Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Well, the Joe Romm saga continues. He’s been discussing the paper “Evidence for super-exponentially accelerating atmospheric carbon dioxide growth“. After I pointed out the problems with the paper’s ludicrous claims about population, Joe pulled his whole goofy section repeating the paper’s population errors. He also talked to one of the authors, and they’re going to pull that section out of their paper. Joe didn’t mention WUWT when he modified his page, either. Typical.
Of course, that means that I’ve now got to read the rest of the paper. I threw up my hands before when I hit that nonsense about population, but since they’ve pulled it out of the paper, I’ve gotta continue. Ah, well, gotta take the bitter with the sweet. Can’t say I’m looking forward to reading that paper, though. I threw up my hands before, I hope that’s all I throw up. Wish me luck …
Figure 1. Do I really have to read the paper? Photo Source
OK, been there, read that. First, what is their basic thesis?
To understand their basic thesis, we have to get past their terminology. What does “super-exponentially accelerating” mean?
Well, it means that the growth rate is increasing. Why didn’t they say that? Hey, they’re climate scientists. Their motto seems to be “don’t educate, obfuscate”.
In any case, their main claim seems to be that the growth rate of atmospheric CO2 is increasing, and that the growth rate of the population is “just” exponential (stable growth). Their conclusion says:
4 Conclusion
We have analyzed the growth of atmospheric carbon dioxide and of what constitutes arguably its most important underlying driving variable, namely human population. Our empirical calibrations suggest that human population has decelerated from its previous super-exponential growth until 1960 to “just” an exponential growth. As for atmospheric CO2 content, we find that it is at least exponentially increasing and more probably exhibiting an accelerating growth rate, consistent with a FTS (finite-time singular) power law regime.
Well … no and yes. No, if the pre-1960 increasing population growth rates are “super-exponential”, then the decreasing population rates since then must be “sub-exponential”. It is not “just exponential”, that statement is not supported by the evidence.
And yes, the rate of atmospheric CO2 growth has been increasing. It’s gone from about 0.25% increase per year in the 1960s to about a 0.5% annual increase in the last decades, although it has been far from constant. Here’s that data:
Figure 2. Annual growth in atmospheric CO2. Data from Mauna Loa.
OK, so the population growth rate is decreasing, and the CO2 growth rate is increasing. That’s what’s so. But … so what?
Both Joe Romm and the authors of the paper seem to think that this is a Very Bad Thing™. Let’s stop a moment and consider what the numbers really mean. We know what the population numbers mean. But what does a “super-exponential acceleration” in CO2 growth mean in the real world?
Consider that at some point not long after 2050 the world population will stabilize. The population of a number of countries has already stabilized (or is dropping). Suppose (as seems quite possible) that atmospheric CO2 rates continue to rise after the population has stabilized. What would that mean, rising atmospheric CO2 growth rates at a time of stable population? What would be happening in the real world to cause that?
Simply put, it would mean that the growth rate of energy use per capita was increasing. Whoa, can’t have that, speeding up the rate at which people get more energy.
Remember, energy use per capita is another name for development. They are synonymous, as I discuss here. I show how this affects the Solomon Islands, a developing country, here.
So the slowing population growth, combined with increasing atmospheric CO2, means that we are winning the twin battles to stabilize population and to bring energy to the people of the planet.
Joe Romm and the authors of the paper think that’s a bad thing. They think the unknown distant future dangers of CO2 outweigh today’s desperate need for energy for the poor people of the planet … which means most of the people of the planet.
I hold the opposite view. I think that bringing energy to the poor now, today, is much more important than any imagined catastrophe that even the alarmists say will not occur for thirty to fifty years.
The claim is often made that the poor will be the hardest hit by warming. As someone who has never been poor, but often broke, I can assure you that’s nonsense. I’ve slept in the city streets with my pants and shirt stuffed full of newspapers, I don’t recommend it. Cold is the enemy of the poor, not warmth, that’s an ivory-tower fantasy.
