Now you state the IPCC used RCP8.5 as a baseline and share their graph. Can you tell me where in the report that graph is? As you know it is a very long report. I see the graphs on page 1069 & 1130, which clearly show all models but not the graph you have shared . https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_all_final.pdf
Now when I look at your fossil fuels graph, the BP Statistical Review of 2018 states clearly below the data on p. 49 of their report: "Notes: The carbon emissions above reflect only those through consumption of oil, gas and coal for combustion related activities, and are based on ‘Default CO2 Emissions Factors for Combustion’ listed by the IPCC in its Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (2006). This does not allow for any carbon that is sequestered, for other sources of carbon emissions, or for emissions of other greenhouse gases. Our data is therefore not comparable to official national emissions data"
There is much more for this discussion but let's start there. Thanks so much for any clarifications or answers to my questions.
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/ how does this align with the latest EIA report showing increasing GDP and energy use offsetting the effect of decarbonization. If anything through to 2050 these projections appear to be between RCP4.5 and RCP6
Rejecting RCP8.5 is one thing we can agree on. Expecting the signatories to the Paris accord is to keep their commitments is another. The UK and EU are already rolling back their commitments to ban ICE vehicle sales and natural gas heating after 2030 and require 100% sales of EVs and use of heat pumps for heating homes.
In that light a long plateau of CO2 emissions at around 40 Gtonnes does not look unrealistic.
Are you confident that China, India and Africa will reduce the use of coal, oil and natural gas even if developed Western economies do reduce their use of fossil fuels.
All that will happen is that the price of fossil fuels will go down and usage wi
ll stay firm whilst the cost of energy in Western economies goes up.
Take a look at Russian oil production before and after Ukraine sanctions. 9.6 million barrels per day before , 9.5 million barrels per day after. Russian revenue has declined, but the beneficiaries have been China and India buying up cheaper oil.
Developing countries will choose the cheapest form of energy to grow their economies
Unless carbon free baseload power becomes cheaper than coal and gas, emissions will not decline.
So RCP4.5 to RCP 6.0 looks realistic, the EIA NZE report projecting a renewable technology path to RCP2.6 is based on Paris Accord commitments which will not be met.
Roger, what will it take to unite the climate realist community? Right now there are too many disparate parties vying for attention including some who discredit the community. What does it take to create one, credible, unified voice?
The AR6 mealy mouthing notes potential for RCP8.5 to still be realistic, “including political factors and, for instance, higher than anticipated population and economic growth.”
As we have noted, “higher than anticipated population growth” compared to the data used to project future population in original RCP8.5 should by now be laughable. It was always a basis for higher emissions in the RCP’s than likely, and it is now indefensible based on ACTUAL population/birth rate data.
In sum, one way RCP8.5 became the official scare story was by using future population projections that were never realistic.
Not only the scenario selection makes the bias, but also the quality of the models that are used to play the game.
There are two kinds of uncertainties or margins for contemplation: those related to the evaluation of the climate sensitivity to all factors, anthropic and natural, the models – and those ingrained in the choice of an improbable future, the scenarios.
We thus find ourselves in a doubly unsettled situation.
The attribution of temperature trends to human or natural causes is the subject of a recent publication by Connolly at al. (DOI: 10.1088/1674-4527/acf18e) where 16 Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) and 5 surface temperature data sets were evaluated with the outcome that “it is possible to conclude anything from the long-term warming being ‘mostly natural’ to ‘mostly anthropogenic’ or anything in between.”
In its AR6 WGI Report, the IPCC retained only one TSI data set with which the temperature trend gets mostly if not entirely attributed to human factors (forcing by greenhouse gases). This was the message sent to policymakers (and to scenario builders).
Ok, I can accept this was an error back in AR5. The IPCC reports are huge undertakings and involve a lot of people. Mistakes happen. You have written about inconsistencies in the IPCC work, for instance those between WG1 and WG2.
These mistakes and inconcistensies reflect badly on the IPCC. We know for a fact that bewteen the final draft and the published report only a few are doing the editing. And we know changes have been made in such instances.
Anyone studying for a PhD shall be aware of the dangers of assumptions and authoritative statements. They shall know to challenge them. In my research the most profound difference we make is to challenge the "everybody knows that"-statements. "Everybody knows" is asssumption and the game of telephone. Ask how they know and people get confused or angry. Often both.
