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indy222 at 01:02 AM on 28 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
I'm continually puzzled why people insist on mis-representing what Garrett's work shows, despite his patient rebuttal to Cullenward, Koomey, and despite my doing the same here. The graph that MA Roger links to above is GDP vs CO2. The Garrett Relation does NOT make a statement about GDP, but instead the total integrated global GDP over all history. And it does NOT make a statement about CO2, it instead says the current POWER (from any source, renewable or not) is proportional to time-integrated GDP. Stop constructing a phony straw man in order to justify dismissing the work, it only shows a lack of objectivity. It is the GR as stated above which is included in the forward projections curves, and those curves have a wide range of possible civilization resiliance to climate change crippling, and decarbonization rates. The point is that all of them show rising CO2 because we cannot accomplish anything, and for a given assumed growth rate of "Wealth"(=time integrated global GDP), more reslient civilization means HIGHER atmospheric CO2. Those curves are including decarbonization. Note that FF's have remained 87% of our global energy mix since 1973 right up through 2015. You have failed to justify why economists (not thermodynamics experts and not climate experts) Koomey and Cullenward's wrong-headed and dismissive commentary should not itself be dismissed. I've not found any substantive criticism of Garrett's work - only straw-man snipe'ing such as I am now seeing here.
As to Garrett's comment "It looks unlikely that there will be any substantial near-term departure from the recently observed aceleration in CO2 emission rates", there was a flattening in REPORTED emission rates in the '14/'15 area, but (1) China has been caught under-reporting their emissions (look it up!), (2) China goes through 5-year cycles of overbuilding (think "Ghost Cities") and then fallow periods, and you must average over those. (3) Look at the Keeling Curve, updated almost daily, at their website. It is as smooth an exponential as anyone could hope. (4) Even if CO2 emission rates take a meaningful turn downward and stay down as we more dramatically go towards renewables, that does not violate the work. The Garrett Relation is between ENERGY and TIME INTEGRATED GDP, it is not with FOSSIL FUEL ENERGY. So yes, a log/log plot shows how closely atmospheric CO2 has followed GDP, but Garrett himself puts no importance on this, it's really just a statement that since virtually all of our energy has been FF energy, then there's not much surprise at the close correlation. If we make FF's a strongly diminishing part of the energy mix, neither he nor I nor anyone else would be surpised to see that curve start to bend.
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MA Rodger at 20:32 PM on 27 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
This thread has seen a lot of blather on the subject of Garrett (2011) 'Are there basic physical constraints on future anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide?' which has been seemingly shoddily treated by its publishers. Yet, if Garrett (2011) had merit, the author should simply have addressed the criticisms of Cullenward et al (2011) and Scher & Koomey (2011). I do not see evidence of such work. Indeed, the content of Garrett is very poor and should never have been published. In my view it is simple nonsense cloaked by scientific smoke & mirrors with no merit what ever.
While the major conclusion of Garrett (2011) is the GDP/Energy-Use relationship, its title sets out an that it is examining projections of CO2 emissions and proclaims "it looks unlikely that there will be any substantial near-term departure from recently observed acceleration in CO2 emission rates" a message that is evidently wrong. The GDP/dCO2 relationship is far from linear. The level has halved 1985-2017 relative to 1960-85. See here a graph (usually 2 clicks to 'download your attachment') of MLO CO2 increases ploted against World Bank global GDP. And even the GDP/Energy-Use relationship is far less linear than Garrett (2011) asserts, the relationship seeing an 8% drop 1985-2017 relatibe to 1965-85. An 8% drop is way outside the findings of Garrett (2011). So how can Garrett (2011) be anything other than nonsense?
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indy222 at 16:12 PM on 27 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
To Scaddenp entry #68. Nowhere does Garrett or I adopt BAU as the inevitable. Again, the renewables fraction is a tunable parameter. So is the resiliance of civilization to the ravages of CO2-linked climate change. What is constrained, is that energy efficiencies permit and enable economic growth and that that growth WILL be engaged in. Neither as individuals nor as nations nor as a globe, do we take savings from our efficiencies and then burn those savings. And all spending results in encumbering future ongoing power consumption. Yes, I too once felt this must contradict the reality of improving energy efficiencies. But I was wrong. It does not. The details are in my .pdf already linked. The Garrett Relation's constancy is consistent with constantly improving energy efficiency as long as the rate of improved efficiency is less than the rate of economic growth. That indeed is what has happened. We put a portion of our economic growth into finding new efficiencies, but we prefer to enjoy a lot of our new-found efficiency-gained cash in other ways as well. And what about in recessions? The math says that improving energy efficiency will be scuttled in favor of just supporting against decay what we already have. And that too is what history shows. While individual country data doesn't really tell a true tale, so many people seem to want to consider the US, that I'll relate the following anyway. Since 1960 the efficiency with which a joule of energy can generate a dollar of GDP has improved a stunning 63%. Has this resulted in a reduction in our power consumption rate? Not even close! Our power consumption has gone UP by 300%. What do we do when we are given new cash from our efficiencies? WE SPEND IT! It's as simple as that, and hard to see how that will change w/o repressive government intervention - which would seem quite unlikely to be tolerated, frankly.
