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Ian Love at 15:56 PM on 24 April 2013Global Dimming in the Hottest Decade
@Rob Painting
Useful article thanks. Has the Part 2 follow-up appeared? I cannot find it....
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barry1487 at 13:23 PM on 24 April 2013Climate Sensitivity Single Study Syndrome, Nic Lewis Edition
It is good form to flag when you have changed the text of an article post-publication, as they do at realclimate. I see Tom Curtis' notes have been taken up re the changed text around the Aldrin study section. Hat tip to you, Tom.
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Tom Curtis at 09:23 AM on 24 April 2013Renewable energy is too expensive
First, in my post @7 I incorrectly stated that Germany emitted 786.7 billion tonnes of CO2 in 2008 when the correct figure was 786.7 million tonnes. This makes no difference to the results of the calculation, which used the percentages rather than the absolute value.
Having a look at one alternative interpretation of Lomborg's claim, I notice that the annual reduction in emission in 2008 from solar power in Germany is approximately 23.6 million tonnes of CO2. According to the IPCC A2 scenario, in 2100 global emissions of CO2 will be 29 billion tonnes of carbon, or 106.43 billion tonnes of CO2. Thus, 2008 emissions savings from PV in Germany will be 0.022% of 2100 annual emissions, or a 1.94 hours worth of global emissions. German PV electricity production has increased linearly since from effectively zero in 1990; and the effective life span of a PV panel is about 20 years. Assuming that PV panels are not replaced at the end of their usable life, this means the total reduction in 2100 emissions from the German PV program represents approximately 0.5% of 2100 emissions in the A2 scenario, or 42.68 hours of 2100 emissions. That figure is close enough that an equivalent calculation is probably the basis of Lomborg's claim. The difference between 43 and 37 hours probably lies in complexities I have not accounted for.
It is interesting to tease out Lomborg's assumptions.
First, he assumes that emissions will follow a BAU trajectory regardless of the efforts of Germany and other nations to avoid that prospect. That is, he is assuming emission reduction strategies will not work to argue that they are ineffective. Clearly the more effective emissions reduction is, the longer the period of "global warming delayed" by Germany's PV program. If in fact we achieve zero net emissions by 2050 (the target we should be aiming for), global warming will have been delayed infinitely by the German PV program. That just shows what a silly metric it is. Indeed, it shows what a silly argument Lomborg is mounting, for it has all the intellectual credibility (because it has exactly the same logical form) of assuming we will achieve zero emissions and arguing that Germany's PV program will delay global warming infinitely.
Second, he assumes that PV cells reaching the end of their usable life will not be replaced, or at least that equivalent PV capacity would have been installed at that time regardless of the existence of the subsidy. This in turn assumes that the cost of PV will not fall below the rising cost of alternative energy production. With the possibility of effective carbon pricing (admitedly not yet achieved in Europe), diminishing easilly accessible fossil fuel supplies and falling PV costs, those assumptions are not safe. I consider the assumption made in my original calculation that PV cells will be replaced at the end of their usable life to be far safer.
Finally, Lomborg is comparing the emissions reductions of installed capacity todate with global emissions in 2100. To make a fair comparison, he needs to compare the 130 billion to Gross World Product (the global equivalent to GDP) in 2100.
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Tom Dayton at 09:11 AM on 24 April 2013CO2 is plant food
There is a refreshingly excellent article on Mongabay.com, quoting scientists who specialize in tropical forests, countering a recent study's disinterpretation as meaning that CO2 rise will result in more tropical rainforests.
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Synapsid at 07:58 AM on 24 April 20132013 SkS News Bulletin #8: Alberta Tar Sands and Keystone XL Pipeline
John Hartz:
Yep, there's plenty of opposition to expanding the TransMountain pipeline and shipping even more oil out of Vancouver; the oil tankers barely make it under the bridge now. There's also opposition to reversing Line 9 to take western Canadian oil to eastern Canada. Maybe neither project will fly. The point is that the oil industry isn't just sitting and gnawing its knuckles over what the White House will do about Keystone XL. There are other options being worked on. Warren Buffett's Burlington Northern Santa Fe is doing well shipping crude south and so is Canadian National, and both have orders in for as many tank cars as can be produced. Cutting demand (I'm not holding my breath) would eventually stop the flow of Canadian crude south, but forcing continued trans-shipment on one pipeline route will not keep the oil in the ground and that is the topic I addressed.
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william5331 at 06:17 AM on 24 April 2013Major PAGES 2k Network Paper Confirms the Hockey Stick
Taranova@7
Each glacial ends with a massive rapid increase in CO2. There are various theories about where this Carbon dioxide comes from but the rise is clear in air bubbles in ice cores. Carbon dioxide then starts to be sequestered by a variety of sinks and we slowly slide into another glacial.
http://mtkass.blogspot.co.nz/2012/02/carbon-sinks.html
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Bob Loblaw at 05:06 AM on 24 April 2013Renewable energy is too expensive
jdixon:
Sure. Just put it back when you're finished with it...
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CBDunkerson at 04:34 AM on 24 April 2013A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
Nuclear would be a reasonable way to provide baseload 'backup' for intermittent renewables. I just don't see it ever happening because nuclear is too mistrusted. Three mile island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima each had a massive impact on the global nuclear industry. If they could go twenty years without a major disaster the story would change, but that probably isn't going to happen when they continue to insist on running decrepit old 'first generation' nuclear plants decades after they were originally supposed to be shut down.
Fukushima probably killed nuclear's last chance. It ended nuclear in Japan, Germany, and other countries that were finally starting to look into it again to reduce emissions. Instead those countries are now going heavily into solar PV... which has helped drive down prices. Globally solar is now much cheaper than nuclear and by 2020 it will be cheaper than fossil fuels as well. At which point... why would anyone give nuclear another chance? Even if they manage to avoid another disaster it will be at least fifteen years before anyone would try to make another major push for nuclear... and by then there won't be any reason to.
