Diving into the Deeps of Decarbonization

Orwellian

Too funny. The UN and the eco-freaks are gripped by madness. Decarbonization is impossible unless we are prepared to forego air transport and international trade of any kind, to say nothing of modern economies. And for what? To solve a non-existent problem!

If carbon dioxide is ‘carbon’ then that makes water ‘oxygen’.

Nobody ever mentions all the CO2 in beer and soft drinks. There are other example of course. It’s worse than we thought.

Nice, ye olde math move to see if you’re going to end up with the units you want to end up with.

I am pretty sure it was Einstein who said ‘everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler”. He was referring to reduction of mathematical formalae, but the UN demonstrates its mindset…WE are all ‘population’ and we are the evil doers that need to be ‘reduced’.
The sooner these clowns are de-funded and gone…the better.

Another Devious aspect from this report:
Page 21 of the SDNS report: “(5.2.2) Levels of per capita emissions by 2050 as a bench mark, not as a target”.
Page 28 of the report (figure 6.3):
GtCO2….2010….2050
India……….2……… 4
China……. 7……… 5
India gets screwed through fantasy figures from 2050 while China can get away with CO2 “murder”. Real numbers – 2010 – do not count.

The whole UN / Bankster “Environmental” drive is a depopulation project, plain & simple, & the motivation is not sustainability, it’s control.
Google the Georgia Guidestones : carved in 8 languages, both sides of 4 huge granite standing stones is the prime object : “Maintain the Earth’s population under 500 million”
These stones, 110 tons, including a capstone, are precisely aligned with the heavens, & were erected in the 80s & paid for by “A Christian”, in cash. They are the 10 commandments of The New World Order.
Simple maths 500 million remaining from a present population of ~7 billion = do away with 13 out of 14 of us.
& they’ve a fair good start. Get hold of a copy of Michael Crichton’s best seller ‘State of Fear’, dealing with the start of the global warming scam. Page 579 of 717 ( in my paperback edition ) he deals with the banning of DDT. June 1972 Ruckelshaus, new head of the EPA, banned DDT as carcinogenic. It wasn’t. Extensive tests had been done, people had ate it for 2 years, for the Sweeny Commission, which had reported DDT as safe 2 months previously, April 1972.
Ruckelshaus never bothered to read the Sweeny report.
Since the DDT ban, deaths from malaria shot up from ~50,000 pa to ~ 2 million pa. That’s ~ 80 million deaths, mostly children in the third world, more than Hitler killed, more than Mao & Stalin.
Ironically, DDT was never officially banned. Third World leaders were told, “keep ordering DDT, you’ll get no more foreign aid” Foreign aid is bribery to foreign “leaders” to allow the slaughter of their own people, & it works the exact same way here in the UK.
Crichton references Wildavsky, Aaron: But is it True? A Citizen’s Guide to Environmental Health & Safety Issues. Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1994 (or 95)
25 pages on DDT, with sections on Alar, Love Canal, the ozone hole, global warming & acid rain.
“Environmentalism” is for genocide.

Nature has already solved the carbon capture issue. It is called trees.
Simply create a new carbon net sink by say foresting an area of scrub land.
IF one is concerned about CO2 and wants to control its emissions, we can continue to use fossil fuels provided that we at rthe same time create new carbon sinks.
Obviously switching from coal to gas would be sensible as can be seen from the US, which is the only developed country that has managed a ‘worthwhile’ reduction in CO2 emissions brought about its exploitation of its shale gas reserves and switching energy production away from coal to the newly sourced gas.
Presently the drive towards renewables has resulted in all but no reduction in CO2 emissions, due to the intermittent nature of renewables, and the need for conventionally powered back up which conventionally powered back up is not used at full capacity. The stop/start ramping up and ramping down of conventionally powered back up generators, creates nearly as much CO2 emissions as would have been the case had these conventional powered back up generators not been used as back up, but instead been used for base load (without any renewable energy involvement)..

” Geoffrey says:
July 9, 2014 at 10:39 pm
If carbon dioxide is ‘carbon’ then that makes water ‘oxygen’.”
Oh dear… you had a 50:50 chance – and f*ed it up.
If carbon dioxide is carbon, that would make water hydrogen by that logic.

Where do the volcanoes and forest fires fit in the equation?

Hoser says:
July 9, 2014 at 10:31 pm
Notice how they emphasize Population. Well, would that not indicate what they believe is the biggest problem? And the solution is of course to make the biggest problem smaller. I wonder what their plan is?
===
Yes, that would seem to be what this is trying to communicate. So “deep decarbonisation” means “deep depopulation”. I assume the greens will be the first to step up to the plate and offer themselves and their children to be sacrificed for the greater good of GAIA.
Or maybe they’ll decide that they, morally and intellectually superior beings, need to stick around to make sure it all works correctly and everyone BUT them and their families needs to die first.
Let’s guess which way they play it.

India and China will pay no attention whatsoever and that is 40% of the world’s population before we consider any other countries that will pour scorn and derision on this, another strange and stupid UN idea.

Momentum = mass x velocity
@mooloo here is the difference
mass = 2
vel = 2
what is momentum you have an answer correct?
now replace every variable except CO2 emissions with the value 2. Solve for CO2. Answer is 1. Do it again use 7. Answer = 1. Again using any number or combination of numbers answer =1
put 7 into first equation answer is 49.
one equation gives a useful answer one does not.

