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Unforced variations: June 2014

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June is the month when the Arctic Sea Ice outlook gets going, when the EPA releases its rules on power plant CO2 emissions, and when, hopefully, commenters can get back to actually having constructive and respectful conversations about climate science (and not nuclear energy, impending apocalypsi (pl) or how terrible everyone else is). Thanks.

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488 Responses to "Unforced variations: June 2014"

  2. Re- Comment by Chuck Hughes — 15 Jun 2014 @ 1:13 AM, ~#291

    The schools in my area are actually very good on the climate issue, but I live in Northern California. I have been supporting Eugenie Scott’s NCSE (National Center for Science Education) for many years. Global warming is one of their issues. I highly recommend it.

    Steve

  4. Re- Comment by DIOGENES — 15 Jun 2014 @ 4:39 AM, ~#292

    I think that your plan for feeding 7 to 10 billion people with no energy sources would win the megadeath contest by a big margin.

    Steve

  6. Edward Greisch,

    Your claim that you have not mentioned nuclear while spamming the thread with numerous posts on nuclear demonstrates your level of maturity. You are not fooling anyone. Why would I change my mind from a discussion like you are making? I take it you are unwilling to discuss nuclear on a thread where the discussion is invited and informed people bring up data from both sides. Please stop spamming Real Climate, it wastes other peoples time. I, for one, am less inclined to support nuclear because of your uncivilized behavior. You will never convince a majority of people to support nuclear by insulting those who disagree with you.

    Corey,
    Your links were interesting. Unfortunately, nuclear discussion is not allowed here. Perhaps you could post a thread somewhere neutral so that this topic can be discussed. It appears that Edward does not feel his arguments will withstand open debate.

  8. Diogenes,

    Why do you “have no doubt this methane release problem is being understated in official channels”? Do you have access to verifiable information about the true release of methane (as opposed to measuring stations which show only a long gradual increase in methane – which is worrying, admittedly)? I haven’t read the full Arctic-News blog post but that blog often has posts filled with very sloppy analysis and hyperbole. As you say, the two main authors appear to have no history of published or credible work in this area (indeed, I can’t really find out who Sam Carana is, or whether his/her past work is indicative of have credibility in this space). The third author also appears to have no expertise in this area. When you say that article contains “facts”, have you verified the facts and been able to link them to the message the authors are trying to put across?

    Try adding a critical comment there about the blog post and see if it gets published. I’ve never seen comments like that at that site.

  9. Chuck Hughes #291,

    “who can you discuss Climate Change with.”

    We are at the stage where the climate change groups have divided into three, of differing size, and the positions have hardened substantially. When one looks at the hard numbers and wipes away all the ideology and hype, one finds the full solution to avoiding ultimate climate disaster involves extremely harsh FF demand reduction, extremely massive measures for rapid carbon removal, and perhaps the need for planet-wide geo-engineering.

    The solutions proposed are in three orders of severity, each solution defining each group. The zeroth-order solution defines the group of what are commonly called ‘deniers’. Whatever their real beliefs are about climate change, the actions they would support are essentially none. They are comfortable with the status quo, aka BAU. They are the largest group, the most influential, and we appear to be rock-steady on the BAU path for as far as the eye can see.

    The first-order solution defines most (not all) of the self-styled climate activists who tend to post on major blogs like RC and CP. The actions this group supports center around substitution of low carbon technologies for high carbon and replacement of low energy efficiency technologies by high efficiency. Essentially, it is continuing life as usual, replacing one set of technologies with another, but not making any major changes in lifestyle or, God forbid, having to make any sacrifices or undergo hardships to save the biosphere.

    The second-order solution defines a handful of people who post on this blog, such as myself, Killian, Wili to some degree, and a few others. The actions we support are strong FF demand reduction, massive reforestation, soil and vegetation management, and replacement of high carbon sources with low carbon sources only for the most essential energy needs. These actions place the highest priority on saving the biosphere, not enriching either of the competing high carbon/ low carbon energy suppliers, and they would require substantial sacrifice and deprivation relative to how we live today.

