Some global warming graphs

[Robert Tulip]

Alternatives paths to reducing emissions are neither silly nor mutually exclusive to what you propose Robert. What has your feathers in a ruffle over this?

Earlier you said it would be silly not to pursue both a better way to manage the emitted carbon, and a reduction of emissions.

That is fine as long as we understand that emission reduction does nothing for climate stability, but is solely justified in terms of waste reduction and economic efficiency. Why drive a gas guzzler when you can get the same result at lower expense? Why leave a light turned on when you can save on power bills by turning it off?

Just don’t pretend that this efficiency value has anything to do with climate change. In fact it is a complete distraction from the climate agenda, since emission reduction lulls people into a false sense of contribution. The only thing that will reverse climate change is mining carbon from the air on industrial scale.

I follow this debate on the geoengineering google group, and it is simply shocking to me how the false “emission reduction is all we need” argument has hijacked the global policy debate on what to do about climate change. This problem has massive opportunity cost regarding investment in practical solutions.

Of course we should invest heavily in extraction as well as reduction. Do you have an objective frame of reference to say that emissions are now lower now than they otherwise would have been if not for government mandates? I know you'll argue against this point, but it would be motivated by your distaste for government rather than solid reasoning. Gas mileage in cars, efficiency in appliances across the spectrum, rebates across the country for switching lighting (incandescents are no longer sold in California, and LED lighting is and HVAC units to more efficient units, and a push for wind and solar. There is no objective reference point, the argument can easily be made that our emissions are less than they'd otherwise be, and not merely exported to China.

California is about 3% of the world economy, so lets say it emits 0.3 gigatonnes of carbon every year. I would imagine all those worthy efficiency measures you cite might add up to about a saving of a million tonnes of carbon a year, which is just a fart in the wind against the climate problem. It is all feel-good religion and minor cost saving that makes no practical difference on climate.

The incentives to increase emissions vastly outweigh the incentives to reduce them, in terms of immediate economic interests.

Say that to Solar and wind companies, as well as LED lighting companies and power distribution companies, not to mention those vendors who benefit from technologies related to car emission reduction (not including companies such as Tesla, who make the entire vehicle to run without gas).

You are not considering the global scale. People in China and India are hungry for electricity, and see coal as the big cheap source. Until alternatives can compete with coal without subsidy, renewables will remain a boutique religious luxury, a pretense that will fail to shift economic incentives.

Reducing emissions is not some evil ineffective plot by an Orwellian government. It's real, effective, and is responsible for new jobs and new technologies.

Bjorn Lomborg has calculated http://notrickszone.com/2014/03/08/lomb ... 7-seconds/ that German investment in renewables delays global warming by about a day at a cost of about $100 billion, although I disagree with Lomborg’s support for fracking.

This tiny real effect at massive cost indicates the startling blunt irrelevance of emission reduction to climate change, and its total failure to conduct cost benefit analysis. Its advocates are not evil, they are simply ignorant and ideologically driven. The typical green delusion is to pretend that benefits are greater than they really are. But as Lomborg says, the opportunity cost is massive, delivering billions for useless subsidies while failing to invest in research.

Your words are fishy Robert. It's as if you've been cognitively captured by some private interest that has no desire in reducing emissions, even when it makes sense.

No, the cognitive capture here is on the part of the mainstream environmental movement which resolutely refuses to face facts regarding the magnitude of climate problems, and the irrelevance of emission reduction to solving those problems.

Sure emission reduction makes sense as a way to make the economy more efficient and encourage innovation. Just don’t pretend it has anything to do with slowing down climate change.

[Interbane]

That is fine as long as we understand that emission reduction does nothing for climate stability

Show me how you quantify the impact of emission reduction to show that it has zero impact. I'd be interested to see how increased gas mileage is shown to have zero impact. Or the usage of LED lighting in place of incandescents.

California is about 3% of the world economy, so lets say it emits 0.3 gigatonnes of carbon every year. I would imagine all those worthy efficiency measures you cite might add up to about a saving of a million tonnes of carbon a year, which is just a fart in the wind against the climate problem. It is all feel-good religion and minor cost saving that makes no practical difference on climate.

America's transportation network makes up nearly half of our carbon dioxide emissions, and our gas mileage standards have doubled. Imagine if every country did the same. Not only this single change, but changes all across the face of the economy, on a global scale.

The elephant in the room is that if we didn't focus on reductions and efficiency, our co2 production would be much much higher than it is now. Which was what motivated me to ask you how you quantify the amount of actual reduction. What objective standard do you have to compare things to? Even going flatline with a growing economy is a worthy goal.

