Glaciers are important indicators of climate change. A recent study published in the leading journal Science shows that glaciers in the tropical Andes have now retreated further than at any other time in the entire Holocene – which covers the whole history of human civilisation since the invention of agriculture. These findings are likely to resonate beyond the scientific community, as they strongly support the lawsuit filed by a Peruvian farmer against the energy company RWE, which has returned to court this week.
Paleoclimatologists can determine how long bedrock beneath a glacier has been covered by ice using measurements of specific isotopes. When rock surfaces are exposed, isotopes such as carbon-14 and beryllium-10 form due to bombardment by cosmic radiation. If, however, the rock is covered by an ice sheet, it is shielded from this radiation, and these unstable isotopes gradually disappear through radioactive decay (with half-lives of 5,700 and 1.4 million years, respectively). This method, known as cosmogenic radionuclide dating, has been well-established for decades. I first encountered it myself 23 years ago during an excursion with glacier experts to New Zealand’s Southern Alps.
The new study applied this method to examine several glaciers in the tropical Andes (see Fig. 1).
In rock samples collected at the edges of the glaciers, researchers found isotope concentrations close to zero. From this, they conclude that these rocks must have remained covered by ice throughout the entire Holocene, shielding them from cosmic radiation. This indicates that these glaciers are very likely smaller today than at any point in at least the last 11,700 years.
This finding aligns with several previous studies showing that temperatures in the tropical Andes have never been warmer during the Holocene than they are today. For instance, reconstructions of the glacier margin of the Quelccaya Ice Cap demonstrate that it has not been smaller than today at any time in at least the last 7,000 years. Temperature reconstructions based on proxy data further support this conclusion.
Global Warming Means Global Glacier Retreat
The Andes are not an exception: according to current research, global average temperatures today are very likely higher than at any other point during the entire Holocene. Given that an ice age lasted for more than 100,000 years before the Holocene, today’s temperatures are probably the highest experienced in about 120,000 years. This unprecedented warming, which began in the 19th century and has so far reached around 1.3–1.4°C, is almost entirely driven by human activity – primarily the burning of fossil fuels. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), natural factors have contributed very little to recent warming, probably even having a slightly cooling effect, due to declining solar activity since the mid-20th century (a fact reflected in the title of former RWE manager Fritz Vahrenholt’s book, Die kalte Sonne – The Cold Sun).
As a result, glaciers worldwide continue to lose mass (see Figure 2). In Germany, only four glaciers remain, following the disappearance of the Southern Schneeferner glacier in September 2022. Soon, there will be no glaciers left in Germany at all.
Implications for the RWE Case
The RWE case addresses, among other things, whether global warming caused by CO₂ emissions is responsible for the severe glacier melt, the substantial retreat of the glacier by approximately 1.5 km over the past 140 years and the thawing of permafrost above the city of Huaraz in Peru. A 2021 attribution study published in the respected journal Nature Geoscience has already conclusively demonstrated this connection; however, RWE appears to continue challenging these findings.
In this context, the new data from Gorin et al. are particularly relevant. The Queshque Glacier, now smaller than at any other time in at least the last 11,700 years, is located only 40 km from Huaraz, in the same mountain range as Lake Palcacocha (see Fig. 3).
It is highly likely that local climate changes across this area differ minimally at most. Although average climate conditions can vary over short distances due to local topography, climate warming typically has a correlation radius of more than 1,000 km. Therefore, there is no meaningful difference in climate change effects between Queshque Glacier and Lake Palcacocha.
This region is already experiencing the most significant climate warming in the history of human civilisation. It will undoubtedly continue until the global economy achieves climate neutrality, essentially, net-zero CO₂ emissions.
In the RWE trial, the central issue will be whether, and to what extent, the city of Huaraz and the plaintiff would be affected by a glacier flood. A systematic analysis of past glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) in the region has examined 160 such events based on satellite imagery. The findings clearly identify the Andes around Huaraz as a hotspot for this risk (see Fig. 4).
Huaraz is located at 9.5° south latitude within the high-risk zone marked in red. Source: Emmer et al. 2022.
Additionally, this study shows that the frequency of such floods has increased significantly since 1980 (see Fig. 5). Before 1980, there was only one year with more than two recorded GLOFs: 1970 due to a severe earthquake. However, there are now repeatedly years with 3, 4 or even 5 glacial lake outbursts.
One thing is clear: given the existing research, it would be absurd to assume that the risk of a Lake Palcacocha outburst could be calculated based solely on historical data, without explicitly accounting for global warming caused by fossil fuels. Anyone who suggests that climate change is not happening in Huaraz – that there is no human fingerprint, and therefore no connection to RWE’s share of CO₂ emissions – may have their reasons for doing so. But the evidence clearly shows otherwise.
Thanks, Stefan. We shall see how the court parses what seems a pretty conclusive case. I wish I had more faith in a positive outcome.
Incredible how utterly misguided and naïve even intelligent climate scientists still can be. As if RWE has anything significant to do with any glaciers melting anywhere, or specifically in Peru. It’s called global warming for a reason. Why not sue the East India Company, Great Britain, China, the USA, Russia, all the western nations who brought you the industrial revolution including NASA?
This kind of approach is ludicrous, no wonder you lose the arguments and the COPs do nothing. Surely Stefan you need a lawsuit against James Watt’s descendants and anyone who has ever held a share in a coal mine anywhere on earth ever?
[Response: Let’s ignore your first sentence, I just report on science here and have nothing to do with this or any other court case.
RWE is the biggest CO2 emitter in Europe and the lawsuit only aims to hold them responsible for their share of global emissions. And you are correct, many others could be held responsible for their shares – so far there has been nearly 3000 climate litigation cases: https://earth.org/explainer-climate-litigation-trends-and-impact/. No doubt there will be more to come. -stefan]
Oh brother, talk about naive:. Clue for you: The source of the greenhouse gasses which contribute to glacier loss is greenhouse gas emissions from sources such as RWE. This is not rocket science.
I take your point, but the same logic would imply that one should not pursue Germans responsible for killing individual Jews, for example, on the grounds that the murder of a dozen people did not ‘have anything significant’ to do with the slaughter of six million.
The reason why people are pursuing individual companies, I suspect, is precisely that ‘the COPs do nothing’, and there are very few alternatives left, of which one is the legal challenge to fossil fuel companies.
It would certainly be more logical to sue Exxon-Mobil, which has emitted far more CO2 in its lifetime. You will probably find that they, together with Shell and BP added together, have contributed the majority of the rise in CO2 levels, certainly much more than was added during the 19th century by the steam engines of James Watt.
I am not sure where your numbers come from, stating that the oil and energy companies cited have a share of more than 50 % together. I rather suspect, you mix up the companies with the buyers of their goods and services. Sure, it is much easier to finger point at single companies than to hold the whole population responsible for their actions. I am not aware of a single case of pressing people to buy and burn their fossil products. Trying to make responsible single companies for the actions of their customers just makes environmentally no sense because it makes people think “oh good, it is not my action that is causing harm” while on the flight to their next holiday destination.
TK: I am not aware of a single case of pressing people to buy and burn their fossil products.
BPL: Advertising? Elimination of alternatives? Fighting tooth and nail to delay any action toward decarbonizing the economy?
BPL: “ Advertising? Elimination of alternatives? Fighting tooth and nail to delay any action toward decarbonizing the economy?”
