1. A world 2 or 3C warmer would be worse off than now.
2. The are no natural negative feed backs that would reduce any warming from CO2 increases.
3. History: People were worse off in the Roman and Medieval Warming periods that were warmer than now.
4. History: People were better off during the Dark Ages and Little Ice Age that were colder than now.
5. Most of the warming since 1850 is the result of human emissions. History: Most of this warming occurred before humans began large scale emissions.
6. Sea rise is faster now than it was before CO2 emission rose. Actually, the gradual sea level rise that began when the Little Ice Age ended is proceeding at about the same pace as was naturally occurring before CO2 emissions rose. The variations are within the error margins of the measuring devices.
7. Droughts and flood are increasing. The data does not show an increase.
8. Tipping points exist. They did not happen when the climate was several degrees warmer earlier in this interglacial. Modelers can program their models to create them, but there is no evidence they exist in the real climate. They are a hypothesis without evidence.
9. Doubling CO2 to 800ppm would make a significant difference. The physics says that since warming effect of CO2 at 400ppm is saturated above 98.5%, Doubling to 800ppm would only increase the warming effect to around 99.5% in a very gradual rise by 2100. This small amount of potential warming by 2100 is not an emergency. A prosperous world will easily adjust to this slow motion change.
10. A few degrees C will destroy the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The real danger to the ice is the dozens of active volcanic vents melting it from below. Reducing CO2 will have no effect on the volcanos.
11. The assumption of a linear relationship between CO2 levels and global temperature is unverified because it can’t be isolated from all the other factors. It is more likely, if you believe the physics experiments, an inverse logarithmic relationship. Every doubling has a much smaller effect than the prior doubling. Once saturation is reached, there is no more increase.
12. Methane is a strong greenhouse gas. Yes, but since water vapor has already saturated the IR frequencies methane absorbs, more methane cannot increase atmospheric temperature in any measurable way.
13. The climate has not been “steady” over the last 1000 years. The Medieval Warming Period was several degrees C warmer and the Little Ice Age was several degrees C cooler.
14. Climate models can successfully predict future climate. No way to know. They haven’t been very good at predicting the last 40 years.
15. The best mitigation might be to provide everyone with all the inexpensive electricity they need and increase the prosperity of all people as much as possible. A prosperous world can easily adjust any of the projected climate changes. Even the worst case IPCC guesses.
That is a lot of assuming by Dr X and others. I would prefer, at the government level, that decisions be based on data and the results of experiments, admitting that we don't know when we don't. Making these decisions based on the educated guesses of one set of experts (with or without a complicated computer program) is a formula for bad policy and misallocated resources.
By the way, I greatly appreciate Dr X putting himself out there for us to pick at and get the discussion going.
There are so many unknowns that people will be on all sides of this.
Being certain with few facts was a good strategy for survival in prehistoric times. That our brains are still instinctively wired this way makes us hard to get along with at times.
“Several major economies, including the United States and the European Union, have recently pledged to zero out their emissions responsible for global warming by midcentury. But many world leaders have not yet come to grips with the extraordinary transformation of the global energy system that is required to do so, the agency warned... [T]he annual pace of installations for solar panels and wind turbines worldwide would have to quadruple by 2030, the agency said. For the solar industry, that would mean building the equivalent of what is currently the world’s largest solar farm every day for the next decade.”
I wonder what Dr. X thinks about the practicality of building solar farms as large as any yet built every day for the next 3,650 days. If this is really what’s required, wouldn’t the more logical approach be to just throw in the towel and mitigate to the extent possible?
Or does Dr. X believe that the International Energy Agency is emulating chicken little?
