The Pipeline to Hell -- that's an appropriate name for the Keystone XL Pipeline, planned to bring 830,000 barrels a day to the US. It really is one step on the path to thermal hell-on-earth in the long run. The local clearcutting and poisoning rape of the boreal forests of Alberta is well documented along with the profound risks of spills from the pipeline contaminating crucial watersheds. Those regional hells are reason enough to reject tar sands and a huge pipeline to transport acidic crude. The Hell I'm referring to is global: Climate Change.
We know the tar sands ("unconventional fossil fuel") is a massive step, perhaps THE step in the wrong direction, with James Hansen's now famous "Game Over" condemnation. But what is the scope of how this one tar sands pipeline contributes to CO2 pollution and its end result? My estimate is that this one pipeline alone is on the order of 1% of the way to climate disaster hell. If the planned $125 billion investments in Canadian tar sands does produce its target 5 million barrels a day,
we are more looking at 10% of global carbon emissions. And by hell, I do mean a world of deaths, as the path this leads to is 6 or more degrees C. of global warming, a scenario of deserts, droughts, floods, famines and hundreds of millions or billions of deaths. Let's look at some numbers...
I'm ballparking here, so you can argue them up or down, but the point is the same, even if the end result takes longer to occur:
The Carbon
Each barrel of tar sands oil takes extra energy, and therefore carbon emissions, to produce: 10 to 45%
If we take a 30% factor, the normal 317 kg from a barrel of oil becomes 412kg. The 830,000 barrels a day becomes 125 million metric tons (Mt) of CO2 a year. The total global estimated CO2 emissions for 2007 were estimated at 8365 Mt. So this one pipeline comes in at 1.5% of 2007 global emissions. There is your 1% of hell. 5 million barrels for all of Canadian tar sands comes in at 10%. Big steps in the wrong direction.
The larger issue is that of using unconventional oil sources at all. Using the Malhotra Cubic Mile of Oil (CMO) or 28 billion barrels, equivalents:
The world has 46 CMO of proven, conventional oil, with another probable 52 CMO awaiting discovery. The world has 300 CMO of unconventional oil (oil sands, heavy oil, shale oil).
"Game over" indeed.
Because growth of oil sands production has exceeded declines in conventional crude oil production, Canada has become the largest supplier of oiland refined products to the United States, ahead of Saudi Arabia and Mexico.
If Canada stays on this path, the pipelines and tar sands lead to carbon hell.
The Hell
It is simple: continued reliance on fossil fuels leads to the worst of the IPCC scenarios, like the A1F1 scenario's incredible 900 ppm CO2 future (remember 350 ppm is the target for sustaining our current climate)..
This concentration leads to nightmare temperature rise:
The temperature rise makes lands into deserts, unable to be farmed or even livable. Tough for crops at 2.5°C:
once the global threshold of 2.5°C is crossed, even breadbaskets in the temperate mid-latitudes will begin to suffer as soaring summer temperatures leave crops suffering from a lack of water.
And
The IPCC study sees net global food deficit beginning to drive up market prices once the 2.5°C threshold is crossed.
[Lynas, Mark (2009).
Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, Fourth Estate.]
Think of America's breadbasket becoming a dust bowl again. Think of feeding 7 billion. Think of famines like the 3 in the last 120 years that have killed roughly 20 million each or more, the last being 29 million in China in 1958. We saw rice and other staples prices recently soar globally from US's biofuels diversion. What will become of the poor when, even in America, there is a "net food deficit"?
As the temperature increases, it will be tough for people at 7°C globally, because whole regions will hit unlivable temperatures.
According to a recent study, parts of the Earth could start to become uninhabitable within a century. Houston, Tel Aviv, Shanghai and many other once-bustling cities are ghost towns. No one lives in Louisiana or Florida anymore, and vast swathes of Africa, China, Brazil, India and Australia are no-go zones, too. That's because in all of these places it gets hot and humid enough to kill anyone who cannot find an air-conditioned shelter.
At 12°C
If the global average temperature rises by 12°C, half of the land inhabited today would become too hot to live in.
Half.
The Fast Track Path to Thermal Hell
The risks of cascading effects, as noted by Mark Lynas, all point to the high global value of keeping the global temperature under 2 degrees of warming. Scenarios based on fossil fuel use all lead to surpassing this threshold, thus to the similar results, but some take longer. Does it matter much if Thermogeddon takes 100 or 200 years? It does if you live in the interim century, but not so much for all that follow. Personally, I think it could occur much sooner, affecting the next generations. Bringing on dirty unconventional oil sources is the fast track in the wrong direction.
This proposed pipeline accelerates our use of carbon-based fuels, and thus heads toward the worst case scenarios, thermal hells. It is an exercise in insanity, in the face of scientific clarity of the causes and effects involved, of the carbon numbers, of the climatic temperature rises, and of the eventual outcomes of deserts, droughts and famines. Seven billion souls and still counting. In a world hotter and drier, how many can the planet support? How many deaths will this proposed tar sands pipeline lead to? What percentage of Thermogeddon will the tar sands of Alberta become? What could $125 billion in investments in carbon-free energy do? If these decisions are anywhere near 1% of what is on the line, we need to kill this Pipeline to Hell before it starts, invest the $100's of billion in non-carbon energy, and get on with the other 99 of them.