The case you are showing here is both assumption, authoritative and convenient. In the field of climate, with so much zealotry and poorly diguised mix of political wants into research it is just too convenient to ignore the error.
Maybe it was not intentional in the first place. But it became covenient, and more than a decade without being called out shows it became intentional.
I'm reverting back to a short piece from 1977 that has influenced me over the years.
“A Computer specialist might be tempted to program the system to show a track record, for convenience. It could be done quite easily. But I commend to your attention the fact that when a manager has to look at a report every day, and physically move a pencil to transcribe the data from the report to a continuing graph or table (depending on management style), that few seconds give the opportunity to think about what the figures mean. Of course, if the boss has his secretary do the posting, he better have a secretary who thinks and calls attention to unusual phenomena. With such a secretary, who needs a boss? I hate to disappoint all you zealots in computer technology, but from time to time throughout this book there will be occasions when I do ask the user to think about what is going on.”
Materials Management Systems, by Robert G Brown, 1977
One of the things I have seen occur far too ofter in this technological age is that people respond out of rote without thinking through things and as a result accept misstatements and errors as fact when, in fact, they are not.
So, when you state, ...here is where a major and consequential blunder was made by the IPCC — the IPCC AR5 in 2013 identified only RCP8.5 as a baseline scenario."; readers and those selected to do peer-review, approached the publication with a bias that the report was correct and did not do the request digging. As a result, RCP8.5 had been replicated as the baseline for a decade.
That's a good out for every crook, scam artist, murderous psychopath on the planet. "I was just stupid, I screwed up, I didn't know any better".
The right thing, the rational thing is attribute to malice if the evidence indicates it was malice, if the evidence indicates stupidity, than that is the explanation, unless the preponderance of evidence points in another direction.
Roger, you keep thinking of these pronouncements as mistakes rather than intentional 'malinformation' (to use the progessives' term). If the politicians can't keep the populous fearful of the next 'climate disaster', then how will they cow and control them?
A confluence of interests among all the parties pushing the "crisis", and they know they will never have any adverse consequences if they are caught . Sad
There is another explanation that us neither a conspiracy nor a mistake. If we apply economic theory to this decision process, which would require not just scientific data, but bureaucratic risk, budgeting and a whole host of other incentives, it is very plausible that 8.5 could be seen as the logical choice and that those same incentives would exist across numerous bodies of decision makers. Bureaucies prime directive is self protection. This means risk should be avoided. In this case, risk is avoided by nor downgrading the baseline.
That's irrational. This is coordinated, in lockstep, just like the Covid insanity was, equally stupid and curiously promoted simultaneously Worldwide, in all the MSM and by politicians, just after the Covid Plandemic was ending. If it was stupidity you would expect random behavior. Some countries would go one way, others would take another course. No this is part of a plan. And serves the same function of wealth transfer and economic destruction as the fertilizer and food attacks, energy scarcity, covid, idiotic wars and W.H.O. compulsory restrictions.
Here in New Zealand I am engaging in discussion with our Ministry for the Environment who are adopting RCP8.5 and variants/successors for sea level rise projections so these posts are really helpful. Their position is: “...we firmly stand by the fact that the use of SSP8.5 in risk assessments is important for stress-testing plans, policies and strategies. Understanding the full range of possible futures enables informed choices about how to manage risk.” and
"The IPCC AR6 WGIII states that it has become less likely, but not implausible, that the world will follow an SSP5-8.5 emissions path. This is because of the effectiveness of green technology development and success of climate policies so far. It should be noted, however, that emissions trends in developing countries still track RCP8.5 and other factors that could result in higher global emissions include higher population or ecomonic growth, which is considered in the use of SSPs.
The emissions associated with SSP5-8.5 are now less likely, but that does not mean that the climate outcome is unlikely. We could reach the average climate outcome associated with SSP5-8.5 even if emissions follow a lower pathway due to climate feedback and tipping point uncertainty. This is due to uncertainty in carbon-cycle feedbacks, which could push CO2 concentrations towards the levels in SSP5-8.5 even under nominally lower emissions trajectories. Carbon cycle feedbacks include the release of methane from thawing permafrost or shifts in forest ecosystems because of higher CO2 levels and higher warming. Abrupt changes and tipping points, such as rapid Antarctic ice sheet melt and forest dieback, are plausible.
Reference: Box 3.3 (page 317) and FAQ 3.3 (page 386), Chapter 3 of Working Group III (Mitigation of Climate Change), Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2022."
