The Arctic Council’s Arctic Monitoring and assessment Programme (AMAP) recently released a Summary for PolicyMakers’ Arctic Climate Change Update 2024.
It is one of several stock taking exercises on the regional and global states of Earth’s climate. The other reports include the 2024 European State of the Climate (ESOTC) report, NOAA’s Assessing the Global Climate in 2024, Berkeley Earth, and the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) state of the climate 2024.
So why bother with several similar assessments? One reason is that they have been written by different people who independently come to the same conclusion: Earth’s climate is changing at a fast pace, and 2024 was the warmest year measured in modern times.
The warming in the Arctic is particularly fast due to an effect known as the polar amplification.
Another question is why we should care about the changes in the Arctic that are documented in the most recent AMAP report. There are several changes in the Arctic that will affect both the globe as well as the mid-latitudes.
Melting land ice contributes to a higher global sea level. The overall Arctic ice loss has contributed far more to global sea-level rise than any other region on Earth.
Thawing permafrost may release methane into the atmosphere, which subsequently increases the greenhouse effect and leads to further global warming.
The report also contains a chapter on the link between the Arctic climate and the weather over North America, Europe and Asia. The mechansism involves movements of the polar vortex over continents that can may result in air outbreaks.
Reduced sea-ice cover and and more acidic ocean may affect marine ecosystems, which indirectly may affect the rest of world through the food chain and trade.
There is also a question whether changes in the salinity of the Arctic seas, such as increased melting of ice, more precipitation and changed river runoff may destabilise the ocean circulation, known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). It is related to changes in the hydrological state, but is not discussed explicitly in this latest report. The European climate would dramatically change if the AMOC stopped.
Please stop using the term “polar amplification” It is completely incorrect. The warming rate monotonically increases from the south pole to the north pole
https://photos.app.goo.gl/RKcxTS7JATfax3vVA
Er, did you read the post?
Keith Woollard: “ Please stop using the term “polar amplification” It is completely incorrect
Here the NASA map of the surface temperature anomaly
here the NASA’s map of the surface temperature anomaly
Put your money where your mouth is – show that “monotonical increase from the south pole to the north pole ” of yours.
Firstly let me apologise for the replicated comment. This original comment was not approved for a couple of days after I sent it despite a number of other more recent commenters being published. I assumed I fell foul of the moderators and assumed it was because I had an external link. I rewrote it just giving a table of the numbers rather than a graph.
To Piotr, that is exactly what I have done, and obviously you have now realised that as your response to the replicated comment acknowledges that. Your second comment is somewhat more intelligent and I didn’t deliberately choose UAH to deceive in any way. It was chosen purely because it is the only one (that I am aware of) that publishes latitude banded data. Curiously GISS also calculate the latitude bands, but I have only every seen them as a time series animation. If you know where the data may reside I would love to see it. But your linked graphic is pointless. What does a temperature anomaly at a particular point it time tell you about the warming rate? If you are truly claiming that the warming rate is larger as you head south of the equator, please provide any sort of corroborating evidence. The NASA youtube of annual temperature anomalies by latitude band clearly shows the Antarctic region is highly variable, but with no distinct trend.
I am not really sure about how to address the other responses, Are people aware the earth has two poles? For PolarFlyer, no that is not the literal definition. Polar amplification would be if the rate of warming monotonically increased with increasing distance from the equator, not south pole.
I did find a GIStemp zonal dataset. There is a very small uptick in the 64s-90s band. I don’t think I would classify it as polar amplification, but if others disagree I will accept that.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/6kZcrWcrG1TP9SFb8
Piotr, in response to your “18 MAY 2025 AT 5:26 PM” as well as all your other replies to me, do you not understand the difference between a rate of change and a single value?
Keith, the anomaly map Pyotr posted is relative to a baseline value, so no, it’s not a single point in time. It gives you change over time, which strangely enough is exactly what “rate” is.
I can only assume you are joking Kevin. One “randomly” chosen point does not give a trend. .
Piotr’s selection of 2022 using your version of arithmetic gives a southern polar warming trend of 1.6 degrees/century. If he had selected the year before it would have been 0.47, or 10 years ago cooling of 0.68. For the ultimate in cherry picking he should have selected 1996 to give a warming rate of 5.2. he could have chosen the most recent data (2024) to give 1.25
All of these numbers are obviously utter nonsense
Using the full dataset, and linear regression, the actual warming rate is 0.63/degrees/century
Keith Woollard May 19: “do you not understand the difference between a rate of change and a single value?”
Do you not understand, Keith Woollard, that this would save your face ONLY it is was one completely unrepresentative i.e., anomalous year? If somebody wanted to base his claim on 2022 being a giant anomaly – on the NASA webpage I gave link to:
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/global-temperatures
the VERY FIRST graph is an animation of temperature anomalies from …. 1880 to 2019.
Of course for Antarctica we don’t have as old T data – they start around 1960, but this should be OK – after all you felt confident lecturing Rasmus for being “completely incorrect”, based on … MUCH SHORTER satellite dataset (UAH).
Patronizing lecturing of others, particularly noted climate scientists, demand proofs beyond reasonable doubt:
“ Please stop using the term “polar amplification” It is completely incorrect. The warming rate monotonically increases from the south pole to the north pole”
Keith Woollard, lecturing Rasmus Benestad
So put your money where your, oh so self-confident mouth was, Mr. Woollard, and prove beyond reasonable doubt that: The warming rate monotonically increases from the south pole to the north pole“
Keith Woollard May 20: “ I can only assume you are joking Kevin. One “randomly” chosen point does not give a trend
See again to the same point Keith Woollard made on May 19:
=================
P: this [argument] would save your face ONLY it is was one completely unrepresentative i.e., anomalous year? If somebody wanted to base his claim on 2022 being a giant anomaly – on the NASA webpage I gave link to:
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/global-temperatures
the VERY FIRST graph is an animation of temperature anomalies from …. 1880 to 2019.
Of course for Antarctica we don’t have as old T data – they start around 1960, but this should be OK – after all you felt confident lecturing Rasmus for being “completely incorrect”, based on … MUCH SHORTER satellite dataset (UAH).
Patronizing lecturing of others, particularly noted climate scientists, demand proofs beyond reasonable doubt:
“ Please stop using the term “polar amplification” It is completely incorrect. The warming rate monotonically increases from the south pole to the north pole”
Keith Woollard, lecturing Rasmus Benestad
So put your money where your, oh so self-confident mouth was, Mr. Woollard, and prove beyond reasonable doubt that: The warming rate monotonically increases from the south pole to the north pole“
=== end of quote ==========
Keith, your logic would be correct IF there were no long-term trend, or if it or the time-line were such the trend were small compared to the annual variability.. However, the anomaly map he cited reflects more than 40 years of warming. I have no idea how you get your numbers in the comment about “cherry-picking’, since conversion to a “southern pole warming rate’ from an anomaly map which doesn’t even extend to the pole is what you might call “problematic.’
The map is, however, qualitatively pretty consistent with Fig. 3 in the “polar amplification” link from the original post–which is why I queried whether you ‘d actually read the post. I suppose I should have specifically called attention to the fact that the figure wasn’t in the body of the post, though.
Anyway, it’s pretty darn clear that no, temps do not decrease monotonically toward the south pole. Sure, the Antarctic amplification is small, but it’s not zero. (And there’s reason to think, just based on straightforward physical theory, that the asymmetry will decrease as warming continues, though I don’t expect to live long enough to see that come about.)
Here’s another NASA visualization of zonal warming over time, just for the interest of it.
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5451/
Thanks for replying with your clarification. I must sheepishly confess, that I think I just brain-farted. What I was thinking was indeed a “monotonic increase with increasing distance from the equator” but somehow my brain substituted “south pole” for “equator.” Doh…
Your image of “UAH Warming vs Latitude,” extending into the southern hemisphere, will be more persuasive if it is resilient to a confidence interval analysis, or if you were to demonstrate a significant p value. Could you perhaps update the graphic with confidence intervals? But even if that worked out in your favor, it would be necessary but probably insufficient to argue any deeper meaning to your point. there is an excellent RealClimate post from 2006 by Dr. Cecilia Bitz, that adds important context. I will quote the most relevant paragraph here:
“Observed polar climate change from the instrumental record is not symmetric. Except along the Antarctic Peninsula (Vaughan et al., 2003), most evidence of significant warming is from the Arctic. In addition, total sea ice extent in the Southern Ocean has had no significant trend since satellites began taking data in 1979 (Cavalieri et al 2003). Newer climate models generally also have very modest or no polar amplification over the Southern Ocean and Antarctica in hindcasts of the last century. The presence of a deep and circulating ocean component is key because ocean heat uptake increases most in the Southern Ocean as the climate warms (see Gregory 2000). The asymmetry at the poles does not however result from a difference in feedback strength associated with the ice or atmosphere. In fact, when these same climate models are run to equilibrium (in the same way that Manabe and Stouffer ran their model so that ocean heat uptake is not a factor) the hemispheres have nearly equal polar amplification.”
(https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/01/polar-amplification/)
I found that post informative, but it is nearly 20 years old. I, and perhaps other RealClimate readers, would be highly interested in a new post updating some of that material. In the meantime, I personally would consider it presumptive to deny an intuitive and long-established descriptive term. If “polar amplification” is truly illusory, a refereed paper that convincingly made that case would surely be a hot item.
With respect,
PF
Hi PolarFlyer,
Thank you for a refreshingly articulate and probing response. I totally agree with your comments and realise the inadequacies of the collected data.
The Satellite data is not quite 50 years, isn’t a true surface temperature and has limited coverage of the poles. However it has far better spatial and temporal coverage and isn’t tied to places where we decide to measure. NASA’s GIStemp (oddly) doesn’t use satellites so is a true surface record and has a much greater temporal range. unfortunately the latitude based zones are only available as annual anomalies which seem to be calculated by rouded monthly values. And you would have to take 80% of the southern hemisphere’s values with a grain of salt for anything earlier than the 1950s.
So with these caveats, it is surprising that they both show very similar latitude/warming profiles.
As far as confidence level, I struggle with the idea largely because I did high school science and uni 150 years ago when we calculated real error bars based on how the data was acquired/processed/presented. What I can say, and did say to Piotr was that “the Antarctic region is highly variable, but with no distinct trend. ” Here is another graph for you, personally I would prefer to show this and let the reader draw their own conclusion about the robustness of the trend. It is the entire set of monthly anomalies for the northern polar region, the tropics and the southern polar region.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Kz7ER5xpihyinaLU9
Regarding the near 20 year old RealClimate post yes there is a lot of useful commentary. The idea of polar amplification may have been made popular in the 1980s, but it was published almost a century earlier.
