New Climate change paper/video... the vegans are coming!

[woodgeek]

I don't like to post a lot of video's here, but I thought this one was very interesting (or provocative, depending on your outlook).

Its by 'Just have a think', who is overall quite reasonable about this stuff IMO.

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The paper being discussed is here.

Basically, it says that the accounting scheme developed by the IPCC 30 years ago, and which has guided the (slow) policy changes for mitigating climate impacts is pretty skewed based on new data, and proposes that all greenhouse gases and particulates be scored instead using their forcing in W/m^2 in warming.

It also says that current human impacts on global energy balance are about 3W/m^2, or over 1 million gigawatts.

This is a more intuitive and sexy way of describing the problem relative to 'gigatonnes CO2eq' and 'Global Warming potential'.

there are two major points,

1. IPCC discounts the particulates (and particulate forming gases) from fossil emissions, and thus overstates fossil emission's fractional impact by a factor of more than 2!
2. The IPCC also made a bookkeeping choice with land use and biomass that undercounts its impacts by a similar amount.

After they crunch all the numbers (summarized starting about minute 11 in the video), they say that on a W/m^2 basis, all fossils emissions are responsible for about 20% of global warming, versus the IPCC estimate of >50%. And that agriculture is responsible for >50%, versus the famous IPCC that put it more like 25-30%. And most of that 'agriculture' score is due to one thing: livestock, or 'animal ag'. This makes sense to me since we can see human climate effects through history (in ice cores) when a continental region got put under the plow, or regrew forest (after the Black Death).

The IPCC (and similar vintage climate activists like Gore and Gates) are openly dismissive of any attempts to mitigate livestock emissions for climate goals... they admit that it is important, but that it should be ignored 'tactically' as it is politically untenable. So there will likely be a battle royale between those activists who want to follow the science (like scientists and maybe younger people) and those who have other priorities or ideas.

I can't resist a video that takes a dig at Bill.

A side note (not discussed in the video) is that recent efforts to reduce N2O and particulates (since 1990 especially) could have greatly accelerated recent warming. Similar to the idea that reducing sulfur in shipping fuel had a recent, rapid warming effect too.

Change is coming, and fighting climate change is about to look a lot different than it did 10 years ago. On the bright side, it might be more effective too.

At least I hope so! 🤞

 

[Whitenuckler]

I don't like to post a lot of video's here, but I thought this one was very interesting (or provocative, depending on your outlook).

Its by 'Just have a think', who is overall quite reasonable about this stuff IMO.

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

The paper being discussed is here.

Basically, it says that the accounting scheme developed by the IPCC 30 years ago, and which has guided the (slow) policy changes for mitigating climate impacts is pretty skewed based on new data, and proposes that all greenhouse gases and particulates be scored instead using their forcing in W/m^2 in warming.

It also says that current human impacts on global energy balance are about 3W/m^2, or over 1 million gigawatts.

This is a more intuitive and sexy way of describing the problem relative to 'gigatonnes CO2eq' and 'Global Warming potential'.

there are two major points,

1. IPCC discounts the particulates (and particulate forming gases) from fossil emissions, and thus overstates fossil emission's fractional impact by a factor of more than 2!
2. The IPCC also made a bookkeeping choice with land use and biomass that undercounts its impacts by a similar amount.

After they crunch all the numbers (summarized starting about minute 11 in the video), they say that on a W/m^2 basis, all fossils emissions are responsible for about 20% of global warming, versus the IPCC estimate of >50%. And that agriculture is responsible for >50%, versus the famous IPCC that put it more like 25-30%. And most of that 'agriculture' score is due to one thing: livestock, or 'animal ag'. This makes sense to me since we can see human climate effects through history (in ice cores) when a continental region got put under the plow, or regrew forest (after the Black Death).

The IPCC (and similar vintage climate activists like Gore and Gates) are openly dismissive of any attempts to mitigate livestock emissions for climate goals... they admit that it is important, but that it should be ignored 'tactically' as it is politically untenable. So there will likely be a battle royale between those activists who want to follow the science (like scientists and maybe younger people) and those who have other priorities or ideas.

I can't resist a video that takes a dig at Bill.

A side note (not discussed in the video) is that recent efforts to reduce N2O and particulates (since 1990 especially) could have greatly accelerated recent warming. Similar to the idea that reducing sulfur in shipping fuel had a recent, rapid warming effect too.

