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Challengers raised points that merit responses. Mine lead to one answer: degrowth.

A machine leaves grooves in bare, red earth as it mines for rare metals. — Mining for rare earth metals for ever more battery-driven gadgetry is a vastly destructive and ultimately doomed response to the climate crisis argues the author. Photo via Shutterstock.

The best intentions in the world will not stop the inertia of a heavy civilization that is rolling on its way. — poet Gary Snyder

In a recent essay I argued that replacing a 150-year-old fossil fuel system with a shiny electrical one in just 25 years to address climate chaos would come with monstrous ecological costs.

I also said it won’t get the job done given that climate change is just one symptom of a greater crisis: the excessive consumption of resources on a finite planet. You had to read deep into the essay to arrive at what I proposed we must do instead of embracing “clean tech” as the blessed saviour.

So let me put it straight here at the top, before I elaborate later: Any imperfect solution to our current civilization-threatening predicament must include dialing down our energy consumption rather than coming up with high-tech visions that keep accelerating it.

And that means reasserting human control over the technosphere now fragmenting us and imposing real limits on the algorithmic conquest of our thinking.

In my article I summarized the work of geologists, journalists, physicists and energy experts — including Simon Michaux, Siddharth Kara, Vaclav Smil, Guillaume Pitron, Alice Friedemann, Nate Hagens and Tom Murphy — who have done the critical math. The ecologist William Rees, the physicist Antonio Turiel and oil analyst Art Berman also have all made important contributions to this conversation.

Their calculations, which respect biophysical realities and limits, show that humans will have to mine more metals and minerals over the next 30 years than have been dug up over the last 70,000 to build a “renewable” transition.

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EU Members Clash Over Nuclear Energy’s Role In Climate Policy

March 29, 2023

EU Members Clash Over Nuclear Energy’s Role In Climate Policy

The EU is in the process of expanding its renewable energy targets to reduce CO2 emissions.
Countries are divided over whether nuclear energy should be considered a part of renewable energy targets.
France leads the campaign to recognize nuclear energy as a CO2-free contributor, while Germany, Portugal, and others oppose it.

The European Union needs to work on a divide among its member countries regarding the role of nuclear energy in achieving their renewable energy goals. This disagreement may delay the progress of one of the EU’s primary climate policies.

On Wednesday, negotiators from EU countries and the European Parliament will engage in their final round of discussions to establish more ambitious EU objectives to expand renewable energy throughout the next decade. These goals are crucial for Europe’s commitment to reduce CO2 emissions by 2030 and to become independent of Russian fossil fuels. However, the negotiations have become bogged down by a dispute over whether fossil fuels produced using nuclear power should be considered part of the renewable energy targets.

France is spearheading a push to classify “low-carbon hydrogen” – hydrogen produced from nuclear energy – as equal to hydrogen created from renewable electricity. France is joined by countries such as Romania, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, all of which seek greater acknowledgment of nuclear energy’s CO2-free contribution to climate objectives.

On the other hand, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Portugal, and Luxembourg oppose this view, arguing that including nuclear power in renewable energy targets would divert attention from the urgent need to expand solar and wind energy across Europe significantly.

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Pakistan’s Dystopian Warning to the World

March 8, 2023

Pakistan’s Dystopian Warning to the World

Supporters of former Prime Minister Imran Khan at a rally in Rawalpindi in November. Photographer: Asad Zaidi/Bloomberg

Pakistan has touted itself as one of the world’s cradles of civilization, flourishing for thousands of years along ancient trade routes passing through the fertile Indus Valley.

Now it presents a dystopian vision of the future, bankrupt, unstable and threatened by climate catastrophe. Its fate offers a warning to other heavily indebted nations on the precipice, from Sri Lanka to Zambia.

Pakistan is due to hold elections no later than October, and political jostling is narrowing the nuclear-armed nation’s options.

Opposition leader Imran Khan, who was ousted from the premiership last year, is in a bitter standoff with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif over control of the country of 230 million. He’s held mass rallies in recent months to pressure the government into an early vote, while the authorities have filed numerous cases against him and issued a warrant for his arrest.

