Diving into the Deeps of Decarbonization

[UPDATE: Comment from Anthony: There has been a tremendous amount of discussion and dissent on this topic, far more than I ever would have imagined. On one hand some people have said in comments that Willis has completely botched this essay, and the Kaya identity holds true, others are in agreement saying that the way the equation is written, the terms cancel and we end up with CO2=CO2. It would seem that the cancellation of terms is the sort of thing that would rate an “F” in a simple algebra test. But, I think there’s room for both views to be right. It seems true that *technically* the terms cancel, but I think the relationship, while maybe not properly technically equated, holds as well. Here is another recent essay that starts with Willis’ premise, where CO2=CO2 and expounds from there. See: What is Kaya’s equation?

Further update (modified 3AM 7/12/14): Willis has posted his response in comments, and due to my own travels, I have not been able to post it into the body of the message until several hours later, see it below. – Anthony]

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

Another day, another new piece of mad garbage put out by the UN. It’s called “pathways to deep decarbonization”, all in lower case (8 Mb PDF). Their proposal is to get CO2 emissions down to zero. I didn’t get far into it before I cracked up laughing and lost the plot.

It starts with the following definition:

Deep decarbonization requires a very significant transformation of energy systems. The ultimate objective of this transformation is to phase out fossil fuel combustion with uncontrolled CO2 emissions. Only fossil fuels in conjunction with CCS [carbon capture and storage] would remain.

But that wasn’t the funny part. That was just depressing. The funny part came later.

Now, out here in the real world the most charitable way to describe this lunacy of forcing the nations of the world to give up fossil fuels is to … to … well, now that I think about it, there is no way to describe this as anything but a pathetic joke which if implemented will cause untold economic disruption, disaster, and death.

In any case, in order to figure out how to “phase out fossil fuel combustion”, they go on to describe what they call the “principal drivers” of CO2 emissions, viz:

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 [gross domestic production] per capita, energy use per unit of GDP, and CO2 emissions per unit of energy:

$CO2_{emissions} = Population * \frac{GDP}{Population} * \frac{Energy}{GDP} * \frac{CO2_{emissions}}{Energy}$

That was where I lost it …

Now, at first glance that looks kind of reasonable. I mean, emissions must go up with population and with GDP per capita, and go down with energy efficiency.

Here’s why I laughed. Lets apply the usual rules of math to that equation. We know that if a variable occurs both on the top and bottom of a fraction, we can cancel it out. Starting from the left, Population on the top cancels Population on the bottom. Then GDP on the top cancels GDP on the bottom. Then Energy on the top cancels Energy on the bottom … and we’re left with …

$CO2_{emissions} = CO2_{emissions}$

Pretty profound, huh? CO2 emissions are equal to CO2 emissions. Who knew?

OK, now let’s build their equation back up again. But instead of using gross domestic production (GDP), we’ll use gross beer production (GBP) instead.

$CO2_{emissions} = Population * \frac{GBP}{Population} * \frac{Energy}{GBP} * \frac{CO2_{emissions}}{Energy}$

Note that this is identical to and equally as valid as their whiz-bang equation, in that it simplifies down to the same thing: CO2 emissions = CO2 emissions.

And as a result, the clear conclusion from my analysis is that the best way to fight the evil menace of CO2 is to figure out a way to make beer using less energy …

Now, there’s a carbon reduction program I could get behind.

Best wishes to all,

The Usual Request: If you disagree with someone, please quote the exact words you disagree with. This prevents misunderstandings, and lets us all understand your objection.

PS—Due to a cancelled flight, I’m stuck here in a hotel in LA on my way back from the Ninth International Climate Change Conference, which I’ll write about another time, and sitting in my hotel room wishing I were home. Not much to do but read boring UN documents … at least this one was funny.

PPS—Although it’s not mentioned in the document, their goofy equation is known as the “Kaya Identity“. Apparently, the number of innumerate people on the planet is larger than I had feared.

==============================================================

Willis Eschenbach says:

July 11, 2014 at 8:43 am

Well, yesterday was a long day. Up early to get to the airport, and this time the flight actually flew. Go deal with the rental car. Roll on home.

Then change clothes, I’d spent the night without luggage. Hang out with the gorgeous ex-fiancee and catch up. Put in a load of wash. Put the trash in the trash bin, the recyclables in their bin, the kitchen scraps in the garden waste bin. Roll all three of them up the driveway to the street. Unpack. Pack. Wash the dishes. Make coffee. Scrub the toilet.

