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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

Recent Comments

Comments 2751 to 2800:

One Planet Only Forever at 06:31 AM on 19 February 2023

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #7 2023

I agree that the highlighted IISD Report “Why Carbon Capture and Storage Is Not a Net-Zero Solution for Canada’s Oil and Gas Sector” is a robust helpful evaluation of the important, but limited scope of, climate impact aspects of fossil fuel activity. In addition to climate impacts, there are other types of harm to consider. And all harms considered, including potential harms like leaks and spills, fossil fuels from oil sands can be more harmful than coal-fired electricity generation (especially if the coke waste from upgrading heavy crude gets burned).

The future of humanity needs more people to ‘want to learn to be less harmful and more helpful’. That is an ‘eternal need’ because of the potential for misleading marketing to successfully impede learning about what is harmful and unsustainable (keeping people from learning how to be less harmful and more helpful at developing sustainable improvements).

The misleading marketing problem is the misleading promotion of Positive and Negative perceptions (beliefs) in pursuit of superiority, popularity and profit. Focusing on positive perceptions excuses harm done or distracts from learning about harm (Canadian band The Northern Pikes said it well: She ain’t pretty she just looks that way). And it is also harmful to promote negative perceptions about improved understanding and actions that are more helpful, limit and repair harm done. Creating unjustified fear and anger regarding learning to be less harmful and more helpful is easy when something perceived to be personally desired or beneficial (those positive perceptions) would have to be given up (like people declaring “You Can’t Make Me” when confronted with increased awareness and improved understanding that would make them less harmful and more helpful ‘If they were willing to learn and change their mind and actions for Good Reason’).

And there is lots of evidence today proving the success of political groups that abuse misleading ‘positive and negative’ marketing (not just the case of Alberta leadership touting the goodness of CCS and Blue Hydrogen while prompting Albertans to fear and be angry about the required rapid transition away from fossil fuel use).

The highlighted report “Why Carbon Capture and Storage Is Not a Net-Zero Solution for Canada’s Oil and Gas Sector” relates to the Hamburg Climate Futures Outlook 2023 that is Story of the Week in News Roundup #5. The actions of Canada’s leadership, especially the leadership in Alberta, are why the Hamburg 2023 Outlook indicates that there is a ‘very low' likelihood that Canada will achieve its current Paris Agreement NDCs which, btw, need to be significantly ratcheted up if limiting impacts to 2.0 C max is to be plausible (figure 6 on page 92, but note that the figure does not indicate how helpful the NDCs are. Russia is shown to very likely meet its NDCs because the Russian NDCs are easier to achieve because they are very far below what is required).

The Hamburg 2023 Outlook painstakingly presents the understanding that it is not plausible that impacts will be limited to 1.5 C. And Canada’s anti-leadership on the matter is a significant part of the problem (pursuing short-term gain and excusing it by claiming things like ‘Everybody else is doing it ’ and ‘It would be foolish not to try to maximize the benefit obtained from a harmful natural resource exploitation opportunity’. Those attitudes are worse than the Tragedy of the Commons attitudes).

Attempts to excuse or put a positive spin on the harmful actions, and claiming that actions to reduce harm done are ‘harmful or foolish, and to be feared and be angry about’, are a systemic developed problem. The developed systems and institutions produce harmful results and a lack of helpful action. They will not responsibly limit and repair harm done.

That connects to the Greta Thunberg Oped that John Hartz @1 pointed to. CCS in Canada is different from the CCS in the Iceland example that Greta talks about. The Iceland operations removes Carbon from the atmosphere and locks it away. That type of operation is needed because keeping impacts below 1.5 C is no longer plausible. Removing CO2 from the atmosphere is now necessary to bring the peak impact level back down to 1.5 C as rapidly as possible. CCS for fossil fuel combustion and Blue Hydrogen production used for fossil fuel production is a temporary measure at best. But Canadian leadership, especially in Alberta, try to claim their CCS and Blue Hydrogen are helpful sustainable improvements. They fully expect to continue to operate and export fossil fuel feed stock far past 2050. They need a longer future for exporting oil sands stuff to make the investments in CCS and Blue Hydrogen appear to be good investments. The business community seem to know those investments are ‘bad bets’. That is why government subsidy is required.

