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icowrich at 05:54 AM on 26 August 2019Greenland is gaining ice
GRACE data ends in 2016. Do we have GRACE-FO data, yet, so we can extrapolate what has happened in the intervening years?
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icowrich at 05:53 AM on 26 August 2019Greenland is gaining ice
If we're losing, on average, 0.01% of total Greenland ice mass per year, then we can expect to lose 1% of the total mass in a century. That doesn't sound so bad until you realize it assumes the melt rate does not accelerate.
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MA Rodger at 03:15 AM on 26 August 2019Residence Time and Prof Essenhigh
daveburton @35,
It would be better if you could come up with some support for your advocacy of Spencer's silly model rather than presenting unsupported assertions that it is "correct". All we have otherwise is the 'big ocean' which you say must be thus effectively an infinitely large sink. You tell us "Mankind has increased CO2 level in the atmosphere by about 47%. We've increased carbon content in the oceans by only about 0.4%." (Note Roy doesn't reckon to your 47% figure.)
If that was correct that the percentage ocean carbon increase has to match the atmospheric percentage increase (which it doen't), that will have massive implications for a whole lot of stuff. (1) The projections of CO2 levels in the RCP scenarios would be massively revised if Spencer's model were anything like reflective of reality. Now I know Spencer denies that CO2 has any sigificant warming impact on the climate but this CO2 model would give him a brilliant second string to his contrarian bow (and how he needs one, as the other ones have proved pretty useless). (2) The implications for ocean acidification are massive and for fresh water it doesn't bear thinking about. (3) The low CO2 levels of the ice ages will have to be entirely re-thought. If atmospheric CO2 levels drop by a third, there would be 13,000Gt(C) being pumped out the oceans and into .... where? Golly, that's a tricky one!!
Yet (and I note that up-thread I wrongly called it a blog from last year 2018) in the four months since this model was posted (April 2019), I see no reference to it beyond that blog. It didn't even get a posting on the planet Wattsupia (which is a really bad sign!!!) Is Spencer too busy chatting to fellow contrarians at the Heartland Institute (where he seemed to have said nothing about his grand revalation)? So why the silence? My take is that Spencer's model is so embarassing that Spencer hopes it goes away. So, daveburton, you are not helping the reputation of poor old Roy with your insistence that his model is correct (when it patently isn't).
By the way, that long fat tail may be a lot stumpier than Spencer's model implies. The idea that the oceans are sucking up carbon at a rate constant with the level of atmospheric CO2 above an equilibrium of 295ppm(v) doesn't seem to hold over the period 1958-2010. Rather than a constant level of uptake, the rate has dropped by a half from the start of this period (1959-78) to the end of this period (1991-2010). That isn't exactly constant over centuries as Spencer's model assumes.
In truth, daveburton, your words do correctly assess Spencer's model when you say "If you start with a physically impossible assumption, you get a physically impossible result." That is exactly what Spencer's silly exercise in curve-fitting has done.
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Eclectic at 00:19 AM on 26 August 2019Residence Time and Prof Essenhigh
Daveburton ,
I appreciate your comedic comments about wires and feedbacks. Although they belong in an earlier lesson than Homeostasis 101.
Likewise, Dr Spencer's Simple Model provides farcical amusement, thanks to its disconnect with reality — why yes, its curve fits reality at least in part . . . just as the Aristotelian model of the planets is a moderately good fit to the observed motion of the planets across the night sky, at least in part!! But unlike our Spencer, our Aristotle had a decent excuse for his blunders.
Daveburton, when I mentioned sitting back and observing "another 40 years or so" , I was of course not alluding to the future experience of someone as unimportant as me (or possibly you). Or perhaps you were just pulling my leg about "that", too.
No . . . I was alluding to something far more important: namely the human race. And here we get to the crunch, Daveburton, the really important point about Spencer's far-too-simple-to-be-scientifically-useful model.
# What do you think was the actual underlying reason for Dr Spencer to publicize his strange little "Simple Model".
( Not for comedy, I suspect. Nor for the edification of genuine climate scientists.)
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Eclectic at 23:51 PM on 25 August 2019There is no consensus
CThompson @819 ,
I'm sure that you would agree that "scientists" exist on a spectrum of climate expertise, ranging from extensive climate expertise (involving much research & publication in respected journals) . . . . across to those with almost zero knowledge of the complexities of climate-related science (e.g. the 19,000 scientists who signed the Oregon Petition two decades ago).
Unsurprisingly, all surveys examining this point do indicate that the higher the climate expertise the higher the "mainstream" consensus percentage.
CThompson, since you seem unhappy to countenance that point, then perhaps you should try coming at the consensus percentage, from quite the opposite direction :- Identify the percentage of climate scientists who are outside the consensus.
That would be much easier — since they are so few in number. And there is an important second identification which you must make. In order to cull out the undeserving (i.e. the crackpots, the nutcases, and the Gone-Emeritus types undeserving of your approbation) -— you must simultaneously identify the valid evidence which supports their "contrarian" views.
# Because if they don't have any valid evidence for their opinions, then they are not really countable as scientists.
Shouldn't take you long at all !
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daveburton at 21:52 PM on 25 August 2019Residence Time and Prof Essenhigh
Eclectic wrote, "your heated-wire analogy is even wider of the mark..."
It is just a simple example illustrating a general principle. It's how negative feedback systems work. If the removal rate increases with system output level, that's a negative feedback mechanism. A constant forcing input will then result in a plateau at "equilibrium," where the negative feedback has caught up with the constant input.
That's true when the input forcing is energy added to your toaster via electricity, and the negative feedback mechanism is radiative & convective heat loss from a nichrome wire.
It's also true when the input forcing is CO2 added to the atmosphere, and the negative feedback is CO2 removal from the atmosphere via dissolution in the oceans and terrestrial plant uptake.
The principle is true regardless of whether the negative feedback is linear or nonlinear. For the nichrome wire example, there are actually three significant negative feedbacks, all with different transfer functions: radiative heat loss goes up in proportion to the 4th power of the temperature relative to 0K, convective heat loss goes up in approximate proportion to the temperature difference between the wire and ambient air, and the resistance of the wire also goes up with temperature. The fact that all three have different-shaped transfer functions doesn't affect the conclusion: because they are negative feedbacks, a constant input (forcing) must result in a plateuing output, gradually approaching equilibrium.
Eclectic continued, "The design of the Simple Model fits at best tangentially with physical reality."
It fits extremely well for the period for which we have accurate measurements:
Eclectic continued, "nor do we have the luxury of time to sit back and observe another 40 years or so, as the Simple Model diverges from the (complex) real world."
Well, I obviously don't, at my age.
But mankind does have that luxury, and you should not expect Roy's Simple Model to diverge much from reality over the next 40 years. It is the "long, fat tail" (due to increased carbon levels in non-atmospheric reservoirs) which is not modeled by the Simple Model. Regardless of what happens with CO2 emission rates, CO2 removal over the next 40 years will be dominated by the removal mechanisms which the Simple Model models well.Eclectic continued, "the paleo evidence demonstrates the falsity of Spencer's too-simple Simple Model."
