Carbon emissions
Over in Bioscience we’ve the latest insistence that we’ve all got to return to our wattle and daub huts and live, happily ever after, as medieval peasants.
More than 11,000 scientists around the world have declared a climate emergency, warning of “untold suffering” without urgent action.
The declaration is based on analysis of more than 40 years of publicly available data covering a range of measures from energy use to deforestation and carbon emissions.
Scientists from the University of Sydney, Australia, Oregon State University and Tufts University in the US and the University of Cape Town in South Africa are joined in the warning by 11,000 signatories from 153 countries including the UK.
In a paper published in the journal Bioscience, the researchers set out indicators showing the impacts of humans on the climate.
In which we find interesting claims like this:
These indicators are linked at least in part to climate change. In panel (f), annual tree cover loss may be for any reason (e.g., wildfire, harvest within tree plantations, or conversion of forests to agricultural land). Forest gain is not involved in the calculation of tree cover loss.
Isn’t that fun? We’ll measure forests that are shrinking but not forests that are expanding? Cutting down that piece of scrub on the edge of the Amazon is included but reforesting all of New England over the past century is not. Ain’t that the way to do science?
The climate crisis is closely linked to excessive consumption of the wealthy lifestyle.
No it isn’t. It’s linked to emissions. And emissions can be higher from a lower consumption lifestyle. It depends, obviously enough, on the technology being used. Those peasants burning forests in order to be able to grow a season or two of runty corn aren’t exactly living high on those hogs they can’t afford. It’s emissions that count, not the level of lifestyle.
Despite 40 years of global climate negotiations, with few exceptions, we have generally conducted business as usual
Bollocks. We’ve gone out and made solar less than cripplingly expensive, the IEA now says that offshore wind is economically viable for the entire energy production system. We’ve certainly done enough to ensure that RCP 8.5 simply isn’t going to happen at all. A reasonable guess is that we’re somewhere between RCP 2.6 and 4.0 at present.
Economic and population growth are among the most important drivers of increases in CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion
No they’re not. The UK has grown both population and the economy since the 1990s and has reduced emissions over that period of time. Not just emissions per unit of population or economy, but overall emissions.
therefore, we need bold and drastic transformations regarding economic and population policies.
If we’re already achieving it, why?
We should leave remaining stocks of fossil fuels in the ground (see the timelines in IPCC 2018) and should carefully pursue effective negative emissions using technology such as carbon extraction from the source and capture from the air and especially by enhancing natural systems (see “Nature” section).
I have me a little test for this. We have a negative emissions technology which we know works and which we know is cheap. It’s also illegal to even test it further. Iron fertilisation of the oceans. My insistence is that no one is being serious if they don’t advocate at least further testing of this process. Other than a few other weirdos like me no one does so advocate – therefore they’re not being serious.
We must swiftly eliminate subsidies for fossil fuels
Fair point, yes, agreed. So, off you go and tell the Russians, Indonesians, Saudis and Iranians – the four by far the largest subsidisers – to stop doing so.
Cropping practices such as minimum tillage that increase soil carbon are vitally important.
Equally fair point. No till cropping usually requiring herbicides and GM crops. So, we’re in favour of those then are we?
We need to drastically reduce the enormous amount of food waste around the world.
Equally true. So, some 50% of the food in poor countries rots between farm and fork. The solution to this is supermarkets – they are really the logistics chains which prevent food rottage. So, we’re going to tell the Indians to allow foreigners into the retail system in order to reduce food wastage, are we?
We’re not? So, are we being serious here or not?
Excessive extraction of materials and overexploitation of ecosystems, driven by economic growth, must be quickly curtailed to maintain long-term sustainability of the biosphere.
How doe material extraction – say, of minerals – harm the biosphere? Don’t we need to dig up some sand, pump some oil or gas, to make the fibreglass for the windmill blades? Some bauxite to make the solar panel frames from?
Our goals need to shift from GDP growth and the pursuit of affluence toward sustaining ecosystems and improving human well-being by prioritizing basic needs and reducing inequality.
The obvious manner of reducing inequality is to make the poor as rich as us. We do know how to do this after all, they should have an industrial revolution just as we did. This isn’t quite what they mean though, is it?
And that GDP growth. They are aware that the IPCC models in which we beat climate change have more GDP than the ones where we don’t, are they?
Still increasing by roughly 80 million people per year, or more than 200,000 per day (figure 1a–b), the world population must be stabilized—and, ideally, gradually reduced—within a framework that ensures social integrity. There are proven and effective policies that strengthen human rights while lowering fertility rates and lessening the impacts of population growth on GHG emissions and biodiversity loss. These policies make family-planning services available to all people, remove barriers to their access and achieve full gender equity, including primary and secondary education as a global norm for all, especially girls and young women (Bongaarts and O’Neill 2018).
Bollocks. Economic growth is the thing which reduces fertility levels. Everywhere that has got rich – not a high standard either, call it around $5,000 GDP per capita, summat like that – has a less than replacement fertility level. We really do know this, it’s an obvious and observable fact. Growth reduces population size.
And here’s the real problem:
As the Alliance of World Scientists, we stand ready to assist decision-makers in a just transition to a sustainable and equitable future.
