Scientists have learned three things about climate change.
Now that we’ve finally convinced most people about #1 and #2 … it’s time for you to face #3. Here’s a start.
Those are facts.
Here’s my opinion: our best hope, maybe our only hope, is to get people to TALK ABOUT IT so much that politicians and pundits cannot ignore us. When enough people TALK ABOUT IT often enough, I’ll have hope. Maybe I’ll even give my friends a break and shut the hell up about it.
Open Mind 
You really ought to at least pretend to put up refs for 3a and b. Otherwise you’re just preaching to the choir.
[Response: Au contraire.
If you aren’t a member of “the choir,” then the more you ask for details, discussion, questions, how it might affect you … the more we TALK ABOUT IT.
If you’re a member of the choir, you need to get the public to TALK ABOUT IT. Not just those who are members of 350.org or who are in deep denial — you need to get moms and dads and kids and cousins and friends to TALK ABOUT IT. Prepare for their questions about #3a and #3b. This blog already has examples (CA wildfires, sunny-day flooding, billion-dollar disasters) and there’s lots lots more out there. Get ready, because if we do our job well — get people to TALK ABOUT IT — the questions will be coming.]
I realise now why science has failed to motivate the public to date – the researchers fogot to reference their work.
Oh, that’s right…
I do think things are shifting a bit. A small instance, of quite a few that I’ve noticed lately: I saw climate change mentioned as a security threat multiplier (to use the jargon) on a popular TV drama just the other night, clearly as a reality to be taken for granted. Very matter of fact, pretty brief, not remarkable. Just something ‘everybody knows’ that happened to bear on a plot point for a moment.
Better yet, the show in question is the sort to have appeal to a wide political spectrum, but perhaps a bit more on the right than the left.
Your citing of 350.org brings up another aspect of current policy making problems.
In Seattle, 350.org supports a city wide up zone that is intended to generate money for ‘social housing’ (subsidized rentals owned by government and non profits). The Sierra Club in places has fallen into the same trap: https://48hills.org/2019/02/the-sierra-club-and-the-luxury-housing-developer/
How has this happened? The ‘growth machine’ (see Logan and Molotch, “The City as a Growth Machine”; David Harvey, “Right to the City”) has been able to convince many members of the millennial generation that increasing density in the urban core is needed to not only “solve” the affordable housing crisis, but also to “solve” the environmental problems cause by sprawl.
The scientific literature says they are wrong on the second point: Increasing density in the core does not reduce overall GHG emissions. There is evidence of a small decrease in per capita emissions, at least in the core, but the impacts of urban agglomeration growth are almost wholly negative. A good recent summary is Joseph Burger, et al. 2017 “Extra-metabolic energy use and the rise in human hyper-density.” doi:10.1038/srep43869
I believe these arguments about how to deal with (manage?) urban growth distract many of us so-called progressive city dwellers from engaging with the climate issue. So we just keep spewing GHGs at ever increasing rates: In Seattle as in many other cities and states, the government is required to monitor GHG emissions. The City just released its latest with data through 2016(!): http://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/OSE/ClimateDocs/2016_SEA_GHG_Inventory.pdf
Seattle’s latest report concludes we’re going backwards; we are not moving toward the “carbon neutral by [pick any future date a decade or two away]” goal established by law. Worse, if you look at it carefully, you find that this report (and probably most such reports) do not use rigorous systems analysis to calculate the impacts of the urban area’s economic activity. Boundary setting is poor: material and energy flows in and out are often not accounted for. There’s quite a bit of published work on this problem as well.
In short: our political economy is broken insofar as having much ability to address climate change at the local level. I agree we need to “talk about it,” but I suggest we need to broaden the scope of the discussion to include systemic problems under the current regime.
I am open to this approach, though I feel a little talked-out after years of working to get friends, family, acquaintances to recognize and accept the changes we need to make.
I decided a few years ago to stop talking with my circles of friends and just wait for them to bring it up. at which point, if they say, hey this is a serious problem, I say: could be.
I think there is some resistance and pushback to be told something like this that requires folks to initiate profound changes in their lives. I understand the resistance to change generally, but it puzzles me in a situation where the stakes are so high. The resistance and pushback means that the attempts to communicate the problem actually stiffens the refusal to accept the science.
I have accepted that many people will only accept that climate change is a real threat when they experience the damage first hand. In that sense, it’s a hot stove problem. A warm stove is not a problem. We don’t learn much from a warm stove. Some folks will need to get burned several times to overcome their resistance to these inconvenient truths.
Nonetheless, I appreciate when folks like you make the attempt to help people learn something from a warm stove.
Keep up the good work,
Mike
Suggest #3d: And when we finally actually do something, we can stop it from getting worse, but it won’t get better for a long time: Archer, et al, 2009, Solomon, et al, 2009.
I opine that we can do better than passively wait. For example, doubling the world’s supply of 3 trillion trees.
Increasing tree population can’t solve the problem alone, but it would help. The solution, if there is one that we can deploy successfully, will be an all of the above approach and it should definitely include more trees. The first step toward more trees would be a global moratorium on changing forestlands to any other landuse. That mitigation tool is likely to be as popular as a carbon tax, which we should also do asap and as broadly as possible. BJChip might be on to something with the owning class analysis. It would be helpful to get the owning class onboard. It’s a predicament.
Citation: MacDougall, A. H. (2013), “Reversing climate warming by artificial atmospheric carbon-dioxide removal: Can a Holocene-like climate be restored?”, Geophysical Research Letters, 40, doi:10.1002/2013GL057467.
Abstract
Citation: L. Cao, K. Caldeira (2010), “Atmospheric carbon dioxide removal:
long-term consequences and commitment”, at IOP.
Abstract
Citation: Boysen,L.R., W. Lucht, D.Gerten, V. Heck, T. M.Lenton, and H.J. Schellnhuber (2017), “The limits to global-warming mitigation by terrestrial carbon removal“, Earth’s Future, 5, doi:10.1002/2016EF000469.
Abstract
Plain Language Summary of Above Provided by Authors
Right on, @smallbluemike. I really don’t know what to do or say any more.
On the one hand, I’ve been told, in person, and by sociologist types in writings, that people need hope and optimism to be motivated to do something. I’ve been told “We’re screwed” as a reason why they oughtn’t bother, or that “It’s too overwhelming”. I’ve been told I depress people.
Then when I have tried to back off, either not bringing it up, or trying to do optimistic, people seem to just drop back and make the matter their 10th priority, if that, and put all kinds of other things above it. They also pretend like doing things like switching off light bulbs is going to help. I mean it does, from an awareness perspective, but that’s mostly about, what the Rev Fred Small calls, maintaining personal purity, and it really isn’t the big change needed.
Also, there’s a known principle in human behavior related to social goods, like recycling or having PV on their roof, that when they do this, they tend to be more wasteful in some other part of their lives. I know this from word-of-mouth discussions with solid waste and recycling experts, but there is a reference from Berkeley Haas (which I cannot find at the moment) that this is seen in comparisons of matched households with and with PV on roof.
I dunno. Good to read Tamino, and hear others grappling with this all.
Regarding optimism and hope(lessness), from http://www.paulchefurka.ca/ —
When it comes to our understanding of the unfolding global crisis, each of us seems to fit somewhere along a continuum of awareness that can be roughly divided into five stages:
Dead asleep. At this stage there seem to be no fundamental problems, just some shortcomings in human organization, behaviour and morality that can be fixed with the proper attention to rule-making. People at this stage tend to live their lives happily, with occasional outbursts of annoyance around election times or the quarterly corporate earnings seasons.
Awareness of one fundamental problem. Whether it’s Climate Change, overpopulation, Peak Oil, chemical pollution, oceanic over-fishing, biodiversity loss, corporatism, economic instability or sociopolitical injustice, one problem seems to engage the attention completely. People at this stage tend to become ardent activists for their chosen cause. They tend to be very vocal about their personal issue, and blind to any others.
Awareness of many problems. As people let in more evidence from different domains, the awareness of complexity begins to grow. At this point a person worries about the prioritization of problems in terms of their immediacy and degree of impact. People at this stage may become reluctant to acknowledge new problems – for example, someone who is committed to fighting for social justice and against climate change may not recognize the problem of resource depletion. They may feel that the problem space is already complex enough, and the addition of any new concerns will only dilute the effort that needs to be focused on solving the “highest priority” problem.
Awareness of the interconnections between the many problems. The realization that a solution in one domain may worsen a problem in another marks the beginning of large-scale system-level thinking. It also marks the transition from thinking of the situation in terms of a set of problems to thinking of it in terms of a predicament. At this point the possibility that there may not be a solution begins to raise its head.
People who arrive at this stage tend to withdraw into tight circles of like-minded individuals in order to trade insights and deepen their understanding of what’s going on. These circles are necessarily small, both because personal dialogue is essential for this depth of exploration, and because there just aren’t very many people who have arrived at this level of understanding.
Awareness that the predicament encompasses all aspects of life. This includes everything we do, how we do it, our relationships with each other, as well as our treatment of the rest of the biosphere and the physical planet. With this realization, the floodgates open, and no problem is exempt from consideration or acceptance. The very concept of a “Solution” is seen through, and cast aside as a waste of effort.