All models are false, but some are useful. Roy's Simple Model is very useful. It is a very good fit to measured reality, and it will continue to be a good fit as long as the CO2 removal mechanisms which are currently most important continue to be most important. When CO2 levels drop below 300 ppmv, and the accumulation of anthropogenic carbon in non-atmospheric reservoirs becomes an important factor affecting atmospheric CO2 levels, then his Simple Model will diverge from reality.
MA Roger wrote, "Yes, the oceans are big. Yes, the oceans contain contain sixty-times the carbon found in the pre-industrian atmosphere (which was in full equilibrium with the oceans). But what has that got to do with your "fact"?"
Mankind has increased CO2 level in the atmosphere by about 47%. We've increased carbon content in the oceans by only about 0.4%.
So, why does that matter? Because it is that accumulation of carbon in non-atmospheric reservoirs that is not modeled by Roy's Simple Model. In other words, his Simple Model assumes the other carbon reservoirs have infinite capacity.
That's a pretty good simplifying assumption, as long as the anthropogenic increase in atmospheric CO2 dwarfs the anthropogenic increase in carbon in other reservoirs. It will diverge from approximating reality during the "long, fat tail," when the anthropogenic increment in atmospheric carbon dioxide no longer dwarfs the anthropogenic increase in carbon in other reservoirs.
MA Roger wrote, "it is very odd that they would ever allow atmospheric levels to remain constant while the ocean absorbed a large constant flux of dissolving CO2."
Atmospheric levels will remain constant when transfer of carbon to the oceans and other carbon reservoirs removes CO2 from tha air as quickly as anthropogenic emissions are adding it. (They're currently removing it only about half as fast as we're adding it.)
MA Roger asked, "Have you actually examined the workings of Spencer's model?"
Of course.
MA Roger wrote, "If you set the future anthropogenic emissions to a fixed value... atmospheric CO2 levels tend to a constant value"
Which is, of course, correct.
MA Roger wrote, "while negative emissions, suck out 15Gt(C)/yr and by AD2191 the atmosphere is entirely denuded of CO2. daveburton, doesn't that strike you as "very odd"?"
Not at all. If you start with a physically impossible assumption, you get a physically impossible result. The only thing I can think of which could possibly remove a net 15 GtC/year from the atmosphere when CO2 levels are below 300 ppmv, is some idiot genetically engineering a fast-growing, fast-propagating C4 tree.
Please don't do that! The Earth doesn't need another K-T Extinction! -
Estoma at 21:29 PM on 25 August 2019There is no consensus
I've been lurking here at Skeptical Science and Real Climate since their inception. One of the first things I learned was about the natural carbon cycle. Put that part aside. The emmissions being talked about are the ones created by fossil fuels. That CO2 has a different signature from the natural CO2.
https://skepticalscience.com/co2-increase-is-natural-not-human-caused.htm
There is such a thing as zero emmissions. You just have to learn what type is being talked about.
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CThompson at 19:44 PM on 25 August 2019There is no consensus
Rob Honeycutt:
Unless you stop breathing, we'll never get to "zero emissions". Further, if you're suggesting that we're somehow going to stop the planet itself from producing emissions? That's not gonna happen. There's no such thing as "zero emissions". -
CThompson at 19:29 PM on 25 August 2019There is no consensus
I think the whole problem I have with this alleged "scientific consensus" claim is the symantic gymnastics it is they engage in. To hear them talk, ALL scientists, or even ALL climate scientists, agree that climate change is happening and humans are responsible. However, and we'll use the Doran study in this example, we find out that actually isn't the case. If we analyze the Doran study and break it down, 10,257 earth scientists were asked to participate in an online survey. Of those, only 3,146 of those asked participated in the study. And, of those 3,146 earth scientists, 5% were climate scientists. That means some approximate 158 of them were climate scientists. Now, surely, there are more climate scientists than 158 and, there's certainly more earth scientists than 3,146 of them and, we can feel pretty confident that there's more scientists than the 10,257 that were asked to participate. So, that certainly isn't ALL scientists as we might be led, by illusion, into believing. Worldwide, I'd like somebody to tell me approximately how many scientists there are in total to qualify any claim that ALL scientists reach this consensus. I'm betting there's WAY more than 10,000, or 3,000 or, 158. So, where do they get off trying to present this illusion that ALL scientists have this consensus. Then, another article I read said that all articles where the abstracts endorse AGW. Well, if the abstract endorses AGW, of course the author is going to endorse AGW as AGW means Anthropogenic Global Warming. Why would they write an article about it if they don't endorse it? And, of course, these people have made it their academic career to be indoctrinated into the AGW camp. If anyone is looking for an objective opinion about AGW, they certainly don't go to someone who has been taught throughout their entire academic career that human kind is responsible for climate change.
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nigelj at 07:49 AM on 25 August 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #34
"Upon arriving in Switzerland last week, youth members of the country’s right-wing populist Swiss People's Party issued a statement calling Thunberg and the movement dangerous fear-mongering."
The right wing populists are such blatant hypocrites, given they routinely fear monger about all sorts of things, in fact fear mongerings is their modus operandi. At least Thundberg is basing her concerns on something solid, unlike the right wing populists who appear driven by nameless fears like headless chickens and nit wits, in the main anyway (they occasionally make a good point)
“Yeah, I’m very dangerous,” she said with a small smile at a press conference. “All we are doing is communicating and acting on the science, and I don’t understand what is so dangerous with that.”
It upsets a lot of things, including peoples deepest political and ideological beliefs and fears.
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MA Rodger at 20:49 PM on 24 August 2019Residence Time and Prof Essenhigh
daveburton @32,
Yes, the oceans are big. Yes, the oceans contain contain sixty-times the carbon found in the pre-industrian atmosphere (which was in full equilibrium with the oceans). But what has that got to do with your "fact"?
The ocean carbon content is a complex mix of carbonate species that populate our salty seas. The actual amount of dissolved carbon dioxide in the whole global ocean is a tiny portion of the total, perhaps 200Gt(C), less than a quarter of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It is this alone that that the atmosphere directly balances with (this balance achieved only when it appears at the surface).
Given the complex set of carbonate species within the oceans and the complex ocean currents, it is very odd that they would ever allow atmospheric levels to remain constant while the ocean absorbed a large constant flux of dissolving CO2. (When I say "very odd" I mean it is utter nonsense.) And were it not so, the accepted scientific works on the subject would be themselves very odd.
