Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A report by the International Energy Agency claims that emissions which will be saved by COP21 / Paris climate pledges currently on the table, will only delay Climageddon by 8 months.
According to the IEA;
Nationally determined pledges are the foundation of COP21. Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) submitted by countries in advance of COP21 may vary in scope but will contain, implicitly or explicitly, commitments relating to the energy sector. As of 14 May 2015, countries accounting for 34% of energy-related emissions had submitted their new pledges. A first assessment of the impact of these INDCs and related policy statements (such as by China) on future energy trends is presented in this report in an “INDC Scenario”. This shows, for example, that the United States’ pledge to cut net greenhouse-gas emissions by 26% to 28% by 2025 (relative to 2005 levels) would deliver a major reduction in emissions while the economy grows by more than one-third over current levels. The European Union’s pledge to cut GHG emissions by at least 40% by 2030 (relative to 1990 levels) would see energy-related CO2 emissions decline at nearly twice the rate achieved since 2000, making it one of the world’s least carbon-intensive energy economies. Russia’s energy-related emissions decline slightly from 2013 to 2030 and it meets its 2030 target comfortably, while implementation of Mexico’s pledge would see its energy-related emissions increase slightly while its economy grows much more rapidly. China has yet to submit its INDC, but has stated an intention to achieve a peak in its CO2 emissions around 2030 (if not earlier), an important change in direction, given the pace at which they have grown on average since 2000.
Growth in global energy-related GHG emissions slows, but there is no peak by 2030 in the INDC Scenario. The link between global economic output and energy-related GHG emissions weakens significantly, but is not broken: the economy grows by 88% from 2013 to 2030 and energy-related CO2 emissions by 8% (reaching 34.8 gigatonnes). Renewables become the leading source of electricity by 2030, as average annual investment in non- hydro renewables is 80% higher than levels seen since 2000, but inefficient coal-fired power generation capacity declines only slightly. With INDCs submitted so far, and the planned energy policies in countries that have yet to submit, the world’s estimated remaining carbon budget consistent with a 50% chance of keeping the rise in temperature below 2 °C is consumed by around 2040 – eight months later than is projected in the absence of INDCs. This underlines the need for all countries to submit ambitious INDCs for COP21 and for these INDCs to be recognised as a basis upon which to build stronger future action, including from opportunities for collaborative/co-ordinated action or those enabled by a transfer of resources (such as technology and finance). If stronger action is not forthcoming after 2030, the path in the INDC Scenario would be consistent with an average temperature increase of around 2.6 °C by 2100 and 3.5 °C after 2200.
Even if alarmists were right about anthropogenic climate change, what a complete and utter waste of effort.
No mention of India’s vast increase in coal usage / CO2 output, or Brazil for that matter. Or Germany. Or Japan…
CO2? You mean PLANT FOOD.
I’d like to see them doubling and tripling their use of coal and quadrupling Co2 output, just to prove this whole idiotic Co2 quack false.
China’s increase dwarfs everyone on your list.
You mean the China that recently announced that they weren’t going to consider doing anything vis-a-vis emissions until 2030? The “successful deal” that Obama “negotiated” celebrated and was doing victory laps about?
Where do they get this from? Ferchrissake they cannot predict the weather to next week.
Ah, but you see weather is different than climate. With weather everybody will be around to see if the prediction is right. With climate they won’t be around. Or, they’ll forget.
Apart from that we know that colder is weather, warmer is climate. Always.
They don’t believe it either. Nobody believes it save a few loonies on the Grauniad environment pages.
If they did believe in dangerous AGW they would recognise that 8 months is negligible, significant changes to negotiations improbable and thus adaptation becomes inevitable.
And then they’d quit these jollies in Paris, Cancun and the like and get on with growing the economy with the cheapest energy sources available in order to pay for the required adaption.
But they don’t believe it either.
I do not believe they will stop anything, there is too much money swilling into their pot.
