Well, that year went quickly. This month, there is the COP28 hoopla, the ongoing El Niño and the speculation about the 2023 temperature ranking (which will not be that surprising). An open thread for climate topics…
Climate science from climate scientists...
“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.”
Leo Tolstoy
He got that right. And that was 125 years ago now.
Here we have the progressive social reformers and missionaries again.
Ned Kelly,
Does this pithy maxim from Tolstoy have any meaning here within the context of this comment thread?
Note that RealClimate is meant to be a forum for the discussion of climate science.
As the one-in-seven comments down this thread that were authored by your good self demonstrate, you Ned Kelly have no interest in that subject, you being a conspiracy theorist, one who is so far up his own backside, he sees nothing but his own bullshit.
MA Rodger said:
Wish it was, but as I’ve been told many times, it’s actually about climate change. And according to some on this site, that apparently doesn’t include natural climate change, which has been designated climate variation to keep the scope focused on man-made change.
So I get the impression that the broader term “climate change” now includes changes in the societal climate, not only climate climate, This may have been intentional — I haven’t read all of Ned Kelly’s comments, but certainly the political climate around using fossil fuels is changing irrespective of what’s going on with the meteorological climate. He has that aspect right, and his concerns about natural resource depletion, especially cheap crude oil are certainly valid.
Yet, it’s smart to keep up the facade of climate change to be only about MET climate. Research dollars will continue to funnel in to help fund the massive computational efforts going on in forecasting, see https://www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.1126/science.adi2336
That’s OK, my own climate variation models only have a handful of tunable parameters, with the several handful of other parameters calibrated by physical constants and measurements.
Sometimes it involves massive computations, but then along comes a reduction:
https://bidmap.berkeley.edu/seminars/apr-4-2024-william-collins-studies-extreme-weather-using-machine-learning-and-climate
https://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR24/Session/D64.3
A recurring piece by Paul Pukite’s, his version of ‘Carthage must be destroyed’:
PP Dec.27: “ I’ve been told many times, it’s actually about climate change. And according to some on this site, that apparently doesn’t include natural climate change, which has been designated climate variation to keep the scope focused on man-made change”
You have been told correctly, Paul. The relevance of climate science to humanity IS in its:
a) understanding of man-made climate change and its effects,
b) ability to inform the humanity on the future consequences of its current and future actions and inactions.
That’s why all the moderators of this website are studying anthropogenic climate change. If you are interested in natural oscillations around the mean, on which we have no influence – this probably is not the best website for you.
For humanity, “ natural climate change ” has only marginal role relevant ONLY as long as it can weaken or strengthen the anthropogenic forcing in the short time scale (decades to next few centuries.). In contrast to projections of various human emissions scenarios – studying natural changes provides humanity with no actionable information – we can’t do nothing about it – it’s “natural”, hence by definition – not affected by people.
In fact – it may be worse than useless – it has been actively mined by the climate change deniers and fossil fuel lobbyists for the scientificky-looking material used to seed doubt about the human impact on the climate in the mind of the society, and to give the politicians the plausible deniability when they following the demands of the fossil fuel lobbyists. As result, “the natural climate change” has been used to weaken and delay any action on GHG mitigation.
The situation is even worse when it comes to your specific hobby horse – ENSO:
1. it is not even a climate CHANGE, but merely cyclic oscillations around the mean
2. it’s only relevance to climate change – is that it is a NOISE to be subtracted from the climate change TRENDS. And to do so – we don’t have to know intimately the mechanisms of ENSO – we just average it away over the climatological time-scale (running average over 30 years) – with the “up” parts of the oscillations over 30 years pretty much cancelling out the “down” parts of these oscillations
3. It’s natural so we can’t do anything about it
4. And despite your grandiose proclamation on how a better prediction of the timing of the next El Nino could .. “ save countless lives” – when asked how – you were unable to give any plausible answer, and instead you tried to wiggle out with semantics – saying that when you promised to “save countless lives” – you did NOT mean “too many to be counted“, but an … unknowable number of human lives (i.e. maybe many, maybe hardly anybody, nobody knows so nobody can count them).
I differ on this. ENSO is deeply fascinating as we witness the sea surface pattern resembling a more nina-like pattern in recent decades. This is somewhat counter intuitive and differs from CMIP expectation. I’m curious if Pukite might offer any insights into whether plundering continental biosystems at vast scale could impact prevailing pressure systems, land-ocean temperature contrasts, and trade winds. A model of natural variation + CMIP expectation offers a useful benchmark to compare against reality and to uncover those earth system nudges not yet considered.
cheers
No real indication of this — it’s like saying we’re seeing more high tides than low tides, which is not borne out by any evidence and would be odd if it did occur.
Do you mean ENSO as a nudge to the climate system or unknown nudges causing ENSO? So little is understood that it’s even difficult to discern the idea being offered. My idea is that deep learning will test out many other possible forcings and nonlinear responses that haven’t historically been considered because companies such as Google and NVIDIA have so much firepower at their disposal. This is will be new emergent behavior extracted much in the way that machine learning has helped in finding new combinations for vaccines, etc.
thank you Paul Pukite,
I have been under the impression that persistent differences in observation vs global climate models in sea surface temperature patterns is one of the most consequential questions in the trace gas and unnatural aerosol radiative forcing modeling community. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/04/a-mystery-in-the-pacific-is-complicating-climate-projections/
I’m inquiring on an additional hypothetical unnatural change to continental pressure and temperature regimes, such as increasingly persistent dry buoyant air caused by watershed desiccation, to impact (force?) remotely the winds and sea surface temperature patterns and trends. This is along the lines of cumulative small scale changes nudging intermediate and larger scale patterns.
JCM “I differ on this. ENSO is deeply fascinating”
Nobody was discussing whether we find studying ENSO fascinating or not, but whether it has comparable applied importance to the future of humanity, and provides comparable actionable information as the studies of AGW.
To use Paul Pukite phrase – can the better prediction of the timing of the next El Nino, “ save countless lives“. Paul Pukite claimed so, but when asked how – could not come up with any plausible scenario, so, rather than admitting that, he escaped into semantics (that by “countless lives ” – he did NOT saving very large, but an … unknowable number of human lives (i.e. maybe many, maybe hardly anybody, nobody knows, so nobody can count them – hence “countless”).
JCM: I’m curious if Pukite might offer any insights into whether plundering continental biosystems at vast scale could impact prevailing pressure systems
Paul is a tidal influence guy. We haven’t ravaged the Moon sufficiently to yield noticeable difference in ENSO. So no, he won’t provide you with the ammunition to whitewash the role of fossil fuels by shifting the blame for AGW onto non-fossil fuel causes.
Paul Pukite to JCM: “ Do you mean ENSO as a nudge to the climate system or unknown nudges causing ENSO?”
Doesn’t matter, Paul – the climate deniers are always about the same – looking for the new ways to whitewash the fossil fuels. So JCM wants to c use you to provide him with a new avenue to seed the doubt about the role of fossil fuels in causing the AGW.
And by doing so, he is what Lenin called – a “useful idiot” of Russia and other anti-democratic petro-states – whose regimes, the wealth of their ruling class, and ability to project their power abroad – would have all collapsed with the world moving away from buying their oil and gas. The more doubt they seed, the more they may delay this time.
Do you really want to play into their hands?
Piotr said:
ENSO isn’t my specific hobby horse — all of geophysics is. Climate science has some serious issues to deal with in terms of the current warming extreme as it can’t come to grips as to a cause. It’s most likely the ocean, as both an El Nino is occurring in the Pacific, as well as an AMO temperature spike in the Atlantic. The following chart shows how extreme the AMO spike is:
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img922/1111/kAEIBJ.png
These are both SST measures, which is essentially buffered from rapid temperature changes in the atmosphere. Is this just a coincidence that both oceans are in sync or is there some teleconnection between the two or a common-mode linkage via an invariant global forcing?
Let’s list the external forcing mechanisms that are purported to cause these spikes:
1. Wind changes, specifically changes or reversals in the prevailing trade winds.
2. Circulation changes, specifically in the thermohaline or ice melt for the Atlantic
3. A small fluctuation in temperature or pressure that gets amplified due to a positive feedback or resonance condition.
4. Long-period ocean tides acting on the ocean’s thermocline
5. A Kelvin wave generated ostensibly from one of the above that spreads across the basin resulting in an amplified event.
Of course some of these explanations begat further questions, such as what would cause a change in the prevailing wind?
For the Record – Moral of the Story “He’s wrong again!” :-)
Piotr says
28 Dec 2023 at 9:38 PM
The relevance of climate science to humanity IS in its:
a) understanding of man-made climate change and its effects,
b) ability to inform the humanity on the future consequences of its current and future actions and inactions.
noting: MA Rodger said:
“Note that RealClimate is meant to be a forum for the discussion of climate science”
and CC Paul Pukite (@whut)
QUOTE : Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
“… Climate science, by contrast (to Climatology), aims to explain and predict the workings of a global climate system—encompassing the atmosphere, oceans, land surface, ice sheets and more—and it makes extensive use of both theoretical knowledge and mathematical modeling..”
And: “Climate science investigates the structure and dynamics of earth’s climate system. It seeks to understand how global, regional and local climates are maintained as well as the processes by which they change over time. […] Some key questions and findings about anthropogenic climate change are also discussed.”
In SUB-Section 5. Anthropogenic Climate Change
Quote Refs from : https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/climate-science/
Yes, the evidence does suggest that Piotr is wrong. And MA Roger and Paul Pukite (@whut) are both correct.
Gawd, we are all going to suffer for this error now! :-)
Paul Pukite (@whut) 30 Dec 2023 at 7:47 PM
Quote: ” Climate science has some serious issues to deal with in terms of the current warming extreme as it can’t come to grips as to a cause. It’s most likely the ocean, as both an El Nino is occurring in the Pacific, as well as an AMO temperature spike in the Atlantic. ”
and therefore-
# 6. Structural and exothermic phase changes in the nickel-iron core of the Earth which cyclically releases latent kinetic energy (heat) which flows to the asthenosphere and abyssal ocean depths, thereby becoming genesis of the majority of recently observed climate change, greenhouse gas forcing, and long-associated geomagnetic dipole phenomena.
NK:
I suppose that’s a valid possibility to consider but there’s no way I see to evaluate since there’s no way to measure the cyclical heat release and thus to correlate to ocean temperature changes. And if there was a way to measure the cyclical heat released by the core, the first thing we would do is understand why this is periodic — is it because tidal forces periodically produce stress and strain on faults and this is the release mechanism?
Not that it makes it any more correct, but the tidal effects on a fluid are much more direct and predictable than on a fault ready to give with a sufficient trigger impulse. The water will slosh in place, as there is nothing holding it back.
Some suggest that the sloshing response is chaotic but basic signal processing on a signal such as ENSO shows a clear annual factor. This is not an annual factor that is revealed by an annual or annual harmonic in the frequency spectrum but clear evidence of annual satellite sidebands which appear by mirror-folding the spectrum about 1/2 the annual frequency.
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img922/3439/LZrfCg.png
The key then is to apply known forcings to modulate the annual forcing as that will create the necessary sidebands and obscure the annual signal. This is known as Double-Sideband Suppressed-Carrier Modulation. Try applying known long-period tidal factors and use approaches such as neural networks to account for and tune for nonlinearities, and use metrics such as correlation coefficients, dynamic time warping, and cross-validation to track how close the models can follow the ENSO time-series data. Research labs at Google, NVIDIA and the Chinese conglomerate Huawei are spending millions on climate machine learning and prediction and this would be a drop in the bucket to them.
Re: Ned Kelly, complimenting Tolstoy: “ He got that right. And that was 125 years ago now.”
Has some famous figure said anything about people quoting others, not understanding that it applies to them? See your happy use of Tolstoy, Hitchens razor Brandolini’s law, thinking they don’t apply to you but only to others?
Piotr says
29 Dec 2023 at 5:51 PM
Interesting.
So who are you Piotr (as the Crow called 3 times), and what your cognitive and moral difficulties that leads you to incorrectly assume, and falsely accuse me of “thinking they don’t apply to me, but only to others”?
This is a very disturbing development over a quite straight forward quotation from a renowned historical figure.
Please explain yourself, and why it is you foolishly believe you know what I am “thinking”?