I would add:
their denying the human responsibility for the climate change – see the leading manager of the said RWE, Europe’s largest CO2 emitter, Vahrenholt, who in 2010 published a book:
“Die kalte Sonne” , co-written with Sebastian Lüning also from RWE, a book heavily promoted by the fossil fuel lobby – because it claimed that fossil fuels are innocent – “It’s the Sun, stupid“.
And how about one the biggest fossil fuel companies in the world, BP, hiring one of the best PR firms in the US to SHIFT the public discourse AWAY from the responsibility of fossil fuel companies that make obscene amounts of profits, and, after buying the policians, get trillions of dollars in subisidies from the taxpayer, and are sheltered from bearing the cost of their pollution (IMF for in 2022: explicit subsidies $1.26 trillion, with indirect subsidies – $7 trillion in 2022 – or 7.1% of global GDP) – and after all that they want to shift the responsibility the individuals. I.e. the narrative that people like Thiemo Kellner – swallowed, hook line and sinker, and now promote as their own views.
On the ethical level, Mr Keller, you answer to Trump’s appeal to the egoism – the idea of privatizing the profit and socializing the costs: with the profits going disproportionally to the few, and the costs being spread onto everybody. That’s the individual and class egoism.
Then there is a national egoism – poorer nations that have contributed little to the AGW, are to be exposed disproportionally to it, while being least able to deal with its effects – the rich nations built their wealth on dumping the GHGs into the common atmosphere for free, now are telling them: “sorry, you can’t do what we have done to become affluent”.
Then there is a generational and species egoism – discounting the value of life of the future generations and of other species – with our generation profitting, and them being left to hold the bag.
Poor Peru: Surely Stefan you need a lawsuit against James Watt’s descendants and anyone who has ever held a share in a coal mine anywhere on earth ever?
Taken at face value, this looks like a defensive reaction by either an RWE shareholder, or a hyper-sensitive Peruvian who is affronted that glaciers in his country are found to have shrunk, as if it were a national insult. If the former, then PP will find little sympathy here; if the latter, then take it easy, PP! Stefan is not an author of the Science or Nature Geoscience articles he cites. He is commenting on the scientific evidence relevant to the RWE lawsuit, which was initiated by a countryman of yours. The plaintiff alleges that RWE is responsible only for 0.5% of global fossil carbon emissions to date, a plausible figure AFAICT (https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/peruvian-farmer-takes-german-energy-giant-rwe-court-landmark-climate-case-2025-03-16). No one is insulting you personally, nor is Stefan blaming the nation of Peru disproportionately for global warming!
As for Stefan needing to sue everyone who’s ever burned, or caused to be burned, any amount of fossil carbon: you understand, don’t you, that Stefan didn’t write the published reports, and isn’t suing anybody? Yet you’ve apparently failed to grasp the Tragedy of the Commons: a term of Economics art, and one reason why Economics is called “the dismal science”. Global warming is the result of the “free” market’s ancient propensity to socialize every transaction cost it can get away with. Only collective market intervention can limit socialized costs, in this case by driving the energy market toward renewables.
Collective measures may include per-tonne fees or taxes on producers, incentives for renewable energy development, and regulations on emissions. The primary obstacle to collective mitigation of anthropogenic global warming is resistance by fossil fuel producers and investors, whose $trillions in annual profits have so far thwarted almost all collective intervention! But anything that reduces net profits to producers drives capital away from them; litigation under existing laws is being tried in the USA (https://lawclimateatlas.org/resources/climate-change-litigation-in-the-us), with mixed results. Suing individual consumers of fossil fuels and all goods and services made with them, is of course ridiculous. Collective action to take the profit out of selling fossil fuels is not: in fact, it is urgent wherever you live!
In Re to MalAdapted, 20 MAR 2025 AT 12:22 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/03/andean-glaciers-have-shrunk-more-than-ever-before-in-the-holocene/#comment-831328
Dear Sir,
I agree that the article cited by Dr. Rahmstorf does convincingly show an evidence that global warming in the industrial era is the cause of Andean glacier shrinkage during this era.
On the other hand, I doubt that it is sufficiently clear in what extent the emissions produced by the company RWE contributed to the observed melting of a specific glacier, so that a court could sentence the company for damages caused thereby. If I was the RWE counsel, I would certainly suggest the article
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/adb7f2
cited by you a few days ago
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/03/unforced-variations-mar-2025/#comment-831238
as an evidence that rather cattle ranchers should be sued for these damages instead of RWE.
Greetings
Tomáš
Poor Peru: “Why not sue the East India Company, Great Britain, China, the USA, Russia, all the western nations who brought you the industrial revolution including NASA?…This kind of approach is ludicrous, no wonder you lose the arguments ”
Completely unfair statement. I don’t recall Stefan actually endorsing lawsuits against fossil fuels companies for their emissions. The only material in the commentary related to RWE was related to scientific issues around emissions, warming and glacier loss. In no way can that be read as an endorsement of the case. However I do agree that suing fossil fuels companies for emissions doesn’t make a lot of sense. Quite happy to see them sued though, when they lie about the climate issue.
Dear Stefan,
I thank you for your response. My apologies for the offense caused by my beginning characterizations for this is how it honestly appears to me.
Stefan, I humbly suggest you went far beyond “just report the science here.” because you introduced this specifically-
“These findings are likely to resonate beyond the scientific community, as they strongly support the lawsuit filed by a Peruvian farmer against the energy company RWE, which has returned to court this week.”
I am suggesting this inclusion of RWE and court cases weakens, confuses and distorts whatever scientific finding and message you intended to convey.
Your reference says “contained 2,796 cases – 1,850 filed in the US” and not 3000. A 70 per year average. No where can I find where it tells us how many cases have been won since 1986. We know it is miniscule though. If US litigation habits were effective the whole world would be doing it just like they do. We, the ROW, do not for obvious reasons.
Lastly Stefan, you say above “you are correct, many others could be held responsible for their shares”. My view is anyone buying electricity from RWE should be held responsible if this lawfare approach had any credibility or effectiveness at holding bad actors to account. I put it to you it does not.
In a broader sense every citizen of Europe yourself and your ancestors included going back centuries should be held accountable for the “fossil fuel pollution” using your national Governments as Proxy defendants. Of course this is absurd. Which was my original point. Everyone should know by now the biggest historical culprit is the USA. Why not sue them?
All attempts to bring lawsuits against companies like RWE and their shareholders for being somehow more responsible than everyone else is collectively is a fallacy. Or you would call for NASA, NOAA, and CopernicusECMWF @CopernicusEU to be sued as well. Because everything that exists today has been founded upon historical fossil fuel energy supply and it’s CO2 pollution. Including NPPs, solar and wind energy to housing and food production and retail shops and the internet you use to distribute your scientific materials.
My advice is to be realistic. Pray for a miracle.
Best wishes.
“All attempts to bring lawsuits against companies like RWE and their shareholders for being somehow more responsible than everyone else is collectively is a fallacy.”
Except that’s not what is being done. RWE is being sued for their share of what has been done collectively. Specific suits require specific facts, and the determining factor in that one, I would say, is jurisdiction.
Pourquoi ne parler que des pertes de glace, phénomène normal en période de réchauffement interglaciaire dans laquelle nous nous trouvons, et taire les gains de glace ? Exemple : une étude parue sur Copernicus (Julia R. Andreasen et al. 2023) sur l’évolutions de la surface de la banquise Antarctique, avec les données satellitaires MODIS (Terra et Aqua) et le GISS de la NASA , montre que malgré des réductions locales observées sur la péninsule Antarctique, elles ont été compensées par une croissance de la superficie en Antarctique oriental et sur les grandes plateformes de glace de Ross et de Ronne- Filchner, soit une augmentation progressive entre 2009 et 2019 avec un gain de 5.305 km² de glace !