@LouPLouP2,
Thanks for your sketch.
I’ve studied the Buddhist approach, too. Not saying if it is right, wrong, or whatever, but the contents of the paragraph isn’t for me. I’m an engineer, first and foremost. I fix things, and, presumably, in doing so, break some things. Engineering is about breaking things which are less important in order to fix things which are more important, and understanding and knowing enough to be able to make those tradeoffs.
Besides that paragraph sounds very Joanna Macy-ish.
She’s not the only voice:
(Thich Nhat Hanh, “The bells of mindfulness”, in A Buddhist Response to the Climate Emergency)
(John Stanley, “A safe-climate future”, from the same as the above)
(The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, “Universal responsibility and the climate emergency”, from the same as the above)
Oh, and Macy has three pages in the book, too: “On being with our world”. Yeah. A quote:
Yeah, righhhhhhhhhhhhhhhttt.
Ecoquant, thanks for your response. It’s not my sketch–copied it from Paul Chefurka’s page. I think it has a lot of validity in how people respond based on their level of understanding of the crises at hand.
I don’t understand how the first paragraph you quote in your response is a “Buddhist approach.” I guess you could say that systems analysis or systems ecology is a Buddhist approach. Isn’t systems analysis compatible with engineer-think?
I think the Thich Nhat Hanh quote is accurate. The age of imperialism is coming to an end, at the same time as the end of its twin, global growth addicted/dependent capitalism.
I think the best outcome (not a “solution”) will be slow rolling economic collapse pulling apart the global movement of energy, material, and people. As the world breaks into smaller economic systems, there will be a downsizing of activity and thus of GHG emissions. I think this is inevitable. I hope it happens soon enough to avoid the horror show of total ecosystem collapse. We do not know where/when movement over nick points to a new and potentially far less hospitable climactic system will occur.
There will be a reduction in human population. I believe this is also inevitable as fossil fuels run out. (I do not believe nuclear or anything else can possibly replace the energy flux of ff.) Human appropriation of net primary productivity cannot be reduced below a certain level per capita—there is a basic metabolism below which we cannot survive. It’s all rather unpleasant to think about, and makes me both glad I’m almost 70, and also wishing to live long enough to see how things play out.
This is my experience too, as reflected in my penultimate paragraph here:
As for solutions, touched on elsewhere in this thread, it might help to list the current range of options…
1) Act early and with suitable alacrity, in response to the science as it was developed, and curtain emissions as quickly as possible in order to retain a Holocene-like climate. I inlcude this only for the sake of completeness, because this option was lost to us several decades ago. In the early 90s I attended a Suzuki lecture where he proposed that we had until 2000 to address the issue or serious consequences would result, and with hindsight he was absolutely correct…
2) Act now, on a “war footing” and with full international cooperation. We will still lose the coral reefs of the world, and many alpine and polar ecosystems, and indeed many forest systems. Our agriculture will be affected, and within several generations we will also lose many coastal regions of habitation and a significant proportion of our geopolitical stability. But from the devastation there will be some societies and a remnant of biodiversity that remains.
3) Act slowly and with tepid but increasing effect in the coming decade. The result will be somewhere between 2 and 4, and more likely to be much closer to 4…
4) Continue dithering and delaying for the next two or three decades as we have done for the last two or three, with a cumulative response that does little to alter the current trajectory of the Keeling curve, the proximal indicator of our progress. In this scenario there’s an almost impossibly small amount of room to find effective solutions to enact with the approach of the mid 21st-century, and humanity might as well grab its ankles and kiss coherent civilisation and a life-supporting biosphere goodbye.
5) Enact a planetary circuit breaker. Whilst I cannot personally contemplate the mindset of doing so, I can appreciate that a less squeamish leader or group of leaders might exercise pragmatism and thin the herd using manipulated markets, or thermonuclear war, or manufactured disease epidemics. Not a complete and lasting solution, but one that would give the remaining people some breathing space to move to a Stage 2 of action. Sadly, given the current world sliding toward authoritarianism, this possibilitydoesn’t seem as outlandishly fanciful to me as it did ten years ago…
6) Push blithely ahead with business as usual, and discover that it was all a storm in a tea cup. Again, I say this only for the sake of completeness, and a working understanding of the science leads me to understand that this is not a realistic option.
Your milage may vary – I’d be interested in others’ thoughts on alternative scenarios.
@therealbernardj,
I think there’s an RCP 4.5ish path, too: it’ll continue as long as those with wealth and property continue to get bailed out by U.S. atrocities like the Nat’l Flood Insurance Program and the Stafford Act. Eventually that’ll become too expensive or be seen to be too unfair.
At that point the wealthy will panic. Harms and loss of wealth will continue for a couple of decades. The wealthy will be a lot poorer. They’ll grudgingly stop supporting, investing in, and subsidizing fossil fuels. And the transition will begin in earnest.
But the world will need to learn how to live with +3C to +4.5C which will continue for reasons and references given above.
therealbernardj — Thanks for the list of scenarios. I’m adding it to my list of “educational” reference material for dealing with the ignoranti.
For clarity, I meant “3) Act slowly and with tepid but increasing effect in the coming decades… ”
It’s an important difference.
One thing underneath the inability to grapple with this is a fundamental economic mistake. Real money represents work done, The money we use represents debt. Work done is limited by the laws of thermodynamics. A debt (promise to pay) has the same limitations as any other promise. None.
The mechanisms of the debt-backed monetary system mean that wealth accumulates with ownership, rather than work. The owning class does not want change so it doesn’t happen, and won’t until things get bad enough that people stop listening to the propaganda of the owning class and take back control of the nation.
If the mistake had not occurred the “owning class” would not even exist.
The other thing is that <we have a natural genetic disadvantage coping with problems that take more than a generation to emerge.
Be careful out there.
This is a salient point when considering the political economics of the situation. I’m pleased that you raised it bj.
By the way, in my list above, I missed the relatively optimistic PNAS paper by Griscom, et al. Also, the current issue of Science (paywall) has Anderson, et al, “Natural climate solutions are not enough“. It can be found elsewhere, though.
Incidentally, GFS/CFSR 2m temperature anomaly is the warmest I’ve seen it in a long time (1.0 C), probably since October 2017. Warm in the Arctic as well (+4.6 C)
(Climatereanalyzer)
Yes, talking about it is what we need to do but talking about it is one of the most difficult things to do, though I try to mention it as often as I think I can get away with. People just don’t want to know.
Just saw a photo of the UK parliament debating some climate change topic and there were just a handful of MPs there. Politicians don’t really care, when it comes down to it.
Tamino, what do you make of Santer’s new paper. I haven’t looked at it in detail but a few comments make me think you may have some conniptions over some of the things done in it. It would be interesting for you to do a post summarising it whether you agree or disagree with its statistical methods and conclusions.
[Response: I’ll give it a good read.]
Link to Santer paper, or at least title and journal?
It’s not an article but rather a comment…
Celebrating the anniversary of three key events in climate change science
Benjamin D. Santer, Céline J. W. Bonfils, Qiang Fu, John C. Fyfe, Gabriele C. Hegerl, Carl Mears, Jeffrey F. Painter, Stephen Po-Chedley, Frank J. Wentz, Mark D. Zelinka & Cheng-Zhi Zou
Nature Climate Change
volume 9, pages180–182 (2019)
I assume you have access to a research library as it is paywalled. Nothing earthshaking about it, really, that I can see. Basically says the alpha reliability of the trend in the satellite record is getting on to or beyond 5 sigma.
I found myself disappointed with the Santer et al paper, and especially the media hype that followed it. It’s almost trivial these days to comment on the statistical probability that humans are the driver of contemporary climate change – what is far more important is a statistical analysis and contextualisation of the human-forced future climate and how this will impact on the survival of the range of species in the biosphere, and of humanity’s ability to survive as well…
I find that in conversations with laypeople and casual acquaintances, putting it in terms of weather is the most successful argument. Of course, one must be careful not to confuse weather and climate, but most people are capable of getting the context, since it’s all around them.
Interestingly, today on The View they interviewed Bernie Sanders, and though he’s not my favorite I found I liked him more than I usually do, he was using a gentler and less censorious tone some of the time. But the message was loud and clear and about as good as it gets, and to an audience who aren’t necessarily in the choir or fully understandig the risks.
Joy Behar ended with a suggestion that they will mount a campaign to get all weather reporters to “talk about it”. A great idea, imnhso!
Here’s an idea to slow population growth, which is in my opinion the underlying driver of almost all environmental problems, including AGW.
A woman/couple (WC) with no kids gets a relatively large yearly dividend. A WC with one child gets a smaller dividend. A WC with two kids gets nothing.
A WC with 3 kids pays a relatively small annual tax. A WC with 4 kids pays a higher tax…..and so on.
The system could be set up to balance out, or be supplemented by the wealthy.
Population is indeed relevant to sustainability.
But for what it is worth, I think your solution, though presumably effective in principle, is a bit beside the point. What I mean by this is that its presupposition is a reasonably prosperous, well-administrated national government–and most, if not all, places that have that already have fertility rates at, or, very often, below replacement levels. The main part of the world where fertility levels remain very high is sub-Saharan Africa.
http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/total-fertility-rate/
Doc
I guess the idea was motivated by a sense of urgency/impatience, and not feasible or realistic.