Then when I got around to opening up my computer in the afternoon, after waking up from its normal sleep and running for about 15 minutes … it died. Dead. As in when I turned it on, It ran for about 5 seconds, and croaked …

So … that meant another 45 minute drive to the “local” Apple store. It also meant about an hour’s worth of waiting for an appointment. Then another three hours while they worked on the machine before finally getting It to run again. Net result?

It’s now 10 PM, and I’m back where I was last night … on line again. Oh, and a couple hundred bucks lighter.

Anyhow, that was how my day went. I hope Bart had more fun than I did.

Regarding the comments, I’m overjoyed that there is much discussion of the issue. My point, albeit poorly expressed given some of the comments, was that since the Beer Identity Is equally as true and valid as the Kaya Identity, it is obvious that we cannot use the Kaya Identity to “prove” anything.

So yes, the Kaya Identity is true, but trivially so. We cannot depend on it to represent the real world, and it can’t show us anything.

For example, folks upstream said that we can use the Kaya Identity to show what happens if the GDP per capita goes up by say 10%. According to the Kaya Identity, emissions will also go up by 10%.

But according to the Beer Identity, if Gross Beer Production per capita goes up by 10%, then CO2 emissions have to go up by 10% … and we know that’s not true. So clearly, neither identity can serve to establish or demonstrate anything about the real world.

What I tried to say, apparently unsuccessfully, is that by itself, the Kaya Identity cannot demonstrate or show or prove anything about the real world. If there is anythlng true about it, that truth must exist outside of the Kaya Identity. Otherwise the Beer Identity would be a valuable guide to CO2 emissions … but we know that’s not true.

Finally, l hear rumblings that Anthony shouldn’t have published this piece of mine. This totally misunderstands Anthony’s position in the game. The strength of WattsUpWithThat is not that it is always right or that it publishes only the best stuff guaranteed to be true.

The beauty and value of WUWT that it is the world’s premier location for public peer review of climate science. On a personal level, WUWT is of immense use to me, because my work either gets falsified or not very quickly … or else, as in this case, there’s an interesting ongoing debate. For me, being shown to be wrong is more valuable than being shown to be right. If someone can point out my mistakes, it saves me endless time following a blind alley.

And indeed, there is much value in the public defenestration of some hapless piece of bad science. It is as important to know not only which ideas are wrong but exactly why they are wrong. When Anthony publishes scientific claims from the edges, generally they are quickly either confirmed or falsified. This is hugely educational for scientists of all kinds, to know how to counter some of the incorrect arguments, as well as giving room for those unusual ideas which tomorrow will be mainstream ideas.

So it is not Anthony’s job to determine whether or not the work of the guest authors will stand the harsh light of public exposure. That’s the job of the peer reviewers, who are you and I and everyone making defensible scientific comments. Even if Anthony had a week to analyze and dissect each piece, there’s no way that one man’s wisdom can substitute for that of the free marketplace of ideas … which is why it’s not his job. Bear in mind that even with peer review, something like two-thirds of peer reviewed science is falsified within a year. And Anthony is making judgements publish/don’t publish on dozens of papers every week.

So please, dear friends, cut Anthony some slack. He’s just providing the arena wherein in 2014 we practice the blood sport of science, the same sport we’ve had for a few hundred years now, ripping the other guys ideas to bits, also known as trying to scientifically falsify another person’s claims that you think don’t hold water. It is where we can get a good reading on whether the ideas will stand up to detailed hostile examination.

It is not Anthony’s job to decide if mine or any other ideas and expositions and claims will wtthstand that test … and indeed, it is often of value for him to publish things that will not stand the test of time, so that we can understand exactly where they are lacking.

So please remember, Anthony is just providing the boxing ring. It is not his job to predict in advance who is going to win the fight. His job is to fill the cards with interesting bouts … and if this post is any example, he is doing it very well.

Best to everyone,

===============================================================

And a final update from Anthony:

While Willis wants to cut me some slack, and I thank him for that, I’m ultimately responsible for all the content on this website, whether I write it or not. While some people would like nothing more than to have content they deem “wrong” removed, such things generally present a catch-22, and cause more problems than they solve. Of course some people would be pleased to have WUWT disappear altogether. Some days, I’m one of them, because it would allow me to get my life back.