But do we find ourselves in ‘an interglacial warming period’ at present? Surely the global warming due to the natural emergence from the Younger Dryas was over by around 6000 years BP?
The rate of global warming, of around 0.2C per decade since 1982, is much higher than seen previously. In the 19th century is was about 0.06C per decade. There is no ‘interglacial warming’ mechanism that can account for this.
As for Antarctica, it is currently losing ice at the rate of around 150 billion tons a year, according to NASA estimates. Given that it is mass of ice melting and not surface area disappearing (or gaining), your figures for the surface area are surely irrelevant, non?
Selon les mesures effectuées par les satellites de la NASA, l’Antarctique perd en moyenne 140 milliards de tonnes de glace par an depuis 2002. L’article que vous citez s’intéresse uniquement à la superficie du plateau glaciaire de l’Antarctique – la glace flottante sur les bords du continent, et non à la masse globale de la calotte glaciaire.
Les données recueillies sur une période plus longue (1990) montrent une perte de la superficie de la plateforme glaciaire de l’Antarctique.
Je dois dire aussi, les glaciers terrestres ne sont pas des calottes glaciaires, ni des glaciers marins. Ne les confondons pas inutilement.
LOL! Denialist sophistry means the same in any language. You’ve explicitly resurrected two zombie denialist arguments ranked by SkepticalScience (https://skepticalscience.com/argument.php): in English, “Global Warming is Just a Recovery from the Little Ice Age” (no. 200) and “Antarctica is Gaining Ice” (no. 10). Congratulations, you’ve decisively outed yourself as a pseudoskeptic!
“””it would be absurd to assume that the risk of a Lake Palcacocha outburst could be calculated based solely on historical data, without explicitly accounting for global warming caused by fossil fuels”””
Based on the article provided by Secular Animist https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/03/unforced-variations-mar-2025/#comment-831238 –
Isn’t the idea that, through the current calibrated global warming schemes and nebulous feedback factors, Fossil Fuel emission is currently responsible for only 18% of effective radiative forcing, and land use emission to have caused 60% (32%-87%)?
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/adb7f2
“We compare these results with conventional accounting and find that this approach boosts perceived carbon emissions from deforestation, and finds agriculture, the most extensive land user, to be the leading emissions sector and to have caused 60% (32%–87%) of ERF change since 1750. We also find that fossil fuels are responsible for 18% of ERF, a reduced contribution due to masking from cooling co-emissions”
This isn’t to downplay opposition to fossil-fueled development, but it’s striking how the cumulative emissions and net radiative forcing from land management far exceed those from fossil fuels. This estimate also doesn’t account for the destruction of biologically mediated precipitation regulation, such as the loss of pollen, bacteria, and fungi, which plays a significant role in atmospheric dynamics.
In various forums, the ecological destruction commencing for real in 20th century is actively minimized in the current campaign for climate protection, in spite of obvious significant indicators such as 73% of wildlife populations perishing since 1970 https://findingnature.org.uk/2024/10/10/visualising-the-crisis-of-biodiversity-loss/ , and the previously mentioned overwhelming contribution of landscape management to net forcing.
any insights into this obvious and potentially damaging bias is appreciated.
Hi JCM. I’m not familiar with large-scale climate messaging from a “reduce fossil use rapidly” standpoint that fails to include benefits to the biosphere due to less pollution, less land disturbance, less water demand, etc. So you might perceive “actively minimized” emphasis, but I’ve not. Most of the time when I see advocacy to halt warming the planet, they’re not saying things like: “but use more land to graze cattle before fattening them”, for example, or suggesting wind farms shouldn’t be sited and operated with the idea of minimizing harm to birds and bats.
Regarding the single-author study you mention (the quote using the royal “we”) I’d really want to see others analyze his novel economic view rigorously before accepting results, especially since he notes some of the detail he includes is ‘indicative’ due to large assumptions or lack of data precision.
Another point I’m not sure he is properly accounting for is his massive discounting of the impacts of fossil fuels as a forcing due to cooling from their aerosols. His figure 1 appears to show that warming from fossil fuel CO2 is pretty much completely negated by accompanying aerosols. It looks very much like it doesn’t take into account that persistence means some of the CO2 from a lump of 1950 bitumen is still trapping heat today, 73 years or so after the accompanying aerosol dose fell as acid rain. Has he also accounted for the fact that the West, then China, have been addressing the aerosols with pollution controls and scrubbers before they were beginning to switch from burning fossil? Fossil burning is cleaner now, and also still, unfortunately, breaking records every year. There’s also fugitive emissions of methane from wells, pipelines and old coal mines which wouldn’t happen but for fossil fuel extraction.
Does your author cover the fact that some areas cleared for agriculture are forest again?
And does he cover the fact that reforestation also can affect albedo such that the carbon uptake might not outweigh the change in albedo? Nature Communications has a 2024 paper going over that: “Accounting for albedo change to identify climate-positive tree cover restoration” that shows that we need to be thoughtful about reforesting, and there are other papers out there that show restoring deep native grasslands might be more the plan in many areas (including where aridification is changing where trees might still do well).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-46577-1
Whenever we hear professional climate communicators claim that an event is primarily due to fossil fuel burning, or some similarly exaggerated framing, we should recognize that such statements are not based on the best available evidence – be it conventional accounting schemes (47% FF burning) or novel method (18% FF burning). Instead, they represent a distortion of both science and academic publishing.
This trend is causing serious reputational harm to the field by legitimizing the introduction of misleading claims into legal proceedings. Half-truths are, in essence, total lies. It seems that the normalization of half-truths has become so widespread that even respected scientists have lost sight of the fact that they are engaging in deception, perhaps under the belief that the ends justify the means.
I think it’s completely obvious how public facing climate science communication and associated finance is 100% focused on fossil fuel elimination, which is a noble pursuit. However, in the process of leveraging legitimate science as a tool for political persuasion, the reliance on oversimplified narratives is seriously damaging perception of the field’s credibility. Alarmingly, this has created a dynamic where conservation practitioners and climate protection allies like myself are treated as adversaries if we don’t fully subscribe to and fixate on the dominant narrative – though this attitude is largely confined to online climate enthusiasts rather than qualified professionals IRL.
JCM: Whenever we hear professional climate communicators claim that an event is primarily due to fossil fuel burning, or some similarly exaggerated framing, we should recognize that such statements are not based on the best available evidence
BPL: Whenever we hear JCM say something like this, we should recognize that such statements are not based on any available evidence at all.
@JCM – I asked some questions about this one guy’s paper and the broadness of its claim and some possible holes in his logic. Instead of addressing those you accuse me of being mean?
And again, your comments like “I think it’s completely obvious how public facing climate science communication and associated finance is 100% focused on fossil fuel elimination, which is a noble pursuit..” may be completely obvious to you, but when I see discussions of dealing with sources of warming, the agricultural methane production from ruminants and rice is very commonly part of the overall set of things to manage. Read about efforts to improve yields of rice without flooding paddies, or food additives to reduce methane in cattle.