    I think real communication among these groups is extremely difficult, because their fundamental objectives are different. We throw words back and forth on this blog, some of which are at the behest of others, but I’m not seeing great communications across the last two groups that post on this blog. In the real world, I find little difference. It boils down to the first group having no interest in changing their lifestyle or paying for a cleaner energy source, the second group willing to pay more for a cleaner energy source but having no willingness to change their lifestyle, and the third group recognizing that the solutions offered by the first two groups will lead directly to oblivion. I don’t believe lack of knowledge is the issue; that’s a strawman offered by the second group to divert attention from the real roadblock. Bottom Line – there has to be a basis and desire for communication in order for effective communication to occur. I don’t see the interest, and I haven’t seen an effective solution to the communication problem advanced.

  10. Steve Fish: 304 Rather interested with your sparring with DIOGENES. Agreed currently turning completely to renewables now might not be that feasible. I also understand that for every additional barrel of oil extracted from the ground and for every trainload of coal on it’s way to a shipping port is not so slowly and defiantly surely digging our grave deeper and deeper. DIOGENES understands the urgency of the situation. He understands the nature of tipping points and points of no return. He understands that the longer we leave dramatic global action on tackling climate change that many many more people and environments will die or at the very least be irreparably compromised than what you seem to be able to comprehend. I think you still seem to think we have years left up our sleeve to figure something out, but the stark reality is that we don’t!. We have in most likelihood left it too late. That is my guess. There is no certainty of knowing if I am right..or wrong. However while there is still uncertainty as to whether we can indeed save planet earth from another PETM or worse we have to take this..our last chance..and act..NOW! I’m with Jim Hansen on the nuclear issue, we must immediately throw out all stops, even the ones that might scare us and do something. I propose nuclear as a medium term solution while we concurrently perfect totally renewable ways to support 7 billion people. The time for talking is over. The time for action is now!!!

  11. Corey Barcus #299,

    “Has anyone else seen this?”

    You are to be commended for posting this informative article. It can also be accessed on:

    http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CCsQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fewp.industry.gov.au%2Fsites%2Fewp.industry.gov.au%2Ffiles%2FAppendix%25207%2520-%2520Getting%2520to%2520Zero.docx&ei=8vueU8nWA4GHyATcnoDgCA&usg=AFQjCNGucy02_w6en-O2HTw3utyJZFqe4Q&sig2=YKICpkLh3VBZh5GOdo060Q

    To summarize, and place in larger context at the same time:

    Implementation of renewables will result in substantially higher energy costs when all components of the system are included, and, as I have shown, renewables by themselves will take us on a fast track to oblivion. Higher costs; no real payoff! What’s not to like?

  14. y’all have taken over, eh? Notice the climate scientists quit showing up, while you go on and on about
    “… nuclear energy, impending apocalypsi (pl) or how terrible everyone else is.”

  15. More on #299

    The original Title and Abstract:

    “Energy intensities, EROIs (energy returned on invested), and energy payback times of electricity generating power plants: The energy returned on invested, EROI, has been evaluated for typical power plants representing wind energy, photovoltaics, solar thermal, hydro, natural gas, biogas, coal and nuclear power. The strict exergy concept with no “primary energy weighting”, updated material databases, and updated technical procedures make it possible to directly compare the overall efficiency of those power plants on a uniform mathematical and physical basis. Pump storage systems, needed for solar and wind energy, have been included in the EROI so that the efficiency can be compared with an “unbuffered” scenario. The results show that nuclear, hydro, coal, and natural gas power systems (in this order) are one order of magnitude more effective than photovoltaics and wind power.”

    Also, excerpts from one of its citing papers:

    “EROI of different fuels and the implications for society: The EROI of our most important fuels is declining and MOST RENEWABLE AND NON-CONVENTIONAL ENERGY ALTERNATIVES HAVE SUBSTANTIALLY LOWER EROI VALUES THAN TRADITIONAL CONVENTIONAL FOSSIL FUELS. At the societal level, declining EROI means that an increasing proportion of energy output and economic activity must be diverted to attaining the energy needed to run an economy, leaving less discretionary funds available for “non-essential” purchases which often drive growth.”

