IPCC Report

[vexed87]

@jacob, that makes a lot of sense.

I typed out a series of responses, but cut them all down and started again. Each one feeling more desperate than the last. I'm still bargaining with hope of solutions. Yet I know in my gut there are no real solutions with fair outcomes for 7.5 billion people. It's truly gut wrenching stuff.

Did you refer to the correct paragraph in the report? D5.4 did not seem relevant to the discussion, or maybe it just went over my head? It's been a long week for me.

[daylen]

@Campitor

I did hear about one possible solution (or partial solution) where businesses with a large carbon footprint(*) are taxed, and the money is dispersed to individuals based on their energy usage (or sum of related measures).

(*) .. or oil/coal .. high-polluting .. whatever the public can agree on.

[BRUTE]

@brute - The link doesn't work (gives me a blank screen).

link works for brute - must be the internet split in two, just like the truth.

... Koch ... Republican ...

no argument to brute. brute considers the IPCC and climate alarmists as biased as the Koch's.

brute continues to be a "luke-warmist", even (or especially after) the new IPCC report. the climate is probably warming, and humans probably contributed to it. it's probably going to be fine, unless the government gets involved. (especially since the "expert advice" from the IPCC is literally genocide).

[hojo-e]

brute continues to be a "luke-warmist", even (or especially after) the new IPCC report. the climate is probably warming, and humans probably contributed to it. it's probably going to be fine, unless the government gets involved. (especially since the "expert advice" from the IPCC is literally genocide).

Is that luke-warmist attitude based on facts or feelings?

[BRUTE]

how can brute tell?

honestly, it might be as much feeling as fact. brute feels pretty repelled by the overall behavior, mode of argument, and various other surrounding factors of the climate alarmists.

on the fact side, the alarmists never seem to talk much about the "consensus" of the "what is the solution" side. most solutions don't even pretend to be effective, they're merely "at least humans are trying to look busy" crap. e.g. fuel standards for consumer vehicles. what are they, 3% of emissions? any effort there is a waste of time.

or the hatred for nuclear. any serious climate strategy should start spamming mass nuclear power plants. being for green and against nuclear power is disingenuous or dumb.

come to think of it, brute thinks that the facts don't even go as far as "it will be bad". the "scientific consensus" merely goes to "it will be warmer", but not "how much warmer".

here is a description of the whole argument as brute sees it:

it's getting warm
-> that's bad
-> it can be prevented
-> preventing it is better than adapting to it
-> the humans who run the post office should be in charge of it

and here's where brute stands on these issues:

it's getting warm : probably somewhat
-> that's bad : who knows
-> it can be prevented : not according to this paper or DLj (see: 1990s)
-> preventing it is better than adapting to it : probably not
-> the humans who run the post office should be in charge of it : definitely not

and unfortunately, the pieces of the chain can't always be viewed separately. that last item alone makes the whole debate a moot point for brute. if humans think the financial crisis was a disaster, how do they think the same system will deal with climate change?

luckily, brute doesn't seem to have to worry much, as most humans don't seem to actually care about climate change, or at least not enough for any of the major changes to be implemented. genocide staved off for now.

[jennypenny]

@BRUTE--Social Security is another, albeit smaller, example of an issue like climate change where politics has occluded the real issue and caused widespread apathy. Politicians will say all kinds of self-serving BS on the question of Social Security's viability and funding challenges. The solutions presented are often politically motivated, making it easy to dismiss the problem itself as political. The hard data on SS is out there though, so one can become informed on the topic if they wish. The severity and timing of future funding issues is debated as well as the best way to mitigate such issues, and economic conditions over the next 10-15 years will influence the outcome. Still, there is no question that maintaining the status quo indefinitely is impossible and continuing on as we are without any attempts to address the funding issue could result in a spectacular failure of the system in the not-too-distant future, yet we feel very little urgency because we've come to see the issue as no more than a political football.


** I removed the rest because I don't think my personal experience contributes to this discussion.

[BRUTE]

it doesn't help that the humans who know "the science" on global warming tend to be completely ignorant on "the science" of climate change economics, but firmly believe the former makes them an expert in the latter.

[jacob]

@brute - I presume you're talking about the ignorance of ordinary humans because one could easily get the impression that you're suggesting that experts have not bothered to consider to what degree climate change influences the economy or vice versa.

In any case, integrated assessment models are big part of the expert focus. You can find this information including a calculated range of prices (whether it's costs or benefits) in USD (whether it's using the social cost of carbon (Nordhaus) or other ways of discounting) summarized in section 2.5 of the report.

