If this survey is real the messages these young people are receiving are completely wrong.
We need to reduce our impact on our planet but CO2 is a complete red herring. The current ECS (temperature increase for a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere) is centred around 3°C (IPCC AR6). The 2°C will destroy civilisation is simply made up.
I think that we should focus on the use of valuable resources like coal and gas that will run out eventually. My ideas are informed by the book ‘Sustainable Energy - without the hot air’ written by David JC MacKay.
I believe that we should be looking to make use of these resources as efficient as possible while minimising any emissions, including CO2. Then we should be identifying alternatives to these resources but taking the time to understand and offset the potential environmental damage done by these resources. Human beings are fortunate in that we have lived through a very stable part of Earth's history, so change is inevitable. We should be thinking about how to build homes and infrastructure so that is can survive these changes.
Then each individual should be thinking about how to reduces their usage of energy. This is something that we have followed and in the last 15 years have reduced out the energy usage in our home by nearly 50%, which saves about £1,000 per year.
As an engineer, I built a model of the home, identified the major areas of loss and thought about cheap ways of resolving it. I found government advise to be useless. We had an EPC assessment done, which concluded that we were using the original usage before we implemented our changes - so government don't understand what we have done, it is not in their model.
If we all did this it would have a massive impact.
Hello PeterRT.
I agree that we can make some reductions in energy use, and most of us have done at least some of that. We have double glazing, roof insulation, as far as is reasonable draught-proof houses, do not generally go racing in our cars and similar. Of course, we are using resources that may run out at some time, but this is inevitable unless we and all future generations use none! With anything more than just surviving we are bound to, and unless the world population decreases hugely, which it doesn't seem to be doing, we are stuck. Assuming that civilisation continues, we cannot stop resource use, but we can look very carefully at what and why they are used. An example is changing our entire car stock for new ones that use more rare resources does not seem very sensible, the same with heat pumps. Rebuilding the entire electrical infrastructure would take huge new resources, all of which are very energy-intensive, and the overall gain is in reality quite small. The general indicator for decisions ought to be the energy payback period, in other words, “how long does it take to show an advantage in overall energy”, and is this longer than the lifetime of the use. In the case of cars, this is somewhat dubious, probably better homes have an overall gain with more insulation. There is a fixation on emissions, and some of those like PM2.5 from vehicles have a very dubious science background, the savings overall are probably non-existent.
In all these things one needs to follow the money very carefully, and many proponents deliberately do not do this, they are devoid of economics knowledge. It is a very powerful indicator of actual gainers and losers, the losers usually being the poorer parts of our societies. Such discrimination is in my view morally wrong and basically criminal, it is a means of exploitation. You will note the antics of XR and insulate Britain, they are hypocritical in energy wastage, and simply wish to cause disruption and inefficiencies in our society.
We had an EPC assessment done, which concluded that we were using the original usage before we implemented our changes - so government don't understand what we have done, it is not in their model.
Ah yes - even simple things like insulating the sloping section of a roof, instead of the flat of the ceiling does not seem to be handled properly, or in most 1970s ‘chalet style’ buildings, where the gap is vented by the roof tiles and air rushes from front to back between floorboards of upstairs and plaster board ceiling of downstairs makes a huge difference, but this loss is unaccounted for.
A few years of fuel bills may well be a better guide to the cost of heating a non-standard set-up than the EPC - the fact that even the chaps doing it cannot explain the sums behind it, but just put things into the computer hopefully, is a big clue as to the level of understanding.
Mike.
Roger Bryant:
[PBL]
1.Human activity is putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at a rate of some 50+ bn CO2 equivalent tonnes per year.
2.The greenhouse effect has been known and understood for some 200 years.
3.The result of the greenhouse effect is tropospheric warming.
4. So how big is the warming associated with the greenhouse effect caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions?
[End PBL quote]
As you are aware I agree with the first three and for 4. follow the other information that you have posted as well as AR6 WG1 which suggest an ECS of around 2°C.
That makes your position clearer.
You have said previously that the “problem” is not CO2. Since greenhouse gas emissions are given in CO2 equivalents, that suggests you were claiming that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are not the problem. It would follow you were denying the conjuction of 1-3. Now that you have said that you are affirming 1-3, it follows that in fact you agree that greenhouse gases are “the problem”. But it seems rather that you think “the problem” (namely ECS) is not in the range that people are worrying about, but rather that it is much lower.
You seem to be wrong about what AR6 suggests. I quote directly from FAQ 7.3.
[AR6 WG1 FAQ] This Sixth Assessment Report concludes that there is a 90% or more chance (very likely) that the ECS is between 2°C and 5°C.
[RB]
In another reply you seem to take the typical ‘green’ endless resources viewpoint.
Straw man.
Costs are relative to, well, politics. Let me remind ourselves of the words of John Maynard Keynes in the midst of WWII: “Anything we can actually do, we can afford.” (1942 BBC Address, Collected Works XXVII).
I think we can cover our rooves with PV plates, cover our walls with insulation, and exchange our windows. We can “actually do” it. Ergo, according to Keynes, we can afford it.
Indeed governments can print money but many of the resources required to carry out the ‘green’ movements demands are finite and highly polluting and energy intensive to produce/refine.
I don't know which “green movement” you might be talking about. Here in Germany we have a Green party, which is about to reenter government. They have concrete proposals for transitioning towards carbon neutral, and it is probably the main reason why they did so well in the recent elections.
What are your solutions to AGW and what are their resource requirements?
That is a general question which has a general answer, namely the same as anyone else's. Reduce my carbon footprint, which at the moment is primarily building heating, which I have been discussing on other threads. And join in on work aiming to get society's footprint well down.
