Earth Hour supporters propose ‘Carbon Law’

From the UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE and “that ain’t gonna fly” department comes this wishful thinking for Earth Hour.

A ‘carbon law’ offers pathway to halve emissions every decade, say researchers

On the eve of this year’s Earth hour (25 March), researchers propose a solution in the journal Science (24 March) for the global economy to rapidly reduce carbon emissions. The authors argue a carbon roadmap, driven by a simple rule of thumb or “carbon law” of halving emissions every decade, could catalyse disruptive innovation.

Such a “carbon law”, based on Moore’s Law in the computer industry, applies to cities, nations and industrial sectors.

The authors say fossil-fuel emissions should peak by 2020 at the latest and fall to around zero by 2050 to meet the UN’s Paris Agreement’s climate goal of limiting the global temperature rise to “well below 2°C” from preindustrial times.

A “carbon law” approach, say the international team of scientists, ensures that the greatest efforts to reduce emissions happens sooner not later and reduces the risk of blowing the remaining global carbon budget to stay below 2°C.

The researchers say halving emissions every decade should be complemented by equally ambitious, exponential roll-out of renewables. For example, doubling renewables in the energy sector every 5-7 years, ramping up technologies to remove carbon from the atmosphere, and rapidly reducing emissions from agriculture and deforestation.

“We are already at the start of this trajectory. In the last decade, the share of renewables in the energy sector has doubled every 5.5 years. If doubling continues at this pace fossil fuels will exit the energy sector well before 2050,” says lead author Johan Rockström director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University.

The authors pinpoint the end of coal in 2030-2035 and oil between 2040-2045 according to their “carbon law”. They propose that to remain on this trajectory all sectors of the economy need decadal carbon roadmaps that follow this rule of thumb, modeled on Moore’s Law.

Moore’s Law states that computer processors double in power about every two years. While it is neither a natural nor legal law, this simple rule of thumb or heuristic has been described as a “golden rule” which has held for 50 years and still drives disruptive innovation.

The paper notes that a “carbon law” offers a flexible way to think about reducing carbon emissions. It can be applied across borders and economic sectors, as well as both regional and global scales.

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, says, “Our civilization needs to reach a socio-economic tipping point soon, and this roadmap shows just how this can happen. In particular, we identify concrete steps towards full decarbonization by 2050. Businesses who try to avoid those steps and keep on tiptoeing will miss the next industrial revolution and thereby their best opportunity for a profitable future.”

Co-author Nebojsa Nakicenovic, deputy director general of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and member of the Earth League, said “Humanity must embark on a decisive transformation towards complete decarbonization. The ‘Carbon law’ is a powerful strategy and roadmap for ramping down emissions to zero so as to stay within the global carbon budget for stabilizing climate to less than 2°C above preindustrial levels.”

Joeri Rogelj, also at IIASA, said, “The carbon law outlines a global path towards achieving climate and sustainability goals in broad yet quantitative terms. It sketches a general vision of rapid emission reductions in conjunction with the development of sustainable carbon dioxide removal options. It clearly communicates that no single solution will do the job, and that this deep uncertainty thus implies starting today pursuing multiple options simultaneously.”

Malte Meinshausen, director of the Climate & Energy College at the University of Melbourne, said “Regions that make way for future-proof renewable energy and storage investments will turn a zero-emissions future into an economic opportunity. While for years, we’ve seen the ramp-down of incumbent fossil technologies only as burden, the other side of the coin is now finally visible: lower costs, more jobs and cleaner air.”

Following a “carbon law”, which is based on published energy scenarios, would give the world a 75% chance of keeping Earth below 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures, the target agreed by nations in Paris in 2015.

###

Notes:

The paper “A roadmap for rapid decarbonization” appears in Science as a peer reviewed “policy forum article” on 24 March 2017.

The Paris Agreement sets out a goal to attempt to keep global temperatures “well below 2°C” above pre-industrial temperatures. http://unfccc.int/paris_agreement/items/9485.php

The global average temperature is currently about 1.1°C above pre-industrial temperatures.https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/wmo-confirms-2016-hottest-year-record-about-11%C2%B0c-above-pre-industrial-era

What are the key carbon roadmap milestones to 2050?

Each decade has key milestones to reach:

2020: 40 Gigatonnes of CO2

2030: 20 GtCO2

2040: 10 GtCO2

2050: 5 GtCO2

Carbon dioxide emissions from land use fall from 4 GtCO2/yr to 2 Gt CO2, to 1 to 0,5 by 2050. New carbon sequestration technologies ramp up to remove CO2 from the atmosphere from 0 to 0,5. 2,5 to 5Gt CO2 by 2050.

How to get there:

  • 2020: remove fossil fuel subsidies. Put a price on carbon starting at $50 per ton rising to $400 per ton by 2050. Large-scale energy efficiency measures and large scale trials of carbon sequestration begin at 100-500MtCO2/yr.
  • 2030: coal exits energy mix, in this decade construction becomes fully carbon neutral or stores carbon, several cities reach carbon neutral status. Carbon sequestration of 1-2 GtCO2 begins.
  • 2040: oil exits energy mix early in this decade. Europe starts the decade with close to zero emissions. Other continents finish the decade close to zero.
  • 2050 global economy carbon neutral.
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MarkW
March 23, 2017 2:50 pm

It would be more effecient to just kill half the population every decades.
Which is what is going to happen anyway if they actually manage to implement these plans.

phaedo
Reply to  MarkW
March 23, 2017 3:24 pm

Don’t put ideas in their heads.

u.k.(us)
Reply to  phaedo
March 23, 2017 3:40 pm

Too late for that.
The hard part is gonna be getting them out.

wws
Reply to  phaedo
March 24, 2017 9:05 am

I propose a “Bite My Shiny Metal A$$” Law.

Reply to  MarkW
March 23, 2017 3:34 pm

We can start with the climate scientists and see how it goes. After that, it’s the accountants, lawyers, and hairdressers (according to Scott Adams.)

Reply to  lorcanbonda
March 23, 2017 5:11 pm

Doug?

Reply to  lorcanbonda
March 23, 2017 5:50 pm

Dang, yes Scott’s brother Doug.

Bryan A
Reply to  lorcanbonda
March 23, 2017 10:18 pm

Don’t even have to go that far. Just allow those who deem this the way to live, to live that way. IF there are really that many people who believe this is that bad of a problem, there is no law forcing them to use carbon based fossil fuel energy. If they all voluntarily switched away from their vilified fossil fueled energy, CO2 levels are sure to drop. I mean 97% believe so no laws are needed to force them away from what they should already be prepared to leave. If decarbonization is what they believe is needed, they should feel free to decarbonize.
Go put solar panels on your roof and pull your electric meter. ________ $60,000 (new roof likely needed)
Buy several 10KWH Tesla Battery Backups and have them installed.__$50,000
Buy a couple Tesla model S’s ______________________________________$190,000
Buy a couple more 10KWH battery backup fast chargers_____________$30,000
Pull your gas meters too gas is also a carbon based fuel
Have your gas furnace replaced with an electric one 120,000 BTU _____$1,100 (10KW load addition)
I would suggest a solar water heater but your rooftop is already covered
So you will need electric instant hot water adding 3.5KW load per unit ___$200 each
Shoot, this stuff is so cheap you could build in redundancy and not have to worry about power outages or personal global warming contributions any more. Best part is, it’s all voluntary and you don’t need the government to pay for any of it.

NorwegianSceptic
Reply to  lorcanbonda
March 24, 2017 4:23 am

I find hairdressers quite useful, actually.

Latitude
Reply to  MarkW
March 23, 2017 3:49 pm

not half, all…..they want to destroy one of the things that makes this plant habitable

higley7
Reply to  MarkW
March 23, 2017 4:36 pm

Hey, this rate of decarbonization would be killing millions perforce, no way around it.

rogerthesurf
Reply to  higley7
March 23, 2017 9:40 pm

higley7

SO long as these people lead the way – I will follow – (at the very end of the queue) – but I support their leadership;)

Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com

Gerry, England
Reply to  higley7
March 25, 2017 6:23 am

Now you see what the plan is.

seaice1
Reply to  MarkW
March 23, 2017 4:48 pm

How are are you defining “efficient” here? Your proposed solution does not meet any definition I am aware of, so presumably you have some new definition.

Reply to  seaice1
March 24, 2017 1:20 am

I believe he’s using Hillary Clinton’s definition of “efficient.” You know, the “fun camp” method. Tried and true, proven effective some 60 years ago by one :”progressive” regime.

MarkW
Reply to  seaice1
March 24, 2017 6:17 am

The amount of energy needed to cut CO2 output in half.
You can spend trillions on renewable energy, which doesn’t cut CO2 at all, or you can spend a few billion and kill half the population.

JohnWho
Reply to  MarkW
March 23, 2017 5:57 pm

Soylent Green?

Bryan A
Reply to  JohnWho
March 23, 2017 10:27 pm

Sure beats that Yellow and Red Soylent

Bryan A
Reply to  JohnWho
March 23, 2017 10:28 pm

Delicious and nutritious, tastes just like old uncle Sol

Resourceguy
Reply to  MarkW
March 24, 2017 4:57 pm

They already have the one-child policy precedence to call up and gender bias selection for family planning.

Randall_G
Reply to  Resourceguy
March 25, 2017 2:36 pm

I’ve seen it poised elsewhere that gender selection by the parents should be illegal until the children are old enough to choose their own gender, one of the twenty seven currently available, prior to culling. 😉

Randall_G
Reply to  Resourceguy
March 25, 2017 2:36 pm

I’ve seen it poised elsewhere that gender selection by the parents should be illegal until the children are old enough to choose their own gender, one of the twenty seven currently available, prior to culling. 😉

Wally
Reply to  MarkW
March 24, 2017 11:03 pm

They don’t dare call it what it really is, CO2 Law

Noel Skippen
March 23, 2017 2:50 pm

Help me celebrate ‘Power Hour” on Saturday night. Celebrate the great benefits that reliable electric power has delivered by turning on your lights at 8.30pm!

Billy NZ
Reply to  Noel Skippen
March 23, 2017 6:20 pm

I’m going to celebrate human achievement day from 0930 until 2130 Saturday. Enjoy riding my bike,driving my car,and maybe do a little arc welding for the hour Saturday evening. Ain’t life grand with all our achievements. Made possible by fossil fuels.

asybot
Reply to  Noel Skippen
March 23, 2017 9:24 pm

Noel I am turning on every light on and in the house on Saturday at 8 PM pst. to celebrate the immense gift electricity has given mankind. ( including the TV, the Stereo and I might even run my car!)

M Courtney
March 23, 2017 2:55 pm

Moore’s Law states that computer processors double in power about every two years.
QED Moore’s Law states that computer models of the climate should double in accuracy about every two years.
However, that doesn’t happen. Because the need for CO2 reductions is based on climate models that are not limited by computational power.
They are limited on the realism of their basic premises.

Until the need for destroying the economy is certain we shouldn’t cause the suffering that goes with destroying the economy.

If you really want to “catalyse disruptive innovation” try the ‘innovation’ instead of the ‘disruption’.

Reply to  M Courtney
March 23, 2017 3:44 pm

Actually, Moore’s law is about shrinking transistors so that the effective computational power doubles about every 2 years. That strategy sort of hit the wall at 18nm. The cost, complexity, and yield hits weren’t worth the marginal advantage. Law of diminishing marginal returns overpowers Moore’s Law. But computational power advances continue ‘as if Moore’s Law’ because of software developments and processor specialization (think DSPs and graphics processors (which work in parallel architectures rather than a microporcessor von Neuman architecture). How much further before those tricks also hit the law of diminishing marginal returns, dunno.

Reply to  ristvan
March 23, 2017 4:40 pm

Intels were 3D. Samsungs are not general CPUs. The small parts are the system on a chip NAND memory. If you want to be clear, tell the whole story– as other commenters below have.

ferdberple
Reply to  ristvan
March 23, 2017 5:33 pm

That strategy sort of hit the wall
====================
true. Back in 2000 Intel was predicting 10 ghz chip speeds by 2011. But around 2005 part of Moore’s law ran into a brick wall. 20 years later 10 ghz Intel cpus remain as common as Unicorns.

