By Larry Kummer. From the Fabius Maximus website.
Summary: Now that the alarmists have had their day trumpeting the IPCC’s worst case scenario (it’s unlikely and becoming more so), let’s look at their best case scenario (hidden by journalists). The risk probabilities are asymmetric: the good news is more likely than the bad news. This is inspirational, telling people that we can make a better world.
“We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”
— Attributed to Roy Charles Amara as paraphrased by Robert X. Cringely.
The IPCC’s AR5 used four scenarios to discuss the future of climate change. These Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) describe trends for future emissions, concentrations, and land-use, ending with radiative forcing levels of 2.6, 4.5, 6.0, and 8.5 W/m2 by 2100. The worst case is RCP8.5. It assumes ugly changes in long-standing trends of population growth and technological development. It is unlikely, and becoming more so each year. But it allows climate activists and click-hungry journalists to spin useful nightmares to terrify the public.
The middle two scenarios seem likely, RCP4.5 and RCP6.0. Both would have ill effects on the world, adding to the stress from increase in pollution and population growth. Neither are Armageddon (combined with our other problems, RCP8.5 might be close to Armageddon).
RCP2.6 is the ignored orphan. It provides no sad stories for journalists and no propaganda for activists. In a sane world it would be headline news, showing us a feasible future achievable — with some work. But not like the revolution activists advocate. See the best guide to this path to a better world.
“RCP2.6: exploring the possibility to keep global mean temperature increase below 2°C.” by Detlef P. van Vuuren et al. in Climatic Change, November 2011.
This paper is too complex to summarize here. Let’s look at the key points about this vision of the future, and how it is already happening.
One way to get to negative emissions by the 2020s.
From “Ecosystem Services, Land Use Change and future Emission Pathways”
by Andy Wiltshire of the UK Met Office.
A decline in the use of fossil fuels after 2020 contributes most to reduced emissions, along with a shift to biofuels and carbon-capture systems. How can that be done? In the below graph, Detlef P. van Vuuren et al. shows one path to negative emissions while energy consumption continues to grow. Like most of these projections, they assume a century of tech stagnation — so that coal becomes the fuel of the future. CCS is carbon capture and storage. There are no signs whatsoever of this happening.
Primary energy use per year (in EJ), by source.
Explaining one of the good paths to the future.
Detlef P. van Vuuren et al. explains one path, relying on strong government policies. Low assumptions for technological progress is a prudent conservatism in the construction of the RCPs, but that is seldom mentioned by the fear-mongers that dominate the news media.
“Clearly, emissions would need to decline substantially in order to reach a level of 2.6 W/m2 by the end of the century. The cumulative emission reduction over the century amounts to about 70% and the emission reduction in 2100 to more than 95% compared to baseline. …The emission reduction rates for methane and nitrous oxide are less than for CO2. The reason is that the abatement potential for several important sources of these gases is limited. …
“Climate policy leads to an improvement in energy efficiency, more use of {carbon capture and storage (CCS)}, increased use of bioenergy, and some increase in the use of nuclear power and PV/Wind. PV/wind increase their market share in the energy system but the increase in absolute terms is only small in this scenario, caused by 1) other options (e.g. CCS) being more economic, 2) limitations associated with intermittent nature of renewables, and 3) the share of power in total energy use. …
“Both the IMAGE calculations and the current literature suggest that there are a number of key conditions that need to be met in order to achieve the required level of emission reductions.
“First of all, emissions need to be reduced rapidly (around 4% of 2000 emissions annually) over a period of decades. This requires an improvement of greenhouse gas intensity of around 5–6% per year, considerably above the historical rates of around 1–2% per year. …
“Secondly, achieving the ambitious emission reductions associated with the RCP2.6 requires sufficient potential to reduce emissions for all major emission sources. In RCP2.6, CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use are reduced by a combination of energy efficiency, increased use of renewables and nuclear power, use of carbon capture and storage and increased use of bioenergy. …
“The third important condition is that non-CO2 gases are strongly reduced.”
How can we do this?
Cost of solar cells.……..