As Islamabad fiddles, the country is burning up its foreign reserves, and investors see a growing risk of default. The government is living hand to mouth, reliant on outside loans from China while negotiating with the International Monetary Fund for the remaining funds in a $6.5 billion bailout — its 13th since the late 1980s.

Pakistan already got a taste of economic disaster last year when deadly floods displaced millions. Such calamities are unlikely to be a one-off, with climate scientists forecasting massive increases in river flows as a result of melting Himalayan glaciers, inundating farmland and obliterating infrastructure — interspersed with drought.

Pakistan could hardly have a more strategic location, lodged between Iran and India and with China and Afghanistan to the north. That, plus its sheer size as the world’s fifth-most populous nation, make it too big to be allowed to fail.

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The Crisis Report — 13

February 14, 2023

The Crisis Report — 13

Russia, Ukraine, China, Taiwan, the US , and the Fossil Fuel Elites — Understanding the Global War that’s happening right now and what it means for the Anthroposphere.

This image is a metaphor for our world. In this image the “ocean” around the island is the Earth’s Oceans. The world’s temperature is set by this ocean. If it cools, the world cools. If it warms, the world warms.

This is a reasonable way to understand the real Earth’s Climate System.

80% of the solar energy the earth captures happens along the equator.

90% of that energy goes into the world’s oceans.

Global Warming is Ocean Warming.

The ocean in the image encircles the island and touches every part of it.

Every part of the island’s middle ring is touched by, and influenced by, the encircling ocean. Every part is affected if the ocean cools or warms.

Every part of the Biosphere is affected by changes in the Earth’s Temperature. EVERY PART. EVERYWHERE.

The Arctic has warmed over 4C. In 2021 NO PLACE on Earth was cooler than it had been between 1950–1980.

The list of things “going wrong” in the biosphere is endless. Because the Biosphere we live in, is completely connected to the “Climate” we have caused to rapidly get hotter.

Our Anthroposphere is in CRISIS.

The castle in the middle represents the “Anthroposphere”. The constructed world we have built over the last 10,000 years.

EVERYTHING happening in the WORLD, in the Anthroposphere, is connected to GLOBAL WARMING and the CLIMATE CHANGE it brings.

WE ARE IN CRISIS AND IT’S ABOUT TO GET A LOT HOTTER.

The green circle is where we are right now February 2023, the blue circles represent various forecasts of how warm the rest of this year is likely to be. The “zero line” in this chart is the 1981–2010 average of global temperatures.

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With 1.5°C Goal ‘Currently Not Plausible,’ Study Calls for Focus on Deep Social Change

February 9, 2023

Scientists at the University of Hamburg in Germany argued Wednesday that meeting the 2015 Paris climate agreement’s goal of limiting planetary heating to 1.5°C is “currently not plausible”—but warned that despairing over climate “tipping points” risks taking attention away from “the best hope for shaping a positive climate future… the ability of society to make fundamental changes.”

The Hamburg Climate Futures Outlook assessed the planetary impacts of several “physical processes that are frequently discussed as tipping points.” These include the melting of sea ice in the Arctic and glaciers at the North and South Poles; the weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the system of ocean currents that carries warm water upward into the North Atlantic; and “dieback” in the Amazon rainforest, in which rising temperatures would dry out trees and eventually change the forest landscape into a savanna, releasing billions of tons of stored carbon.

Those scenarios “are serious developments,” said researchers at the university, but the melting of ice “will have very little influence on the global temperature until 2050.” The weakening of AMOC and Amazon dieback will have a “moderately” greater influence on global temperatures.

“Human agency has a large potential to shape the way climate futures will evolve.”