In the US, fertility rates are indeed below replacement levels, and yet currently over a million more people are born each year than die. Combined with immigration, the population is projected to pass 400 million by 2058 (around 325 million today).
https://census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2018/cb18-41-population-projections.html
Yes, demographic structure is quite determinative over decadal scales. China is a great illustration in that regard; they’ve had the one-child and then two-child policies for decades, yet their population still hasn’t peaked, because for much of that time the population was still skewed young from the preceding population boom. But that phase is ending.
Data:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?locations=CN
Data plus projection:
https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2035/
In the US case, it’s mostly immigration that is driving population increase, if I’m not mistaken. Ironically; current government policy is essentially that it’s more important to keep America as white as is still possible than it is to ‘make America great’ in the conventional terms of maximizing economic size. (Over the long term, immigration generally agreed to be a plus for the GDP–again, if I’m not mistaken.)
I think it’s important to think about the population piece in terms of long-term sustainability. I don’t think anyone really knows how many humans Earth can reasonably support, though there are estimates. But it’s quite clear that we are exceeding planetary boundary conditions now, and if our impact on planetary systems is modeled as the product of our population and our per capita fluxes of energy and materials, as seems right and indeed inevitable, then both terms need to be limited. (Determining those limits may not be easy, though.)
But in terms of the climate crisis, population control is too slow an instrument to address our dilemma as it exists now. The only way it could be effective is basically to unleash a Holocaust on the entire global population, and at an absolutely unimaginable scale. Such a policy would clearly not attract many adherents outside the sorts of circles who are fascinated with serial killers and mass murderers.
The Chinese experiment with population control demonstrates how fraught is this subject, but it is one from which we cannot continue to resile. Unfortunately it requires a global response and therein lies the rub…
I’d add two points though to the commentary. First, any penalty for indulging in extranumerary children should be proportionate to income/wealth, so that all socioeconomic classes are equallty impacted. Seond, one of the best demographic ways to mitigate otherwise apparently harsh measures to shape population is to encourage delayed onset of starting a family. Of the various parameters that influence population structure and size, this is one that can probably be influenced with the least social kick-back.
Since amount of direct or indirect emissions per capita is superproportional to net worth, why not just tax Carbon by assigning an excuse tax which is exponentially proportional to net worth as summed over all assets individual has financial control, defined in same way as trustees are said to have control?
Population structures are very indirect. Indeed, for most people their biggest contribution might be their own biomass as a temporary Carbon reservoir. We are large creatures.
“There wouldn’t be 75 million fewer people, there would be 55 million fewer people (the number that die each year).”
Yes, mental typo. More to the point though, 130 million fewer people in a year than otherwise.
*******
On a personal note, I have two children and they are the joy of my life. Not fair for me to encourage others to have less. Still, it’s going to be hard to keep emissions at present levels, never mind a reduction, given a rapidly growing population.
I think that Snape’s point about population was broader than just the contribution to emissions, but I certainly see merit in your taxing suggestion.
Even in the Third World the carbon flux through a human body would over the course of a year be greater than that sequestered within it. Add to that the footprint to move, clothe, heat and entertain those bodies, and I think that sequestration is probably a forlorn hope. We are indeed large, and our footprints are enormous…
In systems exploited beyond their internal capacity to renew, something inevitably has to give. It’s an implacable fact of the universe.
There’s nothing wrong with warning others about this if you walk the talk. And if we don’t learn the lesson voluntarily, the laws of physics/thermodynamics will educate us regardless…
Regarding Santer’s paper, a good summary can be read in here:
If I understood correctly, the paper validates all the evidence (from data sets) with a “five sigma” level of confidence that global warming is real and humans were and still are the “culprits”
——————————-
Evidence for global warming has reached the “Gold Standard”
Using a reference to the “gold standard,” the authors of the study are referring to statistical analysis common in particle physics and employed in detecting the elusive Higgs Boson. After examining volumes of satellite data, the research team concluded we have reached the “five-sigma” level, meaning there is only a one-in-a-million chance that the pattern of atmospheric heating is not the result of human activity.
Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/environment/evidence-for-man-made-global-warming-hits-gold-standard/article/544095#ixzz5gxk4KC18
——————————-
@drfog,
Oh, this should be interesting. There was a long back-and-forth between particle physicists and statisticians, primarily Bayesian statisticians, arguing about this standard of evidence. Lyons has been one of the most prolific writers here. He addresses the Frequentist vs Bayesian conflict for evidence in a related section of a book, but it is difficult to refer to just that. Lyons also wrote an article for Physics Today on the matter, and wrote an insightful piece contrasting the two approaches in 2013.
Doc
“In the US case, it’s mostly immigration that is driving population increase, if I’m not mistaken.”
It’s pretty close, but the US population is still growing faster naturally (more births than deaths) than from immigration. That’s expected to change by 2030.
“But in terms of the climate crisis, population control is too slow an instrument to address our dilemma as it exists now. The only way it could be effective is basically to unleash a Holocaust on the entire global population, and at an absolutely unimaginable scale.”
Not sure what you’re thinking here. Globally, about 130 million people are born each year compared to 55 million who die.
If every woman had access to birth control, and was urged to use it for a year, there would be 75 million fewer people on the planet by early 2020.
It’s a pipe dream of course (yeah, I’m from Oregon), but a very simple one.
@Snape,
World population models have only relatively recently gotten accurate and real. There was a lot of humbug based upon earlier projections from “experts” which got tossed around. I first learned about this hearing Professor Raftery speak on it at UConn in Storrs. Update. There’s even an R package Raftery and colleagues have produced which let’s a student of the subject investigate this themselves.
There wouldn’t be 75 million fewer people, there would be 55 million fewer people (the number that die each year). It would take 18 years to get 1 billion less humans, but there would still be nearly 7 billion of us and demographics would be shot (as well as most teachers out of a job).
But, yes, it’s a pipe-dream. Though population is an issue, as it is humans who are wrecking the planet, any voluntary population control would take many decades, at least (since “voluntary” implies not all women would forego having children), to have some noticeable impact.
“If every woman had access to birth control, and was urged to use it for a year, there would be 75 million fewer people on the planet by early 2020.”
How many women do you plan to ‘urge’ personally? And what do you think their reaction will be? Personally, I ain’t goin’ there.
I don’t mean that in a snarky way, but these are deeply personal decisions, as well as one with big collective implications. The governmental history here is pretty fraught, not only ethically but also in terms of effectiveness.
Also, I must plus-one Mike’s comments. Even if we did reduce global population by 75 million relative to the current population–twice the the 75 million relative to projected growth, which is what I think you intended–that would be a reduction of less than 1 billion by 2030 or ~ 14%. To estimate the impact, you have to project some level of emissions growth–which could be negative.
The details of the numbers obviously matter a lot, but just to give an idea of the problem, I plugged in a 1% annual growth in emissions–global annual GDP growth seems to have been mostly hovering around 3% in recent years, so I’m assuming that less than half of this shows up in emissions:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG
The result is that you end up in 2030 with a population ~14% smaller, but most of the decline is eliminated in the growth of economy/carbon intensity. Specifically, the 1% annual growth calculation gives total growth over 11 years of ~11.5%.
I’d call that a wash in practical terms, and in my assumptions I’ve bent over backwards to favor the population control side of the debate.
My conclusion is that it’s better to focus on the emissions side directly. Even under very generous assumptions, it’s hard to make much difference in the shortish term with population-related measures. (And right now, we’re down to the shortish term if we want to avoid the worst of climate change.)
Which is not to say population is a question that we should neglect with reference to the longer term. Population, and the related term ‘economic scale’, do matter when we’re talking about real sustainability.
Note for nerds:
I’m one Chardonnay in, after a busy day, so let me check my assumptions here (and, if I haven’t screwed up, clarify the discussion). Here’s what I think I hear Snape & Mike R saying.
Snape: “75 million fewer people”. This is 75 million fewer relative to projected growth, ie.:
2019 births: 130 million, altered to 55 million by campaign
2019 deaths: 55 million
Net increase: 75 million, altered to 0 by campaign
So Snape is apparently assuming ~57% effectiveness of the contraceptive campaign, eliminating 75 million births.
Mike: “55 million fewer people.” This is relative to 2019 population, but, in a seeming paradox, actually assumes 100% effectiveness of the contraceptive campaign:
2019 births: 130 million, altered to 0 by campaign
2019 deaths: 55 million
Net increase: 75 million, altered to -55 million by campaign
Hope I’ve stated those positions correctly. If not, my apologies, but feel free to correct my misapprehensions.
Personally, I think one would be doing well to affect birth rate even by 10%, let alone 57%, or 100%.
Excellent points, Doc. From Snape’s figures, the word population would be 75 million less, each year, than it otherwise would be but, as you’ve shown, that wouldn’t actually eat into the situation as it is today, if the world continues, successfully, to try to increase GDP. The world’s humans have to decrease their impact, not increase it. Sure, population has to stop going up but if the rich portion of the world could live like the poor portion of the world, that would result in an enormous decrease in emissions, even if population continued to grow.
