New Scientist has a recent article about [t]he worst-case climate scenarios are no longer plausible today. This is a topic that has been covered here before, and is partly motivated by a paper discussed in this post.
The basic premise in the article is that global warming of between 4oC and 5oC is no longer a real risk. The problem is that even if the wost-case emission scenario is no longer plausible, uncertainties in climate sensitivity and carbon cycle feedbacks means that we still can’t rule out >4oC of global warming.
The article also suggests that these scenarios date back to 2014, when they were published by the IPCC. As this Skeptical Science post describes, their development actually started in 2007. Also, the concentration/forcing pathways and socioeconomic scenarios were actually developed in parallel, rather than the concentration/forcing pathways following from a set of socioeconomically motivated emission pathways.
The article also suggests that the worst-case scenario became to be known as the business as usual (BAU) pathway. Probably an unfortunate choice of terminology, but this was actually what was used to describe it in the paper that presented it in 2011. Even the 2014 IPCC report (AR5) had a glossary entry that said that BAU has “fallen out of favour because the idea of ‘business-as-usual’ in century-long socioeconomic projections is hard to fathom.” The latest IPCC report (AR6) also tended to use Global Warming Levels (GWLs) rather than simply using the scenarios (i.e., it reported on the impact of different levels of warming, rather than simply the impact of following different concentration pathways).
So, in my view, there’s a lot nuance that the article glossed over, or ignored, and many researchers are already taking note of these criticisms about scenario use.
I wanted to finish by commenting on the following. The article suggests that:
This puts climate scientists on the horns of a dilemma. Do they admit BAU was never really that plausible and risk deniers saying “we told you so” and spreading further muck about climate modelling? Or do they keep pushing BAU and risk it becoming obvious they are hawking a straw man, opening the door to… deniers saying “we told you so”?
Climate deniers may well say “we told you so“, but this isn’t what they’ve been claiming. Climate deniers haven’t really been suggesting that high-emission pathways are implausible, they’ve been claiming that it wouldn’t matter if we did follow such a pathway. They either deny that climate change is driven by human emissions, or deny that this carries any risks.
Also, despite the unfortunate use of BAU, the high emission pathway was always a pathway that we were unlikely to follow. If it had been, we would probably have included an even higher emission pathway. We want scientists to consider worst-case scenarios which, in most cases, we’d hope would not materialise. If scientists are expected to acknowledge some kind of error when it becomes clear that this is the case, then we run the risk of discouraging scientists from considering them in the first place.
Finally, climate scientists are – typically – not experts in energy systems, policy, or economics. They typically use scenarios that are developed by other scholars to try and understand how the climate will change under different possible future pathways and the potential impact of these changes.
In a sense it’s unfortunate that this isn’t simply being presented as an evolution of our understanding of the plausibility of these scenarios, rather than something that implies some kind of mistake on the behalf of those who use them. Of course, given some of the prominent people who are promoting this narrative, this is hardly a surprise.
Links:
The worst-case climate scenarios are no longer plausible today – New Scientist article.
RCP8.5 – Posts discussing the high-emission pathway, RCP8.5.
Scenarios – Posts about scenarios.
Plausible emission scenarios – post about a paper discussing plausible emission scenarios.
The Beginner’s Guide to Representative Concentration Pathways – Skeptical Science post about the RCPs.
RCP 8.5—A scenario of comparatively high greenhouse gas emissions – Riahi et al. (2011).
AR5 Glossary – highlighting how BAU has gone out of favour.
AR6 Technical Summary – discusses the use of Global Warming Levels (GWLs).
...and Then There's Physics 
There are a couple of things I should have added to the post, but I’m trying to keep these short. Firstly, some of the criticism is valid and I do think researchers should take them into account. We should be clear about the plausibility of worst case scenarios and shouldn’t regard as the pathway we’re likely to follow.
However, we also haven’t yet peaked emissions. So, even though there are positive signs, it’s probably worth being cautious about claiming that these worst-case outcomes have been ruled out. Making predictions about the long-term future is nortoriously difficult.
Finally, bear in mind that the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics recently went to William Nordhaus whose work has suggested that the optimal pathway is one that would lead to ~3.5C of warming. Also, this paper is a survey of a group of scenario experts, a significant fraction of whom seem to think emissions will climb to levels comparable to those associated with RCP8.5. I don’t think they’re necessarily right, but if experts think it’s plausible, why should we expect climate scientists to have decided otherwise?
For the Climateball Bingo square:
I’m still waiting for people to complain that RCP 1.9 and 2.6 are implausible. This isn’t about science, it is about politics. Similarly BAU was a reasonable description of A1FI back in the day, but it isn’t a good name now. The “greenhouse effect” isn’t a good name either, but we ought to have the mental flexibility to focus on the scenario and the science and not get our knickers in a twist about the name. Unless of course, you want to avoid discussing the science or solving the problem.
I vaguely recall that the early IPCC reports included a high emission scenario because the politicians specifically asked for it, but haven’t been able to substantiate that.
It is bizarre, I really don’t understand why people have a problem with the scenarios not being chosen for their plausibility but to span (and bracket) what is plausible (if very unlikely). If I were a policy maker, it would be what I would want. My job would be to make the the “right” scenario as plausible as possible.
Dikran,
I think we probably know one of the reasons. A prominent critic of their use has spent a career trying to find ways to criticise climate scientists and has finally found something that looks like it might stick and will milk it for all that it’s worth.
;o) indeed, perhaps the thing I should find hard to understand is that people let them get away with such BS, but we have been living in the bullshitocene [in the Harry Frankfurt sense] for a fair while, so it has become BAU.
Something I also wanted to add was that this practice of counting how often something appears in a report, or in the research literature, is a very simplistic of making these kind of assessments. Even if RCP8.5 is no longer a plausible pathway, there are still valid scientific reasons for using it. Hence, its continued use doesn’t necessarily imply some kind of problem. In my view, you really do need to delve more deeply to try and understand how these scenarios are actually being used, rather than just counting how often the appear in the literature.
The fun that honest brokers can have though by counting things without considering how they are used…
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/08/how-many-findings-of-ipcc-ar4-wg-i-are.html
[if the IPCC thought *all* of the projections would come to pass, there would be no need for any probabilistic statements of conveyance of uncertainty – good bit of stirring though.]
A couple of comments:
1) I can see RCP85 as a BAU case in 2007. Coal-use was ramping quickly driven by China. We never tested 2007 BAU though. Government incentives to commercialize wind, solar, EV etc. moved us off the 2007 BAU case. Without those technologies our worst case today would be much more ominous.
2) While our emission outlook has improved since 2007, science has cutback the low end of the ECS range and uncovered several tipping points that will be hit earlier than anticipated in 2007. The near-term outlook for ice sheets, permafrost, coral reefs, forests have all deteriorated in the past 15 years.
We were lucky that #1 bailed us out. No thanks to the luckwarmers, though. Would have been even luckier without them.
Chubbs, we lukewarmers were pointing out some of the information presented here today a decade ago. Yes, some skeptics tried to score political points by doing what skeptics do. But the unfortunate tendency some on your side had of classing lukewarmers with skeptics did not help–quite the opposite. Replacing debate with a bingo card was less than optimal.
Also, you say our emission outlook has improved–do you mean our knowledge regarding emission trajectories or a lessening of emissions? If the latter, I must take issue with you. Emissions are rising and will continue to do so for the next couple of decades at least. The IPCC forecast emission increases for a long time to come.
Tom,
Except a key message from lukewarmers was about climate sensitivity, not emission pathways.
If this is the case, then I don’t see how you can claim that the higher emission pathways are largely ruled out.
No, they don’t. The IPCC does not present forecasts, they provide scenarios. It’s policy relevant, not policy prescriptive.
“But the unfortunate tendency some on your side had of classing lukewarmers with skeptics”
do you think that writing a book unfairly attacking climate scientists may have had something to do with that in the case of certain lukewarmers?
Of course your definition of “lukewarmer” is a meaningless distinction, as it is consistent with the mainstream scientific position. Why you want to portray that as being somehow different is rather nebulous. Bug or feature?
Unfairly?
Yep. We have gone over this repeatedly and you always evade the point. For instance the phrase “Mike’s nature trick” is not at all untoward but it is the first quote on the cover. If you think you have addressed that one, give the URL for the comment where you did so. We can finish the discussion on that thread if you can find one rather than derail this discussion.
Yes, but we explained Mike’s Nature Trick in the book. And I explained it in a newspaper column within days.
Plus, Chubbs–we did not attack climate scientists. We criticized them, true, for things like advocating the deletion of emails in advance of a FOIA request. But mostly, we quoted them. In complete context. Accurately.
> on that thread
Please.
Better yet, simply remind readers of it, for I doubt there is nothing much to gain from another iteration of it.
Yes, I can’t imagine that much will be gained by discussing the Climategate emails again.
People who are skeptical of the guesses scientists make about the future have indeed been critical of the various guesses for ECS and TCR. Many think 3.0 ECS is to high and it will probably come in at less than 2.0 C. I guess we will have to wait to see who it right and who is wrong.
I have been personally critical of the science which says that all the warming since 1950 has been human caused. I think that there is some portion which is caused by nature (perhaps 50%) – but that some portion is indeed caused by humans (perhaps 50%).
I look forward to the day when we hit 560 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere so we can have an actual measurement of the actual warming from a doubling of CO2. Although I am sure that if it is “to low” many scientists will find some way to dismiss it. Again, we will see.
I am just a layperson – but most of the climate science I read seems like total bullshit. We have been warming for 20,000 years. We know this because the sea level his risen 120 meters over the last 20,000 years. I don’t think there is much cause for alarm just because the sea has risen an additional 8 inches over the last 100 years.
But of course science says it MIGHT rise as much as 3 feet in the next 100 years – so better panic. The tide gauges don’t support this crazy high number – but hey – we are only 1/5 of the way through the century. It will be much much worse later in the century. Science says so.
We will see. Since every guess climate scientists have made about the future has turned out to be wrong I am not to worried. And if we were really worried about the climate we would go nuclear. Until then, I know scientists are not really worried, because they are willing to put the future of the world against their irrational fears of radiation (so they must not be really worried).
Rick,
But this is just a guess. The mainstream position is based on detailed analyses of climate sensitivity which suggests that the best estimate for the ECS is about 3C.
You’re almost certainly wrong. It’s very difficult to explain how a significant fraction of the warming since 1950 could be natural. It might be, but it is more likely that nature has provided some cooling that has masked some additional anthropogenic warmimg (i.e., in the absence of this natural cooling, the anthropogenic warming would have been greater than the warming we’ve experienced since 1950).
Technically not quite this simple and I’m sure those who experience the severe impacts of climate change will wish that we had avoided this.
So, we get ~120 metres with 6 degrees of warming. How much do you think we’ll get if we warm further? Also, it hasn’t risen much in the last 8000 years.
This is wrong on multiple levels.
Jeez, Rick, can’t you do better?
Nope. As a layperson all I can do is use my own observations and common sense – which tell me that most of the projections, scenarios and forecasts I have seen have been wrong.
I don’t even trust what science says was the actual temperature in the past. I have observed that past temperature readings have been edited (and usually warmed) in the name of science. Time of day adjustments, homogenization and so forth. If we could go back in time and take an actual temperature reading at an actual site location at the proper time of day – I don’t trust that the actual reading obtained would match what today’s science said it should be. Personally, I don’t like the idea of editing actual observations of the past – but call me crazy.
All I can do is wait and see what happens and see if it turns out my gut was correct (or not).
I agree that further discussion of Climategate is pretty pointless, but people keep bringing it up.
I think most of what Rick writes is close to hyperbole (matched by some in the activist sphere), but I also suspect sensitivity is low and some of the recent warming has natural causes.
As for the efforts of climate scientists, especially with models, it seems clear that models have provided a good picture of the broad sweep of climate and temperature rises, but at a higher level (so far) than observations have recorded.
Useful tool, terrible master.
Ii>…but call me crazy
OK. You’re crazy.
The biggest error is refusing to admit that people have made a choice: they have chosen not to pursue maximal expansion of fossil fuels. Once you acknowledge that the world has made a (albeit late and halfhearted) collective decision to pivot some way away from maximal fossils to alternatives and lower usage, the whole argument falls flat on its face.