This makes it possible to both calculate the impact to GDP by doing nothing (i.e. business as usual) or something and what the cost of carbon should be (approximately of course) in order to avoid 1.5C, 2C, etc. depending on which year you get started (the longer we wait, the more expensive it gets). Of course, avoiding 1.5C is more expensive (in immediate payouts) than avoiding 2C(*). Conversely, not avoiding 2C will cost more in the future than not avoiding 1.5C(**). From this optimal action can be calculated. This is about as exact a science as economics is in the first place, but it's not like scientists and economists ignore this problem or exist in different silos. The Stern Review was 700 pages long and that was 12 years ago. There's even more information available today for those who go and look.

(*) Because it requires using less carbon which requires making it more costly.
(**) Because the damage will be larger.

This is a two-dimensional(&) cost now vs cost later problem. It's very similar to the pie-talk I discussed above. My point is, though, that experts are certainly able to calculate these costs. The hard part is getting humans to agree on who should pay.

(&) It becomes two dimensional because of the non-linearity of how the concentration pathways would respond to changes in pricing vis-a-vis carbontax and damage from nature. Not much different than trying to plan your future personal life based on your savings rate. In such 2D plots, you can literally draw a contour called "bankruptcy" (i.e. terminal solutions) which is not to be crossed.

Most serious books I've read on this subject also cover the economic aspect. You have to get down to the blog/editorial level or popularized nonfiction before people usually talk about one thing or another but never the two together.

I suppose it could be argued that the IAMs show what people can do and not necessarily what they will do. I am however not aware of any economic model that is able to show what people will do with any great precision. Economists can't even predict/prevent recessions. However, it's certainly possible to integrate economic models into climate change models and vice versa and this not some obscure subject. About 1/2 of the entire report is about doing exactly that.

[BRUTE]

@brute - I presume you're talking about the ignorance of ordinary humans because one could easily get the impression that you're suggesting that experts have not bothered to consider to what degree climate change influences the economy or vice versa.

brute considers pretty much all humans ordinary.

but DLj must be aware that the poster humans for this cause are the likes of Bill Nye the Science (as in science fair) Guy, who is flustered when asked any serious question about the rhetoric he spouts. maybe there are humans behind this that are knowledgeable and have real arguments, and are merely drowned out by the Al Gores, and the TV ads joking about murdering climate dissidents.

and DLj literally responded by arguing he couldn't even open brute's link. this is so politicized and reality so fragmented that there is no argument to be had.

this is why brute has pretty much given up on looking for "facts" on this topic - even the most expertly humans touted (in brute's perception), like Michael Mann, are clearly political hacks with agendas.

it doesn't help that many of the plans or proposed policies seem to be completely ineffective even when used in a very draconian manner - according to their own proponents. this "painful and ineffective, but humans have to do SOMETHING" tactic reeks of sectarian self-flagellation, not finding a solution.

[Jean]

Without DLJ's long post in an other topic, I wouldn't be convinced about human influence on global warming (I'm pretty sure we can't do anything about it, so I never thought about it very much). I otherwise completly agree with brute about how proposed solutions are more about looking busy than solving the problem, but this is how most human activity looks to me, that's why I will play stellaris instead of running for some office.

[jacob]

@brute - Right, this is why brute is better served by reading a basic textbook instead of trying assemble some kind of technical understanding from newspaper editorials, science popularizers, or PBS documentaries even if they feature 20 second soundbites from actual experts.

Begging some momentary forgiveness for extreme flippancy, but there's a place where brute and others can go looking for facts and it's called the library. The library will have a book or several books with titles like "an introductory textbook on climate physics". These books are written so as to present not only the "facts" but a perspective for understanding these "facts" in their proper (scientific) framework. This allows readers to have an "informed opinion". This is in stark contrast to the sources above which serve to provide "awareness" or "opinionated information".

But yes, ordinary humans are generally not interested in learning anything voluntarily insofar the subject matter only interests them tangentially. This is why brute often finds himself arguing dietary advice with people who get their all their "food facts" from facebook memes and netflix documentaries.

brute will probably also note that proposed diets are completely ineffective but that the problem is not an inability to figure out what the correct diet is ... but in humans' ability to follow the diet correctly.

[BRUTE]

brute is not under the impression that he lacks knowledge of the facts of climate physics - his whole point is basically that climate physics are just a small part of the discussion, yet overblown by those that know climate physics or have strong (religious) faith in humans that call themselves "scientists". which makes sense, brute also likes to make out his fields of expertise to be super important.

brute also disagrees on the diet point. for one, diet and ability to follow diet are not unrelated. and second, diet is highly overrated in body composition and health. it is important in maybe 25% of cases (exercise less than that) if brute had to guess. for many humans, diet and exercise are red herrings with regards to their health problems.

[hojo-e]

climate physics are just a small part of the discussion

What other parts of the discussion are not dependent variables to climate physics?

