Positive tipping points, or abject failure, in going green?

[woodgeek]

Just came across a big report on the progress of climate solutions that I rather liked. It is down with S-curve adoption and legacy disruption (a la Tony Seba) but identifies the major barriers to same across all major industries. It calls the S-curves (which it notes are linked to one another) positive tipping points.

Report:

https://www.systemiq.earth/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/The-Breakthrough-Effect.pdf

Its long but has a good executive summary.

TIL: This report thinks that synthetic fertilizer is on the cusp of going green, in particular the use of green hydrogen rather than gas derived (grey) hydrogen for ammonia production. It also notes that ammonia is cheap and easy to transport, so it will allow regions with cheap/plentiful/excess renewable energy to transport some of that to distant regions and customers.

The report is also sanguine on things like plant based and alternative protein adoption.

If you prefer a video, here is one summarizing the report (both a year old):


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I think the above is a pretty even-handed summary of the current state of play in climate solutions, some things are going gangbusters, others not so much. And these trends are linked together. And discussing barriers to progress is more useful than Tony Seba's rosy projections.

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And if you are skeptical of the above happening, take solace in a recent countervailing opinion from the head of Saudi Aramco.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/18/saudi-aramco-ceo-says-energy-transition-is-failing-give-up-fantasy-of-phasing-out-oil.html

He reports that the green energy transition is failing, and we need to give up on the fantasy that it could ever work and should just plan on using fossils forever.

I think they're getting nervous.

Which of these two statements do you think is more grounded in reality in 2024?

 

[begreen]

Thanks for the post. I hadn't heard of this report. There are a lot of positives occuring gradually that make a difference. Still, climate modeling is very complex and sometimes we are going backward due to unforseen circumstances. For example, as of January 1, 2020, the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) new regulations (IMO 2020) limit the sulfur content in marine fuels that ocean-going vessels use to 0.5% by weight, a reduction from the previous limit of 3.5% established in 2012. This was done to reduce pollution and it has been quite effective. However, this change appears to be affecting global warming due to the reduced quantity of sulfur aerosols in the upper atmosphere as a result of the reduction.

Cutting ships’ pollution has climate downside

Rules on the fuel burnt by ships at sea implemented in 2020 lead to local changes in cloud chemistry.

www.nature.com

" marine sulfur aerosols have a short-lived cooling effect, their impact is largest close to where they are released, including areas with large number of cargo ships, such as the North Atlantic. Our analysis suggests that removing the sulfur aerosols may have added around 0.25 C to the North Atlantic region,” Robert Rohde, Lead Scientist at Berkeley Earth."

Lower sulfur, warmer oceans: Scientists debate unintended impact of IMO 2020 | Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide

www.hellenicshippingnews.com

 

[begreen]

Snapshot of marine traffic right now.



I do think we are going in the right direction. Addressing airline fuel will have a huge impact.

 

[begreen]

2023 set a record for planetary warming. The .02ºC global increase was not predicted and it doesn't agree with current models. Now scientists are trying to figure out why. It may be in part related to the reduced marine traffic sulfur aerosol emissions. One problem facing us is that our data aquistion is fragmented and slow in part due to a large dependency on volunteers. New satellite systems will help speed up monitoring.

Climate models can’t explain 2023’s huge heat anomaly — we could be in uncharted territory

Taking into account all known factors, the planet warmed 0.2 °C more last year than climate scientists expected. More and better data are urgently needed.

www.nature.com

 

[woodgeek]

I want an update on the Tonga forcing (presumably fading now) and El Nino.

 

[begreen]

I want an update on the Tonga forcing (presumably fading now) and El Nino.

Yes, the article mentions the effect of the Tonga erruption fading and says we should know by August whether the anamoly is El Niño related. Satellite data from NASA's new PACE mission will be helpful.

 

[stoveliker]

Whatever the anomalies are related to, I have seen data showing the following.

In a stable climate system, records are broken all the time (too). HOWEVER, those records are broken with equal probability on both sides of the distribution of averages for any parameter. I.e. "the coldest winter" happens with equal probability as "the warmest winter". The curve is gaussian.

In a climate system that is changing, the records are skewed to one side of that distribution. Indeed, temperature records are currently much more broken on the warm side than the cold side.

So anomaly or not, if anomalies are consistently on one side of the distribution, it's not an anomaly, but a case of expression of a systemic change.

(Longwinded post about my concern about using the word anomaly; it is often misconstrued by folks to mean "they don't know why", it is often used to argue "one time issue, not trend" - but as I explain above, that's not necessarily the case. A collection of "anomalies" can point to a specific underlying systemic trend even if these are one-time cases or we don't even know the specific causes of these particular cases.)

/end rant

 

[begreen]

Meanwhile, policy makers sit down again to discuss the fate of the world as the waters rise around them.