GCR: Latest climate study says it's already too late

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GRA

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https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1120235_latest-climate-study-says-its-already-too-late

. . . With all the dire warnings about climate-change coming from the most recent studies—from the Fourth National Climate Assessment released on Black Friday to an October report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which showed that catastrophic effects could hit by 2040—the latest news is even worse .

The study by Wood Mackenzie, a global consultant to the energy industry—both renewable and fossil energy—comes out and says what has been on many observers' minds: It can't be fixed.

This isn't some pessimistic study that says the world can't transition off fossil fuels. It is intended to look at the best-case scenario of a convergence of trends toward electric cars, self-driving cars, and renewable power. . . .

  • "Even with an accelerated pace of change, a ‘2-degree world’ remains out of reach in our accelerated scenario," says David Brown, a senior analyst at Wood Mackenzie. "Much more needs to happen around lowering non-power sector emissions to achieve such an outcome. Political momentum will be crucial, and at present climate leadership is lacking."

In its most optimistic scenario, the study assumes that in the U.S., the European Union, and China, all new cars will be electric by 2040, and that will save 11 million barrels per day of oil globally. It says that peak oil consumption will arrive in 2031, five years ahead of earlier forecasts.

It assumes that by 2030, policies in advanced nations will favor self-driving, electric robo-taxis, which will then begin to take off. Those robo-taxis will have five times the utilization of private cars, freeing up land for development or preservation that would otherwise be used for parking lots.

In what WoodMac calls this "carbon-constrained scenario," demand for electricity for transportation will be 1.5 times larger than the total power demand in India last year—1,900 terawatt-hours.

Such high power demand will provide incentives for renewable sources, which the study calls "clear winners," growing at an average annual rate of 11 percent through 2035, with wind and solar power growing nine-fold during that time. The study assumes that large-scale energy storage will become economically viable under such conditions and amount to 780 gigawatts by 2040.

Even under those conditions, Brown says, "Fossil fuel use will not disappear any time soon," amounting to 77 percent of all energy supplies, down 2 percentage points from WoodMac's base case scenario.

Emerging markets will require more natural gas, while coal use will be cut in half by 2040—even with no additional government restrictions. . . .

With that as the best-case scenario, all that could be left to do is adapt to the effects of climate change while working to minimize its effects. Unfortunately, other studies have shown that it will be more expensive to adapt to climate change than to mitigate it.
 
When these scenarios were first examined about...ten years ago?...it was implicit that the most likely outcome was the one we are seeing now: far too little positive change, and essentially uncontrolled acceleration of climate change. I remember shedding a few tears after realizing it was already too late, and this was so long ago that I can't remember the year. Now the challenge is to try to block nihilistic and denialist mindsets from continuing to dictate policy. Now we should be explaining that the choices are between an unpleasant future, and one in which far fewer surviving humans have to live largely in domes and underground, eating yeast grown in our own waste.
 