Please provide some published science that would back up the equivalence of heating and cooling for burning of a unit of fossil fuel that would leave the two effects equal, despite the observed reality that warming CO2 persists in the atmosphere far far longer than the cooling aerosols from the same source fossil fuel burn. Also, please address the same topic but account for the decrease in aerosols produced as nations implement more and more pollution controls while still burning carbon fuels. If you believe the warming/cooling ratios of emissions from a modern supercritical coal plant in the US is the same as the first coal plants in 1800s UK or mid-last-century China, I’d really like to see your evidence, since that was a big part of the paper you brought to this forum.
Seriously – science is about asking “where’s your evidence” when a claim is made. The typical helpful scientific response is not to go into a defensive crouch and argue “conservative” is being picked on, if by “conservative” you are talking about people who, currently, are casting about for novel ways to avoid the conclusion that fossil fuels are producing the bulk of warming this century and the second half of the previous century.
So where’s your evidence?
Fair enough. My interest was in the extreme bias in perception created in the climate space. It is not my modus operandi to tear apart a paper – your ideas seem just fine. I’m sure someone would be eager to count emissions with you in this context. Maybe they will chime in on your specific interests.
Regardless whether it’s the controversial 18% or the conventional 47%, it makes no difference. We all know the standard line: “the climate has already been warmed by 1.3C due primarily to the burning of fossil fuels” ™. Then come the conclusions about some recent event, where conditions “were made 200-500 times more likely due to the burning of fossil fuels”. Exactly like that, in official looking stuff; documents for policymakers, etc.
I suspect that, on some level, climate enthusiasts recognize these claims as deceptive, but that awareness is vanishingly rare. If you have any insights into this obvious and potentially damaging bias, I’d be interested. I think we see aspects of the carnage already on full display right on this very thread.
I noticed your cattle and rice ideas; such as providing food additives, or avoid flooding, which is nice thinking. At the same time, it seems to be completely unserious and disproportionate in perspective about the real scale of environmental destruction ongoing, and how this relates directly to the changes outside to date. This disconnected and disproportionate framing is embedded deep into all aspects of how the issue is communicated. This is the type of thing I’m interested about.
In Re to b fagan, 26 Mar 2025 at 12:08 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/03/andean-glaciers-have-shrunk-more-than-ever-before-in-the-holocene/#comment-831546
Dear Sir,
I would like to make you aware of the circumstance that the controversial Wedderburn-Bisshop article was cited by Secular Animist already on 17 Mar 2025 at 3:36 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/03/unforced-variations-mar-2025/#comment-831238 ,
and has not attracted any attention in the original thread yet.
With respect to perceived incompatibility of attributions made in this article with attributions made in earlier literature, I would like to ask a more generic question regarding attribution studies: Are we indeed sure that there is no “neglected forcing”, so far arbitrarily considered unimportant and thus not included in evalutions yet, although it does in fact play a certain role?
Specifically, I am so far aware of a single study, by Lague et al
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/acdbe1 ,
wherein the authors attempted to quantify the role of water availability for evaporation from the land as a climate forcing.
It appears that so far, there is np global reconstruction of past precipitation and that prevailing view on Earth hydrology still takes global water cycle intensity as a mere feedback to global mean surface temperature changes,
I am therefore afraid that possible historical changes in water availability for evaporation from land might have never been considered as a possible forcing in attribution studies.
And yet another question regarding attribution studies. How will be the attribution made for a forcing that does not work directly (or has only a quite weak direct warming or cooling effect on global climate), however, it strongly changes climate sensitivity to other forcings?
If you could provide explanations and/or some references clarifying these questions, I will highly appreciate your help.
Best regards
Tomáš
JCM: We all know the standard line: “the climate has already been warmed by 1.3C due primarily to the burning of fossil fuels” ™. Then come the conclusions about some recent event, where conditions “were made 200-500 times more likely due to the burning of fossil fuels”. Exactly like that, in official looking stuff; documents for policymakers, etc.
I suspect that, on some level, climate enthusiasts recognize these claims as deceptive,
BPL: Except that they’re not, so you’re solving a nonexistent problem.
b fagan to JCM: “ Please […] back up [your] equivalence of heating and cooling for burning of a unit of fossil fuel that would leave the two effects equal
JCM won’t be able. Nor the author of the proposal for a “novel accounting” of the warming effects that is JCM’s newest reference darling.
b fagan: “ despite the observed reality that warming CO2 persists in the atmosphere far far longer than the cooling aerosols from the same source fossil fuel burn.”
Yeah – to quantify the scale of manipulation here – let’s look at the residence times of both:
– aerosols are Cloud Condensation Nuclei (CCNs) – so most of them would be washed out of the troposphere with rain they help to create – i.e. order of magnitude of the residence time of water vapour in air (i.e. ca.: ONE WEEK).
– in contrast – the surplus CO2 takes MANY DECADES, some of it – centuries/millennia, to clear out of the air.
To make it better, we have a double standard: JCM and/or his author:
– uses the cooling by short-residence time FF aerosols to reduce the importnace of the warming by the long-residence time FF CO2
– while ignoring the coolling by the increase in land albedo due land use change (forest albedo is considerably smaller than that of corplands, pastures, bare soil, or a desert) EVEN THOUGH this increase in albedo, unlike FF aerosols, does not last a week, but is PERMANENT – i.e. will continue cooling even AFTER most of the surplus CO2 released by deforestation has been already cleared out from the atmosphere.
In other words – JCM is seeing an albedo straw in the eye of the other, and ignores the beam permanently embeded in his own.
But for JCM – just the recongnition of the role of GHGs at all – is still a progress, brought on by the new paper with “novel accounting” of the role of non-FF GHGs. A progress, because just a few months back he would have none of it – attacking the credibility of the climate modelling for the “artificial fixation and overemphasis on the outputs of trace gas [Co2 – P.] ”
So under the influence of the “novel accounting” paper, our JCM evolved from the “ anything but the Co2 ” denier to the “anything but FFs” denier.
And who said that “people don’t change”? ;-)
Yes yes I know. The various distortions here are a symptom of something quite insidious. The examples are accumulating.
Nevertheless, academic style contributions from conservationists such as Wedderburn-Bisshop in the framework of emission counting offers a useful reminder.
Underpinning the message is the carbon opportunity cost, which aligns directly as a proxy: We are all on the hook for profound ecological dysfunction. Billions and billions of hectares rendered to rockflour, disappearance of species, and erosion of the essential regulatory functions of the planet. This has critically weakened the natural buffers that sustained stability for millennia. I think it’s not controversial.
Emission counting is just one of many possible approaches to conservation. The role of aerosol co-emissions is already well established, yet it’s striking how many seem oblivious. I can’t imagine why this is the point of contention. In any case, it should be obvious how climate falls under the umbrella of Earth system science; not that Earth science falls under a scheme fixated with FF emission.
I welcome ideas to jolt people into awareness of environmental conservation, numerous co-benefits, and the direct connection to changes outside, from any perspective.
anyone paying attention:
B Fagan is one of the finest communicators around. He doesn’t clutter this comment section, but he is always worth a careful read or listen.
Please.
There is a death, taxes and …JCM downplaying the need to dramatically reduce the use of fossil fuels.
Particularly when he assures as:
JCM “ This isn’t to downplay opposition to fossil-fueled development, but
only to downplay them after the but:
JCM: , but it’s striking how the cumulative emissions and net radiative forcing from land management FAR EXCEED those from fossil fuels.