Very few people are prepared to live simpler, less impactful lives, so how we persuade them, I’ve no idea. I can only think it’ll happen when the climate impacts (and the impacts of other environmental degradation) are such that people can see the dangers without any doubt, and all denier blogs and organisations have effectively gone away.
“these are deeply personal decisions” writes Doc. That’s going to become less and less true over time. There is plenty of food grown now, but my understanding is that three major reasons make it not likely for this circumstance to be able to continue for much longer.
Much food is grown distant from where the people live who need it. As net energy availability declines it will become increasingly difficult to move food from where is it produced to where it is needed. Secondly, current levels of production are heavily reliant on fossil fuels for both fertilizer and production activities. Thirdly, some countries rely heavily on sea food: In addition to fossil fuel dependence of ocean fisheries (sail boats pulling tons of fish?), it appears that we are now in the process of reducing the amount of food the oceans can produce. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/oceans-are-warming-due-climate-change-yield-fewer-fish (Shades of soylent green?)
The further into collapse our economy falls (inadequate energy and material flux to maintain BAU or even stripped down systems), the less people are going to pay attention to such niceties as “deeply personal.” When it comes to how people respond to starvation “niceties” are generally ignored. It could (will?) get very ugly.
@LouPLouP2,
The fact that much of our food choices in the USA are served by long range growing and transporting has four effects. First, it allows people the illusion that they can get what they consider to be staple commodities (e.g., orange juice) at reasonable prices all year long. Second, it allows people access to a far more diverse set of products for relatively cheap prices. Third, it has a much greater chance of collapsing due to climate change and extreme weather events. Four, Carbon emissions are a larger share of whatever the price of food is.
I would suggest that we are a long way from where we are now to starvation. The first impacts of climate will be an abrupt reduction in availability of certain foods, and a spike in prices. Eventually there will be shortages, but these will be shortages of products we are used to having in grocery stores and prepared foods rather than outright inadequate supplies. These are shortages of products wanted versus products needed. Eventually, and like it or not, proper Carbon taxes or not, the prices of food will drift upwards towards their true social cost. This will be enforced not by Carbon taxes but by various disruptions and disasters. (Indeed, one interpretation of imposing a social cost of Carbon is to prepare an economy for these shocks.) This will mean foods will be sourced more locally, and there will not be items available all year long. It will also mean people will devote more of their time to cooking (and associated emissions), taking away from work productivity.
Food will be just the early warning. We all depend on wide ranging supply chains to run our businesses and to live. With climate change, those chains are at risk, or, at least, the costs of operating them are likely to greatly increase. This will be like building the Eerie Canal in upstate New York in reverse. Before the Canal, and its associated branch systems, there were certain products which people in the interior of upstate New York could rarely get. Once the Canal was built, like a postal service, it was a tremendous stimulus to the local economy because now merchants could stock things they hadn’t access to before, and get them regularly and at known prices. Without it, these are gone.
I continue to wonder if looking at impacts in the developing world is where our primary focus should be. I wonder how fragile our economy really is with respect to these kinds of supply shocks and if perhaps applying some of Taleb’s anti-fragile ideas to business planning might be good.
loup-loup, I debated clarifying my phrase ‘deeply personal choice,’ but refrained as the comment was already rather long.
But when I say “deeply personal” I don’t imply (intentionally, anyway) that the choice has no social implications nor constraints. And yes, the ‘constraints’ may well tend to constrict over time as you describe.
Nevertheless, the choice to have children or not tends to be the most consequential choice an individual makes in his or her (especially her!) lifetime. It is literally life-changing. Therefore, no matter what claims society puts on that choice, no matter what the practical constraints or ethical considerations exist, the choice does remain as I described it, “deeply personal.” I think that’s inescapable.
Doc—OK, understood. You focused on the individual, I focused on the societal consequences. Both valid.
I do think modernity (“western culture”) has elevated the personal above the collective interest. Some argue that modernity has led us into the dead end of growth addicted capitalism and individual consumerism and gratification. E.g., https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46818.Wasted_Lives
Agreed, louploup. I think that individualism has value in the sweep of human develooment, but I also think that its reification as an absolute has become toxic. There is such a thing a community–or, if there isn’t, no individual can fully develop themself. There’s a reason that ‘solitary’ is a dreaded punishment for most.
Two observations.
There are many countries now where the citizens are directly suffering starvation that has a climate change thumb pressing down on the previous climatic regimes. Their citizens might have a different view of “long way…”
And even in the wealthier nations we are not as far from potential hunger/starvation as we might like to think:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/15/climate-change-food-famine-study
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11062018/climate-change-research-food-security-agriculture-impacts-corn-vegetables-crop-prices
with regard to food: ” In 1906, Alfred Henry Lewis stated, “There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.” Since then, his observation has been echoed by people as disparate as Robert Heinlein and Leon Trotsky.
The key here is that, unlike all other commodities, food is the one essential that cannot be postponed. If there were a shortage of, say, shoes, we could make do for months or even years. A shortage of gasoline would be worse, but we could survive it, through mass transport or even walking, if necessary.
But food is different. If there were an interruption in the supply of food, fear would set in immediately.”
Lifted from:
https://internationalman.com/articles/nine-meals-from-anarchy/
I think it’s important to remember that most of us reading websites rely on food that is transported to us. Grocery store shelves empty very fast in a real emergency. Plan accordingly. Think about resilience and how you can avoid the nine meal path to chaos.
Are you curious about how societies fare if the food supply is threatened? Look at Syria or Yemen.
Cheers
Mike
@therealbernardj,
As in the case of drought, specific attribution to climate change is possible but tough to do.
I left a comment in the wrong location earlier today (needed to switch to “view full site” option). Reposting down here:
“There wouldn’t be 75 million fewer people, there would be 55 million fewer people (the number that die each year).”
Yes, mental typo. More to the point though, 130 million fewer people in a year than otherwise.
*******
On a personal note, I have two children and they are the joy of my life. Not fair for me to encourage others to have less. Still, it’s going to be hard to keep emissions at present levels, never mind a reduction, given a rapidly growing population.
Realbernard,
“….one of the best demographic ways to mitigate otherwise apparently harsh measures to shape population is to encourage delayed onset of starting a family. Of the various parameters that influence population structure and size, this is one that can probably be influenced with the least social kick-back.”
Almost sounds doable! A way easier sell than no kids at all, same result in the short term.
Snape, a part of the reduction in family size that characterises the contemporary West is the delay in the time at which couples are starting families. There are many social factors that lead to this delay, and other factors that affect the final size of families as well, but the delay in having children has a definite effect – somewhere I have links to interactive models that demonstrate this.
For those interested, population (and organism) growth can be modelled with a number of parameters, but at it’s most simplistic population growth can be defined with:
1) annual/age-related rate of reproduction
2) effective period of reproduction
3) survival rate of mother over reproductive lifetime
4) survival rate of offspring to age of reproduction
The first parameter can be further broken down to (at least…) birth rate (how often females give birth) and fecundity (how many offspring at a birth). Of these two components the second is largely biologically-determined in humans, and the first is strongly influenced by culture but difficult to dictate (unless one is a Chinese government…).
The third and fourth parameters are always pushed to the highest values possible, and are not ammenable to behaviour changes (abortion is more a personal cultural choice, than an effective mechanism for population control…).
This leaves the period of reproduction as the remaining target. The age of cessation (which is biologically determined) is relatively refractory to change compared to age of first reproduction, and it is with the latter that changes can be made that fit well with cultural attitudes to other life choices (e.g. career, travel,recreation), without imposing explicit family size limits on individuals. Even without family size limits though, starting later curtails the population level of recruitment of the next generation because there’s little change in the fecundity (slight increase in multiple births for older women notwithstanding) and only a modest increase at most in the tendency to try to reach the maximum desired family size in a short period before menopause.
To model a specific population’s dynamics one would also need the absolute number of males and females in different age classes. This is where it’s worth noting a few bits of trivia. For many (if not most) species the number of males is largely irrelevant to the calculation of determining the growth potential: they are simply there as filler. This is because it is females that actually produce the rate-limiting units of reproduction. Most male high school and university students have crushed egos when this is pointed out, but to be frank in many species makes simply are not the bottleneck, and most males are superfluous to requirements beyond maintiaining genetic diversity. Where males have a strong input into parenting and are lost to their female partner, and where cultural norms might inhibit re-pairing, or where males become so scarce as to result in some females not being able to procreate (thinks wars…), then there’s a detectable effect, but males generally remain the afterthought in demography…
There are of course many factors that modify the above parameters, and there are implicit assumptions about issues such as movement between systems, and as a result accurate growth equations can become very complex. But with the basic points above it can be appreciated where the major targets are for modifying population size/growth.
RBJ says, in part: “The first parameter can be further broken down to (at least…) birth rate (how often females give birth) and fecundity (how many offspring at a birth). Of these two components the second is largely biologically-determined in humans, and the first is strongly influenced by culture but difficult to dictate (unless one is a Chinese government…)”
Mike would add: or a fundamentalist society that limits access to contraception and favors a patriarchal family structure that accompanies limited access to contraception.
