Because the facts are uncontroversial. Numerous studies, beginning with Carbon Tracker’s 2013 report on unburnable carbon, [ http://www.carbontracker.org/wp-content ... rev2-1.pdf ] have stated the same blunt fact – namely that at least two thirds of our proven fossil fuel reserves will have to stay in the ground to avoid dangerous climate change. Normally conservative, oil boosting organizations like the World Bank and the International Energy Agency have acknowledged that the world’s unburnable carbon reserves are creating a serious asset bubble. Mark Carney, the buttoned down former governor of the Bank of Canada, says that most of our reserves must remain unburned.

The latest report, an economic analysis by Christopher McGlade and Paul Ekins, contains some bad news for Alberta, Saskatchewan, and maybe Newfoundland and BC. To avoid a temperature increase of over two degrees Centigrade, 82% of our coal reserves, 75% of our oil and 24% of our natural gas will have to stay in the ground, voluntarily sacrificed for the sake of a livable future. [ http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v5 ... 14016.html ] ( See ABSTRACT below . . .Ed. )

So those are the facts. Predictably, facts do not matter much to Conservative politicians. Stephen Harper used McQuaig’s comments as a stick with which to beat the NDP: “The NDP is consistently against the development of our resources and our economy. That’s why they have been a disaster wherever they’ve been in government.” Alberta’s leader of the opposition Brian Jean went one further, calling on Alberta Premier Rachel Notley to “…actively repudiate this crazy idea in the strongest terms possible”.

But strangest and most interesting of all has been the reaction of the Federal NDP to McQuaig’s outbreak of honesty. First McQuaig herself tweeted that “NDP policy is sustainable development, overseen by strong enviro review process which Harper has destroyed”. Well, fair enough (except that sustainable development is often code for “unrestrained exploitation”). But then the NDP natural resources critic Malcolm Allen released this: “Ms. McQuaig was not referring to NDP policy, rather she was referring to what one particular international report has said that might be necessary under Stephen Harper“.

Except that’s not right Mr. Allen; it’s not just one study; as I’ve shown here, this is a whole pile of studies endorsed by leading organizations and public figures. It seems as though the NDP are having a tough time distinguishing what the science demands we do from what political calculus demands that they say. And just to make the science-politics divide super-clear, Mr. Allen later added that “There is no cap” on potential oil sands production.

Meanwhile, Manitoba NDP MPs and candidates have been silent on the whole issue. Maybe we need to have a conversation about the facts.

= = = = =


The geographical distribution of fossil fuels unused when limiting global warming to 2 °C

[ http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v5 ... 14016.html ]

Christophe McGlade & Paul Ekins - Affiliations Contributions Corresponding author Nature 517, 187–190 (08 January 2015) doi:10.1038/nature14016

Received 18 February 2014 Accepted 27 October 2014 Published online 07 January 2015

ABSTRACT:

Policy makers have generally agreed that the average global temperature rise caused by greenhouse gas emissions should not exceed 2 °C above the average global temperature of pre-industrial times1.
It has been estimated that to have at least a 50 per cent chance of keeping warming below 2 °C throughout the twenty-first century, the cumulative carbon emissions between 2011 and 2050 need to be limited to around 1,100 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide (Gt CO2)2, 3.
However, the greenhouse gas emissions contained in present estimates of global fossil fuel reserves are around three times higher than this2, 4, and so the unabated use of all current fossil fuel reserves is incompatible with a warming limit of 2 °C.
Here we use a single integrated assessment model that contains estimates of the quantities, locations and nature of the world’s oil, gas and coal reserves and resources, and which is shown to be consistent with a wide variety of modelling approaches with different assumptions5, to explore the implications of this emissions limit for fossil fuel production in different regions.
Our results suggest that, globally, a third of oil reserves, half of gas reserves and over 80 per cent of current coal reserves should remain unused from 2010 to 2050 in order to meet the target of 2 °C.
We show that development of resources in the Arctic and any increase in unconventional oil production are incommensurate with efforts to limit average global warming to 2 °C.
Our results show that policy makers’ instincts to exploit rapidly and completely their territorial fossil fuels are, in aggregate, inconsistent with their commitments to this temperature limit.
Implementation of this policy commitment would also render unnecessary continued substantial expenditure on fossil fuel exploration, because any new discoveries could not lead to increased aggregate production.

Subject terms: Climate-change mitigation
[ http://www.nature.com/nature/archive/su ... l?code=682 ]

References•

1.United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) Report of the Conference of the Parties on its Fifteenth Session, held in Copenhagen from 7 to 19 December 2009. Part Two: Action taken by the Conference of the Parties at its Fifteenth Session. United Nations Climate Change Conf. Report 43 [ http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/co ... /11a01.pdf ] (UNFCC, 2009)
2.Meinshausen, M. et al. Greenhouse gas emission targets for limiting global warming to 2 °C. Nature 458, 1158–1162 (2009) CAS ISI PubMed Article
[ http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 08017.html ]
3.Clarke, L. et al. in Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change (Edenhofer, O. et al.) Ch. 6 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014)
4.Raupach, M. R. et al. Sharing a quota on cumulative carbon emissions. Nature Clim. Chang. 4, 873–879 (2014) CAS ISI Article
[ http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/ ... e2384.html ]
5.IPCC Working Group III. Integrated Assessment Modelling Consortium (IAMC) AR5 Scenario Database [ https://secure.iiasa.ac.at/web-apps/ene/AR5DB/ ](International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis 2014).

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[ http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v5 ... 14016.html ]