Lots of clever solutions have been found to work around the problem. However, there still remains many problems in computer science that would benefit from clock speeds orders of magnitude greater than today’s.

http://www.geek.com/chips/intel-predicts-10ghz-chips-by-2011-564808/
https://www.comsol.com/blogs/havent-cpu-clock-speeds-increased-last-years/

PiperPaul
Reply to  ristvan
March 23, 2017 5:41 pm

My understanding is that the problem with parallel processing is writing software properly for it. Mumblysomething about prediction branches.

Reply to  ristvan
March 23, 2017 7:15 pm

It really doesn’t matter how much faster, bigger or cheaper chips become. Tge operating systems will always manage to use up any spare computing power and RAM.

How do you optimise a Windows application? Turn it into a DOS application! Even back on a 386 processor runing Windows 3.1, when I ran DOS applications, they were scarily fast. I hate to think how fast they would run now!

Samuel C Cogar
Reply to  ristvan
March 24, 2017 8:55 am

Jer0me – March 23, 2017 at 7:15 pm

Even back on a 386 processor runing Windows 3.1, when I ran DOS applications, they were scarily fast.

Of course they were “scarily fast”, especially if those DOS applications were written in “assembler code”.

And the 2nd reason they were “scarily fast” is the fact that RAM memory was @ a premium …… and not “dirt cheap” like it is today.

Me thinks that current computing “applications” are suffering from “the Law of Diminishing Returns”.

As the CPUs got quicker, the available RAM grew quicker than quick ……. but the total amount of RAM resident program code required for the system to function properly increased exponentially.

From what used to be the CP “norm” of tens-of-thousands of bytes of program code ……. that CP “norm” is now tens-of-millions of bytes of program code.

And the computer time required to “navigate” through tens-of-millions of bytes of mostly redundant program code is equivalent to ……. “running around the barn twenty (20) times just so you can get through the barn doors”.

MarkW
Reply to  ristvan
March 24, 2017 9:44 am

Part of the problem is the migration to 4th generation languages like C++.
C++ is a developers dream because of all the stuff it does for you, it allows you to create more code faster.
The problem is that it does so much stuff for you, often stuff that you would never choose to do had you actually written the code for yourself.
The management/sales types, don’t care because faster computers can cover a whole host of programming sins.

Latitude
Reply to  M Courtney
March 23, 2017 3:53 pm

that computer models of the climate should double in accuracy about every two years.

Can’t be done. They are hind casting to temps that have been adjusted to show more warming.
…oddly enough….their linear projections match what they are hindcasting to
But not the real world

ossqss
Reply to  Latitude
March 23, 2017 7:57 pm

No matter the processing power, if the input is not right, the output is not right = Bias

Just sayin, all models, all the time, fail……

asybot
Reply to  Latitude
March 23, 2017 9:44 pm

ossqss +1

ferdberple
Reply to  M Courtney
March 23, 2017 5:52 pm

They are limited on the realism of their basic premises.
=================
spot on. You cannot model the future as the average of all possibilities as the IPCC would have you believe with their “ensemble mean” of individual models. If you could, you could average all rolls of a pair of dice, and this would tell you that the next roll will be a 7. And the roll after that, and the roll after that.

There are a near infinite number of future possible climates. Some warmer, some the same, some cooler. Adding CO2 to the atmosphere MAY increase the odds of arriving at a warmer future, but this doesn’t mean you will arrive.

Even if we pump out all the CO2 we want, the future can end up a roll of double 1’s, and we could plunge into an ice age by 2100. Because without a doubt another ice age is coming, and no climate model can tell us when. By 2100 we may wish we burned a whole lot of coal a whole lot sooner.

Reply to  M Courtney
March 23, 2017 6:00 pm

Eng, I was managing SoC stuff before you were probably born. System on a chip does not mean all portions of the die are same dimensioned. That difference follows from yield requirements.

commieBob
Reply to  ristvan
March 24, 2017 3:09 am

asybot March 23, 2017 at 9:48 pm

+1

It reminds one of the following quote:

A classic (although not legal) example of this focusing on minutiae at the expense of the larger issue is George Tyrell’s line: “if the Jesuits were accused of killing three men and a dog, they would invariably produce the dog alive.” link

It’s one of my favorite quotes but I can’t find the original. William F. Buckley Jr. seemed to know and used it here. Sadly, he’s no longer with us.

Philo
Reply to  ristvan
March 24, 2017 7:35 am

Please stop the useless arguing about Moore’s Law. He was talking about transistors greater than 10μm down to 10μm, the size in the first in the first microcomputer chip, the Intel 4004. They’re now three orders of magnitude smaller and nearly at the limit where electrons wander around through quantum tunneling, near the limit for conventional semiconductors.

At this point the real limits are starting to be connecting these incredibly small computers and other electronics to the outside world. You could conceivably fit 180 of the latest Intel processors(more if they were stacked up) behind a current 27in, monitor- a mini supercomputer on your desktop. Do we put a supercomputer in everyone’s pocket, or implant them in a built-in network?

Curious George
Reply to  M Courtney
March 23, 2017 6:08 pm

Let’s assume that for a double accuracy you need a model with a half-size cell (one cell divides into 8 smaller ones), and a half of a time step. That means 16 times more computations. But even then, for any accuracy you need correct physics – and they don’t have that. It runs very deep. At an elementary level, scratch the surface with https://judithcurry.com/2013/06/28/open-thread-weekend-23/#comment-338257

Gamecock
Reply to  M Courtney
March 23, 2017 7:04 pm

“They are limited on the realism of their basic premises.”

Zactly. The problem is software. Megaflops can’t fix bad design.

March 23, 2017 2:56 pm

Why harm agriculture when there will be no measurable impact on the climate. Don’t these fools realize that when we eventually do run out of oil, our most pressing problem will be how to replenish atmospheric CO2 so that agriculture doesn’t crash.

Geoff
Reply to  co2isnotevil
March 23, 2017 3:17 pm

True. Just like extinction events before. When the Sun cools, the Earth cools, then the oceans suck in lots of CO2 and everything dies.

BallBounces
March 23, 2017 2:56 pm

Alternatively, we could simply halve the number of climate scientists every ten years. The climate alarm problem would go away in no time.

Walter Sobchak
Reply to  BallBounces
March 23, 2017 6:25 pm

+1

Tom Halla
March 23, 2017 2:57 pm

Instant North Korea? I think the DPRK uses energy at about the rate the greens advocate, so it must be nearly paradise./s

Reply to  Tom Halla
March 23, 2017 3:36 pm

North Korea is the rose colored glasses that the greens see as an ideal state to save the world. Some parts of the world have ideal religious laws, they go to Switzerland to escape them. Or Iranians go on holidays to some part in Russia.
If AGW people are posting on here they will not be exempt from the extremely harsh world they are advocating. They are too far down in rank.

charles nelson
March 23, 2017 2:57 pm

When I was a kid we used to write a letter to Santa listing everything we wanted for Christmas.
Next step was to burn it in the fire… the information would then travel up the chimney and get to directly to Santa’s HQ at the North Pole.
It might work.

Mike Smith
Reply to  charles nelson
March 23, 2017 4:49 pm

I conducted that experiment annually for several years.

It worked. No “might” about it 🙂

March 23, 2017 2:58 pm

In the late 1980’s institutional care for psychiatric patients began to be closed down and patients were released into the general community. This process coincided with the collapse of Communism and the surplus lunatics and idle hands joined the Earth Hour and Global Warming Alarmism movement. The University of Melbourne is a typical institution filled with them.

Macha
March 23, 2017 3:00 pm

Heck. Reading this helped me realise how much I dislike the phrase ” carbon emissions”.
About as over used as ” sustainability” IMO. Has WUWT perpetuated it on purpose?.

Lars P.
Reply to  Macha
March 23, 2017 3:16 pm

Heck. Reading this helped me realise how much I dislike the phrase ” carbon emissions”.
Exactly. Like ‘carbon footprint’, ‘black carbon’ and all their twisted terminology. Somebody tell the morons that life on Earth is carbon based. This would be the shock of their life.

gnome
Reply to  Lars P.
March 23, 2017 3:52 pm

I don’t mind “carbon footprint” but all the others are nonsense. The carbon cycle is a well established concept which goes well beyond CO2 cycling.

seaice1
Reply to  Lars P.
March 23, 2017 4:53 pm

It would not be a shock to them as they are all aware of this. What is surprising is that you have such a low opinion of climate scientists that you think they are unaware of such basic science that a 4th grader would know. Either you have climate scientists wrong, or you are wrong. I know where I put my money.

Jaakko Kateenkorva
Reply to  Lars P.
March 23, 2017 11:59 pm

seaice1. “What is surprising is that you have such a low opinion of climate scientists that you think they are unaware of such basic science that a 4th grader would know”

There is nothing surprising in it. Reduced mental capacity has been their best defence so far. Anyone above that of a 4th grader would be more cautious:

Provided the mankind can adjust the climate and should move it to an arbitrary ideal at the end of 1800’s, as they insist.

Based recorded history, 15% of my people starved to death during snowy summers then. A large proportion had to abandon their homes and immigrate across the ocean to foreign lands to survive. And now, based on the latest in the article, more of my people should also be forced to suffer cold, dark and immobility. What more is need for to fulfil the criteria of an attempted mass genocide?

So, based on what you are now saying, it’s done in full capacity for the court of justice? Duly noted man.

GregK
Reply to  Macha
March 23, 2017 5:33 pm

What are the carbon emissions of a horse pulling a cart?

The autonomous vehicle of the future

Trebla
March 23, 2017 3:06 pm

Wow! It sounds so easy! Let’s DO IT!! (Not). These geniuses should note that companies like Suncor are spending billions of dollars acquiring competitors’ oil assets. I wonder why? If oil is going to be “phased out” that means a shrinking market for their products and no way to make a return on their investments. And Keystone just got the green light from Trump, so somebody better tell Trans Canada to put a hold on that investment, or put a pipeline in the size of a garden hose because that’s all that will be needed by 2040..

Editor
March 23, 2017 3:08 pm

How is this “science”?

On the eve of this year’s Earth hour (25 March), researchers propose a solution in the journal Science (24 March) for the global economy to rapidly reduce carbon emissions. The authors argue a carbon roadmap, driven by a simple rule of thumb or “carbon law” of halving emissions every decade, could catalyse disruptive innovation.

Such a “carbon law”, based on Moore’s Law in the computer industry, applies to cities, nations and industrial sectors.

The authors say fossil-fuel emissions should peak by 2020 at the latest and fall to around zero by 2050 to meet the UN’s Paris Agreement’s climate goal of limiting the global temperature rise to “well below 2°C” from preindustrial times.

And exactly what governmental body is supposed to pass this law?

This is mindbogglingly idiotic. Governments can’t pass laws to dictate “disruptive innovation.” Just because government passes a law, doesn’t mean that science and technology will advance at their legislated pace. This is as moronic as Henry Waxman…

We’re seeing the reality of a lot of the North Pole starting to evaporate, and we could get to a tipping point. Because if it evaporates to a certain point – they have lanes now where ships can go that couldn’t ever sail through before. And if it gets to a point where it evaporates too much, there’s a lot of tundra that’s being held down by that ice cap…

[…]

The way we have to do it is to change and transform our economy by moving to a low carbon emission economy. For example, we’ve got to be more efficient in the use of energy; we’ve got to use more renewable fuels; we’ve got to invest in technologies that will allow us to reduce or eliminate the sulfur in something like coal, which is a heavily polluted source of energy.

We’ve got to do all of these, and one of the best ways to accomplish the overall goal is through what’s called a cap-and-trade mechanism. We unleash the competition and the entrepreneurial spirit of Americans to develop technologies and try to figure out how to accomplish the goal, especially when there’s a cap on the total amount of pollution that will be going down over the years.

