People like Bill McKibben of 350.org make a big deal out of the “successes” of carbon divestment, where the 350.org organization bullies convinces some hapless organization to divest from coal and petroleum stocks in investment portfolios. Besides the fact that this has no real impact, since when one person or group “divests”, another one buys the shares up, this graph shows why 350.org, Sierra Club, Greenpeace, NRDC, and the whole lot of climate campaigners are just practicing an exercise in futility.
Dr. Roger Pielke writes on Twitter:
I’m preparing some slides for an upcoming talk (on climate policy, yowza!). The attached is an effort to show in a readily understandable way the mind-bending scale of the energy challenge associated with deep decarbonization. What do you think?
This graph of global fossil fuel consumption tells the true story: green efforts to reduce fossil fuel use have not succeeded with any impact at all. With a 57% increase in fossil fuel use since 1992, their efforts have been completely without effect.
Be sure to save this post URL and share it widely to those that think they have “made a difference”.
UPDATE:
Someone asked a “what if” question on Roger Pielke’s Twitter feed for this graph.
one q: if there had been no “climate diplomacy” how much would fossil fuel consumption have increased? // is there a comparison 25 years to compare it to?
Roger’s answer:
Great Q.
1980-1992 FF increased 1.6%/yr
1992-2016 1.6%/yr
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I find that gloating is a surprisingly soothing and enjoyable activity.
Dont gloat. See my posts about the true costs of this hoax and how much work we have to do to overturn this hoax. The battle has only started.
Unfortunately, you’re right. And ironically, the “studies” indicating that people’s minds about “climate change” being “made up” based on political affiliation rather than science is right, but the wrong way around – it’s the “true believers” that won’t consider scientific facts and are pig-headed about clinging to their *beliefs* in an almost religious manner, not the skeptics who refuse to accept the politicized propaganda being “sold” as “science.”
I would title it “Reality Graph”….and there are something like 1600 new coal plants planned worldwide over the next couple of decades…
Diplomacy? That’s friendly sounding. 🙂
OK you got me…. I use plastic straws when I drink to celebrate the earth has a fever implosion . That’s a lot of straws .
“I use plastic straws when I drink to celebrate”
Beer….. through a plastic straw…….. you can keep that to yourself 🙂
Then there is this
From 1980 to 1992 (12 years) the population went from 4.4B to 5.5B (+ 1.1B) people while
From 1992 to 2017 (25 years) the population went from 5.5B to 7.5B (+ 2B) people
And respectively population growth dropped from an average of 1.75% per year during the first 12 years down to an average of 1.25% per year for the second 25 years
I rarely hear mention (with the exception of the conversion of lighting to LEDs) to any serious effort to maintain current lifestyles, while reducing energy consumption. And my anecdotal observation is that there is a skyrocketing implementation of mundane technologies which consume additional energy. Seemingly every restroom now has “hands-free” towel dispensers, all electrically powered. Has anyone read anything on the potential for focused efforts to reduce consumption, while maintaining current lifestyles, versus the tragic destruction of base power generation which we are witnessing today? (It wasn’t all that stressful to handcrank towels out of the dispenser, back in the dark ages.)
What on earth makes you think that the climate activists actually want to stop burning fossil fuel?
Its never been about that. Its ALWAYS been about marketing, state capture (rent seeking) and profit and screwing the consumer for more whilst virtue signalling to grab more political power and reduce freedom and democracy.
No one cares whether the meme is true or not. Only that its believed enough to allow policy and profit to be built on its foundation.
With respect to the extremely competent and diligent scientists who post here, you are almost wasting your time.
The science is almost irrelevant to warmism. It is simply a tool of the corporate globalists who have decided to control as much as they can and suppress what they cannot control, because they know that the world is heading into a future that is not good, and which they probably cannot control, and they are desperate to avoid that.
The whole meme of social/liberal/politically correct/green/vegan moralism is simply a tool to help enslave the minds of the electorate into a framework where they can be sold the products that are available, and be kept diverted from the real issues that threaten the survival of the elites.
Whilst we are busy being distracted by LBGT, climate change, fox hunting, the real issues of underwriting energy supply, world debt that exceeds world wealth by a factor of thousands, and a world population that is completely unsustainable, and so uneducated that there is nothing for it to do except wander vaguely towards affluence and destroy it, goes unaddressed.
This is probably the end of civilisation as we know it.
What happens next and who keeps their droits de seigneur is the real issue.
I suspect that the survivors will be nations who separate from globalism, and fight like crazy to resits immigration and cultural flooding, and are ruthless and selfish in their defence of whatever common cultural memes are necessary to bind them into a coherent whole, and who have the skill and affluence to arm themselves against the hordes and the brutal realism to use them without thought.
That is what makes the likes of Isis so dangerous, and the Left. They are fully morally complete, in that they define a worldview in which, as in Nazism, they are the Übermenschen, the superior morally correct rightful heirs to the planet.
They can’t run it worth a damn of course – their ideology militates against that – So they will destroy it instead.
Ranged against them we have the cynical leaders such as Putin, and perhaps Trump, who need enough popular support to resist the flood of bovine excrement. And who actually dont give a damn and aren’t in the business of being morally superior, juts in resisting the onslaught.
Forget peak oil, this is the time of peak humanity. In 50 years the populations will almost certainly be a lot less than it is now.
What kills off the surplus in the meantime is the ‘interesting’ bit. Warfare, disease, famine, genocide … take your pick.
And ultimately the most depressing cause of this megadeath will be sheer human stupidity.
The lack of vision displayed by those in control of the process. The people who are in power simply do NOT know what to do with it except fight to retain it.
