As many readers know, there was quite a hullaballo over the Kaya Identity last week, two posts by Willis Eschenbach here and here created sides seemingly equally split on whether the equation is useful or not.
One of the most strident critics was Dr. Roger Pielke Jr., and in the spirit of keeping an open mind on the issue, I offered him space on WUWT. Here is my email and his response, reprinted with his explicit permission.
On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 9:52 AM, Anthony xxxxxxx@xxxx.com wrote:
Hello, Roger Jr.,
I’d like to direct you to a comment on WUWT that challenges your calculations using the Kaya Identity.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/12/the-beer-identity/#comment-1685623
I provide it only for your information.
I know both of you have issues with the current state of discussion on WUWT regarding that equation/identity/relationship, and I’m certainly OK with that.
I think that much of the dissent over it has to do with the difference in viewpoints between science and engineering. I and many others look at the Kaya identity equation more from the engineering perspective, and expect it to perform as many other calcs do, but it seems that it doesn’t act as a hard equation, but more like a soft one, that generally defines the relationships of terms. A number of commenters have approached it from the engineering viewpoint, and find themselves puzzled as to why the numbers they get don’t seem sensible.
I puzzle over that also.
To that end, and because you’ve been highly critical, agreeing with such statements as “breathtakingly ignorant”, therefore, given the critical comment above, I’d like to offer this, first raised in another comment:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/12/the-beer-identity/#comment-1684325
Perhaps Anthony could give equal time to Pielke in defense of the Kaya identity?
I’m more than happy to do so should you be so inclined; not just for my own education on the topic, but for the hundreds, if not thousands of others that suffer from the same doubts that the equation isn’t as well thought out as some claim it to be. Or, if it was never intended to produce real world numbers accurately, but serves only to illustrate the relationship of the variables, explain that clearly so that the engineering types understand it better.
If you wish to make a submission, MS Word with embedded images works best. Any equations you might want to use in MS word’s equation editor don’t translate to WordPress well, so they will be converted to images. Or, you can optionally use LaTex, which is supported directly in WordPress.
I would appreciate an answer, no matter if it is a yes or a no. Thank you for your consideration.
Anthony Watts
=========================================================
Roger’s response Tuesday, July 15, 2014 6:59 AM (published with permission)
Hi Anthony-
Thanks for your email. Apologies for the delay in responding, as have been off email while traveling.
If you’d like to help your readers better understand the use of the Kaya identity, which I think is the most important tool for analyzing actual and proposed carbon policies, then I would recommend that you introduce them to this paper (open access);
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/4/2/024010
The mathematics are simple. Of course, there is a more in depth discussion in my book, The Climate Fix.
Finally, for those who’d prefer a lecture format, here is me at Columbia Univ last summer explaining the significance of the Kaya Identity for climate policy analysis:
Thanks, and all the best,
Roger (Jr.)
==============================================================
I agree with Roger that: “The mathematics are simple.”
In fact I think it is that simplicity that lends itself to being criticized as not being fully representative of a complex system. Willis described the Kaya Identity as being “trivially true” while Roger in his book and video treats its with the same respect as some physical law equation. My take is that the truth is somewhere in the middle between those viewpoints.
Whether it is best used as a political tool or as a physical science tool is still an open question in my mind, though I tend to think it leans more towards political usefulness. Whatever your viewpoint is, let’s thank Roger Pielke Jr. for taking the time to respond and to offer his view here.
This conversation began as a discussion of the Kaya identity and the scientific/mathematical/engineering merits of its application as a tool in guiding CO2 mitigation policies. (the 50 to 1 project explained it better and simpler) Not now nor never have there been solid scientific justifications for such CO2 mitigation so the merits of the Kaya equation are moot.
James NV: And just where does all of that energy go? Into the atmospheric system. The US uses around 100 Quad Btu/y. Where does that go?