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villabolo at 04:20 AM on 24 April 2013Malaria: biting into the climate change debate
Never mind, here it is,
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378011000859
http://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0959378011000859-gr2.sml
The article is paywalled but the maps are freely available.
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brunosan at 04:16 AM on 24 April 2013Malaria: biting into the climate change debate
Great article! Thanks for all the references. I remember talking at a conference with some folks modelling malaria. According to this quick talk climate change is indeed a compounding factor, but second to the interplay of urbanization vs hygiene. I could not find such disucssion on the references. Do we know the "importance" of each factor? I´m pretty sure they ballparked 10% for climate on their models.
- On one side urbanization, populazion growth and populations shifts in general, which increasing vectors of malaria.
- Education, hygiene and public health, which can be very effective in reducing those risks.
That seems to make sense but is hard to find research on that. This is the closest I´ve found:
http://www.malariajournal.com/content/10/1/188
Kudos for the blog, and the article!!
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jdixon1980 at 03:57 AM on 24 April 2013Renewable energy is too expensive
Tom @ 10, I noticed that too about the article that Lomborg cited, which was why I went to Google for answers about the "37 hours" claim, and kept dead-ending at different sources reporting Lomborg's unelucidated, unsubstantiated statement itself.
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jdixon1980 at 03:54 AM on 24 April 2013Renewable energy is too expensive
An apt analogy Bob @ 11; I may borrow it
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villabolo at 03:38 AM on 24 April 2013Malaria: biting into the climate change debate
It's ironic that I was drinking a glass of tonic water (quinine) when I ran into this article. :-)
Is there a map showing the potential expansion of malaria throughout the world?
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Bob Loblaw at 03:06 AM on 24 April 2013Renewable energy is too expensive
jdixon et al:
A friend lent me a copy of Lomborg's book a few years ago. One of the things that struck me was that he seemed to keep comparing the full cost of reducing global warming with the spot price of fixing one symptom by other means. He never added up all the individual spot prices to get a total cost of dealing with global warming.
It struck me as being somewhat akin to trying to decide whether or not to replace the roof shingles. A roofing job would cost $X, but patching the ceiling costs a lot less - so just patch the ceiling. A roofing job would cost $X, but replacing bulbs in the shorted electrical system costs a lot less - so just replace light bulbs. A roofing job would cost $X, but replacing the carpet costs a lot less - so just replace the carpet. A roofing job would cost $X, but painting the walls costs a lot less - so just paint the walls. Eventually, all the different repairs end up adding up to a lot more than replacing the roof, so the sensible home owner would replace the roof. But if you're working for the trade association that represents drywall, electrical, paint, and carpet trades - and excludes the roofing indistry - then it's to your advantage to try to mislead the home owner so they don't get the roof fixed.
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dana1981 at 03:02 AM on 24 April 2013Major PAGES 2k Network Paper Confirms the Hockey Stick
Terranova @7 - see the Long-Term Global Cooling Trend Until the Past Century section. It's a combination of factors - the Earth's orbital cycles, land cover changes, and solar and volcanic activity changes.
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Tom Curtis at 02:51 AM on 24 April 2013Renewable energy is too expensive
jdixon @9, my calculation is based on just one reasonable interpretation of what it means to "delay warming by x hours". There are other possible interpretations. Unfortunately Lomborg does not specify which he means. Indeed, in his article, he links his claim to an article by Alexander Neubacher in De Spiegel which, while highly critical of Germany's solar subsidies, does not calculate or even mention any delay in warming. In other words he does not support it, or elucidate it at all.
As it happens, the Neubacher article claims that solar panels provide about 3% of Germany's power (I implicitly assume about 2.4% in my calculations), and claims that solar energy provide 21% of Germany's "subsidized energy", which assuming all renewables are subsidized is nearly double the 11% I quoted from the Australian government report. Using my interpretation of "delaying warming", therefore, Lomborg's source for his claim would support about twice the delay I calculated.
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michael sweet at 02:14 AM on 24 April 2013A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
JvD,
At 408 you say
"Which means that pretty much every day, they are going to have dozens of *GW* of power with no place to go but out of the country. "
Yet every night France has to export substantial amounts of their nuclear power since their generation capacity is greater than their baseline usage. Why is it good for France to export nuclear but bad for Germany to export renewables? Provide citations to support your wild claim that wind and solar facilities only last 15 years. I previously noted several nuclear plants that have been withdrawn from service because of maintenance issues. Your 100 year claim is simply false.
You currently claim that nuclear has had no problems in the OECD countries (you ignore Japans' problems in that claim) and at the same time claim that nuclear can power the globe. Which is it? You have completely ignored my point that nuclear is unsuitable in unstable countries because the reactors melt down if the grid is disconnected. How will Africa, the Middle East and other volatile locations generate their electricity? You ignore the issues related to waste disposal, which has not even been addressed in most countries. Your citations are all nuclear power supporters, not unbiased scientists. You agree that the consensus of scientists, as reflected in the IPCC reports, supports renewables, and say they are all wrong.
Your argument is bankrupt. You have provided a very convincing argument that nuclear supporters are unreasonable. You are currently convincing people that nuclear is dangerous. You have made a very strong impression on me, and I used to support nuclear.
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jdixon1980 at 02:11 AM on 24 April 2013Renewable energy is too expensive
Thanks John, Tom, and CB. Tom and CB @ 7 and 8, the "hours of emissions" concept is a lot more intelligible than what I was thinking; I took his statement about "delaying global warming" too literally and thought he was purporting to have plugged the emissions reduction into a climate model to get the resulting change in warming.
Moreover, his claim being simpler than I thought also apparently makes it very easy to expose the assumptions on which it depends through basic arithmetic. It's unsettling that Lomborg is apparently comfortable publicizing such a statement without qualification, especially when he is assuming 10 times the emissions growth rate projected by the IPCC.
