Jim D: “If someone wants to write a rosy picture of a +4 C world, it would be a very interesting read. No one has offered one”
That’s because there is less chance of there ever being a +4 degree world as a result of anthropogenic CO2 emissions than there is of you making a sensible post – ie zero.
…and that is where the denial is – that 4 C is even possible with BAU emissions. It was in answer to a question we keep getting on this blog about what exactly is being denied by the denialists.
Isn’t it interesting that whether we’re successful in reducing carbon emissions enough to slow global warming doesn’t depend on what we in the West do – which is negligible – but only on what China does?. Of course, they have been underestimating their carbon emissions for years. Let’s hope they continue building the nuclear plants that we refuse to. And if they don’t build all those plants and retire their coal utilities, maybe their economy continues to slow and they can save the world from over-warming by sliding into a massive and permanent recession. Wouldn’t that be great for the planet?
What I saw in his critique is heavy reliance on countries, like china, actually meeting their targets. He also bases his assimptions on model projections, which we should know by now, are more than a little flawed.
Stephen Segrest | November 10, 2015 at 5:07 pm |
I’m just shaking my head — no one hear at CE voicing opinions today seems to know what a economic dispatch is, or have visited a large regional grid control center (that NASA would be proud of).
As usual you are kind of right and kind of wrong.
To build out smart grid is half a trillion dollars. End user control, bidirectional grid ties, higher capacity grid ties, high voltage lines to nowhere, etc. are expensive.
But If you can draw power from any direction over a larger area the risk of renewables creating a supply problem is significantly reduced.
But all this is pretty expensive. Renewable advocates seem to think style points are more important than cheap power. That expensive power makes the US less competitive doesn’t seem to matter to the well heeled renewable advocates. Al Gore can afford to use 16+ times the power of the average USian. The people driven out of work by expensive renewable energy would probably disagree.
Peter, I hope that reduced coal consumption is not just an indicator of economic slow-down. There seems to be an eerie concurrence of the two.
Of course, while Western nations fiddle with their domestic CO2 control knobs China will go on making all that stuff we want, in good times or bad. As will S Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam, India etc etc…not to mention some new player who is sick of the domain, the plantation or the great people’s collective and wants to try the real juice.
Meanwhile, the climate and the hot bubbly guts of our planet will do whatever they were going to do anyway. Let’s just hope the next Bond Event and next Laki-scale eruption don’t come together. It’s not the climate disasters I dread so much as the climate solutions.
And, as always, it comes down to supporting international agreements. The only way China is going to make an effort is if they see that everyone else is. Same for India.
repeat after me CMS.
temperature is a function of net forcing.
not ONE forcing agent
NET forcing.
Look what you get if you just use two forcing agents instead of one
VP, asked,
How are those admirably succinct summaries not a clear and concise statement of the case, Peter?
If you can show me where, in AR5, WG3, the net benefit of GHG emissions to 2050 and 2100 is clearly stated, I’ll be persuaded I’d missed it and am wrong in my criticism. However, i have not be able to find it.
Net benefit is the discounted reduced climate damages minus the abatement cost. It will be stated in units of 2013 US $ trillions (or another year). That is the nub of the issue as to whether or not GHG emissions abatement makes sense with the policies that have been advocated by climate scientists and the climate cultists for the past 25 years or more.
[…] her always interesting blog, Dr. Judith Curry [and Anthony at WUWT[1]] points[2] to a very well-researched article by Bjorn Lomborg, peer-reviewed, entitled “Impact of […]
Pol Pot simply said, hoe. A was teacher with his own vision. So, no to your question.
Stephen Segrest | November 10, 2015 at 9:43 pm |
For all of you so called “Experts” to be correct, …
OK while I’m not real familiar with California, lets talk California to date. CA currently has about 4% solar and 8% Wind. Can you point me to either (A) the lawsuits filed against the ISO, or the (B) specific engineering analysis (e.g., using modelling like GE system planning models) that this current 12% penetration level has not followed sound engineering economics??
I now have a twin on CE and he makes a lot of sense! From now on I am Peter M
Peter Lang (et al.) is right. (Though I seem to remember a bit about direct “net benefits” from AGW until ~2060.)
It goes two ways. First, the direct benefits of FF consumption are a demographic H-bomb. Coal and oil, in all their “unfiltered glory”, have saved or extended the lives of hundreds of millions, if not billions, and has enabled modernity.
Second, the effects — so far — are net-positive. The relevant question is when and if we reach a point of diminishing return, eventually leading to net damage.
If the trend continues in a “business as usual” scenario, in light of the reduced TCR/ECS estimates (even from IPCC lead authors), we may expect perhaps 1.5C/CO2 doubling (ECS). Feedbacks are ~net-neutral, as is obvious from the empirical data (even the adjusted stuff).