[…]

If we raise the price of energy, which will happen if we’re reducing the amount of carbon emissions, and industries have to figure out how to live in a carbon-constrained environment, they are going to have to figure it out because it’s in their profitable interest to figure it out.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/26/quote-of-the-week-5-waxmans-stunningly-stupid-statement/

I think I’ll celebrate Earth Hour by venting my gas grill for an hour.

ferdberple
Reply to  David Middleton
March 23, 2017 6:26 pm

If we raise the price of energy, which will happen if we’re reducing the amount of carbon emissions, and industries have to figure out how to live in a carbon-constrained environment, they are going to have to figure it out because it’s in their profitable interest to figure it out.
==============
there is nothing to figure out. they will raise prices or go out of business locally and move to some other country without cap and trade. either you will pay more or lose your job. CO2 will remain unchanged.

TDBraun
Reply to  David Middleton
March 23, 2017 6:42 pm

But “an international team of scientists” says this is what we should do. Who are we to question them? Surely they have taken into account every possible ramification this plan might have throughout the entire world, and all the numerous climate variables and every possible economic consequence, and have determined with scientific certainty what the other seven billion people in the world should do.

MarkW
Reply to  David Middleton
March 24, 2017 6:26 am

For years I’ve been debating with electric car enthusiasts who insist that if government were to pass a law requiring battery manufacturers to create the type of battery needed to make electrics work, then the companies would.
According to them, the only thing we lack is the will to do it.

Coeur de Lion
March 23, 2017 3:09 pm

They are all university men so shouldn’t they be well informed about third world needs? Have some brains? It’s all very depressing.

Janice Moore
Reply to  Coeur de Lion
March 23, 2017 3:19 pm

They appear to lack a coeur, de Lion.

Steve
March 23, 2017 3:09 pm

I propose a “Renewables Law” to wit: The Cost of Renewable Energy per KwH Increases every 5 years while the Validity of Climate Models Decreases with every 5 new Models. This can also be called the Law of Blatant Stupidity!

Tsk Tsk
March 23, 2017 3:15 pm

Psst! Moore’s Law ended about 5 years ago, kids. Sorry to burst your bubble. And when you figure out how to heat 1g of water 1C with less than 1Cal, then we’ll talk.

Reply to  Tsk Tsk
March 23, 2017 3:37 pm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/01/05/ces-2017-moores-law-not-dead-says-intel-boss/

Now c’mon — how can Moore’s law be dead? I don’t remember anyone going to jail from breaking it.

Tsk Tsk
Reply to  lorcanbonda
March 23, 2017 3:52 pm

http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?doc_id=1286363

Intel’s entire existence is predicated on Moore’s Law as they’re basically a process company that does a bit of design on the side. Wanna bet that Intel’s latest chips are any cheaper?

Reply to  Tsk Tsk
March 23, 2017 4:05 pm

TT, EU mandated it so it must be possible. To cut CO2 emissions, no electric kettles over 1200 watts allowed. But no regulation on kettle water volume. See. Just as smart as this carbon law paper.

Tsk Tsk
Reply to  ristvan
March 23, 2017 4:15 pm

Clearly they were drinking too much tea for their own good.

schitzree
Reply to  ristvan
March 23, 2017 6:06 pm

Just out of curiosity, how many watts is one of those keurig style hot beverage machines? You know, the ones that make one cup at a time, really fast?

For that matter how many watts is a Starbucks cappuccino machine? I’m betting those somehow slipped under the regulators yardstick.

GregK
Reply to  Tsk Tsk
March 23, 2017 5:34 pm

Moore’s Law now seems to apply to memory rather than processor speed

markl
Reply to  GregK
March 23, 2017 5:38 pm

Both.

Reply to  Tsk Tsk
March 23, 2017 7:20 pm

And when you figure out how to heat 1g of water 1C with less than 1Cal, then we’ll talk.

Please sir, please sir! I can!

Use 1 Joule (which is less than 1 cal 🙂

Janice Moore
March 23, 2017 3:17 pm

That entire hard sell ad can be summed up in one sentence:

Buy our wind and solar parts.

(“And,” cries a little voice from the back, “our temperature data products!!”)

Brought to you by The Enviroprofiteers (large and small).

***********************************************************

What a bunch of CLOWNS (“based on Moore’s law” — lol). A “law” in science is based on observations.

Their phony “law” is simply run-of-the-mill edict.

Response of a sane society:

Go jump in the lake.

Reply to  Janice Moore
March 23, 2017 3:19 pm

I wouldn’t be so diplomatic. This guy had the proper response to enviro-thuggery…

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/06/16/quote-of-the-week-best-response-to-rico20-exxonknew-attorney-generals-ever/

Slacko
Reply to  David Middleton
March 23, 2017 6:04 pm

David, I don’t think Janice is being diplomatic. She is likely aware that the expression refers not to just any old lake, but to the lake of fire and brimstone. See Rev. 19:20 and Rev. 20:10-15. The antichrist and the false prophet must be the first to go, followed closely by false climate prophets. Janice is spot on.

Janice Moore
Reply to  David Middleton
March 23, 2017 6:44 pm

Well, Slacko, I must admit that I was NOT aware of that being the origin for that expression. Thank you for letting me know that it is the equivalent of “Go to blazes!” I thought it was a parallel to “blow it out your duffel bag” (please, do not tell me if there is some disgusting meaning to that one…. I DON’T want to know).

So! I’m flattered that you thought I would know…. and humbled by the fact that I didn’t. Winning combo, there!

#(:))

Slacko
Reply to  David Middleton
March 23, 2017 9:06 pm

“Duffel bag” ?? Ain’t ever heard that one before, so I gotta plead iggerance.
Love you Janice.

PS. Were they your dogs in the video you posted a few weeks ago? If so you have a really sweet voice.

Reply to  David Middleton
March 24, 2017 1:34 am

Essentially the duffel bag expression means the same thing, Janice. Although it originated as “blow it out your barracks bag.”

Janice Moore
Reply to  David Middleton
March 24, 2017 9:02 am

Hi, Slacko,

What a kind, generous-hearted, person you are. Thank you for your warmth and caring.

I can’t remember the video (one with female narration in it), but, my voice sounds like this (except when I am angry, heh):

A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes (at the risk of further worsening my reputation for strong-minded thinking, this is one of my favorite songs)

(youtube)

So. Now you know why I will always use writing for my main means of communication. Even then, I often have a hard time being taken seriously!

Thank you for “talking” to me in such a friendly way. People like you make it possible for me to remain at WUWT.

Your grateful WUWT ally for truth,

Janice

Janice Moore
Reply to  David Middleton
March 24, 2017 9:04 am

Thank you, Writing Observer, for making sure I understood. Sigh. See what I mean, Slacko?

Slacko
Reply to  David Middleton
March 24, 2017 9:45 pm

Janice Moore March 24, 2017 at 9:02 am

Yeah, that’s very similar to the voice that was speaking to the dogs so I guess maybe I was right. I’ve deleted that thread from my inbox though so I’d have to do a search. Thanks.

NW sage
Reply to  Janice Moore
March 23, 2017 6:02 pm

The authors of the so called ‘carbon law’ have it completely backward. A law of this type is formulated based on observations (like Janice said). Only Obama – and the ilk – make pronouncements like the carbon law and then expect the real world to re-arrange itself to fit that law. Nature just doesn’t behave because some human ‘said so’!

Reply to  Janice Moore
March 25, 2017 3:10 am

Janice Moore, Whenever I see you postings it brings a smile to my face old tho’ it be it is the face of an old enquiring engineer. Much have I tried to study history and the AGW stuff reminds me of Phlogiston for it makes as much sense. History tells me that old Sol has some repeating habits of rampart and quite every few hundred years, that give us warm periods and cold periods. Old sol at the moment and most likely for the next few cycles is going on sabbatical leave the next few decades or more are likely to be bloody cold in Europe and North America. If I live long enough I am going to enjoy the idiots with their wind mills and solar panels freezing their butts off in the dark. I will keep warm using good Aussie hard wood in my pot belly stove. Love.

Janice Moore
Reply to  wayne Job
March 25, 2017 7:54 am

Aw, Wayne. Thanks. 🙂 (and I’ve not forgotten how very kind you were to me when I wailed about older women and men and well….. your reassurance is still resonating — thank you again)

I should have known you were an engineer. Engineers are especially wonderful people (in my personal experience). Take care.

Herb
March 23, 2017 3:20 pm

This is unsurprising from the Uni of Melbourne which was once a great institution. Victoria is the State in Australia that leans most to the left.

What’s a “pre-industrial temperature” anyway? Are they talking about the LIA or the Medieval Warm Period, Roman Warm Period or the Minoan Warm period?

What guarantee is there that limiting CO2 emissions to <400ppm has any effect on limiting the natural increase in temperature since the LIA?

March 23, 2017 3:25 pm

The article speaks of “Moor’s Law”.

Let the “Carbon Law”, then, heretofore, be known as … Moron’s Law

Reply to  Robert Kernodle
March 23, 2017 3:29 pm

Oops! Moore’s Law … spelled it wrong the first time.

But Moron’s Law was spelled correctly.

Reply to  Robert Kernodle
March 23, 2017 3:42 pm

As a battery designer, I had somebody ask me if Ohm’s Law applied to batteries. I answered, “Of course it does. It’s a law. If you break it, then you go to jail.”

I received a well-deserved laugh for that. Don’t these guys understand that they are scientists? You don’t just arbitrarily invent physical laws on a whim.

Killer Marmot
March 23, 2017 3:25 pm

Yes, we should assume that science and technology will continue to advance, with many major breakthroughs likely to come. No, we should never assume that major advancement is inevitable in any one area, no matter how much money we spend on it. That is hubris.

An example is cancer research. Scientists have conducted a “war on cancer” for the last 45 years, with the aim of eradicating it. Although many important advancements have been made, we are still a long way from the goal.

Reply to  Killer Marmot
March 23, 2017 4:13 pm

Good example. Cancer is an inevitable byproduct of Wear and Tear in DNA replication. New paper estimates 2/3 of all cancers are just ‘bad luck’. Highly recoomend the recent ebook, Emporer of Disease. An oncologists up close and personal history of the war on cancer.

Tsk Tsk
Reply to  ristvan
March 23, 2017 4:17 pm

Which basically just becomes an ECC problem. We just need to find a way to increase our correction power.

Samuel C Cogar
Reply to  ristvan
March 24, 2017 9:43 am

ristvan – March 23, 2017 at 4:13 pm

New paper estimates 2/3 of all cancers are just ‘bad luck’.

Yup, and I was please to read about that being reported in today’s news @ Fox News

But me thinks those researchers were just being “polite” with their “2/3 bad luck estimate” ……. when in fact it should have been an “estimate of 95% bad luck”.

J Mac
March 23, 2017 3:28 pm

We already have a ‘Carbon Law’ on this planet!
Carbon Law of Earth: All known life forms on planet earth are carbon based, with no exceptions.

Reply to  J Mac
March 23, 2017 3:32 pm

The new “carbon law” would state that all carbon-based life forms are based on pollution. We are born dirty. This is why we need faith in Jesus and climate models.

J Mac
Reply to  Robert Kernodle
March 23, 2017 3:39 pm

No.

Reply to  Robert Kernodle
March 23, 2017 3:52 pm

Carbon-based == original sin?

ferdberple
Reply to  J Mac
March 23, 2017 5:59 pm

Carbon Law of Earth: without carbon we die.

March 23, 2017 3:30 pm

This is a great idea, but why stop at carbon. Why don’t we pass a law to reduce the force of gravity by 50% every decade. It will save enormously on the costs of flights to all the climate conferences, and will make space travel not just accessible but mandatory for all.

J Mac
Reply to  andrewpattullo
March 23, 2017 3:34 pm

+10! Was thinking similarly… but you stated it with much superior grace and wit.

Steve Fraser
Reply to  andrewpattullo
March 23, 2017 4:28 pm

I feel lighter, already!

ferdberple
Reply to  andrewpattullo
March 23, 2017 6:04 pm

reduce the force of gravity by 50% every decade.
========
Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers move over. The Battle of the Bulge is ended. Eat all you want and the pounds will melt away as if by magic. Exercise and dieting will become so yesterday. Fat will become the new thin.

March 23, 2017 3:33 pm

I am going to celebrate earth hour by watching the NCAA college basketball tournament. The first round was boring, but the second round was pure march madness! I can’t wait for the games tonight and tomorrow.

