Is Global Warming Unstoppable?—Theory Also Says Energy Conservation Doesn't Help

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.unews.utah.edu/p/?r=112009-1

Is Global Warming Unstoppable?

Theory Also Says Energy Conservation Doesn't Help

Nov. 22, 2009 - In a provocative new study, a University of Utah scientist argues that rising carbon dioxide emissions - the major cause of global warming - cannot be stabilized unless the world's economy collapses or society builds the equivalent of one new nuclear power plant each day.

"It looks unlikely that there will be any substantial near-term departure from recently observed acceleration in carbon dioxide emission rates," says the new paper by Tim Garrett, an associate professor of atmospheric sciences.

Garrett's study was panned by some economists and rejected by several journals before acceptance by Climatic Change, a journal edited by renowned Stanford University climate scientist Stephen Schneider. The study will be published online this week.

The study - which is based on the concept that physics can be used to characterize the evolution of civilization - indicates:

• Energy conservation or efficiency doesn't really save energy, but instead spurs economic growth and accelerated energy consumption.


• Throughout history, a simple physical "constant" - an unchanging mathematical value - links global energy use to the world's accumulated economic productivity, adjusted for inflation. So it isn't necessary to consider population growth and standard of living in predicting society's future energy consumption and resulting carbon dioxide emissions.


• "Stabilization of carbon dioxide emissions at current rates will require approximately 300 gigawatts of new non-carbon-dioxide-emitting power production capacity annually - approximately one new nuclear power plant (or equivalent) per day," Garrett says. "Physically, there are no other options without killing the economy."

Getting Heat for Viewing Civilization as a "Heat Engine"

Garrett says colleagues generally support his theory, while some economists are critical. One economist, who reviewed the study, wrote: "I am afraid the author will need to study harder before he can contribute."

"I'm not an economist, and I am approaching the economy as a physics problem," Garrett says. "I end up with a global economic growth model different than they have."

Garrett treats civilization like a "heat engine" that "consumes energy and does 'work' in the form of economic production, which then spurs it to consume more energy," he says.

"If society consumed no energy, civilization would be worthless," he adds. "It is only by consuming energy that civilization is able to maintain the activities that give it economic value. This means that if we ever start to run out of energy, then the value of civilization is going to fall and even collapse absent discovery of new energy sources."

Garrett says his study's key finding "is that accumulated economic production over the course of history has been tied to the rate of energy consumption at a global level through a constant factor."

That "constant" is 9.7 (plus or minus 0.3) milliwatts per inflation-adjusted 1990 dollar. So if you look at economic and energy production at any specific time in history, "each inflation-adjusted 1990 dollar would be supported by 9.7 milliwatts of primary energy consumption," Garrett says.

Garrett tested his theory and found this constant relationship between energy use and economic production at any given time by using United Nations statistics for global GDP (gross domestic product), U.S. Department of Energy data on global energy consumption during1970-2005, and previous studies that estimated global economic production as long as 2,000 years ago. Then he investigated the implications for carbon dioxide emissions.

"Economists think you need population and standard of living to estimate productivity," he says. "In my model, all you need to know is how fast energy consumption is rising. The reason why is because there is this link between the economy and rates of energy consumption, and it's just a constant factor."

Garrett adds: "By finding this constant factor, the problem of global economic growth is dramatically simpler. There is no need to consider population growth and changes in standard of living because they are marching to the tune of the availability of energy supplies."

To Garrett, that means the acceleration of carbon dioxide emissions is unlikely to change soon because our energy use today is tied to society's past economic productivity.

"Viewed from this perspective, civilization evolves in a spontaneous feedback loop maintained only by energy consumption and incorporation of environmental matter," Garrett says. It is like a child that "grows by consuming food, and when the child grows, it is able to consume more food, which enables it to grow more."

Is Meaningful Energy Conservation Impossible?

Perhaps the most provocative implication of Garrett's theory is that conserving energy doesn't reduce energy use, but spurs economic growth and more energy use.

"Making civilization more energy efficient simply allows it to grow faster and consume more energy," says Garrett.

