Atmospheric Sciences professor at U. Utah. Believer that it really is turtles all the way down. Opinions predetermined and not my employer's.
Salt Lake City, UT
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Thread: New paper in @EGU_ESD with @ProfSteveKeen and @prof_grasselli shows a 50-year fixed relationship between world economic "wealth" - not the GDP - and global primary energy consumption. Implication? Our future is tied to even our quite distant past
esd.copernicus.org/articles/…
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I feel like we expected climate change to be this gradual thing we'd be challenged to adjust to. Instead, it's more like a roving beast. We never know when it will strike, where, or even how, just that eventually it will come for us too
The fires in Hawaiʻi are shocking and horrific, and I appreciate the attention of the global media on my small state.
I just wish when climate change fueled disasters strike areas in the global south, the media would show as much sustained interest.
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In a world sustained by combustion, even just maintaining the GDP at current levels accelerates CO2 emissions and the rise in concentrations. To stop this either:
1. We proactively collapse the economy now, or
2. Wait for climate change to do it for us later🧵
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At some point this roving beast will pounce often enough that civilization will lose its capacity to repair climate damages even as they accelerate. By being squeezed at both ends, a point will arrive at which civilization tips towards collapse
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We're collectively growing at an extraordinary pace of about 2.4% per year, fast enough to add as much to our daily resource demands in the next 30 years as we have since the dawn of civilization. If you feel it's hard to keep up, there's a reason... 🧵
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It seems a taboo to argue that the development of renewables is accelerating climate change. I don't get it. To me it seems pretty obvious they are.
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As the growth of civilization stalls due to scarcity of energy and raw materials, climate change damages will tip it towards rapid collapse
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There's a perspective that if we can figure out climate change adaptation we'll be mostly fine.
This will backfire. The better we adapt, the longer we can succeed as a combustion fueled civilization, and the worse climate change will get. No way out.
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How can it be that renewables are any sort of environmental panacea if they simply add to the energy mix we use to extract raw materials from our environment, thereby leaving behind an ever growing pile of waste?
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Oh god. The absolute worst possible outcome. These two commitments if effectuated will only accelerate fossil fuel consumption by giving us the added power to access their reserves. It’s well past time for political leaders to be appealing to physics not fantasy
118 countries have committed to 3x renewable energy and 2x energy efficiency by 2030
A remarkable success for @COP28_UAE
This would be a continuation of the last 10 years in terms of growth which would take us to ~75% renewable electricity in the signatory countries
🧵
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Economic systems are physical systems. Whatever you hear the Economics High Priests claim, there is no possible substitute for energy and raw materials
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Tongue-in-cheek, one could say climate accords are driving climate change. That's stupid, though.
Right?
No, I don't think so. Because the accord basis has always been BS climate-econ "emissions scenarios" we accepted uncritically, distracting us from seeking true solutions /1
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I'd like to see this curve flatten through policy, but this isn't looking like it's possible. I think we owe it to ourselves to understand the physical reasons why
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For every trillion dollars of global GDP we add, the concentration of CO2 increases by 1.7 ppmv. Been that way now for 100 years. But, hey, we're clever! We'll figure out a way to decouple climate from the economy...Right? bit.ly/2QLzB7V
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Not just size but speed: "a temperature increase of 5.2 °C above the pre-industrial level at present rates of increase would likely result in mass extinction comparable to that of the major Phanerozoic events"
nature.com/articles/s41467-0…
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The latest IPCC report continues to ignore thermodynamics, insisting a pathway to net zero dominated by energy and material efficiency. This is utterly wrongheaded. It will do the opposite, as it always has for us or any system. 1/5
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I don't know how to make this more clear. The sooner, we end fossil fuels, the sooner civilization collapses. The longer we wait, the harder the collapse will be.
I don't know how to make this more clear. The sooner we end fossil fuels, the more we save. The longer we wait, the more we lose. And everything is at risk.
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I never understand why it is so readily assumed - like gospel truth - that new energy sources will replace rather than add to, or even accelerate, extraction of the old
40GW of solar panels, same amount installed across Europe in 2022, are gathering dust in European warehouses, likely to grow to 100GW by end of 2023.
