By Larry Kummer. From the Fabius Maximus website.
“Misusing the Future”
A presentation by Roger Pielke Jr. at a symposium on
ALternative Pathways toward Sustainable development and climate stabilization (ALPS).
Sponsored by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), 9 February 2018.
Posted with his generous permission. PDF copy here.
Summary
“The talk focuses on a number of “fudge factors” in IAMs, specifically assumptions of spontaneous decarbonization, misuse of RCP 8.5 in climate impact studies and the dependence on Bio-Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) in scenarios. Three other assumptions I could have included are temperature overshoot assumptions, estimates of climate sensitivity and misleading definitions of what constitutes ‘energy access.'”
.
Excerpt from notes by Pielke at his website
We identified the importance of assumptions of spontaneous decarbonization in IPCC scenarios more than a decade ago (Pielke, Wigley and Green 2008). Even though a solid piece of research, our 2008 paper and me specifically were the subject of a furious and sustained attack by the Center for American Progress, such as Joe Romm’s “Why did Nature run Pielke’s pointless, misleading, nonsense?” (the first of dozens of such pieces). With hindsight it seems clear that our paper in 2008 was the trigger for a long effort to drive me out of the climate debate (funded by Tom Steyer with lots of behind-the-scenes help from activist climate scientists).
Looking back at our research, and updating it in my Tokyo talk, I observe that heroic assumptions of spontaneous decarbonization not only survived our critique, but have since thrived. They showed up in the following set of IPCC scenarios (the RCPs) and now in the most recent set of scenarios {Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, aka SSPs}. Such assumptions are like a narcotic in the climate debate. They give the impression that the climate policies at the center of international climate diplomacy might actually work, even as evidence of their failure should seem obvious.
In the talk I reference a paper by MIT’s Kerry Emanuel as an example of the misuse of RCP 8.5: “Assessing the present and future probability of Hurricane Harvey’s rainfall.” I cannot overstate how egregiously bad this is. Emanuel’s paper is so bad not simply because it uses RCP 8.5. Rather it is so bad because its estimate of the impacts of climate change on Hurricane Harvey in 2017 are entirely a function of projected impacts in 2100., which he then divided by 6. Had Emanuel used any of the other scenarios out to 2100, then estimated 2017 impacts would have been much less. That’s right, the arbitrary choice of a 2100 emissions scenario determines the impacts of climate change from 1980 to 2017.
As explained in detail in my 2 books on climate (which in turn draw upon the IPCC and many, many peer reviewed papers), there is excellent and robust science on human influences on climate. Make no mistake, this science is robust and performed with integrity. However, the continued misuse of RCP 8.5 to generate scientifically unsupportable estimates of climate impacts places climate advocates in a position of promoting dodgy science to support political advocacy originally grounded in solid science. Seriously, Why do this? Scientifically empty studies based on RCP 8.5 legitimately give climate science a bad name. …The emperor’s clothes, though, they are lovely.
Bottom Line: The Emperor’s Clothes.
The three assumptions that I highlight in my talk support three political stances reinforcing the status quo. First, the costs of status quo climate policies are low. Second, the costs of inaction are already extremely high. Third, climate diplomacy is on track because a future, unproven, massive technology will save us. Without these assumptions, each of these political stances is questionable — or at least, should be opened to questioning. While important assumptions go unchallenged and challenging questions go unasked, the IPCC is about to release a report on 1.5 degrees (fantasy land).
————–— End of Pielke’s notes. —————-
About RCP8.5 — a worst-case scenario
As Pielke says, for four years RCP8.5 — the worst-case scenario from the IPCC’s AR5 — has been used to terrify people into support climate activists’ policies. Their key means for doing so was misrepresenting it as the “business as usual scenario” (details here). As I and so many others have shown, it is a useful worst-case scenario — assuming adverse changes in many important and long-standing trends. For example, that fertility stops declining and technological progress slows or stops (details here).
The most important factor in RCP8.5 is the increasing reliance on coal, so that the late 21st century — like the late 19th C — is run by coal. Of course, we see today the opposite happening. The US is shifting away from coal (here and here), as is most of the world (e.g., Britain). Slowly researchers are re-examining the plausibility of a coal-burning future, as in two papers by Justin Ritchie and Hadi Dowlatabadi (in Energy Economics and Environmental Research Letters.