They could save themselves all that nonsense if they would just realize it’s ALL carbon. Every last bit of it creates CO2, in spite of their little man-made rule that emissions from bio-fuels don’t count. They still add to the total volume of CO2. The U.N.=irrelevant

Baking and brewing were among the first recorded industries. Yeasts produce carbon dioixide. In the brave new ‘de-carbonised’ world, will yeasts have to be genetically modified to release , say, Nitrogen instead? Or will breweries and bakeries need carbon dioxide capture and storage? Oh, some breweries have that already….
More seriously, I tried reading that document. It made my head spin. They really are on a crusade. Just take a good look at the language.

Willis: Your equation (Kaya Identity) is meant to help governments REALISTICALLY evaluate opportunities to reduce carbon emission – should they wish to do so. If the equation didn’t mathematically reduce to CO2 = CO2, it wouldn’t be of any use.
Population: For the next few decades, there is little opportunity to change the number of people in a country. Most of them are already living and family size tends to change slowly. Over the longer term, population growth tends to go down with increasing GDP.
Per capita GDP: No government wants to reduce CO2 emissions by reducing the growth in per capita GDP – which is roughly equivalent to prosperity. All countries have minimum expectations for increasing per capita GDP and will include this factor in their plans.
CO2/energy is something that can be improved. For electricity (roughly 50% of CO2 emissions), one can replace coal with natural gas. Or fossil fuels with nuclear, solar, or wind. Roughly 100 nuclear plants provide about 20% of US electricity. Reality: Another 200 nuclear power plants (plus replacements) probably would handle our base demand for electricity, which accounts for perhaps 25% of current US emissions. If we want to get there in 25 years, we need to start building about 10 new plants per year. If you don’t think current designs are safe enough and you want something like thorium, how long will it be before you can start building 10 plants per year? A decade to develop the new technology and a decade of operating experience? For transportation and heating, there currently aren’t very good replacements for fossil fuels and the ones that exist will demand more electricity.
GDP/energy also is something that can be improved by energy conservation: better insulation, higher mileage vehicles, replacing incandescent light bulbs, etc. We’ve been concerned about energy conservation since the 1970’s, so this is familiar ground.
If you are a developing country whose population will increase 20% by 2050 and you want to emulate China and increase your GDP two to four fold by then, you probably won’t be signing any international agreements to restrict emissions.

Frightening that this document must have been through review by many people without any of them has spotted the flaws in this formula.Reading the text above it seems that it should have been something like:
CO2 emissions (Tonne/year) = Number of persons on earth (capita) * Produced value per person per year ($/capita*year)* Energy use per produced value (J/$) * CO2 emission per used unit of energy (Tonne CO2/J)
Or, with units only:
(Tonne/year) = (capita)*($/capita*year)*(J/$)*(Tonne CO/J)
Then it is still overly simplistic, but at least it is consistent with regards to units:
Theoretically, to reduce CO2 emissions you can reduce:
Number of persons on earth
Value production per person
Energy use per unit produced value (Increase the energy efficiency)
Reduce the carbon emission per produced unit of energy

Oh my god I am a complete mathematics bozo and even I can see this is just dumb. If your equation can reduce to 1=1 then you are not doing anything useful, no matter how much you insist that it’s “necessary” to have your equation reduce to that. The contortions some of you are going through to try and prove that this is anything other than a completely nonsensical waste of time are incredible.

Of course if we take Willis’s final equation and divide though by CO2 emissions we of couse get the very useful identity of
1=1
I hear the sounds of millions of heads shaken in disbelief all over the planet.
Mooloo and Jos.
No the equation is absurd, it is independent of all its variables, the equation says literally 1 = 1 .

All identities reduce to one equals one.
The trigonometric identities – for example, the one that I discussed above, or the Pythagorean trigonometric identities – can all be reduced to the expression one equals one. They are still incredibly useful.

Frank says: “Willis: Your equation (Kaya Identity) is meant to help governments REALISTICALLY evaluate opportunities to reduce carbon emission…etc.”
Yes, I think that is what this is about. If it’s called Kaya Identity, that means both sides are not just equal but mathematically identical.
Identities do not contain any new information but may be a useful way of rearranging things, eg.
cos(2x) = 2*cos(x)*sin(x)
This is a similar 1=1 situation if you reduce it but if you have a harmonic and its derivative it may be useful to realise that the result will have twice the frequency.
Willis did not report that it was called Kaya Identity and seems to have missed to point of what an identity is.
So as Frank says, if you know population will grow and you wish to at least maintain per capital wealth, you need to look to reducing energy / GDP (as the Chinese seem to be doing) or improve CO2 footprint of power generation.
The other alternative is to look out of window and realise that for the last 17 years temps have not risen, the computer models are useless, the whole “low carbon” paradigm is huge waste of human effort and throw the whole U.N. document out of said window.

A=A, more than an identity, is a tautology. Like A= (B/C)*(A*C/B). In such a dumb children thing, the values of B and C can change all they want and nothing will change in the result. It is not the same as saying that A=D/F, which actually relates something to something different.
I did those kinds of “complications” of tautologies when I was 10, just to impress friends. I’m sure these still impress politicians and people from the Humanities, like Drake’s equation.