Roger addressed the use of WGIII in contradiction to WG1 scientific findings. I also think that scenarios used for 'stress testing' is a long way away from adoption for 'policy.'
If their argument is "we should use 8.5 because climate feedbacks and tipping point uncertainty" why not use 10.5 or 12.5 or simply be honest and say " those are uncertainties that are unpredictable at this point in time". Seems like rationalizing not changing the course of the scientific Queen Mary.
If CO2 is actually not saturated, and it is really driving temperature, and Happer, Lindzen, Wijngaarden, Svensmark and all the other folks with empirical data to the contrary are wrong, will our current approach fix the problem anyway? With China authorizing 2 new coal plants a week, and much of the rest of the world burning more coal, what we are doing will make barely any difference, anyway. There are detailed estimates by Mark Mills (McCormick School of Engineering), Michael Kelly (University of Cambridge) and others of what it would take to reach net zero in the US in the time frames stated, according to which it can't be done, anyway. This is looking to me like a "But we must do SOMETHING!" project.
And why are we still spending all this time and effort on producing these voluminous IPCC reports, anyway? Crazy Al said the science was settled. We still keep working on the same old stuff (electric cars, heat pumps) and feeding the same old rent seekers (wind farm developers, climate modelers etc. ) Publishing AR N+1 does not change any of this.
The climate emergency is now just another self-perpetuating industry.
Bjorn Lomborg's approach: adapting to climate change - which is going to happen anyway - seems to make a lot more sense.
The IPCC should not be treated as if it is a source of serious science. The strength of the IPCC is to give crap science respectability. The brave and persecuted dissenters deserve support not the IPCC. Everyone taking a salary from the IPCC and other doomsday advocacy outfits should think about other work. With honorable exceptions, bureaucratic science has lost all credibility.
Dear Dr. Pielke, Scenarios are absolutely critical and well worth all the attention you give them.
You have mentioned a couple of times that you support decarbonization of the economy "right up to net zero". If that is the case, I would like your thoughts on how the world is going to replace the over 6000 byproducts of oil and gas production which, at present, permeate every aspect of modern life. Road tar, fertilizer, adhesives, solvents, paints, dyes, resins for fiberglass, synthetic fibers for clothes, plastics for bottles, blood bags, credit cards, food packaging, cell phone cases... all these and many more are presently by-products of oil and gas production. Are you aware of plausible plans to replace these thousands of products with "green" alternatives at scale and affordable costs in time to prevent widespread shortages?
The rational thing to do is to conserve oil & gas, especially oil, for the petrochemical industry rather than stupidly waste it for energy purposes that can be substituted by nuclear & biomass or coal based methanol. You can synthesize petrochemicals from a methanol feedstock, methanol can be manufactured in vast quantities from coal/biomass/flue gas/waste. However it would be much more economical to continue to use oil & gas feedstock to those well established industries. Replace the energy instead.
Dear Mr. SmithFS. Since coal is a fossil fuel, present plans for net zero forbid its use since it is not renewable. The organic chemistry industry began with coal derivatives in the 19th century but switched to oil and gas byproducts because they are much more economical. Making methanol out of biomass would increase the demands on the soil which are already very well occupied with feeding the world's population. The petrochemicals industry has grown to its present scale over 150 years; I would be interested to see calculations on how long it would take to replace these massive plants with biomass converters, how much capital it would require, and what price the "green" alternative products would require to be profitable.
I say coal for those who are concerned strictly about oil & gas supply rather than GHG emissions. If you are concerned about GHG emissions then indeed Methanol can be made carbon neutral from biomass, flue gas (i.e. cement plant), waste or even seawater CO2.
As for biomass supply, we are stupidly burning most biomass in powerplants inefficiently, where that can easily be replaced with nuclear. And idiotic agrofuels that have a carbon efficiency of ~10-20% vs biomass --> methanol can have a 100% carbon efficiency. i.e 5-10X lower biomass usage for the same amount of liquid fuel.
And we stupidly burn enough forest in wildfires to replace the entire World's liquid fuel demand with biomass --> methanol. You can convert forest overgrowth locally to methanol with portable tractor trailer sized plants, instead of it causing devastating wildfires with major health hazard from particulate emissions and the many deaths and property destruction. Biomass --> Methanol being one of the simplest and oldest chemical process known to man. A basic distillation procedure.