This reminds me of an old Steve Martin joke. It goes something like this:
YOU can be a MILLIONAIRE and NEVER PAY TAXES! Here’s how. First, get a million dollars…
If only the scientists could produce a realistic plan for a sharp decline in carbon emissions by 2030—problem solved! But they won’t because they can’t. No one can. The complexities involved are beyond analysis, much less solution. Clausewitz wrote that “In war everything is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult”—an observation that’s equally applicable to the issue under discussion here. “We must sharply reduce carbon emissions by 2030 (or 2040 or 2050),” etc., etc. are deceptively simple statements that skate past the “frictions” as Clausewitz called them—all those unforeseeable factors, major and minor, that accumulate to seize up the machinery of the plan. And we might usefully apply his conception of war as a “fascinating trinity” to climate/energy policy: (1) a political, social and cultural question involving partisan interests and primordial instincts; (2) a landscape of uncertainty and chance inviting creativity; and (3) a scientific issue amenable to pure reason. That, I believe, is an apt characterization of the matter at hand.
The trouble with scientists is that they make bad politicians and economists; they tend to lack vision, except through a microscope. I found Dr. X’s exposition most interesting. Do I think it moves the ball? Not really. To be fair, he touches on the non-scientific factors involved. But he doesn’t grapple with them. “I’d aim to halve emissions in the next decade, at least in countries with high emissions like the US. In the following decade, I’d try to get as near zero as possible, anticipating that some sectors will be hard to decarbonize and take longer. I’d also aggressively cut emissions of other GHGs.” How is all that supposed to happen?
Dr. X and others assume that since human activity is largely responsible for climate change, humanity can fix the problem. But maybe that’s not true at all. History doesn’t encourage optimism, that’s for sure.
During the past week, thoughtful writers described key components of climate change that somehow you didn’t include in your latest essay. The word “China” doesn’t appear in your piece, despite China being the #1 greenhouse gas emitter, and increasing. You didn’t mention the energy needs nor economic realities of 4 billion people living in China, India, and Southeast Asia. You didn’t mention their realistic trade-off between energy needs and fossil fuel burning. You didn’t mention “nuclear”, neither fission nor fusion, nor that they are carbon-free. You didn’t use the word “adaptation”, while every coastal mayor and city council in the world must consider actual adaptation measures, such as sea walls. You also didn’t articulate the nuanced policy navigation between the political, the engineering, and the financial (and social media hysteria). You didn’t mention global population, and its coming maximum. You admit that limiting the global average rise to less than 1.5 C is unlikely. But your piece hardly mentions practical decisions about sea walls, purchasing and developing batteries, diminishing forest fires, and adapting to drought or floods. Did you write your essay before reading the prior Energy essays in GC?
These two sentences struck me as unscientific: "Given a risk-averse 1.5 degree goal, my carbon budget preference would be about 400 Gt—roughly ten years of emissions at the current rate. I’d aim to halve emissions in the next decade, at least in countries with high emissions like the US.” Unfortunately, there is no global energy "czar". One's ideal "aims" are academic. Further, if the U.S. vanished, the concentration of atmospheric carbon would continue to increase at 90% of its present rate of increase. We all known that the U.S. and Europe are decreasing their GHG emissions.
Finally, your last sentence, “Do we feel lucky”, is disrespectful. You could add Clint Eastwood's “punk”, as if we are climate imbeciles. In contrast, we are trying to find a thoughtful balance of mitigation and adaption for both developing and the developed countries. We’re trying to navigate a global challenge, with due respect for the complexity of this challenge.
The problem is that while scientists like Dr. X are pulling the fire alarm, it's the politicians like John Kerry who are dispatching the hook and ladder. To me this suggests that either rapid technological advances will need to make it so overwhelmingly economically advantageous to limit greenhouse gas emissions or we're doomed to the global warming scenario that gives Dr. X nightmares. Effective governmental intervention either in the form of mandates or incentives are unlikely to be impactful.
Just last month in New York we saw a perfect example of the the hypocrisy and incompetence of environmental activists and the politicians who genuflect to them. For decades, New York City got 25 percent of its base load power from three reactors located at the Indian Point Power facility in suburban New York (about 30 miles north of the City). Obviously, the power generated was carbon-free and the plant had a spotless safety record.