In addition, the forecast changes from the IPCC talking heads are that the warming will be mostly in the extra-tropics, at night, in the winter. Although the academics may think that’s terrible, I doubt that the homeless folks in New York or London will complain about warmer winter nights …
The best way to protect the poor from the ravages of the climate is to make them middle-class, and that takes energy. The fact that we are depriving the world’s poor of energy now, in order to save them from a hypothesized and ill-supported possible calamity fifty years from now, is a monstrous aberration of basic justice that history will rightly condemn.
w.
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“The best way to protect the poor from the ravages of the climate is to make them middle-class, and that takes energy. The fact that we are depriving the world’s poor of energy now, in order to save them from a hypothesized and ill-supported possible calamity fifty years from now, is a monstrous aberration of basic justice that history will rightly condemn.
w.”
Abso-effen-lutely!
I wonder if providing cheap energy to the developing countries, and thus allow their young to use computers and play with the various electronic toys such as Nintendo, X-box, etc – might help to get them less interested in guns and tribal or religious warfare …
I think it was in the late 19th century that someone speculated that by 2000 London’s streets would be covered in meters of horse manure. They didn’t know that cars would replace horse carriages. Malthus did not know about the coming industrial revolution and so on….. By 2050 this whole talk of the worst case scenario of co2 output might just be a thing of the past. People may laugh saying that we weren’t to know about…….[insert innovation, invention, discovery]. The Romms of this world are way tooooooo pessemistic.
Correction:
“Malthus did not know about the coming agricultural revolution and so on….. “
Ant respiration produces more CO2 than our use of fossil fuels so let’s get rid of the ants.
(sarc)
I suppose this rubbish paper will be peer reviewed and not found wanting.
You have nailed it again, Willis. Romm and his colleagues cruelly mis-use the English language, way past the point of torture, in their attempts to construct alarmist nonsense.
I understand how carefully you construct your writing, but your comment, despite its accuracy, about making people ‘middle class’ will not go down well with large numbers in the UK, where rational discussions using internationally accepted social classifications just do not work. The term ‘Midlle Class’ is used as an epithet by many university-educated people in the UK who use their own parents’ or grandparents’ working class origins as a badge of pride and identity; they stoutly maintain their own membership of the ‘working class’ against all comers.
I first came across this in New Zealand when a Welsh scientist I worked with, a world-class botanist, an all-round good bloke, a wonderfully popular lecturer and an accomplished classical guitarist who grew up in a Welsh mining community, immediately became very angry when another Kiwi colleague innocently described the Welshman as ‘middle class’.
“My father and his father’s father worked down the Pits all of their working lives; I am working bloody class and proud of it!”
It is a commonplace here to see newspaper articles about ‘sharp-elbowed middle class parents stealing the education chances of working class children’ etc, which I find absurd. I once told a group of teaching colleagues here in London that it was ‘our mission as teachers to attempt to make all of our students middle class.’ they failed utterly to understand what I was attempting to say and I immediately became an object of suspucion and dislike. I had proclaimed myself to be one of the despised middle class!
“It is one step below Super Duper Exponentially Accelerating.”
I thought the next step was ludicrous acceleration.
Fans of Warner Brothers animation of 50-60 years back will recall some cartoons featuring Bugs Bunny and Wile E. Coyote, in which Wile E. introduces himself with the name “Wile E. Coyote, Suuuperrr Genius!” Maybe that’s who postulated the formula for Suuperrr-Exponential?!
George V.
I suppose that Romm can blame his delusion of hyper-ultra-super-exponential acceleration on ermm Toyota Prius. 😉
Vince Causey says:
March 17, 2011 at 3:30 pm
Well, I’ve never heard of super exponential acceleration before, and it sure sounds scary. The graph of co2 looks more linear than super duper – I’m sure you can fit a straight line through it. If that’s what they mean by super exponential, what would linear be? A horizontal line?
The whole idea is nonsense because they’ve just made up a term that doesn’t exist in mathematics, and made it mean just what they want it to mean. Of course, if there is such a thing in maths, I’ll have to eat my words.
___________________________________________________________
Well there’s Wictionary;
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/superexponential
But the general term is called tetration;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetration
Now, I’m not saying that CO2 is superexponential, or even exponential, although it might have been so in the past. This is a very important distinction, in the past vs now vs in the future.