    Not quite the spin we get from Fish on his 450 square-foot Utopia!

  16. Gavin, many thanks for the inline responses you’ve been adding.

    Suggestion: date your inline responses? They appear days after the post to which they’re added, out of sequence. I thiink often people miss seeing them — or ignore them and continue proclaiming their beliefs.

    For example where you noted

    [Response: This is almost all complete nonsense, written by people who have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. – gavin] – See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/06/unforced-variations-june-2014/comment-page-4/#comment-552429

    (for which, many thanks, sanity checks always help)

    I wish that comment could be linked to every post where the ‘methane emergency’ program is touted. The same story shows up many thousands of times over the past few years, over and over and over.

  17. Chris, #305

    I’ve already addressed the EROI issue. If you have another question, just ask it. That document you suggested asks plenty of good questions, but the answers I can offer may be rather involved.

    Would you care to discuss waste management? U supply? Something else?

  18. Even more on #299

    Title and Abstract – Author-Ted Trainer

    “Can Australia run on renewable energy? The negative case: The current discussion of climate change and energy problems is generally based on the assumption that technical solutions are possible and that the task is essentially to determine the most effective ways. This view relies heavily on the expectation that renewable energy sources can be substituted for fossil fuels. Australia is more favourably situated regarding renewable sources than almost any other country. This discussion attempts to estimate the investment cost that would be involved in deriving Australia’s total energy supply from renewable sources. WHEN PROVISION IS MADE FOR INTERMITTENCY AND PLANT REDUNDANCY IT IS CONCLUDED THAT THE TOTAL INVESTMENT COST IS LIKELY TO BE UNAFFORDABLE.”

    [edit]

  19. DIOGENES:

    Even if the Kochs removed their opposition to renewables, that by itself would do little to prevent the ultimate catastrophe. What needs to be promoted is stringent FF demand reduction.

    Yes, of course. I responded specifically to Edward Greisch’s apparent ignorance of the Kochs’ machinations against renewable energy. I assume that by now most others here are aware of the larger campaign, funded by the Kochs and other FF billionaires, against all efforts to reduce FF consumption.

  21. Stern and Dietz have a new paper available at the Grantham Institute, to be published in the Economic Journal. They acknowledge that the discount rate they use has ethical problems. Such as, what’s the loss of all the coastlines in two centuries worth when you discount the loss to nothing ? Remember that includes the Sunderbans and the Everglades and lotsa small islands and …

    They also use a RCP dependent temperature distribution to quantify economic loss. But not increase in precip intensity or sea level rise.

    Eventually come up with a carbon price of 1e2US$/ton

    The ethical problems with the discount rate bother me a great deal. And the rest. But Stern is usually a sound guide, regardless of my misgivings.

    And there is a nice paper by Bell et al in Nature geoscience, which shows giant heat transport thru melt and refreeze (but that’s my language, not theirs)

    I am on the road, haven’t had time to read either carefully, but they look juicy. Please forgive the absence of DOI

    In other news, my killfile is again skipping over 90% of all text posted …

    sidd

  22. Michael Sweet #306,

    “Why would I change my mind from a discussion like you are making?”

    Greisch has posted some of the best information on this site, but since it is obvious you have a pre-determined agenda, why would you change your mind? Greisch’s points are validated by the higher energy costs Germany is experiencing since its introduction of renewables, and by the recent peer-reviewed articles I have posted on the basement-level EROIs characteristic of renewables. It’s not Greisch who should not be posting, it’s you and Havers and others who offer no technical contribution, but only complain when the truth is presented. Greisch is a breath of fresh air on this site!