You are almost correct. They will not “Stop” but subtly and slowly change their direction to adapting to the “new consensus”. Warmists and activists will successfully fool almost everyone, re-direct the pot of money to this “new direction” and just carry on to save the world. Just watch.
It’s not about the science. It probably never was. Don’t you remember the following statement?
“Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing, in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.” Timothy Wirth quoted in “Science Under Siege” by Michael Fumento, 1993.
They are wackos.
How many climageddon tipping points of no return do these guys get to watch come and go before nobody pays them even the least attention?
Logic was never their strong point was it?
That eight months will have to decrease with the amount of CO2 released by the delegates flying into France in their private jets.
right – one flies from Paris to Le Havre and the other one from Poitier to Berlin to watch a football match
And maybe Leonardo DiCaprio will arrive in that ridiculous yacht he borrows occasionally to pontificate to us plebeians.
The alarmists are like the Bourbon kings, they forget nothing and at the same time they learn nothing. The politics that will happen at the Paris meeting are exactly the same ones that have applied every year since Copenhagen.
ie – https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2010/12/03/cancun-and-the-chinese-perspective-on-it/
A more light-hearted version – https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/the-real-doh-about-doha/
Pointman
These emissions reductions pledges are intended to get support for a significant reduction in fossil fuel consumption, to reduce energy dependence on OPEC and Russia. We have indications oil and gas are getting harder and more expensive to extract outside the OPEC and Russia oil basins, and this signals prices will climb steeply. I’m starting to think the global warming hysteria is mostly related to the energy security problem, Obama and the Europeans may actually be hyping global warming to get support for cutbacks.
I’m also sensing there’s significant growth in propaganda and lies spread by a pro renewables lobby, which may be financed by corporate interests seeking to increase sales via huge subsidies. This could turned into the ethanol mess cubed.
To be clear, I think greenhouse gas emissions and their accumulation in the atmosphere do cause global warming, but I don’t think the effect is as strong as touted, nor do I believe the propaganda coming out of the White House and associated entities. Energy security, overpopulation, and the rise of Chinese style capitalist dictatorships are a much bigger problem.
Oil and gas are actually going to be abundant for the next 10 to 30 years. Fracking. Fracking puts a cap on prices around $70 a bbl.
M Simon, I must acknowledge I’m an engineer with 40 years’ experience in the oil industry. I prefer to refer to it as “unconventional light oil and condensate reservoirs”. My guess is that $70 per barrel won’t be sufficient to keep North Dakota’s Bakken from declining for 10 years. The same applies to the Eagle Ford, the Niobrara, and other USA reservoirs.
Furthermore, the world consumes almost 80 million barrels of crude oil and condensate per day, and a significant portion comes from regions which lacked the ability to hold production stable in 2010-11-12-13 & 14. That’s five years of high prices which failed to stimulate production such as to reverse decline in dozens of countries.
The message seems to be clear: neither deep oil, nor the light oils from fractured reservoirs, nor the extra heavy oil fields have the capacity potential to keep oil prices from rising above $70 per barrel. Eventually, prices will hit $150 per barrel, and this will put tremendous power in the hands of OPEC and Russia. As I mentioned, the trend must be very clear to the high level politicians, and I think this hysteria had to be caused by energy security concerns.
fernandoleanme June 15, 2015 at 5:50 am
“Eventually, prices will hit $150 per barrel, and this will put tremendous power in the hands of OPEC and Russia.”
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I rather doubt that this will be the case in the short term since the experience of South Africa with the extraction of oil from coal was that the break even price for the process was about $100 per barrel. Obviously, South Africa had already invested in the required plant so newcomers to the process would have to make an upfront investment, so that might add something to the break even price of $100 per barrel. But then again, new technology may make extraction more efficient and cheaper thereby off-setting the investment costs associated with the buiding of the necessary plant.
There is plenty of coal, and obviously it is not worth investing in the process whilst oil hovers around the $100 to $115 point, but once it gets above that, on long term basis, I consider it probably that many countries will look into the extraction of oil from coal.