100 Quad Btu/y * atmos lb / 0.24 Btu/lb F = F/y independent of CO2.
Oops, launched too soon. 100 Quad Btu/y / (0.24 Btu/lb F * Atmos lb) = F/y Check it, like I have to ask.
JamesNV says:
July 19, 2014 at 4:29 pm
“Investing’ in energy innovation, research and development is not necessarily a bad idea regardless of CO2.”
Wind energy is 1000s years old and died out because it was so limited – innovation isn’t the right word here. Also, innovation is good but not holus bolus investment in the full scale real deal before you have done the research, knowing that at this stage the efficiency is 15%. We all know what the new replacement should be able to deliver to be a reasonable alternative and this is where the research should begin, but not on a country-wide scale.
Also, few comment on the enormous waste of resource that we have in hundreds of thousands of climate scientists doing the same thing they have been doing since 1990 with no change in the theory or improvements. We should be disappointed if only ONE researcher did the same thing without variation for over 30 years despite the track record of forecasting from the theory being abysmal. It would be the same thing to keep looking for phlogiston long after the likelihood of its existence is near zero. I’m afraid there are no Einsteins, Newtons, Maxwells, Plancks, Bohrs…. in this pathetic ‘science’. A good example of what is exasperating to thinking, searching persons is the article on the Yamal, Russia pingo feature in which an ARCTIC RESEARCHER was totally unaware of such a landform and gave a fanciful theory for its formation connected to CAGW.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/18/new-pictures-of-the-hole-in-yamal-and-pingo-was-its-name-o/
Gary Pearse says “we have in hundreds of thousands of climate scientists doing the same thing”
Successful “consensus” mythology. It is not known how many climatologists are doing the same thing, maybe a few dozen. Most here can probably name the principle players from memory.
What you see in the mainstream media typically is based on the 12,000 *papers* reviewed by John Cook for his 97 percent consensus claim. Of that 12,000, 64 to 72 were really about AGW.
RobertInAz says:
July 19, 2014 at 4:07 pm
John Brisbin says: July 19, 2014 at 4:02 pm “It is also a generalization beyond what the evidence supports.”
On the contrary, Kaya reflects real world data (see Ruth Dixon: http://mygardenpond.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/a-graphical-look-at-the-kaya-identity/#more-706 )
The key point is for a particular country, Kaya holds for the purpose of policy analysis. It is not a perfect tool. What tool would you suggest to help policy makers understand the cost of mitigation?
end of quote from RobertInAz (sorry I seem to have no formatting controls)
The population based graph you refer to is conveniently on log-log scales. What it seems to indicate is that the supposedly linear function is linear (within +- 1-2 orders of magnitude)
I call that scientific sophistry. Close enough for climate science, though.
I read the paper and listened to the lecture. It was a somewhat boring lecture that did make a few obvious points.
I did notice that Pielke had one huge mistake in his thinking. The major mistake is that Pielke does not seem to understand the economic distortions that are caused by subsidies and indirect subsidies and costs that are added due to anti-CO2 legislation.
For example – the government tells a utility that they must have 20% clean energy. The utility decides to put up windmills and add the infrastructure to handle the windmills. They need to shutdown some of the existing power plants and build new plants to provide “peak power” when the windmills are not generating enough power. The amount of infrastructure needed is enormous as are the costs for the windmills. The end result is that most of the components for the windmills, new plants and infrastructure are manufactured in places like China. To manufacture the new plant, the infrastructure and windmill components requires large amount of emissions as the steel, copper, carbon fiber, fiberglass, housings and etc. are all manufactured. The other cost is transporting all the components and the using large amounts of cement, the transport of workers and etc. etc. The end result is that some of the windmill projects may never generate the amount of power to pay the energy costs for building the infrastructure, installing the infrastructure transporting it, switching to new power plants and building the windmills. However, they have effectively shifted the CO2 emissions to China for the power that is generated. Going to 20% clean energy though does increase the cost massively for energy because essentially, the energy user is financing a huge amount of waste that only has the benefit of shifting CO2 generation to China and does not actually have any net CO2 reduction or if there is some it is very small.