I cannot follow the arguments of the various posts that seem to think this ‘Kaya identity’ is somehow useful. The equation as given is exactly as Willis said, all the terms except CO2 emissions cancel, halving or doubling any of them will make no difference. Separating the terms is false logic, of course it is possible to improve Energy per unit GDP for instance, but in doing so you must either reduce the Energy term or increase GDP (or both), and these values appear elsewhere and must also be changed, putting them in this equation is pointless.

ironargonaut says:
July 10, 2014 at 12:42 am
Momentum = mass x velocity
@mooloo here is the difference
===
The difference is that that is a equation which embodies a natural law which adds new information. There is nothing to cancel out and it is not 1=1. It is not an identity, It has nothing to do with article.

Is this “Excuse for the Pause #11”? “Plant life is sequestering CO2 faster than humans are emitting it”?

What Willis failed to state was that this is called the Kata Identity. That is a recognition that both sides are mathematically identical as in 1=1. He presumably did not realise what “identity” means in maths.
eg sin(2x)=2.sin(x).cos(x)
It does not add any new information but can be useful as a means of rearranging what is known.
For example if you have a harmonic variation and its derivative, it may be useful to note that adding them will produce a result with twice the frequency.

Dear Willis,
I usually like your posts, but this was silly. All you showed was that the units on both sides of the equation are equal. In elementary physics its called “dimensional analysis”, and it is first step in checking a calculation.
Cheers,
SLL

Your beer formulae is wrong, because you don’t calculate CO2 . You calculate CO2 from beer production.

It’s somewhat harsh to discover that ‘Being there’ was a documentary.

Willis says “Pretty profound, huh? CO2 emissions are equal to CO2 emissions. Who knew”?
Well, if (to keep it simple) A = B * C/B * A/C (as of course it does), where B, C/B and A/C are all meaningful, measurable quantities, isn’t it (at least algebraically) a fair point to say that one can reduce A by reducing any one or more of B, C/B or A/C – so long as the others don’t thereby increase disproportionately?
And, as to “the best way to fight the evil menace of CO2 is to figure out a way to make beer using less energy” are you sure that making beer with less energy (so, dare one assume, more cheaply…) wouldn’t disproportionately increase demand (and perhaps in time, population!), thereby outweighing any saving :-‘)

Patrick says:
July 10, 2014 at 3:12 am
May have been mentioned before but, to me, this is a clear indication of UN Agenda 21. Control population through energy poverty. I have a feeling this won’t work without massive concentartion camps…oh wait…we already have one example on the border between Ethiopia and Kenya, ~2million population some of which were born there and have lived there for 20 years or more.
====
Another one is called Palestine. Population 1.5 million.

Jos. says:
July 10, 2014 at 12:30 am
…
Why? Well, the UK and Ireland had gotten rid of most of their energy intensive energy (de-industrialization)
…
==================
Where did it go? Are people doing without those things that those energy-intensive industries once produced? Maybe some are, because of the declining wealth of Great Britain (per capita), but otherwise would you say those industries have perhaps just migrated to, uhhh, China and India?
So they really haven’t reduced their “CO2 emissions”, have they?

Willis – I am all for humour, but having just read through the intro and UK section of this report, I don’t find it remotely funny. It is deathly serious. This report has the backing of the UN Secretary General and will form the basis of the Paris 2015 ‘son of Kyoto’ initiative. It has a huge writing team and massive funding. About $200 million/annum is spent in climate activism at all levels of government, lobbying, NGOs, development agencies, and much of this from philanthropic foundations – not just the EU. This is NOT a bunch of ‘green loonies’ – as one commentators posted.
Already the UK government has legally obliged itself to reach 80% decarbonisation by 2050! It will aim to do this with 30 nuclear reactors (building one per year after 2020); 300% increase in wind turbines; the decommissioning of the domestic gas grid (down to zero gas heating) to replaced by heat pumps/solar; 25 million electric vehicles and a massive increase in biofuels for transport and electricity generation…..now this IS a form of madness, and wilful blindness to the economic realities, let alone the environmental and social impact.
We are a small country – these activist/green/politicians have a vision (if they actually do have any eyesight at all) of an electro-technical landscape, massive exploitation of the ‘developing’ world (for biofuel); complete disregard for community, indigenous people and wildlife; strong government control of the economy, surveillance and accounting…..
part of the blindness is that Germany, with a strong non-indebted export led economy, has already tried this road – its people rejected nuclear expansion and its exchequer recently called a halt to the programme of wind/solar/biomass because at 20% of the ‘turn-around’ to a low-carbon economy, they can’t afford to go further! The UK is broke and fuels its ‘growth’ by investing its newly printed in money in Chinese growth (and India, Indonesia, Russia and Brazil).
No one can face the fact that cheap energy is a thing of the past and the world economy faces a grinding halt int he next decade. The sad thing is that by taking control of the economy – much as happened in Russia and eastern Europe, all manner of stupidities and brutal damage can be inflicted before the edifice crumbles.
I and a few colleagues look report and wonder – is it worth trying to critique it and feed in to the process (they do request feedback) – even though we know we are dealing not with a technical proposition, but a political ideology. We have spent 20 years providing advice to our government on energy policy and its impacts – most of it not listened to, but some got through. Maybe it is important for our children – that they can see that not everyone was gripped by this curious madness. But to do the job requires resources – and who would provide? Not the government agencies concerned with countryside and community, nor wildlife – as used to be the case. Not the Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, RSPB, Woodland Trust, Wildlife Trust and WWF…they are ALL part of the Climate Coalition, with well-paid activists in their staff.
The situation is deathly serious. I make a plea to get beyond the name-calling and the ridiculous thought that these people want to destroy the economy…..their equations only work if the economy grows. They want to control the economy. And they are NOT closet communists – they know nothing of communism. They have virtually no political education. We desperately need to understand what this ‘movement’ is – in terms of its ideology and structure, if we are to prevent it destroying so much of real value.