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indy222 at 15:21 PM on 27 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
To Scaddenp; the point of Garrett's work vs the SRES scenarios, is that the SRES scenarios show fantasic economic growth and no consequences in CO2 harming the economy. No appreciation of what people do with savings, with efficiency gains. I call it "checkers thinking" vs "chess thinking" or "reflexivity" if you like George Soros' formulation of the concept. "Checkers thinking" assumes that if you improve the efficiency of some process, that the savings in energy is a pure gain and is not re-spent elsewhere. That's not what history shows. There's no appreciation in the SRES scenarios of how Draconian must be the constraints on global freedoms and desires in order to actually make happen the curves they simply cobble together as "representative". If we're to remain true to human civilization and human nature as it actually is, then realize that savings will be spent, or worse - leveraged with debt and THEN spent, so we're spending the present and future generations resources to fund what we spend it on. All spending makes "order" out of "disorder" which then must be continually supported with future energy to preserve against the 2nd law of Thermodynamics. Economic growth must be powered and that power must begin 87% as FF energy, and then try to decarbonize from there, but decarbonizing itself will take much energy to accomplish - FF energy. We're in a difficult place, to have to support 7.5 billion who have currently been supported by constantly increasing CO2 emissions, in some other non-CO2 generating way. It's not just me, now, that is recognizing the absurdity of these rosy scenarios. A new entry here is the work of Dunlop, Spratt, and Schellnhuber https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/08/20/we-are-climbing-rapidly-out-humankinds-safe-zone-new-report-warns-dire-climate
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indy222 at 15:09 PM on 27 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
To Michael Sweet's disparaging comment. Clearly you have no interest in actually reading the criticism. Otherwise you would notice that the criticism showed the reviewer hadn't even bothered to understand that the Power/Wealth=constant) relationship defines Wealth as an integral over all time, NOT current GDP! That changes everything. Your comment likewise shows no interest in actually understanding this issue, but only band-wagon hopping on invalid criticisms. I too started out thinking Garrett must be a dismissable "apocalypto" when I hadn't actually read and digested his work, given that I heard about it from Uber Apocalypto (of no credibility) Guy McPherson. With "friends" like McPherson, who needs enemies? I think McPherson's hyping (w/o understanding even what a "heat engine" is) Garrett's work simply because it sounds apocalyptic enough to "support" McPherson's agenda, is a real problem for having Garrett's work digested for what is actually says and shows.
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indy222 at 15:02 PM on 27 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
In your example, when the large majority of the integral has already been accumulated, then the ratio can't change much. However, this is not the case with global GDP. It is HEAVILY weighted towards the present. Most of the sum total of all civilizations GDP since cave-man days, has happened since 1970. So the argument above doesn't carry much weight. It is indeed still remarkable that the ratio is so constant during a period when there has been such radical changes in society, in oil prices, in population, in technology, in everything.... and during a time when most of the total GDP every generated was in fact generated.
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jonb at 13:20 PM on 27 August 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #34
Just to note for some geographical accuracy that NSW is NOT in northern or western Australia. It is in south eastern Australia. Fire patterns are changing differently across different parts of Australia as one might expect in a continent that streches from the tropics to cold temperate environments. And despite our Federal Government (once again in unbelievable termoil and still dominated by climate change deniers), individuals, some State governments and commercial interests are very rapidly building billions of dollars worth of renewable power generators including solar, wind, solar thermal, many linked to battery storage or pumped water systems.
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scaddenp at 11:06 AM on 27 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
Indy222, If I have understood your statement of the Garrett relationship, then I am still not certain it is saying very much.
Take an exponential series. eg y1=a*EXP(b*t) (ie GDP)
Take y2 as a linear relation of y1 eg y2 = c*y2 + d (Power)
Divide the Integral of y1 wrt t by y2 and the result converges towards constant. Rate of convergence dependent on relative values of b and c.
And no, I havent looked at this rigorously from mathematical viewpoint but it looks suspicious to me.
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william5331 at 06:24 AM on 27 August 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #34
Aus is such a disappointment. If there is one country in the world that could rapidly and completely become carbon neutral it is Australia. Their resources of wind and solar are unmatched anywhere in the world. There is one ring that controls them all and if we don't get this one sorted, none of the rest will bear fruit. We must get vested interest money out of politics. "Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune" was never as true as in politics. As long as the coal industry and others are financing the politicians, why we surprised that they do their bidding.