I don’t care how good they think their models are, there is no way polar amplitude will be symmetric until the south pole is not sitting in the middle of a continent, and that is unlikely to occur for at least 300 MY.
Clearly the 2006 post needs to be corrected, but that won’t happen. I didn’t even get a response other than the usual…. how dare you question our beloved overlords
KW: how dare you question our beloved overlords
BPL: Questions are welcome. Repeated questions demanding the answer desired are not.
The AMOC cannot ‘stop’ for heavens sake. It will change direction. Run the models and figure out how it will change. It is embarrassing to hear intelligent scientists talking about the AMOC ‘stopping’..
Put your money where is – o presumably highly intelligent Martin Bush – CITE the papers that show that “the AMOC cannot ‘stop’ for heavens sake, but merely “change direction.”
Or better still present your model which proves that the only change in AMOC can be its direction and how this would falsify Rasmus’ conclusion of ” the European climate would dramatically change”.
Two year old climate scientist? It beggars belief.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/02/how-will-media-report-on-this-new-amoc-study/
Pedro Prieto: “Two year-old climate scientist?”
Aga-baga? Show your reasoning leading you to that oh-so-brilliant quip.
Summary very much appreciated. FWIW the geologist in me seems to discern a very large dipping folded structure in the bottom half of your photo.
>The report also contains a chapter on the link between the Arctic climate and the weather over North America, Europe and Asia. The mechansism involves movements of the polar vortex over continents that can may result in air outbreaks.
Air outbreaks don’t sound all that bad. I think you mean “cold air” outbreaks. Even so, this is just the Summary for Policymakers. It contains not a chapter on the link, but a quarter page. Based on the 2021 edition’s timing, the chapter might not appear for another year.
Regarding the link to North American cold, I hope the report will distinguish between dynamic and thermodynamic effects on cold air outbreak intensity. While there’s some evidence of a dynamic influence via the polar vortex that could make cold air outbreaks more likely, the undisputed thermodynamic effect of a rapidly warming Arctic means that the cold air in the outbreaks will be not nearly as cold.
To weigh these two competing effects, I turn to model projections and observed trends. Focusing on Texas, my area of responsibility, both models and observations agree that thermodymics wins: extreme cold becomes less extreme.
If I’m wrong about that analysis, please correct me!
“The Arctic’s climate is changing at an alarming rate.”
Yes — but that’s not news.
So why rehash this fact in yet another report? The author says it’s because different groups independently arrive at the same conclusion — as if repetition is proof. But that’s not a valid reason. Scientific fundamentals established the Arctic’s vulnerability decades ago. One solid, updated assessment would suffice to track recent accelerations. Instead, we get endless duplication — a costly and ineffective use of time, energy, and resources.
“In the 20 years since the 2004 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA)… the pace of climate change has accelerated… and the need for timely action is stronger than ever.”
Exactly — this quote is a quiet admission of failure. Every “call for action” since 2004 has effectively gone nowhere. There is no meaningful action underway, only recycled language and hypothetical unachievable ambitions. Words are not actions, and belief is not a substitute for structural systemic changes in the world.
“Studies show that ambitious reductions in net emissions can slow the pace of change, but time is running out.”
That’s misleading. Studies also show — undeniably — that such “ambitious reductions” have failed to materialize for over 40 years. If anything, time hasn’t just run out for the Arctic — it’s slipping away for global civilization as we know it.
“The widespread changes in the Arctic reinforce the Arctic Council Ministers’ calls for action…”
Those calls have proven futile. The outcomes speak louder than repeating futile intentions.
And yes — I noticed the snowmobile in the photo is likely powered by a gasoline engine. That pretty much says it all about the disconnect with reality displayed in this report.
Policy Recommendations:
Recycled bureaucratic language, detached from political reality. More time, effort, and funding spent on recommendations that are never enforced, implemented, or even connected to the root cause of the problem.
Science Recommendations:
Valuable and useful data, yes — but where is the system-level critique or even an awareness of it? Nowhere is that present. These recommendations consistently avoid naming the structural drivers of rapidly increasing energy use, emissions growth and environmental breakdown.
Not once do these authors seriously confront the actual root causes of the crisis: not just “CO₂” or “GHGs,” but a civilization model addicted to extraction, consumption, inequality, and power concentration. We face runaway energy use, population overshoot, ecological destruction, economic myths of infinite growth, and elite corporate domination — yet none of this is ever addressed in any major climate assessment report.
Until these systemic drivers are named and confronted, such reports will remain well-written distractions — articulate, yes, but ultimately evasive. This isn’t an action plan; it’s denial disguised as concern.
It’s not a call to action — it’s a performance of concern. A salve for decades of failure, irrelevance, and powerlessness. These reports function less as roadmaps and more as rituals — repeated not to spark change, but to soothe the dissonance between knowledge and inaction.
They achieve nothing. No one in power reads them to act — only to gesture. And so, the crisis accelerates while the experts keep publishing, hoping their words will somehow matter more this time.
But they won’t — not until they finally name the real enemy.
The Arctic’s climate is changing, but that’s not news. Indeed. It has happened before…
Drinkwater, 2006 wrote: “Ecosystem changes associated with the warm period included a general northward movement of fish. Boreal species of fish such as cod, haddock and herring expanded farther north while colder-water species such as capelin and polar cod retreated northward. The warming in the 1920s and 1930s is considered to constitute the most significant regime shift experienced in the North Atlantic in the 20th century.”
October, 1922: “The Arctic seems to be warming up. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters, and explorers who sail the seas about Spitzbergen and the eastern Arctic, all point to a radical change in climatic conditions, and hitherto un-heard-of high temperatures in that part of the earth’s surface.” …”With the disappearance of white fish and seal has come other life in these waters. This year herring in great shoals were found along the west coast of Spitzbergen, all the way from the fry to the veritable great herring. Shoals of smelt were also met with.”
Atmospheric CO2.. 280 ppm?
PP: The author says it’s because different groups independently arrive at the same conclusion — as if repetition is proof. But that’s not a valid reason. Scientific fundamentals established the Arctic’s vulnerability decades ago. One solid, updated assessment would suffice to track recent accelerations. Instead, we get endless duplication — a costly and ineffective use of time, energy, and resources.
BPL: Replication of results is crucial to how modern science is done.
Quote: “So why rehash this fact in yet another report?”
Because it’s easier to write a report than to actually do something to make a difference such as installing an off-grid solar and/or wind-power system for your home, getting rid of your gasoline powered car, walking or biking or taking public transportation instead of driving where you need to go, It’s easier to blame the system or the oligarchs or the Republicans or Trump than to actually do what is needed to solve the problem. If all of the people around the world would do what is needed, the price of oil would drop and might put oil companies out of business, but even if that didn’t happen the human emissions of CO2 would go down a lot. Nah, just write a report, or bash Trump and MAGA from your keyboard – THAT’S THE TICKET!
The Prieto Principle.
“The author says it’s because different groups independently arrive at the same conclusion — as if repetition is proof. But that’s not a valid reason. Scientific fundamentals established the Arctic’s vulnerability [….] ”
Repetition / replication can certainly help provide evidence that a theory is correct. It’s about double checking and a consilience of the evidence. Repetition / replication is used in all scientific fields. One example within climate science is the multiple temperature data sets.
The arctic study done in the 1990s was theory based and predictive, and was good quality but not definitively proven. Repetition especially studies using the emerging real world evidence helped support the theory. I can appreciate this even as a layperson.
“Studies show that ambitious reductions in net emissions can slow the pace of change, but time is running out.”…That’s misleading. Studies also show — undeniably — that such “ambitious reductions” have failed to materialize for over 40 years.”
It’s not misleading. The claim that emissions reductions can reduce pace of change is correct and is clearly meant in theory or in a technical sense. It is therefore not shown to be misleading by a lack of progress solving the problem which could have many causes for example motivational or political. PP statements are a non sequitur and illogical.
“Not once do these authors seriously confront the actual root causes of the crisis: not just “CO₂” or “GHGs,” but a civilization model addicted to extraction, consumption, inequality, and power concentration. We face runaway energy use, population overshoot, ecological destruction, economic myths of infinite growth, and elite corporate domination — yet none of this is ever addressed in any major climate assessment report…..”
The root cause of the climate problem is in fact mostly CO2 and GHGs. This is what causes the warming effect. Therefore it’s the root cause. Saying a large populations or consumption is the root cause of warming is like saying a large population causes heart disease.
Now 8 billion people and high per capita levels of consumption are very arguably a problem environmentally in a general sense. Something clearly has to change. But this is a socio economic issue, well outside the remit of the IPCC. And obviously a reduction in energy use would help reduce the climate problem. The IPPC do actually address this in the mitigation chapter , so PPs claim its ignored is simply wrong.
But we only have a decade or two to deal properly with the climate problem. I would suggest high levels of energy consumption are unlikely to change very much in the next decade or two, given humans liking for consumption, and its obvious benefits. And a rapid pace of economic degrowth could collapse the economy. So we better concentrate primarily on technical solutions like renewables. Like Piotr and others say “the perfect is the enemy of the good.”
Reply to nigelj
Thanks for the reply. I’ll try to respond constructively and keep this focused.
“Repetition / replication can certainly help provide evidence…”
Sure — replication has its place in scientific method when it involves independent testing and falsifiability. But what I’m referring to is the superficial repetition of conclusions across groups that are often drawing from the same institutional worldview, assumptions, and economic blind spots. That’s not “consilience” — that’s intellectual convergence driven by systemic bias, not just data integrity.
“It’s not misleading. The claim that emissions reductions can reduce pace of change is correct and is clearly meant in theory…”
And that’s exactly why it’s misleading in the real-world context — because it pretends “technical truth” is a substitute for political and economic realism. Forty years of promises have produced continued emission increases, yet policy reports still highlight “ambitious reductions” as if they are just around the corner. That framing avoids confronting why those reductions haven’t happened already! It’s like prescribing the right medicine while ignoring the fact the patient can’t afford it, won’t take it, and lives in toxic conditions.
“The root cause of the climate problem is in fact mostly CO2 and GHGs…”
That’s like saying “the cause of obesity is fat.” Yes, at the surface level, GHGs trap heat. But what drives their release? Who keeps putting there and refuses to reduce it while speaking out the other side of their mouths by continuing to increase it by everything they do. That’s what I mean by root cause: a global system built on endless extraction, expansion, and consumption, deeply entwined with inequality and elite economic control. CO₂ doesn’t emit itself. We do — at scale, through systemic behaviors shaped by our civilization’s structure. That’s not a philosophical abstraction — it’s a material, structural fact.