We’re only putting the CO2 back into the atmosphere from where it all once was before nature herself sequestered it in the Carboniferous and various other eras. The more and faster we put it up there, the more and faster the CO2 sinks take it up again. I doubt we’ll ever get it up to the roughly 5000ppm (0.5% – tiny) that was around in the Jurassic.

David Gould, thanks for proving my point for me. Different mindset.

Sorry but I think you’ve all entirely misunderstood the point of the identity. The Kaya identity is a means of communicating the factors of which CO2 emissions are comprised, in order to explain the physical levers that are available if one wishes to control an economy’s CO2 emissions. These are analogous to mathematical factors, for e.g. 6 = 3 x 2. This illustrates that 2 and 3 are factors of 6. This doesn’t prove anything mathematically – it’s just an identity. But it is informative nonetheless. It tells you that 6 can be broken down into factors of 2 and 3. In the same way, CO2 emissions can be broken down into factors of population, GDP per population, energy per population, and CO2 emissions per energy.
Roger Pielke Jr has a lot to say about this – and doubtless he explains it a lot better than me. Whether you agree with him or not, you need to be slow indeed to dismiss his analysis as trivial twoddle – as you all seem to be here!!
Willis Eschenbach – you might want to do a bit more background reading on this before dismissing it the way you have. (That isn’t to say you shouldn’t dismiss it in other ways…)

XCO2 —> T
XCO2 x 112% ——-> T?
Can anyone advise me what T? should be ?

Moderators – seriously, this entire post is embarrassing. I fear this site will risk serious loss of credibility as long as this post is allowed to stand.
[your opinion is noted, and ignored -mod]

Author, author, name the author.

I don’t think it’s as dumb as you’re portraying it. I’ve been impressed with Roger Pielke Jr.’s analysis of it in the past.
GDP/Population is a measure of how wealthy a society is.
Energy/GDP is a measure of how efficiently that wealth is produced.
CO2/Energy is a measure of how dependent on fossil fuels that economy is.
The point of that identity is that if your aim is to reduce CO2, your options are:
1. Make everyone poorer
2. Kill off energy-intensive industries
3. Switch energy production to non-fossil sources
If renewables like wind and solar are more expensive, it makes everyone a little poorer and they’ll use less energy. If renewables can’t support industries like aluminum smelting, it’s a triple win!
We can outsource aluminum production to someplace else where the CO2 emissions don’t matter… oops, can’t do that; guess we’d just stop using aluminum. Or if we stop making aluminum in America and Europe, we can blame the CO2 problem on China and they can pay the reparations to Vanatu.

@William Howard Astley
>The UN equation deep decarbonization equation is not correct.
>The UN equation assumes a 50% drop in GDP will result in a 50% drop in CO2 emissions. That is not correct. The drop in GDP is not sustainable.
As usual you are correct.
The idea that if we stop burning ‘fossil fuels’ (right now or gradually) has two thing goings against it: first who said all are fossil fuels? I won’t explore that now. Second, if burning coal (which is finite in supply) were to be stopped now, people would burn biomass, not so? How much would be needed? We would strip the planet.
Geothermal power is possible in many places but the return on the investment is pretty poor except in certain places.
In the far future (300 years is reasonable) we may be able to use hydrothermal vents to generate a huge amount of power. There are lots of them and they are total uncontrollable so will vent for ever, we can presume. Why not take the power available?
The ‘need to decarbonize’ has a political and economic goal, and is not really about ‘decarbonization’, which everyone knows is impossible in the foreseeable future. It is a way to tax emissions, plain and simple. As there is no risk created by the emissions (none we can detect anyway) there is no problem charging people to emit. Emissions will continue, just send money. As long as the fear of emissions is sustained, people will keep handing over money.
I am in support of giving a reformed UN more money, no doubt about it, but it has to be representative of the global peoples and it has to be accountable. This means a vote in international elections, something several major powers are dead set against because it would make them accountable to a higher power. That would make prosecution of war virtually impossible. And that, in some circles, is anathema.