Have you actually examined the workings of Spencer's model? (The spreadsheet of it is linked on this Spencer blogpage) If you set the future anthropogenic emissions to a fixed value (Spencer sets it to 10.109Gt(C)/yr) , atmospheric CO2 levels tend to a constant value:-
CO2[atm-ppm] = 195 + 20 x Emissions[GtC]
So drop emissions to zero and see the pre-industrial CO2 level restored in two centuries. while negative emissions, suck out 15Gt(C)/yr and by AD2191 the atmosphere is entirely denuded of CO2.
daveburton, doesn't that strike you as "very odd"?
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nigelj at 17:22 PM on 24 August 2019The North Atlantic ocean current, which warms northern Europe, may be slowing
Brian G Valentine @2
"The (gulf stream) current, known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc), carries warm water northwards towards the north pole. There it cools, becomes denser and sinks, and then flows back southwards. But global warming hampers the cooling of the water, while melting ice in the Arctic, particularly from Greenland, floods the area with less dense freshwater, weakening the Amoc current."
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Brian G Valentine at 15:16 PM on 24 August 2019The North Atlantic ocean current, which warms northern Europe, may be slowing
And here I was, under the impression, that the Gulf Stream was the result of the Coriolis force of the rotating Earth, that water diverted off the African continental shelf north to the Poles, where the water cooled, and returned again to the Tropics.
Now who would have guessed that Global Warming could change this?
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Kimbal at 14:02 PM on 24 August 2019Just how ‘Sapiens’ in the world of high CO2 concentrations?
Here's a link to the full text of the Jacobson et al 2019 paper
Perhaps this old thread is picking up again?
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nigelj at 07:34 AM on 24 August 2019Market Forces and Coal
Riduna @15, good points. In fact it appears that while investment in RE has decreased since 2010 consumption and installed capacity has continued to grow presumably because prices have fallen which compensates for the lower investment:
ourworldindata.org/renewable-energy
www.bmwi.de/Redaktion/EN/Dossier/renewable-energy.html
However there may be a limiting factor as prices will just not keep on falling forever, not steeply anyway, and the pace of conversion to renewables is too slow, all suggesting its appropriate to consider what is the best mechanism to ensure investment continues and indeed that more capacity is built. A carbon tax avoids governments having to find money but please all countries have to do something, anything. The pace of change is too slow.
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Eclectic at 05:17 AM on 24 August 2019Residence Time and Prof Essenhigh
Sorry, Daveburton, but your heated-wire analogy is even wider of the mark than Dr Spencer's much-too-simple Simple Model.
The design of the Simple Model fits at best tangentially with physical reality. And 40 years is a short period — nor do we have the luxury of time to sit back and observe another 40 years or so, as the Simple Model diverges from the (complex) real world.
As MA Rodger points out : the paleo evidence demonstrates the falsity of Spencer's too-simple Simple Model.
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daveburton at 00:54 AM on 24 August 2019Residence Time and Prof Essenhigh
Eclectic wrote, " ...the 500ppm figure that the model indicates cannot be exceeded under Dr Spencer's stated conditions of artificiality."
Dr. Spencer's simple model does not say that 500 ppmv can never be exceeded under any circumstances. But if emissions are held steady at 10 Gt/year, atmospheric CO2 level will level-off at just shy of 500 ppmv.
That should not surprise you. It is a natural result of the historically-verified fact that when CO2 levels go up, so do CO2 removal rates. That simple fact, alone, even without reference to a particular quantified model, ensures that a constant CO2 emission rate must result in a plateau in CO2 level.
Do you have an electric stove or toaster? Even though you keep pumping electricity into the nichrome wires, the temperature levels off, and ceases to rise. That's simply because the rate of energy loss rises with the temperature. So the temperature plateaus as it approaches equilibrium: the level where incoming and outgoing energy flows are balanced.
Since the rate of CO2 loss from the atmosphere rises with the CO2 level, the CO2 level must plateau, as it approaches the level at which the flows of CO2 into and out of the atmosphere are the same.MA Rodger wrote, "This is plainly nonsense. Where does all this extra carbon accumulate?"
It's not nonsense, it's fact.
The extra carbon migrates to other reservoirs, like the oceans (the biggest), soil, marine sediments, etc. Those reservoirs dwarf the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and, importantly, dwarf the amount of carbon available in recoverable fossil fuels.
MA Rodger wrote, "if humanity restricts itself to pumping 10Gt(C)/year ... continuing year-after-year for ever-&-ever-&-ever..."
Fossil fuels are a finite resource. So we obviously will not (cannot!) continue to emit 10 GtC/yr from fossil fuels "for ever and ever."
Have you never wondered why most people assume CO2 levels won't ever exceed 600-800 ppmv? It's because for CO2 levels to continue to rise at their current rate, CO2 emissions must continue to accelerate — and resource constraints ensure that that can't continue forever. So the rise in CO2 levels must taper off.
What's more, even if CO2 emissions accelerate fast enough to maintain the current growth rate in atmospheric CO2 level, that would mean CO2's climate forcing trend will fall below linear. Since the warming effect of CO2 is logarithmically diminishing, in order to maintain a linearly increasing temperature forcing from CO2, the growth rate of CO2 levels in the atmosphere must increase approximately exponentially.
That is, in fact, what has happened, for the last forty years or so. CO2 emissions have increased so dramatically that CO2 levels have increased on an approximately exponential curve, so the temperature forcing from rising CO2 levels has increased at an approximately linear rate (actually slightly more than linear). You can see that in a graph of log(CO2). Notice how straight the graph is for the last forty years:
https://www.sealevel.info/co2.html?co2scale=2
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MA Rodger at 19:03 PM on 23 August 2019Residence Time and Prof Essenhigh
daveburton @27,
The problem is as described by Eclectic @28&30. Roy Spencer is not renowned for errorless analysis. This 2018 blog of Spencer's you rely on is no more than an exercise in curve-fitting that leads to the ridiculous conclusion that if humanity restricts itself to pumping 10Gt(C)/year of CO2 into the atmosphere (as it did in 2018), continuing year-after-year for ever-&-ever-&-ever, the atmospheric CO2 level will stablise over 200 years at 500ppm(v) CO2.
This is plainly nonsense. Where does all this extra carbon accumulate? And if paleoclimate studies show atmospheric CO2 levels in past eons at 2,000ppm for over a hundred million years, were did the carbon come from to maintain such levels? According to Spencer's model, simply to maintain it at 500ppm over such a period would require emissions upward of 1Zt(C). I'm pretty sure the planet doesn't contain that much carbon!!
You are perhaps correct to suggest that many misinterpret the Airbourne Fraction which is simply a product of our rising emissions. It is not a subject much discussed beyond the Af concept itself. In terms of the draw-down mechanism, Af is a very poor concept to start from. So in Af terms in 2018, that 57% of 2018 CO2 emissions drawn-down out of the atmosphere is better seen as comprising something like a draw-down of 4% of the emissions 2014-18, 2.5% of the emissions 1999-2013, 0.6% of the emissions 1919-98, etc. These approximate numbers I obtain by scaling one of the 1000_cswv plots in Fig 1 of Archer et al (2009) 'Atmospheric Lifetime of Fossil Fuel Carbon Dioxide' which models a single 1,000Gt(C) impulse. The draw-down dynamics under the gradual release of AGW mean these numbers will not entirely match the AGW numbers, but they do well enough as a rough guide.