RCP8.5 is not a world where the vast majority of the new electrical generating capacity installed in 2021 is low-carbon. Or where sizable chunks of the world have an explicit carbon price. We aren’t doing enough, but we aren’t doing nothing, which is why current trends are in the middle of the scenarios.
> All I can do is wait and see
You can do more than that, Rick. You can parade and even glorify your ignorance while playing all the Climateball Bingo squares.
Up to a point, of course. Which you just have reached.
Ben – I kind of see what you are saying. But CO2 emissions are still going up – are they not? If we were actually cutting are CO2 emissions, year after year, I would say – yes we have pivoted. But I think CO2 emissions are projected to rise – because China and India keep emitting more and more, which more than offsets any cuts elsewhere.
So I guess I don’t see any pivot.
But I am just an ignorant lay person.
Tom,
But this is at odds with the current scientific evidence. You don’t, of course, have to accept this evidence, but it would be nice if you acknowledged this.
To bring us back to this post, this is why I find the framing suggesting that deniers might say “we told you so” rather unfortunate. If we do manage to limit total emissions so that the impacts of climate change end up being less severe than it might otherwise have been, I’m pretty sure deniers will say something like “we told you so”. However, this doesn’t mean they were right because their argument is that we don’t need to worry, not that we’ll do enough to avoid the more severe outcomes. I feel that you’re trying to do something similar.
ATTP:
I don’t think you are using the word “evidence” the same way I do.
Are you saying “evidence” is what the current models say will happen?
Or are you saying “evidence” is looking at what the models said would happen 20 years ago and comparing it to what actually happened?
I say evidence is the latter and not the former.
The models have been wrong since 1988 and any comparison of what was supposed to happen to what actually happened shows the models run warm. That is the evidence.
I don’t think skeptics (please, not deniers… sigh…) are correct, but I think a lot of them are already saying ‘I told you so’ without much in the way of justification, so that wouldn’t change much–and who cares, really?
As you might imagine, our reading of current scientific evidence has produced different opinions for each of us.
Bear in mind that I do think high levels of sensitivity are possible–just not likely. On the other hand, I believe that even with low levels of sensitivity, our increased emissions will produce severe result that are very much worth addressing via both mitigation and adaptation.
The main point is whether or not emissions are going up as fast as they might have done. My impression is “no”, but the reasons are probably a combination of economic growth not being as high as it might have been, a move away from coal, and various policies/incentives leading to an increase in the use of alternatives.
Rick,
This is simply not true.
I disagree.
Alright, Rick. You played
– But Predictions
– But Data
– But China
– But Evidence
– But Modulz
I duly submit that this is enough.
Rick, the models are not wrong. They’re running a little (maybe more than a little) hot, but most of them (and definitely the best of them) are largely accurate. What you (and perhaps others) need to remember is that they are not designed to predict climate outcomes or even specific climate states along the way. Are they often misused for that purpose? Yes. Are they wrong? No.
The best of them are useful. Higher praise cannot be bestowed on a model.
Luckwarm chastising is exactly what Rick needs right now.
Or perhaps it is just the price to pay to keep But Modulz in play.
Last time I checked, Nic’s modulz were running a little cold. Less cold than they used to, but then the limits of justified disingenuousness followed hyperinflation.
The average of the climate models has always been to warm compared to actual observations. Here is an article discussing this problem for the CMIP6 models.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01192-2#ref-CR1
Yes, I wrote about that. It doesn’t mean what you seem to think it means. I’ll link to my post when I get back home later this evening.
Tom,
What did luckwarmers get wrong? 1) climate science, 2) The difficulty of transitioning away from fossil fuels. Turns out all we needed were some relatively inexpensive government incentives to get the ball rolling. Luckwarmers weren’t the only ones to get #2 wrong, but they have persisted in making the argument far too long. Still making it as far as I can see
Chubbs:
The world still uses fossil fuels for over 80% of its energy. Emissions of CO2 keep going up and will keep going up because of China and India. Define “transitioning away from fossil fuels”. If you mean by transitioning away using more and more – than ok. But I sense you do not mean that.
Rick,
Okay, so are you suggesting that those who suggest that we’ve avoided the worst case emission scenarios are wrong?
I suppose that backtracking from Modulz are running hawt to The average Modulz are running hawt is some kind of progress.
You guys just can’t let go of the label wars, can you? I’m sure there’s a bingo card for that, just as there is probably a bumper sticker for every Trumpian meme.
No. I don’t pay attention to the scenarios since I think they are all wrong.
If we don’t warm as much as science says we will (or should) I think it is because ECS will turn out to be smaller than science thinks it will turn out to be (under 2.0 rather than over 3 C). And/or because humans don’t cause all the warming, but merely a portion of it. And/or because nature absorbs more of the emitted CO2 than science thinks it will.
I do not think it will be because humans emit less CO2 or because humanity listened to climate scientists and changed their behavior for the good of all. It will be because science overestimated the rise of the sea, and the warming and just got it wrong (in my opinion). We will see.
It is you guys who insist on using the average of the models! Me – I would throw out the ones which are grossly wrong and only average the ones which are close to correct. But hey – I am just an ignorant lay person.
Rick,
The point of the post is the plausibility of the scenarios.
The point is that they are not plausible. We are emitting more than the rcp2.6, but have to pretend we are not to track actual observed warming correctly.
“It is you guys who insist on using the average of the models! Me – I would throw out the ones which are grossly wrong and only average the ones which are close to correct.”
that would be a “weighted average”, where some of the weights are zero. There are more subtle (and probably more effective) ways to weight the average if it is what you want to do.
This is back to Douglass et al. It would be good if people find out how ensembles are used before stating how it should be done. The reason for taking the average is that it gives an estimate of the forced response of the climate. The observations are not just the forced response, but has an unforced component superimposed on it. So the model spread is a rough indicator of what is plausibly the result of both components, and deleting ensemble members is a task for people who know what they are doing.
The evidence you provided, Rick:
Why are you blaming *you guys* for it?
Being an ignorant lay person does not condone saying stuff.
Nice write-up ATTP.
Speaking as only one of the perhaps many millions of Civilization Engineers (or Civil Engineers, CE) now living (but no longer practicing) … I have always thought of RCP 8.5 as the worst case and not the most likely case. It is one of those things one does design for, even if those (or their) costs are prohibitively high. Always.
One then makes a decision based on economics and how interconnected the design is to say human lives (for example, buildings (with hundreds, if not thousands, of lives at stake) vs breakwaters (where technically a small number of lives may be at stake)).
I think most people miss the concepts of a truly large scale design, and that they do not get any bigger then the entire Earth, in my honest opinion.
If you happen to be a planner, then you ask for stuff, not fully knowing if that stuff you ask for is even possible/probable. The role of the CE is then to see if that is possible and what the cost range might be (for different levels of the design goals).
So BAU was always a high end scenario and NOT some middle of the road concept with a probability of say 50%. BAU was always the worst possible scenario (at least one would hope) and I lay most of the blame of its misuse on those less educated, trained and experienced in such matters. That includes you know who. So, one never really designs for some misused concepts as p = 0.5 but instead p = 0.99 or p = 0.999 (if not even higher).
And over time, some people listened, not many mind you, but some listened and understood and adjusted their planning documents to account for changing energy landscapes. Which leads me to conclude that all this BAU nonsense, is just that nonsense, meant to delay proper planning and designs for the future.
Fully agreed, Everett.
There is also a computational point to run high-end modulz. They provide signals faster. Back in the days, this mattered.
“We will see.”
Ah, no we will not see, because we older people will mostly be dead.
But keeping ones eyes closed appears to be the best advice that deniers have to offer with respect to, say driving a vehicle down a pathway surrounded by, at least, two Grand Canyons (one for each side of said pathway)
Speak for yourself Everett. I have high hopes of making it to 2060, which is when we are projected to hit 560 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere. At the very least, we will be able to actually measure TCR and use it to estimate ECS and see how are models are actually doing with actual measurements.
“”At the very least, we will be able to actually measure TCR…”
[SIGH]
No, you will not be able to measure TCR.
It is not a directly measurable quantity.
You will be able to further constrain TCR with every piece of emerging data, including, but not limited to, surface temperatures measured the year that CO2 doubles from preindustrial.
The basic premise in the article is that global warming of between 4oC and 5oC is no longer a real risk.
damn lukewarmers!
you realize that if we dont have some catastrophes, luke wins, the biggest i told you so
Richard Arrett says:
Scenarios are in constant evolution as producers fight for the last scraps. Art Berman is a good analyst to follow.
“US shale…is no longer a swing producer.”
–Scott Sheffield, Pioneer Natural Resources CEO
from FT article “What the end of the US shale revolution would mean for the world” —
https://www.ft.com/content/60747b3b-e6ea-47c0-938d-af515816d0f1
“I have high hopes of making it to 2060 … ”
How old will you be in 2060 and do you expect to have full mental faculties then as you purportedly do today?
Verytallguy:
Since TCR is defined as Transient climate response (TCR) is the mean global warming predicted to occur around the time of doubling CO2 – and 560 ppm is the doubling – I don’t know whey we cannot measure the temperature and the delta and boom – we have a measurement of TCR. But I am just a lay person – so maybe there is something more complicated to measuring the temperature change caused by a doubling of CO2 that I am not aware of.
Everett:
I will be 100 in 2060. I have no idea what my mental faculties will be like in 2060. But I am an optimist (which is why I don’t worry so much about global warming).
“damn lukewarmers!”
Care to lay down some quotes from you with respect to RCP 8.5? You know at the time RCP 8.5 first came out?
Like you saying that is impossible and it will never happen or some such at that time. Seeing as you are neither a planner or designer, as in the rest of humanity is pretty safe from your kind, thankfully.
Filed under but just asking questions.
> No, you will not be able to measure TCR.
Who cares, Very Tall.
This is just the opinion of an ignorant lay person who kept playing Climateball at Lucia’s and elsewhere for more than a decade. As an opinion, it only matters that it gets repeated. Over and over, like one acquires a language.
Climateball is a word placement discipline.
[Alright, Rick. Enough baiting. See you on another thread. -W]
the only man worth listening to on “scenarios”
Perhaps one should look into the definitions of TCR, TCRE and ECS?
Because I don’t have a good compact answer where this is a definition for TCR …
“The transient climate response (TCR) is defined as “is the change in the global mean surface temperature, averaged over a 20-year period, centered at the time of atmospheric carbon dioxide doubling, in a climate model simulation” in which the atmospheric CO2 concentration increases at 1% per year.[25]”
But it looks like you will have to wait until the year 2070 to do your calculation even though 1% per year starting at 280 ppmv works out to 2.8 ppmv/year and that has not happened yet (taking decadal averages, for example) …
Peter forgot about AGW for his gas price forecast:
You write; “climate scientists are – typically – not experts in energy systems, policy, or economics. They typically use scenarios that are developed by other scholars to try and understand how the climate will change under different possible future pathways and the potential impact of these changes. ”
The problem I see is that the reports of the IPCC include those scenarios and they are used to motivate policy. But that creates a kind of circular argument where people use IPCC scenarios claiming that climate science shows this or that while it is actually economist that has figured out most the stuff – and we all know how unreliable the science of economy is….A bit simplistic, but with some good faith I guess you can understand my concern?
For those who love to quibble over TCR & ECS models it must be shocking to find out Exxon had the best climate models back in the 70s.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/harvard-led-analysis-finds-exxonmobil-internal-research-accurately-predicted-climate-change/
“The researchers report that Exxon scientists correctly dismissed the possibility of a coming ice age, accurately predicted that human-caused global warming would first be detectable in the year 2000, plus or minus five years, and reasonably estimated how much CO2 would lead to dangerous warming.”
If we stay on the ‘Exxon path’ it looks like 3C-4C is likely.
I’m looking forward to outliving my solar panels to atone for owning 15 cars over the last 50 years.
The End of the World Is Just the Beginning by Zeihan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_the_World_Is_Just_the_Beginning
“He has a particular focus on access to oceans and internal waterways (rivers) as he considers that maritime transport is by far the cheapest (relative to planes, trains, trucks); and, therefore such waterways can provide a material competitive advantage in economics and trade (both domestic and international).”