There are two keys to achieving RCP2.6 without massive government policy action. First, replacing coal as a primary source for electric generation. Second, replacing petroleum liquid fuels as a primary source for cars.
The first is already happening. Renewable energy sources (e.g., solar, wind, geothermal) are slowly becoming able to provide substantial grid power. For example, see the graph on the right showing Swanson’s Law in action, the relationship of solar cell costs to volume.
For the near future, substitution of natural gas for coal will make the most difference. Burning coal to produce a million BTUs of energy produces an average of 210 pounds of CO2; burning natural gas to do so produces 117 pounds of CO2 (see coal produced and CO2 emitted per EIA) — a reduction of 45%! For details read Coal bankruptcies point to a better future for our climate.
The second is also already happening. Volvo plans to make only hybrid or all-electric cars by 2019. Toyota plans to sell a car in 2022 powered by a solid state battery that significantly increases driving range and reduces charging time. Norway plans to allow sale only of electric cars after 2025. India is aiming for 2030. Britain will ban sales of gas and diesel cars after 2040. As will France. These are just first movers in this race.
Looking further out, a host of radical new batteries are under development. For example, U Texas-Austin engineers led by Professor John Goodenough, co-inventor of the lithium-ion battery, have developed the first all-solid-state battery cells that could lead to safer, faster-charging, longer-lasting rechargeable batteries (see their press release and their paper in Energy & Environmental Science, Jan 2017).
If pushed with government policies, these measure can push us towards the RCP2.6 scenario during the 2020s. To get the rest of the way we will need breakthroughs that give us new energy sources. These are already under development. A 2015 report by Third Way describes that some have matured to the stage attracting private capital:
“The American energy sector has experienced enormous technological innovation over the past decade in everything from renewables (solar and wind power), to extraction (hydraulic fracturing), to storage (advanced batteries), to consumer efficiency (advanced thermostats). What has gone largely unnoticed is that nuclear power is poised to join the innovation list.
“A new generation of engineers, entrepreneurs and investors are working to commercialize innovative and advanced nuclear reactors. …Third Way has found that there are nearly 50 companies, backed by more than $1.3 billion in private capital, developing plans for new nuclear plants in the U.S. and Canada. The mix includes startups and big-name investors like Bill Gates, all placing bets on a nuclear comeback, hoping to get the technology in position to win in an increasingly carbon-constrained world.”
More daring are projects to harness fusion. Nature reviewed them in this 2016 article. Most interesting is Tri Alpha Energy (see Wikipedia) was founded in 1998 and has raised $150 million from hard-nosed capitalists ($500 million according to the company, $700 million per Pitchbook). Their fifth-generation reactor, “Norman”, achieved first plasma this month. An article in this month’s Scientific Reports describes how the previous generation reactor (C-2U) …
“led to the discovery of an unexpected record confinement regime with positive net heating power in a field-reversed configuration plasma, characterised by a >50% reduction in the energy loss rate and concomitant increase in ion temperature and total plasma energy.”
Animation of their previous machine at work, the C-2U.
“Watch an animation of Tri Alpha Energy’s C-2U machine in action. It is 23 meters long. The machine forms two smoke rings of plasma and fires them toward the middle to merge into a bigger FRC. There they turn kinetic energy into heat.”
Is this unrealistic? No. We need only continue current trends.
Energy efficiency has been improving for decades, as shown in this graph from “Reaching peak emissions” by Robert B. Jackson, Nature Climate Change, January 2016 (also see energy efficiency by nation from the World Bank). New technologies, such as cheaper and better batteries, can take this trend to levels we can only imagine today.
Progress has been fastest in the developed nations. For example, one form of energy intensity — electricity use/GDP — has been declining in the US since 1976. Per capita electricity consumption has been declining in the US since 1999. See this April 2017 Bloomberg article for details (e.g., “most other developed countries have experienced a plateauing or decline in electricity use similar to that in the U.S. over the past decade.”).
The results are already visible — except in the mainstream news. Growth in CO2 emissions was strong during the China-driven boom years of 2000-09, but has been slowing during the past five years. Emissions were flat in 2014-15, and are estimated to have grown only slightly in 2016. This graph is from”Global Carbon Budget 2016” by Corinne Le Quéré et al in Earth System Science Data, 14 November 2016. Click to enlarge.
