Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A new paper claims more shared development goals and less emphasis on wealth creation is the key to solving climate change.
Economic Equality Is Key to Solving Climate Change, Report Shows
By Jeremy Hodges
6 March 2018, 02:00 GMT+10
Economies need to reduce inequality and promote sustainable development for the world to avert the perils of runaway global warming, according to new research.
The risk of missing emissions targets increased dramatically under economic scenarios that emphasizes high inequality and growth powered by fossil fuels, according to research published Monday by a team of scientists in the peer-reviewed Nature Climate Change journal.
“Climate change is far from the only issue we as a society are concerned about” said Joeri Rogelj, the paper’s lead author and a research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis outside of Vienna. “We have to understand how these many goals can be achieved simultaneously. With this study, we show the enormous value of pursuing sustainable development for ambitious climate goals in line with the Paris Agreement,” he said.
…
The abstract of the paper;
The shared socioeconomic pathways and their energy, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions implications: An overview
This paper presents the overview of the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) and their energy, land use, and emissions implications. The SSPs are part of a new scenario framework, established by the climate change research community in order to facilitate the integrated analysis of future climate impacts, vulnerabilities, adaptation, and mitigation. The pathways were developed over the last years as a joint community effort and describe plausible major global developments that together would lead in the future to different challenges for mitigation and adaptation to climate change. The SSPs are based on five narratives describing alternative socio-economic developments, including sustainable development, regional rivalry, inequality, fossil-fueled development, and a middle-of-the-road development. The long-term demographic and economic projections of the SSPs depict a wide uncertainty range consistent with the scenario literature. A multi-model approach was used for the elaboration of the energy, land-use and the emissions trajectories of SSP-based scenarios. The baseline scenarios lead to global energy consumption of 500-1100 EJ in 2100, and feature vastly different land-use dynamics, ranging from a possible reduction in cropland area up to a massive expansion by more than 700 million hectares by 2100. The associated annual CO2 emissions of the baseline scenarios range from about 25 GtCO2 to more than 120 GtCO2 per year by 2100. With respect to mitigation, we find that associated costs strongly depend on three factors: 1) the policy assumptions, 2) the socio-economic narrative, and 3) the stringency of the target. The carbon price for reaching the target of 2.6 W/m2 differs in our analysis thus by about a factor of three across the SSP scenarios. Moreover, many models could not reach this target from the SSPs with high mitigation challenges. While the SSPs were designed to represent different mitigation and adaptation challenges, the resulting narratives and quantifications span a wide range of different futures broadly representative of the current literature. This allows their subsequent use and development in new assessments and research projects. Critical next steps for the community scenario process will, among others, involve regional and sectorial extensions, further elaboration of the adaptation and impacts dimension, as well as employing the SSP scenarios with the new generation of earth system models as part of the 6th climate model intercomparison project (CMIP6).
Read more: http://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/13280/
The paper is a little coy about what they mean by “shared socioeconomic pathways”, but the following description of their favoured scenario caught my eye;
… SSP1 Sustainability – Taking the Green Road (Low challenges to mitigation and adaptation)
The world shifts gradually, but pervasively, toward a more sustainable path, emphasizing more inclusive development that respects perceived environmental boundaries. Management of the global commons slowly improves, educational and health investments accelerate the demographic transition, and the emphasis on economic growth shifts toward a broader emphasis on human well-being. Driven by an increasing commitment to achieving development goals, inequality is reduced both across and within countries. Consumption is oriented toward low material growth and lower resource and energy intensity. …
Read more: Same link as above
The paper has a point – there is no doubt if the world killed off prosperity and rapid economic growth, CO2 emissions would stop rising. If we all lived like people do in places like Cuba and Venezuela, places which have de-emphasised material concerns like financial security and having enough to eat, our global carbon footprint would be substantially reduced.
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“The paper has a point – there is no doubt if the world killed off prosperity and rapid economic growth, CO2 emissions would stop rising”.
This is true. It would ,however, have no effect on atmospheric CO2 growth rate as it is uncoupled from human emissions.
I agree
So do I.