This has been known for say a few millennia even, I first learned about it circa 1983 at the age of 29. What Zeihan fails to note is that 20K TEU containerships mostly ply the Pacific trade routes, then the Indian Ocean and then the East Atlantic Ocean (Europe). The US west coast is the only place with ports that can support the largest of these ships fully loaded. There are no internal waterways on the west cost due to either dams or mountains, so that double decker trains are the next cheapest mode of transportation. The newest Panama Canal channels can’t support these vessels (length, width and/or depth) as also the East and Gulf coasts can’t support these vessels fully loaded.
He also exhibits little if any knowledge of inland waterways, as the Mississippi River just was (or still is) in an all time low water state (or some such, which is barge traffic limited to say 3m drafts).
I also seriously doubt the US will give up its leadership position as a naval power anytime soon …
“Nearly all scholars consider the USA a superpower of the 20th and early 21st century.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_power
In short, he is neither an engineer or a naval architect and has absolutely no formal education, training or expertise in such matters related to waterborne commerce.
China currently produces most 20K TEU containerships, Maersk being the only non-Asian company also producing said ships.
So his so-called book is for mostly general public consumption and bares absolutely no resemblance to the real world as would be the case for actual subject matter experts (I no longer so-called claim to be an SME as I am now 20 years removed from active practice).
Actually, I was the guy rubbishing RCP 8.5 the day it came out, not Steve. The reason being that the world had already implemented enough policies to combat climate change to render it obsolete, and the global energy portfolio had moved enough in the right direction to make its calculations ineffectual.
Also, whatever China’s demographics, they do have ~1.4 billion people to work with while the USA has say ~350 million, so that China appears to have a much larger work force going forwards for any age bracket (there would have to be at more then a 4:1 disadvantage).
Probably a book written for the USA to make them fell good. MAGA!!!!!!
“Exxon had the best climate models back in the 70s”
I said so 1st at Stoat’s …
https://mustelid.blogspot.com/2023/01/rahmstorf-joins-dork-side.html?showComment=1673822677798#c6639565578124922664
“So maybe the oil companies should be running and developing climate models because they are (or were) so good at it circa 1970’s?”
And no, you should not take that part of the comment seriously (file that one under but humor).
Rick keeps saying ‘but what do I know, I’m just a layperson’ – and then making the kinds of mistakes a layperson might fairly make, and then doubling down on them.
No half-decent climate scientist would say “the sea levels have been rising for 10k years, which means it’s been warming for 10k years”. Nor “you can measure TCR by checking the temperature after a doubling of CO2 [while neglecting changes in other forcings]”. And you sure as hell wouldn’t see one say that a non-Time-Of-Day adjusted temperature readings are the “real” temperatures. The whole point of that bias is that you’re accidentally double-measuring some days, and this is incredibly easy to verify, so the measurements [i]aren’t the real temperatures[/i].
So: when saying “I’m just a layperson”, why put up a front of false humility? If you’re going to recognize your lack of expertise, doesn’t it make sense to actually be open to learning some new things?
Rick has left the thread, Windchaser.
Better not pull him back.
EFS,
Also, whatever China’s demographics, they do have ~1.4 billion people to work with while the USA has say ~350 million, so that China appears to have a much larger work force going forwards for any age bracket
You can disagree with the wider interpretations and supposed implications but Zeihan I think is just using mainstream projections on population numbers. China’s working age population reached a peak around 2015 and is expected to drop dramatically over the next several decades, reaching about 35% of the peak by 2100. That’s one thing about China’s pledge for emissions to peak by 2030 – it would actually be quite difficult not to achieve given that their population will be in decline at that point.
On scenarios, an interesting facet of the SSP5 scenario is that US population overtakes China by 2100, reaching 700m.
I’m seeing China at ~800 million in 2100. The USA appears to be a tougher one to project with the US Census Bureau suggesting 405 million in 2060, it is currently estimated to be 334 million (2023). The UN suggests 394 million in 2100 for the US and 767 million for China or still almost a 2:1 ratio for China vs USA. There is also no one alive today that will be working in 2100 as far as I know.
But as of today that population ratio is at least 4:1 in China’s favor. Where did the SSP5 come up with their numbers for 2100 populations?
It also appears that Zeihan does not provide dates for his so-called apocalypse, sometime in the somewhat near term future? Meaning generational as in 20 years? Again, I don’t read stuff from the NYT best seller list (non-fiction) as they are mostly for a non technical audience (I will read textbooks and fiction though).
I don’t pay any heed to what Zeihan says. So much of it is so well known that it’s hard to imagine that it’s going to entirely catch the rest of the world off-guard.
But since I thought I was coming to read an emissions scenarios thread and it went in this particular direction *and* this article hit my notifications literally as I was reading these comments:
BLOOMBERG: China’s Population Starts Shrinking, First Drop Since 1960s
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-17/china-s-population-starts-shrinking-first-drop-since-1960s
“Exxon had the best climate models back in the 70s”
I said so 1st at Stoat’s …
https://mustelid.blogspot.com/2023/01/
I put the case for renewables in Herman Melville’s mouth long before Stefan or Everett:
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2018/11/did-whale-oil-industry-know-about.html
Emissions are now roughly flatlining:
If you include land use change, about a 0.2% growth rate over the last 10 years, compared to about a 2% growth rate over the past 50.
Note also that although China’s emissions are bigger than EU/US/India combined, the other countries (i.e. other than EU/US/China/India) total to substantially more than China. So obsessing about China on its own may miss important parts of the story (e.g. whether the ‘rest of the world’ getting its act together and cuts emissions).
I’m still waiting for people to complain that RCP 1.9 and 2.6 are implausible. This isn’t about science, it is about politics. ”
part of me wants to argue they should do rcp 1-10.
and part of me wants to say go back to the SRES approach
I don’t pay any heed to what Zeihan says. So much of it is so well known that it’s hard to imagine that it’s going to entirely catch the rest of the world off-guard.
probably why he is a guest speaker at the CIA.
It also appears that Zeihan does not provide dates for his so-called apocalypse, sometime in the somewhat near term future?
most china watchers suggest this decade
some suggest this year.
all of my friends inside are scared shitless.
Peter has predicted China’s demise for at least a decade. While things are not rosy in the land of the housing bubble, markets have yet to take note of its downfall. To take two examples, the SZSE is less than 5% less than six months ago, and the MCHI ETF is higher now than then. In fairness, the prediction looked better last November.
It’d be cool if our professional futurologists competed in a tournament with other super forecasters, e.g.
https://www.gjopen.com/
Hmm, so how much of USA debt does China own?
As of Jan. 2021, China owns $1.095 trillion of the total $28 trillion U.S. national debt.
The actual US debt is something like $149T. MAGA!!!!
https://www.truthinaccounting.org/about/our_national_debt
Pop culture is rubbish though, as if Zeihan knows something that the CIA doesn’t know. As if!
I know I am an off the rails type of person, but seriously, spamming China’s imminent collapse is funnier than South Park and The Simpsons combined.
Gunnar,
I guess I would argue that climate science provides information about what will/might happen along the various possible future pathways, but doesn’t tell us the probability of following any of these pathways, or what we *should* given this information. The decision as to what we should do is typically done by policy makers on behalf of the socieites they represent and – ideally – using all the available evidence, some of which will come from economists.
This highlights one issue I have with criticising scenario use on the basis of plausibility. It’s often an explicit decision to not assign probabilities to scenarios because of the possible circularity. If we decide that a scenario is implausible, we might either not bother trying to follow it even if it were technically still possible to do so, or we might decide that we don’t need to do anything more because we’ve already avoided the worst case. The latter is maybe particularly worrying if the assessment that a scenario is no longer plausible is based on assumptions of what will happen in future which might then be influenced by the claims that the scenario is no longer plausible.
Just a comment about measuring the TCR. The TCR is technically a model metric based on a scenario in which CO2, and CO2 only, increases at 1% per year until the concentration has doubled. In the real world, CO2 is not the only forcing. Hence, when atmospheric CO2 has reached 560ppm the net change in anthropogenic forcing will probably not match that due to doubling CO2, because there will be other forcings (methance, aerosols,….). Hence, waiting till atmospheric CO2 reaches 560ppm does not mean that we can then accurately determine the TCR.
And the IPCC were quite clear on that point:
[Source IPCC Summary for Policymakers – Emissions Scenarios]
As I said, the purpose of the IPCC reports is to help policy makers decide which scenarios should be actively made more or less plausible!
I would actually like to read the New Scientist article but it appears to be behind a paywall. Does anyone have access to this article that they are willing to share?
Ben,
Yes CO2 emissions are topping out and will likely peak this decade . Interesting how pessimistic our L**** friends have become about future energy scenarios.
New non-fossil energy technologies have become the leading BAU option for meeting increasing energy demand in the future. Like other emerging technologies following learning curve improvement, the big hurdle is getting to 5% market share and the race is usually over by the 5% point. That is the case today with fossil fuels, their commercial position is steadily deteriorating and will continue to decline no matter what policies are adopted. The incumbent technology still has the dominant market share but the writing is on the wall.
“Hence, waiting till atmospheric CO2 reaches 560ppm does not mean that we can then accurately determine the TCR.”
Yes, and this can be exemplified by the “what if” there’s a major eruption the year we reach 560ppm. Tambora apparently reduced global temperature by three degrees(!)
Would a Tambora in the year of reaching 560ppm magically reduce TCR by three degrees?
“Emissions are now roughly flatlining:”
I’m a little sceptical…
Is that compatible with the Keeling curve?
And how much of it is down to Covid?
VTG,
My understanding is that the emissions (including land-use) since ~2015 are consistent with having flat-lined, but that there is a reasonably large uncertainty.
I think if you tried fitting the last 10 years of the derivative of the Keeling curve, you would get a slope not significantly different to zero (i.e. big uncertainty, as ATTP stated). You can see how wobbly even the 10-year running mean is. Probably need 20-year periods to get reasonable uncertainties, so wait another 10 years (emissions were definitely not flat over the last two decades). Also, there is a lot of other variation in that curve that isn’t just human emissions (e.g. trapped fraction).
Chubbs: I think this business about RCP8.5 is an early sign of the reactionaries switching from arguing that mass deployment of clean technology is impossible, to arguing that it was always clearly inevitable.
Of course, at that point, they are already practically irrelevant, so who cares.
Ben: I certainly don’t care. My learning from the past decade is that the free-market can solve the climate problem if the proper incentives are provided. Going to tweek Willard’s saying – we need a better class of free-market conservatives
“… if the proper incentives are provided”
Who is supposed to provide those incentives, and how are they provided without corrupting the “Free market”?
“verytallguy says: ‘Emissions are now roughly flatlining’;
I’m a little sceptical…
Is that compatible with the Keeling curve?”
Flat lined emissions would mean the Keeling curve was no longer showing acceleration, not that it would stop increasing. Within uncertainty bounds, that’s a plausible interpretation for the (statistically short period since 2015ish).
Covid had an impact on emissions, but we’ve also had sustained La Nina for a few years which probably has a greater impact on the Keeling curve over the last half decade.
Ben , does:
” this business about RCP8.5 is an early sign of the reactionaries switching from arguing that mass deployment of clean technology is impossible, to arguing that it was always clearly inevitable”
refer to the reactionaries who edit New Scientist, or the ones who built all those windmills in Texas?
I believe it refers to Junior or Matt King Coal, Russell.
Speaking of the former, I had a thought for him when listening to the Revolutions podcast series, especially when Madison was involved:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Madison
To honestly root for a “Madisonian view” like he did in his brokering times may not look the same for the audience outside the United States of America.
The Revolutions series is the one by Mike Duncan. Steve Kornacki made one recently under a very similar name, which is also good. It centres around the rise and fall of Newt Gingrich. Newt might also be relevant to Climateball in two ways:
First, he created the GOPAC tapes, a series to train Freedom Fighters in word warfare:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/andrewkaczynski/the-gopac-tapes
It is a pity that nobody thought of calling this Newtspeak.
Second, Newt invested in renewables. Not a lot, but enough to suspect it is not a fluke. He did invest in solar and batteries, even if his heart always was in hydrogen and biofuel:
https://publicintegrity.org/politics/newt-gingrich-faces-questions-about-consulting-job-and-support-for-biofuels/
Would that count as a Madisonian view on things?
IF.