I also think a lot of people reading USA Today (dare I speculate a vast majority!?) would make the same mistake I made and think he was literally talking about "delaying" warming. Am I right to suspect that removing X "hours" (which is really a mass quantity converted to hours by dividing out a rate) of global emissions this century doesn't necessarily mean that you will theoretically "delay" warming by only X hours? For example, supposing we stopped all emissions today, that would corresponding to subtracting 87 years of emissions by 2100. If that were the same thing as "delaying warming" by 87 years, wouldn't it then follow that the average temperature in 2100 should be exactly the same as today? I don't see how one could expect that relationship to hold. In my (extremely basic) understanding you are starting with a positive thermal disequilibrium, which will only decrease as the Earth's temperature increases (so that Earth emits more radiation) and/or the GHG's in the atmosphere decrease (so that more of the radiation emitted actually escapes to space), and the Earth will continue to warm until the combined effects of increasing Earth temperature and decreasing absorptivity of the atmosphere (assuming CO2 actually did start to be taken up faster than emitted by natural processes with human emissions removed) lead to the amount of radiation emitted out to space equaling the amount of solar radiation entering the atmosphere. Then as atmospheric CO2 continues to decline, the thermal disequilibrium will become negative, and eventually Earth's average temperature might again reach what it is today, but it would obviously be silly to assume that the time at which that would happen corresponds exactly to the time period we arbitrarily choose to consider (in this case 87 years from now).
Maybe on the scale of removing only tens of hours of emissions, as opposed to tens of years, the relationship between removed emissions and "delay" of warming might be one to one. But I don't think my extreme example of stopping emissions today is wildly inapplicable - isn't the scientific consensus that we NEED to remove tens of years of emissions to have any chance of seeing climate stability?
So am I right to suspect that referring to removed "hours" of emissions as hours of "delayed warming" is a misnomer?
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John Hartz at 01:57 AM on 24 April 20132013 SkS News Bulletin #8: Alberta Tar Sands and Keystone XL Pipeline
Monday, April 22, 2013 was the final date for receipt of comments on the US State Department's most recent draft Supplemental EIS on the construction of the northern leg of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
To access the comments submitted by the US Environmental Protection Agency, click here.
To access the comments submitted by a consortium of sixteen environmental and public interest organizations based in the US and Canada, click here.
The analysis submitted by the sixteen member consortium is in the form of a 216 page report. Appended to this report is a 64 page "Market Report" prepared by The Goldman Group, LTD.
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John Hartz at 00:35 AM on 24 April 20132013 SkS News Bulletin #8: Alberta Tar Sands and Keystone XL Pipeline
Synapsid:
Stopping the Keystone XL piplein will not, of and by itself, prevnet the further mining of the Alberta Tar Sands. On the other hand, construction of the Keystone XL pipeline will ensure the mining of the Alberta Tar Sands for at least the next 50 years.
The construction of a second TransMountain pipeline from Edmonton, Alberta to Burnaby near Vancouver is not a "done deal" by any stretch of the imagination. For example,
The leader of British Columbia’s opposition New Democratic Party said increased oil-tanker traffic from Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP (KMP)’s proposed pipeline expansion is bad for the province, the Vancouver Sun reported.
Adrian Dix is opposed to Vancouver becoming a “major oil export port,” as a result of Kinder Morgan’s plan to expand its Trans Mountain oil pipeline from Alberta, the newspaper quoted Dix as saying today. Dix is campaigning to unseat the governing Liberals.
Kinder Morgan, based in Houston, is proposing a C$5.4 billion ($5.3 billion) expansion of its Trans Mountain line to 890,000 barrels a day from 300,000 currently. British Columbia’s election is May 14.
Source: British Columbia’s Dix Negative on Trans Mountain, Sun Reports by Rebecca Penty, Bloomberg, Apr 22, 2013
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Tom Curtis at 00:13 AM on 24 April 2013A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
JvD @408, I have been following your debate only casually, but even I picked up the fact that your initial statements were very strong. For example, you are quoted as saying:
""As someone who is familiar with the field, you must know there are many peer reviewed studies that disagree with your assessment that renewables cannot be used to power the entire globe." [comment by michael sweet]
Yes I have read probably all of them. None of them disagree with my assessment, since none of them show how renewables can power the globe. All they do is show that there is enough sun, wind, etc. It saddens me that [SkS] it not able to recognise the difference between that and showing actually *how* renewables can power the globe, which is what is demanded in a scientific discussion. IPCC does not do this. Greenpeace does not do this. WWF does not do this. They make a mockery of serious efforts to move to low-carbon economy. This kind of denial is similar to climate change denial and just as damaging to the effort to save the planet for human welfare. I repeat my call for an overhaul of the treatment of this important subject on SS. Dr. Ted Trainer has clearly shown the problem and [SkS] should take it from there. I can't do more than that."
(My emphasis)
Even not paying attention, I picked up that there is a considerable backdown from "renewables cannot be used to power the entire globe" to "Yes renewables can be used [to power the globe]. But the difficulty is great." Perhaps rather than accusing others of misrepresenting your argument, you could simply acknowledge that your initial statement of your position was overstated, and that your position is actually that:
Renewables can. of necessary, power the globe; but that,
It is not necessary that they do so exclusively because we have recourse to nuclear power; and that
It will be much easier to power the globe with a renewables/nuclear mix than exclusively with renewables.
(Or perhaps you have already acknowledged the initial overstatement and I just missed it, in which case could you point me to that acknowledgement.)
In any event, if you agree that the position I laid out above is your actual position, the issue is, to me, a non-issue. What government policy needs to dictate is a strong, revenue neutral carbon price with a clear timetable for emissions reduction built into the pricing mechanism. The later can be reduced by mandatory reductions in emissions credits in line with the time table (in an ETS), or mandatory increases in the carbon price in any year where emissions excede the timetable allowance (for a carbon tax). With such a policy, the market can decide for itself what is the best mix of nuclear and renewables, and I don't have to pretend to an expertise I lack or an ability to prophecy technological advances 50 years into the future (both of which would be required to resolve your debate).
