Thursday, February 07, 2013

Caution from Ray

U.S. shale oil: Are we headed to a new era of oil abundance? - Slate Magazine

Ray Pierrehumbert doesn't usually turn up at Slate (I see him via Real Climate, though), but here he is suggesting caution about America's newly recoverable oil and natural gas.   This paragraph is worth remembering:
 The flaws in the abundance narrative for fracked natural gas are much the same as for tight oil, so I won't belabor the point. Certainly, the current natural gas glut has played a welcome role in the reduced growth rate of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, and the climate benefits of switching from coal to natural gas are abundantly clear. But gas, too, is in a Red Queen's race, and it can't be counted on to last out the next few decades, let alone the century of abundance predicted by some boosters. Temporarily cheap and abundant gas buys us some respite—which we should be using to put decarbonized energy systems in place. It will only do us good if we use this transitional period wisely. We won't be much better off in the long run if cheap gas only succeeds in killing off the nascent renewables industry and the development of next-generation nuclear power.
 All sounds very sensible to me.

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