“By extrapolating current trends,” reads the study, “permafrost thaw and Amazon Forest dieback are expected to release somewhat more than one year’s worth of today’s anthropogenic CO2 emissions between now and 2050. Thus, the contributions of these two processes to the remaining carbon budget are small…

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We’re Coming Closer to Limits of Adaptation

January 29, 2023

We’re Coming Closer to Limits of Adaptation

An EV in Every Driveway Is an Environmental Disaster

January 29, 2023

An EV in Every Driveway Is an Environmental Disaster

Photo-Illustration: Curbed; Photos: Getty

“There is always a huge climate benefit — and, I would argue, a safety benefit — to ensuring people have access to excellent public transit,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said earlier this month at the Transportation Research Board’s annual meeting. “Even if we weren’t aggressively working to decarbonize existing modes of transportation, that alone is one of the biggest and the best things we can do from a climate perspective.” This is the closest thing to a mic drop that exists at such an event, so the assembled transportation academics, urban planners, and civil engineers erupted into applause. Buttigieg had to pause, letting the hoots fade out before he could finish his remarks. He was onstage with Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to announce the first blueprint to decarbonize U.S. transportation by 2050, an unprecedented collaboration between the Departments of Transportation, Energy, and Housing and Urban Development and the Environmental Protection Agency to move the country away from using fossil fuels when, well, moving around.

Despite its many strengths, the blueprint is largely built around two things that have very little to do with what got Buttigieg the most applause from transit professionals: It’s heavily reliant on developing technologies that don’t exist yet and the Biden administration’s goal to have half of the new vehicles sold in 2030 to be electric (a figure closely negotiated with automakers). The latter point is perhaps why the slow but steadily growing number of electric vehicles, or EVs, sold in this country each year has become its own kind of shorthand for the decarbonization revolution. (“Electric Vehicles Keep Defying Almost Everyone’s Predictions,” “Electric Vehicle Sales Hit a Tipping Point in 2022,” “Electric Vehicles = 10% Of New Vehicle Sales Globally!”)…

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Extreme heat could put 40% of land vertebrates in peril by end of century

January 24, 2023

Extreme heat could put 40% of land vertebrates in peril by end of century

Study shows ‘disastrous consequences for wildlife’ if human-caused emissions push global temperatures up 4.4C

A female desert bighorn sheep in the Joshua Tree National Park, California. Such areas would be among the worse impacted if global emissions are not cut. Photograph: Michael S Nolan/Alamy

More than 40% of land vertebrates will be threatened by extreme heat by the end of the century under a high emissions scenario, with freak temperatures once regarded as rare likely to become the norm, new research warns.

Reptiles, birds, amphibians and mammals are being exposed to extreme heat events of increasing frequency, duration and intensity, as a result of human-driven global heating. This poses a substantial threat to the planet’s biodiversity, a new study warns.

Under a high emissions scenario of 4.4C warming, 41% of land vertebrates will experience extreme thermal events by 2099, according to the paper, published in Nature.

In worse affected regions, such as the Mojave desert in the US, Gran Chaco in South America, the Sahel and Sahara in Africa and parts of Iran and Afghanistan, 100% of species would be exposed to extreme heat. It is not possible to say if these areas would be uninhabitable, but it is likely that more species would become extinct.

A desert tortoise in the Mojave desert, southern California, US — A desert tortoise in the Mojave desert in California, US, an area that would be one of the worse hit by extreme heat. Photograph: Scott Trageser/Alamy

Researchers mapped the effects of extreme heat on more than 33,000 land vertebrates by looking at maximum temperature data between 1950 and 2099. They considered five predictions of global climatic models based on different levels of greenhouse gas emission, as well as the distribution of terrestrial vertebrates, to work out how exposed animal populations would be.

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It’s a Race: Will Human Extinction Result from a Loss of Aerosol Masking or Ongoing Overheating?

January 24, 2023

It’s a Race: Will Human Extinction Result from a Loss of Aerosol Masking or Ongoing Overheating?

Why the Cornucopia of False Solutions to Climate Change?

January 17, 2023

Why the Cornucopia of False Solutions to Climate Change?

For some decades now, a steady stream of marvelous solutions to climate change have paraded past, to great fanfare…most of them false. Some of them have come by twice, like the glorious Hydrogen Economy, which now comes in several colors, and CCS—Carbon Capture and Sequestration. CCS wore the shiny black dress of “Clean Coal” last time and is now calling itself CCUS, with the U standing for Usage. Mostly this means using captured carbon dioxide to push more oil out of old depleted wells. Even if the CO2 stays in the old well, the oil it pushes out will release more emissions than are sequestered—yet there are fat subsidies for doing this, in the name of climate action.