Press Is the Enemy of Climate
It’s easier to tell a story of good vs. evil than to understand the science.
|
Dec. 4, 2018 6_41 p.m. ET
By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
There are lessons in the media’s psychiatric moment last week over the newly published U.S. National Climate Assessment.
Let’s give the New York Times credit. It was braver than just about every other news organization when it said, in its lead sentence, the
“damage will knock as much as 10 percent off the size of the American economy by century’s end.”
I can’t figure out where the Times got this, but it’s the difference between, say, 2% and 1.86% annual growth over the next 82 years and happens
to be about right. How does this justify the dire adjectives it was swathed in? It doesn’t. I suspect that’s why every other news report,
including the Journal’s, relied on adjectives alone rather than giving numbers—because the numbers just aren’t that alarming.
What does the National Climate Assessment actually say? In 2090 the U.S. will experience annual climate-related costs of $500 billion. Notice
that $500 billion, to echo a widespread misinterpretation of the Times report, is not 10% even of today’s economy (it’s 2.5%). It’s 10% of 1971’s
economy.
Steven Koonin, a former Obama administration official and physicist, made a similar point last week on these pages. He calculates that, after
climate costs and modest assumptions about growth, 2090’s economy would still be 3.8 times larger than today’s. If so, $500 billion in annual
costs would amount to just 0.6% of GDP. Understand too that many costs enumerated in the report are not detractors from gross domestic
product but contributors to it. Building a sea wall adds to GDP. Constructing a house to withstand 2090’s weather adds to GDP.
Weirder still, I saw not one news report that ventured to say what the expected temperature would be in 2090. Maybe that’s because doing so
would reveal that these relatively bearable costs arise under a worst-case scenario for emissions, known as RCP 8.5, which would further
undercut the media’s hysterical adjectives. This is a shame because all such studies, including the new U.S. assessment, show that the biggest
threat to climate is a lack of prosperity.
In fact, RCP 8.5 is a model of emissions under conditions of economic stagnation. Trade, technology, global wealth and global per capita
income stagnate. Demographic transitions to slower population growth don’t occur. Fracking is essentially uninvented. Countries burn
impossible amounts of coal because that’s the only resource they have access to.
Notice how important these assumptions are. It’s a mouthful, but here’s what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says: “The
second-to-lowest RCP” [with about half the emissions of RCP 8.5] is “consistent with a baseline scenario that assumes a global development
that focuses on technological improvements and a shift to service industries but does not aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a goal in itself”
(emphasis added).
That is, a fast-growing world is greener even if it’s not trying to cut carbon.
Unfortunately the environmentalist left has only itself to blame for the developed world’s (not including the U.S.) wholesale flight in the
wrong direction. In France, the target of the rioters may be a new fuel tax, implemented by the government as a gesture of climate virtue. But
as every news account tells us, what really is bringing them into the streets is 30 years of slow growth and chronic joblessness caused by
towering taxes and antibusiness regulation.
Put aside scientific uncertainties, which we haven’t talked about. The clear lesson of last week’s U.S. government report and every other
official assessment is that climate change is not the end of the world. We can handle the cost and we can also handle the cost of avoiding a
portion of climate change through sensible tax policy. (It should not be necessary at this point to rehearse the case for a carbon tax that is
simultaneously pro-growth and anti-carbon.)
Unfortunately the U.S. media have become a positive hindrance to public understanding. Consider that systemization of banality known as
Axios. Last week it told its presumably politically engaged readership that the way to “be smart” about climate change is to understand that
“In climate science, one side is the scientific consensus, and the other is a small but vocal faction of people trying to fight it.”
In other words, reduce everything to a binary question of believers vs. deniers, good guys vs. bad guys. Here’s the sad truth: This narrative is
mostly an invention of journalists for their own convenience. It relieves them of having to understand a complicated subject.
I’m not trying to be funny. Over the past 15 or 20 years, the climate beat has been handed over to reporter-activists who’ve decided that
climate science is impenetrable but at least nobody ever got fired for exaggerating the risks of climate change.
Their ignorant crisis-babble is why electorates everywhere now believe climate and prosperity are necessarily at odds. Every study, including
the U.S. government’s latest, shows the opposite: Continued prosperity is essential to mitigating the risks of climate change.
 
When I got my first Prius in 2004, Climate Change Debate was still in full swing. The issue was Science's inability to realize that the effects had already become severe. For years they had been saying in 30 years blah blah, but now its different. Things that weren't supposed to happen until 2030 are happening today.

The reality is it took decades to get on the fast track to Hell and it will take decades to get off that track...decades we no longer have.
 
