The IPCC well knows that halving CO2 emissions in 12 years is politically impossible, economically unaffordable and climatically unnecessary.
Guest essay by Barry Brill
The recently released IPCC SR15 reports (at A1) that global warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2032 and 2050 and (at B) will probably bring species extinction, weather extremes and risks to food supply, health and economic growth. If we are to avoid this, net CO2 emissions will need to decline by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching net zero by 2050 (C1), followed by extensive removals (C5). The required energy investment alone will be $2.4 trillion per year.
Is this possible?
As at 2015, which was not materially different from 2010, more than half the planet’s total CO2 emissions (36Gt) were sourced from just three countries:
Both China and India have made it very clear that the urgent needs of their people preclude any possibility of contributing to emission reductions during the Paris Agreement’s initial commitment period ending in 2030. Instead, China is expected to increase its 2010 emission levels by 50-100%, while the International Energy Agency predicts that emissions in India will treble over the 2010-30 period.
If China and India alone account for 23.31 Gt in 2030 – about 65% of the current total – the IPCC’s 45% global reduction target is clearly impossible. Even if all 195 other members of the UNFCCC (including USA), somehow eliminated all of their CO2 emissions by 2030, they could achieve much less than the global decline required.
But it gets worse. The US has repudiated the Paris Agreement entirely. Allowing 5Gt for USA’s 2030 emissions means the remaining 194 countries all have to reduce their emissions by 134%. Obviously, that’s not going to happen.
SR15 calculates (at D1) that current non-binding commitments under the Paris Agreement will lead to warming of more than 3°C. These targets aim to hold greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2030 to less than 58 GtCO2e – a nearly 30% increase on 2014 levels. But this is already proving too ambitious and very few countries are even trying to meet their stated goals.
So, despite the fact that the Governments of the world have already stated that even their best collective efforts cannot achieve better than a rise to 46 GtCO2 by 2030, the IPCC is calling for a reduction to less than 30 GtCO2. Such a pipe-dream cannot spur greater effort and can only result in a throwing up of hands.
The IPCC’s proposals are bolder than even the most-ambitious scenario set out by the IEA in its World Energy Outlook 2017. This is because SR15 uses only those modelled pathways that might conceivably lead to 1.5°C, rather than scenarios of anything that could possibly happen in the real world.
Just consider the enormity of the 1.5°C fantasy. Coal, which presently represents 37% of the world’s energy must be eliminated entirely within 11 years. But the WEO17 report has found that coal would retain a 25% share for over 20 years. It also reported that CO2 emissions from oil use in transport would almost catch up with those from coal-fired power plants (which are flat) by 2040. The IEA anticipates that a 20 percent rise in emissions from the growth of aviation and ocean-going vessels by 2040 will more than offset the emissions reductions of the 280m electric cars (out of a 2 billion global car fleet) it expects to be operating by that time.
A further IEA report just days ago found that petrochemicals are rapidly becoming the major driver of global oil consumption and are set to account for more than a third of the growth in oil demand to 2030 (and nearly half to 2050) ahead of trucks, aviation and shipping.
Is this affordable?
The IPCC’s modelled pathways show that $2.4 trillion must be invested in new clean energy every year from 2015 through 2035, which, Bloomberg notes, is an almost sevenfold increase from the $333.5 billion invested in renewable energy in 2017. That is an aggregate investment of $48 trillion. The interest bill alone (at say 5%pa) would be $200 billion per month – more than the whole world currently spends on childhood education and environmental protection combined.
The report (C2.7) says that “the literature on total mitigation costs of 1.5°C mitigation pathways is limited and was not assessed in this report”. Others have calculated massive additional expenditure on energy efficiency, electricity transmission and storage, CCS and other carbon dioxide removal (CDR). But even these estimates do not attempt to put a price upon the “unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” called for by the IPCC.
Imagine if a fraction of these massive sums were instead invested in climate adaptation. Or research into future energy technologies. Or poverty alleviation.
New Nobel laureate William Nordhaus uses complex models to balance the costs and benefits of climate goals and finds the optimised outcome is a rise of about 3.5°C by 2100. Bjorn Lomborg says:
“Reducing temperature rises by more would result in higher costs than benefits, potentially causing the world a $50 trillion loss.”
Is this necessary?
Dr Judith Curry points out:
“Over land, we have already blown through the 1.5C threshold if measured since 1890. Temperatures around 1820 were more than 2C cooler.”
All of the risks listed by the IPCC arise on land, if air temperatures rise by 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Even sea level rise is driven by ice-melt on land. And although “pre-industrial” is defined as 1750, the temperature baseline is 1850-1900.