For that to work we would also need a better class of politicians to set the proper incentives (rather than do what is in their short term political advantage, i.e. the next election) and a better class of electorate who didn’t view politics as entertainment or identity affirmation but were concerned with policy.
We are toast if we are going to rely on that 😦
Bob,
When the free-market doesn’t provide enough incentive, governments have to step-in. They step-in all the time for better or worse. Accelerated depletion allowance for oil drilling or ethanol road tax exemption in the US as an example. The easiest, broadest and fairest climate incentive is a carbon tax. Failing that other less desirable incentives can be applied. In the case of solar and wind a mixture of tax credits and set-asides has been used.
Of course there are many examples of poorly structured incentives. Tariffs for US sugar an example that comes to mind. I don’t know about other countries but the US government provides huge R&D and other assistance to nuclear, coal and oil and gas, much larger than any incentive or research funding provided to renewables.
I would argue that solar, wind, and battery EV have progressed largely because of government enabled commercial application. Without government incentives markets would have been closed. Competition and growing scale within those new markets led to learning curve improvements which enabled other markets to be served and also encouraged governments to provide additional incentives.
Our climate policy on the cheap has benefited manufacturing technologies with short-cycle times that can learn by doing at a much faster rate than competition (nuclear, CCS, fossil)
Since this is a physics crowd, readers might appreciate this three body model of Econ:
https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/194
The dichotomy between public and private no longer holds. Every single successful economy known to mankind needed both. WE NEED MIXED ECONOMIES might not work very well as a political slogan, except perhaps in a convention of social democrats.
Never trust a social Democrat to make things sexier.
Tom,
Except a key message from lukewarmers was about climate sensitivity, not emission pathways.
the key defining belief was taking the under bet on
“is ecs greater than or less than 3C.
there were other beliefs WRT to scenarios that were less well publicized.
for example Tom argued at one point that we should plan as if 2.5C was a ceratin future
this in support of spnding more on adaptation.
bottom line: luck warmers tended to valorize futures were warming was less than
3C: for a variety of reasons:
1. unrealistic emission scenarios–
2. unrealistic ECS projections
3. pessimism WRT innovation.
or in general an unlucky mindset.
Diligence is the mother of good luck
Russell: as Willard said, I was referring to RP Jr and Ridley etc (as well as the run of the mill reactionary commentators). The New Scientist article take I don’t think is so bad; they at least acknowledge that the bending of the curve is occurring due to technology and implementation of policies. Even if the ‘dilemma’ they pose is false for the usual reason.
The reactionaries pretty much uniformly, on the other hand, take the view that a middle-ground emissions curve was essentially inevitable and suggesting that we might have followed a higher emissions curve is not just wrong, but so ridiculous as to constitute scientific malfeasance. Yet are happy to go out of their way to whine about “windmills” or how electric cars are all going to catch on fire.
Chubbs: …governments have to step-in…
…at which point you lose any attention from the “less government” free-market “purists”. What you are arguing for (which I do not disagree with) is for an active role in government influencing the “free market”. Which is an admission that the “free market” won’t fix it on its own.
“the key defining belief was taking the under bet on
“is ecs greater than or less than 3C.”
Without considering the loss function, that seems a pretty vacuous bet, especially when there is nothing really at stake (blog-rep is of no actual value). The whole distribution is relevant to policy, both of ECS and of impact.
I realise that everyone is going to try and claim that their narrative is the one that turned out to be closest to the truth and that any mistakes were made in good faith. However, when one of the prominent members of your “clan” is Matt Ridley, it’s hard to see how one can make that argument without appearing to have a poor grip on reality.
Steven “and part of me wants to say go back to the SRES approach”
until people can deal with the difference between a prediction and a projection (a conditional prediction – “IF this, then THAT”) I don’t think there is any substantive difference. They will be rejected by those who don’t like the scenario regardless of how it is formulated.
If the policy makers were happy with RCP1-10 and didn’t need a story to go with the scenario, it might be worth a try if only to see if it reduced the scope for misunderstandings.
I’m not convinced that there’s any alternative way to develop, and use, scenarios that wouldn’t draw overblown criticism from those who are motivated to do so. There’s no perfect way to make these kind of decisions, so criticism is easy. Constructive criticism is more difficult.
Willard, the weirdest climate communication news of the week may be Andy Revkin ‘s shout out for Junior :
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2023/01/a-bombshell-is-when-times-science-guy.html
“Constructive criticism is more difficult.” and will attract a much smaller twitter/blog/media following, which I suspect is what has driven a lot of this from the early days of the public debate on climate change.
Russell,
That’s not weird.
That must be a slow week, Russell, for Eli’s or MT’s fondness for Andrew was legendary in the Climateball realms, e.g.:
https://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2009/02/revkin-beyond-pale.html
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2010/03/andy-revkin-out-in-cold.html
***
Since I’m here, I will add the idea that the best way to appeal to troglodytes might very well energy security:
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/putin-ukraine-war-us-europe-operation-energy-independence-gingrich-mcfarland-forbes-moore
Oh, and Nostradamus was right all along.
Ben:
Those who
” are happy to go out of their way to whine about “windmills” or how electric cars are all going to catch on fire.”
have been hopelessly upstaged by Tucker Carlson telling Fox viewers:
” You can’t charge an electric car with a wind farm”:
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2022/07/he-also-doesnt-believe-in.html
> You guys just can’t let go of the label wars, can you?
This is funny given it was written someone who says “I’m a lukewarmer” in close to every comment he writes here.
Anders –
I don’t know what’s the best way to address the current predicament… but I suspect it’s to be as forward looking as possible. Engaging in discussion of the past, it doesn’t seem to me, has much chance of being productive. Those who are invested in rehashing what happened can never be satisfied, as the need for vindication is insatiable. It’s like a huge black hole that sucks in everything within its gravitational field (if that makes any sense to an astronomer).
I think where we are now is a discussion of low probability, high damage risk. Important within that is discussion of positive and negative externalities, and synergies and common interests. Perhaps there can be enough people interested enough in that discussion to make a difference.
I linked this before…I continue to think it suggests a kind of starting point for looking forward, and moving away from uselessly litigating the past.
Where My Climate Doubts Began to Melt https://nyti.ms/3SLHmds
Joshua,
But the problem with some of the narratives around scenario plausibility is that it’s attempting to dismiss the low-probability, high-impact outcomes. I think some of the criticisms are valid, but there’s a big difference between suggesting that we should be more careful of how we discuss these outcomes and essentially dismissing any attempt to do so.
I find considerable value in what Andrew Revkin, Roger Pielke Jr. and even Lord Matthew Ridley write. I don’t take their writing as gospel, but they’re right a lot of the time.
Stephen, you’re right–it was ECS less than 3.0 that was the lukewarmer position and all else was either added on or opinions of the person claiming it, including me.
If by happy chance we prove to be closest in our predictions, guesstimates or scenarios, I for one won’t be crowing. I will still be agitating for more money for adaptation. If ECS is 2.9 or 2.8, we will still have a lot to do–and even if our ECS guess is bang on, we’ll still be watching the leader board for emission totals.
Tom,
I’ve no doubt that you do.
Anders *
> But the problem with some of the narratives around scenario plausibility is that it’s attempting to dismiss the low-probability, high-impact outcomes.
No doubt. But I think maybe structuring in the “low probability” component can be diffusing and open the way forward to discussing the “high damage” component.
Tom,
You do realise that if the ECS does end up being < 3C, it won't somehow prove that you were right.
ATTP, I can almost understand your ire against Pielke and Ridley (even as I laugh at it), but what on earth do you have against Revking? He has been the finest journalist covering this beat for decades.
It is a symptom of extreme lack of confidence in your position that any deviation from the party line is cause for instant excommunication.
Joshua,
Maybe, but my impression is that – in some cases, at least – what’s happening is that people are using the supposed implausibility of some scenarios to essentially argue that even though they now accept the mainstream position, it’s all okay because the scenarios that would have produced the “catastrophic” outcomes are no longer plausible.
ATTP,
“You do realise that if the ECS does end up being < 3C, it won't somehow prove that you were right."
I will be pleased if ECS is less than 3C. I don't give a damn what it proves about my opinion. I will be pleased on behalf of the planet I live on and the people I share it with.
What kind of word games are you playing? Why are you keeping score?
> I find considerable value in what Andrew Revkin, Roger Pielke Jr. and even Lord Matthew Ridley write. I don’t take their writing as gospel, but they’re right a lot of the time.
It’s noteable that often people who say “how’s that working for you?” to argue that “alarmists” are responsible for what they see as a “lack of progress,” then turn around and praise “lukewarmers” despite that same “lack of progress.”
Reminds me of socializing the losses and privatizing the benefits we see elsewhere.
Tom,
I don’t have “ire”. I also disagree with your description of Revkin, but that’s just my view.
Anders –
> in some cases, at least – what’s happening is that people are using the supposed implausibility of some scenarios to essentially argue that even though they now accept the mainstream position, it’s all okay because the scenarios that would have produced the “catastrophic” outcomes are no longer plausible.
No doubt. Built on top of the constant refrains like “they said snow in the UK is a thing of the past so they’re clearly wrong about future risk.”
There’s a relevant track record in evidence.
But then how do we move forward despite that pre-condition?
Well, if you have time and inclination, please expand on your view. As a former journalist, I may be biased in his favor, but I also might have some additional insight into the quality of his work.
What is it that causes you to disagree with my description of Andrew Revkin?
Tom,
I’m not playing word games, I’m making a point about probabilities. If the ECS range is 2C to 4.5C with a median of 3C, then there is a 50% chance of it being below 3C. If someone claims that it will probably be below 3C, their claim would be wrong even if it does end up being below 3C.
The broader point is that the risk associated with some outcome is essentially the probability of that outcome times the impact of that outcome. So, for a given scenario, most of the risk is associated with climate sensitivity being high. Of course, we could choose to bet on it not being high and this may well turn out to be the case, but this would be luck, not good risk management (hence, why Eli uses the term Luckwarmers).
Tom,
Willard’s already provided some links and here’s a post of mine which was somewhat critical.
“What kind of word games are you playing? Why are you keeping score?”
have you tried perhaps giving a straight answer to the question? It is a really good way of making your position clear and unambiguous, and it ought to be the norm in productive discussion (as opposed to eristic argument).
“It is a symptom of extreme lack of confidence in your position”
Repeatedly evading direct questions is a really good indication of a lack of confidence in your position. It implies that you don’t think you can defend your answer.
Trouble is, giving direct answers to questions commits you to a position, and that is often a bad move in eristic arguments.
The definition of a lukewarmer is facile AFAICS. I am a lukewarmer by that definition and so is the IPCC (IIRC). I think it is as likely than not that ECS will be less than 3C (not that I am an expert), but I understand rational decision making well enough to know that policy should be based on the possibility of it being higher as the loss function is not linear (actually as I said before, the whole distribution should be used in guiding policy).
Joshua, I find your comment to be almost ethereal in its lack of accuracy, insight, whatever. You do manage to construct complete sentences, which is something…
You write, “It’s noteable (sic) that often people who say “how’s that working for you?” to argue that “alarmists” are responsible for what they see as a “lack of progress,” then turn around and praise “lukewarmers” despite that same “lack of progress.”
First, who is saying ‘how’s that working for you?’
I have indeed argued and still hold that climate activists are partially responsible for a lack of progress. I imagine you don’t agree, but you certainly are miserly in any explanation of why. I do praise lukewarmers–I’m a partisan lukewarmer. I think they’re largely correct. I’d be happy to go into chapter and verse on both subjects, but I’m not sure our host would be happy. ATTP, let me know if you want me to expound at length.
Those I have praised in comments here–Revkin, Pielke and Ridley–all advocate vigorous action to adapt to and mitigate climate change. How can you blame them (us) for stalling progress?
To follow up a bit on what Dikran has said, it could be that the ECS is slightly more likely to be below 3C, than above. In which case, someone who claims it will probably be below 3C could be technically correct. However, this still doesn’t really change that most of the risk is associated with the higher ECS values, hence ignoring that it could be above 3C would be ignoring the higher risk outcomes.
Tom,
No, they don’t. They might say that they do to avoid criticism, but they don’t advocate *vigorous* action to adapt and mitigate climate change. Pielke even has an iron law that essentially argues that there are strong limits to what we can realistically do.