“It’s outside the remit of the IPCC…”
And that’s part of the problem. If the world’s premier climate body can’t fully address the systemic economic and social architecture that keeps driving emissions, then we’re left treating symptoms while the disease worsens. The IPCC may mention energy use or economic patterns in footnotes or mitigation chapters, but rarely does it confront the uncomfortable political economy driving the crisis. The WG3 for example is a denialist institution operating like a Fossil Fuel Corps Board of Directors. The things they do and say is denial in action.
“The perfect is the enemy of the good…”
Sure, but the convenient is the enemy of the real. Focusing only on technological solutions without addressing the demand side — or the inequality and consumption patterns that sustain it — or ignoring and denying the existence of a whole global system that is responsible for the GHG and CO2 output and which precisely what is accelerating global warming right now — is a recipe for delusion. We can’t solar-panel our way out of infinite growth.
Let’s at least be honest about where we are and what’s actually driving this crisis. GHGs and CO2 don’t get Vote on what they are doing. Anything less is just another layer of denial under the layers of denial already there for decades in yourself and the self-righteous crusader fanatics such as Piotr who isn’t worth reading let alone replying to.
Another 5 minutes of my life wasted. I wonder what’s happening on Do The Math?
The Prieto P. (formerly known as Darma/Darmah/Dharma /Poor Peru / Darma / Darmah /Dharma /Philly / Compliciated / Complicius / Sabine / Escobar / Ned Kelly/ Thessalonia”?):
“The Arctic’s climate is changing at an alarming rate.” So why rehash this fact in yet another report?
Because, if you haven’t noticed, it is not a primary research paper – but a bullet point in a very brief (1 page long, after excluding illustrations) summary. A summary explicitly addressed NOT to scientific community but to “policy-makers”. You know – the people with outsized influence on our future, yet without scientific expertise, therefore needing simple language and repetition to reinforce what they may have, or not, heard in the past.
Some of them may end up just reading the 5 bullet points. Others may move into the short paragraphs following each of the 5 bullet points. Others still – may go to the 12-page long overview, starting with the updated graphs of the seven key indicators and then having the 5 bullet point further developed and explained in more detail, I.e. things the majority of the policy-makers never heard about. And that’s why “ yet another summary and the full report to follow.
If you really are so concerned about unnecessary, unoriginal, shallow, texts hardly anyone reads – I suggest you direct your attention to your production on this group.
What realistic actions can be taken that would not otherwise create difficulties for all economies? Conventional vehicles do all of the transportation to feed billions of people as well as making the energy transition to renewables and EVs possible. Rapid reductions in CO2 emissions takes none of the CO2 already added out of the atmosphere to lower global temperatures. Carbon capture technologies are costly and energy intensive. Scaled up globally they can’t even store one part-per-million of CO2 by 2050. The real enemy…root cause is population growth. The correlation between Mauna Loa CO2 and global population numbers is almost perfect.
We’ve been through this before, and you’re repeating the same falsehood. If the correlation between Mauna Loa CO2 and global population is so astounding, why is population is leveling off, while CO2 continues to rise exponentially? Your math doesn’t work.
In Re to John Pollack, 15 May 2025 at 9:44 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/05/the-most-recent-climate-status/#comment-833340
Hallo John,
Thank you for your reminder.
Indeed, I remember that someone already operated herein with this allegedly excellent correlation between Mauna Loa atmospheric CO2 concentration measurements on one hand and global human population on the other hand.
There came no reply to your objection then, I think.
Greetings
Tomáš
KT: The correlation between Mauna Loa CO2 and global population numbers is almost perfect.
BPL: Have you checked for autocorrelation in the residuals?
Ken Towe says
15 May 2025 at 8:29 AM
What realistic actions can be taken that would not otherwise create difficulties for all economies?
None.
There is a direct corelation between energy consumption and accumulated economic wealth.
That’s the counsel of despair–unless you are proposing a “solution” that would be even more appalling in scale than the “final” one looming so infamously in our historical rear view. I trust that is not the case.
Some ‘realistic actions’, just off the top of my head:
1) End all new investment in fossil fuel development. (Extant production resources would be maintained while phasing down production levels.)
2) Further accelerate the deployment of modern RE and storage, while upgrading transmission systems.
3) Intensify efforts in energy conservation, efficiency, and demand management. (Still a lot of pretty low-hanging fruit there, as well as structural transformations that may be harder and/or slower, but which merit pursuit.) This could include methods such as tax policies, market mechanisms, and information sharing, as well as direct regulation.
4) End bit-coin mining unless a socially-productive use can be identified.
5) Protect and preserve natural landscapes.
6) Incentivize best agricultural practices, and disseminate knowledge about same.
7) Support research in multiple relevant fields, from basic research to the deployment of new technologies at scale.
The Great Unravelling Is Here
We are living through a multi-front systemic breakdown—on a scale rivaling the Great Depression, and arguably worse than the 2008 crash. Only this time, the fallout is already upon us.
The climate crisis is no longer abstract: 151 unprecedented weather events were recorded in 2024, with $183 billion in U.S. damages alone—likely over $1 trillion globally when fully accounted for. Yet denial still reigns. The estimated cost of climate adaptation is now heading toward $3 trillion per year, but public budgets are bleeding elsewhere—from military escalation to lingering pandemic fallout.
Long COVID remains a major drag, draining an estimated $3.7 trillion from the U.S. economy—about 17% of GDP, comparable in scale to the entire 2008 crash. Despite this, governments are cutting health budgets just as the threat of new pandemics looms: avian flu, hemorrhagic fevers, and more.
The global financial system is fracturing. Sanctions regimes—led by the U.S.—have weaponized finance, destabilized trade, and eroded trust. Russia alone has over 28,000 entities under sanctions. Broad measures on China, Iran, and others have further strained the dollar-based system. Meanwhile, proposals to convert U.S. Treasuries into century bonds (a form of soft default) are rattling markets. With over $30 trillion in foreign-held U.S. assets, any serious tremor could trigger selloffs, interest rate spikes, and financial chaos.
The old “peace dividend” is gone. Cheap money, globalized trade, and military restraint have given way to a new Cold War—already hot in places like Ukraine and Gaza. Europe is allocating €800 billion for rearmament alone. That means even less funding for climate, health, and education—while inflation, commodity instability, and energy insecurity surge.
And now we brace for Trump’s return, with a promised 60% tariff blitz—an erratic, destabilizing move that will intensify global economic strain and fuel cost-of-living crises worldwide.
The signs of disintegration are everywhere: ecological, economic, and geopolitical. The center is not holding.
The only real question now is: How much worse are we willing to let it get before we even attempt a course correction?
But let’s be honest—there is no “we.” There is no collective action coming. The jig is up.
Woke melodramas about Harvard endowments, NOAA shutdowns, or what the Trump administration is doing to “poor old America” are childish distractions—irrelevant theater in the face of systemic collapse.
“The crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think—and then it happens much faster than you would have thought.”
sorry that post of mine should have gone to UV thread.
Thanks Rasmus. This paragraph says it all – “Why bother with several similar assessments? One reason is that they have been written by different people who independently come to the same conclusion: Earth’s climate is changing at a fast pace, and 2024 was the warmest year measured in modern times.”!
There are very many other studies too, of course, all pointing in the same direction.
It would be good to collect and collate observational climate changes / experiences from around the world on one website if some group, somewhere has the resources to set up such a site.? The changes in a small woodland I own in Wales, UK, for example, are unprecedented as trees die from disease and / or fall / are blown over because of ever increasing rainfall / and ever increasing wind strengths. We talk about planting trees to save the planet but forget how a changing planet impacts on native trees that struggle to adapt. This is one small example of how the changing climate is already affecting a local environment. There will be a multitude of examples, visible changes occurring around the globe. It would be good to have such changes collected, photographed and mapped in one place for members of the public to see what is happening close to where they live – and wider afield. “Seeing is believing” as the saying goes. Many people do not understand data and scientific facts and figures. They need to be aware of / understand the changes that are taking though. “A picture is worth a thousand words” and a site dedicated to observational climate changes could be another way of getting the messages across?
Excellent. I’ve been suggesting that we need more localized focus (and reporting), using the improvements in technology and analysis in climate science, rather than discussing the nuances of GMST.
I also have a similar experience on my property… the oaks are all gone, and the ashes are snapping in wind bursts even when they aren’t dead yet. And this last winter I had a thaw-freeze cycle that created a frozen snow condition I’ve never seen here.
“All climate is local” is probably a true statement for most people.
I have wondered why the area or extent of the arctic sea ice has not shinked in more than ten years now. The record low was already in 2013? Actually, the ice area reduced quickly during years 1979-2007, but thereafter it slowed down. So my question is the following: Is there some kind of a mechanism that prevents the extent of the ice from further reducing even though the air and ocean temperatures are rising.
By ‘extent’ do you mean area, or volume? The area may not have diminished but the thickness has. See an article titled: ‘Arctic and Antarctic Sea Ice Thickness and Volume Changes From Observations Between 1994 and 2023’, JGR Oceans, dated 29 October 2024.
The fact that air temperatures are rising fast in the area suggests that this trend will continue.
First off, the trend line for ANNUAL average arctic ice over the past 12 years is indeed sloped downwards, just not significantly yet.
Second, the extreme data point of record September minimum extent–which you may or may not know depending on your honesty level is heavily influenced by short term weather events–indeed did occur in 2013 and has not yet been surpassed.
Two questions:
1. What makes you think that a warming climate will have the specific consequence of a new record September minimum every decade or so? What specific theory predicts this? Do you even know how statistically ignorant/naive/patently dishonest it is to take 12 extreme single day values in a time series and make any prediction whatsoever?
You are either incredibly statistically ignorant/badly misled, or you are intentionally spreading misinformation and propaganda. Deniers dearly love cherrypicking a few extreme values (12 in this case) and throwing out all other 4370-odd other values. It kinda’ looks sciency to the lay crowd but is utterly valueless scientifically.
2. What would make you even think that a warming climate will produce the specific consequence of a statistically significant annual decrease??? What specific theory predicts that this should occur???
Be specific.
Tamino just recently discussed these issues in his blog https://tamino.wordpress.com/2025/05/02/arctic-sea-ice-5/ Before you dismiss a blog entry, do be away the author is well published in time series analyses in such sources as Nature and has collaborated with some of the RC staff in papers.