“Without a Biosphere in good shape, there is no life on the planet. It’s very simple. That’s all you need to know.” Vaclav Smil.
Vaclav Smil: ‘Growth must end. Our economist friends don’t seem to realise that’
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/sep/21/vaclav-smil-interview-growth-must-end-economists
DIOGENES says 3 Jun 2014 at 4:38 PM
Quote
” Energy transitions, shifts from a dominant source (or combination of sources) of energy to a new supply arrangement, or from a dominant prime mover to a new convertor – are inherently prolonged affairs whose duration is measured in decades or generations … It took natural gas about 60 years since the beginning of its commercial extraction (in the early 1870’s) to reach 5% of the global energy market, and then another 55 years to account for 25 percent.”
“Humanity faces a predicament, an uncomfortable situation from which a graceful exit is impossible. All of the different layers of delusion share the drive to avoid the painful reality that society will have to go through wrenching changes on the path to sustainability. ECONOMIES WILL HAVE TO SHRINK, AND LIVING STANDARDS FALL; especially in the richer countries. Whether it be from climate change, cheap energy shortages, or some other side effect of humanity’s exponential growth in its claims upon the earth, if this reality is not accepted and acted upon, modern complex human society will not see the end of this century…… Without an acceptance of reality, and the commitment and acceptance of the REQUIRED CHALLENGES, PRIVATIONS, AND SACRIFICES REMINISCENT OF A WORLD WAR, modern human civilization will not survive. The truth is that there will be a lot of “blood, toil, tears and sweat” on the way to a sustainable future.”
And, where have we heard that before?
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/06/unforced-variations-june-2014/#comment-547960
——–
Substituting Renewable Energy for Fossil Fuels is a Doomsday Stratagem
see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lW3D3hs1WU&t=1171s
Quote
Art Berman – Climate change is not the biggest problem that we face in the world.
It’s a big problem okay it scares me to death but it is not the biggest problem we have.
Certainly not in the near term and for those of you who saw my friend Bill Reese whenever
that was a few semester ago this is his his graph, and what he will tell you and I will agree
with him is that Climate Change is nothing more than a Symptom of exceeding the
planetary boundaries of the Earth that we live on.
We’re using so much of the Earth and polluting it so much, by you know CO2, toxins, plastics,
and chemicals I mean you name it, that it can’t recover. The Earth is pretty resilient and can
recover from all the damage that humans have done to it over our 300 000 year existence at
least as Homo sapiens but today we’re polluting it and using it way faster that it can cope with.
In fact if you do the calculation we’re using about 1.7 Earths today. You know if that were your
savings account you’d be broke pretty soon. That’s the problem.
So what’s the main cause of overshoot and I’m here talking about ecological or biophysical
overshoot? The main reason is human population. Human population at the end of WW 1
was about 2 billion and what’s it today – it’s 8 billion. And how did we get here? The simplest
answer is by means of Ammonia – which is fossil fuel made from natural gas.
Until the end of World War II there was a negative feedback in the system which said the
Earth can’t feed or support more than about two billion people. And then somebody a couple
of somebodies in Germany figured out how to liquefy air and create a free source of nitrogen
…. for Fertilizer!
———-
The German chemists Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch developed the Haber–Bosch process, the
main industrial procedure for the production of ammonia in the first decade of the 20th century.
Synthetic ammonia from the Haber process was used for the production of nitric acid, a
precursor to the nitrates used in explosives during World War one by Germany.
As of 2018, the Haber process produces 230 million tonnes of anhydrous ammonia per year.
The ammonia is used mainly as a nitrogen fertilizer as ammonia itself, in the form of ammonium
nitrate, and as urea. The Haber process consumes 3–5% of the world’s natural gas production
around 1–2% of the world’s energy supply.
In combination with advances in breeding, herbicides, and pesticides, these fertilizers have
helped to increase the productivity of agricultural land:
Quote
With average crop yields remaining at the 1900 level the crop harvest in the year
2000 would have required nearly four times more land and the cultivated area would have
claimed nearly half of all ice-free continents, rather than under 15% of the total land area
that is required today.
— Vaclav Smil, Nitrogen cycle and world food production, Volume 2, pages 9–13
Happy New Year!
Some basic data – I am assuming some viositors here might be looking for some useful info to get into during the holiday season.
World total energy supply by source, 1971-2019 — Graph shows total energy is continually increasing as the world economy keeps growing – exception being the 2008 GFC blip
https://www.iea.org/reports/key-world-energy-statistics-2021/supply
Then came Covid19 disruptions.
QUOTE: Global fossil carbon emissions rebound near pre-COVID-19 levels
part 4
The rapid rebound in global fossil CO2 emissions in 2021 (returning close to 2019 levels) we estimated to be 4.2% (similar to the 4.8% increase estimated by IEA (2021a)) was driven primarily by emissions in the power and industry sectors (figures 3 and 5). Fossil-based investments in economic stimulus packages in post-COVID recovery plans around the world appear to have overwhelmed substantial investments in green infrastructure (Hepburn et al 2020), resulting in a ‘fossil-based recovery’ that may cause the ‘unaffordable delay to climate action’ described by Rochedo et al (2021). Indeed, the jump in fossil carbon emissions in 2021 and the data available on global stimulus packages suggest that the world is tracking the ‘fossil-fueled recovery’ scenario outlined in Forster et al (2020). The full effect of responses to the COVID-19 pandemic on CO2 emissions remains uncertain, but a further rise in emissions in 2022 cannot be ruled out—given that surface transport and aviation sectors have yet to fully recover (figures 3 and 5).
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac55b6/meta
SEE Figure 2 – 2015/16 – 2021 GRAPHS
with average annual growth rates for each fuel shown under brackets for the period 2015 through 2020. Bottom panel: fossil CO2 emissions by fuel type (coal, oil, and natural gas) plus emissions from cement production and flaring; note that these emissions estimates do not include methane leakage during extraction and use.
and SEE Global energy consumption, measured in exajoules per year: 2000-2021
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consumption#/media/File:Global_Energy_Consumption.svg
Combined all sources also show non-stop Growth of total Energy Consumption (from the same paper above)
Exception is the slight dip 2020 and rebound in 2021 for Coal, oil and gas.
Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consumption as a ref
Reality – Energy Consumption Growth and Fossil Fuel Growth continues unabated for 250 years to today
Reality – Renewable Energy Deployments Globally does NOT offset increased consumption of Fossil Fuels and the ongoing Growth in GHG Emissions which are also continuing.
Reality – No Changes to Growth of Atmospheric PPM of CO2 and CO2e which continue to increase yearly.
The evidence is already in.
Reality – The IPPC Theories, the UNFCCC / COP System and the Green RE Transition is not working as planned
The Green RE Transition will not work as planned
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbnXMv19Hck
The quantity of metal required to make just one generation of renewable tech units to replace fossil fuels, is much larger than first thought. Current mining production of these metals is not even close to meeting demand. Current reported mineral reserves are also not enough in size. Most concerning is copper as one of the flagged shortfalls.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBVmnKuBocc
Another quick grab Geoff Miell about David Pratt, and the video lecture –
Pratt says: 29:30 mins @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyLgCr3Drh4
“We have got ten years to really truly turn this around. If I was to give this
presentation in ten years, I wouldn’t be here, because it’d be no point.”
That was June 2019 — he only has 5.5 years left before he gives up completely.
You’re happy with that. But what has he achieved since 2019? Anything at all besides 3051 views?
This is your “hero” and yet you criticise me and conclude in all your wisdom that I am the one who needs professional help!
I really can’t see anything wrong with David Pratt – he sounds much like all the other people I have shared links to here already. He’s on the same page. The shit is going to hit the fan, and his call is there’s only 5 years left before it’s all a waste of time.
So thanks for the ref link – I’ll use it elsewhere. ROFL
The framing was incorrect in 2019, and remains incorrect today. It’s not an all-or-nothing thing. The more emissions can be restrained, the less damage we’ll suffer. Even if we do run our civilization right into the ground and crash our population down to maybe a few percent of the present number–a hideous catastrophe, to be sure!–it would still be less destructive to the overall biosphere to have a half-degree less warming than otherwise. Quitting is morally indefensible–if understandable, given the human reality of fatigue and burnout.
Ned Kelly: – “That was June 2019 — he only has 5.5 years left before he gives up completely.”
IMO, you are misrepresenting David Spratt. From about time interval 0:28:28, in response to the question: Is collapse avoidable? Spratt says (bold text my emphasis):
“Well, I mean, I did talk about the fact that disruption was inevitable, because we know from Limits to Growth and so on, that we are now using the world’s resources at a rate that is unsustainable, and that we will get overshoot and collapse, of an economic character. I mean, even without climate change, that, that scenario is there. So, you are absolutely correct, that there… Ah, the world teeters on the, on the um, ah, financial system breakdown all the time. I mean, the fact, you know, for the last few years in Europe you’ve had to pay money. You had to pay the bank to put money… You had negative interest rates. I mean, that is a sign of, of a system that’s. that’s seriously at war with itself, so I have no doubt that, that that’s the case. Until the system collapses, it hasn’t. Until, until it collapses, I’ll be here trying to get it to do things, so it doesn’t collapse, because, because the other logic is, is yours, and I don’t think that leads many people into a good place. I think it leads them into, into a really dark place. We have got ten years to really, truly turn this around. If we have… If I was giving this presentation in another ten years, I wouldn’t be here, because there would be no point. Seriously!”
Someone in the audience interjected as Spratt spoke. Perhaps someone with a similar attitude to you, Ned? Spratt continued from time interval 0:29:43 with:
“Pardon? No, no, no, no, no… I’ll deal, I’ll deal with that when we get there. Not much point, you know, being sleepless in the next ten years thinking about it. Sorry if that’s happening to you. Ha, ha. I mean, there are many issues. There are extinction issues; there are social issues; there’s race issues; there’s justice issues; there’s climate issues. All I can say is that if we don’t solve the climate issue, all those other things will simply be irrelevant, because there won’t be an organized society here to deal with them. That’s not to put them off and say they are irrelevant, but, my feeling, this is the number one issue. This is the issue that determines whether the other issues are relevant. Um, and um, and so I think we have to defer a whole lot of really important ideological issues about, you know… Are we going to bring down capitalism? I mean, I’ve said to people, if we, you know, given the state of the left at the moment, if we are going to bring down capitalism as a precondition for solving the climate problem, um, I think we are in a lot of trouble.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyLgCr3Drh4
Ned Kelly: – “This is your “hero” and yet you criticise me and conclude in all your wisdom that I am the one who needs professional help!”
I’d suggest there’s a big difference between you, Ned Kelly, and David Spratt. For starters, David Spratt has not quit – you apparently have! What I think is worse is that you are attempting to drag others into your ‘dark place’. I think that’s indefensible.
Um, I did NOT misrepresent Spratt – you seem to have missed this in the paragraph above after your bold text—
Geoff Miell says
30 Dec 2023 at 1:00 AM
If I was giving this presentation in another ten years, I wouldn’t be here, because there would be no point. Seriously!”
imo you could work on your sense of humour / perceptions – and not take such thins so seriously but with a grain of salt? :-)
“Spratt has not quit – you apparently have! What I think is worse is that you are attempting to drag others into your ‘dark place’. I think that’s indefensible.”
Yes I quit living in a fantasy and embraced reality as it is. Long ago. Spratt says he might catch up with me in 5.5 years. He said it.
Meanwhile you may think whatever you wish. And judge me as much as you want. It’s still not going to change and damn thing Geoff.
I have posted some excellent refs … you can look at them ponder greater meanings … especially from https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/ or double down and ignore it all. No skin off my nose.
I am not a darkist, a fantasist, a denialist, nor a conspiracy theorist. lol
I’m a humanist and a realist.
Have at it. :-)
Geoff Miell says
30 Dec 2023 at 1:00 AM
and Spratt saying this
“All I can say is that if we don’t solve the climate issue, all those other things will simply be irrelevant, because there won’t be an organized society here to deal with them. ”
Again I can see where he is coming from, and yet I don’t really agree with this point . Because
1 – the climate issue is not and will not be solved – not in 10 years especially, which is as I said before 5.5 years from today (an old talk right)
So Geoff, it’s not going to happen. So there’s that.