I think if you add a time index to each quantity and then think of this “kaya identity” as an estimation tool it will make more sense.
For example, suppose we have:
a_0 = b_0*c_0*d_0
and this is an identity.
Now lets suppose that at some future time, time =1, I think I can change the value of c. The usefulness of this “identity” I think is the following assumed approximation:
a_1 approximately equals b_0*c_1*d_0
I have no idea if this approximation is reasonable, but I think this is what is going on…
James

richardscourtney:
Incidentally, if you’re looking for evidence and analysis on point 2, start with Roger Pielke Jr

Perhaps we non math majors would better understand the meaning if it was expressed this way:
CO2 emissions = (a) x (b) x (c) x (d)
Whereas :
(a) is population
(b) is GDP per population
(c) is energy used to create GDP
(d) is CO2 emissions from energy in (c)
First you can throw out (a) because it is already expressed in (b) so is therefore redundant
Next you can throw out (d) because that is the answer you are already looking for on the left side of the equation.
That leaves us with the amount of CO2 emissions being derived by calculating the energy used to create a certain GDP based on a certain population.
Now, population is not needed because GDP is not dependent solely on population; less people can produce a higher GDP and more people can produce a lower GDP.
So we are left with CO2 emissions are equal to the energy used to produce GDP.
Finally, that is nonsense because different types of energy production create different levels of CO2 emissions.
That’s why it is said figures lie and liars figure.

richardscourtney
…or you could try thinking about it logically! If an economy consumes a certain amount of energy which produces a certain amount of CO2, and if that economy gets bigger, then all other things being equal, it will produce more CO2! QED. (GDP per head x population = the size of the economy)

Oh dear Lord. I expected more out of the WUWT audience. Simple math :facepalm:.
Thanks for the post Willis.
————–
problem on China and they can pay the reparations to Vanatu.
NikFromNYC says:
July 10, 2014 at 5:12 am
Because all other variables cancel out, this equation negates instead of supports the idea that any of those variables affect carbon dioxide levels!
————
Bingo

Richard,
quoting you
“You then say the equation can be used “when you now how much CO2 you use for producing unit of energy, i.e., when you have a value for the last term CO2/Energy”.
Yes, and the equation can also be used when you DON’T have that value. I explain this as follows.”
My point was, if that was not clear, that the original equation really has four terms: population, GDP produced by that population, energy intensity of GDP and carbon intensity of energy, and using those you can come up with “Total CO2 emissions”. This is also evident if you read the original source.
And it is really simple stuff, I know. It is not difficult to write identities like this. But that does not invalidate the original equation.
quoting you
“And you try to get around this saying, “You shouldn’t treat CO2 as a “separate variable” in the numerator as then you would from the start already know what the total CO2 emissions would be, and wouldn’t need to calculate anything.”
Frankly, “twaddle” is a mild word for that when the equation has CO2 as the sole parameter on one side of the equation and when the equation does not calculate anything because all its variables except CO2 cancel each other.”
If you really want to treat the equation as representing independent parameters which cancel out then please do. But, as I said, if you already know the total CO2 emissions there is nothing to calculate. The point of the equation, be it political or not, is to show how an example of different factors for CO2 emissions and discuss the effect of these factors and how they could be reduced.

Pete Brown says:
July 10, 2014 at 5:34 am

richardscourtney says:
July 10, 2014 at 4:57 am
Richard.
4 questions:
All other things being equal, will CO2 emissions go up or down with each of the following:
1. increasing population?
2. increasing GDP per capita?
3. increasing energy intensity of the economy?
4. increasing carbon intensity of energy?
I’m going to say “up” on each count. That’s all that the Kaya identity is intended to illustrate.

Let’s plug it in and see, shall we?
Co2 emissions = (Pop * 10^6) * (GDP / (Pop * 10^6)) * (Energy / GDP) * (CO2 emissions / Energy)
So, this reduces to:
Co2 emissions = Co2 emissions.
Nope.
Look. No matter what you do to ANY of the terms, no matter what value you assign to ANY of them, the expression is valid. That’s why it reduces. CO2 emissions = CO2 emissions, there is no relationship between CO2 emissions and any of the other variables in that expression.
Let’s check this.
CO2 emissions = 5, population = 6, GDP = 7, energy = 8. then:
5 = 6 * (7/6) * (8/7) * (5/8) -> 5=5 yup.
CO2 emissions = 14, population= 33, GDP = 19, energy = 17, then:
14 = 33 * (19/33) * (17/19) * (14/17) -> 14=14 yup.

To generalize, you have not added any information to the expression:
X=X
by multiplying in and distributing around the factor 1:
X = X * (A/A) * (B/B) * (C/C)
X = A * (B/A) * (C/B) * (X/C)

Hope this helps.

they is not.
Nice.
What I meant to say is, ‘they is not bein’ factors in that ‘spression homey.’

Reblogged this on Centinel2012 and commented:
Their true colors come out! This logic came out of the UN agenda 21 initiative passed in Rio-de-Janeiro in 1992 which when one reads, along with all the rest of the ‘propaganda,’ one sees that the REAL purpose behind all of this is a major reduction in population. What is really meant by ‘sustainable’ is a world with less than one billion people powered by solar and wind which is the maxim that they think those forms of generating energy will support. Their population estimated are probably off as its more like a lot less than one billion.

Mark,
you said: “You think population, GDP and energy are factor in that expression, but they is not.”
Indeed they all are not. Factors are population, GDP produced by that population, energy intensity of GDP and energy intensity of carbon. This is also the way it is explained in the original source. You can increase or decrease any of these factors without changing the others.

They call it the Kaya Identity. Wondering who this Kaya is, I looked her up. In the Urban Dictionary, found her!
“Kaya. a term used to describe someone who is both amazingly beautiful and wonderfully talented, also with a personality fit for an angel.”
Now we know how these do-gooders see themselves. Not really news, though.