Of course, this assumes that nuclear is a permitted technology. I see no problem with making nuclear a permitted technology on condition that clear policies are in place to avoid risks from nuclear power. These policies should include:
1) Fail safe design, so that in the complete breakdown of power supply and or mechanical systems the reactor shuts down safely; and
2) No net environmental impact for ore to waste. The idea here being that uranium ore is a naturally occuring low level environmental hazard. That fact allows a straightforward definition of safe disposal of nuclear waste. That is, if radiation count at the surface of a waste disposal site is no greater than at the original ore body, and the waste is stored in a way that is proof to leeching and as expensive to reprocess as the original ore, then waste disposal has no net environmental impact and can be considered safe.
Do you agree that these are reasonable constraints on the nuclear industry?
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JvD at 00:05 AM on 24 April 2013A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
"As time goes on the need for natural gas backups would then be eliminated by having a large enough smart grid to dispatch intermittent power from areas with excess to areas with a shortfall and/or various methods of power storage. Some areas will continue to rely on relatively steady power sources like hydro, geothermal, and nuclear which are already in place, but most generation will be from solar and wind."
CBDBunkerson don't you see that this is mere handwaving? And the Citigroup study is promoting natural gas usage! I thought we were trying to stop AGW? So what is the scenario if no natural gas is to be used? Biomass? Storage? What is the environmental impact of those options? What is econnomic cost? Better than nuclear? No way.
Putting it differently, lets say we don't worry about those costs of storage/backup, because we assume those costs are going to be made through the next few decades, thereby gradually arriving. Alas, it doesn't work that way. Solar and wind installations only have a lifetime of about 15 to 30 years. So to suggest that we can build our solar and wind now, and then worry about our backup and storage 'later' is catastrophic. What will happen is that we will find out that we will not only have to think about storage and backup 'later', but also our completely new set of wind and solar systems. So every few decades, we need to depend on governments and voters to pony-up the cash for these expensive facilities, or risk falling back to fossil fuels. A never-ending game of Russian roulette. Just one future goverment could destroy all our sacrifices today, by deciding to not renew the massive wind farms, solar farms and city-block sized battery plants. With nuclear plants, there would not be this problem. Nuclear power plants become stupendous cash-cows after they have been in service for a few decades, because their original debts are paid off. For example, Germany installed heavy taxes on all their nuclear power plants, in order to subsidise wind and solar. The cost of power from a nuclear power plant that has paid back it's investment is little more than 0,3 ct/kWh (no typo).
A nuclear power plant of the EPR or AP1000 type will last 60 years. In fact, they are designed ready for life-extensions to up to 100 years of service life. After 100 years, the nuclear power plant will have competed with four(!) complete sets of by then long junked windturbines and solar systems, which then have become (literally) mountain-sized collections of rusting, leaking, chemically hazardous trash! In addition, there will be up to 6 (!) complete sets of junked battery storage systems, which only last 15 years, and which consist of highly unpleasant corrosive salts or heavy metals.
Our children are just going to *love* that, I'm sure!
Not really. I think our children would understand that some nuclear waste deep underground in the middle of the empty desert is far better than untold millions of junked wind turbines (also at sea!) and untold millions of junked rooftop systems beyond service, simply rusting and sitting there on roofs, being ugly, leaking their heavy metals through their cracked coatings, with no regulation, no oversight, no control ....
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JvD at 23:31 PM on 23 April 2013A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
"Shouldn't we be rooting for bigger shares for both nuclear and renewables?"
Yes we should. And I am. Despite constant attempts by some posters on this thread to portray me as being anti-renewables, I am not. However, solar and wind power have serious, inherent limitations which *require* addition of either storage or backup or both. Since storage is not enough (pumped hydro) or too expensive (everything else), and gas is merely another fossil fuel which needs to be *eliminated*, nuclear is the obvious choice. (Contrary to anti-nuke propagandists, nuclear power *can* follow demand very well. Nuclear submarines and nuclear navy ships PROVE THIS every day.)
Germany has today about 70 GW of solar and wind name-plate capacity installed. In a few years, if all goes to plan, they will have 130 GW. But their maximum power demand is about 80 GW. Which means that pretty much every day, they are going to have dozens of *GW* of power with no place to go but out of the country. Scandinavia can perhaps provide a few dozen extra GW of storage to accept the German excess, but that's it. There is no way Scandinavia can 'Power all of Europe'. Sheer lunacy.
Certainly, entire EU-27 has about 600 GW of average power demand and there is no chance that scandinavia could provide 600 GW 'for a week' (according to JasonB). Furthermore, in the GreenPeace energy scenario for europe, some 2600(!) GW of solar and wind power would need to be built. This means scandinavia would have to have about 2000(!) GW of pumped hydro storage capacity. That's about one *hundred* times their current installed amount. They cannot provide this! In fact, they can only provide about 50 to 100 GW (Norway and Sweden together) beyond what they have now. That's a large and valuable resource, but clearly *nowhere near* enough for 'all of europe'.
http://www.twenties-project.eu/system/files/D16.2_2_FINAL_SINTEF.pdf
What intrigues me now is this: Does JasonB even know what Scandinavian current potential is, since he is clearly the expert? Perhaps JasonB will provide us with the scientifically robust information that he has which contradicts the link above and shows that "Fully developed it [scandinavia] could single-handedly power all of Europe for weeks, allowing Europe to easily take advantage of large amounts of intermittent renewables."