In the 60 years of CO2 measurements at Mauna Loa the CO2 content of the atmosphere has risen by around 100ppm from just over 300ppm to just over 400ppm. If this rate is constant, which it probably isn’t, a doubling of CO2 from the 1960 level will take 180 years from 1960 or 120 years from now. That takes us to 2140. Assuming an increasing rate of emissions maybe we will have a doubling of CO2 levels by 2100. If we can reduce a bit the doubling may be by 2150 or beyond.
What is the effect of this doubling? The E&T piece on the Nobel Prize suggests that the ECS is over 2°C.
The IPCC AR6 WG1 has a number of figures:
A.4.4 The equilibrium climate sensitivity is an important quantity used to estimate how the climate responds to radiative forcing. Based on multiple lines of evidence,21 the very likely range of equilibrium climate sensitivity is between 2°C (high confidence) and 5°C (medium confidence). The AR6 assessed best estimate is 3°C with a likely range of 2.5°C to 4°C (high confidence), compared to 1.5°C to 4.5°C in AR5, which did not provide a best estimate.
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM_final.pdf
I will take their best estimate of 3°C for the ECS. This suggests the with rising emissions we may get a 3°C Global increase by 2100. With steady or falling emissions 3°C may be reached by the middle of the next century or beyond. As I have stated many times before we have a climate problem, not a climate emergency.
I don’t see any realistic proposals from the Green Parties. They have lots of demands but very little facts on timescales and resource requirements. The German Greens have done well so far, forcing the closure of viable nuclear plants so the electricity shortfall is produced by burning lignite or importing fossil fuel electricity from Poland.
We live in a circa 20 year old two bedroom apartment with only two outside walls. What heat we do need comes from the district heating which burns actual waste wood from the local timber industry. I walk to work. We do own a diesel car but I don’t see it is energetically sensible to replace it with an EV in view of the limited mileage (kilometerage) that it does. A major part of my employers business is the manufacture of wire and cable systems for electric railways and EVs.
These ECS estimates are the problem as I agreed above, but a lot of work has been done which suggests that somewhere between about 0 and 1 degrees brings the models into better alignment with measured temperatures over the last 40 years or so. The IPCC is extremely good at ignoring data that doesn't match the script because its whole being and money supply are to provide proof of man-made warming (from its own terms of reference!). As I said above it is an entirely political organisation, not a principally scientific one.
Roger Bryant: The German Greens have done well so far, forcing the closure of viable nuclear plants so the electricity shortfall is produced by burning lignite or importing fossil fuel electricity from Poland.
Not really an accurate summary of the situation.
It was the centre-right CDU that exited nuclear, namely Angela Merkel.
The reason lignite is being burnt is that the miner and energy producer RWE (which has two large open-cast mines at Hambach and Garzweiler SW of Cologne which are continually the subject of demonstrations), has a government contract to do so which runs a while yet and cannot be forced to stop early (people and politicians have tried).
By the end of 2020, almost half of the electricity in Germany came from sustainables (46%). Current goal is 65% by 2030. We might well get there earlier.
davezawadi (David Stone):
As I said above it is an entirely political organisation, not a principally scientific one.
Out of the 2000 + odd employees of IPCC only a handful claim to be climate scientists, most are bureaucrats and governmental reps. Following the global warming is a serious problem agenda.
Which of course it isn't an emergency just a problem that needs careful consideration of especially the 1 Billion or so poorer people and the 2-3 Billion others living from pay cheque to pay cheque.
Peter Bernard Ladkin:
By the end of 2020, almost half of the electricity in Germany came from sustainables (46%). Current goal is 65% by 2030. We might well get there earlier.
I hope for your sake the wind blows and sun shines or you'll be screwed!
When did renewables become sustainables. Have I missed something?
Roger Bryant:
In the 60 years of CO2 measurements at Mauna Loa the CO2 content of the atmosphere has risen by around 100ppm from just over 300ppm to just over 400ppm. If this rate is constant, which it probably isn’t,
It manifestly isn't. The slope is continually increasing. If you extrapolate the recent slope back, it crosses the 310ppm scale at 1985, not at 1958. If you take that slope as constant, (which is a very conservative assumption), you get 100ppm increase in 36 years, which would mean a further 200ppm in 72 years from now.
But that is not a particularly good extrapolation. If you extrapolate the early years linearly, you come to about 380ppm in 2020, that is, 70ppm in 60 years or 1.17 ppm/yr. Whereas the rate close to now is 100ppm in 35 years or 2.86 ppm/yr. So the rate has doubled in, shall we say, 50 years. If the trend continues, we'll be up to 5.72ppm/yr in 2070, or 100ppm in 17+years. A reasonable rule of thumb would be to take 36 years for the next 100ppm rise and 18 years for the next 100ppm after that. That is 54 years from now, 2074.
In contrast, you suggest
doubling of CO2 from the 1960 level will take 180 years from 1960 or 120 years from now.
Isn't it interesting how very different estimates are when one uses different approximation techniques? (Mine is better than yours, BTW).
What is the effect of this doubling? The AR6 assessed best estimate is 3°C with a likely range of 2.5°C to 4°C (high confidence),
So that's 3° with 80% CI 2.5° to 4°.
I will take their best estimate of 3°C for the ECS. This suggests the with rising emissions we may get a 3°C Global increase by 2100.
By 2074 if you take my estimate above.
With steady or falling emissions 3°C may be reached by the middle of the next century or beyond. As I have stated many times before we have a climate problem, not a climate emergency.
So what we conclude about how urgent this is is very dependent on our extrapolation techniques.
We're about to take you to the IET registration website. Don't worry though, you'll be sent straight back to the community after completing the registration.
Continue to the IET registration site