Despite this, environmental activists have spent the better part of 30 years bitterly complaining that the plant was allowed to operate. Of course it's these same environmental activists who whine continuously about the threat posed by carbon emissions. A major champion of the activist community is New York's Governor, Andrew Cuomo (currently under an impeachment threat for alleged serial groping). Governor Cuomo has banned fracking in New York State, despite an ample supply of natural gas deposits and he has been a mortal enemy of those who want to build pipelines in New York. As a result of his Jihad against all things with the prefix "fossil," there are parts of the State where it is impossible to hook up new natural gas lines, which dramatically increases the cost of heating homes and making hot water because New York has amongst the highest electric rates in our nation. The excess cost, which can be onerous for working and middle class families could not matter less to the Governor, the state legislature or the latte-loving activist community.
Despite the fact that he allegedly worships at the altar of "clean energy" Governor Cuomo badgered Entergy (the owner of Indian Point) to close all three reactors located at the site. The final reactor was decommissioned in April.
As the reactors closed one by one, the electricity produced by Indian Point was replaced almost exclusively by electricity generated by natural gas. After the first reactor closed a few years back, the share of the State's power that came from gas generators jumped from 36 to 40 percent. With the closure of the other two reactors, New York State will probably get somewhere around 50 percent of its electricity from gas-powered plants during the winter. During the summer, when electricity use spikes, the share of gas generated electricity will surely jump to at least 55 percent and maybe 60 percent. If we have a particularly hot summer, there's plenty of peak-load capacity at the ready, but most of this generating capacity relies on oil.
Perhaps Dr. X will forgive skeptics from wondering why they should believe global warming activists and politicians who claim we face an extinction event when those same activists and politicians are not alarmed at the prospect of closing down a perfectly functional nuclear facility even at the cost of increasing green house gas emissions. The conclusion is inevitable, even the activists don't believe that reducing green house gasses is all that urgent; after all, they've successfully lobbied for a policy that significantly increases these emissions.
Although he wasn't the climate czar when the decision to close Indian Point was made, John Kerry was a well-known environmental activists who had fashioned himself as the Democratic Party's kibitzer-in-chief. We never heard him begging Governor Cuomo to keep Indian Point open. I don't remember hearing much from Bill McKibben, Greta Thunberg or any other well-know global warming activist either. Obviously, they must have felt that the large increase in green house gas emissions that inevitably arose from closing Indian Point was simply no big deal. If that's what leading climate change activists think, why should the rest of us believe anything else?
But here's the real irony; the environmentalists who lobbied for the shut down of Indian Point assure us that there's nothing to worry about. New York has great big plans to generate renewable energy. Off-shore wind farms and thousands of acres of solar arrays are on the way, we're told. Just a few years back, the State legislature mandated that by 2030, 50 percent of the State's electricity had to come from renewable sources. Last year our legislators decided that their goal wasn't ambitious enough and they raised the mandate to 70 percent.
Very little of this infrastructure has been built and anyone who believes that a State as overburdened by governmental bureaucracy as New York can pull it off by 2030 must be smoking some of the newly legal cannabis now for sale on almost every corner. If the fastidious Germans couldn't do it, New York doesn't have a chance.
But suppose by some miracle that we can. Suspend disbelief and contemplate the possibility that by 2030, New Yorkers will get 70 percent of their electricity from renewable sources. Does this mean that all the increased carbon emissions we contributed to the atmosphere in the intervening years as a result of the closing of Indian Point simply don't matter? Not if Dr. X is right. His argument suggests that those emissions are part and parcel of a looming disaster or, at least, a potential disaster.
Of course, 2030 is exactly 9 years away. That's exactly the point where John Kerry said we reach the point of no return. If we finally start making up for the emissions spewed into the atmosphere by the fossil-fuel burning generators that replaced Indian Point nine years from now, doesn't John Kerry think its too late? If we wait that long, and John Kerry is right, why bother trying?