He says the idea that resource conservation accelerates resource consumption - known as Jevons paradox - was proposed in the 1865 book "The Coal Question" by William Stanley Jevons, who noted that coal prices fell and coal consumption soared after improvements in steam engine efficiency.

So is Garrett arguing that conserving energy doesn't matter?

"I'm just saying it's not really possible to conserve energy in a meaningful way because the current rate of energy consumption is determined by the unchangeable past of economic production. If it feels good to conserve energy, that is fine, but there shouldn't be any pretense that it will make a difference."

Yet, Garrett says his findings contradict his own previously held beliefs about conservation, and he continues to ride a bike or bus to work, line dry family clothing and use a push lawnmower.

An Inevitable Future for Carbon Dioxide Emissions?

Garrett says often-discussed strategies for slowing carbon dioxide emissions and global warming include mention increased energy efficiency, reduced population growth and a switch to power sources that don't emit carbon dioxide, including nuclear, wind and solar energy and underground storage of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning. Another strategy is rarely mentioned: a decreased standard of living, which would occur if energy supplies ran short and the economy collapsed, he adds.

"Fundamentally, I believe the system is deterministic," says Garrett. "Changes in population and standard of living are only a function of the current energy efficiency. That leaves only switching to a non-carbon-dioxide-emitting power source as an available option."

"The problem is that, in order to stabilize emissions, not even reduce them, we have to switch to non-carbonized energy sources at a rate about 2.1 percent per year. That comes out to almost one new nuclear power plant per day."

"If society invests sufficient resources into alternative and new, non-carbon energy supplies, then perhaps it can continue growing without increasing global warming," Garrett says.

Does Garrett fear global warming deniers will use his work to justify inaction?

"No," he says. "Ultimately, it's not clear that policy decisions have the capacity to change the future course of civilization."

[orwell]

1. Energy consumption...

...is clearly linked to GDP. It always has been. It's interesting that Garrett has actually computed a constant.

Thanks for the post.

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. You’re welcome. Although I'm somewhat skeptical about the notion of a physical constant…

I mean, it doesn't seem like it could be that cut-and-dry, but it certainly is intriguing, isn't it?

[bananas]

3. the paper is at arxiv.org

abstract and pdf: http://arxiv.org/abs/0811.1855v2
his websites:
http://www.atmos.utah.edu/?module=facultyDetails&personId=10979&orgId=311
http://www.met.utah.edu/tgarrett/

Here's the abstract:

Global Climate Models (GCMs) provide forecasts of future climate warming using a wide variety of highly sophisticated anthropogenic CO2 emissions models as input, each based on the evolution of four emissions "drivers": population p, standard of living g, energy productivity (or efficiency) f and energy carbonization c. The range of scenarios considered is extremely broad, however, and this is a primary source of forecast uncertainty. Here, it is shown both theoretically and observationally how the evolution of the human system can be considered from a surprisingly simple thermodynamic perspective in which it is unnecessary to explicitly model two of the emissions drivers: population and standard of living. Specifically, the human system grows through a self-perpetuating feedback loop in which the consumption rate of primary energy resources stays tied to the historical accumulation of global economic production - or p times g - through a time-independent factor of 9.7 +/- 0.3 milliwatts per inflation-adjusted 1990 US dollar. This important constraint, and the fact that f and c have historically varied rather slowly, points towards substantially narrowed visions of future emissions scenarios for implementation in GCMs.

[joshcryer]

11. Thank you, reading now.

[The2ndWheel]

4. If we really wanted to conserve energy

we wouldn't be looking for a limitless source of it.

[GliderGuider]

5. He sounds like my kind of guy.

I've downloaded the paper, and I'll comment after I've read it. However, his conclusions seem to broadly echo the things I've been thinking for the last for or five years.

[bananas]

6. I skimmed through it

there's some obvious problems with his conclusions.