There is a lot of easily accessible material about the ongoing melt. If you’re really interested, Zack Labe has a comprehensive collection of materials:
https://zacklabe.com/arctic-sea-ice-figures/
The first graphic pictures your assertion nicely.
I have the impression that the metrics used do not necessarily cover the reduction in loss of thicker and older ice. But I’m a true amateur, so will not add anything to this simplistic comment.
For granular detail and fanatical pursuit of same, here: https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/
[haven’t been there for a while, they’ve updated but it seems to be more of less the same]
Re: Harri Hirvensarvi: “why the area or extent of the arctic sea ice has not shinked in more than ten years now. ”
To clarify – by “extent of the arctic sea” you mean – September ice extent, right? (data for, say, April – may show different trends)
First: sea-ice extent is not a straightforward function of “the air and ocean temperatures” – minimum seaice extent depends not only on the amount of seasonal melt but also on how much of Arctic ice is exported (mainly via Fram strait).
Second: sea-ice extent is only one, and not necessarily the best, metric of the state of sea-ice.
It is defined as areas with at least 15% ice-cover. So if you have two identical amounts of ice – enough to cover 100% of 1 km2 of ocean, and in the other you spread the same amount of ice over 5km2 (20% of water covered with ice) – from the same amount of ice we get 5 times larger sea-ice extent. But if you spread the latter from 5km2 to 10 km2 – then suddenly we have … 0 km2 sea-ice cover , thus wrecking further havoc with your analysis
Both issues would be affected on the direction of the winds, which in turn would depend on the weather systems – you may have two years with identical air and sea. temp. and have very different exports and wind dispersal, and therefore very different min. sea ice extent.
HH: the ice area reduced quickly during years 1979-2007, but thereafter it slowed down.
a few possibilities:
– if we had a change in the direction of the winds and therefore both the export of ice and how the remaining ice was spread (e.g. due to weakening of the Beaufort Gyre) then the slope of the sea-ice change may be different
– maybe early on we had “the low-hanging fruit” effect – most prone to disappearance is the ice near the edges of the ice-pack – partially- ice covered ocean has much lower albedo -so more energy available to melt even more ice. And easier to push under 15% if you started with 50% ice than in the centre of ice-pack starting with 100% initial cover.
So if there was more peripheral ice pack in earlier on then you would .expect steeper decline in sea-ice than today. And peripheries around the 8mln km2 ice pack in 1979 were likely larger than the peripheries around much smaller 5 mln km2 today.
And to get the idea about those confounding forces – look at the volume of the LAND ice – which is MUCH less vulnerable to them, so the effect of warming is NOT obscured by those effects. And as you can see in the bottom right corner of p. 5 – there is no flattening today – quite the opposite – the current slope is much STEEPER that it has been earlier on.
I know I pointed out here years ago that what matters is the maximum, not the minimum. But this is the co-dependency thing at work with folks here and the trolls… doomed! not doomed!……………boring.
I did the plots then on WFT but too busy and lazy to do it again. See what you get.
My simple observation is that there should be a feedback effect depending on the minimum extent in terms of outgoing radiation, influenced by moisture/clouds, during the winter when the ice is forming. It isn’t at all unreasonable that there would be a non-linear outcome.
But do the plots and prove me wrong: that’s how science moves forward. Happy to help.
Zebra: I know I pointed out here years ago that what matters is the maximum, not the minimum.
…. because in winter/early spring there is hardly any solar radiation, and the angle of sun is so low that whatever little radiation there is, would bounce from the water surface instead of being absorbed, and therefore – the main reason why the extent of sea ice matter climatically – the ice-albedo feedback – does not function in winter?
Zebra: I did the plots then on WFT
And how did your plot represented the non-existence of ice-albedo feedback in winter?
Z: but too busy and lazy to do it again.
In other words you are too lazy to look up the already done plot on which you are basing your derision toward us for discussing the ice minimum instead the maximum:
Z: “ this is the co-dependency thing at work with folks here and the trolls… doomed! not doomed!……………boring
How truly … zebra.
Harri Hirvensarvi,
I don’t think (as other commenters here do) that it’s useful getting too pedantic about which measure of Arctic Sea Ice to use. The lowest summer minimum was in 2012 and (until this winter-just-gone which managed a record low SIE maximum, by 95,000 sq km [or 0.7%] according to JAXA), the lowest winter maximum was 2017. Certainly prior to this time, there was a robust decline in Arctic Sea Ice which has not been present since.
And you ask if there is/was “some kind of a mechanism” causing the end of that robust decline.
The explanation usually given is rather imprecise mechanism-wise. But that explanation, namely “internal variability,” has been in use for quite some time.
Back before the robust decline ended, there was already talk of the observed decline being greater than that projected by modelling and the reason given was (and appears to remain) due to “internal variability” which in AR6 WG1 3.6.1.1 “has been estimated to have contributed 30 to 50% of the observed Arctic summer sea ice loss since 1979.” (It was noted this 30-50% model-estimated value could have been on the high side.) The difficulty with this assessment is apparently because the assessments have to cope with a few-too-many ‘mechanisms’ for a clear calibration (mechanisms listed in the cited SROCC report ☻ albedo feedback, ☻ increased warm moist air intrusions, ☻ radiative feedbacks associated with cloudiness and humidity, ☻ increased exchanges of sensible and latent heat flux from the ocean to the atmosphere. And to throw in another potential complicating factor, consider the likes of Topál & Ding (2023) who see an inopportune run of “unfortunate … wind patterns that favoured breaking up and melting sea ice.”).
Thus the remaining ice loss which is not attributed to these ‘mechanisms’ is somewhat imprecisely known from the models.
There was also another narrative which was based on the logic of the situation rather than detailed calculation. That is the thinning ice will be less able to survive and so should go with a rush, smashed-up by cyclones which are no-longer stifled by the ice, blown around potentially into regions which promote its melting (as per 2007 when a mass of ice exited the Arctic through the Fram Straight). But we haven’t yet seen this ‘rush’ towards an ice-free summer. Instead, the new ‘normal’ is an Arctic Ocean mainly full of first-year ice which happily grows each winter and with ~70% of it melting-out each summer. As NASA’s Ron Kwok is quoted saying back in 2018 “The thickness and coverage in the Arctic are now dominated by the growth, melting and deformation of seasonal ice. … We’ve lost so much of the thick ice that changes in thickness are going to be slower due to the different behaviour of this ice type.” And in the years since 2018, for the observed decline in thickness as well as SIE and SIV (as per PIOMAS), the operative word so-far has been “slower,” a lot “slower.”
“Internal variability” has become the all-purpose crutch—trotted out whenever scientists (and amateur sleuths) don’t really know, can’t work it out, or feel pressured to offer some excuse for not knowing.
Let’s be honest: it’s the go-to excuse when the data doesn’t align neatly with the models, or when responsibility for observed changes becomes inconvenient.
Take Arctic summer sea ice loss since 1979. There is still no robust, model-based explanation that fully captures the pace and scale of the decline. Why not just admit that? The fallback is always “internal variability.”
But logic, physics, and common sense based on what we already know would suggest the following are not the result of some mysterious background randomness:
☻ Albedo feedback is clearly being driven by global warming and positive feedbacks.
☻ Warm, moist air intrusions are increasingly a product of a warming planet.
☻ Radiative feedbacks from cloud and humidity changes are no mystery—these are well-understood consequences of a warming atmosphere.
☻ Ocean-to-atmosphere heat fluxes are rising in sync with warmer waters and thinner ice.
Yet instead of stating the obvious, too many still cling to the vague comfort of “internal variability,” as if that wipes the slate clean.
It doesn’t. And it disrespects both the scientific process and the public’s intelligence.
Pedro Prieto, albedo feedback, warm moist air intrusions, etc, etc could all be partly driven by AGW and partly driven by natural variability when its in a warming cycle. For example el nino, the PDO cycle, when its in a warming phase, the positive phases of sunspot cycles. Couldn’t it?
MAR, I often complain about people using too many words, but I still bother to check out your comments because there is often that little gem hidden away.
” Instead, the new ‘normal’ is an Arctic Ocean mainly full of first-year ice which happily grows each winter and with ~70% of it melting-out each summer.”
Which has been my point since way back when everyone was ranting about “OMG Ice Free is coming!”.
Of course the ice comes back, as demonstrated by the record. And duh, because physics.
So, will the max decline, sure. But so far the rate has been much less than the rapid (and noisy) September number.
The arctic blue ocean event was always known and described for decades as “an ice-free summer” period, but essentially only in September was when it might first occur. It was never a secret that after September the water would refreeze.
Of course it wasn’t “ice free” either it was noted as being less than 1m2 kms in extent duh!
No one worth listening to was —ranting about “OMG Ice Free is coming!” So what “has been your point since way back” when? Because of what you saying now doesn’t make any logical sense at all. Ignore MA Rodger, he’s lost in the weeds, but what are you talking about?
Ah yes… the fabled “Ice-Free Summer!!!” panic, last seen stampeding through comment threads like a blindfolded goat on roller skates.
William is correct — the “blue ocean event” was always framed as less than 1 million km² of sea ice in September, not the arrival of Poseidon’s sauna on the North Pole.
Refreeze was always expected. This was basic — like, “Day follows night” basic.
So unless your point zebra since way back was to loudly misunderstand the definition and then build a soapbox out of it, I’m genuinely unsure what you’re defending here. Misremembering weather models from 2008? A grudge against September?
If you think I’m wrong, explain it without parroting IPCC talking points.
Socrates’ Pet Scorpion—Emerging from Plato’s Cave with venomous insight and questions no algorithm wants to answer.
Not sure what you are on about here re. “ice free”. That is, “ice free summer” has long had an accepted value of < 1×10^6 km^2 of ice cover among researchers. Is that a problem???
There is ONE Sept min per year. There are 365/6 observation days per year. Which set contains less noise in the annual mean decline over decadal time spans, I wonder?!!! I wonder too which set is affected more by short term weather variation, the annual aggregated mean or a single minimum daily value per year? (No, I actually don’t.)
General comment: Denier types LUV throwing away data points and using only single values with poor statistical qualities and the lowest statistical power to see a true difference possible.
jgnfld
I’m not sure what you are saying. I am comparing the max value to the min value. (And only for extent.)
The one max value declines much more slowly than the one min value. I also believe that there is more variation in the min value. Both of which follow from the physics.
Holding everything else constant, if you enter a period of very low solar energy input (TOA), the less surface ice you have, the more surface ice you will create, since the ice will reduce outgoing radiation.