I suspect that oil will not get above $115 per barrel (on sustained basis) for a long time since there are many geopolitical factors which are keeping a lid on that. But who knows with the position in teh Middle East, and matters could quickly change.
PS. I do not think that the world has come to terms with the impact of US shale. this has feed the USA of dependency on the Middle East and that has brought about a sea change in polical power and foreign affiars.
The low price of oil was undoubtly a geopolitcal movement caused by the US to pressurise Russia. Reagan brought an end to the cold war with low oil prices, and this tactic is being used again with the hope to bring Russia to heal and allow the NATO & european expansion.
Closer to 100 years.
Richard, I wrote eventually. My guess is that by 2035 to 2045 there won’t be enough coal to justify building one of those plants. Everything in this world has a limit. Nothing is infinite, and it just takes a lot more money to extract it as we move to harder to extract reserves.
We have close to 1000 years of coal at current production levels.
Mark, the current reserves to production ratio for coal is about 100, but if coal production keeps increasing then the ratio is smaller. If we assume that coal is used to make synthetic fuels then consumption goes up even more. Eventually coal prices go up so much the world enters a coal supply crisis. Whatever fuel we discuss will suffer from a similar fate: eventually prices go up so much there’s demand destruction. It’s hard to pick a date, but I think many countries are willing to play along with the global warming hysteria because they are afraid of a future energy crisis.
World population decline starts around 2050.
I think it’s going to start declining sooner. People are likely to starve and we should see war break out all over. What do you think is going to happen in Africa with a much larger population and energy costs climbing to the point they can’t afford it?
In Africa, people cannot afford food let alone power. That’s been happening for decades!
Wait until we have 600 million starving Africans trying to cross the Mediterranean and tell me that’s just fine.
May be not 600 million, but certainly many thousandands. It seems to me you have never experienced “poverty” at all.
Wrong. Energy independence is a red herring “goal” they like to trot out every so often, but it is a complete lie. Furthermore, your Belief that man is causing global warming, even if less than what Alarmists tout is not based on real-world evidence, because there isn’t any.
IBruce, I suggest you read the Lewis and Curry paper.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00382-014-2342-y
Or read this discussion at Climate Etc
http://judithcurry.com/2014/09/24/lewis-and-curry-climate-sensitivity-uncertainty/
If oil and gas are getting more difficult to extract, why are oil and gas prices falling?
Mark, oil and gas prices are falling because prices were over $100 per barrel and financing costs were fairly low. We also saw a very aggressive posture by oil companies investing in the “fractured shale” targets. The extraction uses a horizontal well with up to about 30 large hydraulic fractures, a technique which leads to very high initial rates but also has very fast rate decline. Over the last five years the high price environment led these companies to drill thousands of wells. This in turn increased production extremely fast. But now, in June 2015, production is declining at a fast pace. The big question is which price encourages some drilling without causing excess production. My guess is this lies in the $85 dollar per barrel range.
Thus we can expect prices to bounce around erratically, but the eventual outcome is higher prices, simply because production in so many countries is marginal below $100 plus per barrel.
Natural gas is more plentiful, but the answer is similar, there’s over drilling, and companies are crossing their fingers the USA government will allow more exports. But eventually the gas will require much higher prices to be profitable.
By the way, the Energy Information Energy has been releasing contradictory and inaccurate production figures.
You give “the smartest President ever” – way too much credit.
The only thing he thinks ahead of the curve on is his next “Tee time”.
Took a while to access the document – website must be running on wind eh.
I guess I’m not the only one who decided to check that they had actually said something as stupid as this.
Do these people have anything to do with actual power generation?
Not sure I’d trust any of them to put a plug on the end of a cable ….
You can keep an eye on Power Generation here:
http://protonboron.com/portal/power-grid-frequency-meter/
PLANT FOOD is not dangerous to Earth. Lack of it is.
Inefficient coal fired plants? Well lowest KWh cost maybe.