Another option for some fundamentalist societies would be to attempt to institute a “just say no” approach for people of child-bearing age and see if that will reduce population growth. It makes sense on its face, but I think in the societies where it has been tried, it has not reduced population growth because human beings seem to be naturally driven toward sexual activity and without broad and open access to contraceptives and acceptance of sexual activity which occurs outside of the realm of creating pregnancies.
I think a lot of population control discussion proceeds along classist/racist and sexist lines of thought and I have seen enough of all that in my lifetime already and it almost always bothers me, so it kind of jumps out at me when the population control discussion arises.
Cheers
Mike
My observation about the effect on population size of delaying the age of reproductive onset seems to have elicited a bit of discussion on the thread. It might help to make a few observations.
To counter the effect of the delay in starting a family, several things would need to happen:
1) the survival of females through the reproducing phase of their lifetimes would need to be reduced – not much will happen in this regard in a modern society
2) the reduction in fertility that occurs with age would need to be reduced – despite IVF technology, the gains to be had are comparatively modest
3) the greater risk to neonatal health/survival that occurs with maternal age would need to be reduced – despite medical technology, the gains to be had are comparatively modest
4) the interval between successive children per mother would need to be reduced… such that the final tally of successful births matches or exceeds the total opportunityof having children at a younger age. This is not an easy thing to achieve – which is why there are few women in their 40s who’ve banked eggs and subsequently had families of four or more…
The general consequence of having children later is that there is a lower final number of recruitment to the next generation. This is the case for most iteroparous species compared to semelparous ones. There are obvious social/emotional sequelæ to establishing such a pattern of reproduction, as Western trends demonstrate, but from the perspectives of a demographic tool and of social acceptability it’s a parameter that can be easily adjusted with minimum conmparative resistance, and in a modern society it in fact inspires quite a lot of acceptance.
Our population and resource problems are far greater than this though, and eventually nature will thin the herd the way it’s always done – catastrophically, violently, red in tooth and claw… and black and green and purple in pestilence…
We’re just not admitting to this yet.
This was a comment that I ‘found’.
Thanks to Shihan-Malcolm Ayles.
” There is a direct relationship between GDP and energy consumption. The IPCC has said we need to reduce global energy consumption by 45% by 2030 so we need to be reducing global energy consumption by around 5% per year starting now… given that gives us no time to create a systemic change which decouples GDP from energy consumption (this would require a huge amount of energy in of it’s self). The only option is to reduce global GDP by 5% per year.
Now lets see how many environmental groups will campaign to do that let alone a political party anywhere in the world prepared to run a campaign to do that… yes, reduce wages, reduce living conditions, reduce jobs, reduce travel, reduce consumption, reduce meat consumption… all simultaneously and continue to reduce them significantly year on year for a decade. We need to reduce the global GDP back to what it was in 1970 by 2030 with more than double the people… which means that the average per capita GDP actually needs to go back to what it was in around 1940… oh and there was a larger percentage of the world in poverty back in 1940… so in reality is in the developed world we need to wind it back to some were well before that say consumption levels of 1920’s.
So it’s pretty easy to see if we want to meet the IPCC requirements then in the developed would we need to quickly wind things back 100 years over the next 10 years, that is reduce our average per capita GDP every year by a decades worth of gains for the next 10 years.
Really doesn’t seem like many people think this through, sure if we don’t do it were screwed but who really thinks we are even going to consider anything coming close to this?”
https://www.facebook.com/groups/methanehydratesnews/permalink/1195115867309015/
Postkey,
Fortunately peer reviewed articles document that the comment you posted is simply false.
Renewable energy is much more efficient than fossil fuels so the amount of primary energy needed is much less. I will give two examples.
Your coal or nuclear power pant uses steam generators that have an efficiency of about 40% (not counting the energy wasted moving the coal to the plant). My wind and solar plants generate electricity directly and have an efficiency of about 100%. If we switch from fossil fuel to renewable electricity we immediately save over 50% of primary energy.
Your fossil fuel internal combustion engine is less than 25% efficient under optimal conditions, not counting the energy wasted to mine, refine and deliver the gas. An electric car has an overall efficiency of over 80%. That is why it is cheaper per mile to power an electric car. If we all switch to electric the primary energy demand will drop by over 60%.
In addition buildings can be better insulated, heat pumps deliver more heat and cold for a fraction of the energy traditional heaters and AC units do and other technologies deliver the same services for much less primary power.
False claims that we must all go and live in caves are promoted by the denial industry to discourage people from taking action to control AGW. Don’t fall for these false naratives.
My perspective is that it’s also the case that this decoupling of GDP and carbon emissions has in fact been going on for a while in most places. From England to China to North America, carbon intensity has been declining fairly steadily. The rocketing Chinese (and other developing nations’) emissions, coupled with the sheer aggregate size of those economies, has meant that absolute global growth in emissions has continued.
That’s not to say that there’s no connection, of course, or that there’s nothing to worry about. But the connection is, as Michael already pointed out, much less than “direct”. The developed world is a case in point: for many nations, emissions have dropped even as GDP continues to rise. If it can be true in the developed world, it can be true in the developed world as well.
Some attribute this to ‘leakage’–the offshoring to the developed world of the ‘dirtiest’ industries. And there may be some truth to that, historically. But in an era when wind and solar are cheaper than coal or gas, the motive to offshore emissions in order to greenwash goes away. Green is cheaper than black anyway.
I would say it’s impossible to decouple emissions from GDP for two reasons. Firstly, the carbon intensity of an economy is not just GDP/territorial emissions but GDP/all emissions due to that economy. Secondly, if any part of what is measured by GDP involves emissions then there can be no decoupling. I’ve read enough science articles that show there has been almost no even relative decoupling of GDP and emissions. In the end, it’s the global figures that matter. Emissions are currently rising close to the GDP growth rate.
Michael D. Sweet: Are you implying that there is no need to reduce energy flux, either per capita or overall? Your focus on efficiency doesn’t address that key issue. If you are claiming “efficient” renewables can reduce GHG emissions to a survivable levels (i.e., none), please provide some citations from the peer reviewed literature. If that’s not what you’re arguing, what is the relationship between efficiency of EV v ICE and our current global ecological crises?
In any case, efficiency as you describe it is (IMO) irrelevant. Your analysis does not evaluate the systems involved in replacing ICE with EV, etc. The real issue is how much energy we need to maintain our economic systems. Key metrics include not only gross available energy, but also quality and density of energy,‡ and available net energy (how much energy is available to “do work” (maintain economic systems like transportation, health care, education, housing, etc).
[‡ Really good graph about this at https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-02-26/the-future-is-rural-the-unexpected-consequence-of-energy-descent/%5D
Systems analysis is crucial, including what’s called “life cycle analysis” of technologies such as EV and renewables. If you include the entire cycle of energy systems from production through “doing work” (like moving a car), there is no such thing as a mechanical system that has “an efficiency of about 100%.” That would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. You’re correct that all the things you mention to make current activities more efficient is a good thing to do, but it’s just not clear to me how it solves the bigger problems of climate change, biodiversity loss, etc.
I think it’s possible we could maintain some level of “civilization” through the coming impacts of “baked in” global warming and other ecological damage, and some of the things you list would help us do that. But not at current levels of energy and material fluxes.
Louploup2,
There are many papers written about possible future energy systems using renewable energy. I often cite Jacobson 2018 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148118301526. You can read his references and citations to get additional ideas. Keep in mind that Jacobson uses only completely renewable energy and no combustion like biofuels. If you were to use biofuels that would make the process easier.
Jacobson’s proposal is only one of many. While some people challenge Jacobson’s cost analysis there are many other similar proposals. I also like the Smart Energy Europe plan https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032116002331 which uses biofuels and electrofuels to provide all energy including back up for renewables for calm nights. Jacobson does not like the pollution caused by combustion. There are other more up to date systems if you read the papers that cite the references I have given.
Many researchers find renewable energy to be cost effective. Wind and solar are already the cheapest energy on Earth. To a large extent the cost of energy is determined by the energy content of the system. As fossil fuels run out their cost is going up. It is not cheap to frack or drill in 5,000 feet of water. The decreasing cost of renewable energy indicates that a renewable system will be able to supply all world needs. Some habits that people have will have to be changed. Airplanes are particularly energy intensive and might become very costly.
Many people or companies can delay energy use for a price. Current price systems encourage companies to run air conditioning at night and save the cold for use during the day. That uses up the excess energy generated by inflexible baseload facilities like coal and nuclear. For a renewable system people will develop alternate methods of delaying energy use. I could charge my car today while it is sunny or tonight when it is windy. If it is forecast that it will be calm and not too sunny for a few days I can delay some driving until the cost comes down again.
If you claim that fossil fuels are required for energy you must concede that in 100 years fossil fuels will all be burnt and civilization would collapse. I do not know anyone who predicts collapse of civilization when fossil fuels run out. Everyone thinks people will switch to a renewable system eventually.
Michael Sweet:
I do not believe Jacobson’s (and his fellow authors’) energy proposals have credibility. I’m not going to post links to the exchanges wherein his claims are pretty thoroughly debunked; they are easy to find with a quick search.