The Nobel Prize winning chemist, George Olah, examined in depth the problem of replacing diminishing Oil & Gas, and concluded that a Nuclear-Methanol economy would be the most viable replacement. And wrote a book on the subject: Beyond Oil & Gas: The Methanol Economy:
So again, the best thing to do, as I stated, is to continue the petrochemicals industry based on Oil & Gas as long as possible by substituting Nuclear & Methanol for Oil & Gas energy sources. That's the rational thing to do. Unfortunately, we have an energy supply administered by the most corrupt.
Even worse error of the IPCC AR6 is stating this: ". . . the rapid development of renewable energy technologies and emerging climate policy have made it considerably less likely that emissions could end up as high as RCP8.5..."
What "renewable energy technologies" are those? Renewable still remains the same old hydro for most of it and virtually all of the practical renewables. Resource consumption for wind & solar is so extreme that the more wind solar installed the worse emissions get. Again IPCC ignores the only energy source actually capable of replacing fossil, and that is nuclear energy. For this reason the IPCC is guilty of causing the very thing they claim they want to mitigate. Hypocrites.
No punches thrown Mr Smith. The new ruinables are adding to our grid at a pace that barely meets increasing power demand. No transition here. Giving these bankrupting pseudo technologies a boost with the phrase in question is borderline heretical. Roger, pls try to avoid such support. Hypocrites indeed (excellent point btw)!
Few questions I am hoping you can help me understand.
You start with the KNMI report and is 'mystifying' use of RCP8.5. When I look at the report I see a clear discussion of all models, particularly starting on p.26. https://cdn.knmi.nl/knmi/pdf/bibliotheek/knmipubWR/WR2014-01.pdf. Am I missing something?
Now you state the IPCC used RCP8.5 as a baseline and share their graph. Can you tell me where in the report that graph is? As you know it is a very long report. I see the graphs on page 1069 & 1130, which clearly show all models but not the graph you have shared . https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_all_final.pdf
Now when I look at your fossil fuels graph, the BP Statistical Review of 2018 states clearly below the data on p. 49 of their report: "Notes: The carbon emissions above reflect only those through consumption of oil, gas and coal for combustion related activities, and are based on ‘Default CO2 Emissions Factors for Combustion’ listed by the IPCC in its Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (2006). This does not allow for any carbon that is sequestered, for other sources of carbon emissions, or for emissions of other greenhouse gases. Our data is therefore not comparable to official national emissions data"
There is much more for this discussion but let's start there. Thanks so much for any clarifications or answers to my questions.
What was done to Dr. Pielke, Sr. was planned malice. What was done to promote the faux spike was planned malice.
Hey, I found this footage from the recent climatepalooza at the UN in New York
If you look close you can see Guterrez, Kerry, Piltdown Mann, all the Illuminati.
https://www.google.ca/search?q=monty+python+monks+chanting+and+hitting+themselves+on+head&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-ca&client=safari#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:62210d26,vid:P6WjhzzEHmE,st:0
Tell me this isn’t very close to what we witness
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/ how does this align with the latest EIA report showing increasing GDP and energy use offsetting the effect of decarbonization. If anything through to 2050 these projections appear to be between RCP4.5 and RCP6
The totally captured IEA.
Rejecting RCP8.5 is one thing we can agree on. Expecting the signatories to the Paris accord is to keep their commitments is another. The UK and EU are already rolling back their commitments to ban ICE vehicle sales and natural gas heating after 2030 and require 100% sales of EVs and use of heat pumps for heating homes.
In that light a long plateau of CO2 emissions at around 40 Gtonnes does not look unrealistic.
Are you confident that China, India and Africa will reduce the use of coal, oil and natural gas even if developed Western economies do reduce their use of fossil fuels.
All that will happen is that the price of fossil fuels will go down and usage wi
ll stay firm whilst the cost of energy in Western economies goes up.
Take a look at Russian oil production before and after Ukraine sanctions. 9.6 million barrels per day before , 9.5 million barrels per day after. Russian revenue has declined, but the beneficiaries have been China and India buying up cheaper oil.
Developing countries will choose the cheapest form of energy to grow their economies
Unless carbon free baseload power becomes cheaper than coal and gas, emissions will not decline.
So RCP4.5 to RCP 6.0 looks realistic, the EIA NZE report projecting a renewable technology path to RCP2.6 is based on Paris Accord commitments which will not be met.