Change is coming, and fighting climate change is about to look a lot different than it did 10 years ago. On the bright side, it might be more effective too.

At least I hope so! 🤞

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I watched this the other day. Interesting.

 

[woodgeek]

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I watched this the other day. Interesting.

I'll watch the video tomorrow... but just wanted to say that Steve was my dean many years ago, I had lunch with him, and I think he's pretty kooky.

 

[Whitenuckler]

I'll watch the video tomorrow... but just wanted to say that Steve was my dean many years ago, I had lunch with him, and I think he's pretty kooky.

Yes, I agree he certainly has a different personality. He is not one of their fellows. I am learning a lot from watching their video's. They have some very intelligent people some who have written many many books. My real take away from Steve was that even though their are hundred's of scientists working on climate change, we only hear our news from governments and media, unless you want to read reports that are hundreds of pages long and come up with your own conclusions.
I actually watched the one you posted last night. It popped up on my list right away. It was good. I like the w/m2 way of looking at heat and the reflection of energy from the sun by particles emitted. That Just have a Think guy seems pretty smart and experienced. I have not looked him up. Maybe a retired engineer.

 

[woodgeek]

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I watched this the other day. Interesting.

OK, I watch, skipping some boring parts, but read all the quotes from Steve's book. Honestly, the vieo deserves its own thread.

Its a conservative think tank, and a little Biden/IRA bashing slipped through that I don't agree with.

That stuff aside, I can agree with all of Steve's points. The science of climate change (20-30 years ago) was much shakier than appreciated at the time, and the current science is still generating surprises (as in my OP video).

During my 2000 1:1 lunch with Steve, he struck me as a kinda aspy physics guy, who really didn't care about much that wasn't in his own head (and a logical science problem). Not a good listener. At that point, my professional life was on fire due to institutional defects at the institution he ran! He asked the question 'How's it going' and he had zero interest on hearing anything less than 'this place is amazing, inspiration and the best place I have ever been.' No response to my credible, career ending dept dysfunction. I left a few months later for greener pastures.

So I'm naturally skeptical of Steve. He wrote a book, it aligns with his politics, and was guaranteed to sell. This is the interview to plug the book.

He is right to poke holes in climate science (and free to make money off the process), but what does he propose instead?

In the movies, global crises are an incoming asteroid, that scientists can tell you exactly when and where it will strike, and home much explosive yield. Solutions can be workshopped and priced out and executed. Unfortunately, that science (astronomy and celestial navigation) is VERY mature science. Like 500 years mature.

Scientists who struggled to predict the weather a few days out (in the 90s) were supposed to quantify the climate threat to 2 significant digits? No thinking person thought that their prediction could be that precise, and indeed the original IPCC predictions had large error bars. Journalists (99% of the time) don't DO error bars. They just quote the mean case (or the worst case for clicks). Uncertainty is set to ZERO in the press. Then when it turns out that the mean/worst case gets adjusted... we get to write another article/interview. Ad infinitum. And laypeople hearing endless 'CC now predicted to be worse than predicted' and 'CC predictions now less bad than predicted before' just lose confidence in the whole thing.

Scientists in the field know the score. Science remains self correcting, and is less dogmatic and cult-like than other human institutions. The problem is the press and the dire state of science communication and education. IS Steve suggesting we do something about that?

The bottom line is that scientist identified a murky/uncertain existential threat to global way of life. Rather than say 'Hey, don't worry about it, just give us another 20-30 years to refine our models and THEN we'll tell you how to fix it', they convened a large expert panel to give the best summary possible, with giant error bars, and suggested some solutions. Nothing dark or evil. What else should they have done? Steve doesn't say.

One thing I disliked was the interviewer freaking bc as models have gotten bigger and more sophisticated, the error bars have gotten bigger! The implication (I think) is that scientists are not to be trusted, or the original error bars were too small. THis sort of thing happens all the time in (non mature) sciences. Because the error bars are nearly always meant to convey measurement/statistical uncertainty only, assuming that all the model assumptions are accurate. When the assumptions need to change, and are, the whole mean and error bar can shift to a range outside of the original range! Happens all the time...