Their “theory” is based on endogenous growth theory, a relatively modern economic theory;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogenous_growth_theory
An economic theory thas does not account for, by any measure, the actual physics involved in the rather very complex carbon cycle.
The paper is driven by a clear bias towards FTS, all assumptions are directed towards FTS, and all of their accepted bounds are driven by FTS. Yet all their FTS solutions lead to drastically different upper bounds, from 1988AD (the 1988AD solution, as I’ve mentioned previously, is where the human population goes to infinity, which it has not, not even close to that value, so right there we know that their “theory” is very suspect to begin with) to 3939AD. Thus, this is the art of curve fitting, absent widely accepted statistical tests for the significance of their results versus other methods of curve fitting (polynomial, for example).
We would also have to ask the question, are all greenhouse gas emissions increasing now at whatever rates they were in the past? CH4 seems to be a prime example of a greenhouse gas that has not increased even linearity in the very recent past.
We also have the fact that the authors used a 10-year Gaussian kernal filter applied to the Mauna Loa data set. As with any low pass filter there are end effects where the time series is discontinuous.
So, in this case, it matters very much what the low pass filter produces at either end as this largely determines the extrapolated rates (which are then integrated, mind you) going either forwards or backwards (backwords, not so much, in this case, as these equations are constrained by a constant lower bound, and the fact that the lower bound of the remaining terms approaches zero asymptotically).
There is also the issue of splicing the “ice drill cores” onto the Mauna Loa instrumental record, so for example, we know that gas age and ice age are different, that the ice cores act as a low pass filter of actual atmospheric CO2, that there is an inevitable “bump” in this spliced time series, right at the point where the two are joined, and we won’t know for quite some time yet, what the actual low pass frequency characteristics of the “ice drill cores” are, as we need significant overlap between these two metrics (a low pass instrumental record that closely matches (in slope or rate), the natural low pass characteristics of the “ice drill cores” data gathered to date (the new WAIS ice core might resolve some of these issues though, only time will tell).
Finally, why does there CO2 analysis start at 1850AD? The “ice drill cores” show a clear increase in CO2 going back to at least 1750AD. Somehow, I don’t think that this inconvenient truth would fit very well with their, all too many, economic modelling assumptions (for example, delta drops from 0.73 (1958-2009 era, Figure 4), to 0.33 (1850-2009 era, Figure 10), delta is rather important to the authors, as it must be greater then zero (or one depending on their own ambigious definitions), and not indistinguisable from zero (as would need to be shown through actual statistical significance testing)).
Now as to their delta, the authors use the Mauna Loa record, with intervals as large as 1958-2009, to as short as 2006-2009 (four years), using FTS, what we see is their deltas, what we don’t see is there corresponding values for alpha, c, and tc, as similar time series. I do wonder what those plots would look like. A delta of one (1) is exponential growth, which appears to be the limiting condition for longer and longer CO2 time series, as shown in Figure 5 of their draft publication. What must be remembered, is that a delta of less than one, converges to the anti-pole (zero, not infinity). Since we know, a priori, that the CO2 record is increasing with time, the evidence mind you, we know that, at best, their “theory” can only lead to exponential growth (delta = 1) as it’s lower bound.
Also, their Figure 5 (all deltas > 1) is in direct conflict with their Figures 3 (delta = 0.65 < 1), 4 (delta = 0.73 < 1) and 10 (delta = 0.33 < 1). Obviously the authors need to clear up some nomenclature here as they use two different definitions for the same symbol delta.
Also along these lines, the authors appear to be somewhat untrained in CO2 terminology, using the terms CO2 emissions and atmospheric CO2 as if they were one in the same.
In essence, they have assumed (an ansatz, or educated guess, mind you) exponential growth (or higher), using monotonic curve fitting. The important word here being monotonic, as in either concave up or concave down, for either the exponential or FTS curve fitting, for the entire time domain of interest. We know that there are an infinite number of derivitives of e (or EXP) all equal to e, the curvature of the curvature of the curvature …, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. The FTS by definition has a singularity at tc, their regime change argument, which falls flat on it's face, given their own Figure 1.