Regarding your ultimate conclusions:
“[1] If you claim that fossil fuels are required for energy you must concede that in 100 years fossil fuels will all be burnt and civilization would collapse. [2] I do not know anyone who predicts collapse of civilization when fossil fuels run out. [3] Everyone thinks people will switch to a renewable system eventually.”
[1] I did not make that claim. I think I stated pretty clearly that there is no known sources of energy to continue current *quantities* of consumption. The biological term (population dynamics) for our situation is “overshoot”—there are more of us than current primary productivity can sustain. The stored energy of fossil fuels enabled us to grow way past the level that current global energy flux can support. A good metaphor for this dynamic is a battery that is being discharged faster than it can be charged. Schramski 2015 (https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1508353112) explains.
[2] You’re not looking. There is a large and growing number of sites that focus on this very subject. Some are more “doomer” than other. Here’s one by a former actuary (Gail Tverberg) whose analyses are IMO very credible: ourfiniteworld.com. Here’s another by an economist (Tim Morgan): https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/
There are many others. The bottom line question in this arena is how hard (fast) and far the collapse will be when the quantity of net energy really starts declining. By most credible analyses, we appear to be at peak now, if not already declining.
[3] I agree we will “switch,” but “everyone” is a logical fallacy. As my wife tells me, “never say always or never.” Saying those words *almost* always loses debates. My observation is that most people are simply oblivious to the issue, or barely think about it.
@LouPLouP2,
Having objections raised to a set of proposals, even strong ones, is not equivalent at all to “being debunked”. The objections with the greatest merit argue they do not see a reasonable path from where we are to the world Jacobson, et al sketch. That is a plausible argument, and it may even be correct. But I’d argue that that isn’t really Jacobson’s problem. He and colleagues were and are laying out a picture of how it could be done.
That the existing set of policymakers cannot enlarge their imaginations or give up enough profits by suitably high taxation in order to drive to that configuration of energy may be too bad for everyone, but it doesn’t mean the final configuration is impossible.
It would only take one aspect of Jacobson and Delucchi’s paper to be shown to be wrong for the whole paper to be debunked, unless that aspect was in no way critical to the paper’s conclusions.
Personally, I feel the paper makes too many unsubstantiated assumptions and is to dismissive of what the authors consider small numbers to be the ultimate demonstration of how renewables could replace all fossil fuels. As, we’re now 7-8 years on from that paper, the calculations would all have to be done again (since we’re using more energy now and have fewer resources). Jacobson tried to do that with a later paper (which I haven’t read) about the same subject confined to one country. As mentioned, others have criticised the paper, so it is not the definitive answer on whether or not renewables (which itself is a misnomer) could replace fossil fuel energy sources.
It’s rather academic, of course, since the actions, globally, to make it a reality are not being taken.
@Mike Roberts,
Actually, I heartily disagree. That’s how attorneys and courts operate. That’s not, in general, how science, engineering, and mathematics operates. Agreed, there is a deterioration of discourse in the formal professions towards the standards of the legal profession, but that does not mean it’s either welcome or proper.
In general, if there is a criticism of a scientific or engineering paper, the process is to approach the original author and work towards coming to an understanding regarding the criticism — even if the original authors don’t entirely agree with it — and then work on a follow-up paper, or, in the case of journals which permit comments and discussion, produce a series of comments which themselves often are serious contributions to the topic. In the follow-up paper case, the original authors and the critics all appear as co-authors. In the discussion pattern, the critical papers are supplied as discussion, and the original authors write a summarizing rejoinder.
The point is to advance knowledge on the subject. Sure, methods can be criticized, particularly if they are accompanied by citations of data and calculations. The modern approach is to contribute the data sets, and the calculations, and the computer codes used to arrive at the conclusions. (I have a difficulty publishing about most of my personal professional work because my employer, like many high tech companies, does not agree with this openly available pattern. People do publish papers, but they cannot provide the accompanying datasets. That’s not acceptable, at least by the standards of the American Statistical Association and organizations like the Ecological Society of America. I agree it’s not acceptable.)
Also, there are energy budget techniques used to plan and project energy needs in ISOs and RTOs which are essentially equivalent to the work Jacobson, et al did, except often less rigorous. Facts are, it isn’t that hard to develop gross numbers of space needed to capture enough energy to replace all energy needs for the entire United States two- or threefold over. With a little imagination on storage, at face value that’s the answer. And there is enough. The difficulty is getting the energy to where it is needed, and dealing with dynamics, such as capacity factors due to assets not being available at times.
There are many creative ways this could be approached, some suggested by Jacobson over the years, some by others, such as putting assets at meteorological synoptic scales (bigger than most weather systems).
Obviously there is major re-engineering of the grid needed if this were to be pursued, and, to do this, a bunch of local regulation would need to be superseded. Most ISOs and RTOs are pretty independent and utilities like to operate without direction, even if they are supposed to be serving the public. (Some do. Some are advanced and understand what needs to be done. Many do not.) I am pessimistic about that ever happening. Accordingly, that is why I wrote my projections laced with pessimism some time ago. I think, like it or not, that most innovation in the United States is violently Schumpeterian and the way new things get built is to see the existing crumble, like Kodak and Sears.
I understand the economic anguish that will cause. However, it’s the choice of the people of the United States, as is their choice, apparently, to refuse to pay significantly more taxes, top-to-bottom, in order to forestall what will probably be the roughest times the United States has ever seen and, just possibly, given that we’ve collectively never experienced the climate world we are entering, worse than civilization has ever seen. And it will be the United States’ fault since we are top consumers.
But, hey, if that’s people want, I’m sure it will work out fine in the end. It’s all part of the show, right?
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/b4965ac2-9a70-408b-a1f6-58d475b4d760
ecoquant: “He and colleagues were and are laying out a picture of how it could be done.” Well, I see the argument between Jacobson et al and their critics continues to rage: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=5%2C48&sciodt=0%2C48&as_ylo=2018&cites=8941949297806682741&scipsc=&q=criticism+jacobson+renewable+energy&btnG=
A good one on quick skim is https://osf.io/hdb2g/download/?format=pdf (anyone who starts with a Ludwig Wittgenstein quote gets my vote!).
The problem is how you define the “it.” I have yet to see any credible arguments supporting replacement by renewables (meaning low to no carbon emissions) for a major portion (anything above about 20%) of the energy flux needed to maintain *current* economic systems. Let us know when total global carbon neutral energy supply rises above 10%. Better yet, let us know when the global GHG emission rate actually drops: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/co2-emissions-reached-an-all-time-high-in-2018/
@LouPLouP2,
Well, Jacobson, et al aren’t the only ones with a plan. Black and Vetch has a plan, too. in 2015, IRENA thought there was a path for the United States. Perhaps there wasn’t, or perhaps the opportunity is gone. BP has described a path for the world, too, although it won’t be accomplished by 2050. Barclays thinks present day electric utilities are doomed. And Fraunhofer ISE describes how emissions could be reduced by 80% in Germany, not the United States but a pretty bigger hitter industrially, and one still dependent upon coal.
But I don’t think it matters.
What there will be is not an electric or energy grid, but grids. And, increasingly, due to the chopping up of responsibility by present day vested interests and regulations, I have written about this elsewhere. People with access to capital, and this needn’t only be the relatively wealthy, will opt for decentralized high efficiency zero Carbon wind, solar, storage, with smart controllers, and, probably, microgrids having dynamic boundaries. These will be increasingly urban areas and, because cost of living and cost of producing per widget will be lower, since energy feeds into everything, and data and evidence will continue to improve efficiencies, this is where more people will be. Naturally, real estate costs will increase.
But as people abandon fossil fuel energy on price, using it will be increasingly more difficult, and pricier. No doubt there will be an attempt to subsidize users of fossil fuels with taxes on production in fossil free cities, since otherwise such users, who are and will overwhelmingly be rural and semi-rural businesses and people
This will cause the productive part of the population to push back. If they win, people won’t be able to do rural any longer, unless they too adopt the cheaper forms of energy. If they don’t win, the most productive people will be taxed more to subsidized fossil fuel users, they’ll be less productive, and, ultimately, they will relocate, probably to outside the United States. There is already a brain drain underway (emigrants have increased from 4 million to 9 million since 1999, but official counts haven’t been updated since 2011) and it could get worse.
Facts are, if you can get energy 20x cheaper using solar and wind choosing not to access it is simply being self-destructive.
Louploup2:
When I access your GOOGLE search I found that 9 of the first 10 items support Jacobson. I stopped after the first 10. Several were written by other researchers in support of Jacobson’s arguments. The single article that argued against Jacobson’s conclusion was cited only one time and was behind a paywall.
If that is the best you can do I will stand on my comments. It is easy to criticize others work when yuou do not have to provide data to support your claims.
I cited additional studies that you have not addressed. I presume you feel they were more acceptable than Jacobson. As I previously mentioned, hundreds of other peer reviewed articles have come to similar conclusions as Jacobson. I find your dismissal of all these studies with no datra provided to support your claim interesting.
I think that Ecoquant has done a fine job of answering your questions.