J Mac
Reply to  alexwade
March 23, 2017 3:38 pm

2nd that, Alex!
Go Badgers!

DonM
Reply to  J Mac
March 23, 2017 6:53 pm

Badgers …. Badgers … we don’t need no stinking Badgers….

DonM
Reply to  J Mac
March 23, 2017 6:57 pm

Well, after they beat Florida and Baylor then we won’t need them anymore.

asybot
Reply to  alexwade
March 23, 2017 11:00 pm

And so they were ( except Kansas they looked awesome but I am rooting for Gonzaga)! Saturday is going to be a HOOT and I can’t wait!

March 23, 2017 3:35 pm

These people are too smart to be this stupid.
.
.
.
.
.
Aren’t they?

Reply to  lorcanbonda
March 23, 2017 3:55 pm

Perhaps William F. Buckley Jr.’s comment is apropos: “I won’t insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.”

Reply to  lorcanbonda
March 23, 2017 5:24 pm

You’re on the right track.

Some ideas are so stupid that only an intellectual could believe them. – George Orwell.

Some versions are attributed to Bertrand Russell in My Philosophical Development, 1959. Cheers –

March 23, 2017 3:35 pm

Then there’s that nasty, corrosion-inducing, cell-damaging oxygen, The stuff is slowly killing us, even as we breathe it in.

Reply to  Robert Kernodle
March 23, 2017 3:40 pm

Don’t forget dihydrogen oxide… People drown in it all the time. Let’s hit that with Moore’on’s Law too!

u.k.(us)
Reply to  David Middleton
March 23, 2017 3:44 pm

Trick questions just make people feel stupid, education might be the better pathway.

Chimp
Reply to  David Middleton
March 23, 2017 6:58 pm

http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html

Hydric acid sounds scarier.

Gunga Din
Reply to  David Middleton
March 24, 2017 3:15 pm

Chimp March 23, 2017 at 6:58 pm
http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html

Hydric acid sounds scarier.

Very true. That original classic left out “Ocean Acidification”.
(I think. The dangers of dihydrogen monoxide and the reason it needs to be controlled or eliminated were pretty well covered on the site. I just might have missed it. The science wasn’t as settled back then when I first read it.8-)

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  Robert Kernodle
March 23, 2017 3:45 pm

RK,
That is why you should take anti-oxidant supplements with your Cheerios.

Clyde Spencer
March 23, 2017 3:42 pm

It is all a fool’s errand! Let’s assume that fossil fuels could be phased out completely in the next 100 years. That means the total fossil fuel CO2 emitted would be 50% of what it would be otherwise. Let’s further assume that 50% of the recent warming can actually be attributed to fossil fuels. Let’s further assume that the past rate of global warming of approximately 1 deg C is probable for the next century under a business as usual scenario. That means that only half the warming is under our control and it will be only half as great. That is, the fossil fuel warming will be approximately 0.5 x 0.5 x 1, or 0.25 deg C. In other words, by forcing the world to adopt a standard of living not unlike North Korea, the world will only warm 0.8 deg C instead of 1 deg C.

The optimistic believe that we can maintain our lifestyle by using ‘renewable’ energy. That overlooks the fact that bootstrapping an unprecedented change in infrastructure and building alternative power sources will initially require a huge manufacturing boom that will have to be fueled by fossil fuels until such time as nearly all the in-place power sources are replaced.

Janice Moore
March 23, 2017 3:45 pm

The article is loaded with baloney, but this one gets the prize for the BALONIEST STATEMENT OF THE DAY (HOUR? — they come out with them at such high frequency, it may be MINUTE!):

In the last decade, the share of renewables in the energy sector has doubled every 5.5 years. If doubling continues at this pace fossil fuels will exit the energy sector …

Given the essentially 0 inventory output possible of wind-powered plants, “renewables” will be walking out that door arm in arm with FF.

Reply to  Janice Moore
March 23, 2017 4:18 pm

The old confuce nameplate with capacity factor trick. And starting from a very small number, doubling every 5 years is still a very small number.

Reply to  Janice Moore
March 23, 2017 5:55 pm

“If current trends continue ….” There should be a law against that assumption.

I tell people, when I was a kid, we had five minutes of weather every day (usually between the news and sports.) Now we have weather 24 hours a day. If current trends continue, we’ll have like 96 hours of weather every day in a few decades. There will be tornadoes, hailstorms hurricanes, and droughts at the same time.

We’re doomed

ferdberple
Reply to  Janice Moore
March 23, 2017 6:14 pm

the share of renewables in the energy sector has doubled every 5.5 years.
======================
then why the need for a carbon tax? anything with exponential growth will quickly outgrow its competitors.

for example, lets assume that renewables are 10% of the energy sector. not unreasonable, given how fast they have grown. then long before 2050, in fact before 2040, the energy sector will be entirely renewables, with plenty of room for grow by 2050.

year – share of energy sector
2017 – 10%
2022.5 – 20%
2028 – 40%
2033.5 – 80%
2039 – 160%
2044.5 – 320%
2050 – 640%

Ron Williams
March 23, 2017 3:47 pm

“The authors say fossil-fuel emissions should peak by 2020 at the latest and fall to around zero by 2050 to meet the UN’s Paris Agreement’s climate goal of limiting the global temperature rise to “well below 2°C” from preindustrial times.”

Zero FF emissions by 2050, basically in 33 years? Not going to happen. We won’t even hit peak oil by then. Pricing of FF might be an economic issue that slows FF use especially if another cheaper energy option becomes a reality, but that is a another topic for another day.

Especially after another 3-4 years when we will be finding out that the whole premise of CAGW will be in rapid retreat now that the political winds have shifted to allow for real skeptical science inquiry vs. the last 8-10 years of being branded a denier or a heretic if one didn’t follow the Gov’t/academic dogma. Which forced honest scientists to get on the bandwagon if they didn’t want to perish for inability to publish, or receive grant funding for their research. Yes, finally, scientific truth will be closer to the norm than last year, but I really feel some of these academic nut-bars won’t be happy until we are in another full blown ice age. The little bit of theoretical warming we do get from human induced warming is a tiny insurance policy on a period of short global cooling, which would really throw a wrench into global survival. That should be the absolute highest concern knowing what we do now about historical wild shifts in weather and climate.

While I used to worship Earth Day in my younger dryas days when it first started, now every ED I turn on every electrical appliance and lights at my place for the hour as a way of expressing my frustration locally with my neighbours and community whom have been drinking the kool-aid for far to long now. And I was one of the first IPP’s selling electricity back to the grid commercially 25-30 years ago in my neck of the woods, hoping to save the world. I still want to save the world, but CAWG via FF is a weak argument.

Curious George
Reply to  Ron Williams
March 23, 2017 6:27 pm

Don’t get too excited – just ignore the ED. If you run on solar, turning your appliances on does nothing.

Pat Frank
March 23, 2017 3:48 pm

[Moore’s Law –] this simple rule of thumb or heuristic has been described as a “golden rule” which has held for 50 years and still drives disruptive innovation.

That claim perfectly illustrates the fatuous thinking going into the idea of a carbon law. Moore’s Law doesn’t drive innovation. Rather, innovation results in Moore’s Law, which isn’t a law at all. It’s merely an observation.

These people have not only put the cart before the horse, but they don’t understand “horse” or the origin of motive power.

And then Science magazine publishes it.

I hope all these people live long enough to witness the recovery of critical sensibility and then to get really, really, embarrassed by their stupidity.

Reply to  Pat Frank
March 23, 2017 3:59 pm

Science magazine USED to be about science.. Not after the 2013 publication of Marcott’s academic misconduct. Just like Scientific American is no longer either scientific or American.

Stan Robertson
Reply to  ristvan
March 23, 2017 5:07 pm

+1!

Pat Frank
Reply to  ristvan
March 23, 2017 6:18 pm

Rud, do you have any explanation apart from Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds?

Neil Jordan
March 23, 2017 3:49 pm

According to the published timetable:
Each decade has key milestones to reach:
2020: 40 Gigatonnes of CO2
2030: 20 GtCO2
2040: 10 GtCO2
2050: 5 GtCO2
By ordinary linear regression, carbon emissions will reach 0 by 2060 and then go negative to reach -5 GtCO2 by 2070 and so on. I propose to call negative emissions CarbonSuck.
(\sarc for the logarithmically-challenged)
P.S. I will be turning on lights and perhaps lighting off an Adake kerosene railroad signal lantern
http://www.adlake.com/online-store.html
for the occasion of Earth Hour.

Steve Fraser
Reply to  Neil Jordan
March 23, 2017 4:30 pm

Hmm… reduce by half each year never gets to 0.

Neil Jordan
Reply to  Steve Fraser
March 23, 2017 9:16 pm

Departure of nonlinear reality from model linearity is accommodated by the \sarc, a coefficient according to judgment.

MarkW
Reply to  Steve Fraser
March 24, 2017 6:38 am

Reminds me of the old joke about a scientist, and engineer and a beautiful woman.
The scientist and engineer are placed at opposite ends of a long hallway with the woman halfway between them.
The scientist and engineer are told that each time the bell rings, they can each go halfway to the woman.
The bell rings, the engineer moves and the scientist doesn’t.
The bell rings again, and the engineer moves and the scientist doesn’t.
When the bell rings a third time and the same thing happens, the engineer asks the scientist why he isn’t moving.
The scientist replies that if he can only go half way, he’ll never reach the woman so why bother.
The engineer replies, that may be true, but eventually you reach the point where the difference doesn’t matter.

March 23, 2017 3:49 pm

As someone who has innovated (13 US patents), run a VC operation, and run startups, I can assure all readers here that innovation does not respond either to a ‘carbon law’ or a real law like Bush’s EISA07 mandating switchgrass based cellulosic ethanol. For not so amusing details on the latter, read essay Wishful Thinking in ebook Blowing Smoke.

March 23, 2017 3:49 pm

Moore’s law applies primarily for economic reason’s: there’s a fantastic amount of money to be made by cramming more stuff into a smaller space, and it takes about 18 months to pay for the last cycle and build the next. (Companies are always working on implementing the next “node” and researching the next one past that.)

Unfortunately, the greenie meanies nix anyone actually making money, so there’s no incentive to drive a “carbon law”.

John F. Hultquist
Reply to  Paul Blase
March 23, 2017 3:53 pm

Moore’s law, as usually though of, is history.
Advances continue in a new sense — specialized hardware and innovative software.

Reply to  John F. Hultquist
March 23, 2017 5:38 pm

Yup. Lots of articles about that now appearing. Moore’s ‘Law’ died on two realities: the quantum physics of miniaturization (yield, unreliabilty), and the iron economic law of diminishing marginal returns.

Samuel C Cogar
Reply to  John F. Hultquist
March 24, 2017 10:24 am

The fact is, Gordon Moore of Intel fame DID NOT formulate, stipulate or mandate any such thing as “Moore’s Law”.

Gordon Moore simply made a comment in reference to a question ….. and someone took the liberty of referring to said comment as being “Moore’s Law”. To wit:

Moore’s law refers to an observation made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965.

1965 was a time when horrific changes were being accomplished in the production of integrated circuits. Especially the decrease in manufacturing costs.

John F. Hultquist
March 23, 2017 3:51 pm

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, says “… we identify concrete steps… ”

No. “Concrete steps” would be like this:
In 2017, turn off X, Y, …., and Z coal powered plants, and build 1,000,000 windmills on designated acres. Specifics are required — what, where, when? Joachim is full of hot air.

This guy looks like Harold Camping of “Rapture” fame but is more crazy.
Simple arithmetic calculations refute Schellnhuber’s nonsense.
Harold said he only got the date wrong and Rapture was still in our future. Refute that.

mrmethane
Reply to  John F. Hultquist
March 23, 2017 6:42 pm

A concrete step, like the scaling of “earth day’ to “earth hour”, would seem to be a further reduction to “earth minute”.

Gunga Din
Reply to  mrmethane
March 24, 2017 3:19 pm

But…but… All concrete steps contain “Carbon”.
Do they really want more of them?

March 23, 2017 3:54 pm

Such a “carbon law”, based on Moore’s Law in the computer industry …

The “carbon law” is based on wishful thinking and has nothing to do with Moore’s law which is based on “the observation that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law

It’s all marketing of the worst kind … lies and deception.