BTW – these “far exceeding” is not based on IPCC, but on … somebody proposing … a “novel” accounting – in which radiative forcing of the land use changes is NO LONGER calculated from the EXTRA GHGs staying in the atmosphere, but from ….cumulative gross land emissions of GHGs since 1750 WITHOUT accounting for the cumulative uptake of the same since 1750. And ignoring the negative forcing from the albedo that increases severalfold following deforestation, right?
So I prefer your original honesty, without the current pretense of how you don’t intend to downplay the need to reduce the fossil fuel emissions, you know something like the good ol JCM, circa December, bemoaning the climate modelling for its: “ artificial fixation and overemphasis on the outputs of trace gas [Co2 – P.] ”.
To borrow from Gary Oldman Never be ashamed of what you are. .
Some historical perspective on glaciers prior to man-made CO2…
“At Stockholm (1910) the next CIG President, Eduard Brueckner, Professor of Geography at Vienna University, described the worldwide glacier shrinkage since the middle of the 19th century as a cyclic phenomenon. Three years later at Toronto (1913) President Charles Rabot was able to report the first of the glacier re-advances which became general in the following decade….”
Uh, “Bruckner cycles” have been used to “explain” everything from climate to stock prices over the past century and a bit. They have not been shown to have the least bit of predictive or actual theoretical explanatory power in the least.
Good lord. Next I suppose you’ll be telling us that no ice around Svalbard in the 1920s means there was no arctic ice anywhere in the Arctic, right?
Are you really denying that glaciers have shrunk and then re-advanced?
Clue for you:
small magnitude ~decadal wriggles ≠ large magnitude long term trends*
In any case “Bruckner cycles” are pretty much well inside all-out crank territory these days.
_____
*this, of course, is the very same thinking error/intentional propaganda position the proponents of the “Great Global Warming Hiatus” demonstrated.
We’re denying that it’s in some sort of exactly repeatable cycles.
See also an arsonist, caught with 2 empty jerry cans at the origin of the forest fire, proclaiming his innocence: “Are you really denying that wildfires happened long before humans?“
No. He’s denying–and correctly–that the decades of glacial retreat observed on a global basis during most or all of our lifetimes is “cyclical” in the same sense as was (allegedly) true in the 19th century.
Nope.
What I deny is that small magnitude wriggles in glacial extents in a few glaciers pre-20th century have anything much to tell us about the long large magnitude declining trend globally in pretty much all glaciers since then.
As should you.
“In rock samples collected at the edges of the glaciers, researchers found isotope concentrations close to zero. From this, they conclude that these rocks must have remained covered by ice throughout the entire Holocene, ”
That’s a very bold statement. Are they suggestion that having a glacier on top of the rock for a few thousand years doesn’t cause erosion that would wipe the surface layer?
I guess it doesn’t occur to you that if rocks are washed by or immersed in water containing modern isotope levels, they would take up some of those isotopes?
Keith, your point is a valid one – but one discussed at length in the paper. Always helps to read the actual paper before jumping in.,
In point of fact, the erosion cited above as some sort of criticism is cited in the actual research as providing a clean slate to start the timing of surface/near surface exposure.
His criticism is actually about a feature and not a bug.
I don’t see any open access copies out there yet, but his thesis using the very same data is available here: https://dlib.bc.edu/islandora/object/bc-ir:109207/datastream/PDF/download/bc-ir_109207.pdf
All,
No I have not read the paywalled research, but I have read the Lead author’s master’s thesis with exactly the same title from 3 years earlier. Yes there is a lot of discussion about how they assigned numbers to the erosion rate.
The whole discussion is very circular. Some obvious questions that someone should ask.
They are claiming that their results show effectively zero non-ice covered history, and yet to throw away the erosion idea, they assumed 5000 years of exposure followed by only 5000 years of burial. Surely they should have used numbers closer to their own findings..
And even assuming their 50:50 split, surely 5000 years of exposure in a high diurnal temperature range environment would have led to significant breakup of the top few metres leading to much higher erosion and mass transport once the glacier was reestablished.
And their whole assumption is that there is either ice to some random thickness, or bare rock. .
I see nothing in their paper to negate the possibility that there was 1000 years of no glaciation followed by 9000 years of significant glaciation
You could write a letter to the editor of Science stating your “criticisms”, you know. Or will the climate conspirators there ignore your “expertise” and “science”?
Keith Woollard: That’s a very bold statement. Are they suggestion that having a glacier on top of the rock for a few thousand years doesn’t cause erosion that would wipe the surface layer?
From the link in the discussed post – erosion rate is explicitly included in the calculation of the age of the rock exposure. Furthermore, as the authors write – the analysis requires “ carefully scrutinizing in the framework of detailed field studies, including local terrace or moraine stratigraphy and regional morphostratigraphic relationships; as well as in light of independent age constraints ”
Which of the above you have just falsified. Mr. Woollard to JUSTIFY your arrogant claim:
“That’s a very bold statement.” (c) Keith Woollard.
Until then – Occam razor suggests instead something about you – that you PRESUME that despite being a complete ignorant, you must be SO BRILLIANT that you have figured out what professional scientists working in a given discipline for decades did not think of.
Fits well with your overall persona on RC – see your earlier attempts to discredit others based on your failure to grasp even such elementary concepts like “feedback”, or the difference between a “feedback” and a “forcing”; compounded by your the inability to read?/understand? posts in which people explain these things to you.
By their intellectual fruits you shall know them: Mr. Keith Woollard – everyone.
I presume it’s because RWE is an electricity generator, and Germany has made some bad moves by burning far too much lignite for far too long, and in shutting down nukes early for political reasons. There are renewable options for generating electricity, and have been for decades (and even FF options rank gas < oil < hard coal < lignite in terms of CO2 per kWh). And Germans are rich enough to subsidise a rapid transition, where Indians or Nepalis are not.
FF producers are harder to attribute because 95-98% of "their" emissions are from their customers, not from their own operations. Those are my, our and your emissions, not Shell's. And like it or lump it, there is a large installed base of stuff running on them, probably amounting to more than global GDP if we shut them all down tomorrow. Stuff on which we all depend.
Why not sue everyone who has or ever had a car, aircon or central heating? And whose parents and grandparents had coal fires? And Indian villagers burning cow dung? Ford and GM for being too slow to roll out electric cars? Boeing and Airbus? Thomas Cook and KLM? Hotels in Vegas, Acapulco and the Costa Brava? Their own local power company? The local farmers? Pretty soon you’ll have spread the target so thin you’ll have paid out more in legal fees even if you do win.
FF producers are harder to attribute because 95-98% of “their” emissions are from their customers, not from their own operations.
First, 6 Gt from the production, transport and processing of FF is 15% out of the total of 38 Gt, not “2-5%” as you imply with your “95-98%”. Second, it is the FF producers who have made trillions of dollars in net profits, and it is them who gets
about half a trillion dollars annually in subsidies for doing so. So I wouldn’t be so quick with getting them off the hook.
In fact, Dave, you and most of us, are a success story for the effectiveness of the fossil-fuel messaging described a few years back by Mark Kaufmann:
===
“British Petroleum, the second largest non-state owned oil company in the world, with 18,700 gas and service stations worldwide, hired the public relations professionals Ogilvy & Mather to promote the slant that climate change is not the fault of an oil giant, but that of individuals. It’s here that BP, first promoted and soon successfully popularized the term “carbon footprint” in the early aughts. The company unveiled its “carbon footprint calculator” in 2004 so one could assess how their normal daily life – going to work, buying food, and (gasp) traveling – is largely responsible for heating the globe.”