But there are many things capable of bringing down our organized societies now … yes extreme weather events increasing impacts and activity, then there’s the financial system, and vulnerable energy supply of both FF and RE sources. Plus continued overconsumption, exploitation inclduing fish stocks, other natural servies eg the great barrier reef collapsing, the arctic sea summer ice blue ocean events soiking temps and responses to methane escape, the ongoing reduction is aerosols as per Hansen and temp increases, heat waves and the biggy agricultrual disruptions globally simultaneously and extreme rainfall in floods vs swater supply droungts for drinking and agri water.
We’re really quite on a precipice here now and quite vulnerable …. imo …. as Killian used to say it’s all about the RISK levels.
WE have no resilience here left. Look what Covid 19 and gas supplies to Europe and Germany has shown us …. and the all the extreme weather events and the vulnerability of energy supplies.
“You know I’ve been studying this my whole life and I’ll tell you there’s a ton I don’t understand or know about it. The answer that I’ve found is we’re going to have to use a lot less energy. I already told you that’s not happening, not voluntarily, so somewhere out there there’s going to be a trauma, because that’s how humans change. And I think we, you know once we see that trauma, we’ll have no choice but to change, but a lot of people are not going to live. I think it’s time to get honest about the human predicament, and not everybody wants to do that but that’s my message to you.”
Whether something happens soon or not, he still right here. Spot on.
Ned Kelly.
Back in the 1980s when I was at university I was convinced modern civilisation was fragile and doomed for the reasons you state around economics, disease pandemics, complexity, environment, resources etc ,etc. But our civilisation has proven to be quite resilient. Consider that so many doomy predictions have been proven wrong, like estimates in the 1970’s by the “Limits to Growth” people that we would run out of several important metals by 1990.
Other examples: The world has recovered from The GFC. The world has recovered from covid and developed vaccines incredibly quickly. Germany has not been devastated by Russia cutting off gas. Germany rapidly reorganised its economy and increased its energy efficiency.
The point is human society is a bit more resilient than you seem think. Of course theres a grain of truth in what you say. No human system is perfect or likely to survive every possible problem. Humans have done incredibly stupid things. I’m just saying the current socio-economic system is clearly stronger than you might believe.
Of course climate change is a huge threat and we would be foolish to rely purely on adaptation, especially as we can do something to stop the problem getting worse. We should always be pro-active and not react at the last possible minute which we have a habit of doing.
“The answer that I’ve found is we’re going to have to use a lot less energy.”
I assume he means somewhere on a time frame form decades to several centuries. We cannot be certain about the claim. If fusion power becomes a reality it would change everything. If human global population shrunk quickly due to the demographic transition this would offset energy problems. There are too many unknowns for 100% certainty.
The best we can say is we will probably have to do with less energy than presently over the moderately long term, given the worlds resources are finite and given the most likely growth trajectories. The unknown is how much less energy. I’m inclined to think moderately less energy than a lot less, having looked at evidence from pessimists and optimists.
“I already told you that’s not happening, not voluntarily, so somewhere out there there’s going to be a trauma, because that’s how humans change. And I think we, you know once we see that trauma, we’ll have no choice but to change, but a lot of people are not going to live. I think it’s time to get honest about the human predicament, and not everybody wants to do that but that’s my message to you.”
This sounds largely true. I’ve said before we will most probably be forced to simplify to some extent due to resource scarcity. There will be pain. However given humans desire for energy and dislike of pain its likely the system will react to maximise energy availability and efficiency, and minimise pain and humans are ingenious in certain circumstances.
I’m seeing a slow, moderate reduction in consumption and collapse and moderate simplification rather than a massive collapse in a short period and massive pain Life expectancy might go down a bit. Nobody can say for sure either, way because we don’t have a crystal ball and there are too many unknowns.
Its really about making the best possible decisions now and making practical decisions. Changing the socio -economic system dramatically could take centuries if it happens at all. We have to work to fix the climate problem largely within the current system. Like it or not.
There are practical things we can do that should at least make things better even if they don’t solve every problem. That is something. I happen to believe renewables and EVs are one of these.
Nigelj: “If fusion power becomes a reality it would change everything.”
No it wouldn’t, because much of the threat to modern civilisations in the future is unsustainable living i. e. consumning natural resources we are denpendent on faster than they can be replenished. Changing energy sources doesn’t address this.
Adam Lea says
4 Jan 2024 at 1:12 PM
Kudos … You know what you’re talking about.
Are we the baddies? – Crisis on all fronts
These developments are not the outcome of some strange, temporary, collective psychosis overtaking western establishments. They are yet more evidence of a desperate failure to stop the West’s long-term trajectory towards crises on multiple fronts.
They are a sign, first, that the ruling class understands it is again visible to the public as a ruling class, and that its interests are beginning to be seen as completely divorced from those of ordinary people. The scales are falling from [ some of ] our eyes.
The simple fact that one can again use the language of “establishments”, a “ruling class” and “class war” without sounding unhinged or like a throwback to the 1950s is an indication of how perception management – and narrative manipulation – so central to upholding the western political project since the end of the Second World War is failing.
Claims about the triumph of the liberal democratic order declared so loudly in the late 1980s by intellectuals such as Francis Fukuyama – or “the end of history”, as he grandly termed it – now look patently absurd.
And that is because, second, western elites clearly have no answers for the biggest challenges of our era. They are floundering around trying to deal with the inherent paradoxes in the capitalist order that liberal democracy was there to obscure.
Reality is breaking through the ideological cladding.
The most catastrophic is the climate crisis. Capitalism’s model of mass consumption and competition for the sake of competition is proving suicidal.
Limited resources – especially in our oil-addicted economies – mean growth is proving an ever-more costly extravagance. Those raised from birth to aspire to a better standard of living than their parents are growing not richer, but more disillusioned and bitter.
And the promise of progress – of kinder, more nurturing and equal societies – now sounds like a sick joke to most westerners under the age of 45.
Brew of lies
The claim that the West is best is starting to look like it rests on shaky foundations, even to western audiences.
But that idea crumbled long ago abroad, in the countries either devastated by the West’s war machine or waiting for their turn. The liberal democratic order offers them [and ourselves in the west] nothing except threats: it demands fealty or punishment.
https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/are-we-the-baddies-western-support
Ned Kelly: “1800 to the Present – Population, GDP, Energy Consumption, Carbon Emissions, & Human Ecological Footprint. – All are directly coupled / materially interconnected..
https://www.youtube.com/live/2lW3D3hs1WU?si=m2OxJS8-DDwk6sxn&t=1659
It shows there has been no Mitigation at all globally”
It shows no such a thing, for a simple reason that you don’t know what GDP, energy consumption, C emissions and footprint – would have been in the ABSENCE of mitigation. ONLY if you could show that there was no difference – only then you could claim that, barring some confounding variables, “there has been no Mitigation AT ALL globally“.
Making “statistical” claims without the control – is a tool commonly used by the manipulators counting on the statistical ignorance of their target audience, particularly those who are already primed by their views/ideology to believe their message (“the confirmation bias”).
Of course, we don’t have a second Earth for control, BUT we can get some idea by comparing global GDP/C emissions: if “there has been no Mitigation at all globally” then the ratio should stay CONSTANT over time.
It doesn’t : ” Global emissions intensity per GDP PPP ( purchasing power parity) in 2022 reached its 52-YEAR MINIMUM value of 0.386 tCO2eq/k USD, 2% lower than in 2021. ”
https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2023#:~:text=Global%20GHG%20emissions%20per%20capita,2%25%20lower%20than%20in%202021.
Please feel free to dismiss the above argument as you did with my previous ones.by calling me names.
We “jerks” do tend to irritate the politically correct like you with our annoying falsifiable arguments.
Global emissions intensity per GDP PPP ( purchasing power parity) is dismissed out of hand as totally irrelevant. So are you. Enjoy your ignorant bliss and your unfounded arrogant superiority.
Ned Kelly, earlier: “[the youtube link] shows that there has been no Mitigation at all globally”
Piotr, 28 DEC: Your link shows no such things -you don’t know what GDP, energy consumption, C emissions and footprint – would have been in the ABSENCE of mitigation. [To make your proof you need a control. The best one available is Global emissions/GDP – if “there has been no Mitigation at all globally” then the ratio should stay CONSTANT over time. It doesn’t:
“” Global emissions intensity per GDP PPP ( purchasing power parity) in 2022 reached its 52-YEAR MINIMUM value of 0.386 tCO2eq/k USD,”
Ned Kelly 28 DEC: “ Global emissions intensity per GDP PPP ( purchasing power parity) is dismissed out of hand as totally irrelevant.
“What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.” Hitchens’ razor, you know.
Ned Kelly 28 DEC: “So are you [totally irrelevant] Enjoy your ignorant bliss and your unfounded arrogant superiority.”
To whom it better applies – me or you – everybody can decide for themselves, based on the above exchange. By the fruits you shall know them,
RE “energy substitution is not a solution” – I suggested to Kevin and Barton to also look for a graph showing historical GHGs/Carbon emissions. Here is one at this link; as it moves into the next section of the talk:
1800 to the Present – Population, GDP, Energy Consumption, Carbon Emissions, & Human Ecological Footprint. – All are directly coupled / materially interconnected.
https://www.youtube.com/live/2lW3D3hs1WU?si=m2OxJS8-DDwk6sxn&t=1659
It shows there has been no Mitigation at all globally. Despite the deployment of additional RE supply, Fossil Fuel production and consumption continues on growing unabated.
The heading says: “Carbon emissions and overshoot of planetary boundaries are unlikely to decrease as long as energy consumption, world GDP, and population continue to increase.” Plain enough. All have been and are continuing to grow. Plus: “A systems view is needed. This (graph) implies that a civilization paradigm shift is required.”
One that was required 30 years ago at least, has not been forthcoming, and is not likely to arrive anytime soon. BAU is backed into the global systems, as mentioned in several other posts/refs. Everyone more or less knows this is the case, perhaps unconsciously, and even if they dare not speak it. The UNFCCC and the COP meetings are obviously a failure. That is the BAU system operating right there; the ‘economic superorganism’ on steroids; and the global elites in action. It’s clearly not a ‘civilization paradigm shift’ designed to drive down carbon emissions. The facts don’t lie.
FYI – Art Berman makes some excellent points at the end of the video presentation: 33:20 mins
https://www.youtube.com/live/2lW3D3hs1WU?si=6xHN5qG2fi5skLW2&t=2000
“95 percent of marine fisheries are exhausted – 95 percent. And this has all happened in the last 50 years!”
“And no body, voluntarily, is going to use less energy. So something horrible, or reasonably horrible has to happen where we don’t have any choice but to use less energy!”
“No amount of non-fossil fuel energy will make a difference unless we lower total energy consumption and accept it’s consequence of no growth.”
“It’s time to get honest about the human predicament. Climate change and overshoot are as obvious as gravity.”
“Most people including a lot of people that are very serious about climate change and certainly the people who lead the world are energy blind. They don’t know any of this and that’s okay, it’s not their field. They’re not supposed to know it and those of you in this audience, I mean some of you are energy blind and some of you are less energy blind, and that’s okay too. Not everybody’s expected to know everything but for those of us who are not energy blind I’m here telling you that what we’re trying to do right now has been designed by energy blind people and they’ve created a map that is completely wrong and if we follow it we’re going to get lost. That’s what happens when you’ve got a BAD MAP. ”
“The idea that there are obvious fixes I wish it were true. I just don’t see it. This idea or this belief that somehow somebody’s going to figure out something and that’s going to save us, wow! You know what’s the probability of that? I hope it’s true but I’m not going to bet anything on it. Fossil energy is the reason for our material [and civilization] success not technology and innovation. They’re helpful, they’re important but they’re secondary. And the only thing that I want you to remember, if you can’t remember or don’t want to remember any of the rest of this, is that we can’t substitute one form of energy for another and hope to solve this problem. It is complex like most natural systems. Let’s acknowledge it’s complex.”
“You know I’ve been studying this my whole life and I’ll tell you there’s a ton I don’t understand or know about it. The answer that I’ve found is we’re going to have to use a lot less energy. I already told you that’s not happening, not voluntarily, so somewhere out there there’s going to be a trauma, because that’s how humans change. And I think we, you know once we see that trauma, we’ll have no choice but to change, but a lot of people are not going to live. I think it’s time to get honest about the human predicament, and not everybody wants to do that but that’s my message to you.”