ATTP, I do not advocate ignoring the possibility that ECS is 3C or above, up to a sensible limit of 4.5C. As Mosh and I have written repeatedly, building a safety margin into adaptation measures to account for that possibility is just common sense. Reducing emissions should not have a lower limit, beyond which we don’t need to go. The only caveat for me is that we will probably have to accept fossil fuels for air and seaborne transportation–for the foreseeable future.
Risk management does not ignore scenarios beyond those considered most likely. It accounts for pessimistic possibility. It just doesn’t obsess over it.
indeed, a bit like saying that you correctly predicted the outcome of a coin toss – yes, you got the answer right, but only by chance and in no way does it validate your position on the physics of coin tosses.
You are extremely selective in your reading of Pielke fils.
Tom,
Then what is the point of aligning yourself with some label called “Lukewarmer”?
Personally, I think I’ve read far too much of it.
Dikran is right, of course. It’s a hard slog to get a leopard to change its spots.
Cheers all,
Mike
It should be obvious to anyone doing a critical analysis that the free marketeers are scoping out the possibility of good returns of investment in the end times. Doesn’t matter if the choices hasten the end times or assure that we wander into the end times like lambs to the slaughter, there are some investments that are just going to do very well in ends time conditions. The economics of this system simply can’t choosing the high returns choices over and over. It ain’t rocket science, folks.
Cheers
Mike
“Then what is the point of aligning yourself with some label called “Lukewarmer”?
A decade ago, just agreeing with the IPCC wasn’t enough to avoid the label of ‘denier.’ You were there. You saw it. You participated in it.
There was a real need to carve out a position that was not skeptical, but not in agreement with much of the hyperbole coming from climate activists, NGOs and a handful of scientists. The sort of people who never bothered to read the IPCC’s Special Report on Impacts and other relevant literature.
It didn’t work, at least not then. Most activists cheerfully continued to call us ‘deniers.’
Those of us who adopted the label spent a lot of time looking at the data and were persuaded that the most likely value of ECS was below 3C. Happy to expound on that too, although Steve especially has done it repeatedly.
Tom,
I would suggest that stating something like “I agree with the IPCC” doesn’t actually mean that someone does. Have you ever wondered why RPJ often has to add these kind of clarifications to his posts?
“Personally, I think I’ve read far too much of it.”
His lack of response to technical criticism of his work (after having specifically invited it) means I won’t be reading any more of it anytime soon (at least without good reason).
Details here.
Prof Pielke Jr asked “What can be in the book that is so powerful that it has led to complete silence from people rarely silent?”
Asking questions in an eristic argument is risky as well, you run the risk of your “opponent” having a good answer.
“Those of us who adopted the label spent a lot of time looking at the data and were persuaded that the most likely value of ECS was below 3C. “
So the most likely value of ECS is below 3C. I broadly agree. So what difference does that make? Rational policy (as has been repeatedly pointed out) is dominated by the possibility of hit being high (arbitrary values are irrelevant – you need to look at the whole distribution).
There, I have asked a direct question and run the risk of you having a good answer.
(there is actually no risk, if you have a good answer, you will have made your position much clearer and there may be more agreement)
ATTP:
“Tom
Those I have praised in comments here–Revkin, Pielke and Ridley–all advocate vigorous action to adapt to and mitigate climate change.
No, they don’t. They might say that they do to avoid criticism, but they don’t advocate *vigorous* action to adapt and mitigate climate change.””
Not quite— The problem is that ardent advocates of net zero anathematize mitigation as a moral hazard to their cause.
“There was a real need to carve out a position that was not skeptical, but not in agreement with much of the hyperbole coming from climate activists, NGOs and a handful of scientists. The sort of people who never bothered to read the IPCC’s Special Report on Impacts and other relevant literature.”
Why was there a ‘need’ – It’s not like there has been some over-reaction in terms of responding to climate change.
what the Luke Warmers did was give plausible cover to the idea of waiting and taking no action.
Revisiting what it means to be a Luke Warmer and making it mean < 3 ECS is pretty poor form. For much of it's existence the whole idea of what Luke Warmer meant was poorly defined and vague – and deliberately vague. It was always 'marketing'.
For both of you, Tom and Steve, this has been a huge marketing exercise, an effort at self promotion.
verytallguy,
“Emissions are now roughly flatlining:”
I’m a little sceptical…
As others have said, we wouldn’t expect this to be discernible right now. There are reasons to be increasingly skeptical of fossil fuel co2 estimates though, just because the future should see a growing proportion of global emissions coming from countries with less strongly centralised bureaucracies and infrastructure than our emissions inventories have been trained on.
In Nigeria most people with any sort of income have at least one personal petrol generator in their home, it’s pretty common to have multiple. There is a centralised grid, mostly powered by natural gas, but doesn’t reach everywhere and has insufficient supply for the places it does reach, resulting in regular blackouts. It’s estimated that about 50% of Nigeria’s electricity generation is by these personal generators. But these things aren’t plugged into the grid so we don’t really know how much, we have no real consumption data. And that’s a problem because emissions estimates are built on real consumption data, so it never gets counted. Half of the fossil fuel electricity generation of ~ 3% of the world’s population is absent from our inventories.
Unless emissions inventories find a way to track off-book emissions around the world, it seems reasonable to assume a trend towards greater and greater underestimation.
Bob – “Who is supposed to provide those incentives, and how are they provided without corrupting the “Free market”?”
A “Free Market” surely shouldn’t allow and include Cheating as legitimate. Not if it operates within the rule of law.
Applying responsibility and accountability for an industry’s externalised harms and costs isn’t corruption but evading that accountability by use of undue political influence that enshrines a perpetual amnesty in law surely looks like cheating to me.
———–
I tend to swing from optimism to pessimism. Climate accountability denial remains a very well supported position within commerce and industry and political parties and governments. 8.5 scenarios may seem off the tables but powerful interests still act as if unconstrained burning of fossil fuels is an inalienable Right and actively seek the breakdown of international agreements and national targets and commitments. Global missions are as high as they have ever been and still growing, if (arguably) not quite as fast.
Fossil fuel use is still growing and even governments that are allegedly “fully on board” with emissions reductions targets like my own nation’s (Australia) are still giving near absolute backing (with subsidies and assistance) to growing fossil fuel extraction for exports and to the ongoing use of greenwash and delay locally. To the point of funneling dedicated emissions reduction funding to fossil fuel companies for unworkable CCS, for unworkable dirty Hydrogen (with CCS). They are subsidising “trade exposed” emissions intensive industries and supporting dubious carbon offset schemes and more.
For optimism there is the notable absence of any significant new fossil fuel power generation developments in Australia. The only not-renewables project is a single small gas plant by the decree of the previous Federal government that was hostile to climate action and renewable energy.
How much that is reluctance to invest in fossil fuel plant for fear it will be stranded assets and possibly facing future liability should Courts ever catch up and make responsibility explicity and how much it is trust in renewable energy and how much it is purely a cost driven short term market choice isn’t entirely clear. Ironically a lot of the fossil fuel mining operations are themselves turning to renewable energy to run their operations, to be more cost competitive.
I think the “free” market success of renewable energy – all the more impressive for competing successfully against cheaters with a well honed kit of tools for influencing opinion and policy – has been a remarkable achievement and to my mind it is the resulting shifting of perceptions of the climate problem from impossibly intractable to possible to manage, as something communities are willing to commit to that has been it’s most important achievement so far. Whether that competitive advantage can be sustained at ever higher levels of use we will have to wait and see.
So the most likely value of ECS is below 3C. I broadly agree. So what difference does that make? Rational policy (as has been repeatedly pointed out) is dominated by the possibility of hit being high (arbitrary values are irrelevant – you need to look at the whole distribution).
well consider this
1. i framed a position that
a) was consistent with the accepted science
b) could gather agreement from rational “hawks” such as yourself
and
a good number of sceptics described themselves as lukewarmers
BUT
b. a good number of folks derided the position as “untenable” irrational.
which seemed weird to me.
i mean how could i frame a position that was in alignment with the science
and have AGW types disagree with.
look at all the abuse heaped on Tom. it lets you know whats really at issue.
further
“Rational policy (as has been repeatedly pointed out) is dominated by the possibility of it being high
(as has been repeatedly asserted) !!!!!
again, take a look at China and zero covid policy.
they assumed a high fatality rate and high R-nought
from my perspective, having lived there, it looked like a rational policy. assume the worst case scenarios.
but opps. when it backfires even totalitarian states cant control a public that has been
scared for nothing..
I dont think its accepted that rational policy is dominated by extreme scenarios.
and NO you cant simply multiply the probability by the damge to get the expected value.
FFS take a look at the 800Billion we spend on defense. you wanna know how that happens
start with the QDR.
in the QDR i worked with we had to assume 1. a war on the korean peninsula
that required 50% of our air assets. then we need to
derive the force structure required to penetrate the Fulda Gap, survive, and
conquer russia. that drove the specific design of the B2, F22 and F35
in ways that cost billions. no matter how much we screamed about unrealistic assumptions, no one wanted to understand how assumptions precluded solutions.
more affordable solutions
“could gather agreement from rational “hawks” such as yourself”
please could we do without the labelling. I’m not a “hawk” about anything, it isn’t in my nature.
You appear to have written quite a lot without giving a direct answer to my question. I still don’t know how you would use the belief (in a statistical sense) that ECS is less than three to inform policy.
EFS,
I’m seeing China at ~800 million in 2100…
The UN suggests 394 million in 2100 for the US and 767 million for China
Where did the SSP5 come up with their numbers for 2100 populations?
SSPs come from IIASA, who produce their own population projections. The core scenarios are SSP1, SSP2 and SSP3, which are explicitly low, median and high cases for population growth.
The SSP2 median has China at 776 million and US at 460 million relative to global 2100 population of ~ 9 billion. So China about the same. The US significantly higher, I think because of a greater expectation of migration towards the US.
SSP5 is a variant of the low-end SSP1 scenario, both with 2100 global population of 7 billion. SSP1 has China at 650 million and US at 470 million. SSP5 has China also at 650 million, but the US at 720 million. This is really because SSP5, among other things, is a scenario featuring very high openness to migration, and an assumption that the US would be the favoured destination.
“So the most likely value of ECS is below 3C. ”
Most people have had the most likely value as around 3, for the last two decades or more.
“Rational policy (as has been repeatedly pointed out) is dominated by the possibility of hit being high (arbitrary values are irrelevant – you need to look at the whole distribution).”
what does it mean to be ‘dominated’?
Do you think that the current level of action to mitigate AGW is too much?
Not wanting to deflect from my question, but
“b. a good number of folks derided the position as “untenable” irrational.”
This is perfectly reasonable. The rational decision making process requires that you consider the whole distribution of plausible values of ECS (and the associated impacts), so undue focus on the half of the distribution where the loss function is smallest is irrational.
Steven, I agree that you could make a different judgement given the same scientific evidence. However, I do think your description of Lukewarmers is overly generous. Firstly, I don’t think there is/was a consistent position. Secondly, an awful lot of the Lukewarmer narrative appeared to be associated with minimising the risks/impact of climate change. Plus, I wasn’t suggesting that all we needed to do was multiply the probability by the damage, but it is a reasonable way quantify the risk, even if you don’t then use it to define your preferred response.
Nathan “what does it mean to be ‘dominated’?”
that the optimal course of action does not strongly depend on the plausibility of low values of ECS because the impacts there are small, so they only make a minor contribution to the expected losses.
Thanks. Dikran
yes, I agree, you need policy that mitigates the ‘worse’ outcomes, not the ‘likely’
“when it backfires even totalitarian states cant control a public that has been
scared for nothing..”
the hyperbole does you no favours. There have been over 200,000 deaths in the U.K. from COVID, that is hardly “nothing”.
I dont think its accepted that rational policy is dominated by extreme scenarios.”
I agree that there are problems where there are near-infinite losses from tail events, but I don’t think climate change puts us in that position. Also ECS is one line of input to the policy making procedure (if it were that easy we wouldn’t need politicians, and we do). It needs to be balance against the worlds other problems for a start. But I have seen no suggestion of a more rational approach.