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anticorncob6 at 03:54 AM on 27 August 2018Sunshine Blogger Award
There is no possible way that climate change denial will be gone by 2023. Humanity's refusal to accept inconvenient truths is very strong. Or as David K said, the ability to avoid reality is amazing. Just think about the fact that we're still debating evolution.
I estimate that it will take until the mid 2030s before climate change denial is no longer significant.
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barry1487 at 18:20 PM on 26 August 2018Sunshine Blogger Award
Prior to the creation of SkS, there was no accessible resource explaining what the peer-reviewed scientific research says about the many popular climate myths.
Well, prior to SkS there was Coby's Beck's blog, A FewThings I'll-Considered, which had a pretty big debunking list and quite a bit of reference to peer-reviewed lit for a layman. IIRC I found my way to SkS through Coby (or Realclimate, who referenced his old and new blog, too).
Coby moved his debunk articles to here in 2008.
Congrats on the nomination. And I'd second a nomination for Tamino.
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nigelj at 09:50 AM on 26 August 20182018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #34
A couple of your facebook articles have a message when connected together. The Democrats back down on refusing to accept campaign donations from the fossil fuel industry is indeed unfortunate. Perhaps they could learn a bitter lesson from Malcolm Turnball, who has abandoned climate change targets. Despite this compromise to try to please right wing factions, he has still lost the job of prime minister.
This is what happens when politicians are weak, and give away their core positions. They get no respect for this. It looks to me like the Democrats are also trying to please everyone, and will end up pleasing nobody.
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citizenschallenge at 00:54 AM on 26 August 2018Climate change and wildfires – how do we know if there is a link?
"I agree those of us talking about the dangers of climate change have to try to lead by example."
This argument is like being caught stealing and responding with the defense, well the president steals all the time.
It's a cheap Republican rhetorical diversion.
How much of a hypocritical energy pig, or saint, you or I am - has absolutely nothing to do with recognizing and accepting the sober facts of manmade global warmer. NOTHING!
I just finished a pretty good (other's judgement) essay that explores this issue a bit more concretely
The missing key to Stephen Gould’s “Nonoverlapping Magisteria.”
“… missing was a much more fundamental division crying out for recognition. Specifically, the magisteria of Physical Reality vs. the magisteria of our Human Mindscape. …”
http://citizenschallenge.blogspot.com/2018/08/key-to-nonoverlapping-magisterium.html
(@ 22, Santa Rosa, CA)
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citizenschallenge at 00:36 AM on 26 August 2018Climate change and wildfires – how do we know if there is a link?
Having been close witness to the Durango, Colorado area fires, Missionary Ridge 2002, this summer the 416 Fire (witnessed initial fire on both, from a distance that is), also the Burro Fire and the slightly more distant The Plateau and West Guard Fires north of Dolores.
One of the fire obvious observations is that the warmer it gets the greater the afternoon flare up and fire growth. The colder the nights, the slower the next morning's fire's return to actively growing.
The rapid ignitions are again aways related to heat, dryness, wind. Think San Rosa fire, or the 416, where a home owner saw ignition within moments and they had a small fire appliance spraying water within 5-10minutes, but the hot wind and steep slope made this Steam Train (DSNGRR) Boiler klinker started fire different from the dozens of other similiar fire starts in that area (steep uphill pull, pouring on the coals) over the past decade.
Interestingly, three additional smaller fires within sight of our cabin that were contained within a couple days±, all started in the afternoon with cooling temps, and a night for initial ground attack and preparation for the next day's fire fighter assault. (Those guys/gals do do incredibly good work)
Hmmm, how will a warming drying climate impact future wild fires?
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citizenschallenge at 23:59 PM on 25 August 2018New research, August 5-12, 2018
Ari Jokimäki, used to be a trickle, now its torrent, yet somehow awareness (or is it interest) seems to be going down.
Makes me think of the observation: "Buy 'em books and buy 'em books and all they do is eat the covers."
Well if nothing else you continue creating a excellent one stop resource for the few who want to become informed.
Thank you !
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michael sweet at 07:35 AM on 25 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
Indy222,
A blog post from Tim Garrott whining about how badly he was treated is hardly proof that he was poorly treated. His paper was published. The reviewers thought his work was crap and wrote opposing views. That is how science works.
Sounds to me like few experts thing Garrotts work is worth considering.
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scaddenp at 07:10 AM on 25 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
Thanks for that clarification. However, I do not understand your point about the SRES scenarios. Climate models by nature evaluate "given forcing x, then is the climate you will get". The scenarios are to help evaluate the consequences of particular policy actions. If you do BAU, you get this - widely criticized as being too unlikely but you seem to believe the only one possible? - if we implement reductions on CO2, then we get this. With regard to the GR, nowhere do I see a suggestion that power consumption is reduced in the scenarios- only that we change from FF to other means of generation.