Bjorn Lomborg has calculated http://notrickszone.com/2014/03/08/lomb ... 7-seconds/ that German investment in renewables delays global warming by about a day at a cost of about $100 billion, although I disagree with Lomborg’s support for fracking.

notrickzone.com is a site devoted to denying that climate change is real. You're reaching.

Either way, citing a failure of efficient reduction does not mean reduction isn't worth pursuing. Why not cite the failure of Solyndra while you're at it? You're confirming your biases while ignoring other facts.

I do think solar energy may eventually make a big difference. But as long as petroleum fuel is cheaper, we will continue to use it. If Americans force a switch to more expensive energy through government regulation, which is the direction we're going, other nations will gobble up that cheap energy. it will make no difference at all to the total carbon output.

This isn't entirely true geo. If Americans force a switch, the gears of capitalism will start turning and the output will be more efficient energy generation and distribution, more efficient transportation, more efficient heating and lighting, etc. Those efficiencies are technologies that are easily duplicated in other nations. Once the innovations are made that lead to cost effective technologies that increase efficiency, the technologies cross borders. If efficiency is combined with regulation on total emission, the economy can still grow while we produce less and less co2.

But Robert's right that even if everyone on the planet cut their emissions by half, we would still be producing a vast amount of carbon.

Yes, he is. And we obviously have to pursue co2 scrubbing on an industrial scale. But I don't buy the dismissal of reduction.

[Taylor]

withdrawn

[Robert Tulip]

That is fine as long as we understand that emission reduction does nothing for climate stability

Show me how you quantify the impact of emission reduction to show that it has zero impact. I'd be interested to see how increased gas mileage is shown to have zero impact. Or the usage of LED lighting in place of incandescents.

The theme of this thread, the difficulty of quantifying global warming, was illustrated in the graphs at the opening post which challenge the scientific consensus on anthropogenic impact. Those charts are easy to rebut, because they take a tiny slice of data, ignore the trends, and also ignore the causal explanation for the data. One of those charts even ignores standard statistical presentation methods and suggests that is ground for denial of global warming.

Assessing the data on whether emission reduction can affect global warming is far harder than just proving that global warming is real. Data indicates that the real impact of emission reduction is far less than is often assumed by its advocates. This policy failure for the warming lobby is an inconvenient truth, an aspect of the data challenge that in this case goes against the orthodoxy, instead of supporting it.

For ten thousand years the sea level has been unusually stable. It appears this is largely due to human methane emissions from rice cultivation in Asia in the early Holocene preventing a relapse into a new ice age. http://courses.washington.edu/holocene/ ... ange03.pdf

Over the last two centuries the addition of carbon to the air has gone through the roof, as per the hockey stick graph discussed earlier in this thread. Even if humans reduced net emissions to zero today, keeping the CO2 level at 400 parts per million, we would still be in a destabilised climate, and could expect further temperature increase due to the lag of climate change in response to addition of CO2.

The current situation is not remotely like a sudden stop in climate change. The cuts in emission of the lightbulb type are like the difference between boiling a frog in five minutes and boiling it in five minutes and ten seconds. The extra ten seconds is no real help to the frog, but propagandists can paint it as all the difference in the world, in order to skew public investment. When you combine the propaganda with the piddly reality of emission reduction’s non-effect on climate change, it is worse than no real impact, since advocates give the false impression of doing something when we are in a state of stunned helplessness.

America's transportation network makes up nearly half of our carbon dioxide emissions, and our gas mileage standards have doubled. Imagine if every country did the same. Not only this single change, but changes all across the face of the economy, on a global scale.

Yes, improved car efficiency might slow the increase to the very dangerous 500 ppm level by maybe a few weeks. No real difference, except a few people feel better about it because they believe the lies.

The elephant in the room is that if we didn't focus on reductions and efficiency, our co2 production would be much much higher than it is now. Which was what motivated me to ask you how you quantify the amount of actual reduction. What objective standard do you have to compare things to? Even going flatline with a growing economy is a worthy goal.

That is no elephant. It is a donkey, or maybe a mule or a cockroach in the room. The donkey in the room gets people to believe that emission reduction makes a difference to climate change, when it really doesn’t. The objective standard is the one you now proceed to discuss, in the next comment, with an ad hominem attack instead of a response to the data.

Bjorn Lomborg has calculated http://notrickszone.com/2014/03/08/lomb ... 7-seconds/ that German investment in renewables delays global warming by about a day at a cost of about $100 billion, although I disagree with Lomborg’s support for fracking.

notrickzone.com is a site devoted to denying that climate change is real. You're reaching.