The value is being wrong is learning from it. If you don’t learn from it, then being wrong deserves every condemnation thrown at you. I plan on being wrong again, maybe as soon as today, though one never knows exactly when your training and experience will lead you down the wrong path. In this case I was wrong in thinking that this simple terms cancellation argument pretty much made the Kaya identity useless. I’m still unsure how useful it is, or whether its usefulness is mainly scientific or political, but rest assured I now know more than I ever thought I would know about it, and so do many of you. And there’s the value.

I thought this was relevant, and worth sharing:

“For a scientist, this is a good way to live and die, maybe the ideal way for any of us – excitedly finding we were wrong and excitedly waiting for tomorrow to come so we can start over.” ― Norman Maclean

Thanks for your consideration – Anthony Watts

0 0 votes

Article Rating

682 Comments

Inline Feedbacks

View all comments

J Calvert N(UK)

July 20, 2014 3:38 pm

RE “E = I * R. But I = E/R, and R = E/I. So making all of the substitutions you get E = E/R * E/I.” I think you meant to write E = I.R but R = E / I so E = I E/I = E. (There fixed it for you!)
But. what if the resistance varies thoughout your conductor? (Say if it is a thick bar and one corner is getting heated? – or if the conductor is made of different strands of varying resistance? or you are using electrical resistivity to determine the geophysical profile of a patch of ground?)
In the case of the stressed-up bar, if that bar is also being bent or twisted, the axial stress will vary throughout the cross-section – i.e. it will be composed of lots of different little forces acting on lots of little areas. To get the TOTAL Force on the bar you could add-up all these little forces (or integrate stress.dA) but it will the same as the average of these stresses multiplied by the overall area of the bar.
So the Kaya Equation is the same. In a given economy there are lots of little energy producers (e.g. your car) and some emit more CO2 than others (and some emit zero CO2). The TOTAL is the sum of all these little parts. But the little parts are not the same as total!

Michael 2

Reply to J Calvert N(UK)

July 22, 2014 10:55 am

J Calvert “E = I E/I = E.”
Yes, thank you. That was actually what I was trying to achieve and didn’t need to substitute the middle term for its factors. Thus Ohm’s law can be made to resemble the Kaya Identity.
The problem is obvious — using an unknown on both sides. You cannot actually calculate E using this formula as written. Two things need to be *measured* to calculate the third.
So it is with Kaya. As a formula it is useless and should not be written as it is commonly written — it has only one *measured* input, and that is population.
In the “kicking the can down the road” approach to this formula, suppose I double P — what is the actual effect on CO2? Nothing, the Kaya Identity clearly shows this to be the case — but why? It is because in the second term the denominator doubles, thus GDP per person is cut in half.
Some writers say “you MUST reduce GDP per person” — no, mathematically it is automatic the instant you double P.
The HARD part is increasing GDP so the precious “ratio” is maintained — but that’s an operation NOT EXPLICIT.
To make it explicit you must say “Double the population, AND double the GDP per person, AND double the energy per unit of GDP” THEN after kicking that can down the road, yeah, your CO2 is going to double because eventually all these double’s stop canceling.
But it’s dumb. Just say “CO2 = Population” and be done with it.

Michael 2

Reply to J Calvert N(UK)