It is quite similar to a risk analysis project I was involved in years ago, where my solution was to include probabilities of probabilities as a means of determining when we perhaps ought to stop looking at tail probabilities (because of epistemic uncertainty). Unfortunately most people find probabilities difficult enough and probabilities of probabilities was a step (way) too far for the users.
Nathan “yes, I agree, you need policy that mitigates the ‘worse’ outcomes, not the ‘likely’”
it is a bit of a combination of both factors, my key point is that you should just look at the whole distribution and no useful purpose (other than “forming a position”) to arbitrarily truncate it and only look at the bit that suggests all will be relatively O.K.
It is a bit like the papers published giving arguments that climate sensitivity is low. I’d be much more reassured by papers that rule out the possibility that it is high, but it appears that is more difficult to do (IIRC paleoclimate would be hard to explain).
“Steven, I agree that you could make a different judgement given the same scientific evidence.”
I also agree with this, ECS is only one consideration, so the judgement still has many degrees of freedom. This is the problem with defining “lukewarmer” based on ECS if you can’t explain how your position on ECS influences that judgement. There seems to be a disconnect somewhere.
Steven –
> look at all the abuse heaped on Tom. it lets you know whats really at issue.
It seems to me that it’s hard to have a rational discussion when someone is so dramatic, and ignores relevant context. I could say, if I were so inclined, that when someone does that it lets you know “what’s really at issue.”
But appealing to mind-probing is definitely sub-optimal.
Likewise with game-playing about “lukewarmism.” As Anders says:
> Firstly, I don’t think there is/was a consistent position.
Certainly you know that without context and specificity, the discussion of “lukewarmism” is meaningless. It’s an inkblot for people to see what they want to see.
There are reasonable points on both side of this issue. Seems to me that people who peg a lower “likely” band in the range of warming have an argument to make. My understanding is that they can reasonably ask for some others to modify their stance to accommodate changes in the science over time. And in my understanding, people who argue that the “likely” band not be constrained in ways that aren’t consistent with the science also have a legitimate point to make.
Looking backwards there’s plenty to argue about. Do it to your heart’s content, but I think that’s a waste of time.
This is really easy …
3C plus/minus some standard deviation (or 2 sigma), but might not be quite symmetric, so 3C (mean/median) +1.5/-1.0 (yielding 2C < ECS < 4.5 with some language like likely attached).
On the other hand …
3C +0/-2 or 3C +0/-1.5 or 3C +0/-1 so that instead of providing a so-called central estimate (with associated bounds) we get an asymetrical estimate about the mean/median ECS of say 3C (can't be higher than 3C but could be as low as 1C (yielding 1C < ECS < 3C with some language like extremely likely attached).
The problem here is easy to see, luckwarmers have never expressed any sort of central value with limits (+/-) as far as I know, just below 3C is therefore not a sufficient answer. If you believe Nic Lewis like numbers then you need to state as much, or you need to state some other central estimate with associated bounds (say one or two sigma, or +sigma -two sigma or +x.x sigmas -y.y sigmas, and you need not get hung up on sigma as just a central estimate +/- whatever you believe will surface)).
Why is pinning down luckwarmers so hard? See above as one such example for ECS.
Also when does mitigation become adaptation and vice versa? Again the luckwarmer position is ambiguous, but appears to be 100% adaptation (what ever the heck that means). Which means to me, let's just wait and see and then provide the necessary infrastructures on an as needed basis (which is mostly what happens in real life today for many civilization works).
At some point the do nothing approach just means adapt and adapt some more and adapt some more … ad infinitum ad nauseam (so that, to be clear, then express your favored view of just adaptation as such).
Each meter of SLR means adapt and we then have approximately 68 adaptations over these next few millennia. Or the smart move would be to move to the highest ground once, so anything above say +68 meters neglecting asymmetries in Earth's geoid for the moment (as where you happen to be might need, for example) +100 meters or only +50 meters).
Anyways, there are many more ambiguities when one holds an ill defined position and then claiming some sort of victory dance about that ambiguous position.
I must admit that reading this blog today, with its many commenters, makes me long for those long ago days when blogs were still popular.
paulski0,
I can’t or won’t disagree with those numbers. Just that 2100 is still a long ways away and thus population projections are perhaps no better then ECS estimates?
“look at all the abuse heaped on Tom. it lets you know whats really at issue.”
Rashomon
Ken said “Applying responsibility and accountability for an industry’s externalised harms and costs isn’t corruption but evading that accountability by use of undue political influence that enshrines a perpetual amnesty in law surely looks like cheating to me.
I used the “corruption” term to be provocative, because of the extreme position (which I disagree with) that any sort of government taxes, regulations, etc. of corporations is A Bad Thing. “Government shouldn’t try to pick winners”, etc.
I’ve spent too much time living with governments that think the role of government is to “get out of the way of business”, and are removing regulations, fighting carbon taxes, etc. They don’t seem to have any problem with governments that create favourable tax laws for their friends (and political donors), but Dog forbid that the government create any sort of economic environment that favours the competitors of [their friends and political donors].
To those extremists, trying to stop their own favoured industry from “cheating” is indeed akin to “corrupting the ‘free market'”.
Tom Fuller
“A decade ago, just agreeing with the IPCC wasn’t enough to avoid the label of ‘denier.’ You were there. You saw it. You participated in it.”
The thing is Tom, is that you don’t agree with the IPCC. You just say that you do.
In reality, you de facto advocate that the top half of the PDF for ECS should be ignored.
A much better debate would be had if you made an open argument for this rather than pretending agreement with the IPPC.
“look at all the abuse heaped on Tom. it lets you know whats really at issue.”
https://imgflip.com/i/77v86j
PaulS,
With improving batteries, Solar can replace those off-grid diesel generators in Africa and reduce cost. The cost advantage for solar will only increase with time as the business infrastructure to provide off-grid systems in Africa improves.
https://www.crownagents.com/blog-post/divesting-from-diesel-powered-generators-in-sub-saharan-africas-health-sector-the-case-is-clear/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ankitmishra/2022/06/28/husk-power-solar-innovation-is-the-best-way-to-deploy-clean-energy-and-advance-sustainable-growth/?sh=5dda4c7ed568
Tom writes “Risk management does not ignore scenarios beyond those considered most likely. It accounts for pessimistic possibility. It just doesn’t obsess over it.”
It is ironic that Tom doesn’t seem to be able to avoid this sort of uncharitable caricatures of his opponents’ position, while at the same time complaining about caricatures of his own. The Bayesian risk analysis doesn’t “obsess” about anything, that the outcome is dominated by the upper tail is because the impact function is super-linear. It is the result of an appropriately balanced analysis of the plausible values of ECS and the impact function. So this is an attempt to portray the conventional approach as unbalanced, when it is anything but that.
“As Mosh and I have written repeatedly, building a safety margin into adaptation measures to account for that possibility is just common sense.”
Exactly how could Bangladesh (one of the least wealthy and most densely populated nations) adapt to the loss of a substantial fraction of it’s agricultural land due to rising sea levels? Specifically, who will pay for those adaption actions, given that Bangladesh is not a wealthy nation?
On emissions data: the data is problematic in various ways, but there significant and increasing validation effort (e.g. using fossils sales/production data, eventually satellite data), and various countervailing tendencies (e.g. as countries get richer they tend to get better at data-gathering) so I don’t think the situation is as straightforward as “an increasing share of emissions aren’t counted”.
In any case, reaching zero emissions growth in the best available data is not a sign that it is time to declare victory. Just a significant turning point that indicates significant progress compared to a possible world with another century of fossil-fuel-powered-growth.
Repeating for emphasis:
It is ironic that Tom doesn’t seem to be able to avoid this sort of uncharitable caricatures of his opponents’ position, while at the same time complaining about caricatures of his own.
Those tempted to mind-probe may want to question “what’s really at issue.”
Not to say that mischaricatures aren’t an important issue. Indeed, I think almost invariably they lie at the root of where progress stops.
Maybe we all need to try harder to not mischaracterize, and instead to clarify. Imagine what these discussions might be like if a precondition was that everyone had to attain agreement that their characterizations of others’ opinions were accurate.
No problem, I can be patient. The question of mine that it would be most worthwhile answering would be:
I am specifically looking for an explanation of how ECS being likely to be below 3C feeds into policy and why the possibility of it beings substantially higher apparently does not.
“So this is an attempt to portray the conventional approach as unbalanced, when it is anything but that.”
perhaps I should have written “appears to be an attempt” – that is what it looks like, but I can’t *know* why.
“Maybe we all need to try harder to not mischaracterize, and instead to clarify.”
rem acu tetigisti (as Jeeves would say, but he would probably spell it correctly)!
Gents,
Maybe we can avoid another Kick Me episode.
I don’t understand the use of words there, but I suspect that is an instruction to drop the subject, so I will comply.
I am specifically looking for an explanation of how ECS being likely to be below 3C feeds into policy and why the possibility of it beings substantially higher apparently does not.
since you asked a question and have always been polite and earnest to a fault
i will repeat what i’ve said several times
i dont do policy
and what we wrote in our book: we dont dictate policy
Tom asked me to join him in writing a policy book and I refused.
but your question is more general “how does it feed into policy.”
1. it takes drastic action, like throwing tomato sauce on paintings, off the table,
but not out of the room.
2. it opens the door to balancing mitigation, adaption, and innovation as responses
to the challege.
3. it changes the rhetoric from crisis to challenge, from catastrophe to concern
4. it allows time for local/national/ trial and error approaches to the concerning challenge utilizing the lab of democracy.
5. it opens the conversation to people who accept the science but reject the standard leftist policy solutions.
6. it tries to open a policy discussion above the right left divide.
think of it as meta policy
conflict resolution.
A. we believe effective policies in things like eniviroment and public health
require cooperation of the governed. mask policies no one obeys dont work.
so we need a modicum of agreement not universal acceptance on climate
policies.
B to get this there needs to be some common ground on the science
i thought ECS is less than 3C was both true and innocuous. a good candidate
for common ground.
alas.
‘
Sorry, I think I have been directed not to respond further to this line of discussion, but thank you for your reply.
Steven,
What if people don’t want to reject the standard leftist policy solutions?
Dikran,
Kick Me:
https://ericberne.com/games-people-play/kick-me/
One reason why there is a Climateball law for what could be happening if we do not return to the topic initiated by AT.
So, what do so-called climate activists look like? Are these like their cartoon characteristics as portrayed at WTFUWT?
Yes do go over there and see the the really bad titles, very bad wordplay attached to pictures and opening paragraphs (or the entire article even). Almost all of them need to go to journalism classes (or some such) to better compost their efforts!
Now, if ever there were a backlash to so-called climate activists that site would exemplify that so-called backlash most accurately. As in, we need MORE CO2 emissions not LESS CO2 emissions. It is mostly the same group of people that have been around going back to at least the 1950’s or whenever we started to realize that we are messing up our house called Earth.
I am actually trying to visualize the WTFUWT? crowd at a protest march, or some such, sort of like anti-abortion activists, but in this case they are all of one sex, all of one race, all rather old and gray/balding and all wearing suits.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, so-called climate activists are just youthful dirty hippies or some such. Ah, you just got to love stereotypes from the 70’s.
Ah right, I suspected it might be a reference to something (which I possibly don’t understand either – at least not nuances).
I hope you don’t mind to much, but I think I ought to point out the problem with Steven’s answer is the same problem he complained about up-thread, i.e.
“b. a good number of folks derided the position as “untenable” irrational.”
his answer includes:
“it opens the door to balancing mitigation, adaption, and innovation as responses
to the challege.”
Correctly balancing these things required consideration of all of the risks (i.e. the whole distribution of plausible ECS and the associated impacts), so that is irrational (not derision – just a technical criticism), as I pointed outupthread.
dikran –
> I am specifically looking for an explanation of how ECS being likely to be below 3C feeds into policy..
I like the first part of that question – indeed it seems to me to be the crux of the biscuit.
> and why the possibility of it beings substantially higher apparently does not.
The second part, it seems to me, may be more sub-optimal as a point of focus. With someone who believes (with a high level of certainty), that the possibility of the risk being substantially higher doesn’t figure into policy discussion, the discussion takes on an different shape. It becomes a zero sum rather than positive sum.