===
So the goals of the campaign designed by one of the leading PR companies in the US, were twofold:
1. to redirect the responsibility – “ It’s not us, it’s you” – so unless you, the consumer, have sworn off EVERY imaginable use of fossil fuels – i.e. “ no car, no aircon, no central heating“, then you are in no position to criticize fossil fuel corporations that make trillions in net profits on emitting 15% of the total fossil fuel emissions,
2. to sow apathy – when people run their personal GHG calculator and see that, short of the life-changing sacrifices, they won’t be able to reduce their emissions ENOUGH – then why bother at all, let’s enjoy our consumption while it lasts -and “After us, Deluge!”
Both effect – the redirection and the encouraged apathy – get the Fossil Fuel Industrial Complex and the politicians they bought – off the hook.
And it worked like a miracle – despite a few critics here and there (Mark Kaufmann, Bill McKibben)
– those of us concerned about the environment internalized ^* the message
– while the deniers got a handy weapon to bash us with: “if you haven’t reduced your personal emissions to ZERO , then you are hypocrite and have no moral right to criticize others who drive big trucks, live in big houses and fly in private jets, nor you have the right you criticize the fossil fuel lobbyists that delay any meaningful action on AGW to protect their profits.”
P.S. How well we internalized the message – is illustrated when Dave, a good-will, reasonable, educated man, seems to have swallowed the BP’s argument, hook. line and sinker – presents it here as his own views (see above) and even take’s BP argument …. further:
Dave_Geologist: “Why not sue […] Indian villagers burning cow dung? ”
even though these Indian villagers, unlike BP, Exon, Saudi Arabia or Russia, don’t make … $ billions or trillions from that, nor the “cow dung” is … even a “fossil fuel”.
Oh, the power of corporate persuasion…
Source for that 15% please, Piotr? Those are 5-10000-mile pipeline or LNG tanker numbers. If you’re including the energy used to turn crude into Barbi, or the BP crude the Kochs buy, refine and retail (they don’t own any wells), those are customer overheads, not producer overhead.
And sorry, that half a trillion is a common trope, but it’s as wrong as “CO2 is plant food”. In most of the world (maybe not the US, but certainly the UK, Australia and OPEC), O&G production is taxed higher than normal businesses, directly (PRT) or indirectly (subsidising State Oil Company costs, government take higher than investment share, extended capital depreciation periods compared to everyone else). Tax relief on decommissioning is an allowable business expense. The now-controversial UK scheme was a net positive to the taxman (relief now for taxes paid on revenue decades ago, and no inflation allowance). Fuel burnt in operations is tax-deductible, and the taxman can read company accounts just like you and me. Do you really think BP is giving up 25% tax relief on 10% of it’s operational costs, just for some less unkind PR? Piss-poor Big Bad Wolf if they are!
It’s a particularly pernicious myth because it leads people to believe there’s a fortune out there that can fund decarbonisation at no cost to us. There isn’t. I look out my window and see three SUVs and my hatchback. Did BP force my neighbours to buy cars half a ton heavier than mine? Personal responsibility cuts both ways, and all ways. Profits are a few dollars a barrel, it would take more like a $50 a barrel tax to make people change their habits.
The big numbers that are thrown around (usually without attribution but I’ll see if I can find the EU estimate which has the detail) is mainly consumer subsidies in OPEC countries, selling the product at less than market price, and a non-charged cost-of-carbon externality. Your carbon, my carbon, and granny in China’s carbon. It includes carbon credits grandfathered to steel mills, and things like the government carrying the cost of nuclear waste disposal and nuclear accident risk, rather than the generators taking out private insurance. Even the low VAT the UK charges domestic energy consumers is counted as a subsidy to the energy industry, as is the green levy charged to consumers to pay for subsidised wind and solar contracts. O&G shareholders don’t get a penny of that.
There is no free lunch courtesy of Shell or BP. We, consumers, will have to pay and change our habits. That’s a feature not a bug. As prices go up, we’ll consume less or switch consumption.
Dave_Geologist: “Source for that 15% please, Piotr?
Weren’t you the guy who dismissed the opposing point by producing a precisely looking number “95-98%” …. without giving ANY source? Do as I tell you, not as I do?
But that’s OK, here you go:
“Fossil fuels contribute around 72% of total global greenhouse gas emissions (37.8 GtCO2eq of 52.8 GtCO2eq). Around 6 Gt of these emissions result from the production, transport and processing of coal, oil and gas.”
https://www.energy-transitions.org/bitesize/its-in-the-charts-reducing-fossil-fuels/
and another source:
https://www.iea.org/energy-system/fossil-fuels
“The production, transport and processing of oil and gas resulted in 5.1 billion tonnes (Gt) CO2 equivalent in 2022
(this does not include emissions from coal that the first number included)
Dave _Geologist: “And sorry, that half a trillion is a common trope, but it’s as wrong as “CO2 is plant food”
Put your money where is. The way I do:
=== https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/trillion-dollar-question-fossil-fuel-subsidies-2024-11-15/ ====
” The International Energy Agency (IEA) calculated that fossil fuel consumption subsidies stood at $620 billion in 2023.That is a sharp decline from the record sum of more than $1.2 trillion in 2022 – the year where energy prices soared sharply in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which saw subsidies surpass the trillion-dollar threshold for the first time.
Other calculations taking into account the wider ramifications come up with a much bigger number. According to International Monetary Fund (IMF) calculations, whose latest calculations are available only for the record year of 2022, explicit subsidies – or money spent by governments on undercharging for supply costs – amount to $1.26 trillion.
But that makes only up about a fifth of the total amount, which the IMF puts at $7 trillion in 2022 – or 7.1% of global GDP – once the sum of undercharging for environmental costs and forgone tax revenues is taken into account.”
====================
“ As wrong as “CO2 is plant food” and “particularly pernicious myth“, you say, eh?
Reread the paragraph jgnfld. The researchers did not find “modern isotopes” on rock surfaces left there by rainwater (you might experiment by putting a pebble on a slope, pouring water on it and seeing what happens). In any case I’m sure they cut cores and sampled subsurface rock, below any weathering layer.
I presume they found an absence of short-lived cosmogenic isotopes, short in terms of thousands of years but not in terms of decades, which shows that the rocks were buried deeper under ice than the penetration depth of the relevant high-energy cosmic rays. Had they been exposed during (say) the MWP, or during 19th century “cycles”, there’d be cosmogenic isotopes remaining to be sampled.
Correct now that I’ve had a chance to read the article. For those who cannot access a research library, the material is available in Gorin’s thesis a link to which is given above.
The water baths actually served to provide a newly=cleaned slate.
Re the Wedderburn-Bisshop paper, that’s certainly an important point going forwards wrt deforestation.
But in the context of the OP, it’s not reasonable to blame Neolithic farmers, Medieval charcoal-burners, 18th-century charcoal-using iron-smelters, Egyptian copper-smelters, or even James Watt, who died half a century before the CO2 greenhouse effect was measured experimentally. None of them knew the (climate) consequences of what they were doing.
Indeed you probably shouldn’t blame RWE up until the 1970s or 1980s. The warming from coal etc. was masked by those nasty aerosols we cleaned up. There’s no excuse after 1995 when the signal incontestably emerged above natural variation (indeed, that’s when most major O&G companies outside of the USA and OPEC acknowledged the reality of AGW and pulled out of the organisations that continued to deny it).