IMO the zero proposal makes as much sense as any other religious doctrine relating to demanded penance for imaginary sins….ala self-flagellation…I mean really….what’s next? “Father forgive me for I have farted?” As a longtime Monty Python fan I’m truly looking forward to decades of mocking this whole affair, since history has shown time, and time again, that dogmatic extremism eventually leads to extremists being portrayed as the immoral idiots they are…imagine a TV series about rich eco-fascists and their wild and crazy ideas to save the planet, while each episode reveals how their day-to-day evangelistic hypocrisies results in unintended and sometimes fatal consequences for others less fortunate than themselves…you could run it with a laugh track as a sit-com, or without the laugh track as a horror docu-drama.

tttt – i’m now confused as to who is being thick here.
Assuming that the expression follows rules of algebra, it makes no sense whatsoever to say “you can increase or decrease any of these factors without changing the others.”
You cannot. If you increase population, you decrease GDP produced by that population. The reduction is precisely in proporton to the increase, so there is no overall effect whatsoever.
Anyone over 13 years of age who has done any trivial algebra can see this.
So clearly the only possible conclusion is that this is not an algebraic expression. An anyone who thinks it is has simply the wrong mind set to understand the soft sciences.
C = P * (G/P) * (E/G) * (C/E) == C = (P/P) * (G/G) * (E/E) * C == C = 1 * 1 * 1 * C == C=C
Q.E.D.

tttt,

What it says is: if you know how much CO2 is emitted when producing unit of energy, and you know how many units of energy are produced per unit of GDP, and you know the total produced GDP you get total CO2 emissions. What part of this is wrong?

I don’t know tttt. What part of this is wrong?:
if you know how many bananas per hookers in Vegas, and how many hookers in Vegas per 1952 quarters in circulation, and 1952 quarters in circulation per Vegas hooker, what do you really know?
You know that 1 * X = X. That’s all that tells you.

There appear to be two separate issues being argued in this comment thread:
(1) Some commenters believe that because the Kaya Identity can be reduced to the equation “Amount of CO2” = “Amount of CO2”, it has been falsified (unverified). From my view point, all identities share this property and if the two sides of an equation fail to have identical dimensions, that is a sign of a fatal problem. On this issue I side with Pete Brown’s comments on July 10, 2014 and later.
(2) The second objection(s) relate to George Box’s famous quote that “ all models are wrong; but some are useful. Clearly, the Kaya Identity is a simplistic “zero order model”; but apparently, Roger Pielke Jr. has found it useful for certain analyzes, I believe involving “what-if” analysis. And yet, given my own lack of exposure to Prof. Pielke’s work, it seems reasonable that more knowledgable people might find the application of the Kaya Identify to be problematic and subject to political chicanery. In others they find the model to have no practical value or utility.
So my conclusion is that while the Kaya Identity may be criticized as a non-useful or even an easily abused model, the identity itself can not be falsified on mathematical grounds based on Pete Brown’s arguments (relative to factoring) which I believe to be rational.
Thanks
Dan

Ironically, this puts Willis on the same side of n issue with a certain Rabett who posted this at Pielke Jr’s blog:
EliRabettSat Jun 14, 04:00:00 PM MDT
Applying the Kaya identity as a mantra is naive.
CO2 Emissions = Population (GNP/Pop) (Energy/GNP)(CO2/Energy)
since all it says is CO2 EM = CO2 EM.
The circular logic required of the Katya identity does, however, nicely sum up the underlying fundamental fail of CO2 obsession.

IMHO that equation is not a joke. Of course it’s an identity: it would have to be in order to be correct. However, the point is to look at specific methods of cutting CO emissions. E.g., we could cut population, or we could cut CO2 emissions/energy, etc.

tttt says:
July 10, 2014 at 6:49 am

Mark,
You said: “Yeah, and without changing the resulting CO2 emissions as well.”
No, the CO2 emissions would naturally change.

The expression doesn’t capture that. See here.
You can put ANY value in you like for population, GDP, and energy, and the expression remains true. That’s why it’s a tautology
CO2 emissions = CO2 emissions
CO2 emissions = CO2 emissions * 1
CO2 emissions = CO2 emissions * (a*b*c / a*b*c)
CO2 emissions = (a*b*c / a*b*c) * CO2 emissions
CO2 emissions = a * (b/a) * (c/b) * CO2 emissions/c
The point is, a * (b/a) * (c/b) * 1/c = 1. It makes no difference what values you assign a b c. How you vary them. There is no impact on CO2 emissions, because a b and c are not factors. a*b*c / a*b*c is the factor, and that’s == 1.

Al Gore’s waistline has nothing to do with GDP, right?
Direct quote from the original source (also in the original post by Willis): “The simplest way to describe the deep decarbonization of energy systems is by the principal drivers of energy-related CO2 emissions—for convenience, since the focus of this chapter is on energy systems, we simply refer to them as CO2 emissions. CO2 emissions can be expressed as the product of four inputs: population, GDP per capita, energy use per unit of GDP, and CO2 emissions per unit of energy:
CO2 emissions = Population x (GDP/Population) x (Energy/GDP) x (CO2/Energy) ”
—–
On the right side you have Co2 emissions per produced unit of energy. If you really think that cannot be used to calculate total CO2 emissions then so be it.
Miles driven = Gallons * Miles / gallon. Can this be used or not?