The exponential curve fit has one equation with three unknowns, the FTS curve fit has one equation and four unknowns, either way, you are left with curve fitting, by using the only obvious choice, minimizing the sum-of-squares, given that choice, as I've shown previously, other solutions (2nd order polynomial for the Mauna Loa data), produce lower sum-of-squares (~80% for either the FTS or exponential curve fitting).
So if minimizing the sum-of-squares is the only test applied, other solutions exist (call them subexponential) that produce lower sum-of-squares curve fitting than either the exponential or FTS curve fitting.
I think that I have, at least, equally proved that the Atmospheric CO2 record is subexponential and finite, which, a priori, is what we know that nature and the empirical records have shown us to date.
Population is NOT unbounded and ever increasing, CO2 is NOT unbounded and ever increasing.
In closing, if this Bad Paper, bad Paper, you made a mess, is ever published, the expectation is that all raw data and subsequent derivations are released into the public domain, as has, or should be, part of the very modern common scientific practice. If not, than this exercise is, just so much dust blowing in the wind.
Then it’s an issue of separation by a common language. In America we generally consider the middle class the working class. Or at least, ideally, anyone who is responsibly contributing to society is considered “middle class” and not “poor”. The wealthy class or “upper class” in America are those who (are fantasized to) work less and live off of their assets generating income. Though honestly I’ve seen quite a few of our upper class in Southern California and most of those I’ve known/seen do work just as hard as anyone else, they just make more for their efforts (money makes more money).
At 5:27 AM on 18 March, Alexander K writes about Mr. Eschenbach‘s comment:
–
There are plenty of cultural differences between folks in these United States and people in the Commonwealth countries, and this is a great example.
American politicians and similar thieving liars have spent the past century and more peddling the idea that every average private citizen should expect a middle-class standard of living regardless of his or her real role in the economy.
To be called “working class” in America is an insult. Thus we get people who are living from paycheck to paycheck in hourly-wage jobs, their mortgaged-to-the-hilt single-family homes teetering on the edge of foreclosure, unable to pay their absolutely horrible government-school-supporting real estate taxes, and who have no hope or expectation of ever bettering their condition, being called “middle class.”
What really defines “middle class” anywhere? I’m of the impression that it’s a matter of entrepreneurial autonomy and responsibility. The proprietor of a “mom-and-pop” corner convenience store – who runs his own business, and supports his family from the profits he gets thereby – is “middle class.”
The government thug employee who fills in an amount four times greater as “adjusted gross income” on his IRS Form 1040 is also supposed to be “middle class,” but that extremely well-paid malevolent jobholder does not make a single real budgetary or hire-and-fire decision at any time in the course of his employment.
The corner store proprietor has to pay the overhead required to keep his business open, and must be present to serve his customers, or he makes no money. He works for no salary, has no hourly wage, is accorded no benefits he does not pay for directly. He can fail. Lots of such small businessmen fail every year.
Same thing for the privately practicing certified public accountant, the lawyer, and the doctor. If you’re not there to provide your customers, your clients, your patients with the services for which they elect to pay, you don’t make any money.
That’s the real definition of “middle class” in America. The pretense of “middle class” otherwise is a gaudy, hideous duplicity.
Might could be that the above-mentioned Welsh botanist (“world-class” or not) is living in a state of delusion. If he’s initiating original research, submitting grant applications, making key decisions on equipment to be purchased, which personnel to hire, retain, and discharge….
Well, like it or not, he’s performing management functions. That’s another criterion under which “middle class” status can be determined, right?
Outstanding quote! I will use it (with attribution – my names not Romm, Joe Romm) in future debates on the subject. Short and simple and directly to the point!
Jeremy, the American take on class stratification, by your description, sounds pretty much the same as the Kiwi and Aussie versions. Us New World peoples are quite aware of class and see being middle class as a reasonably good and unremarkable thing, and being ‘upper class’ tends to be associated with ‘old money’ and so-called ‘good schools’ etc., but the English seem to be stuck in historic definitions which the individual has difficulty breaking free of and often has no wish to. Kiwis tend not to talk about their own politics and tend to be small-c conservative, whichever of the parties they vote for, but English politics are quite tribal and are very deeply felt. People who label themselves as working class seem to have a deep dislike of any person who is politically conservative and the feelings are reciprocated. As you say, peoples divided by a common language.