Step 1) Independently crowd source estimations for each factor on the rhs for some country. Do the same for the CO2 term on the lhs.
Step 2) Determine the mean, median, or mode for each factor.
Step 3) Divide the product of the rhs factors’ mean, median or mode into the respective mean, median, or mode for the lhs CO2.
Step 4) Repeat from step 1 for all countries of the world.
Step 5) Plot a frequency histogram of the results for step 4 using an appropriate bin size.
Step 6) If the shape of the frequency histogram is more or less normal with a small standard deviation, then use its mean as a constant of proportionality after the equal sign. If the shape of the frequency histogram is otherwise, than scrap the Kaya Identity.
There, fixed it!
@outtheback 12;37.
You nail it.
Its Bistro-maths.
Or is it the joke about the 3 accounts seeking the same job.
Final answer;”Whatever you want the numbers to be”
Your hired.
O/T Do you reckon any of these so called climate change bullshit artists, ever go out of the front door and look up at the sky? Is it cloudy, raining, snowing, sunny etc., check their barometers if they have one, or thermometers, well I do. Any amount of graphs and maths leave me cold. I am no good at math, one of the reasons I could not go for a Science degree, I couldn’t even work our the scientific calculator. But I do know history and archaeology. And I am skilled in horticulture and agriculture, even bonsai. And I know spring follows winter, then summer and autumn (fall) and in Australia we always needs a healthy dose of rain. If too heavy we flood. We have tropical, sub tropical and temperate, alpine, and up North has the big wet, (monsoon) . Luckily, I have my grandfathers notes on when he visited Australia in 1892 and 1894. He revealed that rough seas demolished the American fleet in a very bad cyclone. A coal tender turned turtle in Port Jackson,
(that’s Sydney) after a strong Southerly buster hit it while being loaded. So what’s new, eh.
Anthony wrote (main post):
Anthony,
The point of the Kaya Identity is simply to provide an analytical framework to account for the technical relationships that result in the flow rate of anthropogenic CO2. Yes, in math terms it’s ‘trivially true’. Also, it doesn’t (in itself) ‘fully represent’ a complex system, but it provides the framework for representing whatever degree of complexity might be desired — in examining how GDP affects energy use, how energy use affects CO2 emissions, and so forth. The Kaya Identity is worthy of respect as a useful truth.
The Kaya Identity does not purport to be a ‘physical science tool’. Technological change, as Pielke notes, affects the values of two of the ratios that make up the identity, but that’s the extent to which physical science comes into it. The Identity adds nothing to our understanding of how any given flow rate of anthropogenic CO2 will affect climate. Pielke does not claim otherwise.
The Kaya Identity is certainly a policy tool, if that is what you mean by ‘political tool’. In the text, Pielke uses the Kaya Identity to show how a particular policy would only be feasible given implausible assumptions about future changes in the ratios that make up the Identity. Isn’t that useful?
I am disheartened at the number of comments that make empty arguments against the Kaya Identity without engaging with Pielke’s actual use of it. We have already had two long threads in which people made such arguments in a vacuum. Now that we have an actual text (and/or video), I would expect that people would respond to it.
I’m also hugely disappointed that you, Anthony, refer to Willis and Roger as having two ‘viewpoints’ — presumably somehow of equal weight, despite the vast (!) difference in their expertise. You introduce Roger here as one of Willis’s ‘more strident critics’, when Roger is the expert on the matter, while Willis has not yet shown that he even understands just how the Kaya Identity is used. In scholarly discourse, the proper approach is for a well-developed analysis to be tested by criticism. It is Roger who has that analysis, not Willis. Furthermore, Roger has certainly not been ‘strident’, but low-key and very substantive. Willis, on the other hand, has taken drive-by pot-shots.