  23. FP @320.
    Your guy is evidently a Hockey stick geek which makes a full illustration of his silliness rather difficult. Thus the data he is using may be well known to him & his geek chums. But to normal folk, the “first 17 trees in Mann’s 1400 set, i.e. all up to the first one with NaN’s” does not convert into an accessible data set without a link. I’m left wondering – is that the first 17 trees on the left? And where’s Gandalf?
    What he appears to have then done with that data is to treat each like an average global temperature proxy. Thus he calibrates the 17 data sets by deciding they will all have the same trend over the period (presumably 1400-1550) and adjusting accordingly. He then averages to yield a temperature record 1400-1980. (I’m not sure how you would fix that to degrees Celsius with that method. I note the geek doesn’t label his vertical scale.) And then just for a laugh, he turns it backwards 1980-1400.
    Such an approach would tend to yield a record dominated by the data sets with a low trend 1400-1550, assuming those low 1400-1550 trends are not continued as a small signal for the full record which is a pretty safe assumption. Further, assuming some of those trends 1400-1550 were of the opposite sign to the average 1400-1550 raw trend, they would bizarrely result in any rises in that data’s proxy temperature reducing the averaged result, and visa versa. So I certainly wouldn’t expect a sensible result from such a method.
    Then without sight of the geeky data, who knows what level of foolishness is afoot.

  24. Corey (#307, #317),

    I know the cite you link to has widely been considered a joke. For example, most US power has come from weapons grade materiel that has been downgraded. No accounting of the extra energy needed to do the extra enrichment is included. There are many ways that site shaves corners for its preferred power source while selecting unfavorable studies for those it opposes. Once you come to realize they are dishonest, you may become more interested in independent work that is more thorough.

    One wonders too, since these are industry representatives who are behaving dishonestly, should such an intrinsically unstable and dangerous power source really be entrusted to their care? Their connections with organized crime seem like another red flag. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_waste_dumping_by_the_%27Ndrangheta

  25. Lawrence (#310),

    I don’t usually respond to you since you are a declared totalitarian. But, you are misrepresenting Hansen here, Hansen wants Gen IV plants which can’t provide power for another 35 years. In the mean time, getting 100% renewable power in the US by then is perfectly feasible. http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/february/fifty-states-renewables-022414.html

    You won’t find such a plan anywhere for nuclear power. In many places, cooling water supplies are already tapped out and summer shutdowns are occurring.

  26. Re- Comment by Lawrence Coleman — 16 Jun 2014 @ 6:49 AM, ~#310

    Your suppositions regarding my attitudes are uninformed and your “medium term solution” completely violates Diogenes whole thesis. Here is an exercise for you- determine what privations you and yours are willing to endure and then work backward from this minimum to what energy resources will be required while at the same time eliminating fossil carbon pollution. Let’s be serious here.

    Steve

  28. Re- Comment by DIOGENES — 16 Jun 2014 @ 9:37 AM, ~#311 and 16 Jun 2014 @ 12:31 PM, ~#315

    One little problem for you with this article is that EROI and EMROI are the metrics that allow investors to calculate their “windfall” profits without regard to externalities like environmental degradation and fossil CO2 pollution.

    I never claimed that my reduced carbon experience was a utopia. It was hard work. You had better figure out what you will have to do to avoid starvation with your, so called, plan.

    Steve

  31. At the risk of disturbing Greisch’s anti-renewables rants and Diogene’s apocalyptic puppets, I think it’s worth calling attention to this particular part of the new Stern report:

    These limitations can deliver some ridiculous results. For instance, the traditional DICE model shows a global temperature rise of 18°C would only reduce the global economy by half. But scientists agree this is obviously wrong; such an extreme rise would almost certainly render the planet uninhabitable for humans.

    Civilization as we know it ends well before 18C. Whether it ends at 2 or 4 or more can be the matter of a lively discussion. Any models that have 50% loss at 18C are obviously very wrong.

    Also missing, I believe, is the cultural impact of climate change. When agricultural output falls too far wars start. As Gwynne Dyer says, “people always raid before they starve”.

    I understand that trying to model wars economic impact based on climate model forecasts of floods and droughts is problematic, to say the least. But there must be a better way to say “here be dragons” rather than pretending it’s a safe walk in the park.

  32. Tony Weddle #308,

    I don’t want to do the extended comment your question requires at this time. The main message of my comment was that we need a diverse group of Arctic methane experts to post an article on this issue. I mentioned some names of hands-on experts who are not establishment types; there are others as well.