The bottom line: Co2 levels in an RCP2.6 world
Here are predictions of humanity’s CO2 emissions in three RCP scenarios, at decade intervals. Green is RCP2.6, blue is RCP4.5, and red is RCP6.0. RCP8.5 is off this scale. In RCP2.6 CO2 emissions steeply fall in the 2020s. Graph is from the interactive tool at the RCP Database.
What about levels of greenhouse gasses (GHG)? This shows the total expressed as equivalent of CO2 (in parts per million). For reasons discussed above, they only decline — and slowly — starting in the 2040s. By 2100 the level is … It does not matter. That is far beyond what we can reliably predict now, any more than the people of 1934 could predict our world of today.
What happens to global atmosphere and ocean temperatures in the world of RCP2.6? Estimates vary. The rise is probably close to 2 degrees Centigrade over pre-industrial levels, a long-standing goal for limiting anthropogenic climate change.
Why we don’t hear more good news?
The answer can be seen from readers’ reaction to the 4,000+ posts on the FM website. “If it bleeds, it leads.” People want to read scary stories. They want to read exciting stories cheering our side’s angelic warriors — and hissing at our foes, satan’s minions. Good news does not get big traffic. We love scary stories. The reason why reveals a secret about America.
For More Information
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. For more information about this vital issue see the posts about the RCPs, about the keys to understanding climate change and these posts about the politics of climate change…
- About RCP8.5: Is our certain fate a coal-burning climate apocalypse? No!
- Manufacturing climate nightmares: misusing science to create horrific predictions.
- Ignoring science to convince the public that we’re doomed by climate change.
- “Good news for the New Year! Salon explains that the global climate emergency is over.“
- Good news! Coal bankruptcies point to a better future for our climate.
- Good news from America about climate change, leading the way to success.
- Stratfor gives us good news, showing when renewables will replace fossil fuels.
- Focusing on worst case climate futures doesn’t work. It shouldn’t work.
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Hogwash. Even if solar cells were free, photovoltaic energy, would be too expensive. (Hint, you always have to build two systems, one solar, and one for night).
More Hogwash: “Toyota plans to sell a car in 2022 powered by a solid state battery that … reduces charging time”. The gating factor in charging time is that watts = amps * volts. The Amps and volts of ordinary household panels (120, 15 & 230, 30) cannot charge a battery very quickly. Mo0ving electricity a lot faster than that require either dangerously high voltage or dangerously high amperage. In either case, they will necessitate safety equipment. and far beyond ordinary grid capacity.
[115 and 230 ? .mod]
“..and far beyond ordinary grid capacity.” All that’s needed is fast charge/discharge storage like a flywheel or supercapacitor. The grid can recharge at it leisure. See for example a slightly different application where fast impulses are being smoothed http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/beijing/2016-07/06/content_26006813.htm
No, you run into real world problems. As you increase the charge rate the losses increase and the charging process becomes less efficient. You also run into problems where the inconsistencies in materials cause heating effect to have less time to dissipate across the materials. In short you get hot spots that cause localised damage to the materials in the battery. In Li Ion batteries this cause nice explosions.
“What happens to global atmosphere and ocean temperatures in the world of RCP2.6? Estimates vary. The rise is probably close to 2 degrees Centigrade over pre-industrial levels”
It’s not much different from today. According to AR5, total anthropogenic RF since pre-industrial era is already 2.3 W/m^2. And according to Berkeley Earth, global temperature has risen 1.5 C since 1750. RCP2.6 is more of the same. Temperature rise will be less than 2 C. This is assuming positive feedback. Without feedback sensitivity, which I think is more realistic, RCP4.5 will give less than 2 C warming. Don’t worry, be happy.
Dr Strangelove
Your watts per square meter I will not contest
But at what density, ie temperature and ppm.
Is it at the equator, the Arctic in winter or is at a global average temperature.
And how does this density relate to the glacial to interglacial temperature change.
Are you comparing apples to apples?