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Eclectic at 17:43 PM on 23 August 2019Residence Time and Prof Essenhigh
Yes, thank you, Daveburton, I noticed the 295ppm figure — and also the 500ppm figure that the model indicates cannot be exceeded under Dr Spencer's stated conditions of artificiality.
Curiouser and curiouser, as Lewis Carroll would say. As you know, he ("Carroll") was a mathematician — but even the delightful nonsenses his fertile mind created, had not extended into acronyms like GIGO. He would have had fun with that sort of thing !
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daveburton at 15:09 PM on 23 August 2019Residence Time and Prof Essenhigh
Thanks, Mr. Moderator!
I'm sorry, I guess trying to post code in-line was just a bad idea. The tiny program is in this archive, as calc_est_co2_removal_rates_v02.pl along with everything else needed to run it under Windows, and some other stuff:
http://sealevel.info/CO2_Residence_Times/allfiles2.zip
Eclectic, Dr. Spencer's simple model is doubtless a good approximation of reality as long as CO2 levels are well above 300 ppmv, which corresponds to atmospheric CO2 levels and removal rates that are known with good accuracy. For CO2 levels below 315 ppmv (dates older than 1958) the numbers get fuzzier.
Did you notice the relatively high "natural equilibrium" level he found (295 ppmv)? That might reflect the anthropogenic additions to larger carbon reservoirs, like ocean and soil, and it might be evidence of the widely assumed "long, fat tail." -
Riduna at 15:05 PM on 23 August 2019Market Forces and Coal
Nigelj
I also missed the ‘source’ because it isn’t red.
I tend to be wary of comparing annual investment in RE in dollar terms when their cost is falling. A better measurement is to compare commissioned capacity of RE installed each year.
While accepting that public utilities are best administered by the public sector I don’t agree that this is a sine qua non for continuing RE investment.
We need to remember that the alternative to RE is on-going use of fossil fuels producing GHG emissions, an increasingly severe climate, and rising cost of damage caused by it. That cost can not be ignored and, at least for the public sector, must make RE the only option.
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Eclectic at 13:48 PM on 23 August 2019Residence Time and Prof Essenhigh
Daveburton @27 ,
someone of note once said: things should be made as simple as possible . . . but not too simple.
Dr Spencer has made an interesting exercise in curve-fitting, somewhat resembling the multi-planet atmospheric pressure/temperature curve-fitting that "demonstrated" the non-existence of the GreenHouse Effect. ( To his credit, Spencer has always been scathing about those who claim the non-existence of the GHE. )
For the "simple model", Dr Spencer has also made some peculiar assumptions about the "natural equilibrium" ; about terrestrial biosphere CO2 draw-down ; and about the oceanic contribution ( CO2 solubility, buffering, and overturning currents timescales ).
The Spencer "simple model" is so simple, that it is simply unphysical.
I would like to think Dr Spencer would consider it a waste of your time for you to rest an important argument on such over-simplicity.
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daveburton at 10:31 AM on 23 August 2019Residence Time and Prof Essenhigh
Trying again, with explicit line-breaks added...
Mr. Moderator, I meant no offense, but I'm not aware of any comment policy that I violated, and I do not understand why you deleted so much of my comment.
MA Rodger, here's where the "about fifty year" practical residence/adjustment time comes from. Well, actually, a number of scientists have independently calculated approximately the same figure, but this is how I did it.
Start with the observation that the rate at which natural systems (oceans & terrestrial biosphere, mainly) remove CO2 from the air is governed chiefly by the CO2 level in the air. When the CO2 level is higher, so is the removal rate. When the CO2 level is lower, so is the removal rate.
Some people think the removal rate is governed by the emission rate, and that it's necessarily "about half" (leaving an "airborne fraction" which is also about half). They are mistaken. There is no physical mechanism by which any of the major contributors to the removal rate could be governed by the emission rate. It is the CO2 level, not the CO2 emission rate, which primarily governs the removal rate.
For the oceans, the removal mechanism is dissolution into surface water per Henry's Law, and then then transport to the ocean depths by currents and calcifying coccolithophores, and complex chemistry which is beyond my ken.
For the terrestrial biosphere it is "greening."
AR5 estimates that the terrestrial biosphere removes about (2.5/9.2) = 27% [p. 6-3] or 29% [Fig 6.1] of anthropogenic CO2 emissions from the atmosphere, each year, and that the oceans remove another 26% [Fig 6.1]. (There are wide error bars on those numbers, but the ≈55% sum has narrower error bars than the two addends have.)
Of course, other things also affect the CO2 removal rate, as is obvious, for example, from the detectable effect of very large volcanic erruptions on measured CO2 levels. But the most important factor governing the CO2 removal rate from the atmosphere is clearly the CO2 level in the atmosphere.
Those numbers are known, with fair precision. For the last sixty years we have very good records of both atmospheric CO2 levels and production/use rates of fossil fuels & cement (from which can quantify the main sources of anthropogenic CO2 emissions).
From those data we can calculate how much CO2 was removed from the atmosphere by natural sinks (oceans, biosphere, etc.), each year.
Since we also know the atmospheric CO2 level each year, we can easily build a spreadsheet, and fit a curve, showing the approximate net rate of CO2 removal as a function of the CO2 level.