The case of misleading marketing about CCS is well presented in the IISD report. But is more to be understood regarding Hydrogen. Blue Hydrogen is not great Hydrogen. It is better than Grey Hydrogen. But Green Hydrogen is the type of Hydrogen with a future. More importantly, the way the hydrogen is produced, its colour code, is not the only consideration. How the hydrogen is used also matters. Using it as a fuel source to displace fossil fuel use is the required and sustainable use. Using it to produce fossil fuels is harmful, no matter what colour it is (no matter how it is obtained).

The following are two key statements from the IISD Report:

“As of September 2022, only 30 commercial CCS projects are operating across all sectors around the world, capturing 42.5 Mtpa. This falls far short of the IEA’s (2009) previous target of 300 Mtpa by 2020. Most proposed projects have been withdrawn: of the 149 CCS projects anticipated to be storing carbon by 2020, over 100 were cancelled or placed on indefinite hold (Abdulla et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2021). In the United States, despite significant industry and government investment in the technology, more than 80% of proposed CCS projects have failed to become operational due to high costs, low technological readiness, the lack of a credible financial return, and dependence on government incentives that are withdrawn (Abdulla et al., 2020). Of those projects that are operating globally, 73% of the carbon captured is used for EOR (Robertson & Mousavian, 2022).”

"The opportunity cost of investing in CCS and the risk of stranded assets for Canada’s oil and gas sector will intensify as global climate ambition ratchets up and demand for oil and gas declines. Ultimately, addressing emissions in the oil and gas sector will be critical in the short term, but scaling up alternative energy systems to allow a smooth shift away from oil and gas production will be essential for long-term, economy-wide decarbonization.”

The Hamburg Outlook robustly presents that what needs to happen will not happen without significant systemic change. The future of humanity will continue to be more seriously harmed as long as leaders can become/remain popular by being misleading: Promoting a focus on positive perceptions to impede increased awareness of harm done and promoting negative perceptions about the actions that achieve the required limit of harm done and repair of excessive harm done (more than 1.5 C impacts due to a lack of responsible leadership actions – excused because of the popularity of claims like ‘all leaders are behaving harmfully irresponsibly’ and ‘others are the problem’).

Rob Honeycutt at 05:03 AM on 19 February 2023

The Problem with Percentages

Important questions on this topic are going to be,

(a) what is the required penetration of grid storage?

(b) at what level will end-of-life auto batteries play into supplying those grid storage needs?

Recently, I was reading one energy researcher suggesting we'd only need ~10% storage, which was much lower than I would have guessed. (I think it was Andrew Dessler who said this, but I could be remembering wrong.)

Given the rapidly expanding volume of new EV models hitting the market, within the next decade those are going to all be batteries available for a second life on the grid. A big question mark in my own mind is related to how long EV's are going to last. Initial data suggests EV batteries are still performing well (<10% degradation after >150k miles, off the top of my head). Is that going to translate to people using cars longer, or is that going to mean EV batteries are going to have a lot of remaining life when placed on the grid?

Too often I read people discussing the constraints on resources producing an S-curve in deployment, which is an obviously important issue, but failing to acknowledge since those constraints are knowable new tech to address constraints is always in the works.

I think one of the big differences between legacy FF energy and renewable+storage energy is the expanded breadth of opportunities. There are limited ways to utilize FF combustion and we've probably exploited that potential to near theoretical maximums. Whereas, renewables+storage are announcing potential new materials and methods on a weekly basis.

Looking out even further, I'm fairly confident fusion technology is ultimately going to work, just not soon enough to address imminent climate change issues. But it's important to remember this framing: as likely as not, all of this is merely a bridge to 22nd century energy systems. The Herculean task our generation faces is building that bridge.