@postkey,
This predicament and the continuing refusal of the world’s biggest emitters to accept responsibility for it, and the actions of their enablers, is why IMO serious minded folks are talking less Green New Deal and more negative emissions technology coupled with a drastic reduction in emissions over time.
Who will pay for it? Eventually those responsible.
Tim Garrett’s work shows that each $1000 of GDP requires about 6 milliwatts of power capacity for ever (provided that level of GDP is to be maintained). And this seems to be a fairly constant number over time. So $1000 of growth requires an additional 6 milliwatts of power capacity and then that has to be maintained for ever. Now, contraction would reduce energy demand, so to reduce energy demand, our economies would have to contract. No politician would campaign on the basis of contracting the economy, so …..
@Mike Roberts,
There are generating and transmission efficiencies to be had with decentralized zero Carbon energy, but, acknowledged, that cannot power everything. Also, some of those would be presumed in any rollout. How much raw capacity is needed with zero Carbon sources depends upon what specifically provides it and how it’s interconnected and managed. Even onshore versus offshore wind have different characteristics, and both of these depend upon geography. Apart from NIMBYism it is easier to put solar everywhere, but, at least with present technology (see alternative), that does nothing at night and during snow dumps. (Although snow has less of a long-lived effect than most think, excepting huge extended events like New England and Massachusetts saw in February of 2014.) One way of dealing with poor capacity factors due to availability is to overbuild generation with respect to demand, and then bank the rest in some kind of store.
Zero-emission cement? It’s coming, albeit not tomorrow. Here’s one project:
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/worlds-first-zero-emission-cement-plant-takes-shape-in-norway/
There are others around the world, including novel chemical approaches (IIRC).
Thanks for the link, Doc. I have read about zero emissions cement but I’ve also read about a lot of innovations over the decades that never made it to mainstream use. Again, I’d prefer the term “hypothetical” when referring to potential futures which are still largely a glimmer. And with already built infrastructure and facilities, just how long it will take to reach zero, if all the supposed technologies can be refined enough and scaled up enough without some other serious negative side effect, is anyone’s guess. To my mind, it will be a race against collapse and, even then, may only slow collapse, given the environmental damage our way of life does, even without climate change.
Realbernard
“the delay in having children has a definite effect….”
Thanks. I’m kicking myself for overlooking what should have been obvious. I was thrown off by well intended, but very misleading statements like this:
“Replacement level fertility is the level of fertility at which a population exactly replaces itself from one generation to the next. In developed countries, replacement level fertility can be taken as requiring an average of 2.1 children per woman.”
Misleading because, as you pointed out, the age at which a woman has children, even if it’s at a “replacement level”, has a major impact on population.
It seems that TFR is actually calculated by summing “age-specific fertility rates” (ASFRs), which are essentially just 5-year binned rates:
https://www.population.sg/articles/how-is-the-total-fertility-rate-tfr-calculated
So it would seem that the probable outcome of delaying first pregnancy would be to depress the ASFR for the younger cohorts, and therefore TFR as well. (To an extent, this could theoretically be compensated by increases in the older cohorts, and there is, I think, a small observed trend in this direction. But the potential magnitude of this is limited.)
I think that the main extraneous thing affecting TFR in different societies in practice is infant/child mortality, as that’s really the only thing ‘upstream’ of the youngest ASFR:
(Total births) – (Child deaths) = (Potential mothers)
Doc
I’m looking at something different. To keep things simple:
Lifespan = 64 years
Each couple has twins – 1 boy and 1 girl
*The twins are born when the woman (girl) is age 16
-Year 0, population is 2 (Adam and Eve)
-Year 16, population is 4
-Year 32, population is 6
-Year 48, population is 8
-Year 64, population remains at 8 because Adam and Eve have died.
-Year 80, population is still 8 because Adam and Eve’s children have died……and so on. Population is forever steady at 8, with each new generation exactly replacing the generation that passes away.
********
* The twins are born when the woman is age 32:
-Year 0, population is 2 (Adam and Eve)
-Year 32, population is 4
-Year 64, population remains at 4 because Adam and Eve have died.
-Year 96, population is still 4 because Adam and Eve’s children have died……and so on.
**********
Doubling the age at which a woman gives birth has cut the steady-state population in half.
Snape, I think that’s an artifact of your model structure, not a reality. After all, and trivially, if everybody reproduces at 16, but only lives till 15, the steady-state population will be 0, and it will be reached in year 15.
Or, going the other way–and why not? I seem to recall that Adam and Eve had lifespans far in excess of Bronze Age norms–what if the lifespan were 128? If that were the case, then the steady-state population would be the same for both groups–it would just take longer for the ’32’ scenario to get there.
So the result you derived is dependent on the interplay of reproductive frequency and lifetime.
Mike R., I really don’t see the evidence supporting your claim that there is some sort of invariant relationship between GDP and emissions. Let’s take the global picture.
Here’s GDP since 1960:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD
1960: $1.366 trillion USD
2017: $80.738 trillion USD
Growth coefficient: ~59
Shape of curve: irregular, quasi exponential
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.KT
1960: 9.396 GT
2017: 36.138 GT
Growth coefficient: ~3.8
Shape of curve: irregular, quasi linear
One of these things is not like the other.
You also say that “If any part of what is measured by GDP involves emissions then there can be no decoupling.”
But that’s only true if you assume that the portion dependent upon emissions is in constant proportion to the the whole. There’s no reason it has to be.
It’s not an invariant relationship between GDP and emissions. The invariant relationship is between each $1000 (using a particular year for the value of the dollar) of accumulated GDP (wealth) and the energy required to support that wealth. Since fossil fuels are currently such a high proportion of energy, then there is also a fairly constant relationship to emissions.
Decoupling means that emissions are completely unrelated to the economy. If the economy can, and does, use any energy source with, perhaps, arbitrary reasons for using a non-emitting power source (if such exist) versus an emitting power source, then I suppose the economy would be decoupled. Since that is not true, then we will not see a decoupling until all energy sources are non emitting (so there is no choice).
I suppose one might regard “decoupling” as an ongoing process but, to me, since there doesn’t appear to be an end point to emitting energy supplies, there is no on-going process of decoupling. Ultimately, unless all energy can be made totally non-emitting (throughout the life-cycle) or the economy can operate without energy (and so decoupled from energy use) then the economy can never be decoupled from emissions.
Thanks for elaborating, Mike. A couple of points of difference.
1) My understanding of ‘decoupling’ isn’t that a ‘decoupled’ economy has zero emissions; it is that trends of change between overall economic growth and emissions don’t exhibit a strong causal relationship.
Thus, for example, let’s imagine a Utopian scenario in which a society obtains all their energy from (quasi-magical) quantum ‘zero point energy’ mills. But religious zealots who believe that this is a form of ‘sorcery’ forbidden by Scripture take over government, and convert everything to thermal coal plants on a cost-for-cost basis, such that GDP isn’t affected in any way. (This scenario just gets more unlikely, doesn’t it?)
The result would be a huge increase in emissions, with no change in GDP, and would therefore by my understanding describe a ‘decoupled’ situation.
More generally, it’s at least theoretically possible for an economy, some portion of which is emitting, to exhibit change in its non-emitting sectors, but not in its emitting ones, and reasonably be called ‘decoupled.’
I grant you that, given how pervasive fossil fuel use is in practice in most societies today, this is a bit theoretical. But the greater the penetration of clean energy tech becomes, the less this is true.
2) You say that “there doesn’t appear to be an end point to emitting energy supplies…” There does to me, and to many analysts, as previously discussed. Emissions attributed to renewable energy tech are due to the fact that they are built with existing FF-powered infrastructure. Clean up the energy system, and you clean up those embodied emissions, too.
Yes, Doc, it’s possible, in that hypothetical scenario (I prefer “hypothetical” to “theoretical” since I don’t currently see a path to the scenario you mentioned – and nor do you, I think).
As for the end point. Well, concrete is a big player in the emissions game also, So we’d have to clean up that as well as all energy, to get to zero emissions.
Hypothetically, I agree, economies can be decoupled from emissions though they will never become decoupled from energy use. Consequently, I don’t currently see any likelihood of decoupling.
Tim Garrett:
http://www.inscc.utah.edu/~tgarrett/Economics/Physics_of_the_economy.html
Note that his derived relationship is to *wealth*, not GDP, and also that the data used are from 1970-2012 (by eyeball from the graph). That’s not necessarily adequate, particularly since that entire span is part of the Age of Late Fossil.
The relationship between economic activity and GDP is somewhat complicated. To start with, GDP itself is a mushy metric with a great deal to be desired as a baseline for the energy needs of economic activity. Energy flux all by itself is a far better baseline to start from for purposes of evaluating the linkages between economic activity and global warming.