Roger, what will it take to unite the climate realist community? Right now there are too many disparate parties vying for attention including some who discredit the community. What does it take to create one, credible, unified voice?
The AR6 mealy mouthing notes potential for RCP8.5 to still be realistic, “including political factors and, for instance, higher than anticipated population and economic growth.”
As we have noted, “higher than anticipated population growth” compared to the data used to project future population in original RCP8.5 should by now be laughable. It was always a basis for higher emissions in the RCP’s than likely, and it is now indefensible based on ACTUAL population/birth rate data.
In sum, one way RCP8.5 became the official scare story was by using future population projections that were never realistic.
Great post, Roger!
Not only the scenario selection makes the bias, but also the quality of the models that are used to play the game.
There are two kinds of uncertainties or margins for contemplation: those related to the evaluation of the climate sensitivity to all factors, anthropic and natural, the models – and those ingrained in the choice of an improbable future, the scenarios.
We thus find ourselves in a doubly unsettled situation.
The attribution of temperature trends to human or natural causes is the subject of a recent publication by Connolly at al. (DOI: 10.1088/1674-4527/acf18e) where 16 Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) and 5 surface temperature data sets were evaluated with the outcome that “it is possible to conclude anything from the long-term warming being ‘mostly natural’ to ‘mostly anthropogenic’ or anything in between.”
In its AR6 WGI Report, the IPCC retained only one TSI data set with which the temperature trend gets mostly if not entirely attributed to human factors (forcing by greenhouse gases). This was the message sent to policymakers (and to scenario builders).
Ok, I can accept this was an error back in AR5. The IPCC reports are huge undertakings and involve a lot of people. Mistakes happen. You have written about inconsistencies in the IPCC work, for instance those between WG1 and WG2.
These mistakes and inconcistensies reflect badly on the IPCC. We know for a fact that bewteen the final draft and the published report only a few are doing the editing. And we know changes have been made in such instances.
Anyone studying for a PhD shall be aware of the dangers of assumptions and authoritative statements. They shall know to challenge them. In my research the most profound difference we make is to challenge the "everybody knows that"-statements. "Everybody knows" is asssumption and the game of telephone. Ask how they know and people get confused or angry. Often both.
The case you are showing here is both assumption, authoritative and convenient. In the field of climate, with so much zealotry and poorly diguised mix of political wants into research it is just too convenient to ignore the error.
Maybe it was not intentional in the first place. But it became covenient, and more than a decade without being called out shows it became intentional.
This is scientific malpractice.
I'm reverting back to a short piece from 1977 that has influenced me over the years.
“A Computer specialist might be tempted to program the system to show a track record, for convenience. It could be done quite easily. But I commend to your attention the fact that when a manager has to look at a report every day, and physically move a pencil to transcribe the data from the report to a continuing graph or table (depending on management style), that few seconds give the opportunity to think about what the figures mean. Of course, if the boss has his secretary do the posting, he better have a secretary who thinks and calls attention to unusual phenomena. With such a secretary, who needs a boss? I hate to disappoint all you zealots in computer technology, but from time to time throughout this book there will be occasions when I do ask the user to think about what is going on.”
Materials Management Systems, by Robert G Brown, 1977
One of the things I have seen occur far too ofter in this technological age is that people respond out of rote without thinking through things and as a result accept misstatements and errors as fact when, in fact, they are not.
So, when you state, ...here is where a major and consequential blunder was made by the IPCC — the IPCC AR5 in 2013 identified only RCP8.5 as a baseline scenario."; readers and those selected to do peer-review, approached the publication with a bias that the report was correct and did not do the request digging. As a result, RCP8.5 had been replicated as the baseline for a decade.
"Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity"?
That's a good out for every crook, scam artist, murderous psychopath on the planet. "I was just stupid, I screwed up, I didn't know any better".
The right thing, the rational thing is attribute to malice if the evidence indicates it was malice, if the evidence indicates stupidity, than that is the explanation, unless the preponderance of evidence points in another direction.
The version I heard was "can be explained by incompetence".
Not as charitable but not inconsistent either 👍
Roger, you keep thinking of these pronouncements as mistakes rather than intentional 'malinformation' (to use the progessives' term). If the politicians can't keep the populous fearful of the next 'climate disaster', then how will they cow and control them?
This wasn't a bug - it was a feature!
Ha
But no
To pull off such an information feint would require a degree of planning and sophistication that is more than heroic
I have been in this community for decades and can assure you that such political cunningness and information warfare is not remotely possible
Cock up not conspiracy 👍👍
Too close to the trees to see the forest.
