HONR 229L: Climate Change: Science, Economics, and Governance Fossil Fuel Reserves Your name here 11 October 2017

First and foremost, please read the Jakob & Hilaire “News & Views” piece carefully, which helps “translate” the McGlade and Ekins article. And, please look at (and complete) the admission ticket. You might want to begin by asking students which piece was more understandable: i.e., from which piece did they begin to understand the story. FYI, Nature often accompanies their scientific papers with News & Views pieces to help “translate” the story

McGlade and Ekins state that IPCC recently suggested that to have a better-than-even chance of avoiding more than a 2°C rise in global mean surface temperature, “the carbon budget between 2011 and 2050 is around 870  1240 Gt CO2” You might want to begin by asking folks if they have any idea what this means.

Please note that to introduce this topic, I will show the following slide in class, on Monday. You are more than welcome to use this slide as well, as the start of the discussion Remaining Emissions http://ar5-syr.ipcc.ch/ipcc/sites/default/files/AR5_SYR_Figure_2.3.png

The charts below contains background info vital for getting started with understanding this paper. I show global carbon emissions, in the form of solid (coal), liquid (oil), and gas (methane or “natural gas”), from 1860 to 2015. If you add these numbers up, you will see humans have already emitted about 2056 Gt CO2 CO2 emission, 1860 to 2015 = 2056 Gt CO2 Also, coal dominated in the early part of the record, and coal dominates (globally) as of late. M & E want to leave vast amounts of coal in the ground. See if the class can reason why they reach this conclusion! Note: I think it is because burning coal exerts a social cost, due to poor air quality that results, plus we get more energy per CO2 released from gas (nearly twice as much) compared to coal. WRT to oil, we need this to drive our cars

Now with this background, you can dig into the substance of the paper. Might want to highlight the main findings first: that in order to have “half a chance” of keeping the rise in T below 2°C, the world must leave unused one third of oil reserves, half of gas reserves, and 80% (EIGHTY PER CENT!) of coal reserves. Wow, this seems like such a tall order. Can easily spend 10 to 15 mins discussing whether folks think this is achievable. Your call how to structure !!!

Can spend rest of time trying to decipher McGlade & Ekins (M & E) paper, with help of course from the Jakob & Hilaire (J & H) commentary. While you do not have to get too bogged down in technical details, would be great to focus on the main points of the paper, such as: “resources” versus “reserves” (i.e., what do these terms mean?; what are the numbers for each?) If you can walk students through panels a, b, & c of Fig. 1 great, but if not, be sure to show panel d of Fig 1. Can ask students to explain what is shown (it will be on their admission ticket!) and be prepared to explain yourself, just in case  And, perhaps combine Fig 1D of M & E with Fig 1 of J & H for some fruitful discussion

If you can decipher Fig 2 of M & E, you are welcome to show and ask others if they understood this figure. Completely your call … can go with or without this figure! By the way, the unit of ZJ is explained at http://www.convertunits.com/from/joule/to/zeptojoule

M & E provide estimates with and without CCS Might want to ask students what CCS means … what do the initials stand for (this is given in both papers) and what does this mean? If you have time to do a little bit of on-line research about CCS, which J & H call a “young technology”, feel free to insert. If not, no worries!

Table 1 of M & E is quite a tour de force … using an economically-optimal solution (these words appear right below Figure 2) that maximizes social welfare, they attempt to go beyond global limits on the combustion of fossil fuel by extending the analysis to particular regions. Please consider showing this table, and discussing in the context of this AT question: Outside of the Middle East, what single country sits on the largest reserves of oil (aka bitumen)? If we ignore carbon capture and sequestration, what fraction of this country's oil reserve do M & E suggest must stay in the ground in order for warming to be limited to 2°C? Based on information at https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=727&t=6 assess whether the US would be impacted by the decision to leave so much of this reserve in the ground, should this country choose to follow the numerical guidelines of Table 1 of M & E and other aspects of this table you or the class, upon your questioning, think is worth discussing. Given what is coming next, might want to also focus on Africa in terms of this table.

Please: ask students to define “carbon rent” and be prepared to define if they can’t answer  walk the students through the last AT question, regarding quote from Tanzania’s energy minister

Wrap up as you see fit, either by discussing some of the politics (last column of J & H article), whether students think the framework laid out for what needs to be done to limit rise in GMST below 2C is feasible, or some other means of wrapping up. Great if you can work in some of the lessons from the Jared Diamond portion of class, but doing so is a “tall order” and you only have ~45 mins 

Here are the figures from the readings

Here are the figures from the readings

Here are the figures from the readings

Here are the figures from the readings

Here are the figures from the readings