Now is the time for a new meme – a cultural world-view that is acceptable and lead towards a new arrangement for society. As yet no one has come up with one. We actually need a new religion, more or less, but politically correct green Marxism ain’t it.
Greg rants : “While many who have got suckered by the hype would probably have hoped that it would flatten off or even curve down will be very disappointed, the claim that “their efforts have been completely without effect” is stupid and brings no evidence to support the idea.” Well, I’d say that the yearly increases pre and post decarbonization efforts being equal constitutes evidence.
Change “their efforts have been completely without effect” to “there is zero evidence that their efforts have had any measurable effect.” Satisfied , Greg?
This is the Newcomen steam engine, the first steam engine built in 1712 that started the industrial revolution. It was powered by coal. 300 years later, we are still burning coal more than ever. Decarbonization? LOL
The 2017 EIA IEO report shows that global energy use between 2015 and 2040 will grow by about 161 quadrillion Btus. Of that increased global energy consumption about 2/3rds is forecast to be provided by fossil and nuclear and about 24% from renewable. Fossil, nuclear and large hydro are forecast to provide over 90% of total global energy in 2040.
A picture is worth a 1000 words.
Picture: a typical home in a modern country CO2 footprint (typical value)
Picture: a typical home in a poor country: CO2 footprint of where we need to go by 2050.
1st Class travel is wasteful. We are all in this together. Economy Class for all. Show your solidarity.
It helps to place the claims of the United Nations Environmental Program and the IPCC in context. In 1990, global carbon dioxide emissions were 21.5 gigatonnes (GT). Since that time, there have been a series of multilateral agreements to reduce emissions. In 1990 it was agreed to stabilize emissions at 1990 levels by 2000; in 1997, it was agreed to reduce emissions by at least 5% from 1990 levels by 2010; later, it was agreed to reduce emissions by 17% below 2005 levels by 2020. Some European countries have agreed to reduce emissions by 40% by 2050. The IPCC and several environmental groups are arguing that it will be necessary to reduce emissions by at least 50% below 2010 levels by 2050, and to eliminate emissions entirely by 2100 if catastrophic warming is to be avoided.
Every multilateral target set to date has been missed. By 2000, emissions were 31.5 GT, by 2010 they were 31.5 GT and by 2016 they were 33.4 GT. So, between 1990 and 2016, global emissions increased by 11.9 gigatonnes, or about 55%.
How do present trends compare to the IPCC’s proposed targets? Reducing global emissions by 50% from 2010 levels by 2050 would mean reducing them to about 16 GT. The U.S. Energy Information Administration, one of the most authoritative sources of energy supply and demand analysis, projects that global emissions will be 43 GT in 2040 and go on increasing after that. In other words, according to a very authoritative source, global emissions will probably be close to three times as high as the current targets that the IPCC and Environmental groups are calling for.
Yet, tens of billions of dollars have been spent, especially by OECD country governments since 1990, to reduce emissions. The European Union countries alone have either spent or committed 3.1 trillion dollars on wind and solar energy generation. Have emissions been reduced from the path they would have otherwise followed? Of course. Has it made one iota of difference in terms of whether the IPCC’s emission reduction targets will be reached? No.
I don’t even think emissions have been reduced at all by EU countries. Considering the continued necessity of “baseload” power generation, and the emissions increased by the wasteful land clearing/construction/maintenance of essentially useless “renewables,” their emissions may well have been better off maintaining the status quo!
Leo Wrote: “With respect to the extremely competent and diligent scientists who post here, you are almost wasting your time.”
That probably true with most politicians and the main stream media, but not with everybody. If they are wasting their time, then there would not be the strenuous efforts to shut them up, and discredit them, or to deny them publication. I for one appreciate what I learn from them and I pass it on.
I haven’t read the previous numerous comments. So if my question has been posed, please delete this.
Actually, there is some additional information that would be helpful. An overlay of the actual ‘global’ temperature during this time period would demonstrate how little the temperature has changed while the use of fossil fuels ahs dramatically increased
Certainly their efforts vastly increased costs to consumers with the poor of the world suffering the most.
Yup! And although they won’t admit or acknowledge it, deep down the “greens” are OK with that, since, at their core, the “greens” are anti-human.
MarkW writes:
“The problem there is that the economy is getting more efficient.”
Yes.
An excellent example is the greenest company on the planet: Walmart. One of its (many) successful business models is that it constantly compelled its suppliers to lower their wholesale prices, on an annual audit basis. This of course compels suppliers to look for ways to lower their costs…and, in turn, their own suppliers to do the same.
The production and manufacture of raw material into “goods” is accomplished through the use of energy. Cutting costs therefore inevitably means cutting down on wasteful use of energy. So this vertical, down-the-line dictum that Walmart’s suppliers — and their suppliers — are constantly implementing policies to cut costs means less and less energy being consumed.
So Walmart’s motto — “Always Low Prices” — essentially means “Always Lowering Energy Consumption.”
Forget Walmart’s policy of putting solar panels on its roofs; this is only for publicity purposes. It is the greenest company in America because of (1) economies of scale; and (2) its policy of constantly yearning to lower prices.
Re: Pielke’s “One graph”
AGW enters a whole new phase: a change of coordinates from GtC to mtoe. That should make all the difference in the world.
Q: How many charts would it take to admit (1) average cloud cover, which mitigates warming (and cooling), is the dominant feedback in Earth’s climate, (2) Henry’s Law applies to ocean surface temperature to regulate the concentration of atmospheric CO2, and (3) neither is represented in the GCMs or in the AGW model?
A: 1.