The wrap this up, the OP video I posted is perfectly compatible with Steve's message (except those authors are not selling a book, but posting a free access peer reviewed paper). Steve KNOWs how understanding evolves in immature science, and knows that there is nothing unusual about the progress of understanding of climate change. But he can sell a book talking about a lot of smoke but no fire.

We will see a shift (perhaps more than one) in our understanding of climate change and its drivers as the science and models improve. Unless we (oops) cut all funding for that. Fortunately, the EU is still working on this.

 

[woodgeek]

My own reflections on this paper is that it is an improvement but still a simplification.

When they say that fossils are 18% of global warming, I think they mean averaged over the time they were emitted. And the number is adjusted for particulate pollution that was historically much higher in the past than today.

A thought experiment: if we burn fossils, CO2 accumulates over time, but aerosols are just a reflection of what we burned last week (more or less). If we burned a constant amount over time, the heat forcing would grow linearly, and the cooling effect would be constant.

One exception to this idea is if consumption grows exponentially (which is close to the historical case)....then both the accumulated CO2 and the amount of aerosols grow exponentially and have a constant ratio! Maybe that is/was 18%. But if then you keep emitting the fossils, and get rid of the aerosols (with catalytic converters and smokestack scrubbers) then you kill the cooling effect without touching the heating effect, and the ratio (or percentage of warming) suddenly explodes!

This is similar to the (bad) situation with solar panels. Let's say it takes 2 years for a solar panel to save as much CO2 as is required to make it. If you make solar at a constant rate (GW/year), than the CO2 savings grow linearly after an initial 2 year startup dip. BUT, if you grow the amount of solar you are installing every year exponentially, doubling the amount every 2 years (close to the historical figure) then you save exactly ZERO CO2 on a net basis, until you call the project done, and stop making more (other than replacements).

This is true, and why the benefits of solar are mostly all in the future, not the present. Ugh. Exponentials suck.

So, I am not 100% down with the simple % numbers in the OP video and paper. I think as this angle gets chased around we will discover that exponentially growing fossil emissions nearly cancelled themselves out pre 1900 or so. But then after than the US EPA cleaned up particles (in 1980-90 timeframe), and we saw a big US and global warming surge post 1990, caused indirectly by the EPA. Similarly, China continued the exponential fossil growth, and had super smoggy cities. They only cleaned those up in the last 10 years, and lo and behold, we are seeing a big spike in heating.

Does this mean we should just burn fossils, no way. Because the exponential growth pattern seems neutral only while you are growing, but is a huge time bomb that only goes off when you try to stop (reduce emissions or particulates). In money terms, its like you are paying your bills with your credit card and have no savings. Bad right? What if your income is growing in proportion to your credit card debt... now it seems more sustainable. Until you stop getting raises or try to retire, then you are sunk.

It is the definition of unsustainable.

After the science dust settles, all of this will make the case for intentional aerosol release (of least bad aerosols) look like a no-brainer. These will likely not be sulfate or black carbon, and they will probably be in the stratosphere where they will linger a loooong time.

IOW, geoengineering is baked in, and this paper implies that it is easier than anyone appreciates, bc we were effectively doing it from 1880 to 1980. We don't just need to get rid of the aerosols (per EPA) we need to cheaply replace them with something better and less toxic.

Oh, at least until we all become vegan and reforest 50% of the continents. Then we can stop.

You heard it here first.

 

[EbS-P]

IOW, geoengineering is baked in, and this paper implies that it is easier than anyone appreciates, bc we were effectively doing it from 1880 to 1980. We don't just need to get rid of the aerosols (per EPA) we need to cheaply replace them with something better and less toxic.

As another thoughtful scientist I agree. We certainly can create any number of molecules that could work. Frankly I’m shocked that this hasn’t gotten more traction.

 

[begreen]

Good first video woodgeek. Thanks for posting. I'm not surprised at the changing data and direction. It makes sense that over time our knowledge will increase with better observation, instrumentation, and science. And with this, hypotheses make get disproven. That is the point of science.

After the science dust settles, all of this will make the case for intentional aerosol release (of least bad aerosols) look like a no-brainer. These will likely not be sulfate or black carbon, and they will probably be in the stratosphere where they will linger a loooong time.

IOW, geoengineering is baked in, and this paper implies that it is easier than anyone appreciates, bc we were effectively doing it from 1880 to 1980. We don't just need to get rid of the aerosols (per EPA) we need to cheaply replace them with something better and less toxic.