As Willis Eschenbach comments with characteristic clarity:
“We’ve done the experiment. We’ve seen 2°C of temperature rise already, and it was greatly beneficial overall. So why hyperventilate over seeing a smaller 1.5°C rise?”
So why did the IPCC issue this credibility-destroying Special Report?
[redundant text deleted – formatting issue -Anthony]
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I’m a sceptic. I’ve commented several times on WUWT about how you misrepresent the Paris Agreement targets. This is in keeping with other sceptic blogs, alarmist blogs, the MSM (left and right), institutions such as MIT and governments. So you’re in good company. This is because such misrepresentation suits both sides of the climate debate (see below).
I almost never use capitals, it looks shrill. But in this case, it’s I’ve used them to emphasis the most important aspects of the underlying problem that leads to this profound misunderstanding of the Paris Agreement.
I’ve read the Paris Agreement several times and gone through the websites of the main players, cited below, with a tooth comb. I’ve done an immense amount of research on this since Trump’s Paris Agreement speech.
To start with, here’s the key excerpt from your post:
“SR15 calculates (at D1) that current non-binding commitments under the Paris Agreement will lead to warming of more than 3°C. These targets aim to hold greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2030 to less than 58 GtCO2e – a nearly 30% increase on 2014 levels. But this is already proving too ambitious and very few countries are even trying to meet their stated goals.”
You’ve conflated the 3.4°C target (“more than 3°”) implied in the Paris NDCs with the 1.5°C target, which is just a vague “aspiration”. The Paris Agreement uses that word, aspiration. You’ve fallen into the trap of believing your Washington Post hyperlink (“very few countries”) which makes the same mistake by misinterpreting the highly misleading data from Climate Action Tracker (CAT).
Unfortunately, the way in which CAT spins the countries’ emission data to serve their agenda also serves the sceptic agenda. This is because (supposedly) not reaching our Paris targets means “we’re not doing enough” (for alarmists) and “why bother if it’s so hard?” (for sceptics). WAPO don’t even link the CAT page so here it is:
https://climateactiontracker.org/
The 3.4°C cited by CAT on their thermometer (link above) is the temperature we will (supposedly) arrive at in 2100 based on the Nationally Determined Contributions agreed on at Paris for the Paris Agreement. Most countries are ON TARGET to reach their NDC targets and therefore it’s categorically wrong to say “very few countries are even trying to reach their stated goals”.
There are in effect two goals/targets in the Paris Agreement. First is the 3.4°C implied by the solid emission-cut pledges (the NDCs agreed at Paris) and secondly, the 1.5°C long term aspiration which, when agreed to at Paris was ABSOLUTELY KNOWN not to be covered by the NDC’s. Every delegate knew that in order to achieve the 1.5°C aspiration, they would have to improve on the NDCs agreed at Paris. In pursuit of this, they agreed to 5-yearly meetings to thrash out more ambitious NDC agreements. The 5-yearly meetings are written into the agreement itself and the first meeting HASN’T EVEN TAKEN PLACE YET!
Thus, to say “very few countries are even trying to reach their stated goals” is totally misleading. Their “stated goals” (the NDCs) ARE being reached. The aspiration of 1.5°C is not being reached yet because every delegate knew that this would be a work in progress.
CAT mislead us by focusing on the 1.5°C aspiration, while calling it a target of the Paris Agreement as if it was solidly agreed and backed with NDCs at Paris which are now being flouted. That is categorically untrue. Of course CAT would deny this and point to a very abstruse calculations page buried on their website. But the upshot is that alarmists and sceptics alike think that we all agreed to 1.5°C at Paris, backed that agreement with solid emission-cut pledges (the NDCs) and are now not meeting those NDC pledges. Of course, there are some falling a bit short and some doing better than their stated NDC’s but it averages out to being on target as a whole.
So, once and for all we ARE, from the global perspective, meeting the Paris Agreement pledges and are totally aware that those pledges need to be improved on at the pre-planned 5 yearly meetings in order to achieve 1.5°C.
And yes, it’s a joke that those meetings will achieve 1.5°C because we’ll all have to agree to zero emissions at the first of those meetings to reach it. But that’s not the point here. I’m talking about the honest representation of what was agreed to in the Paris Agreement. This is consistently misrepresented by WUWT, CAT, WAPO, GWPF, MIT and many others on both sides of the spectrum because it suits both agendas for the opposite reason (“do more” vs “don’t bother”).
I’ve presented this several times in the comments here at WUWT but it’s consistently ignored. I don’t know how to explain it any more clearly.
Anthony, it would be really helpful if you did a post on this to settle the matter. It doesn’t detract from the sceptic argument because the futility of 1.5°C or even 2°C is easy to see. But it does show how the left (and CAT and MIT especially) mislead us all.