With friends like environmental activists, do climate scientists really need enemies?
It seems highly unlikely that any of the goals proclaimed by climate scientists will be met. Shouldn't we start planning for the inevitable consequences?
Since we're rearranging baggage, I'll close my participation in this series (which, counting this comment, amounts to roughly two remarks) with this:
"I will leave others to debate the merits of your [i.e., my] comments on long-term climate change. But from an economic perspective, I should think that the answer to "Why do we care about atmospheric CO2 as a greenhouse gas in the first place?" is the risk to the huge investments that have been made, to populations vulnerable to extreme weather, and to the natural world."
That's from our moderator.
Since the question of why we should care has been, by design, explicitly excluded from the conversation of the greenhouse gas and planetary warming aspect of energy provision, this entire discussion has been a long exercise in irrelevance, for all that the details of how to generate energy and provide it to folks have been enormously informative.
Without that historical context, though, we don't even have any idea of what "extreme weather" is, much less whether it's significantly different from other eras. Nor do we have any understanding of risks "to the natural world" absent that history.
And so the risk from political overreaction to a situation whose history is carefully ignored is far more than merely "huge investments," it's the destruction of the quality of lives of billions of people, and the destruction of lives themselves, from the economic dislocation of shifting to a particular form of energy generation, or a bar against generation from burning hydrocarbons.
One problem: "demand for key minerals such as lithium, graphite, nickel and rare-earth metals would explode, rising by 4,200%, 2,500%, 1,900% and 700%, respectively, by 2040." That's as cited by the WSJ in their summary of the IEA report, and that's the level of economic and environmental destruction that would result from just our Progressive-Democratic President Joe Biden's panicky plan.
Assumptions that are as likely wrong as correct:
1. A world 2 or 3C warmer would be worse off than now.
2. The are no natural negative feed backs that would reduce any warming from CO2 increases.
3. History: People were worse off in the Roman and Medieval Warming periods that were warmer than now.
4. History: People were better off during the Dark Ages and Little Ice Age that were colder than now.
5. Most of the warming since 1850 is the result of human emissions. History: Most of this warming occurred before humans began large scale emissions.
6. Sea rise is faster now than it was before CO2 emission rose. Actually, the gradual sea level rise that began when the Little Ice Age ended is proceeding at about the same pace as was naturally occurring before CO2 emissions rose. The variations are within the error margins of the measuring devices.
7. Droughts and flood are increasing. The data does not show an increase.
8. Tipping points exist. They did not happen when the climate was several degrees warmer earlier in this interglacial. Modelers can program their models to create them, but there is no evidence they exist in the real climate. They are a hypothesis without evidence.
9. Doubling CO2 to 800ppm would make a significant difference. The physics says that since warming effect of CO2 at 400ppm is saturated above 98.5%, Doubling to 800ppm would only increase the warming effect to around 99.5% in a very gradual rise by 2100. This small amount of potential warming by 2100 is not an emergency. A prosperous world will easily adjust to this slow motion change.
10. A few degrees C will destroy the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The real danger to the ice is the dozens of active volcanic vents melting it from below. Reducing CO2 will have no effect on the volcanos.
11. The assumption of a linear relationship between CO2 levels and global temperature is unverified because it can’t be isolated from all the other factors. It is more likely, if you believe the physics experiments, an inverse logarithmic relationship. Every doubling has a much smaller effect than the prior doubling. Once saturation is reached, there is no more increase.
12. Methane is a strong greenhouse gas. Yes, but since water vapor has already saturated the IR frequencies methane absorbs, more methane cannot increase atmospheric temperature in any measurable way.
13. The climate has not been “steady” over the last 1000 years. The Medieval Warming Period was several degrees C warmer and the Little Ice Age was several degrees C cooler.
14. Climate models can successfully predict future climate. No way to know. They haven’t been very good at predicting the last 40 years.
15. The best mitigation might be to provide everyone with all the inexpensive electricity they need and increase the prosperity of all people as much as possible. A prosperous world can easily adjust any of the projected climate changes. Even the worst case IPCC guesses.