And the Q&A section after is interesting, the audience was University staffers.
“It shows there has been no Mitigation at all globally. Despite the deployment of additional RE supply, Fossil Fuel production and consumption continues on growing unabated. ”
Wrong. There has been mitigation. Fossil fuels growth would be growing much faster without renewables. This is basic maths.
And renewables already built have already stopped worst possible climate predictions of 4 – 5 degrees c this century, according to studies on the issue, by limiting the rate of growth of coal use. Thats worth something.
And remember renewables are still in the early stages of an exponential growth curve.
https://theprogressnetwork.org/have-we-made-any-progress-on-climate-change/
As a former energy analyst I must agree with the comment about many being energy blind when discussing climate change and human contributions.
The developed world is pursuing a conscientious course of lowering emissions, helped of course by having fewer children and outsourcing some energy intensive processes to the developing world.
That is more than counter balanced by increasing emissions in the developing world, a trend that is virtually certain to continue through the remainder of this century.
Worse, our efforts to date have largely been focused on clean generation of electricity. We have made good progress on this, but the generation of electricity accounts for about 18% of all energy consumption. We’re doing precious little on the other areas of energy consumption, apart from EVs.
Absent draconian neo-colonialism, we are not going to stop the developing world from developing. Current technology makes solar and wind a partial contributor to an energy solution. (A valuable part, but just a part). As no-one is proposing to build out a portfolio that relies on the two non-emissive power sources–nuclear and hydro-electric) and very few seem concerned about improving energy efficiency in industry and construction, we are very much spinning our wheels and spinning tall tales to justify it.
Thomas W Fuller: – “As no-one is proposing to build out a portfolio that relies on the two non-emissive power sources–nuclear and hydro-electric)…”
Evidence/data I see indicates nuclear power technologies (either existing or new/untried) cannot be deployed in any meaningful electricity generation capacities within the required timeframe to avoid overshooting the +2.0 °C global mean surface warming threshold.
https://academic.oup.com/view-large/figure/423296595/kgad008f24.tif
Nuclear technologies cannot save us!
Per the World Nuclear Industry Status Report-2023 (WNISR-2023), Figure 14 · Delays for Units Started Up 2020–2022 shows the real duration to construct through to grid connect (but excludes the time required for planning, licensing, design, procurements and site preparations) for 18 reactors in 8 countries connected to the grid in the period 2020 – 2022. Page 63 includes this statement:
https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/-World-Nuclear-Industry-Status-Report-2023-.html
The IAEA’s Power Reactor Information System (PRIS) provides data about commercial power reactor units throughout the world. Below is a list derived from PRIS data on the most recent power reactor grid connection start-ups for years 2020–2022, and my calculations based on the PRIS data for actual durations needed for start construction to full power capacity delivery to grid operational status:
* BELARUSIAN-1: 7 years, 7 months, 3 days
https://pris.iaea.org/pris/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=1056
* FUQING-5: 5 years, 8 months, 24 days
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=937
* FUQING-6: 6 years, 3 months, 4 days
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=938
* HONGYANHE-5: 6 years, 4 months, 3 days
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=997
* HONGYANHE-6: 6 years, 11 months
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=998
* SHIDAO BAY-1: 10 years, 11 months, 28 days
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=957
* TIANWAN-5: 4 years, 8 months, 13 days
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=975
* TIANWAN-6: 4 years, 8 months, 27 days
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=976
* OLKILUOTO-3: 17 years, 8 months, 20 days
https://pris.iaea.org/pris/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=860
* KAKRAPAR-3: 10 years, 1 month, 20 days (to first grid connect)
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=986
* KANUPP-2: 5 years, 9 months, 2 days
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=1067
* KANUPP-3: 5 years, 10 months, 19 days
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=1068
* SHIN-HANUL-1: 10 years, 4 months, 21 days
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=887
* LENINGRAD 2-2: 11 years, 11 months, 4 days
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=901
* BARAKAH-1: 8 years, 8 months, 14 days
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=1050
* BARAKAH-2: 8 years, 11 months, 10 days
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=1051
* BARAKAH-3: 8 years, 5 months, 1 day
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=1052
Note that SHIDAO BAY-1 includes demonstration twin reactors coupled to a single steam turbine to generate 211 MWₑ (gross) / 200 MWₑ (net).
The PRIS data above provides compelling indications of how much time is actually required to bring these respective civil nuclear power plants from the commencements of their construction phase through to the commencements of their full commercial operational status. Projects on greenfield sites invariably require longer to complete.
Note that pre-project implementation planning, licensing, design, procurements and site preparations (which are usually more difficult to observe because these activities are generally hidden from public scrutiny) require additional time, of the order of five years before the construction phase (i.e. first concrete pour milestone) can even begin.
Published on 7 Oct 2023 in the SMH was an explainer by Mike Foley headlined Is nuclear energy feasible in Australia (and how much would it cost)? It included (bold text my emphasis):
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/is-nuclear-energy-feasible-in-australia-and-how-much-would-it-cost-20231004-p5e9qc.html
That would be the UAE’s BARAKAH-1 generator unit. That would suggest preliminary planning began sometime before Apr 2006 – more than 6¼ years before construction began.
See slide 6 at: https://www.isoe-network.net/publications/pub-proceedings/symposia-thematic/policy-standards-and-regulation/national-regulations/3092-bilal2015-ppt-1/file.html
Finland’s OLKILUOTO-3 project began in the early 2000’s, with Finnish parliamentary approval granted in 2002. I’d suggest there would likely have been at least a few years of preliminary planning prior to the Finnish parliamentary approval – thus, it took more than 2 decades to deploy OLKILUOTO-3.
https://www.powermag.com/olkiluoto-unit-3-provides-carbon-free-nuclear-power-and-energy-security-for-finland/
See also my comments in May 2023:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/05/unforced-variations-may-2023/#comment-811500
In Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/12/unforced-variations-dec-2023/comment-page-2/#comment-817546
Dear Geoff,
Thank you very much for this comment.
Interestingly, countries like my homeland assert, contrary to all this convincing evidence, that nuclear energy is allegedly the one way how to decarbonize their economy.
Czech government plans spending a few billions EUR for a new 1000-1200 MWe block in the nuclear power plant Dukovany, with planned opening about 2036. Majority of public, including Czech climate scientists, support this plan.
I think that in cases such as this, the activism of the said scientists does represent a net harm. They support a “solution” that is in fact nothing else than wasting public money in favour of saving business-as-usual for the dying, economically uncompetitive nuclear industry. The same investment in much less spectacular measures would be much more effective.
Greetings
Tom
Tomáš Kalisz (at 31 DEC 2023 AT 6:28 PM): – “Czech government plans spending a few billions EUR for a new 1000-1200 MWe block in the nuclear power plant Dukovany, with planned opening about 2036.”
Only “spending a few billions EUR”? Where’s the substantial remainder of the finance coming from to deploy a large reactor unit? What technology is the Czech government considering? And what will Czech citizens be paying for their electricity in future if the proposed project proceeds?
The Dukovany site currently has four operational generator units of the VVER-440/V-213 design – 1444 MWₜₕ / 500 MWₑ (gross) capacity. First grid connections occurred between Feb 1985 through Jun 1987. Their operational lives are all well past their design midpoints.
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/CountryDetails.aspx?current=CZ
Of the roughly 60 nuclear plants currently under construction around the world, around 1 in 3 are Russian VVER designs, being built by Rosatom.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide.aspx
I’d suggest sanctions on the supply of all kinds of electronics means that few of these Russian VVER designs will be completed on time, if ever. Russia has relied heavily on concessional financing through Sberbank, which is also sanctioned. Fulfilling existing commitments on time and on budget is unlikely, and new sales now likely just about impossible.
Then there’s China’s Hualong One large reactor design being marketed. Given the current predicament with Russian nuclear technologies, buyers outside China may well be cautious about this option. Good luck with finding out accurately how much this reactor type would cost.
That leaves the EPR design option. Examples include:
* OLKILUOTO-3: 4300 MWₜₕ / 1720 MWₑ (gross) / 1600 MWₑ (net), est. final cost around €11 billion
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=860
https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/04/17/finlands-new-nuclear-reactor-what-does-it-mean-for-climate-goals-and-energy-security
* FLAMANVILLE-3: 4300 MWₜₕ / 1650 MWₑ (gross) / 1630 MWₑ (net), est. cost so far around €13.2 billion
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=873
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/edf-eyes-flamanville-epr-nuclear-reactor-fuel-loading-march-2023-12-21/
HINKLEY POINT C-1 & -2: 4524 MWₜₕ / 1720 MWₑ (gross) / 1630 MWₑ (net) each, est. cost so far for both reactors around £33 billion
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=1072
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=1073
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/cost-edfs-new-uk-nuclear-project-soars-40-bln-2023-02-20/
And the AP-1000 design. Examples include:
* VOGTLE-3 & -4: 3400 MWₜₕ / 1250 MWₑ (gross) / 1117 MWₑ (net) each, est. cost so far for both reactors around US$30 billion
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=1042
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=1043
Tomáš Kalisz (at 31 DEC 2023 AT 6:28 PM): – “Majority of public, including Czech climate scientists, support this plan.”
Once people realize how long it actually takes for experienced countries (and likely longer for inexperienced countries, like Australia) to deploy nuclear powered generator units then they can see the true nature of any new nuclear generator unit proposals – a dangerous fantasy and distraction!
in Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/12/unforced-variations-dec-2023/comment-page-2/#comment-817633
Hallo Geoff,
Thank you for your question regarding Czech nuclear power program and public support therefor.
It is an interesting topics that interesting historical and political aspects and might deserve a thorough sociological research, I think. Herein, I will focus on replying your questions
The reactors considered for the new block in Dukovany are, of course, classical pressure water reactors (PWR), because nothing else is commercially available. There are three participants in the competition: American Westinghouse with their AP1000, French EdF with APR1200 and Korean KHNP with APR1000. Whereas AP1000 is already being practically used (Vogtle), the remaining both reactors are new projects of reduced size reactors derived from bigger reactors in production.
The Czech government intends to provide the “investor” (which is a daughter company Elektrárna Dukovany II created by the biggest Czech electricity provider ČEZ, wherein majority ownership is by the government) with an interest-free loan which should be later repaid by consumers through a guaranteed purchase price of the produced electricity.
I am, of course, deeply concerned that if the project succeeds, the consumers will pay a significantly higher prize for electricity than consumers in other countries that made smarter decisions. Moreover, Czech Republic is not Norway – the Czech state bill is in a significant deficit and we have a huge state debt. The interests for the “interest-free” government loan for EDU II thus would have been still paid, by Czech tax payers for Czech government bonds.
Nevertheless, I criticized the project mostly from the viewpoint of destructive effects that huge public expenses on a such economically uncompetitive and technically obsolete technology like PWR may have on innovation power of Czech industry and of the Czech Republic generally
https://denikreferendum.cz/clanek/32812-cesky-energeticky-titanik-hlasi-plnou-parou-vpred
The article is in Czech. I prepared, however, also a German translation that is publicly accessible on my public German orgpage dealing with this economical aspects of the transition to renewable energy (“Energiewende”):
https://orgpad.com/s/poKXZfJqcDR
Unfortunately, I have not managed to prepare an English translation yet.
Greetings
Tomáš
Tomáš Kalisz (at 6 JAN 2024 AT 9:25 AM): – “The reactors considered for the new block in Dukovany are, of course, classical pressure water reactors (PWR), because nothing else is commercially available.”
Indeed, and yet some people, including for example, Peter Dutton MP, Australian federal politician and Leader of the Opposition, would have us all believe that:
From the budget reply speech presented by Peter Dutton MP in the Australian Parliament on the evening of 11 May 2023:
https://www.peterdutton.com.au/leader-of-the-opposition-budget-in-reply-check-against-delivery-2/
See also the video from time interval 0:17:38 at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY8lfj5kf30
Where are these “safe, reliable, cost effective, can be plugged into existing grids … small modular nuclear technologies”, Mr Dutton? Show us where these reactors are, how reliable they are, how much do they cost, and where they can be plugged into the Australian grid? I’d like to see real evidence/data, NOT ‘hand waving’ fantasy.