Even steadfast climate alarmist media like Salon and Bloomberg (reluctantly) admit that their fear campaign no appears unjustified. That does not the future will be pleasant. Continued growth in population and greenhouse grass emissions almost guarantee some hard times for the world in the mid-21st century. But not certain doom.
What might save us?
Pielke clearly sketches out the problem. What might save us? The obvious answer is new technology. Unfortunately, governments are investing relatively little in potential breakthrough technologies. But several private companies have promising fusion R&D programs. For example, Lockheed’s compact fusion reactor and TAE Technologies (formerly Tri Alpha Energy). There are roughly 200 fusion R&D projects around the world. We only need one to work. Of course, we cannot count on fusion — or any new tech — to save us.
It will take ten to twenty years to take fusion from success in the lab (when or if) to widespread commercialization. Adoption rates for new technologies in consumer goods are 2x or 3x those typical in the early 20th century. And if it is necessary to save the world, power generation systems can be converted in a decade or two.
For More Information
For more information see The keys to understanding climate change, all posts about Roger Pielke Jr., about coal, about the RCPs, and My posts about climate change, and especially these …
- Updating the RCPs: The IPCC gives us good news about climate change, but we don’t listen.
- How we broke the climate change debates. Lessons learned for the future.
- My proposal: Climate scientists can restart the climate change debate – & win.
- 2017 was warm. The next few years will be more important.
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” their fear campaign no appears unjustified. That does not the future will be pleasant. ” — needs some editing
Dr P.
That’s my fault. I rushed to get this out while it was fresh news, so wrote this at midnight. Hard to edit by candlelight!
Don’t sweat it, very few posts survive our version of peer review unscathed.
“…used to terrify people into support [for] climate activists’ policies.”
I rather like “greenhouse grass emissions” in the paragraph before the heading, “What might save us.” but you may want to edit that also.
“What might save us “?
I put my socks on the wrong feet. Send for a climate scientist !
Perpetual calamity is item 1 in Modern Marketing 101, it sustains armies of economists, politicians, charity workers, media folk, healthcare lobbyists, aid workers, and … lawyers.
Meanwhile, I’m off to drive the few miles to my nearest supermarket, stock up on food from all parts of the world, turn on the heating, communicate with relatives in far flung lands, etc. Sheesh, what a hellhole have we made of this world?
Climanrecon,
“Perpetual calamity is item 1 in Modern Marketing 101”
Sad but true. Fear is the core marketing message used by Left and Right in America. The people running these campaigns are usually pros (that doesn’t mean that they always succeed, of course). They use fear so often because it has worked so well since WWII.
For a look at why see We love scary stories. The reason why reveals a secret about America.
Larry,
“Sad but true. Fear is the core marketing message used by Left and Right in America.”
It looks to me like you are doing some fearmongering there . . What is this Left and this Right you speak of? Do you mean political manipulators, mass media, Party establishment people, and such, which you then think/speak of and treat as “America”? As though ONLY those people are real . . matter, count?
It looks like “divide and conquer” tactics to me, sir, being pushed by you . .
Eric, easy for a climate scientist to solve that one redefine left and right. It is after all what the push of the article is all about.
There are no such things as left and right socks and there is no such thing as dangerous human created global warming. That was my point.
I’m sure that wouldn’t stop them switching the two anyway !!
Left and right socks https://www.sockgeek.com/collections/left-right-fit-socks
Someone is showing there age and doesn’t have fancy sports socks 🙂
Left socks support free education for all people, pensions for the elderly, and the end to poverty.
Right socks seek to end social welfare, make people be less dependent on the government, and to reduce government spending.
Enough about socks, what about gloves?
I admit that I don’t have fancy left and right socks and never will. I deeply resent the sports manufacturers who have ruined my little joke about the absence of significant human related warming.
🙂
Suppose CCS can be made to work efficiently, what then? See the Allam Power Cycle which seems to allow the combustion of all that nasty carbony stuff – gas and even coal maybe. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allam_power_cycle
In the Allam process where do they get the CO2 from to drive the cumbustion in the 1st step?
In that case the scientivists would invent some other emission that needed to be captured on bogus health grounds just as they did with Diesel engines. Scientivists do not want any fossil fuels to become clean! See here for the admitted real motivations…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/programmes/analysis/transcripts/25_01_10.txt
CO2 is merely the symptom of a growth-driven society! Mitigation is merely a peg on which to hang all sorts of other angst-driven motivations.