That is a lot of assuming by Dr X and others. I would prefer, at the government level, that decisions be based on data and the results of experiments, admitting that we don't know when we don't. Making these decisions based on the educated guesses of one set of experts (with or without a complicated computer program) is a formula for bad policy and misallocated resources.
By the way, I greatly appreciate Dr X putting himself out there for us to pick at and get the discussion going.
There are so many unknowns that people will be on all sides of this.
Being certain with few facts was a good strategy for survival in prehistoric times. That our brains are still instinctively wired this way makes us hard to get along with at times.
Here’s a headline from today’s New York Times;
“Nations Must Drop Fossil Fuels, Fast, World Energy Body Warns”
Here’s the article (paywall warning)
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/18/climate/climate-change-emissions-IEA.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Here’s the take home message from the article,
“Several major economies, including the United States and the European Union, have recently pledged to zero out their emissions responsible for global warming by midcentury. But many world leaders have not yet come to grips with the extraordinary transformation of the global energy system that is required to do so, the agency warned... [T]he annual pace of installations for solar panels and wind turbines worldwide would have to quadruple by 2030, the agency said. For the solar industry, that would mean building the equivalent of what is currently the world’s largest solar farm every day for the next decade.”
I wonder what Dr. X thinks about the practicality of building solar farms as large as any yet built every day for the next 3,650 days. If this is really what’s required, wouldn’t the more logical approach be to just throw in the towel and mitigate to the extent possible?
Or does Dr. X believe that the International Energy Agency is emulating chicken little?
This reminds me of an old Steve Martin joke. It goes something like this:
YOU can be a MILLIONAIRE and NEVER PAY TAXES! Here’s how. First, get a million dollars…
If only the scientists could produce a realistic plan for a sharp decline in carbon emissions by 2030—problem solved! But they won’t because they can’t. No one can. The complexities involved are beyond analysis, much less solution. Clausewitz wrote that “In war everything is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult”—an observation that’s equally applicable to the issue under discussion here. “We must sharply reduce carbon emissions by 2030 (or 2040 or 2050),” etc., etc. are deceptively simple statements that skate past the “frictions” as Clausewitz called them—all those unforeseeable factors, major and minor, that accumulate to seize up the machinery of the plan. And we might usefully apply his conception of war as a “fascinating trinity” to climate/energy policy: (1) a political, social and cultural question involving partisan interests and primordial instincts; (2) a landscape of uncertainty and chance inviting creativity; and (3) a scientific issue amenable to pure reason. That, I believe, is an apt characterization of the matter at hand.
The trouble with scientists is that they make bad politicians and economists; they tend to lack vision, except through a microscope. I found Dr. X’s exposition most interesting. Do I think it moves the ball? Not really. To be fair, he touches on the non-scientific factors involved. But he doesn’t grapple with them. “I’d aim to halve emissions in the next decade, at least in countries with high emissions like the US. In the following decade, I’d try to get as near zero as possible, anticipating that some sectors will be hard to decarbonize and take longer. I’d also aggressively cut emissions of other GHGs.” How is all that supposed to happen?
Dr. X and others assume that since human activity is largely responsible for climate change, humanity can fix the problem. But maybe that’s not true at all. History doesn’t encourage optimism, that’s for sure.
Dear Dr. X,
During the past week, thoughtful writers described key components of climate change that somehow you didn’t include in your latest essay. The word “China” doesn’t appear in your piece, despite China being the #1 greenhouse gas emitter, and increasing. You didn’t mention the energy needs nor economic realities of 4 billion people living in China, India, and Southeast Asia. You didn’t mention their realistic trade-off between energy needs and fossil fuel burning. You didn’t mention “nuclear”, neither fission nor fusion, nor that they are carbon-free. You didn’t use the word “adaptation”, while every coastal mayor and city council in the world must consider actual adaptation measures, such as sea walls. You also didn’t articulate the nuanced policy navigation between the political, the engineering, and the financial (and social media hysteria). You didn’t mention global population, and its coming maximum. You admit that limiting the global average rise to less than 1.5 C is unlikely. But your piece hardly mentions practical decisions about sea walls, purchasing and developing batteries, diminishing forest fires, and adapting to drought or floods. Did you write your essay before reading the prior Energy essays in GC?
