Main Topics: Module 12

Overview of the main topics you will encounter in Module 12.

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.

Prediction is very difficult—especially about the future.

Fuelish

• Plants use carbon dioxide, water, and the sun’s energy to grow more plant material while releasing oxygen.
• Other life forms “burn” the plants with oxygen to get that energy.
• If buried without oxygen, the plants aren't burned, and as nature heats them, they make fossil fuels:
  • With heating, woody plants become peat (which occurs in sediment; some of which is forming at Bear Meadows and in other wetlands) and then become lignite coal (which occurs in sedimentary rock) and then become bituminous coal (found in harder sedimentary rock, including in western PA) and then anthracite coal (found in metamorphic rock, in eastern PA) (some natural gas is also formed with coal);
  • Algae may be broken down by bacteria to make natural gas (some is produced in Bear Meadows), and with heating algae produce oil (often with natural gas, common in western PA), and then more heating breaks down the oil to produce more natural gas (eastern PA) (natural gas and oil float up and escape to be burned by bacteria, etc., unless trapped by geology).

Take It to the Limit

• Fossil fuels are NOT infinite:
  • Nature really is efficient at recycling, and most formerly living things were recycled rather than forming fossil fuels;
  • Oil & coal companies are really skillful, and already found easy-to-find fuels;
  • We have not set aside very much fossil fuel in parks or reserves (the oil likely to be produced if Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is opened to full drilling is estimated to equal less than 6 months of US use).
• World oil production is likely to peak soon (within decades?):
  • At vaguely recognizable prices and current demand, probably close to ½ century of oil and gas remain, and a few centuries of coal.

Impactful

• Fossil fuels do many important things for us.
• In the US, external energy use is 100 times what we can do for ourselves from energy in the food we eat; the world averages 25 times.
• External energy use is very important for our well-being.
• In the US and the world, most external energy is from fossil fuels.
• But, many negative impacts of fossil fuels, including health problems from air pollution from burning, accidental fires and explosions, leaks that hurt water supplies and wildlife, and climate change.

You’re in the Greenhouse Now

• Some gases in the air let visible light through (sun) but partly block infrared (energy returned from Earth to space).
• These gases make the planet warmer than it otherwise would be, so Earth “glows” brighter, forcing energy past the gases to space.
• We are increasing these gases (esp. carbon dioxide) a lot, and they will stay up for centuries, with some staying up 100,000 years and longer.

With High Confidence

• The greenhouse gases we release are warming the world and will continue to warm it, amplified by feedbacks such as the melting of reflective ice increasing warming.
• This is having and will have mostly negative impacts on us, making our lives harder:
  • Sea-level rise from ice melting and ocean water expanding;
  • More floods and droughts;
  • Dangerous, potentially fatal heat;
  • Strongest storms getting stronger;
  • Ecological displacements causing extinctions and spreading diseases;
  • Ethical issues—changes more dangerous for people less responsible for causing the changes;
  • Many more.
• Not much scientific disagreement on these points;
• But much political, social, and economic disagreement (similar political arguments about scientifically clear results have happened with previous environmental issues).

Making Money

• We have to switch from fossil fuels as they become scarcer; will we do so before or after we change the climate in ways that make life much harder?
• Sustainable alternatives are now often cheaper than the cost we pay directly for fossil fuels.
• And, economic analyses including the health and climate impacts show that fossil fuels are greatly subsidized, so the full price of fossil fuels to society is much higher than the direct cost (roughly double).
• Building a sustainable energy system is a huge task requiring decades, but can be done.
• And can improve the economy, employment, national security, health, environment, and ethics.

Lions and Tigers and Bears?

• Biodiversity is valuable to us as a source of medicines and other useful things we can discover, and because more diverse ecosystems produce more that we might use, and living types can serve as “canaries in the coal mine” to warn us of trouble, and diverse ecosystems motivate tourism that is economically important and fun; also, there are ethical issues of whether we have the right to kill off other species.
• Early and modern humans have been hard on biodiversity and contributed to extinctions, and we may be heading for the next mass extinction on the scale of the great mass extinctions of geologic history.
• Just as smaller islands have fewer species because it is easier to eliminate a smaller population, isolating patches of wilderness in separate national parks will turn them into biological islands and cause the loss of species in those parks.
• Climate change will make this worse, forcing migration when there may not be migration pathways.
• There are ways to avoid these problems, especially by maintaining natural connections between parks