Then there’s nuclear power—that one has popped up again just lately, now in the guise of Small Modular Reactors. Being small and modular won’t change the many reasons nuclear power is a very bad idea, from the lack of safe ways to dispose of the waste—still, after half a century of piling it up—to its vulnerability to terrorism and accidents, to its being the most expensive of all energy sources.

There are various flavors of schemes to burn biomass to produce power, from wood-fired electricity to generating liquid fuels from corn or other crops. So far none of these looks to be sustainable or effective (effective at reducing emissions, that is—they may be very effective at garnering subsidies). As deforestation is a leading cause of climate change, burning wood to make electricity is senseless. Burning agricultural waste removes needed organic matter from soils. An occasional small biomass project may make sense, but this is not a significant way of replacing fossil fuels.

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The Energy Transition Will Run Through the Copper Gauntlet

January 17, 2023

The Energy Transition Will Run Through the Copper Gauntlet

And it may not survive

Since the 2018 IPCC climate report laid out the calamitous consequences of our unbridled carbon emissions, every pathway published by academics and think tanks that claim to save us from ourselves involves the expansion of solar and wind farms as well as net-zero and carbon capture dreams of unbridled optimism.

Net-Zero, the idea that we can keep emitting greenhouse gasses only if we somehow capture or offset those emissions by some yet-to-be-determined means was a dubious proposition at best. It relies on untested-at-scale projects such as carbon capture and sequester (CCS) as well as accounting fantasies that pretend a young sapling that takes 50 years to grow offsets the carbon released from the burning of a mature tree today after being shipped overseas.

Net-Zero plans also assume a rapid and universal deployment of renewable energy-capturing machines a.k.a. solar panels and wind generators. Unfortunately, contrary to their portrayal in mainstream media, solar panels and windmills do not produce renewable energy. These are machines designed to capture and transform energy (electromagnetic or kinetic) available to them and they are manufactured, installed, maintained, and replaced using fossil fuels.

It’s astonishing how the continual absence of any credible carbon removal technology seems to never affect net-zero policies. Whatever is thrown at it, net zero carries on without a dent in the fender.

James Dyke

Senior Lecturer in Global Systems, University of Exeter

Many other metals and rare earth elements have received a great deal of attention due to their exotic-sounding names, relative scarcity, and utilization in cutting-edge technologies, but one of the most critical minerals to the energy transition that is essential to curtailing the most serious effect of climate change is also one that the human race has learned to work earliest — copper.

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“Distasteful Masterclass In Hypocrisy”: Elites Swarm Davos In Private Jets To Discuss Climate Crisis

January 16, 2023

“Distasteful Masterclass In Hypocrisy”: Elites Swarm Davos In Private Jets To Discuss Climate Crisis

The annual conference of the World Economic Forum begins today in Davos, Switzerland. Global elites landed in luxurious private jets over the last few days in airports around Davos to discuss important global challenges, such as climate change, behind closed doors.

“The rich and powerful are swarming to Davos to discuss climate and inequality behind closed doors using the most unequal and polluting form of transport: private jets,” Klara Maria Schenk, transport campaigner for Greenpeace’s European mobility campaign, told news website Politics.co.uk.

Greenpeace International published a new report that showed 1,040 private jets flew in and out of airports around Davos for last year’s meeting, causing CO2 emissions from private jets to increase four times more versus a weekly average.

“Given that 80% of the world’s population has never even flown, but suffers from the consequences of climate-damaging aviation emissions, and that the WEF claims to be committed to the 1.5°C Paris Climate Target, this annual private jet bonanza is a distasteful masterclass in hypocrisy. Private jets must be consigned to history if we are to have a green, just and safe future for all. So-called world leaders must lead by example and ban private jets and useless short-haul flights,” added Schenk.

WEF hopes to tackle what they believe is a climate crisis plaguing the world despite most attendees arriving by private jets, which are the most polluting mode of transport per passenger

And motorcades of WEF attendees were spotted in gas-guzzling SUVs and high-end sedans.

