Tag Archives: most

Leave most fossil fuels in the ground, or fry Updated for 2026

The sheer scale of the fossil fuel reserves that will need to be left unexploited for decades if world leaders sign up to a radical climate agreement is revealed in a study by a team of British scientists.

It shows that almost all the huge coal reserves in China, Russia and the US should remain unused, along with over 260 billion barrels of oil reserves in the Middle East – the equivalent of Saudi Arabia’s entire oil reserves.

The Middle East would also need to leave over 60% of its gas reserves in the ground.

The team from University College London’s Institute for Sustainable Resources (ISR) says that, in total, a third of global oil reserves, half of the world’s gas and over 80% of its coal reserves should be left untouched for the next 35 years.

This is the amount of fossil fuel, they estimate, that the world must forego until 2050 if governments agree on a realistic programme to ensure that global warming does not exceed the 2°C increase over pre-industrial levels agreed by policy makers.

The authors of the report, which is published in the journal Nature, say some reserves could be used after 2050, so long as this kept emissions within the CO₂ budget, which would be only about half the amount the world can afford to use between now and 2050.

They say a factor that might help in the use of fossil fuels is that carbon capture and storage (CCS) is expected to be much more widely deployable by mid-century, assuming it to be a mature technology by then.

No space for any more extreme energy

The study, funded by the UK Energy Research Centre, concluded that the development of resources in the Arctic and any increase in unconventional oil – oil of a poor quality that is hard to extract – are also “inconsistent with efforts to limit climate change”.

For the study, the scientists first developed an innovative method for estimating the quantities, locations and nature of the world’s oil, gas and coal reserves and resources. They then used an integrated assessment model to explore which of these, along with low-carbon energy sources, should be used up to 2050 to meet the world’s energy needs.

The model, which uses an internationally-recognised modelling framework, provides what the authors describe as “a world-leading representation of the long-term production dynamics and resource potential of fossil fuels”.

The lead author, Dr Christophe McGlade, research associate at the ISR, said: “We’ve now got tangible figures of the quantities and locations of fossil fuels that should remain unused in trying to keep within the 2°C temperature limit.

“Policy makers must realise that their instincts to completely use the fossil fuels within their countries are wholly incompatible with their commitments to the 2°C goal. If they go ahead with developing their own resources, they must be asked which reserves elsewhere should remain unburnt in order for the carbon budget not to be exceeded.”

The prospects for an amicable discussion between China, Russia, the US and the Middle East on how to share the pain of leaving these reserves unexploited will demand exceptional diplomacy from all parties.

Prudent investors, keep clear of fossil fuels!

The report’s co-author, Paul Ekins, the ISR’s director and professor of resources and environmental policy, said: “Companies spent over $670 billion (£430 billion) last year searching for and developing new fossil fuel resources.

“They will need to rethink such substantial budgets if policies are implemented to support the 2°C limit, especially as new discoveries cannot lead to increased aggregate production.

“Investors in these companies should also question spending such budgets. The greater global attention to climate policy means that fossil fuel companies are becoming increasingly risky for investors in terms of the delivery of long-term returns. I would expect prudent investors in energy to shift increasingly towards low-carbon energy sources.”

After years of halting progress towards an effective international agreement to limit fossil fuel emissions so as to stay within the 2°C temperature threshold, hopes are cautiously rising that the UN climate talks to be held in Paris at the end of 2015 may finally succeed where so many have failed.

But reaching agreement will be only the first step: effective enforcement may prove an even bigger problem.

Alex Kirby writes for Climate News Network.

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Murder most foul – who killed all the porpoises? Updated for 2026

It’s one of the big mysteries in my career as a marine biologist. Something lurking in the seas off Britain has been chomping away at local porpoises and none of the usual suspects fit the bill. Now scientists have finally identified the cuddly culprit.

I first became aware of the attacks on porpoises – beakless, smaller relatives of dolphins – as I run the UK shark tagging programme and am often asked to comment on possible sightings.

In both 2010 and 2011 I was sent pictures from the Norfolk coast of porpoise carcasses with a considerable amount of tissue bitten away.

And the unfortunate Norfolk porpoises aren’t alone. In fact, huge numbers of harbour porpoises have been washing up on the shores of the North Sea. They shared the same nasty-looking bite marks.

Shark attack?

The common assumption was that these were due to shark attacks. However none of the photographs of the wounds showed the characteristic punctures caused by the multiple rows of shark teeth, such as displayed by human victims of shark attacks.

The UK isn’t exactly known for its deadly sea beasts. While a number of shark species do live round the coast and in the North Sea, the most common are too small to inflict the bites we were dealing with. Larger sharks capable of removing that amount of tissue are very rare.

Invariably the popular press claims attacks like these are evidence of great white sharks. After the 2011 find near Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, the Daily Mail thought a “giant shark or killer whale could be stalking the coast”. The Sun even said it might be Jaws himself.

Given that there are no fully substantiated reports of white sharks in UK waters and that in any case such a shark could quickly dispose of a whole porpoise, this is fanciful.

But at last, we have a more likely explanation.

Whodunnit?

A team of Dutch scientists has now identified grey seals as the culprits. Their work, reported in the Royal Society journal, reveals that DNA from grey seals has been found in bite marks on porpoise carcasses.