[joshcryer]

13. Which parts?

[bananas]

27. Well for example...

He takes global averages from 1970-2005 and generalizes way beyond the data.
He claims that government policies don't make a difference - that's obvious nonsense.
NY City used to shut down for days because of air pollution, government policies changed that, there are now more people and more cars and more economic activity and cleaner air. According to him, that's impossible and didn't happen. He has to explain why it didn't happen, he has to explain why up is down and black is white. Good luck.
Between 1970-2005, US energy consumption grew both per-capita and total. But California enacted policies which kept per-capita energy use flat and total energy growth below the US average. Red states like Wyoming did the opposite. According to him, California fell into the dark ages while Wyoming became a beacon of civilization. The opposite is true - California has been a leader in science, technology, arts, and culture; biotech and Silicon Valley are a couple of examples. Wyoming is known for Dick Cheney.

In the OP, he refers to Jevons Paradox:

He says the idea that resource conservation accelerates resource consumption - known as Jevons paradox - was proposed in the 1865 book "The Coal Question" by William Stanley Jevons, who noted that coal prices fell and coal consumption soared after improvements in steam engine efficiency.

If Jevons was alive today, he'd call his book "The Wind and Sun Question", because as wind and solar prices fall, wind and solar consumption soar with improvements in wind and solar efficiency. We're seeing wind and solar grow exponentially, a lot of this is driven by policies like RPS and FITS, these policies have accelerated the improvements in these technologies. Carbon policies will accelerate it further, as these technologies reach grid-parity, it becomes a tipping point, these technologies will become cheaper per kwh than fossil fuels. Policies which require increased mpg from cars will advance those technologies. We know policies work. He also avoids the concept of "negawatts", if you put in double-pane windows, you still have the same efficiency rating on your air conditioner and furnace, but somehow they are maintain the same temperatures using less energy. There's a lot of research going on now for net-zero buildings, at some point government policies will have energy standards for houses as part of the housing code, just as we have housing code requirements for circuit breakers, grounding, plumbing, and just as we have mpg standards for cars.

[joshcryer]

32. "At some point." In 10 years when we have released as much CO2 as we did since the industrial...

...revolution? In 15 when we will have released double that? C'mon now. There's no indicators that we're even on track to solve this.

[bananas]

28. To make a convincing case

In 1973, the OPEC governments made a major policy change which affecting global consumption patterns.
So he'd have to compare pre-1973 data to post-1973 data.
Different regions instituted different policies after 1973 and have different consumption patterns.
California policies have kept per-capita consumption flat,
Europe has about half the per-capita consumption of the US,
yet the standards of living are similar.
If his constant is independent of fossil fuels,
then it should be the same for civilizations before the fossil fuel age;
that includes not only western civilization, but also the Mohawk, Iroquois, the Roman Empire, Phaoronic Egypt, the Maya, Aztec, Hopi, Indus Valley, etc.

[GliderGuider]

29. I agree down the line. This paper is junk.

:thumbsdown:

[joshcryer]

31. Yet none of these policy changes affected the graph, it goes back to the 1700s.

Note his graph is worldwide, not local. And his model is more accurate than the trend models that have been used. I'm not saying I believe it fully, but it is persuasive. Only time will tell.

Indeed, if you look at current emissions projections all of the policy decisions that you want to discuss are not happening and not projected to happen. He shows that it takes a whole lot more than we expect to make it happen. If you were to implement Jacobson's plan it would cost $100 trillion dollars. Or about 8% world GDP over 20 years. 4% over 40. Either way we've doomed ourselves to 4-5C.

[kristopher]

19. I don't know that the conclusions are the important part.

I agree that the paper is a weak treatment of the topic, but perhaps its value lies more in the approach. We really haven't seen much of this type of approach since the anthropological community turned away from materialist lines of inquiry in the late 70s.

I'd like to seem more people adopt the perspective that interaction with the environment has primacy in the complex web of influences that determines human culture.

His conclusion speaks to me even though his understanding of the idea of "civilization" is far to rudimentary to make the paper's deterministic slant persuasive.

"Because the current state of the system, by nature, is tied to its unchangeable past,
it looks unlikely that there will be any substantial near-term departure from recently
observed acceleration in CO2 emission rates. For predictions over the longer term,
however, what is required is thermodynamically based models for how rates of car-
bonization and energy efficiency evolve. To this end, these rates are almost certainly
constrained by the size and availability of environmental resource reservoirs. Previ-
ously, such factors have been shown to be primary constraints in the evolution of
species <33, 34>. Extending these principles to civilization, emissions models might
be simplified further yet."