It’s global average. The RF is the effect of GHG ppm. I use no feedback 1.1 C per 2x CO2 ppm. I don’t believe in positive feedback. Lindzen and Spencer studies show strong negative feedback. It means observed warming since 1750 is mostly natural.
Dr Strangelove
Thank you, I agree that the warming is natural. I also believe that all of the warming is natural and that there is no evidence at all for CO2 to be considered as a contributing factor.
I also have found that there is very good reason to question exactly what the current temperature trends are recording. There is not enough discussion in this area.
The temperature increases since the 1980s have increased the volume of atmosphere transport, resulting in erroneous temperature values due to relocation of source heat.
Regards
According to the late Bob Carter, if you use weather balloon records, there is no global warming from 1958 to 2002. If his claim is true, the warming in land and ocean data are all urban heat island effect and data manipulation. See his lecture from 15:45 minutes
The lowest level ‘projection’ of the IPCC is still above the actual temperature data and this data is waterboarded and bent upwards by the real climate refugees fearing the end of the gravy. Larry Kummer can’t escape his belief that the “97%” have a scientific point, even though the whole thing has been given the breath of life by high school drop out communist Maurice Strong, because he glommed onto something that he thought he could hype and get scientists paid to push. The IPCC should have cut all those scenarios at least in half over the past decade as it became clear that natural variation (which they had fully discounted as a factor) loomed larger and larger in the dreaded “Pause” that even caused a fair number of prominent climate worriers (the more honest, scientific of them) to develop chronic depression, trying to avoid concluding that their entire education and most of their life’s career appeared to have been phlogiston worthless.
Another thing, the rapid greening (14% more forested area in a decade and greening of arid regions and plankton expansion along with fattening existing trees, moving the taiga northwards….) which took the consensus completely by surprise – they have been fighting a rear guard action insisting it’s bad for the planet! This is exponential in character and is also endothermic (cooling). They haven’t altered their scenarios a whit in the face of these obvious confounding factors – We will never reach 2C even if we had the rest of the world drop out of the Paris Agreement. Trump is a true planetary champion. We will at least now be able to follow climate events with business as usual and finally put a stake through its heart and in the process inherit a Garden of Eden with plenty and growing habitat for the rest of the earths creatures.
That Tri Alpha fusion reactor is just hype. Its average power loss is 0.6 to 1 MW. Even high school kids can make nuclear fusion with a Farnsworth fusor at power loss of less than 0.6 MW. The Holy Grail of nuclear fusion is a large and sustained net power gain.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-V5eLUGthDRY/Uw0Id4cLfkI/AAAAAAAACK0/n_MFJVajSBs/s1600/IMG_6855.JPG
The problem with this article is that in the end its a bait and switch.
The IPCC doesn’t care if people argue about how hot the earth is getting as long as the basic agenda is accepted. That human originated climate change is happening and we ought to be stopping it by using seriously big government.
I.e the outcome they want is seriously big government where rich countries give trillions to poor countries.
As long as we did not have good reliable met data in both space and time, with adjustments it is rarity to get a sensitivity factor to anthropogenic greenhouse gases. Thousands of papers — peer reviewed — has no relevance. This is like a blind man using a lamp pole to guide him.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
But if CO2 isn’t important in ‘climate control ‘ ?
Fossil fuels will still be available, and they will be cost-competitive for many years. The world can always find creative uses for more energy, and some countries will always be looking for ways to get an advantage over others, so fossil fuel use will surely continue to grow anyway. The countries that refuse to use fossil fuels will be disadvantaged.
Some maniacs actually want their countries to be disadvantaged.
good
“The first is already happening. Renewable energy sources (e.g., solar, wind, geothermal) are slowly becoming able to provide substantial grid power”
OECD Total Electricity Production
2015 – 10,743 TWh (☀️1.6%, 💨5.3%)
2016 – 10,873 TWh (☀️2.0%, 💨5.5%)
OECD Total Electricity production growth 15-16
130 TWh – All sources
78.1 TWh – ☀️💨 combined
Expensive, intermittent, unreliable, and not even keeping up with growth, never mind replacing the things they are “supposed” to replace.
If this isn’t happening even in OCED countries how is it supposed to happen in Africa, Asia etc?