George Daddis
Reply to  rovingbroker
March 23, 2017 4:20 pm

Rovingbroker,
Sorry, I was typing while you posted. I didn’t mean to plagiarize.
“Great minds……etc etc.”

Robert from oz
March 23, 2017 4:11 pm

Is it actually possible to stop all fossil fuel emissions ? What about the emissions from nature such as coal seams that were ignited by lightening and other natural seeps etc .

Janice Moore
Reply to  Robert from oz
March 23, 2017 4:19 pm

Natural CO2 emissions make up roughly 96% of all CO2 emissions.

(Source: http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html (See Item 4.))

Janice Moore
March 23, 2017 4:13 pm

LOL — more baloney to laugh at.

Re:

If doubling continues at this pace….

Well!

So, like, if sales of my product double every 5.5 years, then all my direct and indirect competition will dis-a-pear.

Thus! Pogo sticks will soon be replacing CARS!

So, like, fork over the investment cash, suckahs! 🙂

chilemike
Reply to  Janice Moore
March 23, 2017 5:59 pm

And if you can double the jumping height of the product every five years we’ll all have pogo sticks that go a mile high in 50 years or so! Science!

Janice Moore
Reply to  chilemike
March 23, 2017 6:46 pm

🙂

wouldrathernotsay
March 23, 2017 4:14 pm

Sigh. If we remove all the “extra” carbon dioxide and start sequestering it as recommended, all the plants will die, and then so will the rest of life on earth.

I also cannot imagine the Middle East not producing oil. That’s how they finance everything. They will withdraw every last drop out of the ground before switching over to something else.

To celebrate earth hour, I will be driving my kids to dance classes in my big SUV, that is 13 years old. Guess what my mpg is.

seaice1
Reply to  wouldrathernotsay
March 23, 2017 5:07 pm

Quite low?

George Daddis
March 23, 2017 4:16 pm

…a “golden rule” which has held for 50 years and still drives disruptive innovation.

(my bold)
Moore’s “Law” was an observation (not a law) for a specific silicon based process during a specific period of time. In contrast, there is plenty of existing DATA that the innovation of “renewables” has NOT followed that curve.
There is no evidence Moore’s “Law” continues to “describe” (certainly not “drive”) disruptive innovation.
They are scientists so they should understand that.
Therefore this is pure PR.
Any surprise Schellnhuber has jumped out in front of this announcement?
(Reminds me of what even Democrats used to warn regarding Senator Schumer: “Never get between Chuck and a microphone.”

stephana
March 23, 2017 4:19 pm

Remember if you are going to protest this stupidity with a show of massive carbon use you are wasting your time if you can’t see it from outer space. He He.

Ron Williams
Reply to  stephana
March 23, 2017 5:19 pm

I am using all renewable energy I produce myself…just won’t get paid for the hour what I waste. Worth every penny…

poitsplace
March 23, 2017 4:22 pm

Wouldn’t it be easier to simply sign a law that removes CO2’s greenhouse gas capabilities?

Reply to  poitsplace
March 23, 2017 4:50 pm

Not necessary. Thermalization with the Maxwell-Boltzmann velocity distribution of gas molecules biasing reverse-thermalization to the approximately 2000 times greater number of water vapor absorption bands (at low altitude) explain why CO2 has no significant effect on climate.

seaice1
Reply to  Dan Pangburn
March 23, 2017 5:08 pm

Glad we got that sorted so easily.

Evan Jones
Editor
March 23, 2017 4:28 pm

The global average temperature is currently about 1.1°C above pre-industrial temperatures.

I am not so sure about that. First, it looks as if bad microsite has exaggerated both the ups and the downs. Since the temps actually have risen a bit, that translates to a net warming trend bias.

Also, from what I am seeing with those wacky Tmax numbers for CRS units, I am thinking CRS Tmax trend is more than doubled for those stations, with only a slight cooling bias for Tmin.

So I am thinking that GAT is more likely about 0.7°C above pre-industrial temperatures. Remember, prior to 1982 the USHCN was well over 95% CRS units (with a very occasional HYGRO or Sixes), so the whole historical record is in question back to the getgo.

Reply to  Evan Jones
March 25, 2017 3:24 am

I did my schooling about six decades ago and the standard then for the world was 14.7C@1313mb what are they saying it is now?

March 23, 2017 4:29 pm

That Science published this dreck is more evidence that the wheels truly are coming off the CAGW bandwagon. Ever more shrill, ever more obviously stupid. Nothing not to like.
Melbourne is the capital of the Australian state of Victoria. Lovely city, visited on business. They are (perhaps appropriately) shutting their 52 year old Heywood coal plant end of this month–next week. They have foolishly planned no dispatchable power alternative. Adjacent state SA suffered 5 blackouts in the past six months despite depending on an intwrconnector from Victoria powered by Heywood. So the good news is U. Melbourne will also go dark next Aus summer when the grid blacks out. They will then not be able to get their word processor software to write such drivel in the extended regional blackout sure to come.

Latitude
Reply to  ristvan
March 23, 2017 4:39 pm

LOL….I like that

Patrick MJD
Reply to  ristvan
March 23, 2017 7:27 pm

They best throw out all the books in the library, they don’t need them anyway based on this study, and install plenty of bicycles attached to a generator. And maybe the trams can be solar powered. Yeah, that’ll work!

Gunga Din
Reply to  Patrick MJD
March 24, 2017 3:29 pm

Throw out the books?
Printed, historical data that can’t be changed with a keystroke?
No need anymore.
“Google is your friend.”
They’ve been working on replacing “hard-copies” for a couple of decades.

Patrick MJD
Reply to  Patrick MJD
March 24, 2017 7:44 pm

“Gunga Din March 24, 2017 at 3:29 pm

They’ve been working on replacing “hard-copies” for a couple of decades.”

Yes, that is true. Those who control information, control the past and the future.

Hilary Ostrov (aka hro001)
Reply to  ristvan
March 24, 2017 9:33 pm

Speaking of “Ever more shrill, ever more obviously stupid”… Consider the latest and greatest from AR5 WGIII’s Co-Chair, Ottmar “It was never about the climate” Edenhofer. His prelude to this weekend’s confab of G20 Finance Ministers in Baden-Baden includes the following:

[A group comprised of unnamed “experts”] proposes low-carbon growth stimulation through a steep increase in sustainable infrastructure, mobilizing sustainable finance, and adoption of carbon pricing. This would simultaneously achieve the objectives of the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals, the experts argue. [my bold -hro]

Look, folks! “sustainable infrastructure” and “sustainable finance” seem to over-shadow “carbon pricing”. Greener pastures for the UN, perhaps?! Although, while I have seen signs of this shift for some time, I really wonder how these genii think that the gazillion$ the UN wants to redistribute will come from the wealthier nations when they are urging that such ludicrously pricey “solutions” be adopted by their designated golden geese! But I digress …

This “Climate policy brief for G20 finance ministers” also urges:

The G20 finance ministers should now set a clear framework to avoid bad investments. As a first step, the time for all subsidies for fossil fuels should run out as soon as possible, preferably within five years. This would create planning security for investors. In addition, from 2022 onwards, this would provide the G20 finance ministers with around 180 billion U.S. dollars a year. They could invest this money in the construction of sustainable infrastructure, thus boosting not only domestic economies but simultaneously achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

Source h/t the indefatigable DennisA who had previously ruined an earlier day by pointing me towards Christiana Figueres (aka Tinkerbell)’s latest and greatest on the green-slide front.

Amazing, eh?!

ROM
March 23, 2017 4:59 pm

The average person emits through their breath, which has CO2 concentrations of up to 40,000 ppm, an “estimated” 380 kilograms of that noxious “carbon” aka CO2 per year.

[ Nothing as in “nothing” is ever measured with any degree of accuracy at any level in climate alarmism.
Everything is “estimated” only. ]

China’s 1.35 billion people therefore, as a population and based on those estimated personal human emissions of 380 kgs of CO2 per person per year, breathe out an estimated 500 million plus tonnes of CO2 each year.

Australia with its 23 million population has a “Total” annual estimated CO2 emission tonnage from all sources of 550 million tonnes.

Numeracy illiteracy and scientific myopia allied with an ideologically based bigoted blindness to reality have become the hall marks of almost the entire scientific climate alarmist establishment and its running dogs in the academic, political and media elitist establishments.

seaice1
Reply to  ROM
March 23, 2017 5:12 pm

All the carbon (except a very, very tiny amount from some food additives) comes from carbon recently extracted from the atmosphere by plants. This is not fossil carbon and does not add to the atmospheric concentration on the scale of a few years. The illiteracy is entirely yours.

Reply to  seaice1
March 23, 2017 5:30 pm

Seaice1, you show ignorance of the carbon cycle. About half of atmospheric carbon is sequestered by oceans. More than half of that is ‘quasi-permanent’ biologically pumped into limestone beds. The white cliffs of Dover are a coccolyth chalk equivalent. Now, those Quasi permanent carbon sequestration rocks only get recycled by plate tectonic subduction zones. And the best estimates are that without subductiion zone volcanoes, all plant life and therefor all life would be extinguished by CO2 sophocation in about 2.5 million years. The planet is greening from extra CO2. About 85% of plant biomass is C3, needing more CO2 and less water than the (mostly arid, mostly grassss) less needy C4 plants.
Please bone up on basic plant biology and carbon cycles and plate tectonics before reposting. That way you won’t embarrass yourself again.

Ron Williams
Reply to  seaice1
March 23, 2017 5:42 pm

seaice1 “This is not fossil carbon and does not add to the atmospheric concentration on the scale of a few years.” Perhaps you can explain your point a bit better scientifically so as we can understand your point more precisely?

Sure, it is all recycled…including the FF that gets dragged down into the earth’s crust by plate tectonics and later gets released by belching volcano’s. Human exhalation does release 3 Giga Ton of CO2 annually. Why are you sounding so shrill on ROM’s point?

The way I see it, the main problem is 7.35 billion people on the planet at once, and having grown exponentially the last 60 years in my life time, is one of the larger problems we have globally that are causing much bigger problems that are not be addressed. And runaway population growth will not be checked until a significant cooling event wipes out 1 crop year in the northern hemisphere.

John F. Hultquist
Reply to  seaice1
March 23, 2017 10:42 pm

Ron Williams @5:42 “ And runaway population growth will not be checked …

Population is difficult to forecast (under normal assumptions) beyond about 20 years and the smaller the area of interest the worse the problem gets.
However, “world” population looks to be approaching an inflection point between 2050 – 2075. That population is expected to be about 9.22 billion, and beyond that things get very iffy.
The change in individual countries is more fascinating than the total. Nations such as Japan, Germany, and Russia are in decline. Immigration may slow the loss – happening in the mid-west of the USA. Japan will likely not allow much inflow, and so is destined to decline. These are all small areas and important things, happening now — but not about your assertion.
Here is one total population forecast (~175 pages total).

In these projections, world population peaks at 9.22 billion in 2075. Population therefore grows
slightly beyond the level of 8.92 billion projected for 2050 in the 2002 Revision, on which these projections are based. However, after reaching its maximum, world population declines slightly and then resumes increasing, slowly, to reach a level of 8.97 billion by 2300, not much different from the projected 2050 figure.

Source:
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf

seaice1
Reply to  seaice1
March 24, 2017 5:03 am

Ristvan, I have no objection to you disagreeing with me, or pointing out errors in my posts. I do object to your apparent inability to read and then calling me ignorant on the basis of your lack of comprehension. I specified on the scale of a few years, which is what concerns us here. We are not so concerned about geological time, but really only hundreds of years. The processes you describe occur over geological time, as you point out with your 2.5 million years.

Fossil fuel use adds carbon to the atmosphere over the timescales that interest us in a practical sense. Breathing does not.

seaice1
Reply to  seaice1
March 24, 2017 5:18 am

Ron. I more detail for you. In the short carbon cycle plants take carbon from the atmosphere, animals eat it and produce CO2, which the plants then use again. The carbon emitted by the animal was recently extracted from the atmosphere by plants. In order to produce more CO2 in breath, the animal must consume more plant material, and the plant will have removed this carbon from the atmosphere. This is why it is called a cycle. It does not add carbon to the atmosphere that was not recently removed from the atmosphere. The atmospheric concentration is shifted by a few years as the plants grow, store carbon and then release it. It is this time scale that is important because we do not cause any long term increase in CO2 by breathing.