These two sentences struck me as unscientific: "Given a risk-averse 1.5 degree goal, my carbon budget preference would be about 400 Gt—roughly ten years of emissions at the current rate. I’d aim to halve emissions in the next decade, at least in countries with high emissions like the US.” Unfortunately, there is no global energy "czar". One's ideal "aims" are academic. Further, if the U.S. vanished, the concentration of atmospheric carbon would continue to increase at 90% of its present rate of increase. We all known that the U.S. and Europe are decreasing their GHG emissions.
Finally, your last sentence, “Do we feel lucky”, is disrespectful. You could add Clint Eastwood's “punk”, as if we are climate imbeciles. In contrast, we are trying to find a thoughtful balance of mitigation and adaption for both developing and the developed countries. We’re trying to navigate a global challenge, with due respect for the complexity of this challenge.
Dr. M.
Does anyone really believe that India, China, Africa, Russia, etc are going to accept a 1.5 degree C target? I have a hard time seeing that happen.
The problem is that while scientists like Dr. X are pulling the fire alarm, it's the politicians like John Kerry who are dispatching the hook and ladder. To me this suggests that either rapid technological advances will need to make it so overwhelmingly economically advantageous to limit greenhouse gas emissions or we're doomed to the global warming scenario that gives Dr. X nightmares. Effective governmental intervention either in the form of mandates or incentives are unlikely to be impactful.
Just last month in New York we saw a perfect example of the the hypocrisy and incompetence of environmental activists and the politicians who genuflect to them. For decades, New York City got 25 percent of its base load power from three reactors located at the Indian Point Power facility in suburban New York (about 30 miles north of the City). Obviously, the power generated was carbon-free and the plant had a spotless safety record.
Despite this, environmental activists have spent the better part of 30 years bitterly complaining that the plant was allowed to operate. Of course it's these same environmental activists who whine continuously about the threat posed by carbon emissions. A major champion of the activist community is New York's Governor, Andrew Cuomo (currently under an impeachment threat for alleged serial groping). Governor Cuomo has banned fracking in New York State, despite an ample supply of natural gas deposits and he has been a mortal enemy of those who want to build pipelines in New York. As a result of his Jihad against all things with the prefix "fossil," there are parts of the State where it is impossible to hook up new natural gas lines, which dramatically increases the cost of heating homes and making hot water because New York has amongst the highest electric rates in our nation. The excess cost, which can be onerous for working and middle class families could not matter less to the Governor, the state legislature or the latte-loving activist community.
Despite the fact that he allegedly worships at the altar of "clean energy" Governor Cuomo badgered Entergy (the owner of Indian Point) to close all three reactors located at the site. The final reactor was decommissioned in April.
As the reactors closed one by one, the electricity produced by Indian Point was replaced almost exclusively by electricity generated by natural gas. After the first reactor closed a few years back, the share of the State's power that came from gas generators jumped from 36 to 40 percent. With the closure of the other two reactors, New York State will probably get somewhere around 50 percent of its electricity from gas-powered plants during the winter. During the summer, when electricity use spikes, the share of gas generated electricity will surely jump to at least 55 percent and maybe 60 percent. If we have a particularly hot summer, there's plenty of peak-load capacity at the ready, but most of this generating capacity relies on oil.
Perhaps Dr. X will forgive skeptics from wondering why they should believe global warming activists and politicians who claim we face an extinction event when those same activists and politicians are not alarmed at the prospect of closing down a perfectly functional nuclear facility even at the cost of increasing green house gas emissions. The conclusion is inevitable, even the activists don't believe that reducing green house gasses is all that urgent; after all, they've successfully lobbied for a policy that significantly increases these emissions.