  33. Re #322

    Although Stern is making amends with regard to the impact of AGW/ACC (call it what you will) Kevin Andersen has pointed out some shortcomings of a lot of the most credible reports from the USA and the UK. Essentially although all of the latest data on emissions is available in the public realm most of the people who create these reports have used data from a decade ago or more and hence this allows for greater time to cut your emissions which of course paints a kind of false picture when the real emission cuts required are daunting and hence the percentage chances of really 2C and above are higher and almost out of reach.

    Perhaps 3 to 4C is more realistic but it all depends on a whole lot of assumptions about peak emissions and peak growth in countries economies. Annex 1 countries almost have no room to cut now – let alone in 10 years time.

  36. #304 – Re: Steve Fish

    “I think that your plan for feeding 7 to 10 billion people with no energy sources would win the megadeath contest by a big margin.”

    Let’s assume some 2-3 billion will die rapidly and then many more millions a year would die as well due to the lack of extensive medical care as provided by current arrangements.
    Basically people would have to live as past people had to, except with more knowledge. Also populations would be naturally reduced as people wouldn’t be so inclined to bring children to a less abundant world.

    Now compare that to BAU. Do you really think people will fare better when crops start to fail and nobody has a plan?

    I know is all speculation but how do you know you are right and I am wrong?

  37. Regarding the Stern & Dietz paper, it is worth recalling that Brigitte Knopf also expressed frustration with WG II accounting and how it might be reconciled with WG III methods:

    “An answer to “And Then There’s Physics”

    It is an somehow lengthy answer, but the cost issue is complicated.

    The important paragraph in the SPM of WGIII reads:

    “Under these assumptions, mitigation scenarios that reach atmospheric concentrations of about 450ppm CO2eq by 2100 entail losses in global consumption—not including benefits of reduced climate change as well as co-benefits and adverse side‐effects of mitigation19—of 1% to 4% (median: 1.7%) in 2030, 2% to 6% (median: 3.4%) in 2050, and 3% to 11% (median: 4.8%) in 2100 relative to consumption in baseline scenarios that grows anywhere from 300% to more than 900% over the century. These numbers correspond to an annualized reduction of consumption growth by 0.04 to 0.14 (median: 0.06) percentage points over the century relative to annualized consumption growth in the baseline that is between 1.6% and 3% per year.“ (SPM WGIII)

    Footnote 19, where the paragraph is referring to, says:
    “The total economic effects at different temperature levels would include mitigation costs, co‐benefits of mitigation, adverse side‐effects of mitigation, adaptation costs and climate damages. Mitigation cost and climate damage estimates at any given temperature level cannot be compared to evaluate the costs and benefits of mitigation. Rather, the consideration of economic costs and benefits of mitigation should include the reduction of climate damages relative to the case of unabated climate change.” (SPM WGIII)

    So it mainly says that mitigation costs and climate damages cannot be compared. One problem is e.g. that estimates of damages include risks with low probability but high impacts (e.g. the extinction of some small island states) that can hardly measured while the risks of mitigation can much better be calculated.

    On the cost estimates of damages, WGII SPM says:

    “With these recognized limitations, the incomplete estimates of global annual economic losses for additional temperature increases of ~2°C are between 0.2 and 2.0% of income (±1 standard deviation around the mean) (medium evidence, medium agreement). Losses are more likely than not to be greater, rather than smaller, than this range (limited evidence, high agreement).” (SPM WGII)

    Actually, it doesn’t say anything whether these are aggregated and discounted numbers over the whole century or whether these are numbers in a specific year, so it is even harder to compare to WGIII numbers, despite the methodological difficulties mentioned above and in the footnote.
    Hope this helps a little bit to or at least makes it clear that there are huge methodological difficulties in comparing the costs between WGII and WGIII.”
    – See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/04/mitigation-of-climate-change-part-3-of-the-new-ipcc-report/#more-17217

  38. To be fair, Hank, the Arctic Methane Emergency Group (if that’s what you’re referring to), isn’t the same as the Arctic-News blogspot. As I understand it, Sam Carana is no longer a member of that group.