[BRUTE]

those other parts of the causal chain that brute has mentioned above:

it's getting warm
-> that's bad
-> it can be prevented
-> preventing it is better than adapting to it
-> the humans who run the post office should be in charge of it

brute is relatively on board with the whole physics part of climate change. brief disclaimer on the "relatively": brute is no physicist, and has no way of verifying any of the information touted by "experts" on his own. brute has been burned by "experts" before, in fields that were more easily verifiable than climate physics. thus, brute trusts the climate physics experts only to a certain degree, just as he trusts any experts only to a certain degree if he can't verify on his own.

i.e. if, should brute be alive in 50 years, the climate predictions have come true, he would not be very surprised. after all, it was what the experts predicted. should they not have come true, brute would also not be very surprised - experts make wrong predictions all the time, as mentioned by DLj above about economists and recessions.

short aside: brute does not get the impression that physicists are better at predicting weather or the climate than economists are at predicting the economy. both are incredibly complex systems.

here's what brute believes is the likely, boring future of climate change:
- the planet continues getting a bit warmer for a few decades
- humans start shifting more towards renewable energy, especially where it makes sense
- rich countries will start this trend, but eventually upcoming countries will just entirely skip the fossil stage because it won't make economic sense, just like landlines these days are often skipped and countries just immediately invest in cell infrastructure
- fossil fuels will always be used to a degree, in niches where they just make more sense - maybe demands of energy density, petro chemistry, whatever. maybe the ratio of fossils will peter out but never go below 10-15% or so.
- even within the fossils used, rich countries will shift from dirtier (coal) to cleaner (natural gas) varieties. this has already happened - coal lost a lot of market share even under Bush, mostly to natural gas.
- modern nuclear power is very clean, very safe. brute hopes that it can form the backbone of a future energy mix. it is ~8% now in the US, maybe it can go to 30%.
- there will be certain negative effects from climate change, but not nearly as bad as in some of the doomsday predictions
- humanity will continue to get more prosperous at a dramatic pace, lifting the remaining millions (it is not even billions any more) humans out of poverty, allowing them to move from a hand-to-mouth mindset to a more far sighted economic vision that includes protecting the environment.
- the new riches will allow humans to make sacrifices much easier, and build solutions much more effectively and cheaply.
- this is not some kind of future-optimism with magic nano technology. it will be very boring 2%/year changes that slowly shift the situation from "probably a big problem" to "not that big a problem" over decades.
- in 2100, humans will say "huh, looks like that climate crisis was averted. oh well." in retrospect, it will look like the fear of interstate highways and transcontinental railroads and the Y2K bug. it's not that there were no problems, but they were surmountable.

[jacob]

So more precisely, which SSP (socioeconomic trajectory) in the integrated assessment models does brute believe is the more likely one?
SSP1, 2, 3, 4, or 5?

Here's a quick overview: https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-h ... ate-change
(there's a table of the SSPs about 20% down)

I'm sticking with SSP2 (that socioeconomic and political structures will not change markedly compared to the last 40 years, IOW socioeconomic inertia is practically infinite because of the nature of the [complex lag-time] problem and that it's humans who have to solve it) which puts us on a flight path between RCP8.5 and RCP6 ... which, perhaps not coincidentally, will be part of AR6 in the form of RCP7 because that has been somewhat empty in the modelling domain of AR5 due to the conservative nature of the science community.

[7Wannabe5]

@jacob:

Very interesting. Would also be interesting to maybe construct some kind of chart correlating personal behaviors with SSPs. I think "walk" and "talk" are often more out of alignment at the both ends of the fringes*, so status quo most likely.

*People who talk and earn "regional" more likely to spend "global", and people who spend "regional" more likely to talk and earn "global", and nobody actually super-excited about waking up early Saturday morning to volunteer for 2 hours at the recycling drop-off OR going back to work in the same coal mine** as his grandfather.

**True story- I was trying to go to sleep in the back of his van in the middle of the woods on a pretty cold night a few days ago, and my BF picked up signal on his phone and forced me to watch 5 minutes of Trump rally. Everybody is jumping up and down, because they are so happy to go back to work in steel foundries and coal mines like my great-grandfather when he immigrated from Poland/Russia 100 years ago?!?!

[BRUTE]

So more precisely, which SSP (socioeconomic trajectory) in the integrated assessment models does brute believe is the more likely one?
SSP1, 2, 3, 4, or 5?