It’s just the house of cards within the house of cards.
The supposed amount of increase is first of all a comparison between proxy derived “pre-industrial” CO2 levels and modern instrument derived levels – an “apples vs. oranges” scientific incompetency. Add to that the fact that all of the natural sources and sinks are not being measured at all, and the whole notion of humanity being “responsible” for the (fictitious) amount of CO2 level change is as meaningless as the attempt to blame humanity for the temperature change for which the data is crap, and for which even after all the data manipulations can be accounted for by natural forces if you bother to look for them.
“no effect on atmospheric CO2 growth rate as it is uncoupled from human emissions.”
What happens to the CO2 that we do emit?
Oh, you know…the plants eat it. It’s fertilizer, of course! And the rise in CO2 in the atmosphere is because the animals are panting with ecstasy at all the new plant growth! (…Or some other reason equally benign and idyllic.)
Isn’t it fascinating how trolls have to try and convince each other that they are relevant.
Since you ask. It ends up in the sea mostly in a few years since there is a huge exchange going on at sea-atmosphere boundary.
I don’t mean this is fully relevant, but you asked. The higher the atmospheric partial pressure is, the more sea is absorbing. The whole atmosphere weighs 1e5kg/m2. The sea under it has a mass more than a hundred times larger. That’s why there is so much space for carbon in there.
A human produces about 1kg of CO2 each day through respiration. That is 7000 tonnes of CO2 each day. How can you say it is uncoupled?
Oops….left off some zeros…7,000,000 tonnes….
Human caused CO2 flow into the atmosphere is less than 1/30 of natural CO2 flow which varies more than the amount of the human caused flow. The human flow is lost in the noise of the emissions. See: https://papers.ssrn.co/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2997420
and Climate 4 You .com
There are over 7 billion people in the world. Each produces 1kg of CO2 each day, so 7 Gtonnes/day. This is about 2,500Gtones of CO2 per year. From http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget there was only 36.4 Gtonnes of CO2 emissions from fossil fuels & industry in 2016. So humans – just from breathing – are contributing 70 times the emissions than fossil fuels and industry. So, maybe human emissions are being ‘lost’ in the noise of the natural emissions?
Sustainability means the Fearless Leader, the in crowd and I need to be suitably sustained by you lot while I’m working on becoming the Fearless Leader. You just have to have a head on your shoulders to work it out.
And as world population grows, we could eat each other. Solve two “problems” at once.
Tell me donb, you would eat Scarlett Johansen?
If he won’t I will.
It seems some celebrities are more silicone than flesh these days.
at the risk of censure a better question.
For the good of the planet, would she consider eating me?
They have it exactly backward. It is the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change narrative that is the key to halting economic growth.
“…avert the perils of runaway global warming…” Again with the advertising lingo! Stir the pot! Create panic!
The sky is falling! Oh, wait – that’s the wrong play.
That old photo is so reminiscent of Monet’s ‘Gleaners’, I thought it was for a brief moment.
Have these XXXXXs ever taken a hard look at how the Amish/Mennonites manage things? No? i didn’t think so.
The ignorance of these smug, self-serving individuals is astounding. They need to get out more. They need to give up their toys and comfort zones and safe spaces. They also need their own planet. What would Elon Musk charge to relocate them to Mars?
7,600,000,000 large, avaricious, territorial apes on a fragile blue dot, what could possibly go wrong.
You’re free to leave.
Pray tell us, O Wise One: exactly what has gone wrong?
Do you guys know what a petri, ah forget it.
The number is well below the carrying capacity.
That blue dot ain’t all that fragile.
Do you know what a valid analogy is? Obviously not.
Zazove – Don’t forget manipulative and subject to propaganda. Or tribal, “groupish.” It’s always Us and Them, as you pointed out a few days ago. “The ignorance of these smug, self-serving individuals is astounding.”
“The ignorance of these smug, self-serving leftist individuals is astounding.” There, fixed it for you, a simple mistake, we won’t hold it against you.
I see that Kristi has perfected the art of mental projection.