Of course, if want to argue that shouldnt attempt change because history suggests we cant, then that would be a perfectly self-fulfilling prophesy. In 1700, couldnt you make the same argument about the need for horses?
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Daniel Bailey at 00:31 AM on 25 August 2018Welcome to the Pliocene
Orbital forcing peaked in the early Holocene and has declined since. Less energy went into melting ice, and into warming the oceans, slowing the rate of ice sheet mass losses and slowing the rising of sea levels.
Typically, when climate scientists try to understand some of the expected future effects of global warming and climate change, they first look to the past. And in looking to the past, we can use the example of the climate transition from the icy depths of the Last Glacial Maximum into our current Holocene Interglacial to guide us. From about 21,000 years Before Present (BP) to about 11,700 years BP, the Earth warmed about 4 degrees C and the oceans rose (with a slight lag after the onset of the warming) about 85 meters.
However, the sea level response continued to rise another 45 meters, to a total of 130 meters (from its initial level before warming began), reaching its modern level about 3,000 BP.
This means that, even after temperatures reached their maximum and leveled off, the ice sheets continued to melt for another 7,000-8,000 years until they reached an equilibrium with temperatures.
Stated another way, the ice sheet response to warming continued for 7,000-8,000 years after warming had already leveled off, with the meltwater contribution to global sea levels totaling 45 additional meters of SLR.
Which brings us to our modern era of today: over the past 100 years, global temperatures have risen about 1 degree C…with sea level response to that warming totaling about 150 mm.
Recently, accelerations in SLR and in ice sheet mass losses have been detected, which is what you’d expect to happen when the globe warms, based on our understanding of the previous history of the Earth and our understanding of the physics of climate.
Sources for my SLR commentary:
- Shakun et al 2012 - Global warming preceded by increasing carbon dioxide concentrations during the last deglaciation
- Marcott et al 2013 - A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years
- Shakun et al 2015 - Regional and global forcing of glacier retreat during the last deglaciation
- Clark et al 2016 - Consequences of twenty-first-century policy for multi-millennial climate and sea-level change
- Shakun et al 2012 - Global warming preceded by increasing carbon dioxide concentrations during the last deglaciation
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John S at 23:57 PM on 24 August 2018Welcome to the Pliocene
is there a simple elevator answer to a question why was the mid-holocene 0.6 to 0.9 degrees warmer than the pre-industrial (if I'm reading the chart right) when the CO2 was a bit lower (260 ppm vs 280 ppm)? ... less volcanoes?
as a supplementary the mid-holocene sea level vs now is shown as N/A which I understand to mean not-applicable probably (I'm guessing) meaning the difference was < 1 metre, but do we have any more precise idea what it was? — I'm guessing lower than now because it wasn't quite as warm, but by an amount < 1 metre , or by an amount within the range of error so we don't really know more than it was about the same (I recall somone'e lecture about Roman fish tanks implying sea level about the same as now)
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indy222 at 17:55 PM on 24 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
Michael Sweet, here's a link to the rather outrageous (and unfair to an author) treatment he's received on his work on Civilization as a thermodynamic system,
Moderator Response:[DB] Shortened URL and activated hyperlink. You can do this too, using the insert/edit link tool, to avoid long links breaking page formatting.
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indy222 at 17:14 PM on 24 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
scaddenp, Understand what the Garrett Relation says.
the GR is not: Current GDP is proportional to Current power consumption rate
the GR is not: total summed GDP is proportional to total summed past power consumption
Both of the above are completely false....
The GR is: Today's global power consumption rate (about 18 TW) is directly proportional to the summed total inflation-adjusted Gross World Product over the entire history of civilization.
What my work shows, (so far, only published in my powerpoint I show to my students, linked previously, and includes a linear graph of the GR and components of it) is that this proportionality is even closer if you add back in the "shadow economy" that is missing from GDP figures, and if you attempt to correct for the bias in CPI inflation which, while not numerically well-agreed upon in studies, is at least well-argued and calculated to be higher than official figures (it saves governments COLA money to those massive unfunded liabilities). I've been conservative in using only the MIT Business School's "Billion Prices Project" correction. Garrett's original figures use officially reported GDP deflator values from the World Bank. Pretty safe, but may not do justice to the constancy of the (Current Power)/(total time-integrated GWP + shadow economy spending) ratio's constancy and how well it agrees with theoretical thermodynamic reasoning.Frankly, these corrections to the original ratio are both very small compared to the large changes in civilization wealth, power, FF use, oil prices... And the original GR as plotted by Garrett is still quite flat over time, within data errors.