Pick a date somewhere between then and the 1980s, when people like Isaac Asimov were warning us of the consequences to come if we went on the way we did, in the public-outreach domain rather than in dry scientific journals locked away in libraries 95-99% of people couldn’t access. Did Hansen’s projections around then get much traction outside the scientific domain? They were pretty much spot on (the one with too much warming was based on no mitigation and we did have mitigation, just not enough, fast enough).
The issue in the 1960s and 1970s was not a physics failure – models were right enough to say “No, guys, carrying on like this is not a good idea”. It was a failure to anticipate the growth rate in emissions. For those who can access it, Frank Fraser Darling in 1969 was in line with Hansen on the physics, but more concerned about population growth and habitat loss because he totally failed to anticipate the rise in emissions per person (in part because he was a bit of a naturalistic-fallacy man, very down on modern cities and industry as places for people to live and work in, and hoped the developing world would find a “better way” rather than just copying the industrialised world).
Asimov was warning about the greenhouse effect in 1959. G.S. Callendar was warning about it in 1938.
1958: Bell Labs Telephone Hour (brief)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-AXBbuDxRY
Fact check: A 1912 article about burning coal and climate change is authentic – https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/08/13/fact-check-yes-1912-article-linked-burning-coal-climate-change/8124455002/ [I think there was something around then at NYTImes, but not finding it just now]
useful early history: The Discovery of Global Warming https://history.aip.org/climate/co2.htm [AIP is particularly useful, thanks Spencer Weart and team]
The Asimovs:
Isaac Asimov on the Greenhouse Effect: 1977
Isaac Asimov on the Greenhouse Effect: 1989
And, good grief, on ITV(UK mass-market commercial TV) in 1981! Estimates of deforestation’s impact ranging from zero to equal to that of fossil fuels.
1) It will be interesting to see what the German court decides. The USA and UK have put up much of the CO2 from past emissions and China is now the largest emitter. My impression is that China would dismiss the Peruvian farmer’s suit and the same is likely here in the USA—a US jury just hit Greenpeace with a $660 Million penalty for protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline. International Law is about the same as it was 2500 years ago in the Melian Dialogue –“the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must.”
2) What is not often mentioned is the vital benefits the fossil fuel industry has provided in the past – the energy necessary to grow food, transport food to cities, heat homes in winter, provide water, etc. Plus the energy needed to prevail in war. Hence I think national legislatures should be responsible for the decisions on energy policy and I think they will tend to give fossil fuel companies immunity for past emissions. The Green Party in Germany only won 13.5% of the votes in the recent election and Germany is struggling with energy shortages. Plus I haven’t seen any EU army proposing to field solar-powered –or solar smelted — army tanks, missiles and jet fighters against the Russians and Chinese — although one should never discount the EU’s ….er ..eccentricity.
Don Williams
“My impression is that China would dismiss the Peruvian farmer’s suit and the same is likely here in the USA—a US jury just hit Greenpeace with a $660 Million penalty for protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline.”
The Greenpeace example is not a great comparison. The Greenpeace case was heard in North Dakota an oil state so the Jury would be very sympathetic to the pipeline company. They also sued Greenpeace for defamation and orchestrating a criminally behaved protest and this has nothing to do with the Peruvian farmer claiming that the fossil fuels companies emissions has caused him damage.
“International Law is about the same as it was 2500 years ago in the Melian Dialogue –“the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must.”
Not really. Public complainents have won many victories against large corporates. This must really annoy you.
“2) What is not often mentioned is the vital benefits the fossil fuel industry has provided in the past – the energy necessary to grow food, transport food to cities, heat homes in winter, provide water, etc. Plus the energy needed to prevail in war. ”
The peruvian case might come down to weighing costs and benefits and that will be very difficult but not impossible. However personally I dont think we should be trying to solve the climate problem by lawsuits.
“Hence I think national legislatures should be responsible for the decisions on energy policy and I think they will tend to give fossil fuel companies immunity for past emissions. ”
Even the fascist leaning trump might be reluctant to give immunity because it would destroy the whole purpose of civil law.
“The Green Party in Germany only won 13.5% of the votes in the recent election and Germany is struggling with energy shortages. Plus I haven’t seen any EU army proposing to field solar-powered –or solar smelted — army tanks, missiles and jet fighters against the Russians and Chinese — although one should never discount the EU’s ….er ..eccentricity.”
The German grid uses renewable energy and that electricity is used in arms manufacture mixed in with electricity from non renewable sources. One day it will be all renewables. To the manufacturing process its all the same electricity.
Much manufacturing is NOT done with electricity — and I haven’t seen heavy tanks powered by solar cells and batteries. Greens fail to realize a government has many pressing problems, threats and responsibilities — and climate policy has to be done within the context of other pressures and forces. National defense. Feeding the people and keeping them warm in winter. Transport.
Re US environmental lawsuits, here is what the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Juliana vs United States:
” “it is beyond the power of an Article III court to order, design, supervise, or implement the plaintiffs’ requested remedial plan. As the opinions of their experts make plain, any effective plan would necessarily require a host of complex policy decisions entrusted, for better or worse, to the wisdom and discretion of the executive and legislative branches.”
That dismissal was just upheld by the US Supreme Court.
Juliana vs US was filled in 2015 and was the major case promoting the questionable theory of environmental law. It is the US Congress who has to determine what should be done to curtail CO2 emissions, when tasks should be done, how much money to spend and what laws to pass.
While at the same time ensuring the nation is defended , the people are fed, the elderly receive income, the houses stay warm, the transport system works and the economy doesn’t crash.
In that debate, the voters will realize that the fossil fuel industry gives them many vital products and services — and so far environmental groups and their lawyers have given us …..what?
Don Williams
” and I haven’t seen heavy tanks powered by solar cells and batteries.Greens fail to realize a government has many pressing problems, threats and responsibilities — and climate policy has to be done within the context of other pressures and forces. National defense. Feeding the people and keeping them warm in winter. Transport.”
Eventually tanks will be powered by renewables, either batteries, or fuel cells, or biofuels or some other technology. Nobody said everything must be electrified immediately by tomorrow so your argument is a strawman. You are also stating the obvious.
“Re US environmental lawsuits, here is what the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Juliana vs United States….”
I googled the case: Juliana v USA ” First filed in 2015, Juliana v. United States involved 21 young plaintiffs, six from Eugene, who argued that the federal government’s role in allowing and promoting fossil fuels contributed to climate change and violated young Americans’ Fifth and Ninth Amendment rights.” What has this got to do with the peruvian case where a corporation was being sued?
But anyway, suing governments or accusing them of breaking the law has virtually zero chance of success. It’s a waste of time and is not the right target so on that we appear to agree. I think governments role is carbon taxes and cap and trade schemes, and subsidising renewables etcetera . Only the Democrats have done anything like that about the climate issue. Since you lament the lack of progress on the climate issue, you would of course support them. So thanks for that.
In the USA Congress regulates interstate commerce and corporations– and that overrides actions by the states. I assume something similar applies in bureaucratic EU.
Congress is accountable to the voters — environmental lawyers, Democrat judges and their wealthy financiers are not.
Only Congress is qualified to make the many complex tradeoffs to deal with multiple problems and threats. Including treaties with other nations to ensure our enemies do not benefit from ignoring carbon emissions while our economy struggles to reduce them.
This point is the basis of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that was upheld by the US Supreme Court– albeit without prejudice (i.e, other environmental suits may still be heard by the Supreme Court in the future.