And, as the reference MAR gives suggests, the period in which ice is declining is more likely to respond to the yearly variation of inputs.
That’s why I questioned why, back then, so much attention was being paid to that September number.
And this question is for MAR as well:
Why are we still talking about models assuming thick ice when what we have is thin ice? Why, in general, would we think “natural variations” are going to be the same when the climate system isn’t the same climate system as before??
This is similar to what I was talking about on UV with jgnfld and Ray L. Do we call the change from thick ice to thin ice a “tipping point”? “inflection point”? “strange attractor” “yadda yadda”? Why does it matter?
The point is, to the extent we still have a scientific establishment here. it needs to focus more on smaller scale phenomena. There’s no doubt a point where the max value will decline enough that effects will substantially carry through the ice-melting season to the ice-forming season, which will indeed be a big deal. How do we figure that out?
Zebra,
Perhaps I should map out my own explorations within William’s “weeds.”
In the past I have struggled long with the usual “internal variability” explanation for the loss of Arctic Ice exceeding the projected loss in the models. This “internal variability” was usually explained as in some way due to the Arctic Oscillation which is a measure of the strength of circum-Arctic winds that act to prevent warm air penetration the polar region. But when I’ve compared SIE & AO data I’ve never managed to find that idea very convincing although as a simplistic explanation I did give it some merit in years-gone-by.
Seemingly, the AO influence has also become considered less important with modellers, for instance Meier & Stroeve (2022) suggesting the ‘thin ice’ as being the reason for the AO’s failing influence. “In recent years, low summer extents have continued regardless of the atmospheric mode [ie. the AO]. One reason for this is that today’s Arctic ice is considerably thinner than it was four decades ago. Higher temperatures and a thinner ice cover serve to precondition the ice cover to be more sensitive to seasonal weather patterns {..}. Thus, an unusually warm summer (..), or a strong cyclone (..), can result in large reductions in both volume and extent regardless of the atmospheric mode. Conversely, a colder than average summer may reduce ice melt and permit a relatively thin ice cover to survive.”
Looking at the data, I have found the annual Arctic air temperature itself to be a convincing driver of SIV (annual), it giving a strong correlation 1979-2016, since when the SIV has been running perhaps 2,000km^3 behind the level suggested by a linear regression.
Annual SIE & annual Arctic temp are also strongly coupled. They do a pretty impressive job of matching each others wobbles. Trend-wise, SIE was showing more melt than the level suggested by temperature, through the early 2000s by perhaps 500,000 sq km, but that SIE ‘lead’ has almost entirely diminished through the last decade.
And if Arctic temperature is the main driver if SIE & SIV decline, maybe the latest 12-month average to April 2025 (+2.97ºC) having just pipped the record high set back in Jan-Dec 2016 (+2.95ºC) might be telling us something.
So make of that what you will.
MAR,
How about making some plots that relate temperatures and SIE with more resolution? So, we could get an idea about what’s happening with the melt/freeze cycle in more detail?
Come on, I know you like doing that stuff.
zebra,
I’m not sure I can ‘resolve’ what “resolution” you are wishing more of. The melt-freeze cycle when considered as a ‘cycle’ throws up a lot more questions than answers when its relationship to temperature et al is concerned.
Cycle-wise, the best I can do is to point you at the webpage of graphs linked at “MA Rodger says”. Graphs XII and XIV show the annual cycle and are presently up-to-date. (The graphs there were shuffled by GoogleSites some time back, something I haven’t got round to correcting. But it’s not an arduous task locating them.)
What I was blathering about in the comment above was the annual values which do seem to show the big player is temperature. And that finding does agree with much of what some of the literature is saying, which is reassuring. (Eg Docquier et al 2025 which was cited in a recent RC comment thread by somebody.)
To give some graphical support for my blather up-thread, I’ve up-loaded a trio of graphs from their spreadsheets showing the rolling 12-month average SIE/SIV – temperature relationships HERE – (POSTED 27th May 2025). (And you urgings are not actually appreciated.)
The temperature data is from NOAA which doesn’t say what is meant by “arctic”: presumably 66N-90N.
MA, mea culpa. I had never scrolled down past the first few graphs on your site; there is lots of good stuff there.
Your XV is useful in showing the temperatures for winter and summer separately, which seems to coincide with my perception that SIE in March continues to decline even if September doesn’t.
What I would like to be able to see is monthly extent and temperature plotted together for each year. Ideally, it would be presented in a 3D format, to better understand that cycle and how it may or may not be changing. Limiting it to say 20 years should make it easy enough to read.
(I explained my physics reasoning re Min v Max just above in my reply to jgnfld.)
zebra says
23 May 2025 at 6:51 AM
MAR, How about making some plots that relate temperatures and SIE with more resolution? So, we could get an idea about what’s happening with the melt/freeze cycle in more detail? Come on, I know you like doing that stuff.
Ah, I see — climate models developed by leading climate scientists aren’t good enough for Zebra. Instead, he prefers an unqualified engineer to whip up some custom plots so “we could get an idea about what’s happening.”
That says it all, really. Even the faithful are starting to lose faith.
Many thanks.
Funny, however to read all the “may”s. To me it is cristal clear there *will* be effects, though not clearly known to what extent and probably not even which effects exactly.
No surprises whatsoever in the scientific results summarised in these reports. Unfortunately, but also completely unsurprising, no politicians in power any longer even pretend to be listening to the scientific warnings. Maybe that’s the reason why the scientific advices have become more and more vague: the scientists know that nobody in power is listening, they only listen to 1) certain segments of the moneyed classes, namely the oligarchs which by now controls global capital, especially fossil fuel capital, the socalled tech-barons (Musk, Thiel etc.), the military-industrial complex and their “think”-tanks (in both main meanings of the latter word, the fossil fluidistic and the military).
The election of Trump (formally done by the usual around 50000 swing-state voters) as the US commander in chief, ie. the globally leading oligarchic psychopath in the remaining formal democracies, has obviously rendered their until around 2022 – when it became obvious that the socalled Paris-agreement is just more hot air, exactly as James Hansen said in late november 2015 it was intended to be – greenwashing theatre unnecessary,
This theatre was what the leading politicians (dare, if you can, for a moment to consider the processes which make them leading… sorry) until recently concluded from the only sources of information they since around 1980 pretend to be listening to (except their own zero-messaging), namely:
1. the socalled measurements of the political opinion, of which the public opinion since the late sixties have been an echo-function – they are a kind of self-fullfilling prophecies, that’s why they are produced: as an instrument that render political discussions and scientific arguments redundant for “policymakers”. Gallup invented the modern day oracle of Delphi, at least when it says what the leading lights want to hear (and it’s rather easy to make it do just that) and
2. what they call “the market”: the abovementioned oligarchs (as only a few by now still remember, market competition produces it’s own death, oligopolies and monopolies. They then become “the market”).
All in all they felt that most people would only “understand” climate change if it was presented to them as some kind of entertainment and new money-making magic, a new instrument of growth in “the economy” – as they often call “the market”. “Optimism” etc. – you know. When it completely unsurprisingly – see fx. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kZA9Hnp3aV4&t=962s&pp=ygURYWxiZXJ0IGEgYmFydGxldHQ%3D – became at least somewhat obvious, that that was not the case, it was only a question of how long it would take, before *the real climate policies* of Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and Obama would change from somewhat greenwashed business as extremely usual to just business as extremely usual, proclaimed openly first by the Tea Party queen Sarah Palin: “Drill, baby drill!” and then repeated in different kinds of demagoguery by all the others. The laws of nature don’t count in politics, they are only *superficially* recognized through catastrophic events. As a then famous danish politician said around 1920: “°If these are the facts, then I deny the facts”.
So now the policymakers’ “vision” is a new kind of “magic” – a new meme/hype etc.: “For Silicon Valley, AI isn’t just about replacing some jobs. It’s about replacing all of them” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/12/for-silicon-valley-ai-isnt-just-about-replacing-some-jobs-its-about-replacing-all-of-them#comment-171521044 (except their own, of course). Suddenly, our geniuses have invented the eternal machine which supplies itself with energy in eternity. Mankind has become extremely cheap and redundant, die Endlösung der Menschenfrage is at hand. Etc.
We live in the age of commercials. News are commercials, politics is commercials, culture is commercials: everything in the public sphere (the private sphere is dissappearing as outdated) has become propaganda: we live in a new kind of totalitarianism.
Or rather, as the late norwegian poet Georg Johannesen wrote in 1981: “In 1945, Goebbels went to the USA and changed his name to Gallup”. Since Reagan it was easy to foresee Trump, Musk, Putin, Xi etc. if you had understood what caused fascism and stalinism: capital’s dictatorial demand for infinite exponential growth, if necessary achieved by the physical elimination of any protest (stalinism/communism became historically the eastern way to capitalism. That was clear already in 1921, when Lenin proclaimed the economic system in the USSR to be state capitalism).
As Jeffrey S. Dukes found out in 2003 in his paper “Burning buried sunshine. Human consumption of ancient solar energy” https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/5212176.pdf , there is a hidden secret behind the seemingly magic and neverending rise in productivity in modern industrial systems. It is the enormous concentration of energy in fossil fuels, achieved only through their natural “production” during sedimental burial and slow transformation during tens of millions of years. “Next time you fill up at the petrol station, ponder this figure – it took over 23 tonnes of plants to produce each and every litre of petrol you pump into your tank.” https://plus.maths.org/content/burning-buried-sunshine . Since the fossil fuels thus are a finite resource, this “productivity” is a blessing limited in time, and as explained by Albert A. Bartlett in the abovementioned video lecture, this time is faster and faster running out. Even if there were no climate gas emissions from fossil fuels, we would nonetheless be in a dangerous situation, created by the spontaneous illusion of “productivity” inherent in the very nature of fossil fuels. They constitute an ecological trap for homo sapiens.
But if you understand just some of that, you can’t be a politician: everyone in power immidiatly sense that what you say you is an imminent danger to their rule. Politics is what Strindberg in 1880 called “the public lie” (in his satire “Det Nya Riket” – “The New Kingdom”). Real science can only make itself heard, where the politics of capital – oligarchy and demagoguery – at least to some degree has given way to realism and democracy. As shown recently also by Tony Blair now openly lining up with Trump https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2025/may/11/will-labour-stick-with-or-abandon-net-zero (surprise, surprise! Not. If you remember Iraq and Bush II). Of course Starmer etc. will soon chamberlain to that too, because “net zero” won’t happen, it was always another greenwashing of business as usual https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00139157.2025.2434494#abstract https://www.fastcompany.com/90659281/the-world-is-aiming-for-net-zero-emissions-by-2050-its-time-to-admit-its-not-enough . It’s based on fantasies of future technologies which don’t exist.