“Of course, we cannot count on fusion — or any new tech — to save us.” Total nonsense – SMRs such as molten salt will easily, and eonomically, replace any existing power generation technology
and can do so at enormous capacities – easily can even meet the (exaggerated) estimate of 1.5GW
every year – that would be three molten salt SMRs, and dozens can be constructed in factories per year.
I’ll wait until we actually have a couple of these things producing power commercially for a couple of years before declaring that salvation is upon us.
MarkW,
Exactly. Some skepticism is warranted since we have seen so many confident predictions of a glorious energy future that have not come to fruition. Plus the mother of all cornucopian forecasts:
That’s a bit rich after you claim that we can have “widespread” commercial fusion operating 10 years after the lab demonstration. Why? Well we’ve already HAD the lab demonstration of an MSR.
Mr. Kumer. There will be no glorious energy future not because of technology, but because warmunism is not about science. It is about political power. if anything threatens to work the warmunists will declare it anathema and seek to ban it.That is why they are so adamantly against nuclear fission reactors. They don’t want to solve problems, they want to be problems..
Arthur, Dr. Pelke’s argument is that we need to add 1.5GW per day, not per year. I am a big fan of nuclear. It is the only existing technology that has the potential to reliably replace fossil fuel generation at the scale the CAGW crowd demands. Like other posters, I’ll remain skeptical of SMR’s potential until I see them in operation.
SMR != MSR. The economics of conventional LWR are poor and will not improve. There’s simply too much cost in the massive containment and the redundant, redundant cooling systems that are required. Add in the cost of solid fuel manufacture and the horrible burnup (<5%) and you're just stuck. Even if the outrageous regulation were to disappear overnight, we need to move to Gen IV designs to deliver a real renaissance in nuclear power.
Every time you see a USN Aircaft Carrier or Submarine, you are seeing an SMR.
Yes. Molten salt Reactors built small with modular technology is where I would invest development resources.
Robert Hargreaves’ “ THORIUM: energy cheaper than coal” is well worth a read. He seems to be talking sense; but I do not have the expertise to judge.
Just wonder why it is getting so little coverage in the media.
Anthony,
Couldn’t you just share Pielke’s writing or excerpts from his website?
Filtering Pielke’s expertise through a stockbroker touting technology companies is probably not a good idea. [“But several private companies have promising fusion R&D programs. For example, Lockheed’s compact fusion reactor and TAE Technologies (formerly Tri Alpha Energy).”] All that’s missing is, “Call quickly. My insider tip says this stock will take off in the next hour!”
Kummer’s strange mix of repeating alarmist scenarios/fake science, while attempting to appear as a skeptic is the prototypical wolf in sheep’s clothing.
The stock tout is in such a rush to get his stock picks onto your website that he cannot write:
“Continued growth in population and greenhouse grass emissions almost guarantee some hard times for the world in the mid-21st century. But not certain doom.”
Beware this tout.
I think Kent doth protest too much.
Thanks for the perspective, Anthony.
It may be worthwhile to examine carefully this guest columnist’s background, point of view, and motivations.
Since careful examination of people’s background, point of view, and motivations is exactly one of my areas of expertise, I can’t help doing that.
Kummer is up to something. I think he’s pulling a fast one on you. Still hard to tell what his trick is, but he’s not here with clear intentions.
Careful.
Fact-checking:
(1) I am a retired stockbroker.
(2) There is no point to “touting” private companies. Esp one like TAE, which is many years from a public offering — and that assumes that their research produces good results. Which the history of fusion suggests is unlikely to be soon, if ever.
Thanks, Larry.
Then what is it you’re trying to achieve with your postings here?
You slavishly follow the IPCC. You consistently assert as truth alarmist fake science.
And you’re always advocating for some sort of government scheme or other.
You shape-shift, appearing in one sentence to be a skeptic; and the next to worship Pauchari and his gang.
What is your point of view?
What is your motivation?
What are you driving towards?
Thanks again.
Kent
I agree with you Kent. Something is rotten; and this article is deplorable.
[snip – Kent, that’s enough. If you don’t like his articles, DON’T READ THEM. Personal attacks like this one are not OK. Knock it off – Anthony]
==>Kent Clizbe
I can’t stand Larry Kummer’s writing either. His missives* actually make my stomach churn. I’m obviously not arguing against the person* – someone I’ve never met – but I am totally against “his” position! I distrust this writer more than anyone I have ever read.