“Supermicrodistilationliquichemicosis” and we all know what happened to Martian civilization because of runaway greenhouse warming.
Don’t look at me that way. My sentence makes as much sense as this study.
>> Viv Evans said :
>> Abso-effen-lutely!
that is known as a tmesis !
my contribution to erudition
What I don’t understand about skeptics is thier failure to understand that the average dolt in fly-over country (like me) can easily do a bit of research (contrary to thier enviormental views, Google remains an great resoucre). By visiting CIA Factbook, Wiki, and various UN site, one is amazed by all of this Malthusian clap-trap. The Alarmists no longer are guardians to information.
The best way to figure future population growth is the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) metric. Unlike birthrates, the TFR actually does a statistical estimation of current birthrate trends of a given population samples and extrapolates those numbers out through the fertile years of a woman. The global TFR peaked at around 4.89 children per female in 1969-70. Global TFRs have been falling ever since. What has been helping the population growth these past 40 years is something demographers call demographic momentuem. In Japan, Europe, and North America (as well as the Third World) there was a huge population bulge between 1945-1965. This created a growth momentuem that is now beginning to lose steam To indicate how quickly TFRs have fallen, the US had a TFR of 3.6 in 1960; but 1980 it fell to 1.5 children per female; it recovered between 1980-2000 (2.1 by 2000) due mainly to a large influx of immigrants. Europe’s TFR fell from 3.0 1955 to today a TFR of 1.8. But native European TFRs are less than 1.5 (Spain, Greece, Italy, and Russia have a TFR today of 1.1 children per female). To maintain a stable population, a TFR of 2.1 is needed (not counting immigration). Japan has had a a TFR of 1.1 now for over a decade. China has had a TFR of 1.5 for almost 30 years. Mexico’s TFR fell from 5.8 in 1970 to 2.46 today. South America in general has had falling TFRs as well (generally below 2.5). Many Muslim nations are no better. All across North Africa, TFRs have fallen below 2.5. Egypt’s is less than 2.0 and Tunesia’s is below 1.9 . The largest Muslim nation, Indonesia, has a TFR of 1.8 .
Longer longevity and the last of the Boomer momentum will mask our falling birthrates perhaps for a few more years. But it is safe to say that almost all G20 nations are getting older quicker. Outside of Africa (where AIDS and civil war are decimating native populations), almost every society has falling birthrates. Most have birthrates well below replacement levels (2.1). And quite a few have TFRs at the lowest of the low (1.1 or less, that is the native populations will be halving every generation). Aging populations use less energy. Less people leads to less economic activity. No society has ever gotten wealthier with aging, and shrinking populations.
Globally, it appears the world economy peaked between 1983-2007. I seriously doubt we will be seeing those kinds of growth rates again (at least not in any of our lifetimes). Likewise, if the IPCC models are correct, we are currently seeing a peak in CO2 concentrations.
Fifty years from now people will wonder how such smart societies fell for the Alarmist’s ideas so easily.
But how much is in 1 ton of their co2 given the make up of c02 ??? This is the biggest scam of the century . Its impossible to measure all the co2 or know where it comes from , sounds like an oxygen tax to me andc02 has been much higher in the past but it was not hotter and it didn’t come from humans .
Eco-fascists? A fascist is just a fascist, this mob is just the latest crop —modo-fascists if you like.
well, you are half right. stable population and increasing CO2 are possible if the under developed world continues to march toward american living standards, which will require more energy per capita. its more appropriate to ask when living standards will stabilize.
That’s an easy one. Never. People always want to live better, and stability would be deadly boring. Won’t happen.
[Snip. Calling readers “deniers” violates site Policy. ~dbs, mod.]]
Hector;
The Low Variant of the UN pop. projection is the one with the unblemished record. Lower bound of. And that projects a peak at 2030-2040 of under 8bn.
Mostly due to improving living standards. E.g., the 2005 goal of cutting poverty in half in 10 yrs. was reached in ½ the time, by 2010. Mostly due to industrialization in India and China.
Good for them! Break the CO2 famine!
Tucci78;
I think the solution to the class labelling conundrum you document is that the users are referring to values, not wealth levels. The Welsh botanist was claiming working-class values, not income level.