You lot are specialists in drawing graphs about methane emissions. What in buggery do you know about equity or how to achieve it?
The language we use matters - it provides clarity to our own thoughts and enables…
It is now generally acknowledged that the structure of the NHS needs to be overhauled…
In the film Apollo 13, a loss of oxygen causes the crew to start inadvertently…
There's an idea out there which seems intuitive but then so many ideas do seem…
When we think about the darkly opaque goals of modern central bankers as they relate…
As the papers recently filled with the distressing images of desperate souls looking to escape…
View Comments
All Worstall has done is misrepresent what the report says and put up a series of selective straw men.
To take just two
Bioscience: "Economic and population growth are among the most important drivers of increases in CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion"
Worstall: "No they’re not. The UK has grown both population and the economy since the 1990s and has reduced emissions over that period of time. Not just emissions per unit of population or economy, but overall emissions."
Classic example of using a selective sample (the UK) to rebut a global claim. The most rapid growth in emissions has come from the developing world, notably China and India, as they have grown their economies and population. Worstall needs to ignore data he doesn't like to make his point.
Bioscience: "We should leave remaining stocks of fossil fuels in the ground (see the timelines in IPCC 2018) and should carefully pursue effective negative emissions using technology such as carbon extraction from the source and capture from the air and especially by enhancing natural systems (see “Nature” section)."
Worstall: "I have me a little test for this. We have a negative emissions technology which we know works and which we know is cheap. It’s also illegal to even test it further. Iron fertilisation of the oceans. My insistence is that no one is being serious if they don’t advocate at least further testing of this process. Other than a few other weirdos like me no one does so advocate – therefore they’re not being serious."
It is Worstall who is not being serious. Iron fertilisation - the creation of artificial algal blooms that sequester carbon to the sea floor has been tested and it does not work, basically all the local predators detect the free lunch and gobble up the surplus algae, also fertilising one area of the ocean causes 'deserts' elsewhere which does not go down well with the local fishermen. Finally, even if it worked, you'd need to fertilise unfeasibly large areas of the seas to make a significant impact.
He really should try opening a scientific paper once in a while.
"Iron fertilization of macronutrient‐rich but biologically unproductive ocean waters has been proposed for sequestering anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2). The first carbon export measurements in the Southern Ocean (SO) during the recent SO‐Iron Experiment (SOFeX) yielded ∼900 t C exported per 1.26 t Fe added. This allows the first realistic, data‐based feasibility assessment of large‐scale iron fertilization and corresponding future atmospheric CO2 prognosis. Using various carbon cycle models, we find that if 20% of the world's surface ocean were fertilized 15 times per year until year 2100, it would reduce atmospheric CO2 by ≲15 ppmv at an expected level of ∼700 ppmv for business‐as‐usual scenarios. Thus, based on the SOFeX results and currently available technology, large–scale oceanic iron fertilization appears not a feasible strategy to sequester anthropogenic CO2."
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2005GL022449
I show, and you agree, that it is possible - because people are doing it - to have rising population and economic growth and falling emissions. You then use this as proof that growth and population are the essential and sufficient drivers of increased emissions? You sometimes have a clue about logic, do you?
As to iron fertilisation:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/04/28/iron-fertilisation-of-the-oceans-produces-fish-and-sequesters-carbon-dioxide-so-why-do-environmentalists-oppose-it/
I agree that it's not a total solution. But then nothing is, on its own, a total solution, is it?
This fascinates as well:
"The first carbon export measurements in the Southern Ocean (SO) during the recent SO‐Iron Experiment (SOFeX) yielded ∼900 t C exported per 1.26 t Fe added."
Ferrous sulphate is free plus transport costs. It's a waste from other industrial processes. We might have to tip 3 tonnes of it over the side to move 900 tonnes of carbon. That is, move that 900 tonnes for a cost of, ooooh, $10? $30 on the upside?
And you want to tell us all that this isn't a cost effective method?
Should we add numeracy to the logic you're not fully aware of?
And now you are misrepresenting me, nice. The UK will phase out all coal generated electricity by 2025. You apparently see China doing the same. Not me who is logically challenged.
'Economic and population growth are among the most important drivers of increases in CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion'
Outside the special case of a highly developed technological advanced economy this is the case and will remain so, China has made advances in reducing energy intensity which is welcome, but equating the UK with (e.g.) China where the pressures of a growing population and a developing economy are a key driver of emissions is disingenuous at best. Hence all those new coal mines.
You said iron fertilisation 'works', apparently your definition of 'works' is denuding 20% of the oceans for a reduction circa 15ppm CO2, and you accuse others of not being serious. LOL.
I'm told that CO2 is going up by 2 ppm a year. Delaying that by 7 years at near zero cost is a bad idea?
More like 6 years and the cost works out at around $400 US per tonne of carbon removed, far greater than carbon capture and hardly 'near zero'.