I guess I should congratulate her on finally mastering something.
fragile my ass
well, if you fear 7×10^9 animals, be afraid, be very afraid, because an estimated 5×10^30 bacteria, forming a biomass which exceeds that of all plants and animals, with a history of complete sellfishness and disregard to Earth and its inhabitants, are also around.
So if you are right, you should consider bleaching the Earth, for safety. What you think?
This is the ultimate self-licking ice cream cone. Justifying the rationale for their existence with circular reasoning.
IOW, the climate models justify our work, and our work justifies more Climate modeling.
These useful idiots are too stupid to see that their handlers want equality of outcome, and they want governments to enforce it.
Pure neo-Marxism.
It’s a no from me.
[snip]
There really should be a middle finger icon
(not getting on your case mods, just having a laugh).
Many years ago I heard said, “To Stop AGW, Every Human On Earth Must Be Killed. Will You Do It?”
Well, it has taken almost two decades but now the AGW fanatics are proposing the systematic killing of all humans to achieve their perversion.
Ha ha
That’s clearly a threat in some ways, but do you have any backup for your statement, JBom?
I do not recall ever coming across anything like that at any time between the late 1980s and now.
Many have longed suspected that climate change alarmism is a Trojan horse for socialism. This sort of paper throws gasoline on that fire.
Excuse the mixed metaphor.
I wonder if those who see climate change as a serious threat to human kind, and are willing to make personal sacrifices to reduce their carbon footprints, as well as try to convince others to do the same (forcibly, if necessary) ever bother to look at the leaders of their movement.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe Al Gore was worth about $1 million in 2000 when he lost the election to George Bush. It seems he is worth some $300 million now. Being a climate warrior is quite profitable if you are an Al Gore, but not so lucrative if you are one of the activists living in the trenches.
The various religions of the world emphasize self-sacrifice, living modestly, and proselytizing to others to attract converts. They also vilify non-believers, being taught either to convert them, ignore them, or to destroy them. The followers of these religions vary in the extremities of their beliefs and actions, but the leaders of these religions vary little in their efforts to increase their personal wealth and power.
The followers of the religion of climate change have a lot in common with the followers of other religions. They believe in their faith, because the basic fundamantals are inarguably good, and they believe that by getting others to share that faith, that they make the world a better place.
But what they fail to see about their faith is that it is man-made. And men seldom make things except to profit by them. Here in Japan, where I happen to live, the priests who operate the larger Shinto shrines are of criticized for their wealth. They wear platinum Rolexes, and drive Mercedes Benz cars, their shrines are promoted in ways to get visitors and sponsors to part with as much of their money as possible.
While Franciscan monks are sleeping in their cells, and walking about in sandals, his Holiness and the other officers of the church live and travel in luxury. While the young terrorist is blowing up himself and his innocent victims, screaming “Allahu Akbar”! the leaders of his movement are driven around in Maybachs, dining in Paris, and spending the millions they receive from their sponsors as lavishly as they can.
While Nick Stokes is trying to argue against the obvious flaws in the doctrines of his religion, much like a Scientologist arguing with a layman against the absurdities of scientology, the usual group of culprits are acquiring unprecedented riches.
The more things change, the more they remain the same. The words to the song change with the times, but never the tune.
What Socialists fervently wish for would also turn into their worst nightmares.
The most effective way to torture a Socialist: give him what he thinks he wants, and lock the door behind him.
I don’t see them so much as a threat as I see how utterly blind these ideologues are to their lack of importance.
They are, indeed, the useful idiots that Lenin and later, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, the Castros, Franco, Pol Pot and whoever else there was who manipulated the fools like the current crop into doing their will and then executed them as soon as they got what they wanted. Once the destruction is underway, the dictator no longer needs the useful fools who followed his instructions, because they are the elites from the Old Order who must be destroyed first. If that doesn’t happen, they become a danger to the dictator’s plan. Pol Pot killed off everyone by having children execute their own parents.
China’s current economic growth is a threat to these moonbeam hunters. China’s goal is to be the Number One economy, and will do whatever is necessary to get there. Therefore, China does not give a whit what the climate change whiners think or say.