The strong correlative relationship between economic activity and GHG emissions is based on the fact that most of our energy generates GHG as we use it to drive our economic activities. Relative to the total energy flow currently happening, there is very little energy available that does not generate GHG emissions. There is a very strong relationship between the nature of our economic structures and the quantity of energy they consume. One of the best recent summaries of these relationships is at https://arxiv.org/pdf/1812.09756.pdf (also see https://www.nature.com/articles/srep43869 and the references in both)
Humans (like all animals) have a basic biophysical metabolism. Our economic systems also have a metabolism, lower for rural, higher for industrial, much higher for urban agglomeration service oriented. It does not matter how much you fuss with theories about renewables, etc., if you want to maintain some level of civilization with a specific population, you must provide a minimum quantity of net calories to sustain it. Those numbers can be calculated, and IMO there is no way on doG’s green earth that we can maintain our current level of economic activity with anything close to the current population. Not only because it would force the climate into a largely uninhabitable state for us, but because it would force the climate into a largely uninhabitable state for a great deal of the ecosystem. The latter probably results in a long term reduction in net primary productivity (think “Great Extinction”) which feedbacks to the former.
It’s scary as hell where we’re going, and I think we need to get beyond playing around with “renewables” and other ways to avoid the real problem: we are in overshoot in both population and economic activity. Until we acknowledge that fact we’re not likely to do much to make course corrections.
I agree with Tamino: We should to be talking about these topics ALL THE TIME. I pound the ‘limits to growth’ drum regularly in my urban politics activities where I live (Seattle).
BTW, the wealth connection is also significant: the more inequity there is, the likelier there will be economic collapse. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800914000615
Yes, it would be nice if there could be civil discourse between scientists where there are disagreements. Some back and forth between Jacobson and his critics had some uncivil language in them. But I seem to recall this happening with a Wright and Schaeller paper about plankton decline; some initially fiercely rejected criticisms seemed to end up prompting them to redo their research and they came up with more believable figures (it was still a worrying decline in phytoplankton but not nearly as bad as the original paper).
Doc: “Snape, I think that’s an artifact of your model structure, not a reality.”
Me: The model structure is fine.
Doc: “After all, and trivially, if everybody reproduces at 16, but only lives till 15, the steady-state population will be 0, and it will be reached in year 15.
Me: That’s true. If every woman died before she could reproduce, it would be a one-and-done generation.
Doc: “Or, going the other way–and why not? I seem to recall that Adam and Eve had lifespans far in excess of Bronze Age norms–what if the lifespan were 128? If that were the case, then the steady-state population would be the same for both groups–it would just take longer for the ’32’ scenario to get there.”
Me: Nope. The steady-state population would be different for each group. Don’t believe me? Get out a pencil and paper and give it a go.
Doc: “So the result you derived is dependent on the interplay of reproductive frequency and lifetime.”
Me: Yes!
“The steady-state population would be different for each group.”
You’re correct, of course. I applied a factor to one side, but not the other. Duh!
I have “duh” moments all the time. No worries.
Anyway, I found a reference to a similar model, except each woman has 6 kids (3 boys, 3 girls). The interval between generations is again the only variable:
“The following examples of population growth with six children per couple compare generation times of 20 years and 30 years:
2 ————— 6 ————— 18 ————— 54
(20 years) (20 years) (20 years)
80 people
in 60 years
2 ————— 6 ————— 18
(30 years) (30 years)
26 people
in 60 years
With a 20 year generation interval, the total number of people at the end of 60 years is 80 (2 + 6 + 18 + 54). With a 30 year generation interval, the total number of people at the end of 60 years is 26. Increasing the generation interval from 20 to 30 years reduces the population
growth from 80 to 26 during a 60 year period, a percent decrease of 67.5%. A longer generation interval significantly slows the growth of a population.”
https://www2.palomar.edu/users/warmstrong/lmexer9.htm
Louploup’s questions stayed with me, so I did a bit of poking around.
The relevant paragraph read:
What I found surprised me. According to IRENA, in 2015 global renewable energy *production*–not installed capacity, but actual output–amounted to 5,537,179 GWh.
https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2017/Jul/IRENA_Renewable_Energy_Statistics_2017.pdf?la=en&hash=E93A8DF9B1BE56B6E7838E4552A7EC9C0C95867F
Global production figures proved a bit tougher to find, but there is this, from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_production
(There’s also a listing from the CIA World Factbook, but they don’t total all the national figures for you, and I wasn’t zealous enough for this purpose to do the work. But those are presumably more homogeneous, if someone wants to tackle the number crunching.)
Their global generation total?
25,551,300 GWh
That yields an RE percentage of ~22%.
I grant you that this was quite ‘quick and dirty’; that the total RE is still about 60% hydropower; and that there are definitely some real inhomogeneities in the data. But as a first approximation, perhaps it’s not without value.
Doc, thanks for that work! Finding good data can be a challenge. My “relevant paragraph” was basically made up targets based on my eyeballing of various tables and charts I’ve seen over the years. I just did a bit of digging and updating again, including looking at that massive set of data from irena.org — (your total production figure appears to be upper right entry on page 3).
The next step is to compare that figure with other calculations of total ‘renewable’ production (quotes indicate it needs careful definition—hydro? biomass?). And then to compare that figure to total energy production/use (that you used Wiki for).
One of my favorite sources is BP (yes, oil company) annual reporting. https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/energy-outlook.html etc. U.S. EIA is another source. As is the confusingly similar International Energy Agency (IEA). And of course all these sites tend to use different metrics—tons of oil equivalent, GWh, Megajoules. It’s a grunt of an exercise, especially for a policy analysts like me (not a scientist or engineer). ;) At least I know how to do basics on excel.
Comparing the sources (BP and IEA—EIA site is more difficult), at least there is some consistency in the overall global energy production figure: it appears to be close to 14 billion tons of oil equivalent, which translates to c. 160,000,000 GWh. If the Irena figure for global renewable production is accurate, that would be 3.5%.
The IEA figures (https://webstore.iea.org/download/direct/2263?fileName=World_Energy_Balances_2018_Overview.pdf — sorry, buying the actual data tables costs hundreds of bucks ) shows sources as percent of “Total primary energy supply by fuel” (Figure 6) to be:
• biofuels* and waste as 10%
• hydro 3%
• “other” 2% (wind, geothermal)
• nuclear 5%
• fossil fuels 81%
So, the Irena figure appears to well in the range of what these sources say. I think the difference from your cited Wiki figure is because that is only electricity production, which is half or less of global energy flux.
The total figure, 80%+ fossil fuels, is consistent with every reliable source I ever see. That’s why I picked 20% as the threshold for my quote; taking out the biomass and nuclear, ‘renewables’ have to more than double to get there.
*BTW, “biofuels” is it’s own raging debate. I have worked on forest management and conservation law and policy for decades. Use of wood for fuel is not as “carbon neutral” as many boosters claim. Especially not in the short term (it takes decades to sequester the pulse of carbon that burning wood puts into the atmosphere). And even more especially not with many areas like California, Northern Rockies, and even the Amazon appearing to be moving away from carbon sequestration toward if not already into emission.
Yes, the difference is primary versus just electricity. Sorry not to pick up that you were talking primary.
And yes, biomass is problematic.
The issue with biofuels depends on the source and use.
Burning landscape and urban waste that otherwise would be landfilled is not a problem. Much timber waste (cutoffs and sawdust) is burned to run the sawmill.and that is also OK since the waste would be generated anyway. (this is actually a significant source of energy)
Wholesale clearcutting trees in the USA to make wood pellets to burn in the UK is not renewable. Corn ethanol is not worth it. Sugar cane ethanol using waste cane for distillation has better renewable energy content.
Each project has to be assessed on its own. At the start of this process, like now, there are uses like wood pellets in the UK, and corn ethanol that industry gets in for profit. Hopefully as time progresses the useless processes will be stopped and the good processes will be encouraged.
@Michael D Sweet,
And how does
even (help) get us to the necessary zero CO2 emissions?
MDS: Your basic framing is accurate. I have not done the work to parse out the 10% “biofuels and waste” figure in the IEA report. The extremes are easy (corn ethanol in Midwest U.S. v higher EROI sugar based in Brazil; Southeast forests turned into pellets to heat Britain v. cogen in U.S. lumber towns). The difficult ones are in the middle such as C&D waste from construction; is it better to burn it or to bury it?
IMO, our basic starting point should be to increase living biomass as much as possible. Humans are having a significant negative impact on net primary productivity through land use and land use change, reduced ocean productivity, and due to positive feedbacks from global warming. This will not end well if we don’t reverse the trends.
ecoquant: “how does [timber mill co-gen] even (help) get us to the necessary zero CO2 emissions?” I’m pretty hard line about all things tree and carbon (No Cut! and No Emit!), but even I realize that after the transition to a smaller population that’s sustainable with (whatever is left of) available primary productivity and industrial capacity, we are going to need energy, and wood. Co-gen is about as sustainable a source of energy as we can have and it is low tech and works on small scales. You don’t need gigantic forest sucking Drax plant to make it work.
The key to overall sustainability is not to exceed the primary productivity of the supply source(s). Along with honest accounting for the real costs and EROI. I.e., no more petrol trucking wood hundreds of miles. Current calculations where I am in a very wood rich ecosystem (NW rainforest) 50 miles is considered about the max ‘drainage’ for ‘waste’ from timber operations for use as fuel, and that’s using capitalist fossil fuel economics, not net carbon accounting.
I think this is a good description of about the best possible situation a century or two from now: https://www.postcarbon.org/publications/the-future-is-rural/
[Apologies for responding when not being the one asked.]