The patronising persona he portrays in comments to his own posts is particular ridiculous.***
It is a constant mystery to me, why this “figure” – for want of a better word – is given a platform on WUWT.
And that makes me question every assumption I have about the truth of the reality of this forum. ;-(
* With the emphasis on miss, i.e. the verb, fail to hit or reach…etc!
**ad hominem.
***Ridiculous to me, of course!
with respect to the author and Roger Pielke, they are very wrong about a solution to a speculative problem. Even if you believe that “Continued growth in population and greenhouse grass emissions almost guarantee some hard times for the world in the mid-21st century . . . ” The answer is not government programs to stimulate new technologies. There is very little indication that government attempting to solve a problem has resulted in success. More often than not it has resulted in billions of dollars being spent on a dead end. Instead, government can raise awareness of a problem and let the private sector solve it. That is how we have achieved almost every great innovation. Yes the government instituted the basic form of the internet, but that would have remained an obscure government network without the private sector providing the core technology to build it and the private sector seeing the opportunity to use it in a more robust manner. Government bureaucrats are NEVER the answer, and usually are the problem.
Which then leads us to the underlying premise as quoted above — continued growth in population and CO2 emissions. Neither of these have historically been a problem in search of a solution, although for hundreds of years we have constantly heard the refrain that we must contain growth in order to survive. Yet it has been growth, innovation, economic expansion that has allowed mankind to prosper. When we strangle growth for reasons as stated, we end up with stagnant economies, greater poverty and less opportunity for everyone.
Because you have a kind heart, a loving soul and a concern for humanity doesn’t make advocating for policies which are only slightly better than the alarmists a good thing. It makes you an enabler of dangerous behavior. I am many other objective analysts are still waiting for some scientific evidence that CO2 is driving our climate. It has yet to be more than a hypothetical form of causation that is poorly correlated given past data/history. Given this, we should question the premise advocated in this article and certainly criticize its suggested solution.
They are claiming to be searching for pathways to “Climate Stabilization” …. let that sink in.
+1
Everything after that relies on unicorn outputs
and faerie’s dust.
Here’s another one to go after. LAT’s piece in their print edition today (pics of flooded Houston and Philippines, all a part of the show): Even with pledges to fight global warming, you’d better brace yourself for more extreme weather Bits:
Here’s the paper: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/2/eaao3354
Gary,
Thanks for flagging this! It is yet another scary future brought to you by RCP8.5!
It’s another from the seemingly endless series of nightmares brought to us by climate scientists obsession with RCP8.5. See the origin of this misrepresentation of a useful worst-case scenario here.
You bet Larry. The LAT’s, in their shrill – unchallenged – coverage of this, has a youngster standing in the rain with the caption: “A Filipino girl is carried along a flooded road east of Manila during a record-breaking monsoon season in 2016. A new analysis says extreme weather events will become more common around the world as the global average temperature rises.”
– just average precip, to below average, for the Philippines.
I poked around a good bit – the referenced study, NOAA’s 2016 annual climate report (shrill), news about the 2017 monsoon predictions, etc. I saw not a hint of any record breaking monsoon for 2016 in the Philippines. And, just an average typhoon season. And here:
“It is yet another scary future brought to you by RCP8.5!”
It isn’t. They are not assuming the evolution of RCP8.5. They are assuming fixed levels of forcing, to get the probabilities. One is historical – ie GHG remains fixed at 1986-2005 levels (obviously very optimistic). One is where it remains fixed at 2500Gt CO2, the RCP8.5 2016-2035 level. This they describe as the UN aspirational level. The other remains fixed at 3500 Gt CO2, the RCP8.5 2036-2055 RCP8.5 level. This they describe as the UN Commitment level.
The reason for associating with an RCP8.5 period is to get the spatial distribution.
My comment: “It is yet another scary future brought to you by RCP8.5!”
Nick’s rebuttal: “It isn’t. …They are assuming fixed levels of forcing … One is where it remains fixed at …the RCP8.5 2016-2035 level. …The other remains fixed at …the RCP8.5 2036-2055 RCP8.5 level.” {Bold emphasis added.}
Self-rebuttal. Q.E.D.
“Bold emphasis added”
But misplaced. The correct emphasis is:
“They are assuming fixed levels of forcing … One is where it remains fixed at …the RCP8.5 2016-2035 level. …The other remains fixed at …the RCP8.5 2036-2055 RCP8.5 level”
Or, as stated in Fig 1:
RCP8.5 is not “UN aspirational”. But the level is.