What Blair means is the abandonment of anything but “drill, baby, drill!”, but that old secret is too much even for The Guardian. There is never any discussion about carbon fee and dividend – because “everyone” (the oligarchs and their propagandists, the “economist”s etc. have silently decided that that is a no go. Why? Because that would mean that the big polluters would have to change their life-style and the illusion of endless, exponential growth would have to be abandoned.
KVJ: capital’s dictatorial demand for infinite exponential growth, if necessary achieved by the physical elimination of any protest (stalinism/communism became historically the eastern way to capitalism. That was clear already in 1921, when Lenin proclaimed the economic system in the USSR to be state capitalism).
BPL: Communism didn’t do any better on the environment than capitalism; if anything it did worse. Blaming capitalism doesn’t help with the climate crisis, it just reveals your personal agenda. And redefining communism as a form of capitalism makes a hash of the whole idea.
Thank you for this well-written, focused, lucid and very useful post.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA! Good one, SA!
Dear Dr. Benestad,
Thank you for the links to several reports on recent climate status. I quickly read them with focus on land hydrology and terrestrial vegetation. Unfortunately, it appears that there is no clear message if there is a positive or negative trend, either globally or regionally.
Only the European report contains an information about soil moisture (water content in upper soil layer up to the depth of 7 cm). Unfortunately, while its chapter 13 shows very interesting, mutually interrelated temporal trends in cloud cover and sunshine duration, no analogous information about temporal trends in precipitation, soil moisture and/or river flow can be found in the respective chapters 7, 8 and 9. I have not found an information how the “river flow” was calculated. I could not find any information about summary runoff from Europe, as well as about groundwater levels and their temporal trends. The report is also completely silent about terrestrial vegetation, soil organic matter, and possible trends in their temporal developments.
Information regarding trends in land hydrology, soil condition and terrestrial vegetation seem to be basically missing in all other reports as well, although these factors certainly play a role in both regional as well as global climate regulation and their developments in the future may be crucial for human civilization. I therefore wonder why they are not reported, nor included among “climate indicators” (see e.g. page 11 of the European executive summary) yet.
Best regards
Tomáš
Please could you stop using the term “polar amplification”, it is incorrect. Using the almost 50 years of satellite data, the warming rate in degrees/century at the midpoint of each latitude band is :-
+75 2.7
+55 2.1
0 1.4
-55 1.1
-75 0.3
The rate of warming is monotonically increasing with increasing distance from the south pole
The 20th century average temperature for the US 48 states at ~40°N. is 52° F. The same value for the globe at the Equator? is 57° F. Five degrees F warmer. Where is global population’s energy use centered?
When you say “The rate of warming is monotonically increasing with increasing distance from the south pole,” is that not a literal descriptor of what “polar amplification” is? (I’d say “definition,” but some pedant is going to jump all over that) What term would you recommend for this phenomenon, in lieu of the one used by the authors?
See the discussion following the very first comment on this article
Keith Woollard “Please could you stop using the term “polar amplification”, it is incorrect.”
Repeating the same claim does not make it miraculously true. Polar amplification refers to the effects at the ground level, I.e. surface temperatures, not the tropospheric microwave radiation
as calculated and plotted by that famous climate scientist “keithcharleswoollard” and published on …. Google photos.
For a comparison, here is a NASA map of the surface air temperature anomaly for 2022 compared to 1951-1980:
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/global-temperatures
Where is your south pole -to-north pole “monotonic increase” now?
Thank you for the post, Rasmus, and for the summary of AMAP report. I appreciate learning about the most up-to-date climate state assessment, both as continuously refined science and as a foundation for action.
Please continue to post on this topic. I wish comments were of the same quality and value, too many are not, but that should not deter you and the rest of the @group from continuing the good work of popularizing climate science. Anytime, but especially in the most hostile time to science, in general and climate science, in particular.
Yes, there is a arctic sea ice minimum. It began 2017 and there is no more ice loss since more than 15 years:
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/arctic-sea-ice/?intent=121
It’s remarkable that the sea ice age is declining, as seen on the same internet page.
Ken Towe: What realistic actions can be taken that would not otherwise create difficulties for all economies?
This painless-solution ship has long sailed, you know, since we no longer have 280 ppm of CO2 in air, because the fossil fuels industrial complex was allowed to make their gigantic profits on dumping CO2 into the common atmosphere for free over the last couple of centuries, thus privatizing profits and socializing the costs, by shifting the latter onto the rest of the world, and onto the future generations.
This has forced our hand to comparing now the costs of mitigation of the climate change vs. the cost of doing nothing. And since the latter costs dwarfs the former (see the Stern report and other studies on the subject), the only question which way of mitigation is the most effective.
To this end, we can use the very same market system that helped to create the problem in the first place – when CO2 emissions were considered “externalities” – things that have no price, i.e. priceless -i.e. for the market: “worthless”. Putting a price on emissions thus fixes a major blind-spot of the market economy. You can do it directly by putting price on each ton of emissions (“carbon tax”), or indirectly – by setting up the emissions ceiling – and leaving companies decide who can reduce their emissions in the cheapest way (“the cap and trade”). Both systems by taking advantage of the market efficiency reduce the costs the GHG reductions and operate within the already existing economy and using existing technology (renewables and nuclear, and reduction the demand via efficiency)
Unlike the fundamentalist approach of the Multi-Troll (currently: “The Prieto Principle”) that would require:
– a change in human nature (no longer wanting things)
– a global agreement on the deindustrialization, and/or
– global-scale genocide to reduce number of people by many billions
or combination of the above
all all that not over centuries but over the time-scale of … the next 2-3 decades.
You left out the rest of the quote. GHG reductions, reducing emissions, will take none of the CO2 already added out of the atmosphere. Neither does putting a price on emissions. The cost of doing northing? improved infrastructure to help survive and adapt to extreme weather is less costly than hopeless mitigations doomed to failure. For hundreds of years CO2 was “dumped” to vastly improve lives and standards of living. The alternative, stone age living and/or starvation.? The energy transition cannot be done without using vehicles that run on fossil fuels., Making that process more expensive will only delay things.
Ken Towe: GHG reductions, reducing emissions, will take none of the CO2 already added out of the atmosphere.”
First – if large enough – they WILL result in the taking down CO2 already in the atmosphere – as natural uptake will no longer be overpowered by the new human emissions – currently only half of the emitted CO2 stays in the air the reset is absorbed by the natural sinks.
Second – yours is a typical denier/doomer all-or-nothing argument – if we can’t reduce the current levels of CO2 then let’s do nothing and keep increasing atm. Co2. The obvious and fallacy here is that the world at 425ppm won’t be as hellish as the world at 850 ppm.
So you are like a man who stabs his neighbour with a knife, justifies his refusal to stem the bleeding by saying that it would be pointless, since “ it will not bring back any blood you already lost and therefore he plans to continue stabbing the victim until he is dead.
If large enough?? Just ONE ppm of CO2 is 7.8 gigaton..7,800 million metric tons. Climeworks just reported they took out 105 tons last year. Even one ppm would do nothing at all. Try to remember that there are eight billion people who need to be fed and EVs are not doing it. Stab the victim?
PS.. personal insults are not helpful.
As Pyotr said, it’s natural uptake of CO2 that will bring concentrations down–not Climeworks.
Piotr: 18 May “First – if large enough – [our reduction of CO2 emissions] WILL result in taking down CO2 already in the atmosphere – as natural uptake will no longer be overpowered by the new human emissions.
Ken Towe: “If large enough?? Just ONE ppm of CO2 is 7.8 gigaton..7,800 million metric tons. Climeworks just reported they took out 105 tons last year.”
Nobody talks about industrial direct air CAPTURE – we are talking about reductions of GHG EMISSIONS – you know – solar, wind, nuclear, electrification of transport, decrease in GHG intensity, reductions in waste of energy (bitcoin mining; drive-thrus, planned obsolescence, culture of overconsumption and disposability).
And even if were not able to make ANY net reduction CO2 conc. – there is the second point on which you have been uncharacteristically mum. Let me refresh your memory:
Piotr 18 May: “Second – yours is a typical denier/doomer all-or-nothing argument – if we can’t reduce the current levels of CO2 then let’s do nothing and keep increasing atm. Co2. The obvious and fallacy here is that the world at 425ppm won’t be as hellish as the world at 850 ppm.”
Which part of that would you like to falsify, Ken Towe?
KT, personal insults may not dissuade you from your folly, but you’re not Piotr’s only audience. I, for one, share his impatience with motivated denialism. When you rebunk the same misinformation repeatedly, giving no sign you’ve understood the rebuttals already offered, you should expect some exasperated responses. It’s allowed here! If you don’t want to be insulted, quit making confident but erroneous claims like “Reducing emissions, will take none of the CO2 already added out of the atmosphere” when it’s been repeatedly explained here and elsewhere why that’s false. It’s annoying! Until you acknowledge your error, expect to be insulted some more.
KT will never be convinced, but for hypothetical uncommitted lurkers, here it is again in a nutshell: https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-will-global-warming-stop-as-soon-as-net-zero-emissions-are-reached. Dr. Hausfather explains that once anthropogenic CO2 emissions cease, natural processes will draw down atmospheric concentration at roughly the same rate that long-term feedbacks to historical anthropogenic forcing continue to raise GMST. The result will be a long-term stable GMST around the highest value reached before net-zero is achieved.
And again: short of net zero, every decrement of emissions, including in their rate of growth, reduces the rate of forced GMST rise below what it would be otherwise. Since the social costs of climate change rise with the rate of warming, a slower GMST rise is better than a faster one. Until emissions cease, however, GMST will still rise year by year. Eight billion people need to be fed, but the longer fossil carbon emissions continue, the higher the eventual equilibrium GMST will be, and the greater the cost of adapting global food production. Meanwhile, the cost of continued warming will be paid disproportionately by those who’ve emitted the least fossil carbon, and have the least resources with which to adapt!
And no, “EVs are not doing it” all by themselves: that’s a straw man, FFS! In reality, every kWh of electricity used to drive an automobile is the equivalent amount of fossil carbon left unburned, unless some is burned to generate the electricity, and even then it’s more efficient than an ICE. And as carbon-neutral energy supply expands, less and less fossil carbon will be needed to power the global economy. You can look this stuff up, e.g. https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-clean-energy-just-put-chinas-co2-emissions-into-reverse-for-first-time/.