For available internet reference on "primacy of infrastructure" see: http://faculty.chass.ncsu.edu/wallace/ANT411%20Harris%20cultural_materialism.pdf.

[joshcryer]

20. I think it is as persuasive as, say, Hansen's seminal 1981 paper.

:shrug:

[kristopher]

21. You think?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=217945&mesg_id=218205

[joshcryer]

22. Yep, only time proves it out.

Give it 10-15 years to see CO2 levels not be reduced and we'll have our answer if his trend can continue.

[joshcryer]

9. And what I've been thinking for the past four or five days. We're not socially capable of averting..

...extreme climate change. We just aren't.

[OKIsItJustMe]

14. I question whether we’re “socially capable”

Which is one of the reasons I’ve become resigned to GeoEngineering™. To be “socially capable” requires virtually everyone to be on board, and that just isn’t happening fast enough.

GeoEngineering™ is the sort of thing which can just be done by “the powers that be.”

The problem is we need to have “grown-ups” in charge, and I’m seeing less and less evidence that they are…

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29846.html

White House hits back on climate critics

By LISA LERER | 11/23/09 5:40 PM EST

It's been a bad few weeks for the Obama administration when it comes to climate change, as the White House has found itself trapped between a stalled Senate and constant hammering from world leaders on a lack of leadership on global warming.

…

[joshcryer]

16. I'm on the fence with geoengineering, but it may be the only solution.

I am persuaded somewhat by people like Gaven from RealClimate that geoengineering may not be enough.

[OKIsItJustMe]

17. Geoengineering may not be enough

Yeah, I’m afraid it may not be, but at some point, I line up with Otter on this: “I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part.”

[joshcryer]

18. Haha, great quote.

Thanks for that.

[starroute]

7. No growth cycle lasts forever

He compares the growth of civilization to that of a child -- but every child eventually becomes an adult and stops growing.

I'm kind of skeptical about his use of the word "civilization" in general -- which is a very fuzzy term that originally depended on having proper table manners, then was used in the plural in the 19th century to refer to specific past cultures, and in the 20th century came to be vaguely associated with a certain level of social complexity.

But let's leave "civilization" out of the picture and accept his finding that over the past 2000 years there's been a steady growth curve tying energy consumption to economic growth. He could be right about that -- but he goes on from there to assume that if economic growth ever stopped, "civilization" would also stop dead in its tracks and collapse.

Why? That's the part I don't follow.

For tens of thousands of years, human society was essentially homeostatic, although certain increases in efficiency (how to get more usable blades out of a given lump of flint, how to use a throwing stick to hurl a spear further, how to deploy fish-traps and bird-snares to diversify the food supply) did make for modest increases in population and life-span. But it wasn't until you got agriculture, the domestication of animals, and kilns/ovens to enable pottery-making and bread-baking that you had even the first hints of the kind of intensive exploitation of energy resources that this guy is talking about.

So we've had about 10,000 years of increasingly intense use of outside energy sources to get us from the Stone Age to where we are now. But that's only 10,000 out of some 200,000 -- and there's no reason to believe it's going to continue indefinitely. There are lots of things in human history that have been done once and don't need to be repeated -- like domesticating cows, or inventing writing systems. I think it's time to assume that we've pretty much got "civilization" down pat at this point and go on to the next thing.

Part of this guy's problem seems to be that he sees what's been happening as "deterministic" -- as if being able to write a quasi-scientific rule describing it means that it's the product of a law of nature that has us all in its grip. Well, I call bullshit. It's a temporary phase, and the law may work well enough within that phase, but it doesn't apply outside of the very special conditions that have pertained since the end of the last Ice Age.

So the question remains what it's been all along -- how to move on to the next thing with the minimal amount of destruction and maximal amount of humanity.

[OKIsItJustMe]

8. Re: No growth cycle lasts forever

It appears that the Universe’s growth cycle may:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space

[starroute]

23. Not everybody believes in the Big Bang

But it's certainly been the appropriate cosmology to support our era's social expectations.