I just googled Lomborg and that was the first site that came up. I don’t care if they are denialists, the point is that emission reduction makes no scientific difference to climate change. That is a substantive scientific reality which your ad hominem deflection ignores. Maybe you can use your google fu to find some evidence that indicates errors in Lomborg’s data?

Either way, citing a failure of efficient reduction does not mean reduction isn't worth pursuing. Why not cite the failure of Solyndra while you're at it? You're confirming your biases while ignoring other facts.

Improved economic efficiency is a good thing, we just should not pretend it can make a difference to the global climate. It would be like Poland trying to stop Hitler’s invasion through defence by tax reform. Climate change is a runaway train, and stopping it needs massive coordinated measures to manage the global climate by removing carbon from the air. Algae is by far the best bet because it pays for itself, it uses space that has no rival use, and it is fast, ecological, safe, efficient and simple. We could bag up 50 billion tonnes of algae at the bottom of deep ocean trenches every year, as a valuable resource to later raise for many practical uses. Just like fossil fuels – buried sunlight.

I do think solar energy may eventually make a big difference. But as long as petroleum fuel is cheaper, we will continue to use it. If Americans force a switch to more expensive energy through government regulation, which is the direction we're going, other nations will gobble up that cheap energy. it will make no difference at all to the total carbon output.

This isn't entirely true geo. If Americans force a switch, the gears of capitalism will start turning and the output will be more efficient energy generation and distribution, more efficient transportation, more efficient heating and lighting, etc.

Your comment here does not seem to understand market economics. If energy sources are more expensive, then the gears of capitalism won’t force the switch. More expensive energy is sand in the gears of the market, destroying jobs and growth and trade. The gears of capitalism only force a switch to something that is cheaper. Forcing a switch to something more expensive requires the gears of socialism.

You might like to read Atlas Shrugged which examines similar issues, although I suspect your ad hominem anathemas would kick in pretty fast. I assume you mean that capitalists can adapt to a highly regulated environment. That is true, but generally it is more sustainable and efficient to look for ways that a free market can achieve policy objectives, rather than just using the heavy dead hand of state regulation.

Maybe there is a good case for socialist regulation in some areas, but don’t pretend it is capitalist market economics. That is what the moochers do in Rand’s book. I personally think that large scale algae production can deliver improved biodiversity within a market economic framework, without the need for bigger government. If we can have both climate stabilisation and smaller government we can get the best of both worlds.

Those efficiencies are technologies that are easily duplicated in other nations. Once the innovations are made that lead to cost effective technologies that increase efficiency, the technologies cross borders. If efficiency is combined with regulation on total emission, the economy can still grow while we produce less and less co2.

I just don’t buy the argument that making energy more expensive is the best way to stabilise the global climate. My basic hypothesis is that research can find new energy sources that are competitive on price. Carbon taxation is an inefficient driver of innovation, a bit like pushing on a string and expecting the other end to move.

But Robert's right that even if everyone on the planet cut their emissions by half, we would still be producing a vast amount of carbon.

Yes, he is. And we obviously have to pursue co2 scrubbing on an industrial scale. But I don't buy the dismissal of reduction.

You are in widespread company Interbane with your political assumption that emission reduction is the key to climate stabilisation. I have not seen anyone else other than Lomborg and his supporting Nobel Laureates who question the religious dogma of emission reduction as the solution to climate change. Lomborg just gets ignored by the UN crowd, but he deals in facts, not fantasy.

[Interbane]

You are in widespread company Interbane with your political assumption that emission reduction is the key to climate stabilisation.

I never said it was the key Robert. This tangent started when I disagreed that reduction of emissions would have no impact. Of course it will have an impact. I also understand that if we stopped emissions this very instant to zero, our problems would continue. The key is removing the stuff from the air, down to the point where we started, or perhaps some other nearby figure. We don't disagree on that point.

I just don’t buy the argument that making energy more expensive is the best way to stabilise the global climate.

That's not the argument I'm selling.

Your comment here does not seem to understand market economics. If energy sources are more expensive, then the gears of capitalism won’t force the switch. More expensive energy is sand in the gears of the market, destroying jobs and growth and trade. The gears of capitalism only force a switch to something that is cheaper. Forcing a switch to something more expensive requires the gears of socialism.

Forcing a switch to something more expensive requires socialism? Like requiring companies to provide ear and eye protection for their workers? Or forcing companies to use more expensive yet less toxic chemicals in the things they sell? Or forcing employers to give their employees overtime when they are overworked? Are you trying to make socialism sound like a good system? Don't reply to this tangent.