The Warmist response to this would probably be along the lines of “a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step”, or “we have to start somewhere”. They have a “vision”, and that vision is zero “carbon emissions” in order to “save the planet”. How we get there, and what it costs are to them minor details to be hashed out.
If you read the whole Tao Te Ching the quote “a journey of a thousand miles starts with one step” has a context. The journey requires forethought and planning, as well as purpose, sort of a “think before you step” admonition. The greenies are doing everything but think.
What the vision costs and how to get there may not matter to the “warmists”, but they matter to John Q. Public, who so far has not been asked to give up much. Wait till this vision starts to “bite”.
“Even if alarmists were right about anthropogenic climate change, what a complete and utter waste of effort. “
You may have misconstrued the aim of the UN treaties, which might have nothing to do with ‘global average temperatures’ in some future poorly modeled world. So ask: what else would the UN achieve out of the exercise?
UN would achieve independence from all gov’ts that would have lost their sovereignty. From that point on, UN calls the shots for the world.
GREEN MOVEMENT NEEDS FLUSHING!!
Based on a few back-of-the-bar-napkin calculations that’s a mere $520,833,000 per hour in hits against the world economy. But I’m sure the greenies will claim that you can’t put a price on this stuff.
Astonishing accuracy: 8 months, so that would mean april 1 2040
Will they promise to “shut the eff up” and stop their swilling at the trough once this deadline is passed?
Pre-1750 AD, we’re told CO2 was in the atmosphere at 280ppm. Now it’s 400. That’s an increase of 43%.
Despite this increase there’s been no global climatic disaster.
However, we’ve seen inconsequential fraction of a degree temperature variations fiddled about with, adjusted, and with nauseating frequency presented as a global danger.
Yet life on the planet goes on.
Why should we for one minute think that any future CO2 increases will make any difference whatsoever?
Saved by Karl et al!
I don’t know what sort of trend the IEA is using, but Karl et al says about 0.6C° per century. They’re going to have to push that 2040 deadline out a century or so. Or says that Karl et al is wrong.
I think the greatest political failure of Karl et al will be that by getting rid of the pause, they have created their own inconvenient conclusion. Things aren’t as bad as they once appeared! Let’s help make Karl et al backfire on COP21.
“Karl et al says about 0.6C° per century.”
He is saying about 1.06 or 1.16 C per century.
Lance please correct me if I’m wrong. The quote above from Ric Werme is for the period 1998 -2014. That’s 16 years. 100/16 = 6.25. 6.25 x 0.106 = 0.66 C° per century.
Ric’s right (as usual). 🙂
It is all a COP out.
no-one takes the pledges seriously, do they? if only the MSM would inform the public.
way to go, India:
April 2015: PDF: 30 pages: Centre for Policy Research India: Informing India’s Energy and Climate Debate: Policy Lessons from Modelling Studies
(page 17) However, the picture looks very different with per capita emissions (Figure 5). Even after doubling or tripling per capita emission levels, India’s 2030 emissions are in the range about 3.25 tonnes/capita, +/- 0.45 tonnes, which on a global scale is relatively narrow. Notably, this 2030 range is well below the current 2011 world average of 4.6 tonnes/capita…
http://www.cprindia.org/sites/default/files/events/Informing%20India%27s%20Energy%20and%20Climate%20Debate_CPR-IIASA.pdf
way to go, Nigeria:
February 2015: This Day Nigeria: Coal Power to the Rescue
Today, coal-fired power plants provide about 41 per cent of global electricity. With Nigeria’s electricity challenges, the government is turning to coal as an alternative energy source.
Five out of the 10 world’s leading coal producers had in 2014 generated most of the electricity used in powering their economies from their coal power plants…
The government recently said that Nigeria has about 2.8 billion metric tonnes of coal deposits left untapped and which if tapped, can generate electricity for the country for about 30 years…
http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/coal-power-to-the-rescue/200817/
“…inefficient coal-fired power generation…”
So coal-fired stations cannot by definition be ‘efficient’? How efficient is a Power Tower of bird-frying mirrors? Are they not using steam generation?