Although he wasn't the climate czar when the decision to close Indian Point was made, John Kerry was a well-known environmental activists who had fashioned himself as the Democratic Party's kibitzer-in-chief. We never heard him begging Governor Cuomo to keep Indian Point open. I don't remember hearing much from Bill McKibben, Greta Thunberg or any other well-know global warming activist either. Obviously, they must have felt that the large increase in green house gas emissions that inevitably arose from closing Indian Point was simply no big deal. If that's what leading climate change activists think, why should the rest of us believe anything else?
But here's the real irony; the environmentalists who lobbied for the shut down of Indian Point assure us that there's nothing to worry about. New York has great big plans to generate renewable energy. Off-shore wind farms and thousands of acres of solar arrays are on the way, we're told. Just a few years back, the State legislature mandated that by 2030, 50 percent of the State's electricity had to come from renewable sources. Last year our legislators decided that their goal wasn't ambitious enough and they raised the mandate to 70 percent.
Very little of this infrastructure has been built and anyone who believes that a State as overburdened by governmental bureaucracy as New York can pull it off by 2030 must be smoking some of the newly legal cannabis now for sale on almost every corner. If the fastidious Germans couldn't do it, New York doesn't have a chance.
But suppose by some miracle that we can. Suspend disbelief and contemplate the possibility that by 2030, New Yorkers will get 70 percent of their electricity from renewable sources. Does this mean that all the increased carbon emissions we contributed to the atmosphere in the intervening years as a result of the closing of Indian Point simply don't matter? Not if Dr. X is right. His argument suggests that those emissions are part and parcel of a looming disaster or, at least, a potential disaster.
Of course, 2030 is exactly 9 years away. That's exactly the point where John Kerry said we reach the point of no return. If we finally start making up for the emissions spewed into the atmosphere by the fossil-fuel burning generators that replaced Indian Point nine years from now, doesn't John Kerry think its too late? If we wait that long, and John Kerry is right, why bother trying?
With friends like environmental activists, do climate scientists really need enemies?
It seems highly unlikely that any of the goals proclaimed by climate scientists will be met. Shouldn't we start planning for the inevitable consequences?
Since we're rearranging baggage, I'll close my participation in this series (which, counting this comment, amounts to roughly two remarks) with this:
"I will leave others to debate the merits of your [i.e., my] comments on long-term climate change. But from an economic perspective, I should think that the answer to "Why do we care about atmospheric CO2 as a greenhouse gas in the first place?" is the risk to the huge investments that have been made, to populations vulnerable to extreme weather, and to the natural world."
That's from our moderator.
Since the question of why we should care has been, by design, explicitly excluded from the conversation of the greenhouse gas and planetary warming aspect of energy provision, this entire discussion has been a long exercise in irrelevance, for all that the details of how to generate energy and provide it to folks have been enormously informative.
Without that historical context, though, we don't even have any idea of what "extreme weather" is, much less whether it's significantly different from other eras. Nor do we have any understanding of risks "to the natural world" absent that history.
And so the risk from political overreaction to a situation whose history is carefully ignored is far more than merely "huge investments," it's the destruction of the quality of lives of billions of people, and the destruction of lives themselves, from the economic dislocation of shifting to a particular form of energy generation, or a bar against generation from burning hydrocarbons.
Along those lines, the IEA doesn't think a shift to renewables only is feasible at any time soon: https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-minerals-in-clean-energy-transitions
One problem: "demand for key minerals such as lithium, graphite, nickel and rare-earth metals would explode, rising by 4,200%, 2,500%, 1,900% and 700%, respectively, by 2040." That's as cited by the WSJ in their summary of the IEA report, and that's the level of economic and environmental destruction that would result from just our Progressive-Democratic President Joe Biden's panicky plan.
That's part of the cost of ignoring history.
Eric Hines