Climate: Il fait VRAIMENT CHAUD (fka un petit)

[ThinkerX]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

From a climate scientist who has multiple papers cited in the IPCC report, a critique of said report that seems pretty hard to refute.

Having spoken with a local Green Party voter about it, the argument seems to be that a bit of catastrophizing propaganda is necessary to move the needle in the right direction. 

Or, as I have been saying for a while, the changes thus far over the past decade - green energy and EV's - have partially offset the worst case scenario for climate change. Add in Peak Oil accelerating this transition, and...

Yes, it is bad. Really bad.

But not completely catastrophic.

[Luzifer's right hand]

I'm always nice to see that anti-environmentalism sites like the Breakthrough Institute appeal to people. That humanity does not have to change because tech will solve all problems is comforting I guess.

Between greenwashing from one side and the destructive optimism from another side we will definitely see the worst case scenario happening as the pushback against environmentalism is pretty successful.

[Ran]

3 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

I'm always nice to see that anti-environmentalism sites like the Breakthrough Institute appeal to people.

Excellent point.

 

[Luzifer's right hand]

8 minutes ago, Ran said:

Excellent point.

 

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Global-Co2-Emissions-since-1900-Visualized-Nov-8.jpg

Please point me to an actual decrease in global emissions since to since attempts have been made to reduce then that was not caused by an economic downturn.

There are none. We have gotten more efficient in some areas but economic growth has more than offset the improvements and will continue to do so.

I'm not the one focusing on empty words instead of hard numbers.

[Ran]

9 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

Please point me to an actual decrease in global emissions since to since attempts have been made to reduce then that was not caused by an economic downturn.

Here you go.

If you don't want to respond to the actual critique I linked, just don't respond to it rather than trying to ad hominem it away or, failing that, moving goalposts to make arguments that do not address the key point of the article, namely that the IPCC report is deliberately misleading on the topic of agricultural production.

[Luzifer's right hand]

13 minutes ago, Ran said:

Here you go.

If you don't want to respond to the actual critique I linked, just don't respond to it rather than trying to ad hominem it away or, failing that, moving goalposts to make arguments that do not address the key point of the article, namely that the IPCC report is deliberately misleading on the topic of agricultural production.

Because it is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. Improvements of agricultural output at the price of systematic habitat destruction and massive increases of CO2 are not a good thing long term and at best temporary because we live in habitat with limits. The IPCC obviously sees that the source you linked not. 

Your linked article is the misleading one not one by the IPCC.

I respond to destructive optimism when and how I feel like it.

I mean I'm not attacking you personally after all.

[ThinkerX]

12 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Global-Co2-Emissions-since-1900-Visualized-Nov-8.jpg

Please point me to an actual decrease in global emissions since to since attempts have been made to reduce then that was not caused by an economic downturn.

There are none. We have gotten more efficient in some areas but economic growth has more than offset the improvements and will continue to do so.

I'm not the one focusing on empty words instead of hard numbers.

Economics. specifically the economics of Peak Oil, is the big driver. As the giant oil fields that powered civilization are getting tapped out, the remaining oil is getting more and more expensive and dangerous to extract - the Deepwater Horizon fiasco being but one result. This, in turn spurs greater efforts towards efficiency across the board - and spurs the development of alternative energy.

There is also...call it the 'history of technological adaptation.' Likely, it has another term; its just something I've noticed. Examples:

In the early 19th century, bold inventors took steam engines - stationary until that point and attached them to carts intended to run on rails - the first railways. For a good twenty years these were industrial curiosities, as much rumor as fact. But quite a few people saw the potential and were willing to invest in them, These investments turned railways from 'curiosities' to 'niche' items around...1830 or so. At that point, canal companies and others saw them as a major threat and began anti-railroad campaigns. Instead of killing off railways, they grew in popularity, becoming a hallmark of civilization, of 'mainstream,' circa 1850.

This pattern repeated itself with internal combustion automobiles - prior to 1900 or so, these were 'curiosities,' the province of dedicated mechanics and inventors. Ford and other early manufacturers made them 'niche' in the early 20th century, and by...1930 they were effectively 'mainstream.'

This sequence - two or three decades as 'curiosities,' followed by another two or three decades as 'niche' before going mainstream is repeated over and over again with everything from lightbulbs to cell phones to airplanes.

