Presentation to the American Geophysical Union fall meeting, December 17, 2015, San Francisco; Union Session on “Is Peak Oil Dead and What Does It Mean for Climate Change?” According to the IPCC’s Synthesis Report, achieving a 66 percent chance (or better) of Earth surface temperatures warming only 2 degrees Centigrade over preindustrial times requires emitting no more than 1,000 Gigatons of CO2 between 2011 and 2100. However, as climate scientist Kevin Anderson has pointed out, emissions from energy production between 2011 and 2014 were about 140 Gt . Subtracting realistic emissions budgets for deforestation and cement production, the remaining budget for energy-only emissions to 2100 is about 650 Gt of CO2. That equates to just 19 years of continued business-as-usual emissions from global fossil energy use. The recent Paris agreement states the aspirational goal of not exceeding 1.5 degrees, which would translate to less than a decade’s worth of […]