So far, I’ve had no response from Peter Dutton MP (or from his office) to these apparently inconvenient questions since my email to him on 12 May 2023 (and yes, I confirmed ‘eyeballs’ had actually seen my email by phoning his Strathpine electoral office).
Tomáš Kalisz (at 6 JAN 2024 AT 9:25 AM): – “There are three participants in the competition: American Westinghouse with their AP1000, French EdF with APR1200 and Korean KHNP with APR1000. Whereas AP1000 is already being practically used (Vogtle), the remaining both reactors are new projects of reduced size reactors derived from bigger reactors in production.”
You may find these paragraphs of interest, from a piece titled Ted O’Brien’s nuclear love-in at COP28 gets a brutal reality check, published at RenewEconomy on 11 Dec 2023, by Dr Jim Green, national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia:
https://reneweconomy.com.au/ted-obriens-nuclear-love-in-at-cop28-gets-a-brutal-reality-check/
AP-1000 designs operational, or currently under construction, or now abandoned:
China:
SANMEN-1: Construction start 19 Apr 2009, commercial operation 21 Sep 2018
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=879
SANMEN-2: Construction start 15 Dec 2009, commercial operation 05 Nov 2018
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=880
HAIYANG-1: Construction start 24 Sep 2009, commercial operation 22 Oct 2018
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=908
HAIYANG-2: Construction start 20 Jun 2010, commercial operation 09 Jan 2019
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=909
USA:
VOGTLE-3: Construction start 02 Mar 2013, commercial operation 31 Jul 2023
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=1042
VOGTLE-4: Construction start 19 Nov 2013, so far incomplete but continuing…
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=1043
VC SUMMER-2: Construction start 09 Mar 2013, abandoned Jul 2017
VC SUMMER-3; Construction start 02 Nov 2013, abandoned Jul 2017
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil_C._Summer_Nuclear_Generating_Station
The AP-1000 design has demonstrated it requires on average about a decade from commencement of construction to full operational status. I’d suggest add in a further 5 years for pre-construction implementation (typically required before first concrete pour can happen) and that means deployment durations are of the order of about 15 years.
The EPR design (e.g. OLKILUOTO-3, FLAMANVILLE-3, HINKLEY POINT C-1 & -2) has demonstrated deployment durations in Europe are longer.
It seems to me that a “planned opening about 2036” for the Czech government’s proposed new 1200 MWₑ generator unit at the Dukovany site is now looking increasingly optimistic.
Thomas Fuller
“The developed world is pursuing a conscientious course of lowering emissions…..That is more than counter balanced by increasing emissions in the developing world, a trend that is virtually certain to continue through the remainder of this century.”
Maybe you are being too pessimistic about developing countries as follows:
“Renewable energy in developing countries is an increasingly used alternative to fossil fuel energy, as these countries scale up their energy supplies and address energy poverty. Renewable energy technology was once seen as unaffordable for developing countries.[1] However, since 2015, investment in non-hydro renewable energy has been higher in developing countries than in developed countries, and comprised 54% of global renewable energy investment in 2019.[2] The International Energy Agency forecasts that renewable energy will provide the majority of energy supply growth through 2030 in Africa and Central and South America, and 42% of supply growth in China.[3]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_developing_countries
Some interesting data on the accelerating uptake of renewables in developing countries:
https://www.enelgreenpower.com/learning-hub/developing-countries-and-renewable-energy-for-a-sustainable-future
Of course we face challenges scaling up renewables and EV’s which I acknowledge in various comments on this page. I see the difficulties but the alternatives seem worse to me.
“Worse, our efforts to date have largely been focused on clean generation of electricity. We have made good progress on this, but the generation of electricity accounts for about 18% of all energy consumption. We’re doing precious little on the other areas of energy consumption, apart from EVs.”
Agreed, however it seems things are at a tipping point of change. Changing home heating seems challenging and until recently heat pumps have been too expensive and not good enough for very cold climates. The technology has apparently improved recently and I recall that some governments are now subsidising conversions to heat pumps.
“Absent draconian neo-colonialism, we are not going to stop the developing world from developing.”
Agreed, and I don’t think we have any right to try. However we can encourage them to develop as sustainably as possible, and incentivise this. But we have to apply the same standards to ourselves or we will be ignored.
“Current technology makes solar and wind a partial contributor to an energy solution. (A valuable part, but just a part). As no-one is proposing to build out a portfolio that relies on the two non-emissive power sources–nuclear and hydro-electric) and very few seem concerned about improving energy efficiency in industry and construction, we are very much spinning our wheels and spinning tall tales to justify it.”
Current solar and wind technology is mature and does quite a decent job and is now low cost generation (Lazard energy analysis). The main problem is scaling it up fully due to intermittency issues and the related electricity storage is still expensive, – but the technology is improving and costs are falling. Studies show that carbon neutral electrofuels could provide an economic seasonal storage medium to deal with wind intermittency issues. What do you think?
In countries with good hydro potential much of this potential seems already developed (?). We also have to acknowledge the huge impact of hydro power on ecosystems.
Nuclear power is indeed clean zero carbon energy (essentially). But it’s not a panacea. It is very capital intensive, and its slow to build, and there is the safety concern with the public. The slow to build issue is quite a big issue given the urgency of the climate problem.
China and India are however building some nuclear power: “Nuclear power plants operate in 32 countries and generate about a tenth of the world’s electricity.[2] Most are in Europe, North America, East Asia and South Asia. The United States is the largest producer of nuclear power, while France has the largest share of electricity generated by nuclear power, at about 70%.[3] China has the fastest growing nuclear power programme with 16 new reactors under construction, followed by India, which has 8 under construction.[when?][4]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country#:~:text=The%20United%20States%20is%20the,which%20has%208%20under%20construction.
But they are relatively autocratic countries, where the government is strongly involved in building generation. They have subsidy schemes as well. Their governments ignore local opposition. So there has been some progress with building nuclear power
In democratic very free market countries such as America and Germany nuclear power seems to have stalled. Decisions on what type of generation to build appear to be largely made by private sector generating companies and this makes sense to me. They are resistant to nuclear power because of the high capital costs. Public sentiment appears to be sceptical of nuclear power and perhaps this has some impact on decision making.
Safety regulations are also very strict and slow the building programme down and add costs, but given the Chernobyl incident one can understand why. I wouldn’t want weak regulation. The nuclear industry in America also has dreadful project management that has caused huge and avoidable delays in construction and cost blowouts. Read a study on this some time back.
I like your spinning wheels analogy, but renewables are gaining traction if you look at IEA data. We could speed progress up further with stronger cap and trade / Carbon tax schemes or subsidies. Wind power now provides low cost generation, but businesses are tending to only replace end of life or very uneconomic coal plant. If we want to get them to replace newer coal plant, it may require incentives such as strong carbon taxes or targeted subsidies. This seems the obvious way to me, unless anyone has alternative approaches?
nigelj: – “Changing home heating seems challenging and until recently heat pumps have been too expensive and not good enough for very cold climates.”
It depends on whether you are referring to air-sourced or ground-sourced heat pumps and what you define as “very cold climates”.
In my experience, air-sourced heat pumps (using refrigerants like R744 & R32) are suitable for ambient air temperatures as low as around -10 ºC. I have a split-system reverse-cycle air conditioner with R32 refrigerant I use for both space heating and cooling, and a split-system heat pump hot water system with R744 refrigerant. Overnight ambient air temperatures in winter are frequently at or below freezing, less often below -5 ºC and rarely below -10 ºC.
I’d suggest ground-sourced heat pumps are probably the better option for operating in “very cold climates”, where ambient temperatures often get well below -10 ºC in winter.
nigelj: – “The slow to build issue is quite a big issue given the urgency of the climate problem.”
I think very slow deployment times are the strongest argument against nuclear power. I’d suggest there are many documented examples to demonstrate how long it actually takes with available technologies by experienced (and not so experienced) countries. Nuclear cannot save us!
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/12/unforced-variations-dec-2023/comment-page-2/#comment-817546
nigelj says
30 Dec 2023 at 2:44 PM
However, since 2015, investment in non-hydro renewable energy has been higher in developing countries than in developed countries, and comprised 54% of global renewable energy investment in 2019.
— Just a heads up that China is included in the developing nations group. :-)
— and happy new year to all the kiwis and everyone else too.
I would never call myself a “former energy analyst” because it doesn’t take any brains to continue to realize that fossil fuels are finite & non-renewable and that crude oil specifically is at the end of its rope. It’s like saying, “As a former speller …”
Ned said:
Yes. So far, population growth and rapid economic growth, especially in large parts of the developing world, have led to increases in energy consumption that have maintained the growth of emissions even as both total emissions and emissions per capita have fallen in the West. (They’ve also fallen pretty drastically in terms of emissions *per unit of economic output* in China. This metric peaked in 1977: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-intensity) However, nigel is absolutely correct that had it not been for declining emissions in much of the West, as well as some Latin nations (Costa Rica and Uruguay, for two), we’d be in considerably worse emissions shape than is actually the case.
And while distinct progress has been made on decarbonizing electrical generation–for example, here’s the latest US milestone–we’re currently just starting in on the decarbonization of transport, which is a big component of so-called ‘primary energy.’ When you have just started a large task, it always feels as if it will never end. But that’s just an illusion. Substitution *will* become ever more complete, and emissions will fall accordingly.
It’s true, of course, that if economic and/or demographic growth is rapid enough, they can outweigh the effects of decarbonization of energy, at least for a time. But the more complete the decarbonization process becomes, the less those factors matter. And the reality is, population growth is already slowing, and will reverse in the coming decades:
https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/900
It’s also true that growth can’t continue indefinitely–and as far as I can tell, nobody actually knows where the limits are. (Personally, I suspect this depends on technology: if we had an economy based on renewable energy, with very high rates of reuse and recycling so as to minimize extractive activities and the discarding of valuable resources, we’d be able to support many more people and for longer, than could a ‘conventional’ economy.) But as Ray always points out, uncertainty is not our friend. We need to assume that the limits are closer than most people think. (Yeah, I know–‘overshoot’ folk would say it’s not “how far,” but more “in which direction.” And they could potentially be right.)
One more comment: I know this isn’t true of everybody–but some of us at least are at some pains to use less energy voluntarily. I’m not sure how much practical difference this makes, but the assertion to the contrary is, for the record, untrue. (And maybe there are scenarios where this makes a difference.)
I can understand what you’re saying, why and where the refs come into your “story” and it all sounds nice and reasonable. Might even be true or turn out that way. Who knows? I don’t. But I am not banking on it.
then Kevin McKinney says:
One more comment: I know this isn’t true of everybody–but some of us at least are at some pains to use less energy voluntarily. I’m not sure how much practical difference this makes, but the assertion to the contrary is, for the record, untrue. (And maybe there are scenarios where this makes a difference.)
I default to not assuming what was done there is intentional at all. Our modes of thinking and ideologies and framing of what we are used to, seeing like, are mostly unconscious, and in a thinking pattern groove that rolls along happily. we all do it to some degree. New info, framing and perspectives can give a speed bump effect but we quickly fall back into a default modes
Take Barton … I speak/ref of global levels, he pulls a number up for the USA. I speak of energy, he pulls the data on emissions. I speak of a subset in “Passenger/car transport” so Barton to “All Transportation” Mode instead. It’s not uncommon.
Kevin has kind of done the same thing, and I’m not being critical but corrective, because the outcome is what I did write is being misrepresented …. intentional or not that’s not good for anyone. My basic assumption is that it is accidental and unintended — but it’s still false, untrue.
What Kevin said himself is well, accurate, for him and many others. It’s not essentially wrong except Kevin ‘thinks” Except he said “the assertion to the contrary is, for the record, untrue”
Now there was an “assertion” yes, but it is not the one Kevin imagines Art Berman (who I was quoting) made at all
Berman said “I already told you that’s not happening, not voluntarily, so somewhere out there there’s going to be a trauma,” in a particular CONTEXT/Framing. He was not talking about “some of us” nor “everybody”, even “one of us”.
But sure, the sentence quote here says: “And no body, voluntarily, is going to use less energy. So something horrible, or reasonably horrible has to happen where we [meaning collectively] don’t have any choice but to use less energy!”