Currently, wind/solar power and EV's are 'niche,' fast heading for 'mainstream' status circa 2030-2040. This is a process, driven by economics. That process, combined with a soon to be declining global population, will do far more to offset climate change than grassroot action. The economics are cutting across ideological barriers:

 

New poll shows surprising point of consensus for voters from across the political spectrum — ‘broad majorities’ agree (msn.com)

[Luzifer's right hand]

4 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

Economics. specifically the economics of Peak Oil, is the big driver. As the giant oil fields that powered civilization are getting tapped out, the remaining oil is getting more and more expensive and dangerous to extract - the Deepwater Horizon fiasco being but one result. This, in turn spurs greater efforts towards efficiency across the board - and spurs the development of alternative energy.

There is also...call it the 'history of technological adaptation.' Likely, it has another term; its just something I've noticed. Examples:

In the early 19th century, bold inventors took steam engines - stationary until that point and attached them to carts intended to run on rails - the first railways. For a good twenty years these were industrial curiosities, as much rumor as fact. But quite a few people saw the potential and were willing to invest in them, These investments turned railways from 'curiosities' to 'niche' items around...1830 or so. At that point, canal companies and others saw them as a major threat and began anti-railroad campaigns. Instead of killing off railways, they grew in popularity, becoming a hallmark of civilization, of 'mainstream,' circa 1850.

This pattern repeated itself with internal combustion automobiles - prior to 1900 or so, these were 'curiosities,' the province of dedicated mechanics and inventors. Ford and other early manufacturers made them 'niche' in the early 20th century, and by...1930 they were effectively 'mainstream.'

This sequence - two or three decades as 'curiosities,' followed by another two or three decades as 'niche' before going mainstream is repeated over and over again with everything from lightbulbs to cell phones to airplanes.

Currently, wind/solar power and EV's are 'niche,' fast heading for 'mainstream' status circa 2030-2040. This is a process, driven by economics. That process, combined with a soon to be declining global population, will do far more to offset climate change than grassroot action. The economics are cutting across ideological barriers:

 

New poll shows surprising point of consensus for voters from across the political spectrum — ‘broad majorities’ agree (msn.com)

 

Peak oil? That's a field where technological optimism seems reasonable to me. Between oil sands and ocean based reserves the planet has lot of oil reserves than can be accessed after the easily accessed ones dry.up

Even in the EU plans to phase out combustion engines have just failed. E-fuels are the loophole used to keep vehicles using them in production and will make it easy to move the phase out date of fossil fuels back. Probably indefinitely.

Even coal use is still increasing on a global scale and China just increased its investments in the area massively. Fits perfectly with the "pessimistic" IPCC projections.

[Larry of the Lawn]

It is kind of weird how the uber-focus on CO2 emissions has eclipsed all other environmental concerns, or how many people seem to think that even if we can reduce anthropogenic climate change, we aren't still fucking up the environment (which, yes, we all still live in).  

[Kalbear]

8 hours ago, Ran said:

From a climate scientist who has multiple papers cited in the IPCC report, a critique of said report that seems pretty hard to refute.

Having spoken with a local Green Party voter about it, the argument seems to be that a bit of catastrophizing propaganda is necessary to move the needle in the right direction. 

I'll refute it.

His argument is about one small part of the report - climate based yield reduction. He makes a reasonable argument that technological advancement will continue to adapt to climate change as it has before and the ipcc is not taking that trend into account. 

Where he goes wrong is implying that this is the issue throughout the entire report - without any analysis, evidence or data. I'm sure there's a logical fallacy that one can reference.

Furthermore, being pessimistic about crop yields is not an unreasonable thing given other environmental and non environmental collapse issues - salinization, lack of fertilizer, more nationalism, more wars. As an example without any major weather events crop yields went down in 2022 and more people starved because of warfare. Things like tech improving yields won't matter when transport blockades cause food to rot in silos and countries can't afford or are not allowed to import. 

 

[Rippounet]

8 hours ago, Ran said:

Excellent point.

Yeah, so what? Since when is it invalid to look at the quality of a source?

Let's be clear about the basics: the IPCC is a 35-year-old intergovernmental panel reviewing all relevant publications  throughout the world thanks to thousands of scientists. It establishes the global scientific consensus on climate change.
Since its creation it has been mocked, critiqued, attacked countless times, often with money coming from big oil. And yet, it has refined its models, carefully, cautiously, and rigorously, and done its best to present the science without bias.
What the recent developments have proved is that, if anything, the IPCC has been guilty of being far too cautious.