If those panels were deployed, they would displace 7 bcm of fossil gas, according to @Beyond_Fossils.
energymonitor.ai/tech/renewa…
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As a reference point, we would need to replace fossil fuels globally at a rate of roughly 1 gigawatt per day just to stabilize existing rates of CO2 emissions against continued economic growth
First Solar, the largest solar panel maker in the US, announced that it has broken ground on its $1.1 billion factory in Louisiana. The 3.5 gigawatt/year plant will employ 700 and is believed to be the largest capital investment in Iberia Parish's history.
electrek.co/2023/09/21/us-la…
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At current rates of civilization growth, within just one generation we will double energy and raw material consumption. Cumulatively, we will extract as much from the environment as we have since the early days of the industrial revolution.
nephologue.blogspot.com/2019…
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I always find these "viable path" arguments wishful thinking, presented as if the past has no bearing on our future, and that there is no component of inertia to society's trajectory
The ship has largely sailed on limiting warming to 1.5C at this point, barring us getting very lucky with low climate sensitivity or actively geoengineering the climate.
But there still are viable paths to limit warming to below 2C this century, as shown in the figure below:
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"Economic growth can benefit both human welfare and the environment."
It doesn't get more out of touch with reality, unless your version of reality doesn't include thermodynamics. We use energy to transform the stuff of the environment to the stuff of us, at its expense
I've always thought the degrowth crowd was a small group out of touch with reality, but it is apparently a large group out of touch with reality.
Economic growth can benefit both human welfare and the environment.
Poverty is not an option.
theconversation.com/idea-of-…
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Economic collapse will happen around the time that we stop growing, when environmental calamity destroys what we previously built faster than we can recover by building anew with new energy and mineral reserves -- that is with the same reserves driving environmental calamity
Glacier break floods can have devastating impacts. As the world warms this will become more common. And the big one in Antarctica gets weaker with every increase in global temperatures.
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Renewable energy creates economic value
Economic value is sustained by consuming energy
Consuming energy destroys the environment by transforming raw materials
Renewables destroy the environment
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Energy is required to extract raw materials from our planet to turn them into the stuff of civilization. The energy of this "phase change" will rise with increased scarcity and/or climate damages, as will the cost of manufacturing. Economic inflation is thermodynamics!
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So arguing renewables efficiency aids fossil is not crazy. Could still be wrong. But damnit, it shouldn't be taboo to discuss this because, hell, we're not doing good. What if we are doing the wrong thing, doing no more than making certain stockholders rich?
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Every day, humanity consumes for its sustenance the energy equivalent of about 300 million barrels of oil, with a 6 million barrel daily surplus for it to "put on weight". Even zero growth entails enormous consumption and pollution.
journals.plos.org/plosone/ar…
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But what if they aren't? Globally, there's no evidence they are. We still are burning like there's no tomorrow (which is kinda true). Can't we at least talk about the possibility that promoting renewables is making things worse?
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So that's the issue. Renewables add to the economy, which grows, to then demand more energy of whatever sort -- including fossil! Even if the renewable *share* is growing, in absolute terms the fossil amount is still growing too, aided by the renewable's economic benefit.
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Climate damages are occurring faster than expected, as we're finding out. Yet the cutting edge of climate economics still assumes damages follow a simple quadratic with only 2% damage at 2.5ºC. Ludicrous. See critique here: pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.21…
if you're wondering why climate impacts seem to be getting much worse suddenly, let me introduce you to the concept of non-linearity. A short 🧵:
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It's not just climate activists. A Nobel Prize of Economics was given to someone who argued from a cost-benefit analysis for an optimum temperature rise of about 4 degrees C. Insane.
This is why climate activists get so frustrated with the 'let's just adapt', 'climate risk is survivable' arguments. These kind of impacts, which we are already seeing at 1.1C of warming are near impossible to adapt to. bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
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Maybe all Nobel economics prizes are bonkers, but it seems particularly crazy that Nordhaus got rewarded for devising models that have us all happily flying private jets in a global warming hellscape. From @CrisisReports
planetcritical.com/p/william…
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When something perfectly useful is destroyed by climate disasters, repair costs add to the nominal GDP yet only to return humanity to square-one. Long-term, little real value would be added by the effort. Climate disasters are an inflationary pressure.
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The physics and mathematics that accounts for the dynamics of exponential growth is really interesting. The environmental implications however are rather more terrifying.