John Hartz at 04:39 AM on 19 February 2023

2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7

Similar tactics to those documented in the OP were used in the fight to oppose the construction of a wind farm off of the New Jersey coast. This effort is detailed in:

Whale deaths exploited in 'cynical disinformation' campaign against offshore wind power, advocates say by Elizabeth Weise & Dinah Voyles Pulver, USA Today, Feb 11, 2023

PrzemStep at 03:24 AM on 19 February 2023

The Problem with Percentages

Thanks! Will be waiting. And I commend you greatly for how you accepted my critique.

Evan at 21:26 PM on 18 February 2023

The Problem with Percentages

PrzemStep, thanks again for your feedback. After the 2022 numbers are in, I will consider reposting this article by breaking down the numbers further. Perhaps it would be useful doing trend analysis as I've done and comparing to trend analysis as you suggest: breaking the numbers down further and extrapolating each. But 2023 may be the first year where the world is operating at full capacity again (barring any severe recessions), so a recovery in fossil energy use may still be delayed beyond the 2022 numbers. Any of these projections are risky, because continued expansion of renewables beyond producing about 30% of power requires storage technology that must be deployed on a large scale and may compete for materials used in the transportation industry. Tough to predict.

Bottom line, the analysis I provide gives a feel for the magnitude of the problem. My real goal is to demonstrate that just covering the growth of energy use is a mammoth task, one we're struggling to accomplish. Actually replacing fossil energy use is yet to come, and will require even more commitment to change. If people read optimistic-sounding reports and feel that we are doing better than we actually are, then they may prematurely relax the pressure that needs to be continued to really get this energy revolution going. I am trying to provide perspective.

But I will consider your suggestions in a rewrite. I appreciate you taking the time to write your very informative comments.

PrzemStep at 19:57 PM on 18 February 2023

The Problem with Percentages

Evan, thanks for the feedback. I would underline that COViD is 2020, but fossil fuel energy used hasn't risen since 2018, so this could be a global trend - impact of EV and heat pumps should start being felt. Let's wait for 2022 stats, but I believe the picture will be similar. I still believe that the potential of stagnating growth or even a drop in fossil fuel energy use should have been mentioned.

As to the other point: In order for the argument to be more sound it would work better the actual numbers. And the fact is that by coupling wind and solar (degrading exponential) with hydro (linear) you muted the actual percentage growth of renewables. You reached 14000 TWh, I reached 26000 TWh. You must admit growth to 26000 TWh would look way more impactful on the above charts and over 100% of energy growth would be covered by renewables.

PrzemStep at 19:46 PM on 18 February 2023

The Problem with Percentages

@Eclectic - Can "hydro" expand linearly? I don't know. That said growing linearly hydro from ca 4300 TWh would grow to ca 5000 TWh, so 700 TWh, so it is pretty insignificant given the scale of change needed. Or the numbers above. In total I assumed hydro and other renewables only add 1050 TWh by 2032. And as you said: you can only analyze the trend, you can't make an exact prediction. I'm just saying that there was an underlying mistake in the trend analysis, because hydro mutes wind and solar growth.

Evan at 11:28 AM on 18 February 2023

The Problem with Percentages

PrzemStep, thanks for your comments.

Fossil-fuel usage seems to have stalled before the housing crisis, then started back up again. I am aware of the apparent stalling during the Covid pandemic, and am also aware that economies are starting to ramp up again. Will fossil-fuel usage stall or start back up? I am not making predictions, but simply showing where the overall trends have been leading for a long time, and what looks like a plateu may in fact be a temporary trend. Nobody knows the future, but trends are useful for showing the general direction.