I would have expected better of both of you.
The Kaya Identity appears to me to be an abstract representation designed to display the relationship between Global CO2 emissions, Global Population, Global GDP, and Global energy consumption. As that, it can be used to simply explain a complex problem – BUT – using it to establish public policy is IMHO extremely dangerous.
I say this because the purported goal is to reduce CO2 emissions to zero. Using the Kaya Identity it becomes obvious that the ways to achieve this goal are
a) Reducing the World Population to zero – Complete genocide and self-annihilation
b) Reducing the Global GDP to zero – I’m pretty sure this would lead to a complete collapse of civilization as we know it.
c) Reducing the Global energy consumption to zero – everyone would starve to death or die from exposure, which would effectively achieve point a).
d) Reducing Global CO2 emissions to zero – which can only be achieved by a), b), c), or converting all carbon based energy systems to non-carbon energy based systems.
Obviously the only logical choice becomes converting all carbon based energy systems to non-carbon energy based systems, since the Kaya Identity shows that in order to achieve zero emissions, any combination of the other three choices means that we must reduce at least one of the other three variables to zero – which would result in the extinction of the human race.
The worst thing about this is that nobody seems to realize that it is impossible to turn back the carbon emission clock. Even if we reduce our CO2 emissions to zero, the concentration of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere will continue to rise simply because our population continues to grow. The present human population of the earth is at least 6 times what it was in 1850 – consequently the natural CO2 contribution of humans is also at least 6 times what it was in ‘pre-industrial’ times. Unless there has been a corresponding explosion in CO2 consuming lifeforms this means that ‘natural’ anthropogenic CO2 emissions will continue to contribute to the increase in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, albeit at a slower rate.
Mike Tremblay says:
July 19, 2014 at 11:26 pm
The worst thing about this is that nobody seems to realize that it is impossible to turn back the carbon emission clock. Even if we reduce our CO2 emissions to zero, the concentration of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere will continue to rise simply because our population continues to grow. The present human population of the earth is at least 6 times what it was in 1850 – consequently the natural CO2 contribution of humans is also at least 6 times what it was in ‘pre-industrial’ times. Unless there has been a corresponding explosion in CO2 consuming lifeforms this means that ‘natural’ anthropogenic CO2 emissions will continue to contribute to the increase in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, albeit at a slower rate.
No, this is wrong because the CO2 we breathe do not come from fossil sources.
All the CO2 we exhale come from the food we eat, and the carbon in that food has been captured from the air. These processes cancels out and is zero in sum.
/Jan
Krischel,
You can’t compare the Kaya identity to F = ma because F = ma defines what we mean by ‘force’. It doesn’t follow from mere algebraic considerations regarding its units because before it is stated there is no notion of force in the theory. The Kaya identity on the other hand does follow from mere algebraic considerations.
That the Kaya identity may be useful is beside the point, it is ridiculous to give an algebraic identity a grandiose name as if it captures some deeper truth.
Jan Kjetil Andersen,
“All the CO2 we exhale come from the food we eat, and the carbon in that food has been captured from the air”
Carbon in food is often captured directly from hydrocarbons. Food from the Gulf of Mexico is a prime example: http://living-petrol.blogspot.com/
Microbes consume more hydrocarbons than we do. If we don’t burn them, they will anyway. The carbon “budget” is not fixed in a zero-sum superficial surface cycle.
Actually none of it matters because after several decades and scores of additional CO2 ppm the evidence is crystal clear that CO2’s influence over global warming and climate is inconsequential.
Repeated for truth!
To Josh, picture a kettle of slow cooking frogs leisurely wading around in their comfortable pool debating nonsense while the chef grins. Maybe you can somehow work in Angels and pinheads too.
Dr. Doug says:
July 19, 2014 at 8:59 pm
Awesome post. I agree 100%.