The bottom line: lower equilibrium GMST is better (i.e. net global social cost is lower) than higher; slower warming is better than faster; no additional warming is better still; while perfect is the enemy of better-than-it-would-otherwise-be. How hard is that to understand?
Mal Adapted says
24 May 2025 at 1:25 PM
100% good vibe PR theories. How unfortunate that Net Zero by 2050 is a fraudulent myth.
a Net Zero emission will not emerge until the civilisational economic collapse arrives and people are already dying of starvation.
You know you are in trouble when reduced CO2 emissions from an economic collapse caused by low-cost oil depletion is not sufficient to prevent civilization collapse from climate change caused by previously emitted CO2.
Catastrophic climate change impacts are already occurring now with CO2 at 426.13 ppm in February. It will keep rising at +/- 3.8 ppm per year now until further notice. It can only get worse from here because greenhouse gases and CO₂ emissions in particular are growing at record rates.
Were economic BAU to continue with no shortage of energy then we are on track to double CO₂ concentrations above the pre-industrial baseline in 30 to 40 years, around 2065 at the latest. That is CO2 at ~560 ppm implying a global average temperature anomaly of +4°C above pre-industrial levels. Everything is unsustainable long before this.
There’s no excuse for insults.
I’m guessing “Thessalonia” (should be Thessalonike) is yet another sock puppet of Dharma.
Thessalonia (my emphasis): 100% good vibe PR theories. How unfortunate that Net Zero by 2050 is a fraudulent myth.
a Net Zero emission will not emerge until the civilisational economic collapse arrives and people are already dying of starvation.
Sigh. AFAICT, Thessalonia is yet another self-absorbed doomer who mistakes her (going by the apparent feminine suffix: sue me) subjective, mood-congruent ideation for paranormal precognitive ability. I, for one, acknowledge a finite probability of doom as Thessalonia envisions, recognizing the uncertainties in my own internal forecast model. And I note that people are already starving: indeed, thousands to millions of people have already lost their homes, livelihoods and even their lives, to climate change to date. The difference between Thessalonia and I, is that she can only imagine two existential possibilities: a never-realized perfect world or a hypothetical “collapsed” one; while I assign relative values to intermediate outcomes, hence my resort to “better than” as a guide for action. I therefore support collective action to decarbonize the global economy, sooner rather than later. Doomers, OTOH, don’t seem to think fewer mass casualties is better than more of them!
I’m on stronger epistemic ground projecting that until we collectively stop transferring fossil carbon to the atmosphere for economic reasons, whether as producers or consumers, GMST will continue to rise, as will the cumulative net social cost: IOW, the overall trend will be from “bad” to “worse”. Of course stabilizing GMST alone won’t make civilization otherwise sustainable or just, but how hot does it have to get before Ken Towe stops raising specious objections to collectively intervening to cap it, at the lowest level compatible with global justice, chosen collectively, wherein he gets a vote?
Thessalonia: PS. personal insults are not helpful.
Well, KT’s repeated clumsy attacks on decarbonization in these pages are diagnostic of a pseudo skeptical climate change mitigation denialist. They’re clearly aimed at stymying the buildout of the carbon neutral economy, which is now ongoing before our eyes: unhelpful at best, and I happen to think they’re insulting to every reality-based person reading them. Accusing me of propagating a fraudulent myth is pretty insulting too, IMHO, when I’m at least humble enough to recognize genuine experts and provisionally accept their trained and disciplined consensus, while you manifestly are not. And your claim to superior foreknowledge of how generations of humans around the world will act under present and future conditions, is offensive to science and collective good sense. I thus have no compunction about calling you a narcissistic nihilist, and a doomer (LMGTFY: https://www.google.com/search?q=doomer). Are those words insulting enough? If not, I’ll gleefully try harder!
It was Ken Towe who said to Piotr:
19 May 2025 at 12:15 PM
Try to remember that there are eight billion people who need to be fed and EVs are not doing it. Stab the victim?
PS.. personal insults are not helpful.
I responded in agreement. They are still unhelpful when directed at myself.
A defense mechanism where someone unconsciously attributes their own unwanted thoughts, feelings, or traits to someone else.
What is Psychological projection?
There is no excuses for ignorance of the facts either.
Net Zero by 2050 is a fraudulent myth.
some reduced CO2 emissions is not sufficient to prevent civilization collapse from climate change caused by previously emitted CO2.
Catastrophic climate change impacts are already occurring now
CO2 will keep rising at +/- 3.8 ppm per year now until further notice.
greenhouse gases and CO₂ emissions are growing at record rates.
Were economic BAU to continue we are on track to double CO₂ concentrations around 2065
That is CO2 at ~560 ppm implying a global average temperature anomaly of +4°C or higher
Everything is unsustainable long before this.
Everything is unsustainable now. Personal insults are still not helpful.
Kevin McKinney says
19 May 2025 at 10:40 PM
As Pyotr said, it’s natural uptake of CO2 that will bring concentrations down–not Climeworks.
Carbon Dioxide Removal CDR is embedded in all UNFCCC and IPCC Net Zero by 20250 “un-scientific” theories projections and mitigation action plans. Making Net Zero by 2050 a fraudulent myth [ie my personal characterization of the known evidence.]
Numerous peer-reviewed studies and expert critiques do raise serious concerns about the reliance on CDR in IPCC and UNFCCC pathways—especially in net-zero by 2050 scenarios.
These concerns often center around:
The uncertain feasibility and scalability of CDR technologies.
The over-reliance on Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs) such as BECCS (Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage) and DAC (Direct Air Capture).
The moral hazard of assuming future carbon removal will offset continued emissions today.
The unscientific or speculative nature of some of the assumptions underpinning net-zero scenarios.
Key Peer-Reviewed Studies & Reports
1. Anderson & Peters (2016)
Title: The trouble with negative emissions
Published in: Science
DOI: 10.1126/science.aah4567
Key point:
“The reliance on future deployment of negative emissions technologies in scenarios allows policymakers to avoid near-term mitigation, which may be scientifically and politically irresponsible.”
2. Smith et al. (2016)
Title: Biophysical and economic limits to negative CO₂ emissions
Published in: Nature Climate Change
DOI: 10.1038/nclimate2870
Key point:
“The assumed large-scale deployment of negative emissions technologies may not be possible due to land, water, and nutrient limitations.”
3. IPCC SR1.5 (2018) – Special Report on 1.5°C
Observation: All IPCC 1.5°C-consistent pathways include large-scale CDR starting in the 2030s or earlier.
Key point:
“CDR is necessary to achieve net-zero emissions,” but the report admits the technologies are largely unproven at scale and pose substantial risks.
4. Hickel & Kallis (2020)
Title: Is Green Growth Possible?
Published in: New Political Economy
DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1598964
Key point:
“Scenarios for continued economic growth rely on massive CDR assumptions that lack empirical grounding, making such pathways more political fantasy than scientific plan.”
5. Carton et al. (2020)
Title: Carbon removal as carbon colonization: The unspoken danger of relying on NETs
Published in: Development and Change
DOI: 10.1111/dech.12545
Key point:
“Net-zero plans risk becoming a form of ‘carbon colonialism’ if they depend on extracting land and resources from the Global South for CDR efforts.”
Summary of Scientific Consensus
The scientific community does not call Net Zero “fraudulent”, but a growing number of researchers warn that current net-zero targets rely on uncertain assumptions, particularly about CDR.
CDR is embedded in nearly all IPCC mitigation scenarios that meet 1.5°C or 2°C goals.
The science-based criticism is that net-zero may become a distraction from urgent and deep emissions reductions now.
The moral and political critique is that it allows governments and industries to delay meaningful action while banking on unproven future tech.
Conclusion
While the label “fraudulent myth” is not a term used in scientific literature, many peer-reviewed studies do argue that current Net Zero by 2050 pathways are not credible without unrealistic reliance on CDR. These critiques challenge the scientific robustness and political honesty of the frameworks—not necessarily the concept of net zero itself, but rather how it’s being pursued.
There is a similar evidence based view on the efficacy of EVs pathways to reduce carbon emissions long term are not credible, as mentioned by Ken Towe. The moral and political critique is that it allows governments and industries to delay meaningful action to rapidly cut emissions while banking on an unproven future deployment of this electrified battery tech.
Ken Towe and myself may have triggered multiple emotional buttons but our ‘electrically charged’ comments are founded upon credible peer-reviewed scientific research data and analysis.
Th: Net Zero by 2050 is a fraudulent myth.
BPL: And…
Th: Personal insults are still not helpful.
Thessalonia (who clearly uses multiple names here) says: “PS.. personal insults are not helpful.I responded in agreement. They are still unhelpful when directed at myself.”
Then why do you persistently insult the whole group, you hypocrite. Example: “There is no excuses for ignorance of the facts either.”
“Net Zero by 2050 is a fraudulent myth. some reduced CO2 emissions is not sufficient to prevent civilization collapse from climate change caused by previously emitted CO2.”
These are not facts. They are opinions and evidence free assertions and trolling.
“Ken Towe and myself may have triggered multiple emotional buttons but our ‘electrically charged’ comments are founded upon credible peer-reviewed scientific research data and analysis.”
Wrong. Ken Towes comments are complete BS as pointed out by scientists with far more qualifications that you. Or perhaps you just dont understand what you read. Piotr was pointing out KT was wrong to claim CO2 levels wont fall. At no stage did Piotr support DAC, and anyone with more than half a brain can see it will be expensive and may not work.
Why are you even supporting a climate denialist like KT? He has said NOTHING accurate and nothing that deserves any positive feedback.
nigelj says
30 May 2025 at 3:50 PM
Thessalonia (who clearly uses multiple names here) says: “PS.. personal insults are not helpful.I responded in agreement. They are still unhelpful when directed at myself.”
Reply by Thessalonia
nigelj resorts to personal attacks name calling and fiction when his opinions can’t stand up to documented facts.
For the record:
I cited five reputable sources, including peer-reviewed material and the IPCC itself. That’s not “evidence-free trolling.” That’s you dismissing evidence you don’t like, and then pretending it wasn’t given.
On the other hand, nigel’s reply contains zero links to science — just insults, projections, false allegations, and strawmen. For example:
He accused me of “insulting the whole group” because I said “There is no excuse for ignorance of the facts.” That’s not an insult; it’s a valid point when people keep ignoring the science laid out plainly in AR6 and elsewhere.