And that has been pulled separately out of the context where it was being used — so what was Berman saying then, what ws the framing? Did really mean “no single person” or was it a grammatical turn of phrase?
Look typically ‘no body’ is going to voluntarily use less energy (because that narrows their choices). Typically meaning, humans historically acroos time usually do not act this way. And yet sure “some ” people do by choice, but those people also have the “Choice” to do so. These are the exceptions to the rule.
And we shouldn’t be judging what Art Berman was saying based solely on an exception but based on his actual intent of meaning. I could go and find that specific sentence quote in the video, and copy and paste the it in context. Then again, anyone who was actually curious about what he thinks, or want to know where Berman is coming andthe ideas of many others he is sharing, would simply just go and watch the video and come across that sentence and discover it’s fullest meaning in due course. Others will not.
So up to you what you choose to do.
To me, Berman was talking about the collective bulk of humanity as a species group across aeons.
Unfortunately what Kevin has done (without noticing it or thinking about much?) is take something that is systemic and complex, and simplified it into a totally different idea and scope – losing all semblance to the original meaning and intent of the Berman quote, while doing so.
imo both points of view can have some validity. But they are not the same things at all. They not related. One notion does not prove the other wrong in any way. They are not connected, but different.
Which to me is a shame. Now I wonder how many others will make this same indifferent mistake? It’s really a waste of veyr good presentation worth thinking about deeply, imho. Oh well. It is a shame. Another dance around the circle.
Ned, I didn’t “lose” the “original meaning and intent of the Berman quote,” for the simple reason that I never “had” it. (I appreciate that you cited the video, but I generally prefer not to watch video lectures as it’s a drastic time suck, compared with reading the same content.)
But thanks for expanding and clarifying that the quote referred to “typical” behavior.
Your welcome and i understand the time drain of videos – I typically try to give timestamps or other clues, but often I don’t have the time or motivation for that either.
…. a tip, increase the speed to x1.5, it works a treat to skim.
Carbon emissions have NOT been reduced. Carbon emissions and the harm caused by them have increased.
And are still increasing. It’s “basic math”
“Mitigation is the **reduction** of something harmful, or the **reduction** of its harmful effects.”
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/12/unforced-variations-dec-2023/#comment-817487
and
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/12/unforced-variations-dec-2023/comment-page-2/#comment-817454
RE “Fossil fuels growth would be growing much faster without renewables.”
Nigel does not know this. Nigel guessing and assuming this is so without any evidence at all.
Data suggests the world had hit, or is on the verge of hitting Peak Oil supply. Data suggests Gas supply is maxed out – US Shale Gas is maximized and depleting fast. New gas wells supply are not able to replace increasing rates depleted wells. On top of this Russian Gas supply has been shut down across Europe and the West since 2022.
For over a decade now global Oil supply based Gasoline/Diesel fuel refining production has been below Demand, and has been supplemented by “Liquid Fuels” created out of Natural GAS and Refined GASES. This empirical fact further empathizes the critical nature of Peak Oil and the impacts this will have on societies, the global economy, energy prices, and total energy supply.
Renewable Energy supply is incapable of replacing any Oil shortfalls in the short to medium terms (now out to 30+ years)
Making Assumptions is not Scientific, is not a Fact. Making Assumptions is an Opinionated Guess.
“Without renewables” without Hydro, without Biomass, without Nuclear, without Hydrogen, without Geothermal, without Covid, without Wars, without Population Growth and an ongoing or disrupted Food supply, no body has any idea what might have happened otherwise.
No one can rightfully say Fossil fuels growth would be growing much faster without renewables and the rest.
Because no one knows what such Hypothetical scenarios might have unfolded instead – because they didn’t happen. Especially Nigel who appears not to be a knowledgeable expert in this field, nor seeks out and listens to those that are.
Only time will tell what unfolds from here and how fast it unfolds. What is known at this point is that Oil supply and it’s fuel products are rapidly declining, along with the Natural Gas supply and the viable available Reserves are shrinking fast and not enough to replace the already depleted and rapidly depleting Reserves.
Reserves: To be classed as a reserve, an oil or gas deposit must fulfil three conditions: it must have been confirmed by drilling; it must have been accurately measured; and it must be recoverable economically at current prices using current technology..
Of curse the experts are aware of this issues and all the pros and cons of possible technology improvements, and those that likely impossible to make any difference. I have dozens of refs to such experts and their data, as does the https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/ website.
As Art Berman says repeatedly: “It’s complex.”
Now, apologies for repeating myself here, but this bears repeating:
“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.”
Leo Tolstoi
Ned Kelly
Nigelj: RE “Fossil fuels growth would be growing much faster without renewables.”
Ned Kelly: “Nigel does not know this. Nigel guessing and assuming this is so without any evidence at all. Data suggests the world had hit, or is on the verge of hitting Peak Oil supply. Data suggests Gas supply is maxed out – US Shale Gas is maximized and depleting fast. New gas wells supply are not able to replace increasing rates depleted wells. On top of this Russian Gas supply has been shut down across Europe and the West since 2022.”
Nigelj: I don’t know it for sure, but it seems most likely. Remember while we have most likely hit peak oil, that means 50% of the oil is left in the ground. That’s a lot of potential emissions for decades to come.
And we have not come near peak coal or gas (in terms of available resources) yet so even more emissions are possible , for at least several decades maybe a century or more:
“The world has proven reserves equivalent to 133.1 times its annual consumption. This means it has about 133 years of coal left (at current consumption levels and excluding unproven reserves).”
https://www.worldometers.info/coal/#:~:text=The%20world%20has%20proven%20reserves,levels%20and%20excluding%20unproven%20reserves).
Ned Kelly: “Renewable Energy supply is incapable of replacing any Oil shortfalls in the short to medium terms (now out to 30+ years) Making Assumptions is not Scientific, is not a Fact. Making Assumptions is an Opinionated Guess.”
Nigelj: That’s exactly what you are doing – making an assumption that renewable energy cant replace any oil shortfalls. You don’t know that. You don’t have a crystal ball. There are too many unknowns to have your level of certainty that it cannot.
The evidence suggests renewables can most probably replace a shortfall in oil. See my comment on peak oil: Plenty of oil left for decades to come.
hello – nigelj says
29 Dec 2023 at 6:09 PM
“…peak oil, that means 50% of the oil is left in the ground.”
No it doesn’t mean that at all Nigelji. It in fact means that Oil Production has peaked, and begun to fall. The hint is in the wording “peak oil/gas” :-)
QUOTE – even wikipedia knows this:
Peak oil – Wikipedia
Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of global oil production is reached, after which production will begin an irreversible decline.
NIgelji says:
“See my comment on peak oil: Plenty of oil left for decades to come.”
I may have missed that or skimmed past because it wasn’t correct.
But please define “plenty” Nigel. and put a number on how many “decades” you think – and/or post your credible source in the next UV.
fyi Global Peak Conventional Oil was over 15 years ago, circa 2006 iirc. Did I not post something here several months back about a share of “Liquid fuels” was coming from Gases? You know this yeah?
If it wasn’t for the US shale oil/gas plays and the Canada Tar Sands the world would long have been in a meta-crisis of epic proportions. Unfortunately that meta-crisis triggered by a mass shortage of energy supply has not been averted only postponed for several years.
I may post some useful info next month UV on this topic just to annoy people here with factual evidence based reality. Watching people cringe from their cognitive dissonance being triggered is schadenfreude for me. :-)
Me posting info or not, eventually it’s going get y’all (not only here either.) Those WUWT boys too are going be well and truly lambasted by their cognitive dissonances. .
Ned Kelly.
“Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of global oil production is reached, after which production will begin an irreversible decline.”
Correct but peak oil ALSO means about 50% is still in the ground ( as I stated):
“In 1938, the famous geologist M. King Hubbert came up with the concept of peak oil, which is defined as having extracted half of the recoverable, conventional oil reserves. After that, oil production declines and cannot keep up with growing demand as the population continues to rise.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2017/03/02/no-peak-oil-for-america-or-the-world/?sh=1623af634220
But lets look at a quantitative estimate of reserves remaining:
“In 2018, there were an estimated 1.73 trillion barrels of oil in the world. Enough oil to last another 50 years with an average global oil consumption of 95 million barrels per day…”
https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/climate-change/energy/the-end-of-oil
So there are about five decades of oil left (assuming no more discoveries of big new oil fields) . So I’m right renewables and Evs should be able to replace oil before oil runs very low. There are 50 years of oil left, and we have about 30 years to meet Paris accord goals of keeping warming under 2 degrees and transition to Evs.
The transition from horses to cars was mostly complete in 20 years. Where there is a will there is a way.
A correction on my part (sorry) with Nigel’s Peak Oil being the “half of the resource has been used”.
He’s right, I forgot that was how it used to be presented as a thought experiment, the timing when it might hit. I think the current interpretation (I put above) is more accurate / valid now. (but I may still be wrong)
Though there may be something to Nigel’s definition of peak oil when referring to an oil well, or a field, rather than the whole nation or world supply … in that when a well hits half it’s capacity that’s peak oil for the output “generally” does start to decline at that point, or near it, or used to. In relation to Conventional oil wells and not the shale business.
So sorry Nigel – I hope that clarifies things I said before (my bad) and doesn’t make it worse.
Peak oil is the halfway point if a Hubbert or Logistic’ quasi-bell-shaped curve is used to model and map to an aggregate production profile. Individual wells and especially fracked shale oil profiles are not close to this symmetric production profile, as the peak flow of a fracked well is within a year of production start. This is expected from the mechanics of diffusional flow — ask me if you need citations, as this is all my co-author discusses at the PeakOilBarrel blog.
Thanks, I’ll keep that offer in mind, and will check the blog out.
nigelj: – “The evidence suggests renewables can most probably replace a shortfall in oil. See my comment on peak oil: Plenty of oil left for decades to come.”
Better hurry up then and transition…
It’s not about how much crude oil is remaining in the ground!
It’s about the costs (i.e. both energetic and monetary) and flow rates that can be extracted that are useful to society.
I’d suggest if petroleum fuel supplies are not affordable and/or abundant, particularly diesel fuel supplies, with our current energy system configuration, then society would have a very big problem.
For perspective, per the Energy Institute’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2023, from page 17, the global crude oil + condensate annual average daily production and top-8 country producers in 2022 were:
World: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 81,157 kb/d (100%)
1. United States: _ _ _ _ _ _11,887 kb/d ( 14.6%)
2. Russian Federation: _ _ 10,669 kb/d ( 13.1%)
3. Saudi Arabia: _ _ _ _ _ _ 10,509 kb/d ( 12.9%)
4. Canada: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _4,868 kb/d ( 6.0%)
5. Iraq: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 4,446 kb/d ( 5.5%)
6. China: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 4,111 kb/d ( 5.1%)
7. United Arab Emirates: _ _ 3,364 kb/d ( 4.1%)
8. Iran: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _3,313 kb/d ( 4.1%)
https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review
The top-3 producing countries represent more than 40% of the global share of production, the top-5 represent more than 50% and the top-8 represent more than 65%. Very few countries provide most of the world’s oil production.
Matt posted in his blog at Crude Oil Peak on 25 Oct 2023 a piece headlined ME oil supply situation as Gaza war brings world into unknown territory (part 1), beginning with:
See also Fig 1: World crude production by May 2023
https://crudeoilpeak.info/me-oil-supply-situation-as-gaza-war-brings-world-into-unknown-territory
On 14 Dec 2023, Nate Hagens published a YouTube video titled Arthur Berman: “Shale Oil and the Slurping Sound” | The Great Simplification #101, duration 1:30:27. The conversation was recorded on 29 Nov 2023. US petroleum geologist Art Berman presents recent data on well productivity in US shale oil plays indicating we are much closer to ‘the slurping sound’. Show notes, links to the video, transcript, and slides are available at:
https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/101-art-berman
Art Berman’s Slide 1 included (bold text my emphasis):
That suggests to me that the global price of crude oil is only going to go higher in the longer-term, as the remaining US shale so-called Tier 1 acreage is exploited and depleted.
On 1 Jan 2024 Art Berman tweeted:
https://twitter.com/aeberman12/status/1741469704458318102
US ‘conventional’ + offshore oil productions are declining. US tight oil production (excluding the Permian basin) has already peaked. The US Permian basin is the only play that’s likely to show any further growth, but the key questions are:
a) For how much longer?
b) How steep will be the decline after the final peak?