The problem with bandaid fixes is that they often allow bad behavior to persist once the imminent threat is diminished. Intentional geoengineering is likely to be lobbied for hardest by the fossil fuel industry, with support from agribiz. I suspect that given human nature and greed, it will likely be used to defer worry and permit further abuse once the problem is masked.

Also important and imminent are the observations of dramatic decline in insect populations worldwide. They are often at the bottom of the food chain we sit on top of. They are also essential for food and fiber production, pollination, nutrient cycling and control of pest insects.

 

[woodgeek]

Good first video woodgeek. Thanks for posting. I'm not surprised at the changing data and direction. It makes sense that over time our knowledge will increase with better observation, instrumentation, and science. And with this, hypotheses make get disproven. That is the point of science.


The problem with bandaid fixes is that they often allow bad behavior to persist once the imminent threat is diminished. Intentional geoengineering is likely to be lobbied for hardest by the fossil fuel industry, with support from agribiz. I suspect that given human nature and greed, it will likely be used to defer worry and permit further abuse once the problem is masked.

Also important and imminent are the observations of dramatic decline in insect populations worldwide. They are often at the bottom of the food chain we sit on top of. They are also essential for food and fiber production, pollination, nutrient cycling and control of pest insects.

I can't really argue against base motives and greed driving much of the economy. If the beef lobby and fossil companies can get off the hook (mostly) with a little geoengineering... they will argue for it, and find someone else to pay. Indeed.

That said, renewables are crazy cheap now. Does all this mean we will go 100% fossils until 2100 with politicians saying 'TINA', and paying for a bigger and bigger Band-Aid? I doubt that very much. What it means is that the vision of going to net zero carbon across industry, energy and ag by 2050 or something is just as unlikely (and probably was before this news).

Renewables like solar and wind are cheap for power. Batteries are cheaper than peakers. EVs are better than ICE. And all that stuff is gonna get cheaper anyway. So that stuff will displace a LOT of fossil energy and break their grip.

Animal ag will be harder (politically), and the tech (like plant based meats) is less mature and still expensive at small scale. And its major effects (methane) are more short lived (20-40 years). So when we do decide to make that switch 10 or 50 years hence, the warming from that will not be a curse for the next 500 years.

And the two issues are linked by land use. Reducing animal ag not only removes the methane forcing, it also soaks up carbon too with the land use change.... growing lots of lovely firewood.

 

[bogieb]

And the two issues are linked by land use. Reducing animal ag not only removes the methane forcing, it also soaks up carbon too with the land use change.... growing lots of lovely firewood.

My guess is that the ag space would not be replaced by lovely lots of woodd, but by houses for ever increasing human populations. Then there is the attendant infrastructure that goes with that - which I'm including businesses, government and manufacturing.

It is very common around here for farmers of any type to be bought out by development companies. And that is just places suitable for tree growing. Plenty of places that the natural biome is grasslands - although to be fair, if those went back to deep root, native prairie grasses, that would soak up much more CO2 than cultivated plants do.

 

[woodgeek]

My guess is that the ag space would not be replaced by lovely lots of woodd, but by houses for ever increasing human populations. Then there is the attendant infrastructure that goes with that - which I'm including businesses, government and manufacturing.

It is very common around here for farmers of any type to be bought out by development companies. And that is just places suitable for tree growing. Plenty of places that the natural biome is grasslands - although to be fair, if those went back to deep root, native prairie grasses, that would soak up much more CO2 than cultivated plants do.

I am sure that is the case in VT and New England in general. I'm pretty certain that woodland is a deeper and longer lasting carbon sink than grassland. But grassland is better than nothing!

-- Human population will peak globally in a few decades, and most of those people prefer to live in higher density regions.
-- For every place with high human population density, there are much larger areas put under the plow, mostly to grow animal feed. Global land use surveys show this.
-- There are lots of places which are grazed, badly degraded, and then their degradation is used as an excuse for grazing them, bc nothing else can grow there.

Native Americans used fire to clear trees off the plains for thousands of years. The Great Prairie was not a natural phenomenon.
England used to be all woodland (think Robin Hood, from around 1100 AD), but has been pastoral grazing land for sheep for the last few centuries.