If it could only shut up the global warmers at the BBC for 8 months that would be a result.
‘Even if alarmists were right about anthropogenic climate change, what a complete and utter waste of effort. ‘
No just a good excuse to keep up the ante , or do you really think that even if they get what they want in Paris it will stop there ?
Extremists in pratice have no ‘limit’ to their demands for they can always think of something more then could have to met their ‘perfect world ‘
‘Paris Climax 2015’ – Should this be censored?
“eight months later than is projected in the absence of INDCs.”
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more time has been spent in the conferences.
http://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/about-bp/energy-economics/energy-outlook.html
The latest release. It provides an assessment of energy consumption by fuel type in the downloadable Excel tables.
Th estimate goes out to 2035. Not unexpectedly, the use of every fuel type increases. Renewables which currently provide some 2.6% of global consumption are estimated to provide some 6.7% of global consumption in 2035.
Of course, this is just one projection and by an evil Oil company – that I used to work for 🙂 – but BP’s Annual Review is usually a good reference.
Whether or not this projection holds remains to be seen but I somehow doubt that the indicated 6.7% renewable contribution in 2035 is what the alarmists want or expect.
In the grand scheme of things, all they care about is Carbon Taxes. All the junk science is just a smoke screen.
Absurd doesn’t get much more absurd than this.
Much ado about nothing (in terms of climate) but much ado about how to tax and spend us all into poverty.
The INDCs that countries are required to submit are educated guesses about what might happen to future emissions if present policies and programs continue. In some cases, countries include in their assumptions the adoption of several new emissions reductions that might happen under “favourable” conditions including strong new government mandates, sharply higher taxes on fossil fuel consumption, ever-larger subsidies for “green” energy and rapid dissemination of new technologies. In other words, they represent a combination of systematic modelling and political wishes. It is interesting, in this context, that with countries accounting for 34% of current emissions reporting (i.e. almost certainly the OCED countries and a few others, but none of the developing countries where emissions will grow fastest) the so-called carbon budget is fully consumed by 2040. That is like saying that, realistically, there is no hope of attaining the IPCC’s targets related to not exceeding the (arbitrary) two degree C. temperature increase goal. For those who believe in the science of catastrophism and the IPCC modelling, one wonders when the penny will drop and they will all start focusing on measures to adapt to climate change, rather than on attempting to mitigate it.
I have a Jamaican friend who likes to discuss solar power. He seems to be fairly well off, which in Jamaica means having the ability to talk things over with a politician. I suggested they submit a very nice emissions goal based on getting cheap loans subsidized by Rich nations, with investment coming from private corporations. I also suggested they ask for technical help, because solar power really won’t help that much in Jamaica. A small country can make lots of money out of this global warming racket but they need to know how to push the right technology and politics buttons.
Fernando, I can’t bear the thought of solar and wind power structures destroying my favorite place, where some of my favorite friends live. There are so many beautiful birds there. Perhaps putting solar panels on the roofs of the huts with batteries to provide light (and the all-important sound system) instead of running cords out from the land owner’s house might make sense, but you’ll literally have to give those people that stuff because they are doing okay as is. Besides they already use solar hot water – the rain barrels are black and sunshine is well mixed with precipitation to replenish and heat their bathing water.
May I (all in fun) share a suspicion? I think the only thing that the French fear about climate change is that England might grow better grapes.
My calculations only came out to 7months, 29 days and 12 hours. They might have forgotten to include the Theodician Metaphasic Tranch enhancement Dampening. It’s a common mistake.
Pardon me for asking, but is climageddon possibly referring to the upcoming solar grand minimum?
Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
“Even if alarmists were right about anthropogenic climate change, what a complete and utter waste of effort.”
Has anyone off to Paris worked out exactly what the figure for climate sensitivity is yet? If not the 2C figure is utterly useless as is the latest climate gabfest / junket …