Also on 1 Jan 2024 Art Berman tweeted:
https://twitter.com/aeberman12/status/1741508709585494079
It seems US shale oil producers have effectively used a larger straw and are much closer to that ‘slurping sound at the end of a milkshake’.
On 10 Nov 2023 Art Berman tweeted:
https://twitter.com/aeberman12/status/1722833614625190110
Tight oil increased from 9% to around 70% of crude + condensate from 2010 to 2023, and while it is oil, it has lower energy content than conventional oil. Tight oil is fine for making kerosene, jet fuel and gasoline. It cannot, however, be used for producing diesel without blending it with heavier oils, and diesel is the main cash product and workhorse of the modern global economy.
What will be the global petroleum fuel supply and price situation in future? Would there be enough global fuel supplies to meet demand, or would fuel rationing be required? I’d suggest most commentators are ignoring this possibility. Are they ‘energy blind’ or willfully ignorant?
Hr N.Kelly
Do you come from a privileged, personality strenghtening” psevdomilitary unifomed camp , an “academy” or something, where you learn to write about such things in a most convincing way, for sales promotion and business class, … or maybe even on behalf of that grand old party with P ?
And I do not have to even mention which grand old Party, only the grand old one with P.
Hello Genose Shri Carbomontanusji 30 Dec 2023 at 2:10 PM
Does P stand for Potatoes?
Or something else?
An interesting circle: My quote from DIOGENES says 3 Jun 2014 at 4:38 PM was regarding a post here by
wili says 3 Jun 2014 at 10:03 AM
http://www.humanitystest.com/endless-layers-of-delusion/
Many here may find common ground and perhaps insights from various parts of this longish essay:
Endless Layers of Delusion By Roger Boyd
One of the delusions discussed:
“2 Degrees is Safe, and 450 ppm of Carbon Dioxide Equivalent Will Get Us There” —
(Apologies if the formatting doesn’t work – I’m guessing. )
That link is dead, but coincidentally I have recently seen Roger Boyd’s current activity 9 years later: see
Geopolitics And Climate Change – https://rogerboyd.substack.com/ He hasn’t quit yet.
Some more very poignant comments/quotes by DIOGENES (in hindsight 9 years later) ensues:
Wili #35,
Your Boyd reference was Beyond Outstanding. However, because of its length, not everyone will read. it’s highlights need to be emphasized.
” “there is little explicit scientific evidence for why 2 degrees centigrade should be the preferred target”[23]. The current impacts of only a 0.8 degree warming point to the IPCC target being too high, “If we’re seeing what we’re seeing at 0.8 degrees Celsius, two degrees is simply too much”, states Thomas Lovejoy…..
Such evidence has led climate scientists like James Hansen to call for a limit of 350 ppm[45] of carbon dioxide (we are already pretty much at 400) rather than the U.N. supported 450 ppm. Of course, if the U.N. accepts Hansen’s position, the soft and fluffy options disappear and the “BLOOD, TOIL, TEARS, AND SWEAT” OPTIONS RAISE THEIR UGLY HEADS.” [….]
“Vaclav Smil has captured the sheer enormity of the task of replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy: (remember this warning was made in 2014)
“Annual combustion of [fossil fuels] has now reached 10 billion tonnes of oil equivalent …. nearly 20 times larger than at the beginning of the 20th century … Energy transitions, shifts from a dominant source (or combination of sources) of energy to a new supply arrangement, or from a dominant prime mover to a new convertor – are inherently prolonged affairs whose duration is measured in decades or generations …
It took natural gas about 60 years since the beginning of its commercial extraction (in the early 1870’s) to reach 5% of the global energy market, and then another 55 years (115 years all up) to account for 25 percent.”[85]”…..
The many congratulatory announcements of growth in installed wind and solar capacity MISREPRESENT THE TRUE SITUATION. Even using the best locations possible, the utilization of that capacity is about 40% for wind, 20% for solar photovoltaic (PV), and 60% for concentrated solar (CSP)[86]. [ In fact it is actually much lower than that now.]
There are also the specious congratulatory statements about wind and solar providing a high percentage of a country’s electricity needs on a specific day, or even confusing electricity supply for the overall energy supply[87]. Of course, there is no mention of the non-windy, overcast days where they may be providing next to nothing and the fossil fuel generating plants are being fully utilized. [ That is still happening today].
In the absence of extremely cheap and scalable storage systems, redundant backup systems are needed, as with Germany, which assumes that it will be burning coal to produce electricity for decades to come”…..
[And it is – as well as shutting down all Nuclear PP and cutting off Russian Gas supply for Industry and Gas Power Plants in 2022 has forced Germany to REOPEN Coal fired plants and stall the shutting down of others. At times both Wind and Solar input is close to Zero, as high priced unreliable electricity imports from neighbouring nations skyrockets. And the Price of Gas in Germany and Europe multiplied by something like 1000% at one point. Germany still lacks sufficient Gas supply as Industry, Chemical, Manufacturing is either closing down or being shipped off-shore as the Economy implodes into Recession, LNG ex-US is still 2 to 3 times the price Germany used to pay Russia for non-stop supply. Germany’s energy system is a Catastrophe. ]
….. NEARLY ALL THE INCREASE IN RENEWABLE POWER GENERATION IS USED UP BY THE GROWTH IN DEMAND AND THEREFORE THERE IS VERY LITTLE ACTUAL REDUCTION IN FOSSIL-FUEL USAGE. As long as the economy keeps growing, energy demand will tend to grow, and thus the replacement of fossil fuels will be chasing an ever-increasing target.
As James Hansen notes with respect to China, “It is true that China is leading the world in installation of renewable energies. However, … new fossil fuel energy output in China, mostly coal, exceeded new wind energy by a factor of six and new solar output by a factor of 27.”
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/06/unforced-variations-june-2014/#comment-547960
All of this was known then, and still known today. But it is as if no one knows anything at all still. Back to that Tolstoi quote we go!
Oh my, in the eyes of babes (rational people with a high degrees of integrity and wisdom) whether Climate Scientists or not in 2014, and now with the benefit of 9 years of Data to use in Hindsight vs quite fallible hypothetical imaginary ‘models’ vs Rational Logic being applied to the Real Whole of World Human situation.
It is what it is. And here we are. :-)
Well done DIOGENES, wili and Roger Boyd despite not making a dint of difference. The climate scientists have achieved any better. No one has. And no one is to blame for that.
It’s the “system” stupid!
( I hope the formatting worked ok)
Kevin McKinney says
6 Jan 2024 at 10:54 AM
the utilization of that capacity
sigh
you know wind doesn’t blow sun doesn’t shine high latitudes in winter
double sigh
Generation scales, approximately, with capacity.
triple sigh
Maybe, just maybe, you’re the one totally responsible for the communication breakdown here?
Nah, couldn’t be, now could it?
Ned Kelly said above thread (26 DEC 2023 AT 8:56)
“I believe you’re missing the obvious. No pain no gain. Massive reductions in consumption and in energy use is going to happen by choice or be forced upon us, or even both at the same time. ”
His other comments (paraphrasing) indicate he thinks that consumption of energy is about to hugely decrease either by choice, or forced on us by resource scarcity or the alleged inadequacies of “renewables” or possibly by governments(?). This will apparently cause society to crash, and this is the only way we will achieve environmental sustainability and genuine simple living. He said “no pain no gain.”
This seems like possibility that cant be ruled out, given there are some unknowns about reserves of minerals and the driving forces of societies behaviour. Some ancient societies have crashed due to resource scarcity issues, eg Easter Island. A huge reduction in consumption over short time frames would definitely cause a crash of frightening proportions and probably 25% – 50% unemployment due to the demand contraction. Similar to the 1930s.
But it seems unlikely that modern industrial society would choose to dramatically reduce its energy consumption given our addiction to consumerist culture and our fear of such scenarios.
It seems unlikely that resource scarcity will cause a huge and imminent reduction in consumption. Mark Jacobson has published peer reviewed studies that renewables can work at scale and the earth has sufficient resources in conventional deposits. There are also vast, rich untapped mineral resources in geothermal brines. While some resources are particularly scarce and its a worrying problem humans are very ingenious at overcoming problems. For example it looked like the GFC would destroy the worlds financial system, but we recovered.
It It also depends on whether global population shrinks quite fast with more 1 or 2 child families ( as Zebra alludes to). One things for sure: exponential economic growth cannot possibly continue indefinitely. And it looks like SOME sort of contraction in consumption is inevitable long term. The unknown is how much.
On balance it seems to me more likely that we could face a modest towards moderate reduction in use of resources and energy, evolving slowly rather than a massive reduction and consequent crash. I hope so anyway. And IMO it suggests renewables are still our best option despite the obvious challenges deploying them, and the possibility we may have to make do with less energy than currently, to some degree anyway. Obviously any reduction in consumption would help with environmental problems.
Some relevant published experts on such issues: Jared Diamond and Joseph Tainter.
.
I have never said “about to “
If you (and others) are going to comment on what I wrote, please be decent enough to copy/paste the quotes accurately to show what I actually have written.
Thank you.
{ Or I will have to cry on Gavin’s big shoulders. ]
Tomas Kalisz. Above thread. You discussed renewables and subsidies and said you were sceptical of subsidies for allegedly poor quality technology like DAC. I have to agree about DAC. I did a quick calculation on another website that on the basis of the largest working instillation you would need about 900,000 DAC instillations to mitigate about 20% of yearly CO2 emissions! This is very resource intensive and maybe quite unrealistic.
You were also sceptical of subsidies for already profitable renewables like wind power. But as I asked, would you support some methods of speeding up the transition to wind and solar power, such as subsidies, or a carbon tax or cap and trade? Because the transition isn’t going fast enough.
You promoted sodium batteries which you said were cheap and being neglected. However I just had a quick look on wikipedia, and sodium batteries are already under serious commercial development, and are at prototype stage and near mass deployment (allegedly):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery
In Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/12/unforced-variations-dec-2023/comment-page-2/#comment-817547
Dear Nigel,
Many thanks for your question.
I do not think supporting quicker installation of electricity production facilities exploiting renewables by public subsidies is an efficient use of available resources.
I am afraid that in fact, it may be an opposite. The debts created this way may be comparatively destructive or even more harmful as negative impacts of the climate change itself. We should take also this risk into account.
I think the effective use of public money is there, where they can bring maximum effect. This is more likely if they help fixing the most serious weaknesses in the system.
Considering the electricity supply and distribution, the Achilles heel of the system is in my opinion the electricity storage. This is why I seek a significantly cheaper alternative to existing electricity storage methods, so that the renewable sources enable reliable electricity supply any time and still for a more affordable price than fossil fuels or nuclear power plants.
No kind of batteries, including sodium ion batteries, can enable this goal. Technical reasons for this statement consist in the circumstance that in batteries, only very small fraction of materials used therein is the electrochemically active medium that indeed enables the required storage. The vast majority of the entire battery are supporting materials – an electrolyte, a diaphragm, wiring, housing, the majority of the material used in electrodes, because the electrochemical conversion is localized in the thin layer on the interface between the electrode and the electrolyte only.
The storage in metallic sodium does represent a completely different concept, related to so called redox flow batteries (RFB).
Herein, you change electrochemically a fluid medium that can flow continuously through an electrochemical cell. In this case, the only limit for the amount of the storage medium is the size of the respective storage tank.
In RFBs, the price and storage capacity are still limited due to use of relatively diluted aqueous solution of relatively expensive materials such as vanadium salts. Splitting the RFB into two separate units – an electrolyzer and a fuel cell, operating with undiluted molten sodium hydroxide and molten sodium as storage media enables reducing the lower margin for investment into a 1 kWh storage capacity from ca 100 USD in case of batteries to a few USD in case of bulk sodium storage.
Greetings
Tomáš
I mentioned this growth data a few times so thought I’d throw in the latest readings fwiw.
A day earlier than usual (Christmas?) NOAA published the latest weekly Mauna Loa CO2 average.
Week beginning on December 17, 2023: 422.24 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 419.05 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 397.72 ppm
Last updated: December 23, 2023
Although the daily averages slowly drop from the upper level they have jumped to, the annual increase is at 3.19 ppm, much higher than in the average of the last ten years (2.45 ppm/a).