  39. NASA GISS global temperature for May have been posted and will likely spawn the “hottest May on record” messages.
    At +0.76ºC, it is the sixth hottest month on record. Perhaps most noteworthy is that, despite the very cool February, the first five months of 2014 are running hotter than any full calendar year (just) and an El Nino should be boosting those temperatures by the close of 2014. So 2014 looks to be favourites for the “hottest year on record” accolade and it could be by quite a margin.

  40. EROI

    Let’s review some of the more relevant material posted the past few days, and place it in a larger context. In the 20th century, we had the promise of corn-to-ethanol. Substantial areas of prime farmland were converted to corn production, based on the hype that cleaner burning (less GHG) fuels could be produced at very favorable energy gain ratios. The final result was a fuel system that had little visible energy gain advantage and essentially no GHG reduction advantage. In addition, prime land that could have been used to feed the poor of this country and the rest of the world, and possibly for carbon sequestration purposes, was misused due to this obscene scam.

    Fast forward to 2014. The modern-day equivalent of corn-to-ethanol is again being hyped on our major climate blogs. The postings of Corey and myself (all from the prime peer-reviewed literature) have shown that, like corn-to-ethanol, what we can expect from renewables are basement-level EROIs. Implementation of renewables, the main component of the ‘tag team’ sales pitch, would do even less to reduce emissions than I showed for their proxy Ceres Clean Trillion plan, and would be a Death Sentence for the 7+ billion people of this plant. Let’s not replace one scam with another, no matter how strongly it is lobbied by the renewables investors.

  41. > AMEG … Carana … Arctic-News
    Not the same, but all rather full of the same stuff, near as I can tell.
    Their stuff is rebunked over and over and over and over and over again.
    Simple question: ask what would they recommend doing with the methane produced if it were wise to “depressurize” those geological formations? Russia and Japan are drilling into methane sources now — to sell it to burn; that warrants no credit as geoengineering: it increases the very longterm CO2 forcing. The stuff didn’t blow out last time it got very warm.

    You can look these people up. E.g.
    http://planet3.org/2014/03/13/mcphersons-evidence-that-doom-doom-doom/

    Paul Beckwith says: April 5, 2014 at 7:38 pm
    Sam used to be a member of AMEG but he left …

    with disavowal of the some of the more apocalyptic stuff he blogs, but he’s not an outlier

    Michael Tobis says: April 7, 2014 at 8:55 am
    I have received some email correspondence from Prof Wadhams; I do not have permission to reproduce it. I will limit myself to understatement: I find it less than compelling.

  43. Chris #329,

    Thanks, I’ve been wondering about that: how to compare mitigation costs, adaptation costs, and the remaining risks of potential damage costs?

    It seems to me these haven’t been properly integrated yet, and how that could be done is unclear to me as well.

    And how does all this relate to the IPCC-baseline assumption that you quote: “[per capita] consumption in baseline scenarios… grows anywhere from 300% to more than 900% over the century”?

    How realistic is this assumption of continued per capita consumption growth? Does this assumption include climate and other planetary ecological boundaries and risks? Hoe about potential limits to growth? Can they simply be excluded? On what basis?

    If average per capita consumption will grow by at least 300% over the century anyway, then a risk of 10-20% consumption losses by 2050 or 2100 as a result of climate warming may not seem too catastrophic.

    But if average per capita consumption would only grow by for example 50% and climate risks could be as high as for example 50% consumption losses, then that would seem to be a lot more painful.

    It seems current economic models, including those of Stern himself, are way too inadequate to really tell us anything at this point, as Stern wrote in this paper last year:
    http://personal.lse.ac.uk/sternn/128NHS.pdf

    The abstract reads:
    “Scientists describe the scale of the risks from unmanaged climate change as potentially immense. However, the scientific models, because they omit key factors that are hard to capture precisely, appear to substantially underestimate these risks. Many economic models add further gross underassessment of risk because the assumptions built into the economic modeling on growth, damages and risks, come close to assuming directly that the impacts and costs will be modest and close to excluding the possibility of catastrophic outcomes. A new generation of models is needed in all three of climate science, impact and economics with a still stronger focus on lives and livelihoods, including the risks of large-scale migration and conflicts.”

    How do you see this?