Nick,
You are beyond parody. Nothing you say is relevant to my statement that this study was “another scary future brought to you by RCP8.5!”. Which is typical of your rebuttals.
My fav of your irrelevancies is “They are not assuming the evolution of RCP8.5.” I didn’t say that they did.
We’ll let the audience decide which is right — the quote I gave showing that they used RCP8.5, or your rebuttal — a quote saying that they used RCP8.5.
“combined that data with various climate models to make predictions about frequency of extreme weather events under different global warming scenarios.”
STOP RIGHT THERE READ NO FURTHER :JUNK SCIENCE
“Continued growth in population and greenhouse grass emissions almost guarantee some hard times for the world in the mid-21st century.”
Population growth may indeed lead to some hard times, and the best way to curtail that is by the expanded use of fossil fuel energy to modernize third world countries – IOW exactly the opposite of what the Eco-Fascists say we should do (because they prefer a world of scarcity where the political “elites” can rule over the rest by “allocation” of the crumbs under the table).
As for the “greenhouse grass (sic) emissions” comment, sorry but that’s pure crap. Greenhouse gas emissions (i.e., CO2) DO NOT and WILL NEVER drive the Earth’s climate, and for justification of that, you can just refer to the complete lack of CO2 vs. temperature correlation over hundreds of millions of years (geocarb reconstructions) and the REVERSE correlation (temperature driving CO2 levels) on shorter time scales (ice core reconstructions). Observation TRUMPS theory, as I like to say.
AGW not Science, too right. Reaching where we were in 1965 in NZ and other similar societies, brings birth rates down to replacement with normal small excursions above and below.
Pielke jr., “Make no mistake, this science is robust and performed with integrity.”
Roger jr’s problem is that he believes climate models. So does Roger sr. They shouldn’t.
And “performed with integrity,” or not, climate modeling is performed with incompetence.
The science is pseudo.
Integrity as in ‘he hid the decline with great integrity’. Lukewarmers are more dangerous than warmists. They give the rascals credibility by looking like a critical audience.
Interesting. So unless you deny physics, and proclaim that CO2 can’t possibly have any impact, you are part of the enemy.
The “reasonable man in the middle” wants lunatics and sane people to work together to find a compromise.
So having a position that isn’t at either extreme means you want to get those at the extremes to work together?
You are assuming facts not in evidence.
Both extremes are wrong. So is the middle position.
The only position warranted by the state of the scientific art is that no position is possible.
Those who take any specific position along the CO2 warming line don’t know what they’re talking about.
All positions are possible, at present no position is provable.
The climategate emails showed an utter lack of integrity several years ago.
Roger asked, thenanswered his own question on RCP 8.5 use.
Q: “However, the continued misuse of RCP 8.5 to generate scientifically unsupportable estimates of climate impacts places climate advocates in a position of promoting dodgy science to support political advocacy originally grounded in solid science. Seriously, Why do this?
A: “for four years RCP8.5 — the worst-case scenario from the IPCC’s AR5 — has been used to terrify people into support climate activists’ policies. “
What else needs to be said about the climate hustle? Or the activist-pseudoscientists who push it?
And his use of the word “terrify” is certainly going to raise the anger of the climate pseudoscientists.
They really are terrorists.
Not the kind that drives an electric-powered car bomb into a crowd of people, or puts on a suicide vest and walks into a steak-house restaurant yelling “Thanks be to Gaia. Now die you climate killing meat eaters!”
No, these are climate terrorists in academic ivory towers who use a computer and a pen to terrify populations.
Their intent is to extort billions of dollars from tax-payers (for them and their sponsors) and are keenly intent on spreading their climate religion through media-enforced, indoctrinating propaganda campaigns.
Investigative Journalist Sharyl Attkisson recently gave a TedX talk where she talked about her research into the origins of the Fake News branding campaign was originally started by the Left. In that talk she identified two important warning signs that are happening now in the Left leaning media regarding the climate hustle.
Those are two important warnings signs we are seeing everyday now in the Climate propaganda campaign being waged on the West by academic climate terrorists and their weaponized media outlets.
Joelobryan,
That is a great “answer” to Roger’s question. But it is mine, not Roger’s.
it’s not, of course, an original insight of mine. Although ignored by most journalists, many have pointed out the absurdity of regarding RCP8.5 as a “business as usual” scenario. It’s a useful worst case scenario — showing what might happen if we’re unlucky — but has been grossly misrepresented.