PS- just a note on the CAT thermometer. It used to say 3.6°C for the “current policies” which were very closely in line with the policies implied in the Paris NDC commitments (MIT Report 291, 2015: 3.6°C; MIT Global Outlook 2015: 3.7°). However, the MIT Global outlook 2015 didn’t include some developing country NDC’s amounting to around 20% of emissions. Their 2016 Outlook still didn’t include them when submitted because they weren’t well-presented. In 2017 CAT reduced the 3.6°C to 3.4°C based on reinterpretations of the policies of India, China and some others as well as the small (opposite sign) negative contribution from US pulling out. Therefore “current policies” though not being the exact representation of the NDC’s, appears to be within 0.1°C of them. This is why I refer to CAT’s “current policies” as representing the NDC’s. Indeed the current policies were put in place because of the NDC’s needing to be met.
Also, the 3.2°C “pledges” should be completely ignored. These are NOT the NDC pledges made at Paris. CAT’s obscure calculation pages say that the 3.2°C includes 2050 strategies for some developed nations that were submitted long after Paris, are NOT appended to their NDC’s and are therefore aspirations that may or may not be firmed up at the 5-yearly meetings. It also includes an assumption that the NDCs continue to be strengthened after 2030 at the same rate of emission-cutting from 2020-30. This is simply putting words in the mouths of delegates at future COP meetings, i.e. a disgracefully misleading ploy.
To illustrate what a huge effect the spurious 2050 studies have and how misleading it is to include them, the “pledges” used to be 2.8°C. The jump to 3.2°C was almost entirely due to the US 2050 strategy being removed from the calculations.
The big negative contribution of the US 2050 strategy removal is different from the “small (opposite sign) negative effect” mentioned above for the US NDC adjustment mentioned above. The first represents huge pie in the sky, hoped-for emission cuts being implemented by 2050 and running to 2100. The second represents the modest NDC commitment which will be largely fulfilled anyway because a) its the low-hanging fruit and b) all NDC’s incorporated the long-agreed Copenhagen Agreement pledges (2010-2020) which are now largely implemented and constitute 0.5°C of the 0.7°C impact of the “Paris” Agreement. So yes, you read that correctly: the Paris Agreement itself contributed 0.2°C only, not 0.7°C or “on the order of 1 degree Celsius” as claimed by MIT in their response to Trump’s correct citation of their work.
I agree that alarmists and the media tend to over-emphasise the inadequacy of Paris NDCs, so as to urge developed countries to “do more”. Sceptics, who think the 1.5°C target would be met by doing nothing, deride the huge requested CO2 cuts as unachievable and say “don’t bother”.
The Paris Agreement main target is “well under 2°C”, which is not that much more than 1.5°C. The IPCC (SR15,D1)says: “Pathways reflecting current [NDCs] are broadly consistent with cost-effective pathways that result in global warming of about 3°C by 2100, with warming continuing afterwards (medium confidence).”
The IPCC thinks the current NDC trajectory will result in 1.5°C happening as early as 2032 (with 2°C not long after). If we don’t double the pace by 2030, no targets will ever be met.
CAT (and WaPo) say most countries aren’t really trying. I’ve no cause to argue with this. I know USA has pulled out, Australia has just done a u-turn, Canada provinces are rejecting the new carbon tax, Germany and Japan are building numerous coal plants, nobody is financing the Green Climate Fund, and the Katowice COP24 is looking dicey.
As to whether
Well, yes, alarmists say”do more”emission cuts, and sceptics (who think all targets would be achieved by doing nothing) ridicule the huge numbers.
The main Paris target is “well under 2°C”(forever), which is not much different from 1.5°C. The IPCC (SR15, D1) says the present NDCs will lead to “global warming of about 3°C by 2100 and continuing thereafter”, and the 1.5°C will be broken as soon as 2032. Therefore, the world must massively step up the pace between 2015 and 2035.
CAT says few countries are even trying to meet their Paris promises. I’ve no reason to argue with this – given that the USA has pulled out, Australia has just U-turned, Canada is rejecting its carbon tax, Germany and Japan are piling into new coal stations, nobody is contributing to the Green Climate Fund, and the Katowice COP24 is looking decidedly dicey.
Thanks for your replies
“IPCC achieves net zero credibility”
It achieved this even last century with ignoring views of scientists, cherry picking only pro CAGW articles and politicians making its own conclusions.
“Even if all 195 other members of the UNFCCC (including USA), somehow eliminated all of their CO2 emissions by 2030”
If this was even possible I would bet all the money in global warming scam that nobody would notice any difference.
Numbers, numbers, numbers, and simple ones at that. If the general public could think with this stuff, we would not have AGW alarmism.
They do not care about economics because that is everybody else. Besides, economists are always wrong.