Cheers, 🙂
Khwarizmi says:
July 20, 2014 at 3:11 am
Thank you for an interesting link Khwarizmi, but I think that the share of non-photosynthesis based food must be negligible compared to what we get from photosynthesis-based products.
/ Jan
Shawnhet says:
July 20, 2014 at 6:26 am
You can add me to the supports, good work Doug.
/ Jan
Cynicism alert!
My interpretation of the Kaya identity: if someone is truly worried about catastrophic AGW due to CO2-emissions, but refuses to accept an increase in realistic alternative energy sources to fully fill the production-gap that shutting down fossil fuels will leave, must be for population reduction and/or radically shrinking economies.
Populations can be reduced in two ways. The short term solution is some kind of genocide, the long term is forced sterilizations or some other draconian measures to reduce birth rates. This long term solution is probably to slow given that we have to ACT NOW™!!
Economies can be shrunk and people can be put in poverty and misery by many means, taxation and/or highly regulated plan based economies could be viable options. Unfortunately this will probably have an adverse effect on birth rates, so perhaps some kind of combo of population control and economy control needs to be put in place just for safety’s sake. The fear of you or your family being killed by something other than malnutrition or cold could at least add some kind of excitement into the extremely dull life you will be living.
So, with rising populations and economies in developing nations, requiring somewhere around 3-4 times the current energy consumption and 2-3 billion more people in a few decades, we are left with a choice of three paths:
1) Kill every 9 out of 10 humans give or take.
2) Make sure that life is truly depressing for those 9 out of 10 humans by taking away any means to reach a reasonable standard of living.
3) Build nuclear power plants like there’s no tomorrow. Take the alarmist word for it and accept that the climate science is settled and divert all those research funds into short and long term science projects with one aim, abundant energy for all. This has a side benefit that we need old school schooling focusing on the the sciences that don’t have science it their names: physics, mathematics etc. Who knows what we’ll find as a humanity if we would go in this direction. But since this path requires free thinking and motivated individuals I guess it is out of the question.
F*ck it
Michael 2 says: July 20, 2014 at 10:53 am Kaya is useless. It is because the terms cancel that what you are left with is exactly one factor — the CO2 efficiency of energy. Until and unless you have “carbonless energy” all other approaches are doomed. You don’t need Kaya for this.
It is this persistent misunderstanding the prevents people to understand Kaya’s usefulness. For example, you can lower per capita GDP. This is the effect of some mitigation strategies. Kaya helps quantify the amount of lowered per capita GDP required to meet a CO2 target. Politicians can decide if they want to do that. They don’t, explicitly.
Another example is increasing the energy efficiency of GDP. This is actually a potentially fertile area for innovation. This will be especially true when we stop focusing on the last term. An example of this is on recent contracts, we are bidding hotelling space only for the technical workforce. (This are call center size work spaces). The expectation is the majority of workforce will work remotely most of the time. Collaboration tools become paramount.
“Kaya helps quantify the amount of lowered per capita GDP required to meet a CO2 target.”
I simply do not believe it or you. This Kaya thing, revised so it doesn’t self-cancel, is somewhat of a measure of past performance.
If you start tinkering with society, you will also change the thing being measured. Suppose you knocked GDP per capita to ZERO, which is true or nearly true in some third world nations. Do they stop emitting carbon dioxide? No, very likely on a per-capita basis they emit MORE — they burn whatever is handy, wood usually, and the impact on the environment is much worse than a wee bit of global warming.
Suppose you increased the carbon efficiency of energy — the one thing that would be “win win”. So what happens if the constraints are removed? Population would skyrocket most likely with sufficient energy — between people feeling like they can have more children and probably even a cessation or reduction of war (some people LIKE it so it will never completely go away).
Suppose you could change the energy per unit of GDP? Well, when anyone here says how exactly that is to be done maybe we can explore it. Essentially that’s the opposite of the industrial age — going back to knitting at home. GDP without energy.