Larry Kummer, Editor
February 15, 2018 at 10:57 am
————————-
As far as I can tell, there is no way to show, in any of the scenarios considered, in accordance with the whole AGW “science”, that there could be a stop or reversal of their AGW….the most ever that could be “dreamed” about is simply in the context of a “small” slowdown of AGW… something in the lines of – 2100 condition postponed to 2130 or 2140 or at most 2150.
For that to be somehow shown as a hypothetically significant point to consider, beyond the noise, it will require not only the application of the most hipper CO2 sequestering geoengineering + albedo in same hipper geo + aerosols geo in the same hipper (to a point of impossibility, for not saying insanity), but still on top of it all is required to also consider the total human and civic “cleansing” off this planet Earth….And that must be met and achieved in the span of the next decade…for it to mean some hypothetical stand of some kind of “achievement” as per the AGW “science”.
The experiment, the GCMs can not do or simulate a stop, let alone a reversal of the AGW, as per the AGWers “science”… once the simulation kicks in to the warming (trend) gear…..
Even CO2 trend can not stop or be reversed in the GCM simulations at that point of warming.
But considering the above conditions as a solution for the most possible achievable, there may likely and with some luck be, a little slowdown maybe hypothetically shown, as per the best of their AGW “climatology”.
Which in the end of the day still with not much of any meaning…unless when hypothetically considered as a possible proof of the non existent anthropogenic forcing in climate, or the proof of the fictional and falsity of AGW…
In these terms I do not think there could actually be or exist any hope in the renegotiation clause…
It will be far much worse than the first terms of the famous accord, the famous world “saving” one …
Also, if I happen to be not that wrong with this, ppl once more have to consider, that after all GCMs are not that bad, as per the point of a scientific experiment…
hopefully I have not messed a lot around with this one 🙂
cheers
Fusion energy has been 30 years away for the past 50 years. It must be one of those physical constants. It remains a distinct possibility that it is undoable, at least in practical terms. We might not be able to make a box in which to put the Sun.
I totally agree.
Within 10-20 years Fast breder reactors will have swept windmills and solar panels away.
See the documentary ‘pandoras promise’.
It has its own website on the net.
WUWT should focus a lot more on this PROVEN technology, IMHO.
“Within 10-20 years Fast breder reactors will have swept windmills and solar panels away.”
Jeeeze. Spoken by a nuclear physicist in 1960.
“Within 10-20 years Fast breder reactors will have swept windmills and solar panels away.”
Not if the warmunists have anything to say about it. They don’t want to reduce emissions of CO2, they want to impoverish the mass of humanity.
Personally, I would never say never. More to Roger’s point, he did qualify the statement with “(when or if)”. He is at least a clear-eyed optimist.
DJ,
Note that are my words, not Pielke’s (see the red dashed line divider).
Supporting your point, I preceded that sentence with ” Of course, we cannot count on fusion — or any new tech — to save us.”
“Clear-eyed optimist” — that’s a great description of my beliefs.
Any assumption used in setting the foundation of a research paper invalidates its conclusions.
Predictions of the future, no matter how they are arrived at, are speculative assumptions.
If you leave the speculation-on-speculation based papers out, there is nothing to warrant the emergency halt of industry and redistribution of western money by the global com-cabal.
It invalidates the conclusions if you wish to take action on them. Or more precisely extrapolate beyond the scope of them. In of themselves, your conclusions are simply predicated on your initial assumptions.
“We might not be able to make a box in which to put the Sun.”
Well put.
The fascination with fusion fascinates me. TAE indicates they are about 0.3% of the way to obtaining the required temperatures. It has taken them 20 years so far. Larry’s provided link has them admitting several years more research will be needed after they achieve the temperature goal (without speculating how long that step still might take). Sure, p-11B is a laudable goal, but I doubt we see it demonstrated (much less commercialized) in the lifetime of the present backers. Larry will protest that venture investors have a respectable track record, but billions of Kelvins is not something dollar-billionaires grasp.
Yes, fusion is inevitable, but perhaps generations away. In the meantime, fission: U, Pu, and Th. The longer we wait to implement, the more humanity will suffer for the delay.
How are we suffering now because we haven’t fully implemented fission?