The general public believes hurricanes are driven by “heat” because they start in the tropics, and is too stupid to grasp the idea that it is temperature differences that provide the energy to power them. Warming affects higher latitudes more, so more even, so fewer hurricanes.
It would take some time to get across the idea of a “proxy.” But Mann’s temperature proxy was tree ring growth, and I think they can grasp that. Then they can get it: alarmists hate all life.
The Left Wing is not group think. The Left Wing has shutdown thinking in their wing. The Left Wing is a big tent that includes revolutionary Zombies groups who spread chaos.
Park the fact that there is no CAGW problem to solve.
The CAGW ‘plan’ does not work.
The forced solution to CAGW is to spend more and more money on wind and sun gather as the ‘solution’ to anthropogenic CO2 emission/
Wind and sun gathering simply does not work (reduce CO2 emissions enough and is too expensive), regardless of how much money is spent.
P.S. There is a Canadian/US Molten Salt reactor that is underdevelopment, phase II Canadian Regulator approval. The new design MSR (Molten Salt Reactor) can produce electricity as cheap as coal and is failsafe. It is 1/10 the cost, 7 times small, 10 times lighter, 20 times more efficient with fuel, than the old pressure water reactor. It new MSR is failsafe. This is an interesting subject. This is a destructive engineering breakthrough, that is gathering political momentum.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/obamas-renewable-energy-fantasy-1436104555
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/22/shocker-top-google-engineers-say-renewable-energy-simply-wont-work/
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/21/renewable_energy_simply_wont_work_google_renewables_engineers/
Yes. We see this with every El Nino. Very nicely with the last one and 1998.
Just a side note. My curiosity was piqued by news headlines to the effect that “the IPCC warns we only have 12 years to act” to avoid catastrophic climate change.
Without getting into any underlying details, it struck me that 12 appears to have a remarkable precision, namely +- 1 year. Undergraduate physics students are prone to write answers to problems and entries in lab reports to as many significant digits as their calculator outputs. Often they get problems stated in terms of a “2.3 kg mass with a 10 N force acting on it” and express their answers as 4.347826 m/s^2 or some such. I literally have to threaten them with points off to get them to round answers to the last significant digit of the problem.
I wanted to see the source of this particular claim and it appears it comes from the statement in the report:
A1. Human activities are estimated to have caused approximately 1.0°C of global
warming above pre-industrial levels, with a likely range of 0.8°C to 1.2°C. Global
warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at
the current rate (high confidence).
It looks like the 12 year figure comes from (2030 – 2018). It appears the report believes it is operating with a precision of 1 year. I noted that it states the upper bound as 2052, not 2051 or 2053, but 2052. It strikes me it would be much more consistent with undergraduate physics understanding to state no more than 2030 – 2050, and the warning should be “we have only about a decade to act.” Stating the number as “12” suggests a precision that is quite remarkable. I find this odd when compared to the often-claimed notion that it takes 10 years for change in any climate variable to be detectable.
“The IPCC well knows that halving CO2 emissions in 12 years is politically impossible, economically unaffordable and climatically unnecessary”
I think they knew that from the beginning.- that is since about 1980.
Never fooled Donald Trump I would say, nor Al Gore and Co either.
I think the UN has passed its use by date, all it is doing now is advocating communism.
For instance.
https://thedemiseofchristchurch.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/unitednations-conference-on-human-settlements_habitat1.pdf Page 8. The emphasis is mine.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
The old adage applies to the IPCC crew. “never get so close to your position, that when your position falls you fall with it”. They are so close to their position that if we had 12 years of global cooling they would stick to their guns
There was a mention about a increase in the use of electric cars, so where is the electricity to come from to recharge the cars batteries. Will each single electron tell the owner if it comes from dirty coal, or from a nice clean windmill ?.
MJE
There are 250 million vehicles in the USA alone. Any significant portion of that converting to all electric will require an upgrade of the grid and increased capacity. 70% of US electricity is generated via fossil fuels.
Really funny how a fake, climate denial blog like this can say a notable organization like IPCC has zero-credibility, yet has not issued one credible, comprehensive report to refute the IPCC report. You and other climate denial advocates are the reason why we are in this mess and Trump & Republicans are only making matters worse.
Denial is a religious term. Warmies are religious people. I’m a scientist like many here and skepticism is the norm and accepted in science. IPCC forecasts have consistently been wrong. When the data says your model is wrong you abandon the model- that’s science.
What mess? You mean the mess that is yet another corrupt UN company fleecing countries out of billions of dollars to line their pockets and usher in a globalist government?
You’re a useful idiot and you’re being fooled.
“So why did the IPCC issue this credibility-destroying Special Report?”
To scare countries into committing more cash in Poland.
Will it backfire? -> maybe
Are politicians smart enough to reject it? -> probably not.