Data source: IEA, July 2017 Renewables Overview Report
“Here, drink this”.
What is it?
“Arsenic”.
Are you crazy? I’m not drinking that.
“Good news! I have this instead”.
What is it?
“Watered down arsenic.”
The future of fusion energy lies with privately funded devices, not the tokamak design, which is the preferred choice of government funding. However, TriAlpha is near the bottom of the heap among the the alt-designs of private programs.
The leader is a micro firm in New Jersey call LPPFusion, which uses the principles of dense Plasma Focus. (The LPPFusion device is labeled on this graph as FF-1)
http://lppfusion.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ntauT-chart.png
For a full explanation of the progress, challenges and physics of Dense Plasma Focus fusion, see
There is an engineer named “Goodenough”? Really?
John Goodenough of U.T. Austin developed the LiFePo4 LiB cathode material, and is now working (like Toyota) on solid state ‘glass’ electrolytes that are said to enhance LiB energy and poswer density by a factor of ~2x while possibly also substituting cheap and abundant sodium for some or all of the lithium.
This article touches on a point I consistently make as strongly as I can : technological advances
in energy are moving in the direction of lower carbon, and this movement is motivated by economics, not from any fear of too much carbon in the atmosphere. Electric cars have only gotten a reputation as expensive because , at least in the recent past, their batteries cost so damn much. They also couldn’t be recharged quickly, which eliminated electrics from long distance trips. But batteries will continue their cost reductions and right now are close to being as practical as a gas powered vehicle, especially when one takes lower fuel and operating costs into account, not just the car’s sticker price. An electric vehicle is so much simpler mechanically that it has an inherent cost advantage, excepting its battery pack. And batery recharges in a travel situation, using supercharger stations, take less than half an hour to obtain 3 or 4 hours of travel on the highway.
So, I like this article, but it may possibly be the most future energy technology ignorant article ever written. Looking to fusion as the future nuclear power is quite ridiculous when we have molten salt nuclear reactors in a dozen variations by a dozen companies and two countries (India and China) already passed the design stage and into the testing and in some case, about to begin the prototype stage, which would lead directly into commercialization. Make no mistake – this is NOT simply a theoretical, untested new way to extract energy from Uranium (or, alternately, from Thorium). Molten salt reactors have operated as experimental reactors since way back – half a century ago. The problem was always the inability to fit enough fuel in a space (the core) restricted by the use of carbon moderators ,and the corrosive effects of molten salt. The reactors simply couldn’t unlock enough nuclear enegy to drive the turbines, unless unacceptable high levels of enrichment were used. The advent of a variety of new designs using new materials and in some cases, new approaches, have all eliminated the obstacles and resulted in more than half a dozen molten salt reactor designs, all of which are well along in development, some practically ready for prototype construction (Moltex Energy) . These reactors share few of the characteristics of current light water nuclear reactors : meltdowns are quite impossible, since the uranium/Thorium is in a melted condition during normal operation and in any environment cooler than 450 degrees, will freeze and all fission will halt, without the need for any cooling system or human intervention. Operating in temperatures above normal will simply lead to lower fission activity and lower temps. In no cases in the system where radioactivity exists do high pressures exist. Only the turbine side of the system involves high pressures and that part of the system has no radiactive material. There is thus no means to blast any radioactive material into the environment . Of course any core material would immediately freeze upon leaving the reactor and any fission activity would halt. These reactors, obviously, do not have to contain high presures and are thus not the massive reactors we see in current reactors. They also have an ability to extract a larger percentage of energy from uranium fuel than current reactors, so can be powered by spent fuel (nuclear wastes ) , extracting roughly the same amount of energy that the reactor that contained the spent fuel extracted. These reactors are cheap to build, Moltex Energy hired expert cost estimators and they estimated that their design can be built for less than $2 per watt, and built in factories and with minimal site preparation costs, thus eliminating the causes of cost overruns prevalent in some current nuclear projects. Current nuclear projects have a wide variety of costs, the highest being typically in Western countries – a range of from $5 to $8 per watt would cover the majority, which is 2 1/2 to more than 4 times the cost of a molten salt reactor. They also cost less to operate, being walkaway safe and practically immune to terrorist attacks. Their lifespan would be on the order of 80 years, or 4 times that of solar panels and wind turbines. Levelized cost estimates indicate less than
$40 per MWhr or less than 4 cents per kilowatthour. That’s the cheapest power available from any technology. They also, unlike currrent reactors, have the ability to ramp their power output up and down rapidly, eliminating the need for mid peak generators, typically always provided by fossil fueled generators. They are thus not limited to baseload operation, as are current nuclear reactors.
