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
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.
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?
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 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?
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.
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
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"?
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!
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.'
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?
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.