July 22, 2014 1:55 pm

J Calvert N(UK) says (regarding Ohm’s Law) “what if the resistance varies thoughout your conductor? (Say if it is a thick bar and one corner is getting heated? – or if the conductor is made of different strands of varying resistance? or you are using electrical resistivity to determine the geophysical profile of a patch of ground?)”
That would be proof of Maxwell’s “Demons.”
Ohm’s Law is silent on your question. In order to measure current you are going to need to funnel all that current through the measuring point, and that is also where you will measure voltage. In certain situations Ohm’s Law might fail such as in a Hall Effect device (current can be diverted by magnetism) or a tunnel diode (A small portion of its transfer curve shows negative resistance) or simply not be useful (trying to gauge the voltage gradient on the surface of your variable resistance conductor, a situation likely to exist in semiconductors).
“In the case of the stressed-up bar, if that bar is also being bent or twisted, the axial stress will vary throughout the cross-section – i.e. it will be composed of lots of different little forces acting on lots of little areas. To get the TOTAL Force on the bar you could add-up all these little forces (or integrate stress.dA) but it will the same as the average of these stresses multiplied by the overall area of the bar.”
A pretty good metaphor. If the bar is just laying on a table its overall stress will be zero (or negligibly not zero) while internally it could have considerable stresses acting against each other (ie, “Pre-stressed concrete”).
But you might also integrate the absolute values or squares of the stresses (and then take the square root for an RMS type equivalence). This would give you a better sense of whether the bar was “stressed” even as it sits apparently unstressed on a workbench.
In other words, SOME of the components of the Kaya formula probably do have self-canceling properties such that the overall sum is not equal to the sum of the absolute values, and to simply sum up everything could produce an answer that does not mean what it seems to mean.
Really, the only things that produces carbon dioxide are the things that produce carbon dioxide. If that is the goal, to measure it, then ignore factors that don’t produce carbon dioxide.
But you cannot measure it so you estimate it from components. The proportion of fossil-fuel-originated carbon dioxide can be measured with good precision. Oil and coal has no C14 (radioactive isotope of carbon). It’s all C12 because the halflife of C14 is about 57,000 years if I remember right — better check — “the half life of carbon-14 is 5730 years.” (http://www.chemteam.info/Radioactivity/WS-Half-life-C14only.html) good digits, bad magnitude. Half good memory!
Anyway, with oil and coal being millions of years old there’s no C14 and that means CO2 from fossil fuel isn’t going to have C14 either. So you measure the proportion of C14 in atmosphere “pre-industrial” embedded in 200 year old wood for instance, and compare it to modern times. If the doubling (or nearly so) of CO2 in the atmosphere was indeed caused entirely by burning fossil fuel, there will be a measureable and significant increase of C12 while the C14 fraction would remain relatively untouched.
URL: http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/14/7273/2014/
Abstract: “We find that the average gradients of fossil fuel CO2 in the lower 1200m of the atmosphere are close to 15 ppm at a 12 km12 km horizontal resolution.”
Going from 280 ppm to 400 ppm should have produced a C12 measurement of the difference or 120 ppm or thereabouts, but it didn’t.
So what happened? Obviously more CO2 exists — where did it come from if not human burning of fuel? Ah, well, humans are not the only source of CO2. Warming peat bogs, gradually uncovered since the end of the Little Ice Age, will release considerable volumes of C14 along with C12. Warming seas will hold less CO2 which will be mostly the normal C14/C12 ratio. As it happens this positive feedback has been noted and predicted but what does it MEAN?
It means your ability to reduce CO2 is limited to the amount you put in — 15 ppm. Go totally carbonless and you’ve reduced only 15 ppm.
Can you assert that 15 ppm tilted the playing field this much? Seems unlikely. There’s more at work here than SUV’s and coal fired power plants.

Michael 2

July 22, 2014 2:12 pm

I should modify my comment above regarding confounding factors.
C14 is produced by cosmic radiation in the upper atmosphere. That means the pure C12 fraction of fossil fuel combustion *also* has a “half life” before becoming the normal mix of C12/C14. The paper acknowledges this factor thusly:
“This fossil fuel signal can moreover be partially masked by the enriching effect that anthropogenic emissions of 14CO2 from the nuclear industry have on the atmospheric Δ14CO2 signature.”
The paper I cited identifies a *gradient* of 15 ppm and I have not studied exactly what that means. On further study it appears that the authors were studying gradients specifically in the vicinity of fossil fuel combustion sites which will be emitting pure C12 carbon dioxide. The range of the gradient is 12 kilometers (grid 12km by 12km) and its purpose is to show whether or not accurate and meaningful C12/C14 measurements can be made anywhere near a powerplant (for instance) without introducing the same bias as, say, an “urban heat island”.
In other words, if you were researching the human component of carbon dioxide and you just happened to be sampling in the vicinity of a combustion type power plant (oil, gas or coal), you would naturally expect to have a higher proportion of human CO2 than measured elsewhere.
The implication is that different measuring sites will experience a gradient of about 15 ppm per 12 km from the source. What is the raw measurement is something I have not yet discovered.
“The above-ground nuclear tests that occurred in several countries between 1955 and 1980 (see nuclear test list) dramatically increased the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere and subsequently in the biosphere; after the tests ended, the atmospheric concentration of the isotope began to decrease.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14
This creates a small problem of deciding whether any particular C12 is human or natural.