Sustainable development is a meaningless term. We could set off all 15000 of the worlds atomic bombs across the world and the earth would only sneeze. Sure humans and all major forms of life wouldn’t survive but the cockroaches who were here 200 million years ago would survive and thus 200 million years later humans would probably again be walking our planet.
Good point, Alan. The earth isn’t fragile – we are.
You mean the grown-up cockroaches aren’t already?
[??? -mod]
From the very start, CAGW has ALWAYS been a political phenomenon, and NOT a physical one.
CAGW was simply a ploy designed to destroy free-market economies and replace them with massive central government controlled fascistic/socialistic economies through: massive CO2 taxes, global redistribution of wealth, massive CO2 EPA regulations, urban planning, zoning restrictions, massive government subsidies for expensive, unsustainable and inefficient wind and solar government projects, etc…
In a 2008 UN report, the UN estimated global governments could steal $76 TRILLION of taxpayer money over the next 40 years to address this fictitious CAGW sc@m….
Leftists almost succeeded, but alas, facts are stubborn things, and for all intents and purposes, CAGW is ALREADY a disconfirmed hypothesis given the HUGE disparity between CAGW global warming projections vs. reality:
When (not if) this CAGW sc@m is eventually laughed into oblivion, the blowback against the Left will be overwhelming because it ruined so many peoples’ lives on a global scale for a FAKE, contrived and non-existent “catastrophe”…
yes but why do all the politicians believe it ? This hoax has been so successful that i’m afraid we have lost the cause.
They don’t believe it. Professional liars can easily spot a big lie. It’s just about how useful it is to them. This one was more useful than its daddy – that phony socialism is really, really good for poor people. Too easy this one – scaring people with the weather since the dawn of time,
Power.
Yet another example that the CAGW crowd is made up of watermelons: green on the outside, (commie) red on the inside.
We always knew that Tom. It’s just that they knew that we sounded desperate and conspiratorial in the face of their weight of popular opinion as opposed to our weight of evidence. Age old problem this. There were probably people burnt at the stake because they could do things the church couldn’t understand.
I fear this post is badly out of thread. Sorry.
It started in our schools in the 5th century when religions decided to educate the young. They of course indoctrinated them into believing in a God (otherwise known as a pink elephant). then when the idea of constitutions entered human psyche they made sure that the constitution guaranteed certain religious schools. Of course books like the bible always preached poverty and egality. Notice I didn’t say equality. Next along came the Marxists who preached socialism and then when they figured out that true socialism is impossible the socialist governments turned into communistic dictatorships. It is amazing how many socialistic opposition parties exist around the world. The ones that have come to power have quickly turned to dictatorships. We never learn our mistaken lessons from history and are always doomed to repeat them. The world is spiraling in a downward descent into hell. Just ponder for a moment just how bad it is. 90 % of all research on cancer is fraudulent. More than 50% of all scientific papers have invalid conclusions and 43% of those 50% are fraudulent. Fraudulent papers have increased 10 fold in the last 30 years. 99% of all climate scientific reports are fraudulent because they are based on a global warming hoax and what’s worse is that global warming is now taught in textbooks to school children all over the world. Mankind has invented over 120 million different compounds and lets any new compound onto the market without being tested as to its toxicity. Many government agencies even in the wealthiest of countries have essentially been corrupted by the very industry that the agency was created to police. Mankind has turned the world’s oceans into a plastic garbage dump. We have a stone cold killer dictator called Putin who threatens the rest of the world with new nuclear cruise missiles and a smaller tin pot dictator that cant feed his own country (North Korea) who threatens to rain down nuclear weapons on anyone who criticizes him. One country of 1.34 billion people threatens to invade by force its neighbour Taiwan ‘ forcefully executes political prisoners and takes their organs to sell to doctors to perform transplants, and has its stated goal to subvert every other country with its communist party propaganda. This same country has pollution so bad in all its forms that life expectancy is expected to decrease by an average of 5.5 years. In Italy the 4 main mafia groups have revenues of over $ US 200 billion a year. There are anarchists,socialists, 1% ers, drug addicts, people who believe in at least one of the 1000s of internet conspiracies, KKK members,Hitler lovers, racists, and people who believe that welfare is their God given right in every country. Our cities are overrun (on every street corner) with homeless addicts who steal for their next fix. Many country governments in the world are actually connected to underworld mafia type criminals. Other countries are threatened by these criminal groups(Mexico and Italy come to mind). Many countries also secretly undermine every other country by stealing and hacking their computer systems. Many school children around the world are afraid to go to school Ex: Afghanistan. A few countries are failed states. There are insurrections in dozens of countries. We have a world body like the United Nations which has close to 60 agencies or committees with some of them promoting fraudulent practices and even fraudulent scientific reports. There are presently about 30 different huge scams in the world with AGW being the most costly. There is very little investigative journalism anymore because it is too costly for media to conduct and doesnt pad the bottom line. Media are failing all over the world because everybody wants their news free from the internet. In every country drug addiction rates are going up and there are even drugs like Fentanyl with some variations which are 10000 times stronger than morphine which even in the tiniest amount can kill you. In the US alone in 2016 there were 20000 deaths from it. Fentanyl patches are on the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines. And you ask me why am I cynical about life?