Mostly from all the waste on solar and wind, but we are not suffering here because oil and gas (and coal) are extraordinarily inexpensive. Developing countries are suffering because they don’t have power. They would benefit from better developed fission. Still, sooner or later the waste of natural gas on electrical generation will catch up with us, and it and oil and coal will grow relatively more expensive. That is when we will all suffer if we are still pretending fusion will save us, or that bird-bat killers have some practical benefit.
The same loons who are against fossil fuel power are also against fission power.
The world will never run out of natural gas, coal nor oil.
To the extent that as fossil fuels become scarce they become more expensive which in turn has four impacts.
1) We look harder for new sources.
2) We extract sources that weren’t economical at lower prices.
3) We take efforts to use less
4) We switch to other things that are now less expensive.
The world never ran out of whale oil either.
Mark,
“To the extent that as fossil fuels become scarce they become more expensive”
Exactly! Geologists have known this for a long time. Sir Ronald Prain’s 1975 classic Copper clearly explains this. It’s a total refutation of the peak oil hysteria, written 30 years before.
Here is the excerpt from the book — Good news: here’s why we won’t run out of minerals (including oil). He discusses the dance of ores (inverse relationship of quality and quantity) and technology — with prices as the music.
Lonnie,
“Yes, fusion is inevitable, but perhaps generations away.”
That’s exactly what I said. Why do you consider it a rebuttal? Let’s replay the tape.
Let’s say, as an illustration, that ten years from now TAE has a working fusion system (that’s the timeline I’ve heard that they are using). Then 10-20 more years until beginning of widespread commercialization. Then 10 to 20 years for conversion of much of the world’s power gen system. That is a total of 30 to 50 years. The lower limit requires a lot of luck plus a crash program of development and implementation.
You are more optimistic than I. You said “fusion if inevitable.” I believe that is a exaggeration, unless by “inevitable” you mean in the next century. The last time I checked (several years ago), Robert Hirsch — one of the godfathers of America’s fusion program — was skeptical that current programs were even on the right track.
the DOE’s NIF needs to be shut-down. It’ll never be anything but a self-licking ice cream cone.
What a silly presentation. Just the use of “Carbon Emissions” tells you all you need to know. Very sloppy when the focus is on CO2 control. Showing pictures of smokestacks and smog are just scare tactics when you are talking about CO2. Last I checked CO2 was odorless and colorless. What a complete waste of time.
Remember, even after the emperor was confronted with the truth, he acted as if nothing had happened.
But he thought, “This procession has got to go on.” So he walked more proudly than ever, as his noblemen held high the train that wasn’t there at all.
Minor editing required- “Even steadfast climate alarmist media like Salon and Bloomberg (reluctantly) admit that their fear campaign no appears unjustified. That does not the future will be pleasant. Continued growth in population and greenhouse grass emissions almost guarantee some hard times for the world in the mid-21st century. But not certain doom.
What might save us?”
Electricating the transportation sector will be a bit of a challenge and the depth and breadth of that challenge usually ignored.
Did you mean electrifying, or electrocuting?
electro razz ma tazz ing. Going to take a little copper and lithium. Where and who is going to make that enormous mess?
“Continued growth in population and greenhouse grass emissions almost guarantee some hard times for the world in the mid-21st century. But not certain doom.”
Assumption of facts not in evidence, i.e., opinion.
icisil,
That’s true. I used to preface almost every sentence with modifiers – I thing, imo, probably, perhaps, etc.
My editor told me to stop that. It makes the text boring as dirt. Readers can distinguish statements of fact (the car is blue) from statements of opinion (the future will be good). They don’t need to be told the obvious.
Roger said:
** Make no mistake, this science is robust and performed with integrity. However, the continued misuse of RCP 8.5 to generate scientifically unsupportable estimates of climate impacts places climate advocates in a position of promoting dodgy science to support political advocacy originally grounded in solid science. Seriously, Why do this? Scientifically empty studies based on RCP 8.5 legitimately give climate science a bad name. …The emperor’s clothes, though, they are lovely.**
Roger said RCP8.5 is misused, then he says climate science is robust. What part is robust when many pseudo-scientists use RCP 8.5 to predict gloom and doom? U of Winnipeg professor Danny Blair uses it to predict Texas temperatures for Manitoba by 2080. He runs the Prairie Climate Centre which produces the Prairie Climate Atlas – essentially loaded with exaggerations of what the temperatures will be by the end of the century. And the Manitoba government pays for part of it. As I see it, he does not do the background research, but uses the bad assumptions of the IPCC. Then he uses his position of authority at the U of Winnipeg to spread these bad predictions which most of us will not be around to see fail. Another problem is that Blair and others are using and almost linear relationship between increasing CO2 and temperatures for the pessimistic outlook.