Dr. Roy Spencer did that, and found it is very closely approximated by a very simple function, which you can read about here:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2019/04/a-simple-model-of-the-atmospheric-co2-budget/
Using Dr. Spencer's "simple model," I wrote a tiny Perl program to simulate the effect on atmospheric CO2 level of a sudden cutoff of CO2 emissions. Counting 280 ppmv as "pre-industrial," 63% of the anthropogenic CO2 is gone from the atmosphere in 54 years, and 2/3 is gone in 60 years:#!/usr/bin/perl
# estimate CO2 removal rate in ppmv/yr as a function of CO2 level in ppmv,
# per Dr. Roy Spencer's "simple model"
# ref: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2019/04/a-simple-model-
# of-the-atmospheric-co2-budget/
sub removal_rate {
local($co2level) = shift;
local($removalrate) = 0;
local($co2elevation) = $co2level - 295.1;
local($ratio) = 47.73;
if ($co2level <= 295.1) {
$removalrate = 0;
} else {
$removalrate = $co2elevation * 0.0233;
}
return $removalrate;
}
# SIMULATE DECLINE IN CO2 LEVEL IF EMISSIONS SUDDENLY WENT TO ZERO
$co2level = 410;
$year = 2019;
print "Simulated CO2 level decline, with level starting at
$co2level ppmv in $year, and zero emissions:\n";
while ($co2level > 300) {
printf("$year %5.1f\n", $co2level);
$year += 1;
$removalrate = &removal_rate( $co2level );
$co2level -= $removalrate;
}Here's the result of a simulation run, with CO2 starting at 410 ppmv in 2019, and zero emissions:
2019 410.0
2020 407.3
2021 404.7
2022 402.2
2023 399.7
2024 397.2
2025 394.8
2026 392.5
2027 390.3
2028 388.0
2029 385.9
2030 383.8
2031 381.7
2032 379.7
2033 377.7
2034 375.8
2035 373.9
2036 372.1
2037 370.3
2038 368.5
2039 366.8
2040 365.1
2041 363.5
2042 361.9
2043 360.4
2044 358.8
2045 357.3
2046 355.9
2047 354.5
2048 353.1
2049 351.7
2050 350.4
2051 349.1
2052 347.9
2053 346.6
2054 345.4
2055 344.3
2056 343.1
2057 342.0
2058 340.9
2059 339.8
2060 338.8
2061 337.8
2062 336.8
2063 335.8
2064 334.9
2065 333.9
2066 333.0
2067 332.2
2068 331.3
2069 330.4
2070 329.6
2071 328.8
2072 328.0
2073 327.3 <== residence/adjustment time (e-folding time) = 54 years (using 280 ppmv as base)
2074 326.5
2075 325.8
2076 325.1
2077 324.4
2078 323.7
2079 323.0 <== two-thirds of the anthropogenic CO2 is gone in 60 years (using 280 ppmv as base)Of course we know that this simple model would not accurately model the "long, fat tail," with CO2 levels under 300 ppmv. But the point I made previously is that, for practical purposes, that doesn't matter, because we all know that CO2 levels that low are harmless.
Moderator Response:[BW] I tried to correct your comment by adding some more line breaks - may make the code itself not work, though due to syntax errors now.
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daveburton at 10:24 AM on 23 August 2019Residence Time and Prof Essenhigh
Yikes! Obviously my <pre> block with nicely formatted code got turned into one enormous line, and it ruined the formatting for the whole page!
I'm very sorry!
Please just delete that, Mr. Moderator.
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nigelj at 08:56 AM on 23 August 2019Market Forces and Coal
I meant the word source wasn't highlighted in red.
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nigelj at 08:34 AM on 23 August 2019Market Forces and Coal
Riduna @8
Yes 'we' sure looks like that trade union organisation. I didn't click on the word source in Johns article because it wasnt highlighted in a different colour, but I gave it a go now it goes to that website. If only people would just be clearer on who they represent.
I'm not adverse in principle to trade unions or his basic concerns about needing more democratic input into decision making etc.
The major concern in his article appears to be that falling costs of renewables generate low profits once subsidies are removed. He goes on to say "By now, the message should be clear: The insistence on private-sector-led investment in renewables, which we are told needs to be “unlocked” through various incentives—subsidies, feed-in-tariffs, guaranteed returns through PPAs, etc.—has proven to be a disastrous failure. This is the reason why renewables are “underperforming.” This is what must change if deployment is to reach the levels needed to meet the Paris targets."
I think its a fair analysis, but unfortunately he doesn't appear to say what this should change to in any detail. The website talks about trade unions and democratic control of things but doesnt spell out how that would work and why it might lead to increases in adoption of renewable energy. A workers cooperative might prefer to stay with fossil fuels! The only thing he does is hint at direct government investment in electricity generation.
Subsidies have been good in that they have kick started renewable energy, however clearly there is now a problem with profitability when subsidies are removed. Perhaps its as simple as keeping a subsidy mechanism in place, but there are obviously other options. For example a carbon tax would punish continued use of fossil fuels, so reducing their profitability and thus countering the falling costs of renewables so increasing their profitability. But Im not an economist and dont have the knowledge to work that out in detail.
Another option is the government just take over the financing of renewable energy, (as the article suggests) but that is a "big call" with obvious political ramnifications and implications for governments ability to fund such a thing, although some mechanisms do exist. This appears to be what the GND proposes.
And I repeat subsidies are not a market mechanism, so although generators are free to decide what to invest in we are left with a semi market approach. Carbon taxes are also a semi market approach. The only purist market approach is to just keep fingers crossed and hope markets solve the problem left to themselves (they wont).
But investment in renewables does seem to be stalling so something has to change and the only options appear to be 1) keep subsidies 2) a carbon tax or cap and trade approach and 3) direct government investment in renewable energy.
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Riduna at 07:21 AM on 23 August 2019Market Forces and Coal
nigelj @ 8
Could "we" be Trade Unions for Energy Democracy?
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swampfoxh at 06:51 AM on 23 August 2019'No doubt left' about scientific consensus on global warming, say experts
Moderator: I have investigated, to the best of my ability, as to why I have been "kicked off" this site. I think I have not received your posts, via email, for about 4 months. If there is anything you can do on your end to put me back in the "loop", I would appreciate it. I don't have the proper computer skills to know how to handle it and I am too old to have children who can. Thank You.
Moderator Response:[DB] You are not blocked here, as your comment appearing here attests. Your last comment was made here on July 6th. Your account is still set to receive emails.
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MA Rodger at 05:09 AM on 23 August 2019Residence Time and Prof Essenhigh
daveburton @24,
You seem to think that the (410-280=) 130ppm anthropogenic CO2 increase in the atmosphere would drop by 63% over a period of "about 50 years" (according to daveburton @22) and presumably conclude that today's CO2 levels would leave us with (280+0.37x130=) 330ppm after that time period. Even if your talk of e-folding time were applicable to the draw-down period of CO2 from the atmosphere, I don't think this use of the 63% is correct.
The anthropogenic emissions total 650Gt(C), enough to raise atmospheric levels from 280ppm to 585ppm if it were emitted all at once. The 410ppm in today's atmosphere has thus already lost 43% of its added CO2 and if emissions stopped today we could expect something like a further 37% reduction over 1,000 years, leaving perhaps a level of 340ppm in AD3000. And there it will stop for tens of thousands of years if natural processes are allowed to run their course.
While I have no inkling what you are considering with this multiplier of 20x for (20x50years=) 1,000 years residency time, I do wonder how it should be re-calculated for a residency time of tens of thousands of years now we will be leaving CO2 above your threshold 340ppm level for such long periods.
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daveburton at 02:21 AM on 23 August 2019Residence Time and Prof Essenhigh
Paul Pukite, it appears that you've missed my point. Don't you know what "from a practical perspective" means?
I thought this was clear, but I guess not: "Since I don't think anyone believes that a CO2 level of 320 or 340 ppmv could have any deleterious effects (compared to 275 or 280), the long tail (representing CO2 levels below 330 ppmv) should be disregarded."
Let me try again to explain it.
The folks who claim very long anthropogenic CO2 residence times (or adjustment times, if you prefer) do so to magnify the supposed harmful effects of elevated CO2 levels. It is a key parameter when calculating the so-called "social cost of carbon," used to set things like carbon tax levels and offset prices.
