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    Energy and Climate Change: An Introduction to Geological Controls, Interventions and Mitigations
    Energy and Climate Change: An Introduction to Geological Controls, Interventions and Mitigations
    Energy and Climate Change: An Introduction to Geological Controls, Interventions and Mitigations
    Ebook330 pages3 hours

    Energy and Climate Change: An Introduction to Geological Controls, Interventions and Mitigations

    By Michael Stephenson

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    About this ebook

    Energy and Climate Change: An Introduction to Geological Controls, Interventions and Mitigations examines the Earth system science context of the formation and use of fossil fuel resources, and the implications for climate change. It also examines the historical and economic trends of fossil fuel usage and the ways in which these have begun to affect the natural system (i.e., the start of the Anthropocene). Finally, the book examines the effects we might expect in the future looking at evidence from the "deep time" past, and looks at ways to mitigate climate change by using negative emissions technology (e.g. bioenergy and carbon capture and storage, BECCS), but also by adapting to perhaps a higher than "two degree world," particularly in the most vulnerable, developing countries. Energy and Climate Change is an essential resource for geoscientists, climate scientists, environmental scientists, and students; as well as policy makers, energy professionals, energy statisticians, energy historians and economists.

    • Provides an overarching narrative linking Earth system science with an integrated approach to energy and climate change
    • Includes a unique breadth of coverage from modern to "deep time" climate change; from resource geology to economics; from climate change mitigation to adaptation; and from the industrial revolution to the Anthropocene
    • Readable, accessible, and well-illustrated, giving the reader a clear overview of the topic
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherElsevier Science
    Release dateMar 20, 2018
    ISBN9780128120224
    Energy and Climate Change: An Introduction to Geological Controls, Interventions and Mitigations
    Author

    Michael Stephenson

    Michael Stephenson is an expert on energy and climate change and has a unique mixture of experience in modern climate and energy science, policy, “deep time” climate science, and coal and petroleum geology. He has published two books on related subjects and over 80 peer-reviewed papers. His recently published book Shale gas and fracking: the science behind the controversy (Elsevier) won an ‘honourable mention’ at the Association of American Publishers PROSE awards in Washington DC in February 2016. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the Elsevier Journal Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology. In addition, as Chief Scientist of the British Geological Survey, Michael Stephenson has represented UK science interests in energy, as well as providing extensive advice to the UK Government.

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      Book preview

      Energy and Climate Change - Michael Stephenson

      back.

      Chapter 1

      The Carbon Cycle, Fossil Fuels and Climate Change

      Abstract

      Geological science offers a unique way of looking at the relationship between energy and climate change. The neatest way to see this connection is through the carbon cycle—the path that carbon takes through the atmosphere, biosphere and geosphere—and to see the limits to that cycle, and the controls on its rate and character that are subject to natural fundamental laws. These laws can be modelled through the new discipline of Earth system science, revealing the extent to which life in all its forms interacts with other big forces to change the world. This is best illustrated in how the carbon cycle is at the centre of the tension between our use of energy and the atmosphere, and the geological generation of much of the fossil fuels we use to generate power. Carbon leaves the atmosphere largely through the engine of life, including biological pumps operating in the ocean. In a permanent form below the surface of the Earth, essentially as fossil fuels like coal, gas and oil, this carbon can do no harm. Of course, carbon can also leave the rocks and get back into the atmosphere. For example, carbon dioxide is released during the metamorphism of carbonate rocks when they are subducted into the Earth's mantle, or by volcanoes. But it is humankind's intervention in the carbon cycle, a short cut within this large geological part of the carbon cycle, which is causing the problem: the burning of fossil fuels.

      Keywords

      Carbon cycle; Carbon sequestration; Climate change; Earth system science; fossil fuel combustion; fossil fuel formation

      Contents

      The Carbon Cycle

      How Fossil Fuels are Formed

      Coal

      Oil and Natural Gas

      Methane Hydrates

      Carbonate Rocks

      How Fossil Fuel Formation and Combustion Change Climate

      Geological Sequestration and Climate

      Combustion and Climate Change

      Summary

      Bibliography

      A lot of us are now familiar with the famous photograph taken of the Earth on February 14, 1990 by the Voyager 1 space probe from a distance of 6 billion kilometres. In the photograph, the Earth appears as a pale blue dot against the blackness of space. During a lecture at Cornell University in 1994, the cosmologist Carl Sagan showed the image to the audience and contemplated the deeper meaning of the pale blue dot, in relation to the ultimate negligibility of humankind against the vastness of space. But the pale blue dot also helps us to realise the physical, chemical and biological boundaries that limit our planet. Most of the processes that I talk about in this book have limits, rates and thresholds that are governed by a system. The science of this is called Earth system science. It is fairly new and it is very interdisciplinary, using elements of geology, physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics.

      One of the most interesting early findings of Earth system science is the extent to which life in all its forms interacts with other big forces to change the world. In a sense, the tension between our use of energy and the atmosphere and the geological generation of much of the fossil fuels we use is one of the best demonstrations of the way in which life interacts with other big forces, as I hope you will see. This is a unique geological way of looking at the problem of energy and climate change.

      The Carbon Cycle

      Geologists were amongst the first to recognise that life has had a powerful role in shaping the Earth. James Hutton, one of the founders of geology, described the Earth as ‘…not just a machine but also an organised body, as it has a regenerative power…’ The Russian geologist Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky was one of the first geologists to hypothesise that life is a geological force that shapes the Earth, suggesting that the oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere result from biological processes. During the 1920s he published works arguing that living organisms could reshape the planets as surely as any physical

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