SPE Denver General Meeting October 2026

Abstract:

Petroleum Engineers should have a basic grasp of climate science. While alarmists in the media have caused many of us to tune-out, the science can be quite interesting. This 30- minute presentation reviews the basic physics, some learnings from paleo reconstruction, recent temperature trends, and then teaches how engineers can make their own future warming calculations. You may be surprised how similar are projections between the scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other well-known scientists branded as skeptics. Often missing from the climate narrative is perspective on climate shift versus natural weather variability, for both temperature and storms. This presentation tries to frame this distinction for you so you can make up your own mind on urgency. The climate narrative will always be ubiquitous for the oil and gas business, so hopefully by having a grasp on the science we engineers can better influence the narrative, and quantitatively understand how our actions can be helpful.

Biography:

John Schopp, SPE, was Vice President at Encana for 15 years, and then Senior Advisor to private equity company Blackstone Group for 5 years before retiring in 2021. He is a lifetime weather enthusiast, and upon retirement found the time to read the 2400 page Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report as well as a number of books and technical articles on climate science. John penned the JPT article “Engineer Raises Climate Science Above the Din” in 2023 and recently taught an SPE Masterclass titled “Climate Science for Engineers”.