A very concise description of effects of moisture limitation in the landscape is available from Ghausi et al
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2220400120 Radiative controls by clouds and thermodynamics shape surface temperatures and turbulent fluxes over land
“We first show that the turbulent fluxes of sensible and latent heat are constrained by thermodynamics and the local radiative conditions. This constraint arises from the ability of radiative heating at the surface to perform work to maintain turbulent fluxes and sustain vertical mixing within the convective boundary layer. This implies that reduced evaporative cooling in dry regions is then compensated for by an increased sensible heat flux and buoyancy, which is consistent with observations…. We conclude that radiation and thermodynamic limits are the primary controls on LSTs and turbulent flux exchange which leads to an emergent simplicity in the observed climatological patterns within the complex climate system.”
basically moisture limitation makes for a warmer lower atmosphere by changing flux partitioning and reducing cloud.
Ghausi is on a role more recently also by pointing out that variations in downward LW radiation at the surface depend more on lower atmospheric heat content than to changes in emissivity.
https://twitter.com/S_ghausi/status/1738138108527546563
The great bit is that these schemes are using a physical approach that align also with common sense. The takeaway is that limiting landscape moisture results in a more sensitive climate system. While these general insights are already known, both through firsthand experience by going outside or by reading classic textbooks on the boundary layer, I suppose what’s new is to describe it through their maximum thermodynamic limits framework.
They note also that “these fluxes [H & LE} seem to be strongly coupled to highly heterogeneous land surface characteristics and appear unconstrained by the energy balance alone. With limited observations of land surface variables, they further remain uncertain in climate models and are generally described using a bulk aerodynamic approach and semiempirical parameterizations (19–21). Owing to this inherent complexity, there remains substantial intermodel disagreement and biases in their estimates (22–24).”
So in addition to practical significance outside, there is also a market to know this in the trace gas research/modeling community.
in Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/12/unforced-variations-dec-2023/comment-page-2/#comment-817592
Dear JCM,
Thank you for this reference. In my understanding, it further supports the thesis that water availability for evaporation from land is an important “forcing” regulating Earth climate.
As water availability on land could have been changed by past human activities, asking in which extent these anthropogenic changes could have contributed to the observed climate change seems to be a relevant question, deserving equally thorough scientific scrutiny as any other climate “forcing”.
I wish you a happy and productive year 2024.
Greetings
Tomáš
I don’t see how you reach any such conclusion, Tomas. From the cited source:
“The implication is that the climatological variations of surface temperatures are predominantly shaped by radiation, clouds, and thermodynamic limits.”
All of which are NOT evapotranspiration.
In Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/12/unforced-variations-dec-2023/comment-page-2/#comment-817685
Hallo Kevin,
Thank you for your question.
Honestly, I understood the article the way that the authors found a certain correlation between limited water availability on land on one hand and clouds reflecting solar radiation on the other hand.
If so, then it appears that the role of water evaporation in surface temperature regulation might consist rather in its indirect effect (influence on surface irradiation by formation of light reflecting clouds) rather than in its direct effect (surface cooling by latent heat flux).
I thought that due to this indirect effect, water evaporation could be still taken as an important “forcing” if we assume that water availability on land can be artificially changed.
Please correct me if I in fact misunderstood the message brought by the authors.
Greetings
Tomáš
There are a lot of ‘moving parts’ in the science connected to the various Makarieva et al papers, or the present Ghausi et al, so to speak, so it’s not easy fully to grasp–or to summarize. So I offer not so much “corrections” as questions.
However, you seem to be assuming that the cloud radiative effects are closely linked to the surface water availability, and as far as I can discern, that is not what the authors are saying:
And:
One case illustrating the potential for decoupling of clouds from surface water availability–or at least, causality running the opposite way–would be the Pacific northwest in North America, where moist marine air is usually advected toward the east into the coastal and interior mountains, resulting over time in the formation of temperate rainforest ecologies.
Which brings me to a larger question regarding the issue of climate forcing. What is the potential magnitude of any evapotranspirational effect? Clearly, it is a terrestrial factor, so we know already that it cannot operate over more than 30% of the global surface. But just how much smaller is it? Some regions, such as the Pacific northwest, are unlikely to change greatly in terms of cloudiness, regardless of what happens at the surface. Others, like the Sahara, seem unlikely to change much any time soon, based on the apparent absence of plausible modifiers.
There are areas which could potentially make a difference: the Amazon, the Loess plateau (both considered by Makarieva et al), and perhaps the Boreal forest (a matter of evident concern for Makarieva). These collectively would certainly be significant; the Boreal is about 17 million km2, which is about 3.3% of Earth’s surface area, and the Amazonian rainforest is good for another 7 million, or about 1.4%. Together, roughly 5% of the surface. (Let’s be generous with our rounding.) The Loess Plateau is less than a million km2, so well under one percent. How many other areas are there which might plausibly see significant enough anthropogenic hydrological changes to make a difference to temperatures?
I have no idea, honestly, but I do feel quite skeptical that these areas could be large enough, nor their associated radiative and temperature changes strong enough, to create a non-negligible ‘forcing’ at global scale. And that doesn’t even consider your previously posed question as to whether such changes might be countered by compensating changes over the ocean. (After all, conservation principles suggest that that might well be a strong possibility.)
Discussion of humidity trends:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/12/climate-change-humidity-paradox/
Updated humidity data here:
https://climate.metoffice.cloud/humidity.html
in response to “I do feel quite skeptical that these areas could be large enough”
it is common to limit one’s conceptual framework to what is visible, not to what is missing or invisible.
While considering the residual remaining biosystems do not omit the vast moisture reservoirs already gone.
In this way Makarieva and co are somewhat misleading when they point to residual forest conservation.
The area of aridification encompasses also the vast wet lands already drained and ongoing watershed erosion and desertification practically everywhere.
The scale of missing soil moisture genesis regime includes roughly 5 billion hectares. The discussion and financing of this awareness, conservation, and restoration has been displaced by contemporary reductionist ideas in teaching. I am often surprised how little awareness there really is, considering its happening everywhere all around us all the time.
https://commons.princeton.edu/mg/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Soil_Degradation,_1997.jpg
in Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/12/unforced-variations-dec-2023/comment-page-2/#comment-817746
and to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/12/unforced-variations-dec-2023/comment-page-2/#comment-817722
Dear Kevin, dear JCM,
Thank you both for your contributions.
Personally, I do not dare to decide in which extent the past anthropogenic changes in terrestrial vegetation, hydrological regimes and organic matter in soils could change the sensitivity of Earth climate to changes in the content of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and thus contribute to presently observed climate change.
JCM, could you report some references estimating the extent of anthropogenic deforestation, wetland and soil degradation?
As regards direct evidence for changes in hydrological regime, based on the previous discussion, I am quite afraid that contrary to existence of proxy data more-less allowing us reconstruction of past Earth surface temperatures, no such data do exist with respect to past global water cycle intensity. I am also unsure how convincing is the evidence for “continental desiccation” accompanying the present climate change.
As Kevin pointed out, there are certainly huge regional differences, nevertheless, I hope that at least satellite observations from the last 4-3 decades could allow to see some global trend.
In this respect, I would like to repeat my question – addressed not only to public, but also to the moderators – whether or not available meteorological data support the hypothesis that in global sum, continents were drying during the last decades.
Greetings
Tomáš
to Tomas
I fear there is a serious lack of geo-referenced, measured and harmonised data on the factors of hydrological disruption.
Very likely the information exists, but in thousands of disparate repositories, and also accessible through firsthand experiences and anecdotal evidence. A globally harmonized system of information is a worthy endeavor.
However, the issues are clearly known, evidenced by various UN sustainable development goals which speak to the issues.
e.g. For example,
https://unfccc.int/news/wetlands-disappearing-three-times-faster-than-forests
Approximately 35% of the world’s wetlands were lost between 1970-2015 and the loss rate is accelerating annually since 2000. Elsewhere it is estimated 50% loss during 20th century.
Additionally, it is practically common knowledge and widely understood that the rates of soil erosion exceed the rate of soil genesis by orders of magnitude. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0438-4
I am particularly interested in the Kleidon group analysis methods as they seem to offer the potential to deduce such changes based on observable climate changes. This to complement the outputs of trace gas and aerosol forced model efforts.
cheers
Kleidon group papers approach many of these problems upside down and backwards so it’s easy to overlook the implications. Through demonstrated analytical solutions, they effectively address thermodynamic turbulent flux partitioning without relying on semiempirical parametrization.
This approahc is able to physically connect the surface moisture limitation and thermodynamics with cloud and the radiative regime. That is: surface temperature, lower atmospheric heat content, solar absorbed radiation, and atmospheric outgoing radiating temperature. What a dream!
the title of the paper is literally “Radiative controls by clouds and thermodynamics shape surface temperatures and turbulent fluxes over land”
no need for k-scale models or whatever to understand and know this, then.
They do it in a way that is totally different from complex numerical models. What to notice in relation to recent discussions is the the ability to deduce flux partitioning from radiative properties. Whether the implications seem obvious or counterintuitive, it’s useful to know.
Or maybe it’s still resisted here for unknown reason?
In the not so distant past, in the comments on this very website, it was determined to be obvious by consensus that evapotranspiration bears no relation to temperature or the planetary radiation balances. This is clearly false and shown plainly in many ways.
The Antarctic Sea Ice Extent for 2023 (JAXA’s excellent VISHOP SIE engine) was possibly more bananas than the global temperature with the annual average of 9.88M sq km, the lowest annual average by a long long way. 2023 managed to set 271 daily record lows and until the last fortnight of the year, when not setting records was running second or third lowest. (This recent return to a more ‘normal’ SIE level curiously began a year after a short bananas period at the end of 2022 began.) A plot of the SIE anomaly using JAXA data, as a series and year-on-year is seen here – Graphs 3 & 3a showing the numbers with the big annual cycle removed.
Given the rather wild wobbles in Antarctic SIE over the last decade, it is safe to say that the added bananas of 2023 will probably not be a one-off.
Antarctic SIE (M sq km) – JAXA data
Annual averages over last decade
1st … 2023 … … 9.88
2nd … 2017 … … 10.67
3rd … 2022 … … 10.70
4th … 2019 … … 10.78
..
6th … 2018 … … 10.92
7th … 2016 … … 11.13
..
15th … 2020 … … 11.50
16th … 2021 … … 11.52
..
34th … 2015 … … 12.33
35th … 2013 … … 12.46
36th … 2014 … … 12.69
No of days with record low SIE
2023 … 271 days
2017 … 48 days
2016 … 41 days
2022 … 6 days
I always consider the use of the acronym ‘FWIW’ to be a mark of ignorance as the user evidently is admitting to not knowing the ‘worth’ of ‘it’. In the case of this Ned Kelly comment, I think the worth is negative in that the comment suggests there is at least some merit in the analysis presented when the wibbly-wobbles of the MLO CO2 record make such an analysis entirely meaningless.
The comment prompted me to update the graphic at the top of >a href=”https://sites.google.com/site/housman100resultstemperarypost/home/test-page-for-jpeg-storage”>this webpage. The 3.19ppm/yr value quoted by Ned Kelly for the MLO 12-month increase for w/e 17/12/23 is the second last weekly MLO data point. The average weekly ppm/yr at MLO has been pretty flat since April, averaging 2.9 ppm +/-1.1(2sd). The usual suspect for wobblising these numbers is ENSO (thus the MEI trace on the graph).
Note also the trace of the global average monthly dCO2/y. This has been a lot less wobbly than the MLO data (40% the sd) over the past few years. (See the second graph which traces MLO and global dCO2 from 1979.) It may be the now available data is now reducing the wobbles, but maybe it is something else.
This CO2 data shows the rate of CO2 rise of the last few years averaging a constant 2.4ppm/y. Whether or not the present El Niño will be adding wobbles to upset that average rise (as it has shown to do in the past) remains to be seen.
MA Roger the ‘wibbly-wobbly’ very cute ‘Numbat’ had something to say FWIW.
Whoopie. How did this ‘man’ ever negotiate his way through normal life and survive?
IMHO it is a miracle he ever managed to get to this age without being taken out permanently for his arrogant offensive behavior towards other human beings.
What is a Numbat?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbat#/media/File:Numbat.jpg