Now with fossil fuels the carbon was removed from the atmosphere millions of years ago. When we burn this it is shifting the carbon concentration not by a few years but by millions of years. This carbon was not recently removed from the atmosphere, so when we release it it adds to the current concentrations in the atmosphere.

Over millions of years the carbon is laid down as rocks, subducted and returned to the atmosphere by volcanoes. The timescales involved are very different than those we concern ourselves with regarding policy.

Burning fossil fuels is basically releasing some of this carbon from the long cycle into the short cycle. It would have the same effect if vulcanism suddenly started producing 100x as much CO2. We would anticipate that atmospheric levels of CO2 would rise were that to happen.

I don’t think I can put it any more clearly than that.

Reply to  seaice1
March 24, 2017 6:41 am

Sea ice, how is the ppm still around 3 ppm ? The record probably needs adjusting? You should be be alarmed that 8 of the years since 1998 were below 2 ppm. I am. If the entire rise in co2 was entirely anthropogenic, then if we weren’t producing co2, co2 ppm would be negative. The total co2 would be dropping 4 ppm per year. If you are hoping for a dead world, that’s great news.

Reply to  seaice1
March 24, 2017 5:20 am

seaice1:

ristvan observed the great ignorance of the carbon cycle displayed by your post, he stated it, and he gave you information to remove some of that ignorance. You have complained at his commenting on your ignorance, and you wrongly assert he misread what you wrote. Sadly, there is a long series of examples of you behaving as you have to ristvan.

Proper behaviour would have been for you to thank ristvan for giving you his knowledge.

Richard

Reply to  seaice1
March 24, 2017 5:32 am

seaice1:

You assert

Burning fossil fuels is basically releasing some of this carbon from the long cycle into the short cycle. It would have the same effect if vulcanism suddenly started producing 100x as much CO2. We would anticipate that atmospheric levels of CO2 would rise were that to happen.

NO!
At issue is what the atmospheric CO2 concentration would be if the CO2 emission from human emissions (i.e. the anthropogenic emission) were absent.

I refer you to our analyses which show the atmospheric CO2 concentration would probably be the same if the CO2 emission from human emissions were absent. It would probably be the same.
(ref. Rorsch A, Courtney RS & Thoenes D, ‘The Interaction of Climate Change and the Carbon Dioxide Cycle’ E&E v16no2 (2005) )

Those analyses show the short term sequestration processes can easily adapt to sequester the trivially small anthropogenic emission in a year. But, according to each of our six different models, the total emission of a year affects the equilibrium state of the entire carbon cycle system. Some processes of the system are very slow with rate constants of years and decades. Hence, the system takes decades to fully adjust to a new equilibrium. So, the atmospheric CO2 concentration slowly changes in response to any change in the equilibrium condition.

Importantly, each of our models demonstrates that the observed recent rise of atmospheric CO2 concentration may be solely a consequence of altered equilibrium of the carbon cycle system caused by, for example, the anthropogenic emission or, for example, may be solely a result of desorption from the oceans induced by the temperature rise that preceded it.

The most likely explanation for the continuing rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration is adjustment towards the altered equilibrium of the carbon cycle system provided by the temperature rise in previous decades during the centuries of recovery from the Little Ice Age.

This slow rise in response to the changing equilibrium condition also provides an explanation of why the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere continued when in two subsequent years the flux into the atmosphere decreased (the years 1973-1974, 1987-1988, and 1998-1999). Your assertion fails to explain this.

Richard

seaice1
Reply to  seaice1
March 24, 2017 10:43 am

rishrac – what ppm’s are you referring to?
Richard.
Please explain why CO2 from fossil limestone would behave differently from fossil CO2 from coal once it got into the atmosphere.

That is exactly my point to which you respond NO.

You quote my words so there is no reason to repeat them. I cannot put it any more clearly. IF vulcanism pumped the same amount of carbon from subducted limestone into the atmosphere it would have the same effect as humans pumping CO2 into the air from fossil coal.

If you point is that doing either of those things would have no effect then say so and we can move on. Otherwise explain the difference.

You will note that I have not insulted you at all and I hope you can refrain from that also.

Reply to  seaice1
March 24, 2017 3:32 pm

What’s there that the you don’t understand about parts per million per volume per year. I never sited the source. The source or lack is it is what the data points to. What it seems that you don’t understand is that the difference in most of the anthropogenic co2 has been produced since 1998 yet it isn’t making it into the atmosphere. While 1 or 2 ppm/v per year may not seems like much, it represents 17 to 30% of all anthropogenic co2 produced. That’s on top of the amount that is acknowledged to have been sunk. If you aren’t alarmed by this, you should be. It means that if we weren’t producing co2, the total level of co2 would be decreasing.

seaice1
Reply to  seaice1
March 24, 2017 1:42 pm

Richard, as I said to someone else, I take care with my writing, please take some care with your reading. I am not ignorant of the long carbon cycle referred to, so I took careful steps to avoid confusion by inserting the clause “on the scale of a few years”. It is quite revealing that you ignore my to response to ristvan explaining this, and you double down in the unjustified allegation of ignorance. I recommend reading before responding, and if you don’t understand then either keep quiet or ask for clarification. Personally I apply these principles, so I am not suggesting anything I don’t do myself.

Your proper response would be to thank me for giving you this insight.

seaice1
Reply to  seaice1
March 24, 2017 3:52 pm

rishrac. “What’s there that the you don’t understand about parts per million per volume per year” Thank you for the clarification. You only mentioned ppm. not ppm/year. As I understand it you are saying that the rise is 3ppm/year, when we are putting out 6ppm/year, or something like that. The answer is that the sinks are not fixed, but depend on the level of CO2. About half of the extra CO2 is quite rapidly adsorbed by the sinks Higher levels mean more adsorption – in the oceans and by plants. However you are discussing details of the size of sinks and sources that is nothing to do with my point. It is an interesting topic for discussion but is not the point I was making. If we do not introduce fossil CO2 the sinks will remain the same.

Reply to  seaice1
March 24, 2017 4:44 pm

The sinks were always capable of handling this much co2 or they weren’t. If anything the sinks should have shrunk. There is definitely less of the earth covered by tropical forest which was called ” the lungs of the earth “, and oceans that are warmer, therefore not able to absorb as much. If there is variability in the sinks that can go from 6 BMT in 1965 to 19 BMT in 2014, what is it ? …..(Don’t try and confuse the issue. 12 BMT was produced in 1965, 6 BMT went into the sink, and 6BMT went into the atmosphere. In 2014 38 BMT was produced with 19 BMT going into the sink. That year 2.13 ppm, a full 1 ppm off, 6 BMT additional was sunk.) ….. And what I’m not able to get through to you is that the year after 1998 which was 2.93 ppm, 1999 the level was 0.93 , in one year 12 BMT just went poof. No levels exceed 3.00 ppm per year until 2016 (except for 2005 which NOAA adjusted sometime soon after the realization that for the last 60 years co2 followed temperature ). There has not been any make up years were the co2 ppm per year exceeded production. They have ALL been below.
All numbers from NOAA.

seaice1
Reply to  seaice1
March 24, 2017 3:56 pm

Richard, since you assure me that you always answer questions, I will phrase my comment explicitly as a question. Why would CO2 introduced into the atmosphere from fossil limestone behave differently than fossil CO2 introduced to the atmosphere by burning coal?

seaice1
Reply to  seaice1
March 24, 2017 4:59 pm

rishrac. Henry’s law says that the higher the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere the more the oceans will absorb. The temperature rise of the oceans means that they can absorb less, but the temperature rise of the oceans is minuscule compared to the Henry’s law aspect. It is widely commented here that more CO2 means more plant growth, so increasing CO2 increases the plant sink. I really don’t see what problem you have with this. We would expect that if CO2 increases the sinks would increase, so we would expect that not all the added CO2 would remain in the atmosphere.

None of this is at all controversial and I don’t really see what your point is. Please explain.

catweazle666
Reply to  seaice1
March 24, 2017 6:56 pm

” Henry’s law says that the higher the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere the more the oceans will absorb.”

Only if the temperature of the oceans remains constant.

Which of course it doesn’t, it is warming.

Hence, it emits dissolved gas, it doesn’t absorb it.

Reply to  seaice1
March 24, 2017 9:11 pm

You don’t see a problem with the sink currrently at 19 BMT as opposed to 6 BMT? You don’t see a problem with 7.5 BMT in one year that’s over and above the 19 BMT that is calculated to have been absorbed by your Henry’s law ? On the one hand, your saying the carbon cycle is so finely balanced that any anthropogenic co2 shows up in the system, then on the other 25 BMT out of 38 BMT gets sunk, no problem ? Put another way, we would have to produce 25 BMT for the total co2 level increase/decrease to be 0. The only increase came from 13 BMT. That’s about 2.15 ppm/v . The actual record amount in 2014 was 2.13 ppm. 2016 hottest year on record from an el nino, co2 ppm came in at 3.10 and an additional 12 BMT more co2 than produced in 1998. . Why do you think levels were 2.93 ppm in 1998 ? You don’t understand in terms of this balance idea, how much has been added and how much isn’t accounted for.
Some have said about the input of co2 from volcanoes. So what happened with Mt Pinatubo? The year before, 1991, co2 ppm was 0.99 and 1992 was 0.48 ppm ?

seaice1
Reply to  seaice1
March 25, 2017 4:36 am

catweazle. This one comes up here frequently and i did mention it in my comment. The increase in amount of CO2 absorbed through the increase in concentration is orders of magnitude larger than the amount desorbed through warming.

As a first approximation, doubling concentration doubles amount absorbed.
here is a table of solubility at different temperatures and pressures. Partial pressure is a measure of the concentration. Atmospheric pressure is 100kPa (approx), so 5kPa is 5%

http://sites.chem.colostate.edu/diverdi/all_courses/CRC%20reference%20data/solubility%20of%20carbon%20dioxide%20in%20water.pdf

We see that at 20C 5 kPa we have 0.035%. Doubling the concentration to 10 kPa we get 0.071%, or about double. If we were to raise the ocean temperature a full 5C we would have 0.062% – still much higher than the lower concentration at the cooler temperature. However, we are talking about an increase in ocean temperature closer to 0.1C. This would give about 0.00708%. This increase in temperature has very little effect on the amount absorbed.

Increasing CO2 levels in the atmospheres causes more CO2 to dissolve in the ocean even when we have accounted for the increase in temperature.

rishrac.
“The sinks were always capable of handling this much co2 or they weren’t. If anything the sinks should have shrunk.”
I explain above why the ocean sink has grown. That is just thermodynamics and it is inevitable. There were articles here recently about the Greening of the Earth because of raised CO2 – that is an increasing sink. I don’t see why the sinks should have shrunk. I am sure one could speculate that these land sinks may shrink or rise, but it certainly does not seem at all improbable that they would rise. It therefore seems unlikely that CO2 levels would be dropping without anthropogenic emissions.

seaice1
Reply to  seaice1
March 25, 2017 4:38 am

That should be 0.0708% (not 0.00708%).

Reply to  seaice1
March 25, 2017 2:38 pm

Seaice, the theories, and assumptions on the observed data you make is disturbing. There is really no point in discussing this with you. There is no iteration in the final analysis. You cant use Henry’s law ad infimum until you reach you stated reasoning. You can’t assume that both the ocean is getting, at least the top layers are getting much warmer, and at the same time assume that a great quantity of co2 has gone into it. Both can not be true. Neither can, the sinks become larger and co2 can last hundreds of years in the atmosphere. One or the other has to be false. Exactly how do you think NOAA calculated the amount every year that is being sunk? You think you have a brand new explanation ? You should tell NOAA so they can correct their numbers. Which they have no problem adjusting anyway. Maybe they just guessed ? I will say it again, the sinks are way too big, and the amount of co2 that has gone missing is equal to all the additional co2 produced since 1998, using 1998 as a base.. It is roughly 78 BMT that is over and above what is officially sunk. If you aren’t alarmed, you should be. What ever you believe or being told to argue.