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Wow. Just got dropped on homeowners insurance in SLC after being with the company 22 years. Stated reason? Two car thefts in 3 yrs for 3k total. Real reason? I’m blaming global warming. When I get dropped for petty theft, I’m guessing insurance companies are seeing the end
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Our future success is now competing with the resource demands of sustaining all we've produced in the unchangeable past. The larger we get from prior growth, the more energy and raw materials we require just to survive in the present. Eventually the carousel stops.
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Going for irrational here.
If climate change is a crisis, nuclear power will only accelerate it. The power will be used to grow global society so that increases its demand for all types of energy, including useful fossil fuels. Rich, nuclear-fueled Ontarians fly to Florida
"It is the backbone of Ontario’s electricity system, operating safely, for decades."
#NuclearEnergy
GOLDSTEIN: If climate change is a crisis, opposing nuclear power is irrational torontosun.com/opinion/colum…
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When will civilization collapse? Here's my case for about 2050: thread
1. Systems that grow fastest collapse fastest
2. In 1950 the energy demand growth rate was 0.7%/yr
3. In 1970 the energy demand growth rate was three times faster at 2.4%/yr
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Only a few years ago, increasing precipitation extremes seemed mostly a super interesting academic question. Even in the tropics, precipitation can start high up as snow. As climate warms, snow gets denser and falls faster, and so precipitation extremes become *much* more intense
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Because, as economists never fail to remind us, those who lack their training in the finer points of the scientific method, "correlation does not equal causation"
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First, does renewable energy help the economy? Well, yeah... otherwise we wouldn't do it. Does a larger economy consume natural resources? Yeah...that's kind of how production works. Need stuff.
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Lowering inflation requires increasing access to the fossil fuel resources that have traditionally sustained us, and decreasing damages from climate change.
Solve that one
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Collapse is the super-exponential irreversible decline of the global capacity to consume primary energy resources
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Just attended a workshop with a gaggle of prestigious macroeconomists. I worry that any system focused on academic prestige makes it harder to solve important problems, in this case the existential risk that climate change will cause mass migration and economic collapse
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Given our global predicaments, it is disappointing the pervasive belief, even/especially among academics, that increasing our collective energy efficiency will lead to less world energy consumption. The opposite is true. Always has been.
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A wake up call to climate scientists: we make projections using models based on neoclassical economics, assuming they are reasonable (not our field). But they are utterly preposterous. e.g. because agricultural is <1% of GDP, climate damages to agriculture don't really matter:
Have you ever wondered why economists like William Nordhaus reach such bizarre conclusions about sustainability? It's because neoclassical economics fundamentally misunderstands the role of natural resources. Here's a deep dive into the problem:
economicsfromthetopdown.com/…
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The world adds close to 500 GW of power per year as it is, so if this switch to renewables materializes, it does not imply less fossil consumption. Historically, new energy sources have added not replaced.
Good morning with good news: Global renewable energy capacity will double in 5 years, averaging nearly 500 GWs of new RE/year, according to IEA. World will get about 38% of its electricity from renewables in 2038. Add 10% from nuclear and world may reach 50% zero carbon in 2027.
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I really don't understand the "carbon footprint" concept. If the activities of people/sectors/nations are all intertwined, how can the footprint of the island be disconnected meaningfully from the whole? How is there not only a single global carbon footprint?
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Does a larger economy need more energy? Yeah... can't do stuff without energy. Period. Does any economic action "know" which type of energy? No... it really doesn't care. Just needs energy.
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General mayhem. One less appreciated aspect is how climate extremes will accelerate inflation. Economic production will no longer be as available to grow civilization. It will increasingly be needed simply to repair what we have previously produced
washingtonpost.com/climate-e…
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To afford the high costs of mitigating climate change damages, civilization must remain healthy. A healthy civilization requires energy for its maintenance. So, for as long as fossil fuels remain, maintaining civilization will accelerate climate change.