Again, constantly improving energy efficiency is not inconsistent with the GR constancy. But if the GR is a true property of the human + physics nature of things, and can be relied upon to remain true in the future, it really points to a glaring inconsistency in the (UN politically directed) IPCC SRES scenarios, which basically invent, (whole-cloth!), economic and power trends cobbled simply to get a total specified climate forcing, without any appreciation of the connections between population, energy consumption rates, and GWP. And compound those flaws by then adding in massive atmospheric CO2 removal later in the century in order to produce the UN politically desired "carbon budgets" which clearly make no sense. Economic growth at the rates the IPCC SRES scenarios show are only consistent with MUCH higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations, unrealistic in that such high CO2 will cause such crippling climate change as to (in the words of James Hansen) make the world "ungovernable", and that is NOT an environment of economic growth, but instead rapid decay.
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scaddenp at 15:22 PM on 24 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
indy222, I will defer happily to you on any matter of economics, but the plot that I dont understand the power to weath relation, where my graph showed decreasing trends not a flat line. I am not reproducing the Garrett plot.
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indy222 at 13:58 PM on 24 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
I don't know which plot you're referring to. The CO2/GDP plot that JevonsRevenge put in, but which is not fundamental nor relevant for the Garrett Relation? The Garrett Relation plot from my grab of original data from the sources given in my pdf linked earlier, shows it to be quite similar to Garrett's for the data range he had then, and which is even flatter when biases are corrected for, as I describe in my pdf. You might check to see if the worldindata source is using MER (market exchange rates) or PPP (purchasing power parity) accounting to combine countries and get a global GDP. As I argue, Garrett correctly used MER accounting. Some sources may use PPP accounting, but that doesn't properly reflect the value of future civilization network building, key to understanding the energy implications contained in the Garrett Relation. You must use PRIMARY energy (different than some measures, e.g. electricity, other forms of processed energy) and you must use MER accounting. These are the measures which reflect the true cost and the true GDP relevant for energy consumption.
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scaddenp at 07:25 AM on 24 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
indy222, you insert links and images via the toolbar in the "Insert" tab of the comments editor.
My problem is reconciling the graph I constructed from worldindata (which at its base is not too different in source from that used by Garrett) with Garrett's plot.
Also important from the climate perspective, is that while increasing wealth requires increasing energy use, the energy does not have to come from FF.
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JevonsRevenge at 00:10 AM on 24 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
scaddenp Thank you for taking this seriously, and setting me straight in a calm, professional manner, despite my unabashed arrogance. I feel a freedom I have not felt since I first stumbled upon Garrett's work years ago.
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indy222 at 17:25 PM on 23 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
And note that my graph is linear, not log.
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indy222 at 17:23 PM on 23 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
scaddenp, it doesn't look like you even noted how flat the ratio is on the log plot. Over a time when GDP more than doubled and Power more than doubled, and we went through big oil price spikes, plunges, recessions, transformations from a US/Europe dominated world to an Asian one... the Power/Wealth ratio stays within a band only 16% wide and that is easily within the (unstated - what's wrong with economists anyway??) error confidence of the World Bank data. Yours is just not a valid complaint here. You want to see the graph with full spending, including the "shadow economy", and a conservative correction for the under-stated inflation? It's all within a band of only 13%, and the first and last year's data is on top of each other. See slide 238 from LINK Sorry, but I don't see how to insert a .jpg into these responses, only URL's.
Moderator Response:[DB] Shortened link and activated hyperlink.
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scaddenp at 15:31 PM on 23 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
The graph trick applies to the ratio of power to GDP. Use Log to make numbers small and then use axis range much large than range of value to claim something is constant.
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indy222 at 15:09 PM on 23 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
Here's my last comment for now. Even people who sort of accept that improving efficiency may help us grow, don't quite appreciate exactly how close the relationship is. Realize that it is the actual putting into practice the new energy efficiency that CAUSES the spurt in growth and hence the spurt in total energy consumption. We're like the not-too-bright donkey who's owner on his back is dangling a carrot on a stick and string a foot in front of his nose. Every gallop forward only carries the carrot farther in front to make a mockery of his efforts. Every instance of growth encumbers ongoing new power to support that negative entropy growth in the ordered system called Civilization, AND, it also makes us bigger, badder, better at accessing NEW energy reserves and we take full advantage of that. CO2 emissions grew 2% last year, and are expected to grow another 2% this year, and again in '19. Hence accelerates our energy consumption in total. That's what history shows, right up to the present. And for decades now, the fraction of that energy consumed which must be carbon emitting, has not improved. A constant fraction of an exponentially rising total primary energy consumption, is an exponentially rising CO2 emission rate, and an upward arcing atmospheric CO2 - which is exactly what we see right up through the present moment. We're not decarbonizing anywhere near fast enough to change this. And, if we tried, we'd have to work HARDER, and that means spending MORE energy to accomplish that mission, and that means MORE CO2 emissions to get to a day of smaller fraction of CO2 energy sometime in the future. We're between a rock and a very hard place.
I'm not arguing against trying to improve energy efficiency. But it's not our salvation. We've done it forever, and it's only gotten us to this very frightening place. We need improving energy efficiency AND Tibetan-monk level belt-tightening in our consumption at the same time. BOTH. Channeling every dollar not essential for survival, into decarbonizing.