You are thinking too much math if you think increasing population will reduce GDP per capita.
It doesn’t “cancel”.
@ferdberple
GDP/Al Gore’s Waistline
Ok, if Al Gore’s Waistline increases, what happens to GDP?

The equation can be useful as a way to show how modifying anything on the right changes the answer on the left, which is mislabelled and should be something like DeltaCO2. The equation can show clearly what effects large scale changes can have on CO2 emissions. It can be shown, for instance, that a global pandemic killing say 80% of humanity would seriously reduce our CO2 emissions. It makes clear the stark reality of reducing CO2 emissions.

P.S. Mods – it can’t be both “noted” and “ignored”. Those are mutual exclusive concepts.

Again I agree with Pete Brown. . . to those that attempt to invalidate the Kaya Identity based on mathematical grounds. . . your arguments are embarrassing! If you find the Identity to be overly simplistic (e.g., missing important factors, non-linearities etc.) fine. . . otherwise . . .
Dan

@JohnB:
GDP per capita, not GDP.

@DanielG
Thanks for the comment, but I did mean GDP.
If population doubles and GDP *per capita* stays the same, CO2 emissions would double. CO2 emissions would stay the same if GDP per capita halved. i.e. *GDP* stayed the same.

concepts.
JohnB says:
July 10, 2014 at 7:28 am
Oh dear!
All this because Willis (and most commenters here) don’t understand the difference between an *equation* and an *identity*.
It is called the Kaya Identity, not the Kaya Equation. An identity is true for all values. You don’t *solve* an identity, it is always true. So what is the purpose of it? As has been noted above, the purpose is to show CO2 emissions as a product of meaningful terms: population, wealth per person, energy use and CO2 efficiency of energy production. It is *meant* to cancel out. That is what identities do!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_%28mathematics%29
—————————-
But the equation shows that CO2 is not a product of the other variables, it shows that CO2 is independant of the other variables.

An interesting article. Isn’t one of the limitations of the Kaya Equation that it only relates to carbon dioxide emmisioned used to produce energy ? For example wif e chop down trees and burn them, i.e. deforestation, then carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, but no one using this energy.
I am unclear how this “Carbon dioxide released into the air by burning” would be reflected in the carbon emissions per unit of energy consumed term .
The Science Geek

@Joseph Murphy
But the equation shows that CO2 is not a product of the other variables, it shows that CO2 is independant of the other variables.
It is an identity, and it doesn’t show anything. You have to use logic in order to work out results. One might think that increasing population won’t cause increasing CO2 emissions due to the identity. After all, GDP per capita will decrease proportionally. But that is not what happens in real life. When population increases, so does GDP. Therefore math cannot tell whether CO2 emissions will rise or not. If we assume some degree of linearity, GDP will increase proportionally to the population (production, consumption, imports, exports, and gov. spending). Thus GDP per capita is more or less independent of population. Rising population, rising CO2 emissions.

JohnB
Yes!
Admittedly your way was quicker…

Daniel,
If you think there is a relationship between the variables (and in fact I do), use empirical data to work out the relationship. Or use a theoretical relationship, that’s fine too. The tautology does not tell us anything about what the relationship is in reality.
How do I choose between these tautologies?
1) CO2 emissions = sqrt(GDP) * (population^2) / (sqrt(GDP) * energy/(population^2) * co2em / energy
2) CO2 emissions = (GDP^2) * sqrt(population) / (GDP^2) * energy/(sqrt(population) * co2em / energy
3) CO2 emissions = bannas * hookersinVegas / bananas * coinsInCirc/hookersInVegas * co2em / coinsinCirdc
I need to know which describes something in reality that I care about.
Maybe I’m being unreasonable. I think that
F = MA
tells me something useful about reality. I don’t think that
F = X * (Y/X) * (Z/Y) * (F/Z)
gives me any information about anything.

“As has been noted above, the purpose is to show CO2 emissions as a product of meaningful terms: population, wealth per person, energy use and CO2 efficiency of energy production.”-JohnB
But the point is the Kayla Identity is not “SHOWING” anything (any more than my Rodney equation I posted earlier does). The Kayla equation is merely stating what you assume (i.e. that you think there is a connection between C02 and population etc).
As it happens I for one do think C02 is linked to the terms in the Kayla equation. And that only makes it worse because unlike my Rodney equation which is easy to spot as nonsense albeit true nonsense because the Kayla equation contains connected terms it makes it look like it saying something more meaningful than it really is.
For example lets say I suspect that current (I), Voltage (V) and Resistance (R) are somehow related to each other. So taking my queue from the Kayla equation I write.
V = R * (I/R) * (V/I)
In this equation as it happens I correctly imply that there is a relation between V, I and R. But this equation (which is completely true) hides the fact that it gives no actual useful information about how V, I and R are related to each other. It does not tell me for example that V = IR. It is just a useless tautology stating that V=V and that I’m guessing it might have something to do with I and R (but I am not actually stating anything meaningful about how V relates to I and R if it does).
That all change once I right V = IR.