Reply to  seaice1
March 29, 2017 1:49 pm

seaice1:

You ask me

Why would CO2 introduced into the atmosphere from fossil limestone behave differently than fossil CO2 introduced to the atmosphere by burning coal?

I answer:
IT DOESN’T:
I never said it did whatever you may mean by “CO2 introduced into the atmosphere from fossil limestone”.

And what limestone do you think is not fossil?

Richard

Reply to  seaice1
March 30, 2017 12:50 am

seaice1:

I provide an important addendum.
1.
I gave you a clear explanation of our work (which I referenced) that refutes your untrue assertion.
2.
You replied by ignoring everything I wrote and asking a question which suggested I had said something I had not.
3.
You say you don’t want me to insult you.
4.
In light of
(a) your ignoring what I wrote,
(b) you falsely claiming I had said something I did not,
(c) you asking me to justify the something you had falsely claimed I said,
(d) your (deliberate?) idiocy, and
(e) your cowardice in posting from behind an alias,
please tell me how it is possible to insult you because I want to.

Richard

Reply to  richardscourtney
March 30, 2017 2:26 am

Richard, comrade sea ice knows ‘ a few eggs must be broken to make an omlet’. Truth being one of them if necessary. You’re arguing with a slightly insane person. Sea ice can’t possibly be wrong if it helps achieve the overarching agenda. It doesn’t matter what you say or what the facts are. When the argument can’t be won, the next step is to claim to be insulted. Of course in the overall scheme of things, I’ve committed crimes against humanity for disagreeing with them.. in that person’s or persons view. Who cares if the actual events occured or not. Already as of 2013, 50 million climate refugees have died from climate change. That was promised in 2000. It’s always some future time if we don’t cede power to them right now, something really bad will happen… soon. Democracy just can’t respond to this imminent threat quick enough. We need a command economy, like North Korea, to respond to this dire threat. They know what’s best for us. We are stupid and child like. So comrade Richard, give up your deiner ideas come over to the warmist side.
That’s what you’re dealing with Richard.

Smart Rock
Reply to  ROM
March 23, 2017 6:34 pm

Running dogs. Haven’t heard that one in a long time. Great turn of phrase; it sounds so disparaging. I’m going to start using it again.

Gunga Din
Reply to  ROM
March 25, 2017 6:55 am

The average person emits through their breath, which has CO2 concentrations of up to 40,000 ppm, an “estimated” 380 kilograms of that noxious “carbon” aka CO2 per year.

Would the carbon law make this mandatory?
https://youtu.be/YlXAbi7RSBU

March 23, 2017 5:09 pm

This “carbon law” is complete stupidity. Neither carbon nor carbon dioxide has anything to do with global warming. Look at this: in the Cambrian atmospheric CO2 was 7000 ppm. . By Cretaceous, which is 400 million years closer to us, carbon dioxide is down to only 1000 ppm.This is a reduction by a factor of seven. You will find the necessary data in figure 30 of my book “What Warming?” And the corresponding Cretaceous temperature? Still just 22 degrees Celsius, That means no change in 400 million years. You have to be awfully stupid if these figures do not tell you that carbon dioxide can not change global temperature. And note especially how its atmpospheric amount keeps going down. If we now come even closer to us, like the Holocene for instance, the amount of carbon dioxide will be down to 280 ppm, our pre-industrial value. Do you ever wonder what its post-industrial value might be.? You can calculate this if you assume that the lowering of carbon dioxide we observed is linear. Doing this linear extrap[olation tells us that in another two million years, CO2 will be down to 250 ppm, the photosynthyetic limit, and life will end. Can we do anything about that? Just maybe, if we can change the climate. To prevent the extinction of life we must add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. The best way to do it is to burn more fossil fuels. And also, if you want to furyher reduce ythe likelyhood of exrinction, get rid of all the renewables whose only function is to bring the extinction day closer to us.

Reply to  Arno Arrak (@ArnoArrak)
March 23, 2017 5:38 pm

Typos corrected

This “carbon law” is complete stupidity. Neither carbon nor carbon dioxide has anything to do with global warming. Look at this: in the Cambrian atmospheric CO2 was 7000 ppm. Corresponding global mtemperature was 22 degrees Celsius. By Cretaceous, which is 400 million years closer to us, carbon dioxide is down to only 1000 ppm. This is a reduction by a factor of seven. You will find the necessary data in figure 30 of my book “What Warming?” And the corresponding Cretaceous temperature? Still just 22 degrees Celsius. That means no change in 400 million years. You must be awfully stupid if these figures do not tell you that carbon dioxide cannot change global temperature. And note especially how its atmospheric amount keeps going down. If we now come even closer to us, like the Holocene for instance, the amount of carbon dioxide will be down to 280 ppm, our pre-industrial value. Do you ever wonder what its post-industrial value might be.? You can calculate this if you assume that the lowering of carbon dioxide we observed is linear. Doing this linear extrapolation tells us that in another two million years, CO2 will be down to 250 ppm, the photosynthetic limit, and life will end. Can we do anything about that? Just maybe, if we can change the climate. To prevent the extinction of life we must add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. The best way to do this is to burn more fossil fuels. And also, if you want to further reduce the likelihood of extinction, get rid of all the renewables whose only function is to bring the extinction day closer to us.

observa
March 23, 2017 5:15 pm

Sounds great. Let all the concerned perfessers at Melbourne Uni lead the way and shut down the campus aiconditioning straight away and open the windows. Back to the future like the grandparents and all for the sake of the grandkiddies eh perfessers?

markl
March 23, 2017 5:19 pm

The world hasn’t reduced its’ human CO2 generation in the last 30 years despite the efforts and look at all the problems that are occurring related to those attempts and how the temperature isn’t increasing at their projected rates. These people need a reality intervention.

Chris Curnow
March 23, 2017 5:20 pm

Ah..the celebration of North Korea showing us how to do Earth Hour ALL night .. Every night

Robert from oz
Reply to  Chris Curnow
March 23, 2017 6:37 pm

And south Australia and now Victoria .

seaice1
March 23, 2017 5:21 pm

The idea of a carbon law as described is a bit silly. Of course, nobody with any sense would confuse laws such as Poe’s Law, Goodwin’s law and Moore’s Law with actual physical or legal laws (no apologies to those above who appear to have done so). The word Law does not mean the same in this context. Nonetheless, these “laws” are derived from observation of the world, not prescriptions of how the world ought to be. They seem to share some attributes of the aforementioned physical laws, in that they seem to fit with continuing observations. The suggested carbon law is even further removed from such physical laws because it is not describing what we will see, but what the authors believe we ought to see. I am not in favor of describing such things as laws, no matter how desirable the outcome.

troe
March 23, 2017 5:32 pm

“Forward, always forward” Erich Honecker October 1989 40th anniversary of the GDR.

The President of the United States believes that Anthroprogenic Climate Change is an invention of the Chinese to steal American jobs. -reports of Donald Trumps private statements on AGW.

Climate agitprop is running on as if nothing has changed.

Reply to  troe
March 23, 2017 9:05 pm

I don’t think that the Chinese Communists invented the hoax, but they may very well be taking advantage of it. Unfortunately, they don’t have a clue of just how bad they need these United States. Without us and our economy, they don’t have an economy. The same goes for Mexico. We buy their oil, spend tourist dollars down there, and remittances provide even more hard currency than oil. Some 10% of Mexicans have fled to these United States for a better living and many send their earnings home. Mexican economic refugees have made Los Angeles the second largest Mexican city in the world. (We also spend a zillion dollars on drugs with all the attendant problems on both sides of the border.) Countries that wish us ill should worry that they just might get their wish!

PaulH
March 23, 2017 5:37 pm

Earth Hour? Is that still a thing? I thought just about everyone except the self-flagellating enviro-kooks ignored that silliness. Oh well, for Earth Hour I’ll plan on watching the hockey game on the HDTV while running the dishwasher, self-cleaning oven and clothes dryer, while enjoying a cold beer or two from the refrigerator with the lights on. Life is good. ;->

JohnWho
March 23, 2017 5:48 pm

Wrong “M” Law –

it looks more like they are enamored with Murphy’s Law.

chilemike
Reply to  JohnWho
March 23, 2017 6:06 pm

Or maybe they mean Mary Tyler Moore’s Law.

Ktm
March 23, 2017 6:05 pm

Maybe if i chain myself to the bottom of an empty swimming pool and slowly full it with water, my body will be forced to disruptively innovate some gills.

Necessity is the mother of invention, right?

troe
Reply to  Ktm
March 23, 2017 6:19 pm

Hahaha…That’s funny as hell

Reply to  Ktm
March 23, 2017 7:33 pm

Necessity is not the mother of invention, laziness is. If something is really necessary, you do it however you can, typically using existing methods. When lazy people want to do something, they invent easier ways to do it.

Bill Gates advocated hiring lazy programmers for precisely this reason.

Patrick MJD
Reply to  Jer0me
March 23, 2017 7:58 pm

I thought he just stole it, CP/1?

Chuck in Houston
Reply to  Jer0me
March 24, 2017 12:16 pm

As a UNIX sysadmin (along with network and storage) these past 30 years, I agree that laziness indeed plays a large part in the creative process. God bless shell scripting. And perl.

Edward Katz
March 23, 2017 6:06 pm

A proposal like this only underscores the fact that these climate activists are getting further removed from reality every time they open their mouths.

arthur4563
March 23, 2017 6:08 pm

Notice these morons never mention the revolutionary new nuclear reactor technologies and provide nothing more than arm waving , silly claims about Moore’s law. Wind power hasn’t changed much in 30 years, despite all of the impetus granted by large increases in market demand. Instead of making fossil plants more expensive, molten salt reactors are going to provide an alternative that’s
cheaper than fossil fuel. These lunkheads are attempting to make renewables attractive by making their fossil fuel alternatives artifically expensive. A bunch of Dudley Do Wrongs – they have the dumbest plan imaginable.

Severian
March 23, 2017 6:17 pm

Carbon Law? What about Ape Law?

Art
March 23, 2017 6:18 pm

Let me think about this. Hmmmm…… Since the law would only apply to the successful western capitalist economies and the majority of the world would keep on merrily emitting an ever increasing amount of CO2……..sorry, just can’t figure out the science on this one.

Bill Illis
March 23, 2017 6:32 pm

Everyone can ignore this study because they did not even build a model for the Carbon cycle.

If they did, they would have noticed that the natural sink rates are increasing and will soon be 20 billion tons CO2.

So why reduce emissions to Zero. You don’t need to. Simply stabilizing emissions, as has happened over the last three years with the switch to natural gas generated electricity from coal, will stabilize CO2 levels and cause them to eventually go down.

The issue really is that NONE of these climate scientists have any math skills. They are getting papers published and climate models built and they can’t pass University math classes. That is how they ended up in “Environmental Science” because the were failing math.

Chimp
Reply to  Bill Illis
March 23, 2017 6:36 pm

All the more remarkable when you consider that many so-called “climate scientists” aren’t climatologists, or even scientists, but mathematicians and computer programmers.

Actually, in the strictest sense, no consensus “climate scientist”, regardless of his or her field, can be considered a scientists, since they don’t practice the scientific method.

Ron Williams
Reply to  Chimp
March 23, 2017 7:26 pm

Does anyone know if there is an actual designation for an actual “Climatologist” that is versed in every discipline required to be an expert in climate? Seems to me there is probably at least 20-25 direct subjects required to adequately understand the science well enough to be able to make any credible analysis. I guess one would be a “generalist” if one had to know that many disciplines, but what does a mathematician actually know about many specific climate related issues. Sounds like a giant conspiracy with all these expert scientists rubbing each others backs exclaiming the science is settled, and 97% at that according to their own study.

michael hart
March 23, 2017 6:47 pm

When these space cadets retrain themselves as nuclear engineers then the universe might start to take them seriously.