One rogue scientist attacking the IPCC's latest report in an obscure corner of the internet isn't enough to claim anything, and certainly not enough to cast any kind of doubt on the IPCC's conclusions on anything. This guy's opinion has the same level of validity as the blog articles I wrote on US foreign policy when I was 20 - zilch.

Of course, I suppose it is your prerogative to spread climate change denialism on your forum.

[Ran]

3 hours ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

His argument is about one small part of the report - climate based yield reduction.

It is one of the seven chapters (of eighteen) that specifically breaks down what they claim about impact of global warming. The other 11 chapters are introductory, conclusive,  or applying the information those seven chapters provide to specific regions of the world. One of the seven chief sections of the document (the longest section, as well) being clearly misleading strikes me as a substantial issue.

3 hours ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

Where he goes wrong is implying that this is the issue throughout the entire report

Yes, I'd like to see him delve further into other areas to substantiate that. He has raised reasons to be concerned, and I can see he believes that those issues are found elsewhere, but I'm not competent to be able to address those. I do think what he points out about chapter 5 of the WG2 report is, however, pretty shocking. It's not what I would expect from scientists at a body like the IPCC.

However, I did find another interesting example of a hard-to-refute critique from Brown, regarding a paper that is repeatedly cited across the WG2 Report, particularly in the 4th chapter ("Water"), and whose method (Fraction of Attributed Risk, aka FAR, borrowed from epidemology) to attempt to attribute the percentage of damage caused by things like floods and weather events to climate change is applied in the various regional sections. The part that is hard-to-refute is that the authors of the paper two years later walked back the use of the FAR method that was the center piece of the prior paper, believing that its utility is much more limited, but there is no reference to the fact that the applicability of the method (especially, from what I can tell, as applied by WG2) has been substantially questioned by the authors themselves.

[Ormond]

2 hours ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

 

Where he goes wrong is implying that this is the issue throughout the entire report - without any analysis, evidence or data. I'm sure there's a logical fallacy that one can reference.

 

Imply? I think he directly states that:

Quote

The report’s chapter on risks to agriculture is not an outlier. It is emblematic of the entire portion of the IPCC report that assesses the impacts of climate change and that drove the nearly hysterical media coverage.

I don't know who is correct here. But somehow criticizing someone who starts off by saying he is using one specific example of something he finds in the report for not giving any other examples seems a bit unfair. I hope he writes something else about the other points he finds overblown, but one only has so much space in one article. 

[Rippounet]

Ok, now lets address @ThinkerX's point.

7 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

This sequence - two or three decades as 'curiosities,' followed by another two or three decades as 'niche' before going mainstream is repeated over and over again with everything from lightbulbs to cell phones to airplanes.

Currently, wind/solar power and EV's are 'niche,' fast heading for 'mainstream' status circa 2030-2040. This is a process, driven by economics. That process, combined with a soon to be declining global population, will do far more to offset climate change than grassroot action.

This perspective is basically what Evgeny Morozov has called "solutionism": the idea that technology and/or economics will provide a solution, as they always have.

This solutionism is also the core argument of the article posted by Ran, with this key sentence:

Quote

this dire prediction would only come to pass if all technological and socioeconomic progress that has led to historical yield growth suddenly came to a halt.

BTW this kind of key sentence is actually easy to spot because countless articles have used a variation of this argument.
Let's rephrase it: this guy is saying we can ignore dire predictions if we have faith in humanity's ability to pursue its technological and socioeconomic development.

Or, in layman's terms: "Don't worry, we'll figure something out, we always have."

In even simpler terms, this is faith. Faith in technology and the innovative capabilities of our species.

Why is this bullshit? Because it reflects a dreafully poor understanding of the current crisis. Technological innovation is great, but it always require raw materials, energy, or water (sometimes all three). While it is possible to switch from one type of technology to another, such switches do not eliminate the environmental cost of production. Sometimes that cost decreases, but fundamentally it is the technological and socioeconomic progress itself that is the source of the environmental crisis.
This is why there will be no technological miracle. The "market" has been too slow to direct the funds towards adaptation these last few decades, and renewable energy is barely having any kind of impact. This is what the graph looks like.
I'm not dure where the idea that we have "partially offset the worst case scenario for climate change" comes from, but it is not true. Right now we've failed to achieve anything at all and are on the RCP8,5 scenario. As far as I know we haven't even managed to shoot for the RCP6 scenario just yet - now that would be something.