If it’s not clear whether someone accepts the first part of your question but rejects the second, then that issue needs to be clarified to see what kind of discussion can be had. Sometimes, I’ll grant, the distinction between rejecting the second part and accepting the second part can get tricky. And sometimes people will leverage the difference to disguise aggression or a wish to vindicate grievances.
I hope that maybe makes sense to someone other than myself.
Stephen –
Seems to me that number 5…
> 5. it opens the conversation to people who accept the science but reject the standard leftist policy solutions.
Is a framing that’s logically incompatible with number 6…
> 6. it tries to open a policy discussion above the right left divide.
You are first explicitly land (and pejoratively) labeling a policy option as “standard left wing” and then asking to rise above a left vs. right dichotomy.
Not only is that logic, imo, logically incoherent, even if you don’t think so it’s clear likely to reinforce left vs. right partisanship in the real world. In the real world its signaling. You might as well frame it as… “reject the standard alarmist policy perspective” and sit back and wait for responses about the “typical ‘denier’ policy perspective.”
And then after doing that you can complain about a lack of progress and blame that on climate scientists?
Joshua “I hope that maybe makes sense to someone other than myself.”
if nothing else it is always best to ask one question at a time. However I have been asked to move on so having given a response that was the minimum Steven’s answer deserved, I am going to leave it there. I think it has corroborated my existing impression that “lukewarmer” isn’t a coherent position, just a technically true, but completely bland statement about ECS.
Moshpit is just deploying the Missouri Compromise solution to these problems. There is a middle ground like there is an edge to a knife you just need to really flatten that edge out so that you can stand on it. Not useful as a knife anymore, but there you have it, a middle ground on a really dull knife. Conversely, you can really sharpen that knife so that no one can stand on it. Somehow, it did not work then and I am afraid that it will not work now.
More to the point, are RCP 7.0 and RCP 6.0 and RCP 4.5 also off the so-called proverbial table? At some point, this does indeed look like a do nothing approach or business as usual.
Should have said Steven not Stephen
dikran. OK. Thanks.
I agree that “lukewarmism” can be incoherent and is often used incoherently. As a label it seems pretty useless to me – a result of it being so vague – unless the aim is one of tribalustic signaling.
Better to spell out what one believes rather than rely on opaque terms.
Verytallguy asks “Would a Tambora in the year of reaching 560ppm magically reduce TCR by three degrees?”
Yes. That is why it is called the transient climate response. You might get a different number the year you hit 562 ppm, compared to the year we last hit 281 ppm. You can get an actual measurement of TCR as you hit every doubling from 280, 281, 282 and so forth. So yes – they will take into account everything which influences global temperature – even eruptions in the year we hit 560 ppm.
Richart Arrett “Yes. That is why it is called the transient climate response.”
No, that is not the reason. TCR is the transient response to a perturbation of CO2 in isolation. You said more or less that yourself:
Note the lack of mention of any other forcing.
It is a model metric – you can do that experiment with a model, you can’t do it with the real world. ATTP has pointed this out to you already.
I’ll leave that one up, Dikran, but just because you responded.
I said earlier that Rick has taken his leave from this thread. I mean it.
EFS,
My understanding is that RPJ argues that RCP4.5 should be treated as a plausible worst-case/high-emission pathway. According to the table in the post, RCP4.5 could require only ~640GtC from 2006, which is about 500 GtC from today. So, 50 years at current emissions could produce a RCP4.5-like change in forcing. We could do better than this, but this does not seem like a reasonable worst-case scenario, because it seems that we could certainly do much worse.
One wonders what would happen if keeping to s about 500 GtC from today conflicted with economic growth?
It would be difficult to have a worst case scenario if everything was conditional on economic growth.
Perhaps we could coin “BAU(ATTOW)” – Business as usual (at the time of writing)?
Isn’t it also making assumptions of no surprises in carbon cycle feedback?
ATTP,
Imagine a world in which Junior is the so-called intelligent designer and everything fails almost immediately after construction because the dead load coefficient was 1.0 (and not say 1.4) and the live load coefficient was also 1.0 (and not say 1.7) and a coefficient of less than 1.0 was not applied to the ultimate strength of a material under consideration.
The above really dates me, but in general, we do not design for the most likely case because we usually do not want everything we design to fail in pretty short order. So that, for example, relying too heavily on the IEA for future designs is suboptimal, in my honest opinion.
I am wondering though if deniers were in charge, how long they would really last? My answer is, not for very long.
I, for one, am bemused as to why different assessments of ECS make conversations more or less left or right wing.
VTG,
It is all a vast left wing conspiracy to subjugate the vast right wing conspiracy. Anyways, it is all a conspiracy!
It’s the suits versus the hip hugging bell bottoms. I thought everyone here understood their stereotypes.
VTG, well, quite!
I suspect Mrs Thatcher would look at the whole distribution and the associated impacts. That doesn’t mean she would have implemented a humane policy, but if not, it wouldn’t have been because of the self-delusion of acting as if the upper half of the distribution was not where a substantial amount of the risk lies.
[Cameron, May, Boris, Truss and Sunak have somehow made it easier to say something good about Mrs Thatcher]
@-dm
“Cameron, May, Boris, Truss and Sunak have somehow made it easier to say something good about Mrs Thatcher”
Just as McConnel, McCarthy, Jordon, and Trump have made it easier to say something good about Reagan.
The increasing sectarian extremism has not helped in any attempt to reduce CO2 emissions.
In fact wind-turbines kill bird and cause cancer, the Texas electric grid continues to fail from cold and heat blocking gas supplies and generators. which it shows no inclination to abandon, and Wyoming is banning electric cars
[Mod: Link doesn’t seem to work.]
@-J
I get an ‘access denied’ message when I try and click on your link.
I am aware the proposed legislation is essentially performative;
“But state Sen. Jim Anderson, who introduced the bill, said he doesn’t actually want electric vehicle sales to be phased out, though the resolution pushes the legislature to seek just that.”
My quoting of the proposed legislation was equally performative, intended to show the level at which pro-fossil fuel sentiment now explicit.
Chatter above TCR. TCR can be easily estimated from observations. Since 1970 there has been a steady rise in forcing roughly equal to 0.5 x 2CO2. The temperature rise during that time is roughly 0.9C. That puts TCR around 1.8C pretty much as expected by climate science. One caveat is that recent research indicates that 1970 to 2019 featured conditions that weren’t representative of what we might expect in the long term. More warming would be expected under more representative conditions.
https://eos.org/editor-highlights/a-dilemma-about-radiative-climate-feedback-in-recent-decades
I find Luckwarmers boring. Same old talking points from the hiatus. I don’t sense any real interest in climate science or ECS, they certainly aren’t up-to-date on recent ECS science. They are stuck in the Nic Lewis false rhetoric of “observations vs models”. The climate has certainly moved on. Temperatures have risen rapidly since the end of the hiatus demonstrating that unlike models, “low ECS” has very little short-term predictive power.
One final point. You can’t separate uncertainty from ECS values. It falls out of the (1 – feedback) term in the denominator. If uncertainty is a fixed percentage of feedback magnitude, a reasonable assumption; then the larger the feedbacks, the greater the uncertainty. If ECS was truly low we wouldn’t argue about it so much.
“TCR can be easily estimated from observations.” indeed, but that is very different from measuring TCR from observations. What was proposed was essentially like measuring the length of a moving walkway by pacing it out and multiplying the count by your stride length.
Marsupial’s twin paradox: twins measure the length of the walkway in opposite directions and find it is substantially longer in one direction than another and conclude that there must be an anomaly in the space-time continuum.
Ok I see the point. Same with ECS. Perhaps that’s the attraction provides plausible deniability to a lay audience.
The basic problem is that we don’t have accurate, or precise, estimates of the net change in anthropogenic forcing and this is unlikely to change in the coming decades. Given that an observational estimate of the TCR, or ECS, refers to the warming due to a change in forcing that is equivalent to a doubling of atmospheric CO2, any attempt to use observations to make these estimates will probably have reasonably large uncertainties.
What would really help to set an improved estimate of TCR from observations is to stop burning stuff and throwing aerosols and short-lived pollutants up into the atmosphere.
I think a lot of the problem is that a lot of people think that we can just let the data speak for themselves because they don’t trust modelling, but they don’t understand that data doesn’t speak for itself. If you want to ask a specific question, you need to set up the experiment so that the data *can* only speak to answer that specific question. If you can’t set up the experiment (i.e. observational science) then the data will be giving you an incoherent mixture of the answers to many different questions at the same time and you will need to do some modelling to extract the answer to the question you are interested in.
However some would still prefer the wrong answer in order to avoid models they don’t understand, rather than put in the effort tosufficiently understand the model.
Izen –
The link just shows that it was performa rive and I thought your comment was as well but just wanted to double-check.
I’ll try again to see if it works.
https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/environment-verify/wyoming-not-banning-electric-vehicles-fact-check/536-a1b22240-7cff-4ee3-b0ab-6dd106f497ba
“The basic problem is that we don’t have accurate, or precise, estimates of the net change in anthropogenic forcing and this is unlikely to change in the coming decades. Given that an observational estimate of the TCR, or ECS, refers to the warming due to a change in forcing that is equivalent to a doubling of atmospheric CO2, any attempt to use observations to make these estimates will probably have reasonably large uncertainties”
And also that internal variability adds significant uncertainty to the warming estimate.
And that measurement uncertainty, particularly in the historic record is significant.
And that natural forcings (solar, volcanic etc) adds further uncertainty…
ATTP,
I agree there is uncertainty. The IPCC AR6 likely TCR range is 1.4 to 2.2. One approach used in AR6 was the instrumental record, along with paleo observations and other approaches. However unlike previous rounds, models were not used to estimate TCR or ECS. So distrust of models doesn’t justify a “low ECS”card anymore.
Joshua, it may be a location based permissions issue. I found this fairly easily that looks like it may be the same source?
@-B McM
“What would really help to set an improved estimate of TCR from observations is to stop burning stuff and throwing aerosols and short-lived pollutants up into the atmosphere.”
I suspect it will be easier to reduce aerosols and short-lived pollutants than burning fossil fuels.
Any perusal of the oil/gas industry media shows an appetite for increased production at a high price. The pursuit of profit still dominates an industry that is causing significant change to the global climate.
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Saudis-Wont-Let-Oil-Stay-At-75-Pioneer-CEO.html
“Saudi is not going to let Brent stay around $75 a barrel,” Scott Sheffield said, adding that it wouldn’t surprise him “if they had another cut.”
As for where Pioneer’s CEO sees oil headed, Sheffield sees the $80 a barrel mark as the base, with an upside of $150.”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/IEA-Sees-Global-Oil-Demand-Hitting-A-Record-High-In-2023.html
“The International Energy Agency believes global oil demand will hit a record high of 101.7 million barrels per day this year.”
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/oil-production-picking-up-second-largest-us-shale-field-2023-01-18/
“Oil production in South Texas, home of the second largest U.S. shale field, is expected to rise as much as 4% this year, as higher prices spur more drilling and as U.S. crude exports set new records.”
dikranmarsupial admits “TCR can be easily estimated from observations.” indeed, but that is very different from measuring TCR from observations.
Oh- of course I meant that you would measure average global temperature when we hit 560 ppm and “estimate” TCR by subtracting the average global temperature when we were last at 280 ppm. Then rinse and repeat every two ppm (562, 564, etc.). Then we can average all the “estimated” TCR “calculations” together and arrive at an average “estimated” TCR. Which can then be used to see how the models are doing and can even be used to “estimate” ECS.
Rick,
1. Do you get that when atmospheric CO2 hits 560 ppm that the change in anthropogenic forcing will almost certainly not be equivalent to a doubling of atmospheric CO2?
2. Do you understand why I’m asking this question?
Izen: There is a huge push to improve air quality, and I think that has been just as important hitting new fossil infrastructure as climate legislation.
For example, consider the business with diesel cars; the pollution control equipment adds up to 1000s of £ and is significantly annoying and maintenance-intensive (e.g. cleaning the DPF). For coal plants, the capital cost of new plant is to a large extent because of the cost of pollution control stuff. It is a big reason most places haven’t built them recently.
BEVs are seen as ‘good’ not just in a climate sense, but also in a not-idling-a-dirty-diesel-in-front-of-the-school sense. Gas stoves are increasingly seen as an internal air pollution problem, but were the main drawcard for convincing householders to get put on the mains gas network.
