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Future scenarios with significant anthropogenic climate change also
display large increases in world production of fossil fuels, the principal
CO"2 emission source. Meanwhile, fossil fuel depletion has also been
identified as a future challenge. This chapter reviews the connection
between these two issues and concludes that limits to availability of
fossil fuels will set a limit for mankind's ability to affect the climate.
However, this limit is unclear as various studies have reached quite
different conclusions regarding future atmospheric CO"2 concentrations
caused by fossil fuel limitations. It is concluded that the current set of
emission scenarios used by the IPCC and others is perforated by optimistic
expectations on future fossil fuel production that are improbable or even
unrealistic. The current situation, where climate models largely rely on
emission scenarios detached from the reality of supply and its inherent
problems are problematic. In fact, it may even mislead planners and
politicians into making decisions that mitigate one problem but make the
other one worse. It is important to understand that the fossil energy
problem and the anthropogenic climate change problem are tightly connected
and need to be treated as two interwoven challenges necessitating a
holistic solution.
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