"Peak Oil May Solve the Climate Change Problem without Regulation."

CO2 not as big a enemy as methane.... While articles like this put CO2 effects and into future perspective, they do not focus on the fact that we still have to reduce toxic emissions and curb the methane cycle. CO2 may not be a 'real future threat' industrial emissions, toxic releases and peak oil are.

Regardless of your social cause - we need to have a future powered by sustainable energy.

EV World - Problem with Biokinetic Sequestration

He contends that there is no need to regulate carbon dioxide emissions using cap and trade schemes like those found in the Waxman-Markey Bill (HR 2454) because two natural force are at work: rapidly approaching limitations on fossil fuel availability and natural (biokinetic) sequestration. He writes...

Intuitively, anyone who recognizes the practical limitations on fossil energy supply knows emissions will not rise exponentially for another century, as portrayed by the IPCC and the US Global Climate Change Research Program (ref-1). The forecast growth rate in energy consumption—1.4% per year—is not very large, but compounded over a century it would suggest that by 2100 we would be consuming three times more energy than we consume today. In the meantime, we will have consumed about 15 trillion barrels-of-oil-equivalent.

That is an astounding number considering we only have about 13 trillion barrels-equivalent in oil, gas, coal, oil sands, heavy oil and oil shale combined. And only a portion of this total, perhaps no more than one-third, can ultimately be recovered under reasonable economic conditions.

He believes that "oil is peaking about now," while gas and coal will follow "within a couple of decades." He argues that "unrealistic" expectations of future fossil fuel energy supply are "but one glaring error in the climate change science."

"A second is the systematic underreporting of the beneficial impact higher CO2 concentrations have on photosynthesis," he writes, noting that plants and the oceans can absorb much of the CO2 released by the last two hundred years of industrialization.

"In 2008 we emitted about 34.2 billion tonne [of CO2], of which 18.8 billion went missing. A prime suspect for this missing mass is the fertilization effect that CO2 has on photosynthesis rates."

Dr. Bunger developed a biokinetic model that takes into the account the rate of natural plant and ocean sequestration and projections on oil, gas and coal depletion (Colin Campbell, Energy Watch Group 2007 Coal Report ). The result of that model, shown below, indicates that CO2 emissions will level off well below the 450 ppm tipping point suggested by James Hansen and others around 2030 and begin a gradual decline.

He concludes, "Rather than making the problem worse through regulation, political effort should be better spent on improving efficiency of energy use, and helping to ensure we have adequate domestic supply of fuels when the world-wide competition for dwindling supply begins in earnest. That time is not long from now."

Read more from EV World