Gord,
“What part is robust when many pseudo-scientists use RCP 8.5 to predict gloom and doom?”
Science is a institution. It’s just people, and so it works in our usual sloppy fashion. Stephen Jay Gould’s books describe the twists and turns, with lots of dead-ends — heavy on the politics — of science.
It does not work in the sense of reliably producing correct and useful information, but rather that the misinformation and nonsense is eventually identified and washed out. That often takes one or more generations.
We have to have realistic expectations for our institutions. In Robert Heinlein’s Have spacesuit, will travel, a professor of a species far advanced beyond ours said “Democracy is a good system, for beginners.” I suspect that it would have said much the same about science.
“Misusing the future”
Ain’t we just the master of the understatement – they are destroying ‘most everything right here and now.
The Future is getting really quite scary. Where did it finish up, mentioning no names with the initials AH?
Go find Matt Ridley’s Rational Optimist blog entry for Feb 13…The Censorious Age
Peta,
“Ain’t we just the master of the understatement ”
It’s called “vicious understatement”, a polite form of ridicule used for centuries. See Jane Austen’s novels for pro-level use of it.
We need to start building Generation 3 reactors now. Perhaps , in a few years, after Finland has demonstrated the efficacy of Generation 3+ reactors, we can move on to those. We need to get started now and simultaneously continue work on nuclear waste disposal. Those bad jokes called wind and solar energy, will not be practical until sometime after a fleet of nuclear plants could be up and running. We can then concentrate on Generation 4, fusion or whatever better designs might come along. We need more education to dispel fears of nuclear power and to send, especially wind power back to the nineteenth century where it belongs.
Actually, some common sense regulation is really all that’s necessary to dispel some fears of nuclear power. One such would be requiring NPPs to dry store spent fuel rods in caskets rather than storing them in spent fuel pools forever (like it’s done now). Both the NRC and Congress have the power to make that happen.
But Jon, the scare for nuclear is bigger than the scare for global warming.
There is a generational (human, pardon the pun) element at play here.
The 3 major nuclear accidents:
Three Mile Island 1979
Chernobyl 1986
Fukushima Daiichi 2011
The memories of these incidents will affect policy decisions for at least 1 or 2 generations, or 30 to 60 years. Of course modern media also influences historical revisionism which infects education as well.
Add a few more years. I believe that things will have to get much worse before the obvious nuclear solution is allowed.
That’s an education issue, since none of these accidents were anywhere near as bad as the press made them out to be.
Nobody was even injured at TMI, only a few were injured at Fukushima and the only ones who died at Chernobyl were those who volunteered to enter the contaminated zone in order to bury the core in concrete.
It has emerged that at Chernobyl there was a nuclear explosion at the top of the reactor – the cause of a bright blue flash witnessed by many. Obviously that was a major disaster.
TMI was nothing save a few scare points. The UK accident in the 50’s was much worse. There was an accident at Chalk River that was pretty scary, like the UK and Fukushima. Fukushima was a silly, outdated US breeder design that was, on top of all, badly constructed and serviced.
The next gen CANDU reactor design is complete now and will soon hit the bedrock in several countries, Canada and China at least. It will run on that wasted 95% from the silly reactors. They will pay us to take it away! Where there’s muck, there’s brass.
Even in uptown Waterloo, we are penny-pinchers of note, you know. Copper wire was invented when someone dropped a penny between two Canadians. That’s why we had the first telephones just down the road in Brantford. We already had the wire and didn’t want to waste it.
The density of the fuel was too low to support a “nuclear” explosion.
Sounds more like a hydrogen explosion.
We don’t need to work on nuclear waste disposal, we need to work on nuclear waste reprocessing. Like the rest of the world does.
This is an excellent overview of RCP8.5 Derangement Syndrome (RDS).
Thank you!
should, most likely be “no longer appears jstified”
Cripes “justified”
Even steadfast climate alarmist media like Salon and Bloomberg (reluctantly) admit that their fear campaign no appears unjustified.
I think was meant to read:
…..campaign ‘now’ appears unjustified.