http://www.iea.org/etp2017/
The above document is the biggest threat to your wallet and well being that any government agency has ever come up with.
I disagree on this statement: ‘The paper has a point – there is no doubt if the world killed off prosperity and rapid economic growth, CO2 emissions would stop rising.’
Hmm so, you are unaware of the natural cycle of CO2 outgassing from warm seas? If you are a firm believer, make a forecast in how Co2 emissions would decline over time, were Humanity suddenly not present.
Here we go again. Human annual emissions are much larger than the atmospheric CO2 rise. Thus, oceans are sinking much of human emissions. So how, in fact, warming seas have been emitting CO2 in the decadal scale? The sea surface temp rises so slowly it has no big effect on CO2 balance on average, but yearly fluctuations of course exist.
This will fail for the same reason as Malthusian / Ehrlich failed. More money invested in technology provides replacements and improved outcomes.
The doomsayers always underestimate human ingenuity.
“SSP5 Fossil-fueled Development – Taking the Highway”
Sounds good to me. No more IPCC, no more “carbon” nonsense. CO2 continues to rise, benefiting all life, including man. Wait – that’s not what they mean?
Sociopaths are us!
Marxists know they are lacking in credibility. They persist because they also know it’s a human condition to be incredulous. That’s the way they designed modern education in those societies who were stupid enough to allow it to happen. Never was about the climate, science, humanity, honesty, integrity etc etc. Ghastly people.
What this shows is how far today’s socialists have fallen from the original Left. Even Lenin and Stalin wanted to catch up and then exceed the West’s prosperity. Communists wanted everyone to be equally rich, not equally poor. But the demise of the USSR showed that socialism and communism did the latter, not the former. But instead of changing their belief in high tax, large and centralised states, people on the Left kept those parts of Left wing dogma and changed the desired outcomes – hence the push for measures of “happiness” and “solidarity” and “social justice”.
This is a classic example of that combined with the “new science” of building a model using assumptions that will produce results deemed bad and then claiming the middle proves it will be bad.
Yup, barking, sniping, sneering, pontificating yet glaringly hypocritical and verbose people. Just look at the Oscars. There’s a reason why they’re called actors and actresses ( stuff their grammatical edicts). As I said, ghastly people.
Looking at the Oscars … why does kobe bryant get a bye with respect to the METOO group.
Weren’t they there on the same stage, posing together, making a statement that they are still united and won’t take it anymore. Do you have to abuse an actor or actress to be ostracized … abuse of maids & concierges doesn’t extend to the same level?
Just wondering; do most people commenting here consider a slave planation socialism? If not, why are you helping our would be slave masters sell their plan as socialism?
Good point.
However the plantation is the world, the government is the owner, and the climate extremists want to be the straw bosses and task masters.
“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.
Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”
Enter the climate repairman.
‘ Climate Repairman’. The book Orwell would have written had he stuck around a bit longer…