What I'm really suggesting in this post is that isolated, impressive-sounding percentages can often be misleading, and in the case of population, show the opposite trend to what is happening. I am suggesting that people look at the totals, and not just isolated percentages. I am not making specific predictions about the future, but rather showing that based on long-term trends, renewable energy is far from replacing fossil fuels, even though the impressive percentage growth of renewables makes it sound like renewables are replacing fossil fuels.

Eclectic at 10:07 AM on 18 February 2023

The Problem with Percentages

China is somewhat of a special case, owing in part to the rather complex financial rivalries between provinces (despite Beijing policy).

PrzemStep @2/3 , you are right . . . predictions are difficult, especially of the future [as the saying goes]. Probably the Third World countries will continue to be open slather re fossil fuels, and even the First World countries will continue to use colossal amounts of gas/petroleum for decades. And . . . our mathematical trend analysis really needs to be firmly based on the underlying physical situation (plus guessable politics).

Can "hydro" expand linearly? Or must it plateau out soon? And will we eventually find domestic electric power supply being "shaped" by smart-meters (a la ISP download speeds) according to wind/sun ? Or will new-technology batteries come to the rescue? Crystal ball needed.

PrzemStep at 08:38 AM on 18 February 2023

The Problem with Percentages

It seems in all honesty that you should revisit the math, calculate wind/solar growth separately and then adjust this piece with the new numbers. I'm afraid that in its current form it is simply misleading. As to the possibility of fossil fuel generation stagnation - I expect this to at least be discussed.

PrzemStep at 08:31 AM on 18 February 2023

The Problem with Percentages

Hi there,

Unfortunately I'm posting because I noticed what can only be called bad trend analysis.

1. The renewable energy growth trend is simply badly done.

a) Renewable energy has four distinct components with different growth trends. Wind, solar, hydro and the rest (primarily bioenergy). Hydro and other renewables is following a linear growth trend, while wind and hydro are growing exponentially. However this exponentiality is hidden if you throw them in together: the dominant hydro represses the actual growth rates of solar/wind. This means your analysis is inherently flawed.

b) Solar is growing from 2011 to 2021 by 38,8% annually, while wind by 16,5%. Assuming hydro and other renewables continue linear growth they reach respectively 5000 TWh and 1100 TWh by 2032. By comparison if solar and wind retain 38,8% and 16,5% annual growth rates they will reach 37600 TWh and 9900 TWh respectively, so jointly renewables would have 53600 TWh by 2032. That would be the result of a proper trend analysis. Surprisingly you seem to have had a problem with percentages...

c) Now both solar and wind seem to be following more of an S-curve, so 38,8% and 16,5% growth rates seem unlikely to hold. Basic analysis of trends suggests average growth rate for 2022-2032 at 25,5% and 14% respectively, worst case scenario 20% and 11%. This average scenario would mean 26300 TWh renewable energy by 2032, while the worst case scenario 19000 TWh. As you can see all result put it much higher than your wrongly done trend analysis suggests.

2. The fossil fuel usage graph has an even simpler flaw. It suggests continued linear growth, but absolutely ignore the fact that fossil fuel usage seems to have stalled in 2018 and shown little growth. We seem to have hit peak oil consumption. IEA notes all these facts. No does this mean that fossil fuel usage will stop growing or even start falling? No. But you should have at least noted the recent stagnation of fossil fuel growth as the sudden jump from 2022 is odd to say the east.

Doug Bostrom at 03:07 AM on 18 February 2023

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #7 2023

Yes indeed, John.

Beyond the repugnant cynicism of this tactic in support of the strategy of "prolong monetization for as long as possible," it has a notable side-effect, or so I think.

Something I've observed is that on "our" "right" side there's tendency to conflation of all CO2 removal schemes with the fossil fuel industry's tactical adoption of a particular mode of so doing for purposes other than intended or claimed.

Leading to (as in some other areas) a spectrum of what are effectively beat-downs of researchers daring to investigate CO2 removal. "They're just greenwashing!" The criticism is ineluctably a form of ad hominem attack, if unpacked at all.