The Egyptian pharaohs and the feudal lords of the Middle Ages had their own cosmological systems which justified their actions in much the same way -- and the expanding universe is likely to go the way of the geocentric Ptolemaic system and the flat earth when we no longer have need of it.

Science is a lot less "scientific" than scientists like to think it is.

[joshcryer]

10. I don't think he's saying it will grow forever, he's saying that it grows proportional to past...

...growth. In other words, for every inflation adjusted dollar he has observed that there is future energy growth. There's obviously a limit, but he presumably ties the growth to emissions.

One need only look at IEA emission projections to see that we're not going to slow down until well after 2050. And note, these projections take into account renewable energy.

[joshcryer]

12. OK, went over the paper:

He does not assume civilization is a forever growing child:

But, assuming the child reaches adulthood, growth tends towards a balance between energy consumption and heat production, and h tends to zero.

[joshcryer]

15. Choice quote:

To reach stabilization, what is required is decarbonization that is at least as fast as the economy’s rate of return. Taking the 2005 value for h of 2.1% per year, stabilization of emissions would require an equivalent or greater rate of decarbonization. 2.1% of current annual energy production corresponds to an annual addition of approximately 300 GW of new non-carbon emitting power capacity - approximately one new nuclear power plant per day.

Note that he admits that the model is simple, and that it may in fact not follow for future economic growth (though it follows well with the emission projections we have so far). Hell, it's simple enough for me to understand a lot of the math.

Jacobson reckons that we'd need to spend $100 trillion to transition to a zero emission world by 2030. That's, from my calculation, about 8% global GDP investment over the same time period. Or 4% if you want to move goalposts until 2050.

We are not doing that, so we're fucked.

[bananas]

26. We've known that for several years

In 2004 Pacala-Socolow showed what was needed to stabilize at 500ppm;
since then there's been a growing consensus that 500ppm is too high, the target should be 350-450ppm.

Their work was referenced in the 2007 Keystone report on nuclear energy,
Climate Progress corrected errors in a Reuters news article at the time:

Nuclear Power No Climate Cure-All
June 18, 2007

Everything you could possibly want to know about nuclear power — and its (limited) potential as a potential climate solution — can be found in the new Keystone Center Report with the less-than-captivating title “Nuclear Power Joint Fact-Finding.”

Reuters is confused in its article on the report, “Nuclear Power Can’t Curb Global Warming – Report,” and actually overstates the case for nuclear:

Nuclear power would only curb climate change by expanding worldwide at the rate it grew from 1981 to 1990, its busiest decade, and keep up that rate for half a century, a report said on Thursday.

Specifically, that would require adding on average 14 plants each year for the next 50 years, all the while building an average of 7.4 plants to replace those that will be retired, the report by environmental leaders, industry executives and academics said.

Incorrect. You would need 8 to 10 times faster growth (3 nuclear plants built each week for 50 years) — and some 100 Yucca Mountains to store the waste – for nuclear to curb global warming on its own. How did Reuters get it wrong?

The huge growth in nuclear power examined in the Keystone report amounts to only one of the so-called “stabilization wedges” needed to fight global warming. The “wedges” idea, created by Princeton’s Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow, has become a term of art in the climate debate which you can read about here.

<snip>

Climate Progress has an excellent overview of what's needed to stabilize at 350-450ppm,
I summarized it here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x191961
As Al Gore has said a number of times, nuclear energy won't play a major role.
Nuclear can't even come close to solving the problem, and isn't needed at all.

[joshcryer]

34. How long do you project until we have that renewable capacity?

That is, the renewable capacity akin to 1 nuclear plant per day for a year, every year, for decades.

When?

Never? Probably.

[bananas]

36. Only about 1/3 of it is renewables

Referring to How the world can (and will) stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm: The full global warming solution (updated)

I also agree with McKinsey Global Institute’s 2008 Research in Review: Stabilizing at 450 ppm has a net cost near zero.