It would be nice if JasonB provided some scientific support, like I have been doing in my previous posts which he seems to have been selectively reading. I say selectively, because JasonB is still claiming my figures for uranium and thorium reserves are wrong. If only he would go back and simply read science, rather than simply allow his imagination of what is 'fact' run wild? Here is my source again:
http://www.mcgill.ca/files/gec3/NuclearFissionFuelisInexhaustibleIEEE.pdf
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JvD at 22:59 PM on 23 April 2013A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
CBDunkerson:
"The SkS position, as described in the post above, is that renewable energy sources can be used to produce substantial baseload power. Your position is that they cannot and that nuclear must be used to reduce CO2 emissions. The quotation you supplied states that renewables can be used, albeit with difficulty, to achieve low carbon goals without nuclear. Which agrees with the SkS position... and directly contradicts yours."
Yes renewables can be used. But the difficulty is great. Too great, as is stated clearly be every authority on the subject. Therefore, relying on them *alone* to solve the climate crisis constitutes taking a great *risk* with our common future. This risk can be all but eliminated when nuclear is allowed to play a role.
Putting it another way: Yes, a burning building can be extinguished by using only champagne. There is no denying it can. But for purposes of risk management and prudent resource allocation, at least some water should be used. Similarly, we can run the global economy using renewables only, but for purposes of risk management and prudent resource allocation, at least some nuclear should be used.
I note that you have turned to misrepresenting my arguments and calling me crazy and irrational. I doubt that those who read this will be terribly impressed with the strength of your argumentation. I am not, at any rate. What I recognise here is a failure on your part to maintain sight of what is at issue here. Hopefully, your kind of so-called 'environmentalist' will wisen-up very soon. Otherwise, all hope of solving the climate change crisis is lost.
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CBDunkerson at 22:40 PM on 23 April 2013Renewable energy is too expensive
jdixon1980, basically when Lomborg says that global warming will be delayed by 37 hours, what he means is that 37 hours worth of emissions will be removed. However, as Tom Curtis shows, to get that figure he is assuming that neither Germany nor any other country makes any further efforts towards emissions reductions and future emissions grow to astronomical levels... and he then uses those hypothetical future emission levels, rather than actual current levels, to determine the offset from German solar PV.
The same deceptive 'logic' could be applied to show similarly low impact from his suggested course of using natural gas... divide the current emissions reduction from just one country by huge hypothetical future emissions from the entire world and you get a small number.
Note that, of course, he doesn't do an apples to apples comparison. Instead he says, "if fracking happened worldwide". So he describes the benefits of current solar PV in Germany alone vs the benefits of future fracking on a global level.
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Bob Lacatena at 22:19 PM on 23 April 2013Major PAGES 2k Network Paper Confirms the Hockey Stick
Excellent point, Terranova.
The long term cooling trend is exactly as expected, due to the termination of the last interglacial. Based on both historical records and our own knowledge of physics and climate, the earth should, by all measures, be slowly but inexorably sinking into another glacial period, as can be seen in the temperature record below.
Yet here we are with a temperature rise which is unprecedented in the past half a million years, possibly pushing us to or even past the Holocene climatic optimum.
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DSL at 13:12 PM on 23 April 2013Major PAGES 2k Network Paper Confirms the Hockey Stick
Is that a general question, Terranova, or are you referring to the attribution PAGES provides? I can't recall any study covering the Holocene that attributes the cooling trend of the last 6-8k years to anything other than Milankovitch forcing.
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Doug Hutcheson at 12:48 PM on 23 April 2013It's not bad
- What date is the 'present' you refer to in your assertion "1 degree Celsius warming from the present value was the peak of the positive effect on GDP"?
- What is good about knowing this will roll over us in 60 years, if the argument is used to delay taking action?
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Terranova at 12:24 PM on 23 April 2013Major PAGES 2k Network Paper Confirms the Hockey Stick
Dana,
What caused the long-term cooling trend?
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wili at 12:16 PM on 23 April 2013Climate Sensitivity Single Study Syndrome, Nic Lewis Edition
Andy, thanks for this thoughtful piece. When you wrote this statement, though:
" Taken to an extreme, that viewpoint can lead to a fatalistic approach, in which efforts to mitigate climate change by cutting emissions are seen as futile"
it concerned me that you might be falling into a syndrome I usually associate with the denialist camp--deciding what the science should be based on what we think people's reaction to the science might be. I believe it was Inhofe that was quoted as saying that he believed in GW till he started looking into some of the policy and tax implications of dealing with it. Then he decided not to believe in it any more.
I don't think we want to do the same thing on the other side. If even some legitimate science points to feedbacks leading to some version of 'run way' global warming, we should consider that this is a posiblity, and not reject it merely because we think it might have an effect on some people's psychology that might be detrimental to the 'cause.'
I am thinking especially of the MacDougal study that came out last fall on permafrost thaw, that you and a number of other sites covered. An honest presentation of the science, it seems to me, should include that crucial study, even if you then decide it is flawed in some way, or just one study needing further confirmation...
We have to front the facts that the best science presents us with, not pick and choose whatever articles fit into our emotional landscape (or into the imagined emotional landscape of others).
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Mark Bahner at 11:57 AM on 23 April 2013Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
A logical question that should have been asked before publication is: "What do the authors expect the world GDP will be 200, 400, 600, or 1000 years in the future?"
Of course, such a question would likely demolish the premise of the paper, so it's not surprising it wasn't asked.
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Mark Bahner at 11:38 AM on 23 April 2013It's not bad
Mark @344 - first off, almost all of the estimates in the Tol paper you reference are from the most conservative economists doing climate research (Nordhaus, Tol, Mendelsohn, etc.),
Richard Tol is a conservative? That might be news to him! But OK...what do the "non-conservative" ("liberal?") economists say?
Despite these underestimates, the paper still concludes that the net impact on GDP at 2.5°C will be negative, and we're already committed to about 1.5°C warming and still rising fast. So I'm not really sure what your point is.
My point is that global surface temperature is rising by about 0.15 degrees Celsius per decade. So 2.5 degrees Celsius isn't likely to happen even in this century.
In fact, per that paper, 1 degree Celsius warming from the present value was the peak of the positive effect on GDP. At 0.15 degrees Celsius per decade, that's more than 60 years in the future.