That's the double-bind
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I published a prediction in 2012 that climate change, by damaging our past creations, would lead to high inflation. Response? Inflation is controlled by banks. Period. But then this: interest rates stay high because stuff is no longer insurable
finance.yahoo.com/news/jerom…
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100 year growth plans just make me sad
With a new strategic planning process to guide the next 100 years of campus growth, we're streamlining campus planning to minimize one-off projects that can lead to unforeseen negative impacts on the rest of the institution.
attheu.utah.edu/campus-life/…
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A friendly reminder that we’re thermodynamically open systems that process energy and material resources
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The climate economics emperors wear no clothes. Start at min. 36
@ProfSteveKeen is exposing why the Nobel winning DICE model used to estimate the damages from climate change is sheer nuttery. Really. (Collaborative paper forthcoming)
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
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It's pretty astonishing what passes in the widely accepted DICE model for modeling interactions between the economy and climate. In the 2023 version nber.org/system/files/workin… we see the following equations for economic output. A thread on what I see as problems:
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Since some asked, here's some data that shows how new energy sources add rather than replace. But the main point is that this is to be expected based on first physical principles. Add energy to a system and all available degrees of freedom speed up
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I realize, being pro-solar and wind is an almost religious belief for some, even some quite well-known. I get it. We all want to make a difference and at first blush, renewables seem the way to go.
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Here we are in the 2020s, climate change largely out of control and getting worse, with a great many still advocating that "we know the solutions, all we need is the political will".
Here's where I think we screwed up, by not acknowledging the "counterintuitive" 1/
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Holy Graupel! This one is 13 mm across, captured in 3 angles at 4.51 pm by the @UUtah Multi Angle Snowflake Camera near @AltaSkiArea . I didn't even know this giant was possible. 13 mm is insane - 1 mm is typical
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It's been a bit surprising the reaction to this, some very supportive, but much including personal attacks, which I suppose only proved the point
It seems a taboo to argue that the development of renewables is accelerating climate change. I don't get it. To me it seems pretty obvious they are.
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Why are we seeing so much economic inflation? Why can we anticipate climate damages and decreased resource access will lead to long-term hyperinflation. Why is it traditional economic models struggle to explain inflation? 1/n
nytimes.com/live/2022/07/12/…
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I joke that climate economists believe that we will all get private jets in hell. This really is not far from the truth. Thread on Nordhaus's DICE-2023 model
nber.org/system/files/workin…
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"One lesson we must learn from Maui is that combinations of circumstances that we think of as unlikely might no longer be unlikely at all."
washingtonpost.com/opinions/…
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But wait! A Nobel prize winning economist said that 6C would only mean a 8.5% drop in GDP from what it would have been otherwise! pnas.org/content/114/7/1518
It's 2020. So crazy we still allow this disconnect on a decades old problem.
"Forget the Cretaceous and the asteroids—at 6C degrees we’re approaching the kind of damage associated with the end of the Permian, the greatest biological cataclysm in the planet’s history, when 90 percent of species disappeared...
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Growth precedes collapse. The greater and longer the growth, the more acute the collapse. How could it be any different?
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Planning vacation travel but riddled with guilt about the climate impact? Don't worry. If you don't consume now, you or others will later. And in a globally interconnected economy, all human activities and expenditures, one way or another, will lead to CO2 emissions
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We can have our cake and eat it too it seems.
Such a tremendous disconnect between the rising alarm of climate scientists who study our rapidly altering environment, and climate economists who study models that trivialize climate impacts on population and infrastructure.
In a better world this would be a huge development: there is no longer a significant tradeoff between economic growth and saving the planet 1/
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From @skdh, a bit brutally honest but generally very very true. Science is turning into a capitalist machine that has forgotten how its success requires treating its practitioners as - surprise - people
piped.video/watch?v=LKiBlGDf…
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Is it misplaced the taboo about discussing the high probability of climate-induced societal collapse till the point we look upon one another as protein sources?
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DICE is widely used. Nordhaus got a Nobel prize for this work. I don't get it. To me it seems like a failing grade for its lack of dimensional reasoning and appeal to inherent uncertainty, and its glaring neglect of the impacts of climate change on labor and capital.
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All the work on emissions scenarios and climate policy will continue to get it wrong if it fails to account for the underlying thermodynamics driving civilization maintenance and growth. We need not be surprised
theguardian.com/environment/…
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War footing needed to correct economists climate change failings cnbc.com/2021/05/24/war-foot…
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This how collapse can happen. We recover from external shocks until their cumulative impact, and the cumulative slowing of growth, mean that with one more successive tap we can’t
"Extreme weather and pandemic help drive global food prices to 46-year high.
"Current high food prices, combined with the ongoing pandemic, will make the global food supply highly vulnerable to extreme weather shocks in 2022."
climateandeconomy.com/2021/1…
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Some big flakes falling this morning in Salt Lake City. The one on the right is a inch tall.