<snip>

This is what the entire planet must achieve:

* 1 wedge of albedo change through white roofs and pavement (aka “soft geoengineering) — see “Geoengineering, adaptation and mitigation, Part 2: White roofs are the trillion-dollar solution“
* 1 wedge of vehicle efficiency — all cars 60 mpg, with no increase in miles traveled per vehicle.
* 1 of wind for power — one million large (2 MW peak) wind turbines
* 1 of wind for vehicles –another 2000 GW wind. Most cars must be plug-in hybrids or pure electric vehicles.
* 3 of concentrated solar thermal (aka solar baseload)– ~5000 GW peak.
* 3 of efficiency — one each for buildings, industry, and cogeneration/heat-recovery for a total of 15 to 20 million GW-hrs. A key strategy for reducing direct fossil fuel use for heating buildings (while also reducing air conditioning energy) is geothermal heat pumps.
* 1 of solar photovoltaics — 2000 GW peak
* 1/2 wedge of nuclear power– 350 GW
* 2 of forestry — End all tropical deforestation. Plant new trees over an area the size of the continental U.S.
* 1 wedge of WWII-style conservation, post-2030

Only 6 of those 14.5 wedges are renewables: 2 wind, 4 solar.

Here are additional wedges that require some major advances in applied research to be practical and scalable, but are considered plausible by serious analysts, especially post-2030:

* 1 of geothermal plus other ocean-based renewables (i.e. tidal, wave, and/or ocean thermal)
* 1 of coal with biomass cofiring plus carbon capture and storage — 400 GW of coal plus 200 GW biomass with CCS
* 1/2 wedge of next generation nuclear power — 350 GW
* 1/2 wedge of cellulosic biofuels for long-distance transport and what little aviation remains in 2050 — using 8% of the world’s cropland .
* 1 of soils and/or biochar– Apply improved agricultural practices to all existing croplands and/or “charcoal created by pyrolysis of biomass.” Both are controversial today, but may prove scalable strategies.

That should do the trick. And yes, the scale is staggering.

Only 1.5 out of 4 of those are renewables: 1 geothermal, 1/2 biofuels
Only a total of 6.5 out of 18.5 wedges - about one third.

<snip>

Note to all: Do I want to build all those nuclear plants. No. Do I think we could do it without all those nuclear plants. Definitely. Therefore, should I be quoted as saying we “must” build all those nuclear plants, as the Drudge Report has, or even that I propose building all those plants? No. Do I think we will have to swallow a bunch of nuclear plants as part of the grand bargain to make this all possible and that other countries will build most of these? I have no doubt. So it stays in “the solution” for now.

<snip>

Here's how we're doing on wind:

This is not to say the two wind power wedges (4000 GW peak total) would be easy — but the world did build over 27 GW last year, a 36% jump from 2007. We would need to average 100 GW/year through 2050. But I do think it is ecologically and economically possible, as I think all the other wedges in the top group are, too.

But none of the wedges is easy. That’s why getting to 450 ppm is not yet politically possible. Not even close.

Three more points: First, it bears repeating that the wedges are not analytically rigorous (as I explained in Part 1), but they are conceptually useful. We might need a couple more or a couple less.

IIRC, wind additions are doubling roughly every 3 years, if that countinues we'll be adding 100 GW/year by 2015.

[Nihil]

24. Sigh.

> Throughout history, a simple physical "constant" - an unchanging
> mathematical value - links global energy use to the world's
> accumulated economic productivity, adjusted for inflation.

It's not a "physical constant" as it is a derivation from a particular
compilation of economic estimates (which are themselves neither physical
nor consistent). All he's done is produce another handwave in a history
of arbitrary handwaves - albeit a slightly different one due to his
choice to treat an elaborate virtual construct as a physical system.

This abstract intellectual musing becomes more harmful (in the GIGO sense)
when it is used by the current crop of spineless politicians as another
reason to support Business As Usual.


> "Physically, there are no other options without killing the economy."

Well, we have confirmation of the solution then don't we?
Kill the chimera that is referred to as "the economy".

Let's face it: the result of this "analysis" proves that "the economy"
is currently killing us (by means of irrational drivers for self-harming
behaviour) so it is a simple matter of self-defence that we have to kill
"it" first.