Accompanied by "moral hazard" conjectures and "we can't walk and chew gum at the same time" appeals in support of monolithic solutions that as a practical matter can't be executed in an instant.

John Hartz at 14:47 PM on 17 February 2023

Skeptical Science News: The Rebuttal Update Project

John M, Baerbel, Ken & Doug:

At the risk of preaching to the choir, I believe the Climate Feedback website offers a rich lode of high quality rebuttals which can be mined by SkS volunteers working on the rebuttal project you have set forth in the OP.

John Hartz at 14:32 PM on 17 February 2023

Underground temperatures control climate

Suggested supplemental reading:

Fact check: False claim the rotation of Earth's core is responsible for climate change by Eleanor McCrary, USA Today, Feb 14, 2023

John Hartz at 14:30 PM on 17 February 2023

Skeptical Science News: The Rebuttal Update Project

John M, Baerbel, Ken & Doug:

As an aside, I have noticed a welcome and recent uptick in the number of news media outlets which are now generating their own versions of rebuttals of climate pseudoscience. A case in point is the national newspaper, USA Today. It's most recent rebuttal:

Fact check: False claim the rotation of Earth's core is responsible for climate change by Eleanor McCrary, USA Today, Feb 14, 2023

I believe this "fact check" directly relates to the SkS rebuttal, What influence do underground temperatures have on climate?

John Hartz at 09:55 AM on 17 February 2023

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #7 2023

By coincidence, Greta Thunberg adresses CCS head-on in a recently (yesterday) published Op-ed that I today posted a link to on the SkS Facebook Page. A key pragraph from Thunberg's Op-ed:

"Also, the carbon-removal facility in Iceland has some serious scaling up to do. Yet that is clearly not happening, which makes no sense at all. Why foster the idea that this underdeveloped technology could be a substitute for the immediate, drastic mitigation needed? Why bet our entire civilization on it without making the slightest effort to make it work? Why make the world picture a potential solution so vividly that we include it in every possible future scenario and then fail to invest in it? Could it be that it was never even meant to work at scale? That it was just being used — once again — as a way of deflecting attention and delaying any meaningful climate action so that the fossil fuel companies can continue business as usual and keep on making fantasy amounts of money for just a little while longer?"

Source: Greta Thunberg: Global leaders are dropping the ball on climate change, Op-ed by Greta Thunberg, Winston-Salem Journal, Feb 15, 2023

ubrew12 at 04:16 AM on 17 February 2023

The Problem with Percentages

"renewable energy grew 25% in a single year, recent, historical trends indicate that the growth of renewables is not even keeping up with growing, global energy demand." Global energy demand may be accounted in terms if 'fossil energy in' rather than 'electricity out'. As mentioned a week ago on this website, 60-70% of 'fossil energy in' is lost as waste heat upon combustion, the remainder becomes electricity. For fossil energy, the 'energy in-to-power out' conversion is as low as 30%. For renewable energy, it's closer to 80%.

RichardBryan at 17:55 PM on 16 February 2023

The escalator rises again

I asked someone to think about climate related trends in terms of what a stock market chart might look like. People can immediately picture and understand that a stock price which declines over the course of a year would nevertheless have periods of days or weeks or months wherein the price was rising and falling and rising and falling, only to close lower at the end of the year. So when looking at charts describing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, or surface air tempertures, a short segment in the middle of the graph won't be an accurate representation of what's happening (i.e., a global warming "pause"); looking at the long term is what matters. People intuitively understand stock market charts and I've found this analogy to long term climate changes to be helpful in day to day conversation.

John Mason at 17:35 PM on 16 February 2023

Skeptical Science News: The Rebuttal Update Project

John - thanks for the imput. "It's not bad" is in our next batch i.e. at an advanced draft stage and bearing in mind what you said, we'll likely take a look sooner rather than later.