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indy222 at 14:55 PM on 23 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
Equally vital to understand, is that this "Garrett Relation" is ONLY applicable to GLOBAL power and global spending. California is meaningless. So is the U.S., So is Europe. Only the total globe is relevant. Trade in materials, energy, money across borders render looking at individual countries or continents meaningless. They are not "closed systems" and don't obey simple thermodynamics. But then, ths same is true of CO2, which is well-mixed and climate too is a completely GLOBAL phenomenon. We NEED to consider both CO2 and economics only in a global context. You'll fool yourself if you try to make generalizations based on regional data. There's a perfect correlation between the fraction amount of our manufacturing which we've outsourced to China and the apparent improvements in our efficiency of GDP per unit of power. Very convenient - China gets the bad rap and the CO2 guilt, and we get the rosy-looking energy graphs as their goods come back to the U.S. See.... LINK
Next, realize that achieving energy efficiency is not new. We've been continually and strongly and consistently improving the efficiency with which energy produces wealth. It is not in conflict with the Garrett Relation (GR). As long as global GDP is growing faster than energy efficiency, there need be no conflict between constantly improving energy efficiency and Power/Wealth=Constant. What's really interesting is that if you look at recessions, when d(GDP/dt is negative, then to be consistent with the GR then energy efficiency trends must reverse and get worse. What's interesting is that the "fake data" from China during their economic contractions shows exactly this. Overstated GDP (for political reasons) makes their local Power/Wealth look better than it is. Even taking the official World Bank figures at face value shows that energy efficiency improvements halt during each of the recessions of the past 30 years over which they give data. Again, those figures are in the pdf of the powerpoints presentation I have on this subject LINK
Moderator Response:[DB] Shortened URL and activated hyperlink.
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indy222 at 14:32 PM on 23 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
Let me clear up the misunderstanding. Cullenward's bogus criticism only betrays that he didn't pay attention while reading Garrett's paper(s). The "Garrett Relation" that "Power/Wealth= Constant" means the following: "The global Current Power Consumption rate is directly proportional to the sum total of all GWP spending over all time (==Wealth)". Cullenward assumed he was saying that GWP is proportional to power. But that's false, it's the SUM TOTAL of ALL GWP over ALL TIME, that is proportional to current power. I am writing a paper with Tim Garrett as co-author which shows that this relation is even better obeyed than Garrett's original paper showed, as there are sublties to how inflation is corrected, how different currencies are calibrated, about the "shadow economy", and a bias in GDP reporting from big countries like China which skew official figures as well. Don't confuse the fundamental "Garrett Relation" with the much less significant CO2 vs GDP graph. That graph Garrett himself down-plays, but it's interesting as a visual proof at how badly we're doing in de-carbonizing. Back to the Garrett Relation; Jevons' Revenge (my term, I hope it catches on, to distinguish from the original "Jevons' Paradox" by Jevons himself, which is more restricted and so not relevant here) says that all improvements in energy efficiency result in MORE total energy being consumed. Because human civilization is driven (genetically?) by the goal to achieve the most rapid, efficient growth possible, and improving energy efficiency aids the expansion of civilization. The point of Jevons' Revenge is that any savings resulting from energy efficiency WILL BE SPENT, and it doesn't matter where, because the Garrett Relation shows that ALL spending sum totalled over all time, remains proportional to current energy consumption rates. It is explicitly in the mathematics of the CThERM model which includes the Garrett Relation and which is very well verified in historical data right up to the present. Now, the carbonization of energy is a parameter in the model which you can tune any way you feel is realistic, but Garrett has made a few projections under the assumption of (A) no decarbonization (that has been the history of the 21st century so far) and (B) decarbonize exponentially with a halving time of 50 years; meaning the CO2 emissions per joule of energy expended, is cut in half every 50 years. Both result, with a wide range of assumptions of the resiliencey of civilizataion to the decays caused by climate change, to increasing CO2 at different rates. If we REALLY got serious, we could do better than t(1/2)=50yrs, but so far, we're doing nothing remotely like this. FF's are still growing at an absolute rate that is about equal to that of renewables, so that the % of global energy from FF's has remained about 83% the entire 21st century so far.
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JevonsRevenge at 13:47 PM on 23 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
scaddenp This, he claims to be a linear plot of the same data. Is the same trick present here?
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scaddenp at 12:08 PM on 23 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
Jevons, the energy production has increased and it mostly comes from FF, then CO2 of course continues to rise. The ratio of power to wealth however is about how efficiently we generate wealth from that power. Those graphs show we are getting much more efficient at generating wealth from power. Also, the longer time interval gives a better perpective.
Looking at Garret's graph, I havent tried to reproduce from his sources, but I note that he is plotting power/wealth on a log axis which covers a much larger range than the actual data. In short, a well-known graphing trick.