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Synapsid at 10:35 AM on 23 April 20132013 SkS News Bulletin #8: Alberta Tar Sands and Keystone XL Pipeline
I'd like to address the idea that stopping Keystone XL will result in the oil sands being left in the ground.
The permit that the White House will accept or reject applies to the portion of the pipeline that actually crosses the US / Canada border, not to the rest of it. Last year Canada exported more crude oil, mostly from the oil sands but some from the Bakken (which is mostly in North Dakota and Montana, not Canada) than in any previous year, and did so without the Keystone XL. The oil was taken by truck from the fields to rail-loading terminals, and that whole part of the rairoad industry is being expanded rapidly. This effort will grow anyway, but especially if Keystone XL is turned down.
The TransMountain pipeline from Edmonton, Alberta to Burnaby near Vancouver is to see a second pipeline open by 2017, in the existing right of way; no approvals needed. The resulting combined capacity will be 850 000 barrels a day, which is larger than the planned capacity for Keystone XL. This pipeline supplies crude to refineries in Washington State.
Enbridge is planning expansion of its existing network for delivering oil that will make its way to the Gulf Coast, aiming for a daily volume that, again, is larger than that planned for Keystone XL.
The above two projects aren't getting the attention Keystone XL is, but they represent more than twice the capacity that pipeline would have, and they serve to carry Canadian oil to the US.
The southern portion of the Keystone XL-associated, get the crude to the Gulf Coast, program is already under construction, and will help drain the backup at Cushing, Oklahoma, which has pushed down crude prices in the Midwest. There is no Federal approval required, as the pipeline will operate within the US. Currently, Midwest refiners are taking advantage of this low-cost crude to produce gasoline and diesel and sell those products, at world not Midwest prices, to Latin America and the Caribbean, just as Gulf Coast refiners would be able to do with crude delivered by Keystone XL.
So: Keystone XL would lower the price of transporting Canadian crude to Gulf Coast refineries but that oil is making its way there now and will continue to do so, in increasing quantity, Keystone XL or not. Denying the permit will not keep the oil sands from being used--will certainly not result in the oil remaining in the ground.
The way to keep oil in the ground is to reduce the demand for the products refined from it, not to convince ourselves that pushing up the transport price of crude will get people out of their cars.
All this is taking attention away from the huge amounts of coal which is not only still being used in the US (though use is declining) but which the US is exporting to Europe in large quantity. Export terminals planned for locations on the coasts of Oregon and Washington will allow a great deal more coal to be sent to eastern Asia, if those ports are built. Coal is a worse producer of greenhouse gases and other nasties than crude from the oil sands is.
In view of all the above, focusing on Keystone XL seems to me to be a case of skewed priorities. Coal is a worthier target but it isn't getting the attention it deserves.
By the way: tar is a refinery product, not a type of oil. Canada's oil sands produce bitumen, which is heavy oil.
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Tom Curtis at 09:28 AM on 23 April 2013Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
Gingerbaker @36, if all anthropogenic emissions ceased, CO2 levels in the atmosphere would approximately halve over the course of 200 years as CO2 is absorbed into the ocean. This reduction in CO2 concentration (shown in red above) approximately balances the increase in global temperatures due to the "commitment", ie, the increase as the Earth achieves equilbrium. Therefore the two approximately cancell out, resulting in no change in temperature.
Over the following 10 thousand years, the CO2 will be removed from the ocean, drawing down CO2 levels to preindustrial levels. The draw down is sufficiently slow that in one to two thousand years, when slow feedbacks have had time to reach equilibrium, the temperature will still remain at current elevated levels, ie, the draw down in CO2 will be approximately balanced by the increase in temperature resulting from such slow feedbacks as reduced albedo due to the melt back of icesheets.
"Aproximately" in both cases is leaves a fairly wide margin and there may be a slight increase or decrease in the long term, and disparities of rate may result in significant temperature fluctuations.
These scenarios are only relevant if we in fact cease net anthropogenic emissions. As some emissions (eg, methane from rice paddies) are simpy unavoidable, that means an ongoing deliberate sequestration process. Further, it is economically unfeasible to cease emissions in less than 20 years, and probably in less than 40 years. Finally, such scenarios are only relevant if there are no large increases in natural emissions as a feedback to increased global temperatures, something some people argue has already started happening.
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Tom Curtis at 09:13 AM on 23 April 2013Renewable energy is too expensive
J Dixon @4, according to wikipedia, in 2008 Germany emitted 786.7 billion metric tonnes of CO2, or 2.63% of global emissions. Also according to wikipedia, by 2008 Germany has reduced its emissions by 22.4% relative to 1990 levels. So, without its renewable energy commitment, Germany's emissions would have been more than 28%, or 0.73% of global emissions, higher. That means in each year, Germany's emissions reductions represent at least 64 hours of global emissions for that year. Over the rest of the century, assuming German emissions remain constant relative to world emissions, that represents 5,500 hours of delay in global emissions. That is, global warming will have been delayed by German emissions reductions, if they make no further reductions, by 7.5 months.
According to an Australian Government report, photovoltaic cells represent 11% of Germany's total renewable energy production. As Lomberg refers explicitly to PV production, that means the emissions reduction involved represents a delay of 605 hours. To reduce that to 37 hours, Lomborg would need to assume an average global emissions over the course of the 21st century to be over 16 times current levels, or with a linear growth model model, emissions at the end of the century to be 32 times current levels.
So, all Lomborg needs to do is assume:
1) Emissions growth will not be curtailed, growth in global emissions at ten times the rate projected by the IPCC; and
2) Emissions growth will in fact be about ten times greater than projected by the IPCC for a BAU scenario.