Bear in mind that even Stern (2006), with his hideously low discount rates, and flatly incorrect “very extreme weather” and risible “dumb farmer” scenarios estimates that AGW will cost us ~20% of GWP in 200 years (most of that being in the second hundred years). And he also concedes that GWP will be many times what it is today by then. That’s with 5C – 6C warming.
But it is looking more and more that we will top out near the top of the warming-benfit curve at a third to a quarter that if we just go about our business. That would be a win-win. Are we to “compensate” the FF companies for that “damage”? I say we just be big about it and call it even-steven. #B^)
PA — Your example is ridiculous and reflects no engineering economics. You’re not a serious player. And by the way, I believe Texas will have more renewables than TX by the end of 2015.
Lawsuits? He is hysterically hollering about lawsuits. We have to show him lawsuits? Irrelevant BS.
I just schooled little ss on CA, after he admitted being clueless, and now he is an expert. Are we supposed to be surprised that CA is leading the U.S. in new orders for combined cycle natural gas units?
CA buys more of almost everything. We got a lot of electrical appliances here. The fancy ones from Germany. We got those freaking Teslas that nobody living in the sensible states is buying. And we have a left-loon greenie governor and state legislature who are ramming uneconomical unreliable greeny energy down our throats. Of course CAISO has to buy a lot of gas generating units to back up the intermittent greeny crap. And we are supposed to sue the government over that? They make the laws, clown. We can only move out.
We thought you were going to put your math where your mouth is and show us some of your expertise. Instead we get hysterical arm waving about lawsuits. Very amusing.
evanmjones,
Thank you for your reply.
First, the direct benefits of FF consumption are a demographic H-bomb. Coal and oil, in all their “unfiltered glory”, have saved or extended the lives of hundreds of millions, if not billions, and has enabled modernity.
No rational person should ignore or disagree with the enormous benefits fossil fuels have provided to both humanity and the environment to date. This explains it pretty well:
“Humanity unbound – how fossil fuels saved humanity from nature and nature from humanity http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/humanity-unbound-how-fossil-fuels-saved-humanity-nature-nature-humanity
However, my question about net-benefit of GHG emissions abatement is about the projected costs and benefits of GHG abatement policies to the world and to individual regions and countries to 2050 and 2100. As far as I can see, AR5 WG3 avoids addressing the issue. It spends chapters on trying to make a case based on alarmism and arguing moral and ethical issues. But they never manage to bring it together and make clear case for spending $ trillions on mitigation policies and the “climate industry”. Clearly, if they cannot state the case clearly in economically rational terms, there is no case for abatement. It cannot be justified on economic grounds.
The red line on this chart shows that the net benefit of optimal mitigation is negative for all this century.
For non-optimal policies, the hypothesized benefits would be less and the cost would be more. Optimal is not practically achievable. And the projections are based on assumptions that make the benefits much greater than likely and the costs less. See these two posts for explanation:
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2014/10/26/cross-post-peter-lang-why-carbon-pricing-will-not-succeed-part-i/
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2014/10/27/cross-post-peter-lang-why-the-world-will-not-agree-to-pricing-carbon-ii/
Peter, how do you reach this conclusion? “To peak CO2 by 2030 the Chinese have to peak coal use by 2020 – it takes that long to turn around the Chinese economy…” Hopefully, they will do this, but it does not seem necessary in order for them to fulfill their commitment. It seems that to fulfill the commitment Chinese CO2 emissions can increase every year up to 2030 but not beyond. Also, it would seem possible for the peak to be a plateau. That is, it doesn’t appear that emissions have to fall after 2030, just not increase. Fortunately, other realities (see below) probably will lead to Chinese emissions peaking prior to 2030.
To me the primary goal of the Chinese Government is for its leaders to stay in power, and at least two things probably have to happen for that to occur. First, the terrible local pollution has to be curbed. This winter is shaping up to be a particular problem, and this will prompt the government to do more to combat local pollution. Generally, a side effect of curbing local pollution is a reduction of CO2, allowing the government to take credit on the global stage for CO2 emissions reduction. For me the local pollution problem is the main reason China is tackling CO2 emissions. Second, the economy has to continue to grow. For the last several decades this has taken precedence over environmental quality. However, now both the economy and the environment have to share the spotlight because enough Chinese residents have become wealthy enough to demand a cleaner environment. Economic growth in China has slowed to around 7%, but this means China’s economy will only double in size about every decade instead of the previous doubling every seven years or so. So, from an economic point of view, it’s like getting another China every decade. And when you stop and think India wants to emulate China’s economic success. What is that going to mean for CO2 emissions? To me it makes the US 28% reduction commitment pale in comparison.
