Most fossil fuels 'unburnable' under 2C climate target

[Eugene]

Source: BBC

7 January 2015 Last updated at 18:00 GMT

Most fossil fuels 'unburnable' under 2C climate target

By Helen Briggs
Environment correspondent, BBC News

Most of the world's fossil fuel reserves will need to stay in the ground if dangerous global warming is to be avoided, modelling work suggests.

Over 80% of coal, 50% of gas and 30% of oil reserves are "unburnable" under the goal to limit global warming to no more than 2C, say scientists.

University College London research, published in Nature journal, rules out drilling in the Arctic.

And it points to heavy restrictions on coal to limit temperature rises.

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Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30709211

[riversedge]

1. Pres Obama's veto pen is smart--no use for a pipeline

if fossil fuels stay in the ground. Of course that is a big IF--but lower prices will help that to happen.

[FBaggins]

2. Unfortunately... "leader of the free world" is mostly imaginary

He can't veto other countries' coal burning.

[pscot]

4. we'll burn more oil

because it's cheap.

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. Which fossil fuels must remain in the ground to limit global warming?

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0115/070115-fossil-fuels

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Which fossil fuels must remain in the ground to limit global warming?[/font]

[font size=4]7 January 2015[/font]

[font size=3] A third of oil reserves, half of gas reserves and over 80% of current coal reserves globally should remain in the ground and not be used before 2050 if global warming is to stay below the 2°C target agreed by policy makers, according to new research by the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources.

The study funded by the UK Energy Research Centre and published in Nature today, also identifies the geographic location of existing reserves that should remain unused and so sets out the regions that stand to lose most from achieving the 2°C goal.

The authors show that the overwhelming majority of the huge coal reserves in China, Russia and the United States should remain unused along with over 260 thousand million barrels oil reserves in the Middle East, equivalent to all of the oil reserves held by Saudi Arabia. The Middle East should also leave over 60% of its gas reserves in the ground.

The development of resources in the Arctic and any increase in unconventional oil – oil of a poor quality which is hard to extract – are also found to be inconsistent with efforts to limit climate change.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature14016