Bouldergramp said:
Press Is the Enemy of Climate
It’s easier to tell a story of good vs. evil than to understand the science.
|
Dec. 4, 2018 6_41 p.m. ET
By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
There are lessons in the media’s psychiatric moment last week over the newly published U.S. National Climate Assessment.
Let’s give the New York Times credit. It was braver than just about every other news organization when it said, in its lead sentence, the
“damage will knock as much as 10 percent off the size of the American economy by century’s end.”
I can’t figure out where the Times got this, but it’s the difference between, say, 2% and 1.86% annual growth over the next 82 years and happens
to be about right. How does this justify the dire adjectives it was swathed in? It doesn’t. I suspect that’s why every other news report,
including the Journal’s, relied on adjectives alone rather than giving numbers—because the numbers just aren’t that alarming.
What does the National Climate Assessment actually say? In 2090 the U.S. will experience annual climate-related costs of $500 billion. Notice
that $500 billion, to echo a widespread misinterpretation of the Times report, is not 10% even of today’s economy (it’s 2.5%). It’s 10% of 1971’s
economy.
Steven Koonin, a former Obama administration official and physicist, made a similar point last week on these pages. He calculates that, after
climate costs and modest assumptions about growth, 2090’s economy would still be 3.8 times larger than today’s. If so, $500 billion in annual
costs would amount to just 0.6% of GDP. Understand too that many costs enumerated in the report are not detractors from gross domestic
product but contributors to it. Building a sea wall adds to GDP. Constructing a house to withstand 2090’s weather adds to GDP.
Weirder still, I saw not one news report that ventured to say what the expected temperature would be in 2090. Maybe that’s because doing so
would reveal that these relatively bearable costs arise under a worst-case scenario for emissions, known as RCP 8.5, which would further
undercut the media’s hysterical adjectives. This is a shame because all such studies, including the new U.S. assessment, show that the biggest
threat to climate is a lack of prosperity.
In fact, RCP 8.5 is a model of emissions under conditions of economic stagnation. Trade, technology, global wealth and global per capita
income stagnate. Demographic transitions to slower population growth don’t occur. Fracking is essentially uninvented. Countries burn
impossible amounts of coal because that’s the only resource they have access to.
Notice how important these assumptions are. It’s a mouthful, but here’s what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says: “The
second-to-lowest RCP” [with about half the emissions of RCP 8.5] is “consistent with a baseline scenario that assumes a global development
that focuses on technological improvements and a shift to service industries but does not aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a goal in itself”
(emphasis added).
That is, a fast-growing world is greener even if it’s not trying to cut carbon.
Unfortunately the environmentalist left has only itself to blame for the developed world’s (not including the U.S.) wholesale flight in the
wrong direction. In France, the target of the rioters may be a new fuel tax, implemented by the government as a gesture of climate virtue. But
as every news account tells us, what really is bringing them into the streets is 30 years of slow growth and chronic joblessness caused by
towering taxes and antibusiness regulation.
Put aside scientific uncertainties, which we haven’t talked about. The clear lesson of last week’s U.S. government report and every other
official assessment is that climate change is not the end of the world. We can handle the cost and we can also handle the cost of avoiding a
portion of climate change through sensible tax policy. (It should not be necessary at this point to rehearse the case for a carbon tax that is
simultaneously pro-growth and anti-carbon.)
Unfortunately the U.S. media have become a positive hindrance to public understanding. Consider that systemization of banality known as
Axios. Last week it told its presumably politically engaged readership that the way to “be smart” about climate change is to understand that
“In climate science, one side is the scientific consensus, and the other is a small but vocal faction of people trying to fight it.”
In other words, reduce everything to a binary question of believers vs. deniers, good guys vs. bad guys. Here’s the sad truth: This narrative is
mostly an invention of journalists for their own convenience. It relieves them of having to understand a complicated subject.
I’m not trying to be funny. Over the past 15 or 20 years, the climate beat has been handed over to reporter-activists who’ve decided that
climate science is impenetrable but at least nobody ever got fired for exaggerating the risks of climate change.
Their ignorant crisis-babble is why electorates everywhere now believe climate and prosperity are necessarily at odds. Every study, including
the U.S. government’s latest, shows the opposite: Continued prosperity is essential to mitigating the risks of climate change.

Thanks, but we already have innumerable examples of how to fight change through obfuscation.
 
DaveinOlyWA said:
The reality is it took decades to get on the fast track to Hell and it will take decades to get off that track...decades we no longer have.
More like 200 years in the making. Take another 100 to stop digging the hole. Then 500 to reverse the effects.
Best of luck to the future. Going to need to adapt and I think we will.
 
smkettner said:
DaveinOlyWA said:
The reality is it took decades to get on the fast track to Hell and it will take decades to get off that track...decades we no longer have.
More like 200 years in the making. Take another 100 to stop digging the hole. Then 500 to reverse the effects.
Best of luck to the future. Going to need to adapt and I think we will.

I think we were fine until the 2nd round of major deforestation...
 
Part of my point is that anything to do with climate change should be looked at in 100 year blocks as a minimum.
Those that talk a few decades are just kidding themselves.
 
smkettner said:
Part of my point is that anything to do with climate change should be looked at in 100 year blocks as a minimum.
Those that talk a few decades are just kidding themselves.

Ok but part of my point is that the bulk of the damage is hardly centuries old. The other part is the turnaround happened and we lacked the scientific cojones to recognize it.
 
Ok but part of my point is that the bulk of the damage is hardly centuries old.

The oceans have been absorbing huge amounts of CO2 for centuries, masking the damage until recently. (They are pretty much at capacity now.)

Does anyone remember in which topic I wrote a brief but comprehensive summary of climate change? It seemed well received and I'd like to have it available to use again in cases like this.
 
As Charles Darwin says: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one most adaptable to change.'' I consider the climate change as a change that will lead us to a higher step of our evolution. But to success first we should be adapted to mother nature, starting with the places we live, our homes. I think we need bigger and long term projects such as Neom. Adapting our preferences to the green friendly projects like this will not only slow down the climate change, but also take us to a higher step. I don't like when people talk like it's the end of everything: maybe it's the end of the old but the start of something more developed. All I can say is time will show.
 
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