It is not a minor consideration. A 1000-year residence time is used to justify 20x the tax rate of a 50-year residence time.
Are you with me so far?
But everyone, even the most fervent alarmists, agree that there are no harmful effects from CO2 levels "elevated" to less than, say, 340 ppmv. So, since that "long, fat tail" represents CO2 levels below 330 ppmv, it is obviously a mistake to use it to magnify the supposed harms of CO2 emissions.
In the CO2 decay curve, the first e-folding time reduces the anthropogenic CO2 increment by about 63%. I think everyone understands that there are no plausible harms from CO2 levels that low. All that matters is the first e-folding time, which is about fifty years.Moderator Response:[DB] From the AR5:
“The removal of human-emitted CO2 from the atmosphere by natural processes will take a few hundred thousand years (high confidence). Depending on the RCP scenario considered, about 15 to 40% of emitted CO2 will remain in the atmosphere longer than 1,000 years. This very long time required by sinks to remove anthropogenic CO2 makes climate change caused by elevated CO2 irreversible on human time scale. {Box 6.1}”
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Inflammatory rhetoric and sloganeering snipped. -
nigelj at 19:23 PM on 22 August 2019The North Atlantic ocean current, which warms northern Europe, may be slowing
Related article and a related research study by J Hanson.
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Eclectic at 13:56 PM on 22 August 2019Millions of times later, 97 percent climate consensus still faces denial
My apologies, Moderator. My post "crossed" with your request.
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Eclectic at 13:53 PM on 22 August 2019Millions of times later, 97 percent climate consensus still faces denial
BillyJoe @34 ,
please clarify the point that you really wish to make.
If you wish to suggest a form of words that would be "foolproof" , and to be used in any future consensus survey by John Cook (or others) . . . then you are welcome to do so. The new wording won't alter the past, though.
But I think you will have an uphill battle to find anything foolproof — especially since the anti-science group will be actively trying to be foolish in their interpretations.
I am not aiming to provide any "excuses" for past surveys — I am simply pointing out the futility of hoping to achieve legalistically-ironclad definitions with absolute perfection. Basically, in this matter of assessing consensus, we must rely on the common sense of the reader in understanding what is being discussed.
As for "misinterpretations" by the science-denialists — well, You Can't Fix Stupid, nor can you fix malice & deceit in the minds of denialists.
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BillyJoe at 11:10 AM on 22 August 2019Millions of times later, 97 percent climate consensus still faces denial
Eclectic@29
Putting aside, for a moment, the fact that climate deniers will definitely use it as a "gotcha" to fuel climate denialism...
I do not understand why you prefer to make multiple excuses rather than simply agree that it is a good idea to state facts accurately.
It's a win-win situation to get it right: providing accurate information and avoiding giving climate deniers another talking point.
Moderator Response:[JH] This discussion has run its course. Let's shut it down.
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Riduna at 08:36 AM on 22 August 2019Market Forces and Coal
johntreat
Are we talking at cross purposes here? The focus of your comment is on what attracts RE investment while the focus of my essay is on Australian coal production, arguing that its level is affected by market forces, particularly demand from consumers, asserting that it is vulnerable to reduced demand brought about by climate change imperatives and adoption of clean energy technology.
The essay does not attempt to look at the global warming effects of lower or higher coal use or what induces investment in RE projects. You are right to assume that the Australian RE Pipeline ($39 billion) is largely attracted by availability of one-off public financial assistance for approved investments.
Australian coal production also receives subsidies of $1-2 billion per annum.The Australian government has announced its intention of terminating financial assistance to RE investors, arguing that this sector is now well established and no longer requires assistance. It will be interesting to see if this results in a predicted investment collapse – or ongoing investment in fewer but larger, multi GW projects.
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SteezyMac23 at 08:36 AM on 22 August 2019There is no consensus
Robert S. "Even in periods of end interglacial times, when temps would be expected to slowly cooling down, as you mentioned?"
Is it a "period of end interglacial time"? Well it depends on what you think causes the glacial periods--if the mechanism isn't there, then it isn't going to happen. If you believe the Milankovitch cycles are what initiates the glacial/interglacial, then we are still a ways from another glacial period. So it is not inconceivable that the planet would experience a warming at this time.
Then he wrote:
"Even on that kind of time scale, a blink of an eye really?OK, but can you substantiate with references?"
If you want to take issue with the idea that the planet has had warming similar to the recent warming on both the time scale and in magnitude, be my guest. It would be a losing battle. As for references, all one has to do is a little searching--this interglacial, the last glacial, the last interglacial, etc. It won't be too hard to find warming of this magnitude in this time scale."
Glacial and interglacials are caused by orbital patterns. That has been proven. Interglacials last around 15,000 years give or take some.
Moderator Response:[PS] I should just point out that you are responding to a comment from 2008. There are 17 pages of comments here.
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scaddenp at 07:56 AM on 22 August 2019Market Forces and Coal
The "carbon tax" regime most favoured envisages redistribution of the tax gathered to public on per capita basis. So you would pay more petrol yes, but get money back from government to cover that. It sounds like money merry-go-round but if you use less carbon than average then you make money at expense of those who use more carbon. A strong incentive to look for ways to use less. Macron's levy on petrol gave nothing back so the yellow vests had some justification.
At the industry level, even a carbon tax with no feedback to consumers can be effective. If two products are equivalent in everything except price, then you buy the cheapest? If you have limited budget you buy the cheapest? Well surely then if you can avoid paying a carbon tax, then you can ship your product for less than your competitor who is just absorbing the tax. Solar panels on the factory roof for starters.
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therealjason at 03:58 AM on 22 August 2019Sea level rise due to floating ice?
Why aren't we talking about the amount of fresh water rain falling into the oceans on a yearly basis? Wouldn't this reduce salinity and raise ocean levels also?
Moderator Response:[DB] In the same fashion that breathing in is offset by breathing out, rainfall is offset by evaporation over climate-related timescales.
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nigelj at 14:12 PM on 21 August 2019Market Forces and Coal
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_pricing_in_Australia#Effect_of_the_carbon_price
A carbon pricing scheme in Australia, commonly dubbed by its critics as a "carbon tax", was introduced by the Gillard Labor Government in 2011 as the Clean Energy Act 2011 which came into effect on 1 July 2012. As a result of being in place for such a short time, and because the then Opposition leader Tony Abbott indicated he intended to repeal "the carbon tax", regulated organisations responded in a rather tepid and informal manner..."
Despite this it did have some effect as I noted: "Because the Australian carbon tax does not apply to all fossil fuels usage, it only had an effect on some of the emitters of greenhouse gases. Among those emitters to which it applied, emissions were significantly lower after introduction of the tax. According to the Investor Group on Climate Change, emissions from companies subject to the tax went down 7% with the introduction of the tax, and the tax was "the major contributor" to this reduction."