You can reduce or raise the population. You can reduce or raise the GDP per capita. You can reduce or raise the energy intensiveness of GDP. You can reduce or raise the carbon intensiveness of energy. These are all independent quantities, susceptible to being changed by appropriate policy.
I can’t believe some of you are having difficulty with this.

I don’t think there’s anything to laugh to on that equation. It is reasonable decomposition of the CO2 production. You just reduced it backwards the way how it was originally created.
Of course that equation has little sense if you’re trying to reduce emissions to zero. Because the only way is just that – to reduce CO2 to zero. You don’t solve it e.g. by reducing population, GDP, or energy production to zero because that way you only get CO2 = CO2 * 0 / 0.
But on the other hand this equation does have a lot of sense when talking about CO2 emission reductions. And its factors can often be reasonably forecasted.
Unlike your Gross Beer Production factors.

The ONLY thing you can do to reduce CO2 emissions is to reduce CO2 emissions.
Really? So (for the state of argument) shooting every living human wouldn’t reduce CO2 emissions?

@Tamara:
Prove that there is a relation between dogs and geese, geese and mice, and mice and elephants.
Guess What: There isn’t.
@Rodney:
Note that R is defined to be V/I:
V = I * (V/I)
@Mark Bofil:
Sqrt(GDP) is meaningless. Prove there is a relation between co2em and coinsinCirdc.
The point of the ratio quantities is to create independent variables.

There is no math error. You, in fact, proved that there wasn’t an error. When we write Y = f(x), well, f(x) better equal Y. I can’t understand how it could be otherwise.
Maybe your criticism is that the equation is trivial. Here again, I would disagree. The equation tells you that if we reduce population we reduce CO2 emissions. Logical, no? Maybe you consider that trivial. OK. But, it also tells you that if we reduce GDP/population. In other words, if we reduce the average wealth of individuals, we reduce CO2 emissions. Now that, I, for one, consider profound, and a stunning admission.

If this identity (as its supporters call it) is other than a standard mathematical equation (is it?) and its purpose is to calculate and/or display the relationships between population change/GDP change/energy usage changes on one hand and CO2 emission changes on the other, then I think such an effort is best accomplished with data graphs rather than this identity. If this is indeed other than a standard mathematical equation, exactly how is it supposed to work and be understood? Graphs are easier to understand.
This “equation” would have to be other than a standard mathematical equation because it indeed makes no sense as such due to the CO2 emissions variable being on both sides and the remaining variables cancelling themselves out.
The only thing being accomplished by using this identity in the climate debate rather than displayed data in graphic form is to generate controversy.

I am for recarbonization because is the good thing to do for the environment. And since it is good for the environment by helping plants grow faster, it is also good for the people.

>> The equation tells you that if we reduce population we reduce CO2 emissions.
It most definitely DOES NOT tell you this.
Let’s try some high school algebra (even)
Assume these variables
Population = 300 million
GDP = 3 trillion dollars
energy = 500 trillion joules
According to the forumula
CO2 = 300 million people * ($3 trillion / 300 million people) * (500 trillion joules / $3 trillion) * (CO2 emissions/500 trillion joules)
Note that you cannot solve for CO2 (other than the fact that it can be anything – even units don’t matter – it could be “400 bananas” or “5 quadrillion barrels of oil”). But if we use algebra that’s been around for the last, oh, few thousand years, you end up with this after simplifying:
CO2 = CO2
Now let’s say that we halve the population to 150 million. Everything else remains the same.
CO2 = 150 million people * ($3 trillion / 150 million people) * (500 trillion joules / $3 trillion) * (CO2 emissions/500 trillion joules)
That simplifies to (suprise!)
CO2 = CO2
If we had gone with 400 bananas of CO2 or 5 quadrillion barrels of oil, they are unaffected by population.
It’s disheartening to see how many people think this equation is somehow useful.

@Jason L says:
Everything else remains the same.
Bullshit, GDP decreases.

Daniel G,

Sqrt(GDP) is meaningless. Prove there is a relation between co2em and coinsinCirdc.

1) You give me the unsupported assertion that sqrt(GDP) is meaningless, and in the next breath demand that I prove a relationship. Why do you get to make unsupported assertions where I have to prove relationships?
2) But this is in fact my point. Prove there is a relationship between these variables (or at least demonstrate it) and show me what it is.

The point of the ratio quantities is to create independent variables.

Yes. And doing so assumes without a scrap of support that there is a specific relationship between the variables. And again, I happen to believe that there is a relationship, but that has not been demonstrated, nor has the specific nature of the relationship been illuminated. It would be much clearer and less misleading to say:
Co2 Emissions = F(Population, GDP, Energy, Misc)
in my book.

>> Of course, you halved population, and doubled GOP per capita. All other things weren’t equal.
No, I halved population. The formula — as presented — doubled GDP per capita.

So you think it plausible that if we magically eliminated half the human population, we’d all be twice as productive?

>> Of course, you halved population, and doubled GOP per capita. All other things weren’t equal.
By the way, let’s say halving the population also halves GDP per capita. It doesn’t change anything. The formula still reduces to CO2 = CO2. You can study for ten years the effect that population has on GDP (maybe you find that halving population causes people to be a little more productive, so it only reduces per capita GDP by 40%). Plug in your findings into that formula, and learn exactly nothing about CO2.