Frankly, I think my plot is better.
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JevonsRevenge at 11:33 AM on 23 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
@michael sweet Thank you for sharing Cullenward et al's criticism! The last time I tried accessing it, all but the abstract was hidden behind a paywall. I look forward to reviewing these criticisms.
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michael sweet at 10:48 AM on 23 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
Jevons Revenge,
Perhaps the extra CO2 is coming from thawing permafrost, methane clathrate decompositon or released by forest fires. There is no reason to believe that nature will continue to absorb all we emit at the same rate.
This SkS article indicates that we may be near, or already past, a point where the climate tips against us and natural releases of CO2 control the temprature no matter what we do.
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michael sweet at 10:37 AM on 23 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
Jevon's revenge,
Tim Garrett, the author of the blog you cite, has had a lot of criticsm of his work. Since he also claims that humans cannot affect the climate, in contradiction to what anyone who reads the newspaper can currently see, perhaps his data is off. I note that your graph at 43 is truncated at the year 2000. Where I live it is 2018. A lot of progress has been made in producing more GDP per unit energy since 2000. Scaddenp's graph appears closer to what I would expect to see.
Since he is not mentioned at Desmog Blog he must be a minor character in the Climate Debate.
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JevonsRevenge at 10:36 AM on 23 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
@scaddenp this is Garrett's original paper on the subject, detailing how the relation is derived: link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-009-9717-9
Offhand, I know it used inflation-adjusted 1990 US dollars to calculate global wealth. It's also worth noting that China and several other developing nations have over-reported their respective GDPs and under-reported their energy usage. After all, the continued increases in atmospheric CO2 have to be coming from somewhere, right?
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michael sweet at 10:18 AM on 23 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
Jevons Revenge,
Since California only generates 1% of global CO2 source, how big of a dent do you expect to see? Even if California completely stopped using fossil fuels it would be impossible to see on a graph of world emissions. Is your question serious??
In order to solve the CO2 problem everyone has to contribute. Each countries emissions by itself does not make muc hdifference. When the US refuses to control emissions it delays other countries emission reductions. A classic tragedy of the commons.
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scaddenp at 10:05 AM on 23 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
Trying a very quick Excel plot and using data from ourworldindata.org/ I do not reproduce your constant relationship between wealth and power. World GDP in 2011 international dollars, Energy is primary energy production. I get:
I would say world is getting more efficient at using energy to create wealth and that ratio to fossil fuel is dropping more steeply than that of total energy use. What is the source of your data?
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JevonsRevenge at 09:46 AM on 23 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
I recently asked Katharine Hayhoe about this. She said that FFs and economic growth have already begun to decouple, citing this report from California: arb.ca.gov/newsrel/newsrelease.php?id=933 If this is true, where is the California-sized dent we would expect in Global CO2 levels, and why does the Keeling curve continue to show CO2 level growth at *precisely the same* rate as it did before California enacted these policies?
Moderator Response:[JH] Enacting policies and fully implementing them are two different things.
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scaddenp at 09:09 AM on 23 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
I dont think there has been much effort to get off FF yet but the past is no reason to say that we cant do so. Especially as renewables get to point where they can compete with FF on price without subsidy. I will willingly concede power/wealth not changing much but no reason to assume that power=FF into the future. I am willing to bet you could draw similar graphs for animals of burden and water wheels which would suddenly go off trends as technology changed. Give it another decade or so especially we inact actually effective policy.
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JevonsRevenge at 08:57 AM on 23 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
@scaddenp it's not a belief, it's an observation, though I suppose that's not evident from this particular graph.
This one shows the trend persisting into more recent years. The growth rates of Global Primary Energy production (Global power) and Global GDP accumulated (Global wealth) have remained constant for at least as long as we have been keeping records, and this trend continues unabated despite all our attempts to free ourselves from it.
There is no evidence in the data that any policy measures, individual actions, or technologies implemented to date have made any difference in fossil fuel consumption on the Global level.
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One Planet Only Forever at 14:21 PM on 22 August 2018State of the climate: 2018 set to be fourth warmest year despite cooler start
Mal Adapted,
The likes of Roy Spencer could learn a lot from Sean Carroll's book "The Big Picture" published in 2016. It is an extensive presentation of the developed improved awareness and understanding of what is going on, including how the human mind works.
It was a NY Times Bestseller. However, it did have critics, mainly the angry group of evangelical purists that disliked the way that Carroll explains that our current understanding of what is going on in our Universe does not require an Intelligent Designer, and the way he effectively makes the case that it is unlikely that there is a God-being influencing what is going on.
So the likes of Spencer would not likely learn anything from reading Sean Carroll's book.
As you say, they have already decided not to be open to improved awareness and understanding. They deliberately limit their scientific methods and critical thinking to the defense of the limited worldview they have personally chosen to try to hold on to and defend.