A confluence of interests among all the parties pushing the "crisis", and they know they will never have any adverse consequences if they are caught . Sad
If actions were random then the climate models would not all run hot. At least some would run cooler than observations.
Since there are dozens of them all running above observations, that is not random.
There is another explanation that us neither a conspiracy nor a mistake. If we apply economic theory to this decision process, which would require not just scientific data, but bureaucratic risk, budgeting and a whole host of other incentives, it is very plausible that 8.5 could be seen as the logical choice and that those same incentives would exist across numerous bodies of decision makers. Bureaucies prime directive is self protection. This means risk should be avoided. In this case, risk is avoided by nor downgrading the baseline.
That's irrational. This is coordinated, in lockstep, just like the Covid insanity was, equally stupid and curiously promoted simultaneously Worldwide, in all the MSM and by politicians, just after the Covid Plandemic was ending. If it was stupidity you would expect random behavior. Some countries would go one way, others would take another course. No this is part of a plan. And serves the same function of wealth transfer and economic destruction as the fertilizer and food attacks, energy scarcity, covid, idiotic wars and W.H.O. compulsory restrictions.
Here in New Zealand I am engaging in discussion with our Ministry for the Environment who are adopting RCP8.5 and variants/successors for sea level rise projections so these posts are really helpful. Their position is: “...we firmly stand by the fact that the use of SSP8.5 in risk assessments is important for stress-testing plans, policies and strategies. Understanding the full range of possible futures enables informed choices about how to manage risk.” and
"The IPCC AR6 WGIII states that it has become less likely, but not implausible, that the world will follow an SSP5-8.5 emissions path. This is because of the effectiveness of green technology development and success of climate policies so far. It should be noted, however, that emissions trends in developing countries still track RCP8.5 and other factors that could result in higher global emissions include higher population or ecomonic growth, which is considered in the use of SSPs.
The emissions associated with SSP5-8.5 are now less likely, but that does not mean that the climate outcome is unlikely. We could reach the average climate outcome associated with SSP5-8.5 even if emissions follow a lower pathway due to climate feedback and tipping point uncertainty. This is due to uncertainty in carbon-cycle feedbacks, which could push CO2 concentrations towards the levels in SSP5-8.5 even under nominally lower emissions trajectories. Carbon cycle feedbacks include the release of methane from thawing permafrost or shifts in forest ecosystems because of higher CO2 levels and higher warming. Abrupt changes and tipping points, such as rapid Antarctic ice sheet melt and forest dieback, are plausible.
Reference: Box 3.3 (page 317) and FAQ 3.3 (page 386), Chapter 3 of Working Group III (Mitigation of Climate Change), Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2022."
Roger addressed the use of WGIII in contradiction to WG1 scientific findings. I also think that scenarios used for 'stress testing' is a long way away from adoption for 'policy.'
If their argument is "we should use 8.5 because climate feedbacks and tipping point uncertainty" why not use 10.5 or 12.5 or simply be honest and say " those are uncertainties that are unpredictable at this point in time". Seems like rationalizing not changing the course of the scientific Queen Mary.
Exactly
Climate Emergency Inc.
If CO2 is actually not saturated, and it is really driving temperature, and Happer, Lindzen, Wijngaarden, Svensmark and all the other folks with empirical data to the contrary are wrong, will our current approach fix the problem anyway? With China authorizing 2 new coal plants a week, and much of the rest of the world burning more coal, what we are doing will make barely any difference, anyway. There are detailed estimates by Mark Mills (McCormick School of Engineering), Michael Kelly (University of Cambridge) and others of what it would take to reach net zero in the US in the time frames stated, according to which it can't be done, anyway. This is looking to me like a "But we must do SOMETHING!" project.
And why are we still spending all this time and effort on producing these voluminous IPCC reports, anyway? Crazy Al said the science was settled. We still keep working on the same old stuff (electric cars, heat pumps) and feeding the same old rent seekers (wind farm developers, climate modelers etc. ) Publishing AR N+1 does not change any of this.
The climate emergency is now just another self-perpetuating industry.
Bjorn Lomborg's approach: adapting to climate change - which is going to happen anyway - seems to make a lot more sense.