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grindupBaker at 08:07 AM on 23 April 2013Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
@Gingerbaker #36. Yes. Dr. Trenberth states the estimate of 0.9+/-0.4 wm**-2 at present time. In my layperson opinion oceans S.B. stated even more profoundly, if only to clarify for the unbiased but unknowledgeable members of public. "Global Warming" IS the increasing trend of heat in the ocean. Surface temperatures are a proxy measurement, subject to periodic vagaries. I think it's misleading to consider that "Global Warming" ends when the TOA radiation becomes balanced. I think it ends when the oceans regain whatever is their natural temperature gradient from surface to sea bed, and then when TOA radiation becomes balanced. This because oceans have ~40 times heat capacity of all freshwater and ~550 times heat capacity of all air + land (as deep as relevant). If, as example, +2.8 degrees C was needed to balance TOA radiation then I would think by simple logic that "Global Warming" ends when the oceans are +2.8 degrees C warmer, in the absence of that warming changing the forcing of course.
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John Hartz at 06:55 AM on 23 April 2013Renewable energy is too expensive
@jdixon1940 #4:
The following letter-to-the-editor (LTE) was published by the New York Times yesterday (Apr 21, 2013). It rebutes an Op-ed previsously published by the Times that advocated for the replacement of coal by shale gas in China. The LTE is equally applicable to the Lonberg Op-ed in my opinion.
To the Editor:
In “China Must Exploit Its Shale Gas” (Op-Ed, April 13), Elizabeth Muller argues that shale gas can replace coal in China. However, China’s coal power capacity is already twice that of America’s, and will be triple by the time China begins to fully exploit its shale gas reserves in 10 years. By then it will be too late and expensive to replace these coal plants, most built in the last decade, as they will still be young, efficient and cheap. Gas in Asia is still expected to be two to eight times more expensive than coal.
Gas is also a carbon-intensive fuel, even if less so than coal, and substituting it for coal will not get us the reductions necessary to stabilize the climate. Seriously attacking greenhouse gases in China, and globally, will require deploying carbon capture and storage for existing and new coal (and gas) plants. Otherwise, it’s game over for climate change.
ARMOND COHEN
Executive Director
Clean Air Task Force
Boston, April 15, 2013 -
william5331 at 06:45 AM on 23 April 2013Arctic methane outgassing on the E Siberian Shelf part 1 - the background
Two points. 1) Methane is only 25 times as potent a green house gas if it is being given out evenly over the years. With an accelerated rate of release, it's potency approaches 140 times that of Carbon dioxide. The rate looks to be accelerating now.
http://mtkass.blogspot.co.nz/2013/03/the-real-strength-of-methane.html
2) There is a reasonable chance that a sudden release of methane from under continental glaciers would not show up in bubbles in Antarctic and Greenland ice cores as methane. The top 70 or so meters of accumulating ice sheets remains in difusion contact with the atmosphere and methane, with it's 7 year half life is reletively quickly oxidized. An ice core could show a sudden methane pulse from under retreating ice sheets as Carbon dioxide.
http://mtkass.blogspot.co.nz/2011/09/continental-glacier-meltdown.html
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John Hartz at 06:10 AM on 23 April 2013Renewable energy is too expensive
@jdixon1940 #4:
You have an excellent sense of smell. It is very disheartening to see that the USA Today choce to post an Op-ed by Bjorn Lomberg on Earth Day. That it and other MSM outlets in North America have done so illustrates the power and reach of the fossil fuel industry and its allies. (Think advertising revenues.)
I'll let my more-learned SkS colleagues respond to your specific concerns about Lomberg's tome. Perhaps we can persuade Dana to crank out a formal critique article.
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Andy Skuce at 06:09 AM on 23 April 2013Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
Gingerbaker: Every report I remember reading has implied that the 0.8C global temperature increase we have seen is by no means all that we can expect 400 ppm CO2 to deliver.
Indeed, that's what the blue line in Figure 1C shows; albeit for 380ppm, a level that we have already passed and may not see again for centuries or even millennia.
As I understand it, it is not that the heat in the deep ocean will come back, it is more like the deep sequestration of surface warming, as we have observed it over recent decades may not continue. In other words, the air conditioning currently provided to us by the oceans may falter.
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jdixon1980 at 05:26 AM on 23 April 2013Renewable energy is too expensive
Questions for the knowledgeable:
Bjorn Lomborg has a column today in USA Today where he is promoting more fracking as the best approach to global warming. In the column he claims that "German taxpayers have poured $130 billion into subsidizing solar panels, but ultimately by the end of the century, this will postpone global warming by a trivial 37 hours." http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/04/22/earth-days-good-news-column/2101327/ I have been reading extensively (at least for a layman) on the subject of global warming for about a year now, and this is the first I have heard of anyone speaking in terms of "postponing" global warming by a certain amount of time as a measure of the impact of an emissions reduction, and so I was immediately suspicious of the claim. I tried googling "postponing global warming 37 hours" and only came up with hits to Bjorn Lomborg's statement itself (today's USA Today column was not the first time he had made the statement), with no analysis or explanation.
Does anybody have a clue as to what Lomborg might even mean quantitatively? Is he simply suggesting that the amount of emissions reductions in Germany due to solar panels, all other human activity remaining unchanged (my vague understanding is that the possibility of non-linear feedbacks would generally require assuming that all other countries' emissions remain fixed before one could hope to meaningfully predict the impact of one country's reduction in terms of a time lag at the end of the century), would theoretically only reduce the slope of the current long-term temperature trend so as to reach on January 1, 2100 the global average surface temperature that would have been reached 37 hours earlier if not for the reduction in German emissions? Or perhaps that, integrating theoretical thermal disequilibrium curves in two most-likely scenarios projected out to the end of the century, one with the current German emissions reductions due to implementation of solar, and one without, and fixing all other human activity in both scenarios, it would take until January 1, 2100 for the Earth's total heat content to increase by the amount that it would have increased 37 hours earlier without the German emissions reductions?
Assuming he means one of those things, is there any merit to his claim?
Since I am not a climate scientist, but rather a patent attorney with a mechanical engineering background that is growing staler by the year, I hesitate to call BS on Lomborg's claim, but it smells very fishy to me, so I would be interested to hear what people here have to say.