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nigelj at 14:02 PM on 21 August 2019Market Forces and Coal
Johntreat @5 &6
Anyone can be a critic. Nothing is perfect in this life. Please state your better alternative on how to transition to renewable electricity generation if you want to have credibility.
And who is "we"?
You say "there is no evidence whatsoever that a carbon tax would be effective in disincentivizing wasteful production; on the contrary, companies simply absorb the tax as a business cost and pass it on to consumers (as they do with the costs of advertising, or the costs of hiring lawyers to fight consumer-protection groups).'
What a huge strawman. Carbon taxes are not primarily intended to reduce wasteful production; there are other ways of doing that. Carbon taxes are intended to put a price on fossil fuel use and encourage alternatives. In fact the strongest transition to renewable energy in Australia happened in the short period it had a carbon tax.
There is no problem companies pushing costs onto consumers provided there is a carbon tax and dividend structure. However its very unlikely that producers would push all costs onto consumers, because that risks losing market share.
A quick look on wikipedia at carbon taxes show they are used in plenty of countries and have delivered some positive results even with quite weak settings, and the research on this is listed.
You are making baseless assertions. But maybe you have another alternative and can convince me. What is it?
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nigelj at 13:24 PM on 21 August 2019Skeptical Science New Research for Week #33, 2019
“Keep calm”? A critique of Wolfgang Behringer’s “A CulturalHistory of Climate” Rüdiger Haude"
The research paper was paywalled, but I read Behringers bio on wikipedia and stumbled upon a link to a free version here.
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johntreat at 13:16 PM on 21 August 2019Market Forces and Coal
^"... *they* were supposed to mimic..." Apologies.
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johntreat at 13:15 PM on 21 August 2019Market Forces and Coal
nigelj:
The point is that when government subsidies — which were supposed to shepherd nascent industries to market viability — were removed, the failure of the market forces there were supposed to mimic became obvious. And although it is a favored policy shibboleth, there is no evidence whatsoever that a carbon tax would be effective in disincentivizing wasteful production; on the contrary, companies simply absorb the tax as a business cost and pass it on to consumers (as they do with the costs of advertising, or the costs of hiring lawyers to fight consumer-protection groups). That's why a carbon tax is a deeply regressive kind of tax. The "yellow vests" in France made sure we all know that.
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johntreat at 13:02 PM on 21 August 2019Market Forces and Coal
Riduna:
Climate change is not an "Australian" issue; it is a global issue. Given the phenomenon of "off-shored" emissions, it should be clear that the performance of market-focused climate policy has to be assessed on the basis of global trends. This is a basic flaw in the original piece, IMHO.
But even if we grant the national frame of reference, I think you've missed the significance of the BNEF graph of clean energy investment in Europe: When government incentives for RE are scaled back, investment collapses. It isn't clear from the original article how much of the $39b is underwritten by such incentives, but my understanding is that it must be considerable. So that investment isn't due to "market forces," but to government attempts at minimizing the impact of market forces on a fledgling industry.
On the issue of cost, I think you've missed the point of the analysis we've done, which is simply that low-cost doesn't mean profitability. Profit-seeking investors — and there is no other kind of private-sector investor — invest on the basis of profitability, not on the basis of cheapness. Investment in renewable generation has proven to be stubbornly poor at delivering returns to investors, especially as governments have turned toward more competitive subsidy mechanisms. That's why the BNEF graph of clean energe investment in Europe collapses. To be clear: RE generation at the right end of the graph was still *cheaper* than at the left end, but it wasn't *profitable*, because the government subsidies that were masking the failure of market forces had been removed.
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nigelj at 12:03 PM on 21 August 2019Market Forces and Coal
Johntreat
"As governments have turned away from “come one, come all” feed-in-tariffs towards more competitive bidding regimes where the “winner takes all”, there are pressures to win the bid in order to secure a 20-year subsidy in the form of a “power purchase agreement” or PPA. The bidding process has driven down contract prices even faster than the real costs of building the projects have fallen (due to “learning by doing,” economies of scale, technological improvements, etc.). Investors then see diminishing profit margins and lose interest."
This is not so much market forces failing, as a badly designed market bidding mechanism combined with subsidies ( a non market mechanism). Carbon tax would have been a better market mechanism, and would not require subsidies.
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Riduna at 11:37 AM on 21 August 2019Market Forces and Coal
johntreat
claims that market forces have “demonstrably failed” to drive forward the energy transition. This is not the case in Australia where market forces have attracted S39 billion in a renewable energy pipeline and possibly a further $15 billion in proposed major projects.
Market forces Are not the constraint on transitioning to a decarbonised economy. Rather development and commercialisation of technology, particularly fort energy storage, are.
The point made in this essay is that Australian coal production is dependent on and vulnerable to change in demand for coal and those changes are likely because of contracting demand from its largest customers.
It is true that Chinese government policy is to proliferate use of coal-fired electricity generation – a fact noted in my essay China’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions. If successful, which is debatable, China would be committing many countries to increased coal consumption for the next 40-50 years.
Surely a question to be asked is will those countries proceed with China's gift of new coal fired electricity generation which:
(a) produces energy which is far more expensive than that generated from renewables
(b) puts them at a competitive disadvantage with countries actively transitioning to a decarbonised economy, and
(c) increased their carbon emissions and contribution to carbon emissions which increased global warming and cost of damage it causes. -
nigelj at 09:24 AM on 21 August 2019Millions of times later, 97 percent climate consensus still faces denial
MAR @31
"you do react to my assertion that there is scientifically a "looney fringe" that happily exaggerates AGW and which matches that denialist 3%...Such exaggeration is often wielded by denialists as reason to ignore the science."
Shrewd observation on this very real looney fringe that exaggerates AGW. A good example is arctic-news.blogspot.com/ and they might be well meaning, but they are clueless and indeed just hand the denialists ammunition.
"I will continue to object to use of the word "existential" without qualification. And the extinction of species and habitats is surely not such a qualification."
The term existential threat in unqualified form has bothered me as well, as being a dubious claim easily ridiculed by the denialists. I've said so at RC. However extinction of some species would be a reasonable qualification wouldn't it? It's a very real possibility, almost a given.
However I'm having second thoughts on the use of the term extinction in the sense that the Extinction Rebellion group does not seem to have alienated people with it's choice of words, or been rubbished over it. Perhaps people largely appreciate the implied intent that climate change has a very strong possibility of making many plant and animal species extinct, and at least some poorer human communities in the tropics largely extinct if they don't immigate somewhere less hostile, which might not be an option open to them. So perhaps the term extinction and existential threat is not so bad.
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Doug_C at 05:09 AM on 21 August 2019Millions of times later, 97 percent climate consensus still faces denial
MA Rodger @31
There's clearly an unscientific bias being applied by climate change deniers. Despite the vast amount of objective evidence going back centuries that the Earth is in fact much warmer than it should be if just basic thermodynics were at work and it is almost certainly the presense of persistent carbon dioxide that is mostly responsible for this warming effect, their entire position is based on denying this.