"Ocean iron fertilisation has been suggested as a low cost mitigation option to capture and store carbon. However, previous methods of estimating the cost fail to account for many of the losses and offsets occurring over the storage period. A method for calculating the net carbon stored from iron fertilisation of high nutrient low chlorophyll ocean regions is provided. Ship based fertilisation of the Southern Ocean is considered as a case study, on average, a single fertilisation is found to result in a net sequestration of 0.01 t C km−2 for 100 years at a cost of US$457 per tonne CO2. Previous estimates of cost underestimate the economic challenge of distributing low concentrations of iron over large areas of the ocean surface, and the subsequent loss processes that result in only a small net storage of carbon per km2 fertilised. "
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264437659_A_method_for_estimating_the_cost_to_sequester_carbon_dioxide_by_delivering_iron_to_the_ocean
Discussed here: https://phys.org/news/2012-12-iron-fertilisation-sunk-ocean-carbon.html
When I spoke to the German guys who looked at it (you know, journalist, research) I was getting back rather lower numbers.
And do note what I'm actually suggesting. Not that we go do it. Rather, that we go do more research on it. Which seems a reasonable enough idea, no? After all, we are talking about spending trillion upon trillion to "beat climate change" aren't we? And a few millions to shovel ferrous sulphate over the scuppers might be a reasonable price to pay to mitigate that larger sum?
We have this not entirely understood nor costed method of climate change mitigation. Yet no one is researching it and it's even, under most interpretations of international law, illegal to even test it. At which point I do indeed conclude that people aren't being serious.
Now you are misrepresenting yourself:-
'We have a negative emissions technology which we know works and which we know is cheap.'
'We have this not entirely understood nor costed method of climate change mitigation'
It's Schrodinger's technology, both cheap and not costed simultaneously.
If you read the articles I've cited, you'll see research has been largely stopped because even at the most optimistic case, ocean fertilisation offers hugely less value than technologies which deliver known benefits.
"In his paper 'The cost of delivering iron to the Southern Ocean to sequester carbon', Harrison argues that the cost of iron fertilisation will vary with the oceanographic conditions at the time and location of fertilisation, but in almost all situations it is an expensive operation. As well as being expensive, the amount of carbon stored for more than a century is so small that it is uncertain whether measurable storage will occur at all.
"This means that while under certain conditions the cost may be moderate, under less ideal conditions, iron fertilisation may actually create more greenhouse gas than is sequestered," says Harrison.
The study used average results from iron fertilisation experiments conducted in the Southern Ocean and concluded that the mean price will be over US $400 per tonne of carbon dioxide sequestered from the atmosphere for 100 years or more.
"If the ocean is to play a greater role in storing carbon, we will need to develop more effective and economical technologies that are competitive with abatement opportunities on land," says Harrison."
https://phys.org/news/2012-12-iron-fertilisation-sunk-ocean-carbon.html
And why not try reading the article I linked to. Where I point to my own sources?
One dead link? That one?
Climate change is a fact, on a living planet in a wobbly orbit around a moody sun. Man-caused runaway climate change is a religion for which there is no science at all, given the lack of an unoccupied control Earth for comparison. This "study" says prosperity is "linked at least in part to climate change" and was prepared to underpin a public protest in favor of methods as extreme as government control of family size and as amorphous as "gender equity." Such studies are counted in statistics in other studies that use their number as "scientific proof" of a catastrophe.
Did anyone do an analysis of the areas of expertise of the 11,000 scientists? I'd like to know how many have experience in the areas of (or closely related to) climate science, versus those that aren't. Like a ratio of biologists or atmospheric physicists versus astronomers or robotics scientists.
From the Researchgate.net profile of Christopher Wolf, the second signatory of the BioScience "viewpoint" - NOT "paper" that's causing all the fuss...
"I am a co-signatory for the in-press Viewpoint article in the journal BioScience (https://academic.oup.com/bioscience) [Oxford University Press] entitled “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: a second notice” by Ripple et. al. (2017). The pre-print article can be read at: [ http://scientistswarning.forestry.oregonstate.edu/ ]. If you are a scientist from any scientific discipline (e.g. ecology, medicine, economics, etc.), and are concerned about global environmental and climate trends, the authors invite you to become a co-signatory of the paper. According to the website, more than 13,000 scientists from 180 countries have already signed."
So, the “11,000” scientists quoted by the Grauniad are anybody who fancies bunging their name into a website (according to more eagle-eyed contributors to WuWT they include “Dr Mickey Mouse” and “Prof A Dumbledore”).
The lead author wrote a chapter for the "Extinction Rebellion" handbook so is probably something of a zealot as well..
Tim: "We’ll measure forests that are shrinking but not forests that are expanding?"
Back when people still talked about Anthropogenic Global Warming instead of this Climate Change scam nonsense, a truly erudite economist told me about a project he did for a UN Agency. In those happier days, there was less religious certainty about AGW and its fearsome effects. Economist was charged with analyzing what would be the effects of a possible increase in global average temperature.
As a serious analyst, he prepared two reports -- one listed and quantified the possible negative impacts of rising temperature (eg loss of some beachfront property), while the second listed and quantified the possible positive consequences (eg greatly increased agricultural productivity in Canada and Siberia).
He presented and explained the two reports to the UN Agency. The head UN bureaucrat took the report on potential benefits … and ostentatiously dropped it in the trash can.