Meanwhile, climate protesters spent Monday morning blocking at least one airport used by the super-rich.

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Energy requirements and carbon emissions for a low-carbon energy transition

January 1, 2023

Energy requirements and carbon emissions for a low-carbon energy transition

Abstract

Achieving the Paris Agreement will require massive deployment of low-carbon energy. However, constructing, operating, and maintaining a low-carbon energy system will itself require energy, with much of it derived from fossil fuels. This raises the concern that the transition may consume much of the energy available to society, and be a source of considerable emissions. Here we calculate the energy requirements and emissions associated with the global energy system in fourteen mitigation pathways compatible with 1.5 °C of warming. We find that the initial push for a transition is likely to cause a 10–34% decline in net energy available to society. Moreover, we find that the carbon emissions associated with the transition to a low-carbon energy system are substantial, ranging from 70 to 395 GtCO₂ (with a cross-scenario average of 195 GtCO₂). The share of carbon emissions for the energy system will increase from 10% today to 27% in 2050, and in some cases may take up all remaining emissions available to society under 1.5 °C pathways.

Introduction

The IPCC’s Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C concludes that we can still meet the 1.5 °C target and that by doing so, we would reduce climate impacts and limit the risk of exceeding the tipping points of the climate system¹. The report provides a range of low-carbon energy pathways compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5 °C. However, at present, there is no estimate of how much energy would be needed to build and maintain a low-carbon energy system, or what amount of greenhouse gas emissions would be associated with such a transition^2,3,4. This is an important gap in knowledge, as previous research suggests that rapid growth of low-carbon infrastructure could use a substantial amount of the global energy supply^5,6. Moreover, since the global energy supply is currently derived mostly from fossil fuels, the transition itself may become a source of significant emissions^7,8.

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Rising authoritarianism and worsening climate change share a fossil-fueled secret

December 31, 2022

Rising authoritarianism and worsening climate change share a fossil-fueled secret

Around the world, many countries are becoming less democratic. This backsliding on democracy and “creeping authoritarianism,” as the U.S. State Department puts it, is often supported by the same industries that are escalating climate change.

In my new book, “Global Burning: Rising Antidemocracy and the Climate Crisis,” I lay out connections between these industries and the politicians who are both stalling action on climate change and diminishing democracy.

It’s a dangerous shift, both for representative government and for the future climate.

Corporate capture of environmental politics

In democratic systems, elected leaders are expected to protect the public’s interests, including from exploitation by corporations. They do this primarily through policies designed to secure public goods, such as clean air and unpolluted water, or to protect human welfare, such as good working conditions and minimum wages. But in recent decades, this core democratic principle that prioritizes citizens over corporate profits has been aggressively undermined.

Today, it’s easy to find political leaders – on both the political right and left – working on behalf of corporations in energy, finance, agribusiness, technology, military and pharmaceutical sectors, and not always in the public interest. These multinational companies help fund their political careers and election campaigns to keep them in office.

In the U.S., this relationship was cemented by the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United. The decision allowed almost unlimited spending by corporations and wealthy donors to support the political candidates who best serve their interests. Data shows that candidates with the most outside funding usually win. This has led to increasing corporate influence on politicians and party policies.

When it comes to the political parties, it’s easy to find examples of campaign finance fueling political agendas.

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Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions

December 31, 2022

Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions

Photo Credit: Getty

Thanks go to Tony Heller, who first collected many of these news clips and posted them on RealClimateScience.

SUMMARY

Modern doomsayers have been predicting climate and environmental disaster since the 1960s. They continue to do so today.

None of the apocalyptic predictions with due dates as of today have come true.

What follows is a collection of notably wild predictions from notable people in government and science.

More than merely spotlighting the failed predictions, this collection shows that the makers of failed apocalyptic predictions often are individuals holding respected positions in government and science.

While such predictions have been and continue to be enthusiastically reported by a media eager for sensational headlines, the failures are typically not revisited.

1967: ‘Dire famine by 1975.’