Deniers simply do not weight their position based on the varying confidence in the data. They are 100% certain that by vastly increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere there will be no major warming event. And in fact whenever possible they default to a global cooling scenario to frighten people into believing in the threat of rapidly advancing ice sheets from the next ice age.
As for the catastrophic impacts of global warming and climate change, when exactly do we declare it an emergency. The entire biosphere is now in a state of risk, we are now in the position where it isn't individual species that are at threat but the entire biological systems of the planet.
Most life on Earth is in the oceans and they are in rapid transition to often a much more hostile state to the life there. About 25% of marine life spends part or all its life on coral reefs. As we saw with the recent coral bleaching over a massive area in the Great Barrier reef system this transition to what is effect a dead state can happen very rapidly. It took two years for half of one of the most extensive and diverse ecosystems on Earth to die.
We are not going to see a rapidly recovery of any coral reef system on Earth, almost all are going to be lost in the coming years as an incredible amount of heat is added to the Earth - mostly the oceans - constantly. Skeptical Science has a meter to display just that. The loss of marine coral reef systems globally can be considered a significant extinction event on it own. That will include most of the 1 to 9 million species that depend on coral reefs.
But it is just one such factor. As I said we also have to look at the rapid and virtually uncontrolled removal of many marine species at clearly unsustainable rates. How will the oceans even function with such rapid and destructive changes. The source of most free molecular oxygen on Earth.
Terrestrially we are looking at about 40% of insect species in rapid decline and the overall biomass of insects decreasing at about 2.3% a year. The basis of much of the food chain and biological communities on land is in rapid decline.
About 40% of avian species are also in decline.
I don't believe in unsupported alarmism, I do think that if the evidence is as stark as it seems then we are looking at a rapidly approaching point where the overall integrity of ecosystems on a global scale will start to fail.
At which point there will simply be nothing we can do except watch a very rapid and almost certain cascade effect into a world that will not support much of the life now on Earth. And certainly not a species as large as ours with such high metabolic requirements.
The oxygen question alone is stark. Not only are the oceans in a decline to a very unstable situation, but we are rapidly removing the secondary centers of oxygen production the rain forests. Under the current government in Brazil deforestation has doubled in pace. The rain forests of the SE Pacific region are being logged and in many cases converted to palm oil and other plantations on a vast scale.
All these factors stress the entire biosphere and global climate change ties it all together into a formula for catastrophic failure that the data indicates has already begun.
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Cestsibon at 03:58 AM on 21 August 2019The CO2/Temperature correlation over the 20th Century
As this is your first post, Skeptical Science respectfully reminds you to please follow our comments policy. Thank You!
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johntreat at 01:30 AM on 21 August 2019Market Forces and Coal
This piece is clearly well-intended but seems strikingly out of touch with what is actually happening with energy consumption and investment under the currently dominant climate policy paradigm, which insists that governments rely on "market forces" to drive forward the energy transition, and which has demonstrably failed. Far from being some kind of inevitable "force of nature" as the author seems to suppose, the very existence of "market forces" depends entirely on the maintenance and effective enforcement of a variety of legal institutions of and by the state (property rights, financial institutions, trade mechanisms, etc.).
At the same time, it seems to be increasingly evident even to advocates of mainstream climate policy that it is failing to deliver the energy transition. Colleagues and I have written about this extensively, including in a series of major Working Papers and occasional shorter pieces. Here's an excerpt from one of the latter:
We are told repeatedly that the falling costs of renewable generation capacity makes renewables “more competitive” with fossil fuels, and that each new record low auction result for solar or wind is a reason to celebrate. From the standpoint of private investment and profit making, however, falling auction prices are hardly a good thing. As governments have turned away from “come one, come all” feed-in-tariffs towards more competitive bidding regimes where the “winner takes all”, there are pressures to win the bid in order to secure a 20-year subsidy in the form of a “power purchase agreement” or PPA. The bidding process has driven down contract prices even faster than the real costs of building the projects have fallen (due to “learning by doing,” economies of scale, technological improvements, etc.). Investors then see diminishing profit margins and lose interest. (“Too bad about the planet but, hey, there are many other things to invest in.”) As one analyst writing for Risk Magazine puts it:
At the end of the day investors aren’t just going to put their money on a good story, their main objective is to make money from these investments. A look at the renewable energy sector fundamentals analysis shows that the total rating of all listed renewable energy companies fundamentals is just 3.9 out of 10, a rating that signals the renewable energy sector has very poor fundamentals.
Under the current policy approach, private project developers have avoided risk and expanded their market share through PPAs with government entities, or with utilities that are mandated to reach renewable energy targets. But the “guaranteed returns” that such PPAs ensure for investors often translate into higher electricity costs for users, which can quickly translate into “political risk” when electricity users start complaining about rising bills. Governments then phase out—often abruptly—the policies that made investment in renewables attractive in the first place. This is what happened in Europe where, once subsidies for renewables were scaled back, investment collapsed:
Because of falling auction prices, many people still assume that the market share of renewables will reach a “tipping point” once they become the “least cost option.” But because there is simply not enough profit in “low carbon solutions” like renewable power generation—at least, not without subsidies—renewables are unlikely to attract the levels of capital needed to achieve the Paris targets.
On coal in particular, here is an excerpt from another recent piece I authored, looking at the latest data on coal consumption and emissions in the context of the need for dramatically greater electricity generation in order to have any hope of wider decarbonization:
While demand for all forms of energy is growing, what is happening with the power sector (electricity) is especially important. Moving away from fossil fuels will involve widespread electrification, dramatically increasing the need to generate electricity. Global demand for electricity grew even faster in 2018 than demand for energy overall, at 4%. And 42% of energy-related emissions last year came from the power sector.
Despite the closure of many coal plants around the world, coal remains the dominant fuel for generating electricity globally. On current trends, coal consumption is projected to remain at roughly current levels for many years. Although coal consumption declined for a few years, it actually rose in 2017, and again last year.
Coal consumption is growing dramatically in several large countries, mainly in Southeast Asia. China recently announced plans for at least 300 new coal-fired power plants – most of them outside China. Coal demand for power rose 2.6% last year, and CO2 emissions rose 2.5%, with coal accounting for 80% of the increase.
Government commitments under Paris have to be understood in the context of the fact that those commitments were widely recognized at the time as completely inadequate to achieve their stated purpose—but also, perhaps even more alarmingly, the fact that almost no governments are on track to meet even those very inadequate targets. To extrapolate on the basis of those commitments while ignoring those two facts seems careless at best. And calling emergent technologies "disruptive," although fashionable, does little to strengthen the argument. Lots of things are "disruptive": wildfires, epidemics, wars. We need a credible plan with real democratic accountability, not more market-driven chaos and "disruption."
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