The IPCC should not be treated as if it is a source of serious science. The strength of the IPCC is to give crap science respectability. The brave and persecuted dissenters deserve support not the IPCC. Everyone taking a salary from the IPCC and other doomsday advocacy outfits should think about other work. With honorable exceptions, bureaucratic science has lost all credibility.
Dear Dr. Pielke, Scenarios are absolutely critical and well worth all the attention you give them.
You have mentioned a couple of times that you support decarbonization of the economy "right up to net zero". If that is the case, I would like your thoughts on how the world is going to replace the over 6000 byproducts of oil and gas production which, at present, permeate every aspect of modern life. Road tar, fertilizer, adhesives, solvents, paints, dyes, resins for fiberglass, synthetic fibers for clothes, plastics for bottles, blood bags, credit cards, food packaging, cell phone cases... all these and many more are presently by-products of oil and gas production. Are you aware of plausible plans to replace these thousands of products with "green" alternatives at scale and affordable costs in time to prevent widespread shortages?
The rational thing to do is to conserve oil & gas, especially oil, for the petrochemical industry rather than stupidly waste it for energy purposes that can be substituted by nuclear & biomass or coal based methanol. You can synthesize petrochemicals from a methanol feedstock, methanol can be manufactured in vast quantities from coal/biomass/flue gas/waste. However it would be much more economical to continue to use oil & gas feedstock to those well established industries. Replace the energy instead.
Dear Mr. SmithFS. Since coal is a fossil fuel, present plans for net zero forbid its use since it is not renewable. The organic chemistry industry began with coal derivatives in the 19th century but switched to oil and gas byproducts because they are much more economical. Making methanol out of biomass would increase the demands on the soil which are already very well occupied with feeding the world's population. The petrochemicals industry has grown to its present scale over 150 years; I would be interested to see calculations on how long it would take to replace these massive plants with biomass converters, how much capital it would require, and what price the "green" alternative products would require to be profitable.
I say coal for those who are concerned strictly about oil & gas supply rather than GHG emissions. If you are concerned about GHG emissions then indeed Methanol can be made carbon neutral from biomass, flue gas (i.e. cement plant), waste or even seawater CO2.
As for biomass supply, we are stupidly burning most biomass in powerplants inefficiently, where that can easily be replaced with nuclear. And idiotic agrofuels that have a carbon efficiency of ~10-20% vs biomass --> methanol can have a 100% carbon efficiency. i.e 5-10X lower biomass usage for the same amount of liquid fuel.
And we stupidly burn enough forest in wildfires to replace the entire World's liquid fuel demand with biomass --> methanol. You can convert forest overgrowth locally to methanol with portable tractor trailer sized plants, instead of it causing devastating wildfires with major health hazard from particulate emissions and the many deaths and property destruction. Biomass --> Methanol being one of the simplest and oldest chemical process known to man. A basic distillation procedure.
The Nobel Prize winning chemist, George Olah, examined in depth the problem of replacing diminishing Oil & Gas, and concluded that a Nuclear-Methanol economy would be the most viable replacement. And wrote a book on the subject: Beyond Oil & Gas: The Methanol Economy:
https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Oil-Gas-Methanol-Economy-ebook/dp/B08671RCN9
So again, the best thing to do, as I stated, is to continue the petrochemicals industry based on Oil & Gas as long as possible by substituting Nuclear & Methanol for Oil & Gas energy sources. That's the rational thing to do. Unfortunately, we have an energy supply administered by the most corrupt.
Even worse error of the IPCC AR6 is stating this: ". . . the rapid development of renewable energy technologies and emerging climate policy have made it considerably less likely that emissions could end up as high as RCP8.5..."
What "renewable energy technologies" are those? Renewable still remains the same old hydro for most of it and virtually all of the practical renewables. Resource consumption for wind & solar is so extreme that the more wind solar installed the worse emissions get. Again IPCC ignores the only energy source actually capable of replacing fossil, and that is nuclear energy. For this reason the IPCC is guilty of causing the very thing they claim they want to mitigate. Hypocrites.
No punches thrown Mr Smith. The new ruinables are adding to our grid at a pace that barely meets increasing power demand. No transition here. Giving these bankrupting pseudo technologies a boost with the phrase in question is borderline heretical. Roger, pls try to avoid such support. Hypocrites indeed (excellent point btw)!
Love the reference to 'ruinables'. Not heard that one before. I might use that if you dont mind?👍
That's a commonly used and perfectly accurate term. Also you hear "The Unreliables" used a lot.