The researchers examined 721 dead porpoises in detail. The sheer numbers enabled them to identify the key characteristics of seal bites including substantial loss of skin and blubber, puncture wounds (often repetitive) to the head, tail and flippers, plus series of parallel scratches anywhere on the body left by seal claws.

A flow chart has been produced using these marks to determine if the porpoise was attacked by a seal and if it could have escaped. This will be invaluable to those undertaking autopsies of porpoises in the future.

The majority of confirmed seal attacks are on juveniles. Since many of the porpoise carcasses were found on Dutch bathing and surfing beaches the authors offer up the thought that humans may be at risk.

Perhaps this serves us right, as it seems humans may have triggered this change in seal diet. Along with their close relatives dolphins and whales, porpoises often become entangled in fishing gear and some attacks may simply be seals scavenging trapped porpoises.

Having got used to the scavenged fare, the authors speculate that seals may have turned to attacking live porpoise.

Porpoises have a hard life. Even dolphins attack them. They are victims of the fishing industry and subject to an increasing amount of noise from boats, oil rigs and wind turbines.

Now, possibly triggered by our activities, there is yet another pressure on this species: hungry seals.

Ken Collins is Senior Research Fellow, Ocean and Earth Science at the University of Southampton.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Alfred Nobel would have wanted an environment prize Updated for 2026

It’s Nobel Prize week, with awards for Medicine and Physiology, Physics, Chemistry, Peace and Economics all being announced. We will discover who will win the literature prize later in the month.

While a Nobel is not the most lucrative accolade in academia – it ‘only’ awards US$1.2m whereas since 2012 the Fundamental Physics Prize has paid out US$3m per recipient – it is easily the most recognisable and prestigious.

You may be the most highly cited scholar in your field, have a small army of postdocs and a shelf full of books discussing your theories, but adding ‘Nobel Laureate’ to your CV reaches the parts other accolades can’t.

The first prizes were awarded in 1901, five years after the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who in his final will bequeathed the majority of his considerable fortune to the establishment of the a foundation that would award prizes to “those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.“

The Nobel Foundation has previously made awards within the area of sustainability – most famously the 2007 peace prize jointly awarded to Al Gore and The IPCC.

The new challenge is making human existence sustainable

But if the foundation is primarily tasked with rewarding those individuals and organisations that have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind, then a Nobel Prize for Sustainability should be central to that aim.

Recently the WWF and the Zoological Society of London reported that the number of wild animals on Earth has halved over the past 40 years.

This dramatic decline in the abundance of fauna has been associated with an equally dramatic decline in the diversity of all species such that we are currently in the middle of what may prove to be one of the great mass extinctions in the history of life on Earth.

Our global emissions of carbon dioxide continue to rise and we are currently on course towards dangerous climate change within decades.

So why not add the names Edmond Becquerel, Rachel Carson, Dian Fossey, James Lovelock, the Penan people in Malaysia and others that have done the most to promote ways to live sustainably on our home planet to the 876 other recipients of a Nobel Prize?

New times, new necessities

It was Nobel’s wish that the foundation would award five prizes (the economics prize was created much later, after an endowment from the Swedish central bank in 1968 “in memory of Alfred Nobel“). As he never explained why he chose those particular themes, we can only speculate as to his reasoning.

Arguably physics was the foremost science in the late 1800s, as it was in the process of transforming our understanding of the universe with new theories on the atom, electricity, magnetism and cosmology.

Great advances were also being made in medicine and the physiology and what is man without an understanding of literature? Promoting peace is clearly a laudable aim. Perhaps easiest to understand is the prize for chemistry, given that Nobel was a gifted chemist and made his fortune largely by building an industrial chemicals empire.

For example, in 1867 Nobel invented dynamite and in 1875 gelignite. These easy to handle and very powerful high explosives greatly aided mining and the extraction of natural resources such as coal and iron that was needed to continue to drive the industrial revolution.

Nobel’s 1887 invention of ballistite, which he sold to the Italian military, made rifles and cannons significantly more reliable and lethal. Nobel was more directly involved in armaments through his 1894 purchase of the steel producing company Bofors which he put on course to become one of the world’s leading weapons manufacturers.

Whatever his motivation, today the name Alfred Nobel is firmly associated with his eponymous prizes and a celebration of those reasons to be optimistic about humanity’s achievements and future.

In many ways, Nobel was entitled to feel optimistic about the positive impacts that could arise from the age of great acceleration in knowledge and development in which he lived.

At the start of the 20th century, the global average life expectancy was 31. It is now 67. People live longer, healthier lives thanks to better medicine, sanitation and diets. The significant reduction in death rates is an important reason why there has been such a significant increase in the total number of humans.

Limits to growth on a finite planet

In the past 45 years the world’s population has doubled. This exponential increase in the numbers of people is eclipsed by the intensity of consumption. In the past 20 years our global civilisation consumed more energy than it did in the previous 2000.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that there are limits to this trajectory and that the processes of industrialisation are at risk of tipping the Earth system into a state that would not accommodate our global civilisation.

Would awarding a Nobel Prize for Sustainability change any of that? In isolation, of course not.

But I like to think that Nobel himself would understand that in the 21st century ‘conferring the greatest benefit to mankind’ means looking beyond ourselves and considering how we interact and affect the other species with which we share planet Earth.

James Dyke is Lecturer in Complex Systems Simulation at University of Southampton. He does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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