The health toll of air pollution is pretty severe especially in the less-developed world so if anything this stuff is just as important as climate. Together, these make fossils seem like the way of the past…
[No need to respond to Rick’s baiting. -W]
ATTP:
Yes – I do understand that. However, take a look at this:
https://archive.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/345.htm
More specifically this quoted portion “The �transient climate response�, TCR, is the temperature change at the time of CO2 doubling and the �equilibrium climate sensitivity�, T2x, is the temperature change after the system has reached a new equilibrium for doubled CO2, i.e., after the �additional warming commitment� has been realised.”
Now I see that TCR is the temperature change at the time of CO2 doubling. It doesn’t say anything about while holding all forcings constant except for CO2 – it just says what is the temperature change at the time of CO2 doubling.
Do you understand why I am telling you this? Do you understand why I might think that TCR is just the temperature change at the time of CO2 doubling? Do you understand why I might think this could be measured?
Rick,
The TCR is a model metric. When the TCR is estimated in a model, the only thing that changes is the CO2 concentration, at 1% per year. All other forcings are held constant.
Hence, if you want to estimate the TCR in the real world, you have to account for these other possible changes. Hence, the “real world” TCR is typically estimated by working out how much warming would take place if there was a net change in forcing that was equivalent to a doubling of atmospheric CO2. Since there many possible forcing agents, this isn’t going to be when atmospheric CO2 has doubled. It will depend on the impact of all the possible forcings (CO2, methane, aerosols, solar, etc…).
Also, as VTG points out, this is also complicated by internal variabilty. Hence, even in a model, the TCR is typically estimated by increasing atmospheric CO2 at 1% per year until it double, which takes 70 years, and then taken the 20-year average of the temperature (although I can’t remember if this is 10 years before the double and 10 years after, or 20 years after the doubling).
Since this is been explained a number of times already, maybe we can move on, rather than continuing to go in circles.
Sure – I will drop it. You do you. Me – I am going to be looking at the temperature change at CO2 doubling. We can circle back in 2060 ish.
I find Luckwarmers boring. Same old talking points from the hiatus. I don’t sense any real interest in climate science or ECS, they certainly aren’t up-to-date on recent ECS science.
what hiatus? there never was one.
talking points? name one . i dont do policy or talking points.
real interest? how would i demonstrate that? publishing perhaps?
up to date? Im still taking the under bet.
Steven,
That’s fine, but it has no more validity than someone who takes the over bet.
What would the bet look like?
I could take both if I can build a Dutch book out of it.
although I can’t remember if this is 10 years before the double and 10 years after, or 20 years after the doubling
Your first option, a centered 20 year average or conversely the most recent 20 years so that a centered average means 10 years before the then current date.
Also found this recent TCRE (and ZEC) paper …
Much of zero emissions commitment occurs before reaching net zero emissions
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/acab1a
2023-01-03
Scholar search of “transient climate response emissions tcre” confined to 2023
“We explore the response of the Earth’s coupled climate and carbon system to an idealized sequential addition and removal of CO2 to the atmosphere, following a symmetric and continuous emissions pathway, in contrast to the discontinuous emissions pathways that have largely informed our understanding of the climate response to net zero and net negative emissions to date. We find, using both an Earth system model and an ensemble of simple climate model realizations, that warming during the emissions reduction and negative emissions phases is defined by a combination of a proportionality of warming to cumulative emissions characterized by the transient climate response to emissions (TCRE), and a deviation from that proportionality that is governed by the zero emissions commitment (ZEC). About half of the ZEC is realized before reaching zero emissions, and the ZEC thus also controls the timing between peak cumulative CO2 emissions and peak temperature, such that peak temperature may occur before peak cumulative emissions if ZEC is negative, underscoring the importance of ZEC in climate policies aimed to limit peak warming. Thus we argue that ZEC is better defined as the committed warming relative to the expected TCRE proportionality, rather than as the additional committed warming that will occur after reaching net zero CO2 emissions. Once established, the combined TCRE and ZEC relationship holds almost to complete removal of prior cumulative CO2 emissions. As cumulative CO2 emissions approach zero through negative CO2 emissions, CO2 concentrations drop below preindustrial values, while residual long-term climate change continues, governed by multicentennial dynamical processes.”
The above really dates me, but in general, we do not design for the most likely case because we usually do not want everything we design to fail in pretty short order.
well it all depends.
with aircraft you most definately design for the most likely case.
its called “standard atmosphere” of course you also EVALUATE the design at extremes! and then look at design changes required to survive extremes.
you design for 0 G and then test to destruction at 150% of max G.
to see how the system fails. we dont design to operation effectively at 14 Gs
so yes there are safty factors put in place to handle worst case, but you only design TO extreme cases if you have transparent aluminum, or free weightless materials, impervious to hold cold and sand.
same with electronics: we designed hand held electronics to surive a 3 foot fall onto carpeted surface. not a drop from the sears tower. the CD player in your trunk is not rated to operate in sub freezing temps.
heck your EV isnt designed for siberia
again, you design FOR the average case, most likely, then you EVALUATE
at extremes to judge robustness. you dont design for the edge case.
again you design for standard atmosphere, not tropical.
“with aircraft you most definately design for the most likely case”
No you don’t. And saying something like that does not make it so.
Moshpit confused themselves on what the design goals are for heaven’s sake. As they, meaning Moshpit, have never designed anything to begin with in the 1st place. Except for maybe what all they said above! As if anyone would do the examples they suggest.
There is an informal logical fallacy in all that Moshpit had to say and that is a strawperson fallacy.
Dropping something, in an atmosphere, has a terminal velocity, which, you know is besides the point of designing something to begin with in the first place.
“the CD player in your trunk is not rated to operate in sub freezing temps”
It also did not work under standard city road conditions either. Bump. Skip. Bump. Skip. Bump. Skip. …
And you are not designed to give a competent comprehensive answer whatsoever.
Steven,
Im still taking the under bet.
That’s fine, but it has no more validity than someone who takes the over bet.
validity? arguments are valid or not.
bets are wise, unwise, in the money, out of the money, etc.
dont forget that during the time we defined the term
folks like Tom and Zeke were framing bets with people.
.17C per decade was the over/under line
Steven,
I gave up real betting a long time ago, because I lost so much money. So much, in fact, that I promised myself that if I were ever to visit a casino again I would burn any fungible assets at the door.
As to over/under betting, no one should do that in real life, meaning an over/under bet is meaningless when the uncertainties are, you know, uncertain.
I do not claim to support anything other than the science itself, as in, central (or somewhat asymmetrical) estimates with associated uncertainties.
Betting as a game is one thing, betting in real life (meaning much more is at stake then the simple betting process itself) not so much, in my honest opinion.
The major problem with betting is that humans do it all the time, and a lot of the time they can get away with those bets and pay no price for being wrong (technically we would call them dead) Design something for a hundred year lifetime and it fails in the last, say 50 years, who you going to blame? Dig them up and hang them after the fact, I guess.
Steven,
Indeed, which is essentially what I’m getting at. However, earlier you presented a scenario under which you suggested you could build agreement. If you’re simply taking a “bet” on a possible, but not necessarily likely, outcome, then that is no different really from those who “bet” on other possible, but not likely, outcomes.
ATTP,
It is actually a bit more then that. The low end uncertainty, that one, no one really cares about. So that when you try to split the baby, as it were, there is no risk per se at that low end.
So that all the real risk and uncertainty lies at the upper half of the distribution and not the lower half of the distribution.
Do you really care about the most likely annual flood or the most likely 100 year flood? In that game, I always go for the 100 year flood even though I might still be wrong, but less wrong then if I designed for the annual flood!
Were I 100% certain that AGW carries no risk, I’d go all in on reinsurance stocks:
https://www.reinsurancene.ws/reinsurers-must-seek-new-opportunities-reprice-amid-climate-pressure-moodys/
I would then need to assume I hold information that the quasi-omniscient Market has yet to price in. With more capital I’d actually start a reinsurance gig and undercut all the competition.
***
Bets are not just for honor. Every belief on which we act by investing resources is a bet. One of my pet peeve is people showing an outrageous disparity between their beliefs and their betting preference, e.g.:
https://reason.com/2005/06/08/betting-on-climate-change/
While in his various appearances Dick seems very confident about his expectation that AGW will be a piece of cake, his bet shows otherwise.
Willard, will the reinsurance rating of the American Corn Belt rise on the news that Ohio’s legislature wants to take a bite out of its carbon footprint by allowing each household to distill 200 gallons of gasohol-grade moonshine a year?
Will AOC and the GND take their side, or the Revenooers ?
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2023/01/does-green-new-deal-include-homebrew.html
Now I see that TCR is the temperature change at the time of CO2 doubling. It doesn’t say anything about while holding all forcings constant except for CO2 – it just says what is the temperature change at the time of CO2 doubling.
Do you understand why I am telling you this? Do you understand why I might think that TCR is just the temperature change at the time of CO2 doubling? Do you understand why I might think this could be measured?
There are two options.
One is that you’re genuinely incapable of understanding an extremely simple and obvious point.
The other is that you’re choosing to pretend you don’t understand.
I go for the latter FWIW, but it’s impossible to be sure. Goodbye.
What will be really interesting is to see what happens to all the ethanol once everyone goes BEV. Already starting to see significant reductions in liquid fuel usage in places like Norway (where total distance driven is not changing much).
https://robbieandrew.github.io/EV/
Ben,
Will be interesting to see what transpires in US, where ethanol lobby is strong. In other US news, solar is dominating new electricity capacity.
“Moreover, if the current trajectory persists or accelerates, generating capacity by the mix of all renewables should overtake that of natural gas before 2030 and possibly much sooner.”
https://www.pv-tech.org/solar-to-dominate-us-capacity-additions-73gw-expected-through-2025/
In the same magazine. A $6.7 Billion, 50GW per year, PV factory is being built in China. How is fossil or nuclear going to compete? That’s the equivalent of 5 to 10 nuclear power plants per year in a highly automated facility. The manufacturing scale of solar continues to increase and will dwarf the competition.
https://www.pv-tech.org/longi-to-invest-us6-7-billion-in-building-new-production-base-in-china/
I suspect the ethanol lobby will turn to ‘Sustainable’ Aviation Fuel, or maybe industrial feedstocks (e.g. for plastics).
There is a good chance renewables in the UK (excluding biomass) produce more electrical power than fossil fuels this year.
“What will be really interesting is to see what happens to all the ethanol once everyone goes BEV.”
Cue Covering Climate Now campaign against Driving Under the Influence of Gasoline
Bets are not just for honor. Every belief on which we act by investing resources is a bet. One of my pet peeve is people showing an outrageous disparity between their beliefs and their betting preference, e.g.:
word, brother willard!.
Cue Covering Climate Now campaign against Driving Under the Influence of Gasoline
huffing gas is no joke
Betting on fossil fuels is a losing proposition. Your drawing dead. Better to fold now instead of throwing good money after bad. Your grandchildren will thank you.
Betting on fossil fuels is a losing proposition. Your drawing dead.
ya im being abused at WUWT for saying coal is dead.
idiots
I still expect a long fat tail of legacy fossil fuels with fierce ongoing defense of their continuing unconstrained use. And lots of mismanagement, blameshifting, inter-nation rivalries and conflicts and stubborn wrongheadedness, including ongoing Doubt, Deny, Delay politicking that maintains a lot of support and influence.
We aren’t seeing solar and wind dominating new electricity builds because power companies care about global warming; ironically it appears to be a case of market forces at work. Who’d a thunk that would happen, even as little as a decade ago? But it isn’t guaranteed that market advantage will be sustained at ever increasing RE penetration, as the needs are for large scale energy storage and remaking of electricity grids.
Much as I have a lot of optimism about the ability to do zero emissions steel, concrete and transport we can’t count on them being like renewable electricity and achieving self sustaining lower costs that are lower than the existing industry standard practice; doing things that are hard, especially when it costs more (in immediate Transient Response terms) takes a lot more commitment than I’m seeing.
I do think it is going to take some push to get some of these industries to take the challenge seriously – to believe it is zero emissions or no emissions and no exceptions. I think that if they really have to they will and very likely the end result will be cost effective but as long as they don’t have to they won’t.