DW: Democrat judges and their wealthy financiers are not.
BPL: I keep my Soros money in a big pool in the back yard. Want to go for a swim?
DW: the voters will realize that the fossil fuel industry gives them many vital products and services
BPL: No kidding. We’re trying to substitute other was that give the same products and services. Those products and services are IN NO WAY limited to what fossil fuels can provide.
DW: and so far environmental groups and their lawyers have given us …..what?
BPL: An end to particular pipelines, coal mines, etc., and broad support for renewable energy.
1) In response to my comment that national legislatures will tend to give fossil fuel companies immunity for past emissions, NigelJ said: “Even the fascist leaning trump might be reluctant to give immunity because it would destroy the whole purpose of civil law.”
2) Strange — in 2015 the Moral Demigod Barack Obama and US Congress gave the US telephone companies full immunity for illegal spying on us. Spying we found out about only because Edward Snowden ruined his life to warn us after Obama’s Director of National Intelligence lied to the American People and Congress —under oath — about the spying.
https://theweek.com/articles/516842/should-telecoms-pass
Note especially Glenn Greenwalt’s comments.
To quantify the CO2 intensity point:
There were 1 billion people in 1804, and about 8 billion today. CO2 emissions per annum have increased by a factor of 150, since 1850.
150 ÷ 8 = 20 (rounded). 1 ÷ 20 = 5.%. That’s the share of emissions attributable to population growth. And that’s being generous to population growth’s contribution by assuming no increase in emissions per head between 1804 and 1850.
From what I can glean German Law is based mainly on Byzantine Law, which was based on Roman Law.
That has a concept of “vincible ignorance” – should have known, ignorance is no defence, guilty; and “invincible ignorance” – couldn’t and shouldn’t have known, ignorance is a defence, innocent.
Scotland has a mixed Common/Roman Law system and the offence of Culpable and Reckless Conduct (a sub-category of which is Reckless Endangerment, which I’ve heard often enough in crime shows to persuade me that at least some US States have it too). Interestingly England doesn’t, despite being a Common Law system like the USA. There have been some high-profile cases where it was obvious someone “should” have been prosecuted and convicted but got off because there was no intent (there are no-intent convictions, but there has to be an associated crime such as a robbery, or a breach of HSE, traffic, etc. regulations).
In the Scottish legal definitions, “recklessness” has to go beyond the normal everyday usage, basically beyond what a reasonable person would do. And the harm doesn’t have to actually happen, potential harm is enough, although I presume the penalty is less for the latter.
Assuming most jurisdictions have something similar (it’s such an obvious loophole otherwise that I would expect Statute or Case Law would have seen the need to encompass it), “didn’t know” would be a likely pre-1995 defence (reasonable people could have said “What if there’s missing physics, wait until the signal emerges above the noise.”). “Don’t believe it” obviously not, unless there were reasonable grounds for not believing it, which doesn’t apply to AGW and its impact on glaciers. The challenge might be passing a likelihood test (RWE produced such a tiny amount of global emissions, in practice they made no meaningful difference to the (potential) outcome).
Disclaimer: IANAL.
BPL, you can’t expect corporations to respond to voices crying in the wilderness when the public, who are also their customers, elected do-nothing governments and kept on trucking.
I picked the 1980s because that’s when it was getting traction and the IPCC was set up. And when Thatcher gave her speech to the UN. I first became aware in the mid-90s from a library book written around 1990.
To expand on English law (but remember, IANAL), in most cases there is an avenue for prosecution, which is why the rare exceptions are newsworthy.
Failure in a duty of care seems to be the way in for things like a mother leaving children at home and going to the pub and then there’s a house fire, a captain leaving the bridge unmanned in a busy shipping lane, or a paddle-board operator taking novices onto a river in spate despite the visible risk and a severe weather warning.
The challenge then would be whether RWE had a duty of care to some random town thousands of miles away.
DG: The challenge then would be whether RWE had a duty of care to some random town thousands of miles away.
BPL: They at the very least had a prima facie responsibility not to do that town any harm.
Stefan,
I am sure your Figure 2 is accurate, but if you are using it to show the FF are the cause then you are also being deliberately deceptive. How does an image like this fit your narrative?
https://web.archive.org/web/20100528085216/http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2001/07/glacierbaymap.gif
And for greater context
https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2002/0391/intro.html
Keith Woollard “ How does an image of [some glacier, somewhere, shrinking before 1850)] fit your narrative?
The same way that that an image proving a forest fire long before humans, does NOT make
the prosecutors “narrative” that the human caught at the origin of the forest fire, with two empy has cans, his eyebrows singed, and his clothing reeeking of gasoline, had started that fire – is “ delibrately deceptive“…
And of all people on RC – YOU, Keith Woollard, accusing Stefan, of being “ deliberately deceptive??? You, Keith Woollard ??? ;-)
The battle on measures against climate warming should be fought on the political scene, not in the court. Legal cases is a waste of time and money and diverts the focus on the real responsible. The best political tool to combat emissions, is to impose so high economic penalties on climate gas emissions, that it becomes cheaper to clean up than to emit.
The problem with this is that the political system has been bought and paid for by fossil fuel interests. Since the politicians refuse to do their job of protecting the interests of their people, the courts are the last resort…at least until the fossil fools also buy them.
Re: Erik Lindeberg In an ideal world yes, In the real one – one path does not prevent the other. And since the political will for put the price on emissions is waning – Trump in the US; abandoment of the revenue-neutral consumer carbon tax in Canada, after successfull misrepresenting it as a tax grab; wavering of EU over its Green Deal, – the court actions may be soon the only game in town left.
One would love to see intelligent discussion amongst people who actually know what they’re talking about here instead of endless arguments among and corrections of people who think they know more than they do or actively believe they are right when they’re wrong.
ou are entirely correct: “The best political tool to combat emissions, is to impose so high economic penalties on climate gas emissions, that it becomes cheaper to clean up than to emit.”
Yes, that is correct. But don’t forget there are two ways to do it. One is by raising penalties. The other is by using innovation to lower the cost of cleaning up.
And both are in play. Note the cost curve of modern RE. (No link, since it’s VERY easy to search.)
Kevin, the following is something interesting related to the costs of renewables fyi.
“Renewables allow us to pay less, not twice”
https://electrotechrevolution.substack.com/p/renewables-allow-us-to-pay-less-not
Deploying “a simple, stylized example” and “this simple webtool” are also a fallacies. It is not evidence of anything. It is opinion and rhetoric. Where can I buy a “10 GWh battery ” in the UK?
Meanwhile the Peruvian Glaciers are still melting away.
Poor Peru, using a webtool is not a fallacy. A fallacy is a mistaken belief. A webtool is just a webtool and such things are used all the time. You have to prove the webtool is faulty, by showing the maths and physics in the webtool is wrong. You have not.
California has a 3 gw/ hr battery instillation. So logically if you build several of those you have 10 gw / hr. It all comes down to money and motivation, something out of the control of the people who prepared the study.
Even if renewables with storage were Free they are still incapable of meeting current and future global BAU electricity demand.
Even if Renewables with storage were Free they are still incapable of providing current and future global BAU energy demand, or heating and industrial heat and desalination plants, and global transportation energy demand, or supplying zero emission cement and industrial scale nitrogen fertilizers and plastics.
Meanwhile the Peruvian glaciers continue to melt along with the Antarctic Ice sheets.
Empty evidence free assertions, Propaganda.