Predictions of coal, CO2 production flawed

AUSTIN, Texas — The CO2 emission estimates used for government policy decisions assume unlimited coal and fossil fuel production for the next 100 years, an unrealistic premise which skews climate change models and proposed solutions, according to new research published by Tad Patzek , chair of the Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering Department at The University of Texas at Austin. Based on widely accepted studies predicting coal production will peak and decline after 2011, Patzek warns climate change predictions should be revised to account for this inevitable peak and decline. His research appears in the internationally peer-reviewed journal, Energy , The International Journal . "Governments worldwide are basing their policy decisions on the uninterrupted increase of coal and oil production worldwide," says Patzek. "These policy decisions will be inherently in error, and will lead to expensive and false technological solutions." Under the 40 different U.S. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios, Patzek found 36 of the 40 scenarios predicted future carbon production and CO2 emissions at today's rate of coal production. Credible forecasts of coal production, by contrast, predict a 50 percent reduction over the next 50 years. "Most of the IPCC scenario writers accepted the common myth of 200-400 years of coal supply, and now their 'eternal' (100 years plus) growth of carbon dioxide emissions in turn is a part of the commonly accepted social myth," says Patzek.