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Gingerbaker at 04:33 AM on 23 April 2013Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
According to Aradhna Tripati, a UCLA assistant professor in the department of Earth and space sciences and the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences:
“The last time carbon dioxide levels were apparently as high as they are today — and were sustained at those levels — global temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher than they are today, the sea level was approximately 75 to 120 feet higher than today, there was no permanent sea ice cap in the Arctic and very little ice on Antarctica and Greenland,”
This does not seem to jive with the Science article which asserts that if CO2 emissions were to stop today, the global temperature would not go up. Every CO2 vs global temp graph I can remember seeing indicates that that there is a significant time lag between CO2 concentration and global temp.
We now know that 90% of the heat imbalance caused by AGW is in the deep oceans. This heat, along some time scale, will eventually become unsequestered and actually increase temperatures, yes?
Every report I remember reading has implied that the 0.8C global temperature increase we have seen is by no means all that we can expect 400 ppm CO2 to deliver.
Now, one article in Science comes out, and we are supposed to believe its assertions? This is not making sense to me.
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shoyemore at 04:09 AM on 23 April 2013Major PAGES 2k Network Paper Confirms the Hockey Stick
Roger D #3
the point is that the flatish average annual surface temperatures mislead the willing-to-be-misled into thinking that no damage is being done between up-ticks in avg. surface temperature.
A very good description of boiling frog syndrome.
The premise is that if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
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keithpickering at 02:54 AM on 23 April 2013Major PAGES 2k Network Paper Confirms the Hockey Stick
Not just the Arctic. The world as a whole is a whopping 0.2°C warmer during the most recent 30-year period (1983-2012) than during 1971-2000, in spite of a 60% overlap in dates.
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Bob Loblaw at 02:33 AM on 23 April 2013The science isn't settled
engineer:
I don't think it is correct to just call it a technical problem. To follow on Glenn's comment, when you are trying to model today's climate, you can get away with saying "this is what the vegetation is", or "this is where the ice sheets are", etc., and simply measure the required input parameter for the climate models. You can even do that to a certain extent for past climates, as there are proxies that will give you an indication of vegetation cover, ice cover, etc. Understanding why the vegetation, ice, etc. are the way they are is a help, but not an absolute necessity to be able to develop a good understanding and a reliable model of current climate.
Contrast that with the future: we can't measure the vegetation cover or ice sheet distributions - we have to model them. But uncertainties in how vegetation responds to a changing climate is not a problem that necessarily requires increased understanding of climate dynamics - it is a problem of understanding vegetation dynamics. Predicting something like future aerosols not only requires estimating future levels of existing emission sources (which requires economic modelling), it also requires assumptions of what future combustion technology might produce, and what social policy choices might be made. You can start by assuming they won't change, but proper policy decisions require that you also evaluate what might happen if they do change (using realistic ranges of possibiliites).
It's a classic multi-disciplinary issue.
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jdixon1980 at 02:27 AM on 23 April 2013The History of Climate Science
Neilrieck @ 15, I would point out to those friends and relatives that Weart's interactive html history is divided into subtopics addressed in many bite-sized "essays" (his term) that can easily be read in a single sitting and don't have to be read in any particular order, and the writing is excellent. I find the Weart essays (which I downloaded as PDF's to my e-reader for reading on my daily commutes) to be page-turners, albeit speaking as someone who was already interested in this subject. Still, this post adds something in that, as a comprehensive treatment, it is far more condensed than the entirety of Weart.
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John Hartz at 02:24 AM on 23 April 2013The science isn't settled
@engineer
Here's a concise descpriton of how global climate models evolved and function.
By the mid-1990s, it was possible to investigate the causal mechanisms behind changes in Earth's climate using relatively sophisticated mathematical models of Earth's climate. These models solved the same complex equations of atmospheric physics that numerical weather prediction models did. But they also took into account components of the climate system other than the atmosphere, including the oceans, the continental ice sheets, and even life on Earth (collectively known as the "biosphere"), and they attempted to account for the physical, chemical, and biological interactions among these components. Of course, no theoretical model is ever perfect; even the best model is only an idealization of the actual world. There are always real-world processes that cannot be captured—for example, in the case of a numerical climate model, individual clouds or small-scale air currents like dust devils—that are simply too small for the model to resolve. The key question is, can the model be shown to be useful? Can it make successful predictions?
Source: How Do We Know Humans are Responsible for Global Warming? by Michael Mann, WeatherUnderground, April 22, 2013
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jdixon1980 at 02:17 AM on 23 April 2013Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
Small typo: I think there was supposed to be a "(C)" after temperature change in the Figure 1 description.
Moderator Response:[AS] Thanks, fixed.
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Martin Lack at 02:08 AM on 23 April 2013Carbon Dioxide the Dominant Control on Global Temperature and Sea Level Over the Last 40 Million Years
Bill Everett @22, 52, and 74.
I am 100% with you on your persistent advocacy for use of the 'thermostat' analogy (rather than 'control knob'). As you have pointed out, promoting the view that atmospheric CO2 acts as a thermostat reinforces the reality that there is a great deal of inertia in the climate system. Without this, 0.8 Celsius for 40% increase would imply 2.5 C for double. However, since there is inertia in the system, we are heading for 3 to 6 C for double pre-Industrial CO2 levels. Therefore, given the disruption being caused by 0.8 C, I really do not understand how anyone can remain complacent about where humanity is taking this planet... To mark Earth Day 2013, Michael Mann has posted an excellent extract from his book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, on the Weather Underground website today:
http://www.wunderground.com/earth-day/2013/how-do-we-know-humans-are-responsible-for-global-warming
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dana1981 at 01:55 AM on 23 April 2013Major PAGES 2k Network Paper Confirms the Hockey Stick
Roger @3 - bear in mind that the Arctic is now considerably warmer than the 1971–2000 average.
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