:shrug:

[GliderGuider]

25. If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

IMO The paper suffers from way too many problems to be useful. Some of the most egregious are:

- Over-aggregation. He considers the world as an amorphous monolithic whole. While that is appropriate for the CO2 side of the equation, it doesn't work for the economic side. He should have tried to validate the theory against regional observations, at least to establish error bars for his "constant".

- The lack of a convincing theoretical (or even speculative) justification of why this physics-based approach might be appropriate to the problem. The analysis is in a totally different domain from the problem.

- He fails to consider hard cases like transitions between different types of civilizations with different economies and energy sources. He looks at a single econimy/civilization at what amounts to a single point in time, and then over-generalizes his conclusions.

- He seems to think that the fact that he was able to tease out a constant means that number is a priori significant. He sure didn't convince me of that.

I also have a problem with this conclusion: "it looks unlikely that there will be any substantial near-term departure from recently observed acceleration in CO2 emission rates." It's not because I don't agree with it (I do), but because the paper doesn't really support it. It's a subjective conclusion that seems to have been based on his assumptions. He assumed there would be a constant relationship, he analyzed past data and found one, so he assumed it would continue. I agree that the decarbionization of our global industrial civilization is a very big job from any point of view - technical, economic or sociological - but his model doesn't show that we can't/won't do it.

The paper is a useful reminder of the importance of thermodynamics when considering system behaviour, but the application here seems inappropriate to me.

Now, I'm neither a physicist nor an economist, so maybe some of what he wrote went over my head. However, I have a lot of personal experience in trying to dress up my assumptions with numbers and then sneaking conclusions out the side door. This paper looked like it was doing just that.

[joshcryer]

33. "he analyzed past data, so he assumed it would continue"

Yes, that's precisely what he did, and it is more accurate than trend models. He admits it is simplistic and can be improved upon, but as far as I see it, it's plausible.

Read the following sentence and let it sink in:

In 10 years we will have released as much CO2 as we released since the start of the industrial revolution over a hundred years ago.

[GliderGuider]

35. I don't trust that 10 year number.

Where did that assertion come from? I didn't see it in either the paper or the article in the OP.

If the Keeling Curve is correct, we've added about 18 ppmv to the atmosphere in the last 10 years (from ~369 in 2000 to ~387 in 2009 according to the raw data (seasonally adjusted) from Scripps).

A doubling in ppmv would represent a doubling in CO2 emissions from all sources, as long as the efficiency of the global carbon sinks remains about the same. So we added 18 ppmv in the past 10 years. The previous 18 ppmv (from 351 to 369) were added from 1988. So in the last ten years we added as much CO2 to the atmosphere as in the 12 previous years, not the previous 100+ as the assertion claims. In fact since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution we have added about 107 ppmv (280 to 387), which means that since the beginning of the IR up to to 2000 we emitted about 5 times as much CO2 in total as we did since then.

Now, these figures are first approximations, and don't take into account the recent degradation of the global carbon sinks, which the Copenhagen Diagnosis paper estimates as a reduction of 10% (from 60% of emitted CO2 absorbed down to about 55%). That 10% reduction isn't enough to modify the overall conclusion.

So, I don't buy the "doubling in the last 10 years" assertion.

Not that this makes our situation any less dire, but this is a basic piece of math, and if it's not right every argument predicated on it is devalued.

[joshcryer]

37. If you go by this graph:

Around 300 gt of CO2 cumulatively emitted.

According to the EIA:



About 30 gt per year 2008 onward.

ie, in 10 years, 30 gt * 10 y = 300 gt.

I will admit that it is a simple calculation, however, I think your calculation neglects the carbon sink nature of the environment. I never said that CO2 in the atmosphere doubled, just emissions.

[wtmusic]

30. Ech. Bullshit.

"I'm just saying it's not really possible to conserve energy in a meaningful way because the current rate of energy consumption is determined by the unchangeable past of economic production. :silly:

Also: "Making civilization more energy efficient simply allows it to grow faster and consume more energy," says Garrett. Really? Efficiency = conservation? :silly:

Another goofball who doesn't want to feel guilty about heating his pool.