The idea isn't to put more costs on energy producers that aren't warranted. I don't think it's a bad idea for them to pay for the ambiguous externalities of their pollution, which they haven't been. There are costs associated with their externalities, we all breath the same air. My point in mentioning economics is that if the costs of one energy source(coal) are increased, and another(solar/wind/biofuel?) are decreased, the point on the graph at which they cross is when the switch will happen. The costs of cheap energy would go up if we could cut through the ambiguity of externalities - how to quantify their impact both financially and morally - and force them to pay accordingly. Putting our waste in the landfill costs money, so why doesn't putting waste into the air cost money? There are associated costs to these things, and any morally sound market would take them into account. Pressure to create sustainable and renewable energy sources will make them cheaper, year by year.

Improved economic efficiency is a good thing, we just should not pretend it can make a difference to the global climate.

There are presumptions to what you're saying. How do you know the point in time that is the threshold, once crossed, that we can't recover from? Let's say it's fifty years from now, and all our efforts to scrub co2 from the air run into snags, despite the best efforts of people such as yourself. We hit the 49th year and realize we still need 2 more years. If only we had cut back emissions a little more, we could make the deadline.

I just googled Lomborg and that was the first site that came up. I don’t care if they are denialists, the point is that emission reduction makes no scientific difference to climate change. That is a substantive scientific reality which your ad hominem deflection ignores.

No scientific difference? If the entire world cut emissions by half, rather than doubling them over the next 25 years, what would the ppm difference be at the end of the century? I don't know the figures, so it's an honest question.

I'm not sure if this site is accurate, but it's useful. http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/v ... ns-of-co2/

If we released 20 gigatons per year rather than 80 per year by 2050, it appears to be a difference that would be measurable. That's 600 gigatons over a decade. Either I have a bad source, I'm bad at math, or you mean something different. Do you mean that the figures are so hopeless that we could never accomplish them? Wouldn't the deadline be easier to meet with 600 gigatons less co2 in the air to remove? Or is doomsday going to happen before 2050-2100? These aren't sarcastic questions, I'm pulling numbers I've never seen before and making many assumptions. Point out which assumption is wrong and I'll be happy to dig deeper.

The cuts in emission of the lightbulb type are like the difference between boiling a frog in five minutes and boiling it in five minutes and ten seconds. The extra ten seconds is no real help to the frog, but propagandists can paint it as all the difference in the world, in order to skew public investment.

You contradict yourself and give a useful analogy. Ten seconds is not the same as "no difference", especially scientific. Unless you know the exact date of the point of no return. If that's the case, and you have the math all figured out, then I apologize. But we both know that the frog could very well jump out of the boiling water at five minutes and five seconds, which means the small difference would turn out to be all the difference in the world. If only we knew.

Reading between the lines, I'm sensing your problem is with public investment. You're saying that the main thrust of our investment should be into removal of co2 from the air, rather than reduction of emissions. The emphasis on reduction of emissions makes us feel as if we're accomplishing something, so we turn our business to other matters, since time in our daily(and political) lives is limited. This would be a frustrating position for those who understand the situation better. This makes sense and I think you're right, but you haven't been clear at articulating this point. You have to realize I'm skeptical to the core, and saying that reducing emissions has zero impact is not the way to sell me. You don't need to debate with me as if I'm a politician Robert.

I'd be happy to add my two cents to every conversation regarding climate change from now on. We need to focus on scrubbing co2 rather than emission reduction, with emphasis on the former but ignoring neither.

[Taylor]

I found this article to be interesting; http://www.powermag.com/carbon-capture- ... nd-demand/
According to the agency's named ( IEA and Global CCS Institute ) both include co2 capture and sequestration as part of a global reduction plan. Reduction being the overall plan for at least the next forty years. The link will take you to the site but once there you'll have to search carbon capture & sequestration for the article I mention.

[geo]

I do think solar energy may eventually make a big difference. But as long as petroleum fuel is cheaper, we will continue to use it. If Americans force a switch to more expensive energy through government regulation, which is the direction we're going, other nations will gobble up that cheap energy. it will make no difference at all to the total carbon output.

This isn't entirely true geo. If Americans force a switch, the gears of capitalism will start turning and the output will be more efficient energy generation and distribution, more efficient transportation, more efficient heating and lighting, etc. Those efficiencies are technologies that are easily duplicated in other nations. Once the innovations are made that lead to cost effective technologies that increase efficiency, the technologies cross borders. If efficiency is combined with regulation on total emission, the economy can still grow while we produce less and less co2.