This bears repeating. I’m frankly dumbfounded skeptics here do not realize Kaya is a skeptic’s tool. It is the warmists attacking Dr. Pielke on his blog on this subject.
Dr. Doug says: July 19, 2014 at 8:59 pm
The Kaya Identity is certainly a policy tool, if that is what you mean by ‘political tool’. In the text, Pielke uses the Kaya Identity to show how a particular policy would only be feasible given implausible assumptions about future changes in the ratios that make up the Identity. Isn’t that useful?
Jan Kjetil Andersen says:
July 20, 2014 at 12:42 am
————————————————————————————————————————-
Actually, I am not wrong – the CO2 we exhale does come from the food we eat, that point is correct, but the oxygen that we inhale to produce the CO2 comes from the photosynthetic conversion of any CO2 (regardless of its source) that is present in the atmosphere. This is one of the canards foisted by the CAGW crowd – the CO2 that is being released from the burning of fossil fuels HAS to have been in the atmosphere at some point in the past, hence the higher concentrations of CO2 present in the atmosphere before the carboniferous era. If you reread what I posted, you will see that i wrote that ‘Unless there has been a corresponding explosion in CO2 consuming lifeforms this means that ‘natural’ anthropogenic CO2 emissions will continue to contribute to the increase in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere’ – the explosion of carbon consuming lifeforms during the carboniferous is what resulted in the reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere at that time and also resulted in the creation of the fossil fuels that we are presently using.
In a comment above I raised the point that determining what happens to carbon dioxide levels is is irrelevant because it is not the cause of global warming. And it is not, as I pointed out, because those proposing that it causes greenhouse warming simply cannot explain why there has been no warming for 17 years. They are so desperate to explain it away that they have started to look for that “missing heat” in the ocean bottom, of all places. This is just an example of how much they wish the stoppage of warming to go away. It has gone so far that they have persuaded their captive science journals to print articles on that stupidity and other unlikely hypotheses. Fact is that their greenhouse theory of Arrhenius is an abject failure and must be discarded. This leaves them with no rational explanation for the pause Somehow nobody on this blog even blinked an eyelash when I said that and most could not be pulled away from thinking that the Kaya identity means something. It does mean something. It means exactly as much as rearranging the furniture on the deck of the Titanic meant after it hit the iceberg. The iceberg for global warming fantasists is 17 years of no warming which their several dozen supercomputers simply cannot explain. Roger Pielke Jr. is a smart man but he has put a huge amount of effort into an aspect of global warming that has no chance of leading anywhere. Instead letting yourself be pulled into fighting side issues, why not concentrate on the main thing: the observed absence of greenhouse warming for the last 17 years? Without greenhouse warming there can be no global warming movement and getting rid of it should be our aim.The warmists are doing all they can to deny the absence of warming by claiming that it has merely slowed down, not stopped. They have minimized it both in AR5 and in NCA and Obama just ignores it. We must be ready to handle any future attempts to cover up or misinterpret what this lack of warming means for global warming, and be ready for novel attempts to deny it.
In his lecture, Pielke rejects emission target mandates, perpetual subsidies, and cap and trade. He promotes expanding energy access to those who lack it, and rejects population control and restrictions on GDP growth. That leaves efficiency improvements and technological breakthroughs as “levers.”
We don’t want the wealth being squandered on fear mongering propaganda and crony green energy schemes to be redirected to crony research institutions. So, is there any “investment” that might spur innovation?
How about incentive prizes for a viable thorium reactor design and durable solar roofing that exceed a certain output/cost ratio?
I just posted the same notion here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/12/the-beer-identity/#comment-1690445
Willis got me to thinking outside the box by abandoning Dr. Kaya’s purposes to ponder unintended uses of the identity. Just one example but because this is largely a policy/political tool there are surely other unintended abuses that can be discovered to exploit one’s agenda du jour.