Here's a quick overview: https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-h ... ate-change
(there's a table of the SSPs about 20% down)

I'm sticking with SSP2 (that socioeconomic and political structures will not change markedly compared to the last 40 years, IOW socioeconomic inertia is practically infinite because of the nature of the [complex lag-time] problem and that it's humans who have to solve it) which puts us on a flight path between RCP8.5 and RCP6 ... which, perhaps not coincidentally, will be part of AR6 in the form of RCP7 because that has been somewhat empty in the modelling domain of AR5 due to the conservative nature of the science community.

oh sorry, that link doesn't work for brute.

[BRUTE]

going back to work in the same coal mine** as his grandfather.

brute actually knew a professional human male who would repeatedly say that his greatest achievement in life was proving to his father that he was a tough guy. he proved this by working in the same coal mine as his father for 5 years or so. he had a lump of coal to show that he would pull out occasionally. it was a pretty massive lump of coal.

probably some kind of tough-guy signaling/status dynamic, like growing up "in the hood". humans.

[jacob]

oh sorry, that link doesn't work for brute.

Yeah, right, what are the odds? Luckily, you can find this table everywhere, just like you can find Nordhaus's work everywhere.

GEC42(2017)153-168

Here's the table...

• SSP1 Sustainability – Taking the Green Road (Low challenges to mitigation and adaptation)
  The world shifts gradually, but pervasively, toward a more sustainable path, emphasizing more inclusive development that respects perceived environmental boundaries. Management of the global commons slowly improves, educational and health investments accelerate the demographic transition, and the emphasis on economic growth shifts toward a broader emphasis on human well-being. Driven by an increasing commitment to achieving development goals, inequality is reduced both across and within countries. Consumption is oriented toward low material growth and lower resource and energy intensity.
• SSP2 Middle of the Road (Medium challenges to mitigation and adaptation)
  The world follows a path in which social, economic, and technological trends do not shift markedly from historical patterns. Development and income growth proceeds unevenly, with some countries making relatively good progress while others fall short of expectations. Global and national institutions work toward but make slow progress in achieving sustainable development goals. Environmental systems experience degradation, although there are some improvements and overall the intensity of resource and energy use declines. Global population growth is moderate and levels off in the second half of the century. Income inequality persists or improves only slowly and challenges to reducing vulnerability to societal and environmental changes remain.
• SSP3 Regional Rivalry – A Rocky Road (High challenges to mitigation and adaptation)
  A resurgent nationalism, concerns about competitiveness and security, and regional conflicts push countries to increasingly focus on domestic or, at most, regional issues. Policies shift over time to become increasingly oriented toward national and regional security issues. Countries focus on achieving energy and food security goals within their own regions at the expense of broader-based development. Investments in education and technological development decline. Economic development is slow, consumption is material-intensive, and inequalities persist or worsen over time. Population growth is low in industrialized and high in developing countries. A low international priority for addressing environmental concerns leads to strong environmental degradation in some regions.
• SSP4 Inequality – A Road Divided (Low challenges to mitigation, high challenges to adaptation)
  Highly unequal investments in human capital, combined with increasing disparities in economic opportunity and political power, lead to increasing inequalities and stratification both across and within countries. Over time, a gap widens between an internationally-connected society that contributes to knowledge- and capital-intensive sectors of the global economy, and a fragmented collection of lower-income, poorly educated societies that work in a labor intensive, low-tech economy. Social cohesion degrades and conflict and unrest become increasingly common. Technology development is high in the high-tech economy and sectors. The globally connected energy sector diversifies, with investments in both carbon-intensive fuels like coal and unconventional oil, but also low-carbon energy sources. Environmental policies focus on local issues around middle and high income areas.
• SSP5 Fossil-fueled Development – Taking the Highway (High challenges to mitigation, low challenges to adaptation)
  This world places increasing faith in competitive markets, innovation and participatory societies to produce rapid technological progress and development of human capital as the path to sustainable development. Global markets are increasingly integrated. There are also strong investments in health, education, and institutions to enhance human and social capital. At the same time, the push for economic and social development is coupled with the exploitation of abundant fossil fuel resources and the adoption of resource and energy intensive lifestyles around the world. All these factors lead to rapid growth of the global economy, while global population peaks and declines in the 21st century. Local environmental problems like air pollution are successfully managed. There is faith in the ability to effectively manage social and ecological systems, including by geo-engineering if necessary.

[JamesR]

The GDP numbers incorporate population projections from each SSP, as well as assumptions of international trade flows, technological development and other factors consistent with the SSP narratives.

I'm worried the GDP projections aren't factoring in the costs of the huge amount of damages in terms of fires, hurricanes, tornados, typhoons, droughts, hail, flooding, sea level rising, etc. The costs would probably go up dramatically more depending the SSP heat projection so when SSP5 is a degree hotter than SSP2, it might still end up comparing poorly in terms of GDP. It's hard to imagine what kind of damage there is at 4 degrees vs 5 degrees, and how big of a difference there is between those.