  45. MARogers (#331),

    The monthly anomaly data are not all relative to the same temperature baseline, but rather internally to each month. You can’t say which is the warmest month just by looking at the anomaly data, only the warmest June or October, for example.

    There is also a note that data from China are still awaited so the the May 2014 data can not be directly compared with previous years. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/updates_v3/

  46. Tony Weddle,

    You are quite right to be sceptical of Camara’s blog.

    Some time ago I tried to start a discussion with a view to dismantling some of the trash posted there. My opening comment was posted, but further comments were not published. Leaving it looking like their BS answer had sent me packing.
    http://arctic-news.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/rebuttal-david-archer-wrong-to-dismiss.html

    Camara and the Arctic Sea Ice News blog are not to be trusted if they won’t allow critical discussion of their claims. In that respect they are no better than WTFWT.

  47. Re David Miller #326, as a reminder from the 2009 study An adaptability limit to climate change due to heat stress: summarized = The upper limit for heat stress humans can adapt to is called into question with a 7 °C temperature rise, quantified by the wet-bulb temperature, regions of Earth would lose their habitability. As i understand these are all mean temperatures, extremes will cause a lot disruption for society (and nature ofc) much earlier, due to combined effects such as ozone pollution and infrastructure damage, etc. But as we concluded years ago, the public likely requires sigma events to wake up.

    Full abstract

    Despite the uncertainty in future climate-change impacts, it is often assumed that humans would be able to adapt to any possible warming. Here we argue that heat stress imposes a robust upper limit to such adaptation. Peak heat stress, quantified by the wet-bulb temperature TW, is surprisingly similar across diverse climates today. TW never exceeds 31 °C. Any exceedence of 35 °C for extended periods should induce hyperthermia in humans and other mammals, as dissipation of metabolic heat becomes impossible.

    While this never happens now, it would begin to occur with global-mean warming of about 7 °C, calling the habitability of some regions into question. With 11–12 °C warming, such regions would spread to encompass the majority of the human population as currently distributed. Eventual warmings of 12 °C are possible from fossil fuel burning. One implication is that recent estimates of the costs of unmitigated climate change are too low unless the range of possible warming can somehow be narrowed. Heat stress also may help explain trends in the mammalian fossil record.

  49. Lennart (#343),

    I see the consumption growth in their baseline as having to do with development. So long as environmental impacts are reduced during this phase, the “limits to growth” don’t really kick in. If the only kind of car sold in India is electric and solar is they way they charge them, then multi-car families are not a big deal. If we start to synthesize glucose using wind or solar energy, then meat consumption can increase while reducing silage production and returning land to wilderness. A home where the buffalo could be pretty common after mid-century, for example.

    I suspect. also, that they may have got the sign wrong on how limiting environmental damage affects growth. I suspect it increases rather than retards it. The cost curves for renewable energy are quite encouraging.

    I think that over time you can see care for the environment as an investment in prosperity in many many situations. Failure to be prudent in this area seems to induce poverty and pestilence. It would be odd if this suddenly reversed as the IPCC seems to suggest it might.

  50. 331 David Miller: Yes. Economics is nonsense. Economics students should be required to get degrees in physics before being allowed to take any economics courses. Otherwise, they will not know what reality is.

    Money is a human invention and therefore not natural/real. Food is not a human invention. All organisms need food. Global Warming [GW] will take away our food supply in about 40 years if GW continues as usual. Humans existed long before the invention of money. Humans will not survive the non-existence of food, if the non-existence of food happens. There is nothing more immoral than risking the extinction of humans. Therefore: Economics is immoral.

    Civilization as we know it ends before 6 degrees C because 6 degrees C is the extinction point. Try to tell that to an economist.

    PS: I don’t do anti-renewables rants. I try to get people to Do the Math. One way to get wrong answers is to fail to solve the problem. Another way to get a wrong answer is to make wrong assumptions. A third way to get a wrong answer is to ignore real world constraints. Most people are allergic to math. Most people cannot imagine 40 years into the future. Etcetera. The human brain is not well designed. There is a consequence. It is called Gigadeath.

    322 DIOGENES: Thank you.