But that's just climate change. Kal and Larry correctly point out that the crisis goes much deeper. Why does the IPCC not take into account hypothetical future innovations? Because the current agricultural model based on intensive monoculture farming is not sustainable to begin with. It requires too much water, too much fertilizer, too much pesticides, it erodes and weakens and dries up the soil to such a point that even without climate change crop yields would eventually fall rather than increase.

We do need faith in our species, in our collective ability to change socioeconomic structures in order to aim for degrowth. Social innovation might save us, not technology.

[Kalbear]

20 minutes ago, Ormond said:

Imply? I think he directly states that:

I don't know who is correct here. But somehow criticizing someone who starts off by saying he is using one specific example of something he finds in the report for not giving any other examples seems a bit unfair. I hope he writes something else about the other points he finds overblown, but one only has so much space in one article. 

Then he shouldn't state that. It's irresponsible. I don't see how it is unfair. 

At the very least one should wait on using this as evidence for general issues until these supposed other articles come to life. That is pretty irresponsible.

[ThinkerX]

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

Why is this bullshit? Because it reflects a dreafully poor understanding of the current crisis. Technological innovation is great, but it always require raw materials, energy, or water (sometimes all three). While it is possible to switch from one type of technology to another, such switches do not eliminate the environmental cost of production. Sometimes that cost decreases, but fundamentally it is the technological and socioeconomic progress itself that is the source of the environmental crisis.
This is why there will be no technological miracle. The "market" has been too slow to direct the funds towards adaptation these last few decades, and renewable energy is barely having any kind of impact. This is what the graph looks like.
I'm not dure where the idea that we have "partially offset the worst case scenario for climate change" comes from, but it is not true. Right now we've failed to achieve anything at all and are on the RCP8,5 scenario. As far as I know we haven't even managed to shoot for the RCP6 scenario just yet - now that would be something.

Not quite. You can legitimately argue that building a coal-fired power plant and a windfarm are roughly equal in terms of destructive costs to the environment. However. that picture changes once they are up and running.  The coal-fired power plant continues to spew out massive amounts of carbon for as long as it is in service. The windfarm, though, creates NO further emissions.  And for over a decade now, wind farms and solar arrays have been exploding in number while coal and oil power plants are being phased out. This is reflected in the graph you posted - oil and coal usage is increasing very slightly or starting to decline. Peak Oil will accelerate this decline, forcing a switch to other energy sources. Right now, the alternative of choice is natural gas - but Peak Oil affects that as well.

I see this transition as a decades long process, not as something that can be rushed.

The other mistake you and others here continue to make is to go with the overall global temperature increase, neglecting major regional/seasonal variations. Climate change is chaotic, not uniform.

 

[mcbigski]

Birthrates have been going down for decades in developed countries.  Best way to reach a stable sustainable population is education and nuclear fission for consistent carbon free energy and prosperity.  

Energy wise, it's not even close on the fission.  If you disagree you're either a misanthrope rooting for genocide or a useful idiot for people plotting the same.  (Sure orbital solar in the long run maybe, but in the time frame we run out of fissionables on earth, we could be mining dozens of light years away.)  

[Jace, Extat]

I agree with the 'education' part...

The rest I'm too dumb to have a real opinion on

[Kalbear]

It's okay, so is he.

Fission might help - if you remove most regulation and are fine with the occasional meltdown - but we are past the point where it alone can save the day. And we still need things like massive electrical infrastructure changes and massive removal of ICE engines. 

Meanwhile China is going ahead with more new coal plants opened up in one year than at any time in their history. But I'm sure they'd be happy to take the suggestion of using nuclear power, especially while the west doesn't.

[ThinkerX]

30 minutes ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

It's okay, so is he.

Fission might help - if you remove most regulation and are fine with the occasional meltdown - but we are past the point where it alone can save the day. And we still need things like massive electrical infrastructure changes and massive removal of ICE engines. 

Meanwhile China is going ahead with more new coal plants opened up in one year than at any time in their history. But I'm sure they'd be happy to take the suggestion of using nuclear power, especially while the west doesn't.

You do what you can, where you can.