Sorry for taking so long to respond. This is a good point.

I don't know if anyone has read the piece that discusses why buying a used Hummer has a smaller carbon footprint than a new Prius. The reason is that manufacturing the Prius, especially the hybrid battery, requires a lot of energy. So a Prius starts with a higher carbon deficit than a used Hummer. This is, of course ridiculous because the technology that made the Prius will ultimately be able to reap huge benefits in energy efficiency. As Interbane says, we are investing in the long-term viability of the technology.

So just to be clear, I have always thought that people should do what they can to reduce waste. We are an incredibly wasteful society with no thought given to leaving computers and lights on. Reducing emissions probably won't make much of a difference in the long haul, but it's worth doing.

The current belief that we are doing something to combat global warming by passing a few regulations seems incredibly naive and even dishonest to me. The Democrat party seems poised to capitalize politically on the fears of climate change. But it also may be true that the current mindset of carbon reduction is a necessary baby step in reaching the kind of global awareness to take more meaningful steps later.

[Interbane]

The current belief that we are doing something to combat global warming by passing a few regulations seems incredibly naive and even dishonest to me.

This made me think of something, and it's entirely a tangent. When we reference belief in aggregate - ie the "current belief", what is the process for finding out what the current belief is? I envision a spectrum of various independent beliefs, with peaks and valleys representing beliefs that are more or less commonly held. The peaks would correspond to coverage on news stations or good arguments. This misses the nuances that each individual holds, and those nuances matter. For example, I think we are doing something(as opposed to absolutely nothing) to combat global warming by passing a few regulations. I also think there are bad regulations in the mix. Based on Robert's input here, I also think the primary solution is to focus on scrubbing vs reduction.

See this article from the Economist from 2009. http://www.economist.com/node/13174375

See this excerpt, emphasis mine: "PREVENTING catastrophic climate change, most people agree, will mean reducing the level of man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. That, in turn, will require the widespread use of “low carbon” technologies such as solar and wind power, more energy-efficient buildings, and so on. Some countries have pledged to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions by 80% by 2050, and campaigners are calling for cuts of 90% or even 100%. New Zealand, Costa Rica and Norway are racing to become the world's first “carbon neutral” country. But some researchers think there might be a simpler way to reduce the level of CO2 in the atmosphere: to build “air capture” machines that, as their name suggests, grab it from the air."

This captures Robert's frustration clearly. The first part of that paragraph is about reducing emissions as if it's the primary solution. The last sentence offers scrubbing as an "alternative" solution, as if reducing emissions actually reduces the amount of CO2 rather than slows the rate at which it accumulates.

I'm starting to agree with Robert more and more. The language we use to discuss these ideas needs to be catered to the audience. Depending on the soundbites used and which ones go viral, less effective solutions will have the most buy-in. But I also think there are intelligent people who will see the issue with the argument that reduction has "zero impact", and will lock on to it in the same way I have. The discussion must be truthful, which requires a well thought out narrative that eliminates the potential to polarize. Pay lip service to the small effects, but emphasize what's important.

[geo]

I found this article to be interesting; http://www.powermag.com/carbon-capture- ... nd-demand/
According to the agency's named ( IEA and Global CCS Institute ) both include co2 capture and sequestration as part of a global reduction plan. Reduction being the overall plan for at least the next forty years. The link will take you to the site but once there you'll have to search carbon capture & sequestration for the article I mention.

Thanks for posting this. Maybe this link is better:

http://www.powermag.com/carbon-capture- ... nd-demand/

“Fossil fuels are useful, plentiful and affordable, so of course we will continue to use them,” he said. “To exploit this resource to the full, without further damaging the planet, we need CCS.”

CCS stands Carbon Capture and Sequestration. Unfortunately it sounds like these projects aren't getting off the ground. The report blames the lagging pace on policy rather than technology.

[geo]

The current belief that we are doing something to combat global warming by passing a few regulations seems incredibly naive and even dishonest to me.

This made me think of something, and it's entirely a tangent. When we reference belief in aggregate - ie the "current belief", what is the process for finding out what the current belief is? I envision a spectrum of various independent beliefs, with peaks and valleys representing beliefs that are more or less commonly held.. . .

Another excellent point. I've created a strawman that represents only a portion of the overall spectrum of beliefs. I'm allowing my political views to bias my beliefs.

This is a great thread. Robert's got me thinking a lot about carbon capture as well.