Sadly, scientific investigation and critical thinking can be very harmful when it is applied by people who are not open to a holistic worldview (not liking the understanding presented by Sean Carroll), and who are focused on narrow-minded selfish interests (not interested in more altruistically helping to develop a sustainable better future for humanity).
More people need to develop improved awareness and understanding of what is really going on and strive to help develop a sustainable better future for all of humanity (all of the future generations), rather than seeking excuses for a sub-set of current day humanity getting away with an unsustainable activity that is undeniably harmful to future generations (and harmful to a significant portion of current day humanity).
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sailrick at 13:55 PM on 22 August 2018Sunshine Blogger Award
I think Tamino's Open Mind blog is worthy of a nomination
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scaddenp at 13:07 PM on 22 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
Why do you believe that the relationship would continue to exist if we transitioned off fossil fuels? This tells you about the past but it doesnt have to be our future. Not to mention being fairly skeptical log/log plots and estimates of world GDP pre-1700.
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scaddenp at 12:58 PM on 22 August 2018State of the climate: 2018 set to be fourth warmest year despite cooler start
And for further perspective on the what 80N means. The area north of 80N is ~4M sq kms (slightly less). The arctic region is 14.5M sq kms. The area of the arctic ocean is 15.5M sq km. Area of globe is 510M sq km.
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JevonsRevenge at 12:17 PM on 22 August 2018Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy
It's telling that the study only examines the future evolution of the U.S. economy. Truly, this is a shockingly naïve oversight of epic proportions.
"Consider the above plot, which shows the relationship between the atmospheric concentration of CO2 above a baseline of 275 ppm and the world’s total GDP, adjusted for inflation to 1990 dollars (see Garrett, 2012 for details). Data is taken from a mixture of ice cores for older dates and gas samples for newer dates.
What is immediately evident is that, on a log-log plot, there has been an extraordinarily tight relationship between GDP and CO2 concentrations for at least 2000 years. As long as we look at global scales, each ten-fold increase in GDP has always corresponded with an approximate four-fold increase in excess CO2."
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michael sweet at 10:25 AM on 22 August 2018State of the climate: 2018 set to be fourth warmest year despite cooler start
Bob Hoye,
From the OP:
"The Arctic has been strikingly warm so far this year, with many areas 3C warmer than the global average."
But if you want to cherry pick only a tiny fraction (80 North) for only part of the year (summer only) than everything looks great!
Who gives you your cherries? I also suspect Steve Goddard.
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Mal Adapted at 09:21 AM on 22 August 2018State of the climate: 2018 set to be fourth warmest year despite cooler start
nigelj:
According to wikipedia, Roy Spencer who compiles the UAH data is an agw climate change sceptic to some extent, and has strong religious fundamentalist views and has signed declarations that say our climate change is natural.
Well, Spencer signed An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming, which states:
WHAT WE BELIEVE
We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence —are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth’s climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history....
WHAT WE DENY
We deny that Earth and its ecosystems are the fragile and unstable products of chance, and particularly that Earth’s climate system is vulnerable to dangerous alteration because of minuscule changes in atmospheric chemistry. Recent warming was neither abnormally large nor abnormally rapid. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human contribution to greenhouse gases is causing dangerous global warming....
Ellipses represent arguments from consequences, boiling down to "mitigation will harm poor people."
IOW, evidence be damned: AGW can't be a threat because God wouldn't allow it. By signing this document, Spencer has publicly announced his determination to fool himself, and IMHO has forfeited all scientific credibility thereby.
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scaddenp at 07:40 AM on 22 August 2018State of the climate: 2018 set to be fourth warmest year despite cooler start
I am not sure quite information you think the DMI is giving you, but if that is the only temperature record you look at, then surely you should look at what DMI itself have to say about the record and what it is fit for. Ie it is not a climate data record. Furthermore, if you have watched over a no. of years you will notice that there is very low variability in the mid summer temperatures (generally stuck at just above zero) especially compared to the winter temperatures. Reason? Above 80N is mostly ice. The air temperature above ice is forced to close to 0C or below because the insolation goes into just melting the ice. While the ice persists, temperature will be nearly constant. Looks to me like you are looking for a record that makes you feel comfortable about doing nothing but unfortunately this isnt the one if you understand what it tells you. Did you find the more complete analysis of snow cover statistics that I pointed you to comfortable? Or did you choose not to follow the link because winter snow cover fits what you would like to believe whereas spring and summer are unconfortable?
Furthermore the extraordinary high temperatures in winter on DMI is by contrast a real cause for concern - linked to other unpleasant weather phenomena.
Cherry picking one aspect of Greenland ice balance while ignoring the larger picture is also not convincing. I dont suppose your opinions are being "informed" by Tony Heller aka Steve Goddard instead of science?
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