John Hartz at 05:05 AM on 16 February 2023

Skeptical Science News: The Rebuttal Update Project

John, Baerbel, Ken & Doug:

I have been sifting and winowing through the internet for more than a decade now to identify quality news articles about manmade climate change and related matters.* During this time, I have seen a signifigant growth in debunking articles generated by journalists, scientists, blog authors, and others.

One such article was posted just two days ago. It is:

Myth-buster: Why two degrees of global warming is worse than it sounds by Daisy Simmons, Climate Explained, Yale Climate Connections, Feb 13, 2023

In the context of the rebuttal update initiative described in the OP, I thought it would be interesting to see which of the Skeptical Science (SkS) rebuttals Simmons' article best pairs up with. It appears that would be the SkS rebuttal, #3 It's not bad.

Having said the above, the existing SkS rebuttal, #3 It's not bad covers almost the complete universe of climate science. Therefore, the best Advanced version of the rebuttal would in essence be the most recent scientific report of the IPCC.

My basic recommendation re this ball of wax is to slice and dice the the SkS rebuttal, #3 It's not bad into distinct chunks.

___________________

*The first SkS "Bi-Weekly News Roundup" was posted on Nov 16, 2012.

John Hartz at 02:35 AM on 16 February 2023

Skeptical Science News: The Rebuttal Update Project

John, Baerbel, Ken & Doug:

Kudos for taking on this much needed and somewhat overdue task. I will help out as much as I can.

Bob Loblaw at 23:40 PM on 15 February 2023

Climategate CRU emails suggest conspiracy

The Climategate and Peer-review link I gave above is #95 on SkS's "Most Used Climate Myths". (This thread is # 17.)

If you really want to read about corruption of the peer-review process, you should look at # 205 on the list: "How contrarians used pal review to publish contrarian papers". In the contrarians' world it is easy to imagine that the mainstream climate scientists are corrupting the process, because that's exactly what the contrarians are willing to do when they have control of a journal. Accuse your opponent of doing what you are doing...

Bob Loblaw at 23:24 PM on 15 February 2023

Climategate CRU emails suggest conspiracy

JonJC, Eddie:

I suspect that the video in question is the one recently discussed on the "It's the sun" thread. MA Rodger's comment provides a link to the Curry/Peterson part of the video, with a pithy comment about the quality of Curry's blatherings.

I also suspect that there is nothing new in Curry/Peterson that isn't the result of a gross misrepresentation of the email contents. For the peer-review aspects, you should also read this SkS post on the subject:

Climategate and the Peer-review Process

Eclectic at 20:40 PM on 15 February 2023

Climategate CRU emails suggest conspiracy

JonJC @85 ,

the Climategate biz is rather ancient history by now ~ but the science-denialists are desperatey short of ammunition . . . so they have to keep dredging it up (and they can never admit they got it wrong).

My favorite discussion of it is by science journalist "Potholer54" , back in about 2010. Google his youtube video titled "Climate Change - Those hacked e-mails".

His video runs 9 minutes, and you will find it amusing as well !

( The issue has had no significant developments since since then.)

EddieEvans at 20:11 PM on 15 February 2023

Climategate CRU emails suggest conspiracy

JonJC

I'd like to listen to the suspect climate gate program. Do you have a link?

JonJC at 16:54 PM on 15 February 2023

Climategate CRU emails suggest conspiracy

Judith Curry recently did an interview on Jordan Peterson's podcast - and she still leans very heavily on Climategate. She made some points which I've not seen covered here - about emails where climate researchers were bullying editors into silencing critics - it would be good to have some of that rebutted here (just because Peterson's reach is huge).
If you're not across it I'll suffer through listening to it again and will provide a summary - please let me know if you'd like me to do this.

John Mason at 20:47 PM on 14 February 2023

Temp record is unreliable

Please note: the basic version of this rebuttal has been updated on Feb 14, 2023 and now includes an "at a glance“ section at the top. To learn more about these updates and how you can help with evaluating their effectiveness, please check out the accompanying blog post @
https://sks.to/at-a-glance