March 23, 2017 6:59 pm

Johan Rockström? He is nothing but a ‘educated farmer’ (a.k.a. agronomist) and one of the High Priests of Climate Doom in Sweden. Any one who remember what was tought in mandatory school here ignores him …

He’s just one of many types of left wing contribution* hunters we have here, including politicians, bureaucrats, most journalists and other useful idiots …

* Social welfare in disguise …

raybees444
March 23, 2017 7:15 pm

Where can I get a supply of what the authors of this opinion piece masquerading as “science” have been smoking?

clipe
Reply to  raybees444
March 23, 2017 7:37 pm
clipe
Reply to  clipe
March 23, 2017 8:30 pm

I knew this screenshot would pay dividends one day -Hello raybees444- Thanks for stepping on the upturned rake.

http://s28.postimg.org/bfijguaq5/stepping_on_rake_cartoon.png

clipe
March 23, 2017 8:06 pm

“The national celebrations, also known as National Earth Hour Mauritius, will be held in the beautiful town of Curepipe where the Queen Elizabeth Avenue (main historical street) and key landmarks will light up at night.”

Brook HURD
March 23, 2017 8:28 pm

They predict that several cities will be carbon neutral by 2030. The residents will go to sleep when sun sets and walk to work after the sun raises. In the winter there will be massive deaths due to hypothermia. Those deaths which are no doubt part of the plan will be what reduces carbon emissions.

Dean - NSW
March 23, 2017 8:34 pm

Wonder if they included the Chinese plan to keep increasing emissions until 2030 then do something about it maybe….

gbees
March 23, 2017 8:57 pm

Moore’s law came about through entrepreneurship, science & capitalism by the private sector. The carbon law would result from government taxation & regulations, religion (CAGW) & socialism. Hardly a recipe for success. Remember these peoples’ names. They are stark raving mad and need to be locked up.

hunter
March 23, 2017 9:15 pm

The anti-carbon fanatics are sort of the Khmer Rouge combined with the Heaven’s Gate death cult.
Anti-human pastoral delusions combined with si fi movie plots.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2120869/Heavens-Gate-cult-committed-mass-suicide-15-years-ago.html

http://www.cambodiatribunal.org/history/cambodian-history/khmer-rouge-history/

Peter
March 23, 2017 9:31 pm

I propose a carbon free diet for all supporters of this innovative law. All foods with carbon in them would be banned.
This would fix the problem.

Barbara Skolaut
Reply to  Peter
March 24, 2017 9:57 am

+ 1000

And no cheating.

Michael Darby
March 23, 2017 11:02 pm

https://wentworthreport.com/2017/03/24/no-to-earth-hour/

[https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/ef2eb88edc694057d5c371b78933cc0f?s=200&ts=1490335271]

No! to Earth Hour wentworthreport.com No! to Earth Hour, by Michael Darby. Wentworth Report readers are entitled to be unimpressed by plans being made for so called “Earth Hour” on Saturday 25 March. Thousands of misled people across A…

________________________________

March 23, 2017 11:39 pm

These people are as mad as a box of frogs.

Telboy
March 24, 2017 1:29 am

Pure happenstance, but I’m happy to say that on Earth Day I shall be doing my bit by flying from Japan to England. Keep the plant food coming!

Khwarizmi
Reply to  tango
March 24, 2017 4:23 am

Our rulers sold Hazelwood to foreigners, so we no longer have control over our power supply. That’s what globalism is all about – losing your sovereignty.

Patrick MJD
Reply to  Khwarizmi
March 24, 2017 4:52 am

Exactly! Just like ~20% of NEW housing in Australia, now purchased by non-Australian residents, mostly Chinese. And our leaders wonder why there is a “housing affordability crisis” in Australia, when wage growth is stagnant and jobs are going offshore (To China). Recipe for disaster.

Khwarizmi
March 24, 2017 4:12 am

It’s called “The Australian-German Climate College,” according to Google:
http://climate-energy-college.org/files/site1/images/1249/11760335_884114351677249_4558013007527105719_n.jpg
http://climate-energy-college.org/

I want to know why only European nations are subject to incessant propaganda demanding that they change their evil ways with regards to energy use. Isn’t it enough that we exported most of our manufacturing to increasingly wealthy and powerful China, while we grow weaker, less capable, and more indebted?
Isn’t it enough already that my small nation of ~20 million people, producing an insignificant fraction of total CO2 emissions, has the 2nd most expensive energy on the planet? What more do they want?

Patrick MJD
Reply to  Khwarizmi
March 24, 2017 4:49 am

Voting does not make any difference in Australia. When a “party” comes to power, it’s more like shuffling chairs on the deck of the Titanic. You know what will happen, but shuffling chairs makes no difference!

K. Kilty
Reply to  Patrick MJD
March 24, 2017 7:28 am

Truly inadequate diversity.

Patrick MJD
Reply to  Patrick MJD
March 24, 2017 7:40 pm

“K. Kilty March 24, 2017 at 7:28 am”

True, but at least our democratic right to shuffle chairs remains intact.

K. Kilty
Reply to  Khwarizmi
March 24, 2017 7:36 am

If only the VC had booby-trapped his typewriter. Lost opportunities.

Graham
March 24, 2017 4:58 am

Nuts to that. Here’s a Carbon Law I’d back.
Carbon Law: Any adult person who refers to carbon dioxide as “carbon” will be liable to a term of imprisonment that will expire when global warming/climate change fraud does.

Hivemind
March 24, 2017 5:23 am

“2030: coal exits energy mix”

More accurately: norm for electricity supplies becomes no power. Days with power become rare.

jclarke341
March 24, 2017 6:31 am

The most interesting thing about this article is how well it fits with the entire Global Warming meme, right on down to the idea that the real world is completely irrelevant. Moore’s law was a product of observation. Moore didn’t decide that computer power should double every two years. He observed that it was happening and predicted it would continue. The ‘Carbon Law’ is quite different. While the authors claim that renewable energy output has doubled every 5.5 years for the last 10 years, it’s share of the total energy produced has not doubled, as fossil fuel use also continues to increase.

Secondly, the constant increase in computer power that was described by Moore’s Law was generated organically by (relatively) free markets. It was, and is, hugely lucrative for inventors and corporations to continue the constant improvement in computer technology. The opposite is true of renewable energy. Without massive government subsidies, solar and wind power would be making a much smaller contribution than the already are.

Increasing computer technology has massively contributed to the growth of the global economy. Increasing renewable energy is having a large, and growing drain on the global economy. A strong economy is one that continuously finds the most efficient uses of limited resources. It is economic suicide to move towards less efficiency while forcibly limiting the available resources

Moore’s law was based on observation. The Carbon Law is based on wishful thinking and delusion. The global climate is also found in observations, while the climate models continue to be a product of ‘wishful thinking’ and delusion. In the make-believe world of AGW, something like the ‘Carbon Law’ would be right at home, but it is less than useless in reality.

Sheri
March 24, 2017 6:59 am

“Businesses who try to avoid those steps and keep on tiptoeing will miss the next industrial revolution and thereby their best opportunity for a profitable future.”

“The next industrial revolution” would be the one that comes after decades of death and poverty caused by trying to reach zero carbon. The grandchildren of today’s business owners might live long enough to see that happen. In the meantime, welcome to environmental hell.

March 24, 2017 7:29 am

Unfortunately passing carbon laws does not overcome or disprove the actual laws of physics as they relate to energy generation. Of course this level of decarbonisation is possible, but with gas replacing coal burning and nuclear energy both, wholly sustainably and affordably. These goals are Impossible on the science facts with renewable energy offsetting fossil a bit of the time, and wholly ridiculous in terms of adeqaute overall grid energy supply with “storage”. Unless you go back to 3rd World energy supply levels.

As are these random science denying economies. And both economies and renewables are largely unnecessary IF you want to achieve these carbon reduction goals fastest and at lowest cost in energy science fact. These are scientists at a real University?

No arithmatic or joined up physics was troubled in the making of their assertions. It’s undeliverable science denial.

K. Kilty
March 24, 2017 7:32 am

Such a “carbon law”, based on Moore’s Law in the computer industry, applies to cities, nations and industrial sectors.

What they propose is the exact inverse of Moore’s Law. Moore’s Law is simply an observation of what innovation produces. What they propose is legislation demanding a particular outcome, with innovation to supposedly follow. Idiocy, foolishness, stupidity, hubris….none of these terms really describes what is afoot here.

Bruce Cobb
March 24, 2017 8:14 am

Looks like they are using Moore’s Law correctly; they want to double-down on stupid every 5 -7 years.

eyesonu
March 24, 2017 8:32 am

I’m holding out for Earth Hour this coming Saturday between 8:30 and 9:30 pm. Will turn on the auto-dishwasher with the drying mode on. Wash clothes in hot water and utilize clothes dryer. Long hot shower and cooking dinner. I’ll shut down heating system early in the day and turn it back on at 8:30 to bring back up to normal temp. May even vacuum floors if time allows. Oh … and play the stereo full blast with some heavy rock!

Dale S
March 24, 2017 9:36 am

In a way, the “Carbon law” folks are right — if you want to meet the goals of Paris, you really do need to make massive, painful changes along the lines they realize. The actual non-binding Paris commitments are nowhere near enough to get emissions where they “need to be”.

The part they don’t seem to get is that the cure is vastly worse than the disease. Exiting coal and oil world-wide by 2050 would create *massive economic harm*, while the 1.1C increase from an arbitrary level earlier in the industrial era (plus a substantial rise in CO2 concentrations) has caused no documented net harm at all. [I too am bugged by the “above pre-industrial temperatures”. We don’t *have* global pre-industrial temperatures, and from proxies and variation in our earliest industrial temperatures we certainly know the temperature was not fixed!] What realistic damages are they expecting from exceeding 1.5C that could possibly economically justify the policy steps they call for?

This is rather like advocating applying a tourniquet in hopes of preventing future bruises.

Barbara Skolaut
March 24, 2017 9:53 am

“this year’s Earth hour (25 March)”

Thanks for the reminder! I’ll be sure to turn on all the lights tomorrow. (Would raise the [oil] heat, but tomorrow’s supposed to be in the 70’s [F].) Probably wash clothes a day early too. And I’ve got a project that requires me to use the oven for several hours – been putting it off, but tomorrow sounds just about perfect> 😀

Bruce Cobb
March 24, 2017 11:16 am

Maybe we’re looking at “Earth Hour” all wrong. If you shut everything off for an hour, when you turn things back on, you perhaps realize even more how fortunate we are to have energy available in such abundance, to make our lives comfortable, and do things we want to do. But then you also realize that this is exactly what the climate cultists want to stop, by making energy cost far more, and be less available. But it needs a new name, like “Energy Hour”. Earth Hour is stupid.

Patrick MJD
Reply to  Bruce Cobb
March 24, 2017 7:27 pm

Earth Hour is certainly stupid because the generators are still spinning and still burning coal/gas for when the fools turn on their TV’s and lights again.

It’s stupidity beyond stupid, very common in Australia.

Gunga Din
Reply to  Patrick MJD
March 25, 2017 2:36 pm

Unless it’s “green and sustainable”, the goal is to have an energy grid that can support peak demand.
“Earth Hour” (voluntarily reducing your personal use of electricity for an hour) is just a useless, “feel good” action to get you to feel good about supporting those politicians/ideologies who’s goal would be to expand “Earth Hour” into a 24/7, mandatory, reality.

Patrick MJD
March 25, 2017 3:02 am

Not seen anything in the media about Earth Hour in Aus, which IIRC, originated here.

Gunga Din
March 25, 2017 2:11 pm

Those in favor of a “carbon law” may be Horta’s in disguise.
https://youtu.be/IpZ9_i3DEbU

Warren Latham
March 26, 2017 9:01 pm

I had to read this twice:- “Our civilization needs to reach a socio-economic tipping point soon, and this roadmap shows just how this can happen. In particular, we identify concrete steps towards full decarbonization by 2050. Businesses who try to avoid those steps and keep on tiptoeing will miss the next industrial revolution and thereby their best opportunity for a profitable future.” (the quote from Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research).

A more illiterate, ill-educated, meaningless and contrived piece of drivel would be hard to find.

Well spotted Anthony.

Russell Johnson
March 29, 2017 6:15 pm

Simple response: no way