Most designs do not need to be shut down for refueling, increasing their overall capacity. The biggest and most important and viable energy technology has been practically ignored by the self-appointed “experts” who only see current energy technology existing, essentially unchanged until the next century. Global warmists are motivated to be blind, since they practice what amounts to a
religion, worshiping environmentally obnoxious (19th Century) windmill technology
There is minimal proof that CO2 controls the climate — that’s why we don’t listen to the IPCC — if you listen, you are a fool.
The IPCC was created and lead to create a problem for a solution . Handsomely paid for services rendered
all for the cost of a ruined reputation . Who cares what they say .
Since it has been a while since I posted, and since this post is dead on the money (except for being too pessimistic), I thought I’d post.
We are already at the turning point at least as far as the US is concerned. We have hit the point where I can fully solarize one of my houses — 30 to 45 KW-hours worth of batteries, 10 KW of rooftop solar capacity — for a price that I can amortize in less than a decade and dropping like a rock. Most of that “price” I can pay off with what I don’t pay for electrical power from the grid — this is very close to zero actual out of pocket expense with self-funding borrowed money, and with at least half of the useful service life of the installation after the loan is fully paid off.
This isn’t going to stop here — Swanson’s Law (somebody actually named this — we were talking about it on WUWT years ago as a variant of Moore’s Law) doesn’t just “stop”, cell prices per watt continue to drop and Perovskites may cause them to drop “through the floor”. If not perovskites, perhaps some other novel technology. There is a lot of research, rich payoffs, and technology here was NEVER going to sit still. Battery technology has finally turned the corner to where a ton or so of lead-acid batteries is no longer the only way to go for full off-grid installations, and IT isn’t finished yet. Not by a long shot.
In three years, installing rooftop off-grid solar (not necessarily from Musk’s overpriced plant) is going to be an increasingly standard feature of new housing. Cost will be wrapped into mortgage, with the house advertised as zero energy cost forever (not really, but certainly very low if one simply gradually maintains the initial system). By 2025, electrical utilities will start feeling the “burn” as the demand for their product actively decreases. Well before 2030, this will reach crisis proportions UNLESS fusion happens first and rolls in cheaper than solar plus storage.
Note well that this won’t be driven by saving the world from Evil CO2 (whether or not CO2 is evil or the best thing every to happen to the planet, not an argument I care to get into today as it is likely a bit of both of one isn’t engaging in politics or trying to make money). It will happen because people will make free-market choices without any extrinsic incentive required to SAVE MONEY by going with the cheapest energy resource. Yay capitalism. Technology plus freedom wins again.
In the end, even RCP 2.5 may end up being pessimistic. If it isn’t, it isn’t going to be because of the US, or Europe, or China, or India — even poor countries will want to install the cheapest available power resources, and that is going to be solar almost without exception everywhere within maybe 50 degrees of the equator. My crystal ball doesn’t predict what we’ll do north/south of that, nor precisely how or even if we provide bridge power for when the sun doesn’t shine (enough) for an extended period of time, but I’m pretty confident that we’ll simply rebuild the distribution grid if we HAVEN’T got fusion by then so that the tropics can provide energy to the polar regions and simultaneously provide continent spanning bridge grids that almost never rely on fuel.
This whole debacle was, it is quite true, never about the science as much as it was about the money, but at the same time, the monetary cost of burning coal for fuel was always going to end up being the highest in the long run, both extrinsic AND intrinsic. It has been “dumb” to burn a scarce feedstock resource for heat for decades at this point, and it has been “smart” to be working on alternatives for decades as well. And we have. And it is about to pay off.
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