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Starting to feel this way about civilization
piped.video/watch?v=3m5qxZm_…
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Solar energy plants are not some unalloyed climate good they're made out to be. If anything they make the problem worse. With added energy we build new stuff of all kinds - increasing world energy demand - and we expand faster into existing energy reserves, including fossil
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For climate mitigation, renewables will make things worse
1. Adding renewable energy helps grow civilization, and with it our interface with existing energy reserves - including fossil
2. Even if renewables make climate less bad, then we can grow more, also to consume more fossil
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The only way to avoid civilization collapse is to collapse civilization. No way out.
Wow! Human extinction is a mainstream news story today.
"By 2070, these temperatures and the social and political consequences will directly affect two nuclear powers, and seven maximum containment laboratories housing the most dangerous pathogens."
bbc.com/news/science-environ…
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The countless tragedies aside, it's an interesting year.
What does not receive attention is that in an interconnected world we will all be affected. Some combination of globally higher unemployment and inflation are things to look for 🧵
Carbon dioxide (CO₂) averaged about 420 ppm in August 2023
10 years ago August averaged about 395 ppm
+ Preliminary data (@NOAA_ESRL): gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/
ALT Red line graph time series of monthly carbon dioxide abundance from January 1959 through August 2023. There is a seasonal cycle and long-term increasing trend. Current levels of CO2 are at 420 ppm. This is the Keeling Curve graph. A line for CO2 10 years ago is also annotated.
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"It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth."
- William Stanley Jevons (1865)
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So we @prof_grasselli @ProfSteveKeen uncovered this crazy thing in the models used by macroeconomists: anything new that the economy produces loses half its value to consumption and depreciation in just 3.5 years. That's nuts. 1/3
esd.copernicus.org/articles/…
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Economics describes capital stocks and production flows. This is wrongheaded physically. Capital value is sustained by energy consumption. Only with an energy *excess* can we use raw materials to produce the stuff of civilization. No stocks, only flows and the flow imbalance.
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Optimism is great. But to me this reads like a statement "Because of my commitment this morning to reduce my daily caloric consumption by 500 calories per day I can confidently rejoice in my new slimmer self within a decade"
Good news: Because of our actions and commitments, projected global warming in 2100 is only about half of what was expected just a few years ago.
Bad news: The impacts even at lower temperatures are far worse than what was expected.
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For a more in depth discussion of how these forces have shaped our collective growth to date, including that of past civilizations, complete with some physics see:
esd.copernicus.org/articles/…
Without equations there's a recent discussion with @CrisisReports at planetcritical.com/p/the-the…
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I view a minerals shortage as an environmental good. The economy requires matter to build and maintain - well - everything. If resource availability shrinks, civilization contracts, and lo, unto us the critters will return.
iea.org/commentaries/critica…
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Exhibit X of the undying belief of those who have prospered most from the capitalist system that exploded climate change that what made them wealthy will also provide the cure to the sins of wealth
“Without innovation, we will not solve climate change,” says Bill Gates. “We won't even come close.” Tonight on 60 Minutes, Gates shows @andersoncooper some of the innovations he is backing in pursuit of zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. cbsn.ws/3alWlrT
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The thing is this isn't really a joke. By analogy to how climate economics modeling is currently done, future stellar consumption of Earth could even damage GDP by 90%. But labor growth and capital would be unaffected so the GDP would still be much higher than today. Wacko
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The question should not be whether an action leads to less fossil fuel consumption now, but whether it leads to less consumption forever
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There is something far more powerful than #COP25 and any of its participants, that is the collective demands of an interconnected humanity to consume as much as it can till it can't.
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"Staggering declines in wildlife". While I'm sure this isn't on the table, the way to stop this is to halt the global economy 🧵
nytimes.com/2022/12/16/clima…
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The implication for climate mitigation? Not good at all. Civilization has inertia. Our roots are deep and old, tied to systems for consuming energy. As with a tree, we will continue to consume energy for as long as we can - until we are chopped down by external forces and can't.
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If you think COVID was stressful consider human population still grew. Critters on the other hand…
Scientists say the public should be terrified by the deluge of recent extinction research known as 'the Apocalypse Papers' calling for it to immediately become part of daily human conversations. 🧵
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