He claims “These are not facts. They are opinions.” Except they’re drawn directly from the conclusions of climate science literature. HIs sweeping rejection of the IPCC’s warning about the limits of Net Zero rhetoric and the ongoing effects of historical CO₂ is misinformed.
nigelj also distorts my comment and Piotr’s reply to Ken Towe. I never claimed Piotr supported DAC — I pointed to the fact that he corrected nigelj not me. Piotr acknowledged that CO₂ will decline slowly once emissions stop — which aligns with what Ken said. If people here are going to critique others, at least read their comments first.
Lastly:
nigelj asks why I “support a climate denialist like KT.” I support specific facts — not individuals or favoured personalities. I don’t support everything Ken says [never heard of him before now], but when someone is correct on a key point, I don’t dismiss it just because it’s unpopular. That’s called intellectual honesty.
Try it sometime.
Thessolonia, @ 31 May 2025 at 2:11 AM
You said originally: “There is no excuses for ignorance of the facts either.
Net Zero by 2050 is a fraudulent myth. some reduced CO2 emissions is not sufficient to prevent civilization collapse from climate change caused by previously emitted CO2.”
I pointed out these were opinions not facts.
You now come back and say you cited “five reputable sources, including peer-reviewed material and the IPCC itself. That’s not “evidence-free trolling.” That’s you dismissing evidence you don’t like, and then pretending it wasn’t given.”
Your sources don’t say anything about fraudulent myths, and that it’s a fact it’s all a fraudulent myth. Its purely your ‘opinion’ that their findings justifies the label fraudulent myth.
It’s not a fact that civilisation would collapse if we didn’t quite get to net zero emissions. Your sources don’t state it’s a fact or show it’s a fact. They are just informed opinions. It also depends how you define collapse, which you don’t do so it’s all meaningless blather.
We do know it’s a fact – or at least 95% certain – that if we don’t get all the way to net zero by 2050 it will have negative consequences, for example SLR and worsening weather conditions.
“Piotr acknowledged that CO₂ will decline slowly once emissions stop — which aligns with what Ken said.”
No it doesn’t align with what Ken said. Ken was quite emphatic that without technologies like DAC, CO2 levels wouldn’t drop. Piotr showed he was wrong. CO2 would be absorbed by natural sinks eventually.
Th: nigelj resorts to personal attacks name calling and fiction when his opinions can’t stand up to documented facts.
BPL: Nonsense. Nigel is one of the most polite and reliable posters here.
Multitroll: (currently: Thesallonia) in defence of a denier Ken Towe: “ Piotr acknowledged that CO₂ will decline slowly once emissions stop — which aligns with what Ken said.”
Nigel: “No it doesn’t align with what Ken said. Ken was quite emphatic that without technologies like DAC, CO2 levels wouldn’t drop. Piotr showed he was wrong. CO2 would be absorbed by natural sinks eventually.”
Thanks Nigel.
And after deliberately misrepresenting my arguments as the very opposite to what I have said – our Multi-troll applauds himself: That’s called intellectual honesty.” and … lectures you “ Try it sometime” ;-)
The more they inflate their ego balloon, the louder the crack when it is confronted with reality.
Barton Paul Levenson says
1 Jun 2025 at 7:50 AM
Th: nigelj resorts to personal attacks name calling and fiction when his opinions can’t stand up to documented facts.
BPL: Nonsense. Nigel is one of the most polite and reliable posters here.
Pedro: My reading of this thread rates him as the most incompetent and self-serving troll of all. But I can’t split second place.
Thessalonia’s comment is wholly justified. Yet again they remind me why a stay away. I’m not alone. You’ll find us everywhere but here.
BPL: Nonsense. Nigel is one of the most polite and reliable posters here.
Pedro: My reading of this thread rates him as the most incompetent and self-serving troll of all. But I can’t split second place. . . . Thessalonia’s comment is wholly justified. Yet again they remind me why a stay away. I’m not alone. You’ll find us everywhere but here.
BPL: Promises, promises.
“The energy transition cannot be done without using vehicles that run on fossil fuels.”
I’m going to be charitable and assume that that argument is merely naive. For one thing, transportation is just one part of making the energy transition, and not necessarily the biggest portion, either. For another, much of the transportation can in fact be done with electric drivetrains today, and some of it is. For a third, the energy transition–like any transition–is a process, not a paradoxical construct in which the beginning presupposes the end to be a reality. IOW, 100% electric/non-emitting transport will be arrived at over time–as we already see, actually.. EVs now account for about 8% of US auto sales, 15% of European sales, and half of Chinese sales. Electric bus sales are at a lower level, but growing rapidly. Electric trucks are still lower, but again growing rapidly, though sometimes erratically.
Kevin.. currently there re no EVs doing much, if any of the delivery and installation of these massive solar and wind farm projects. Nor are they transporting food to feed people, nor plant and replant corn and sugarcane for biofuel ethanol only 10% of which is in gasolines. That obviously means more oil will be needed with more CO2 added. The same is true of “global” reductions in emissions that will slowly decline but will add CO2 during that decline to zero. And natural uptake is, of course temporary being recycled by the oxygen created when the plant biomass dies.
Doing nothing is of course not possible and doing anything requires transportation. Evs are not ready and even they require CVs to install charging stations.
Well, that comment is a real jewel of incoherence! No, “reductions” can’t “add CO2.” Presumably you mean the emissions continue to “add CO2”, which hardly qualifies as a keen insight–but, thanks to the “reductions”, less is added than would have been the case. (Also hardly a keen insight, but apparently I must point it out anyway.)
Actually, EVs are transporting food, and planting all sorts of crops:
https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/electric-trucks-market-102512
https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/electric-tractor-market.html
For what? Growth rates strongly suggest that you are, you know, wrong.
Not if your electrician has one of those nifty EV Sprinters.
https://www.mbvans.com/en/inventory?
Not that that matters: it’s one trip in an ICE vehicle versus years of combustion-free driving. Which is what I call an emissions reduction!
Kevin McKinney says
27 May 2025 at 11:05 PM
No, “reductions” can’t “add CO2.”
That’s a stunning scientific blind spot.
Even if global annual emissions begin to decline—even slightly—they still add to the total atmospheric CO₂, just at a slower growth rate. Meanwhile, natural emissions are accelerating under higher global temperatures due to positive feedback mechanism.
The reality is that atmospheric CO₂ concentrations will continue to rise each year until we achieve actual net zero—a purely hypothetical benchmark that remains, in all likelihood, unreachable.
So no matter how much so-called “renewable” infrastructure we build-still reliant on fossil fuels and concrete—we remain locked into rising greenhouse gas forcing, and with it, rising global temperatures for the foreseeable future.
Sometimes the climate science literacy here leaves a lot to be desired.
W: atmospheric CO₂ concentrations will continue to rise each year until we achieve actual net zero—a purely hypothetical benchmark that remains, in all likelihood, unreachable.
BPL: Who says it’s unreachable? You?
Barton Paul Levenson says
29 May 2025 at 7:42 AM
W: atmospheric CO₂ concentrations will continue to rise each year until we achieve actual net zero—a purely hypothetical benchmark that remains, in all likelihood, unreachable.
BPL: Who says it’s unreachable? You?
Thessalonia: Yeah. William, Ken, me, logic, reason, peer-reviewed studies, economics, energy demand growth, data and the science. Try looking at it one day. Uncountable thousands of others agree too.
Conclusion
While the label “fraudulent myth” is not a term used in scientific literature, many peer-reviewed studies do argue that current Net Zero by 2050 pathways are not credible without unrealistic reliance on CDR. These critiques challenge the scientific robustness and political honesty of the frameworks—not necessarily the concept of net zero itself, but rather how it’s being pursued.
Then there are the difficult facts to handle like accelerated global warming the last 15+ years, accelerating CO2 ppm, positive feedbacks from natural sources increasing CO2 even more, no global reductions in fossil fuel emissions to date instead growth, and the dire implications of James Hansen et al’s scientific work about ECS possibly 4-5C range, and decreasing global aerosols and albedo.
Go look at it some day.
Th: All you are offering are opinions. You confuse emotional reassurance with physical reality. Your position boils down to faith in spontaneous adaptation — without empirical support for feasibility, timeline, or scale.
BPL: Note that Nigel is talking about the issue, and Th is talking about Nigel. “Making it about you” is the name for that technique. Th can’t counter what Nigel is saying, so he attacks Nigel personally–after complaining that “personal attacks don’t help.”
Barton Paul Levenson says
1 Jun 2025 at 7:53 AM
Th: All you are offering are opinions. You confuse emotional reassurance with physical reality. Your position boils down to faith in spontaneous adaptation — without empirical support for feasibility, timeline, or scale.
BPL: Note that Nigel is talking about the issue, and Th is talking about Nigel. “Making it about you” is the name for that technique. Th can’t counter what Nigel is saying, so he attacks Nigel personally–after complaining that “personal attacks don’t help.”
PP: Nice try, Barton — but your attempt to cloak Nigel’s hostility in the veil of “issue-based discussion” is textbook gaslighting. When someone persistently misrepresents others’ arguments, distorts scientific nuance, and hurls ad hominem attacks (as Nigel has done repeatedly), calling that behavior out is not “making it about him” — it’s holding him accountable.
You’re not defending scientific discourse — you’re protecting a toxic double standard. When Nigel misreads or misstates, you call it “qualified critique.” When others respond with corrections or assert boundaries, you call it “personal attack.” That’s not just dishonest — it’s manipulative.
So if there’s an award to be handed out, it’s not for propaganda. It’s for masterclass hypocrisy. Congratulations. You win hands down!
PP: your attempt to cloak Nigel’s hostility in the veil of “issue-based discussion” is textbook gaslighting.
BPL: I’d better get my ladders and my lucifers ready.
PP: When someone persistently misrepresents others’ arguments, distorts scientific nuance, and hurls ad hominem attacks (as Nigel has done repeatedly), calling that behavior out is not “making it about him” — it’s holding him accountable.
BPL: Nigel is talking issues. You’re talking Nigel. “Making it about [him]” in action.
KMcK: “…but growing rapidly.”
TPP: Yes — new car sales, bus sales, truck sales — all growing rapidly. But electric or not, that makes little difference to long-term climate outcomes. You’ve confused sales growth with climate progress — a common but deeply flawed assumption.
Many still refuse to confront the basic logic of why this thinking is so misguided. And ultimately deadly.
Exponential growth in manufacturing, energy use, and population isn’t evidence of a successful “energy transition.” It’s not progress — it’s the sound of a death knell ringing in your ears… just not yet heard.
You can’t consume your way out of a crisis caused by overconsumption. Growth for its own sake isn’t a solution to climate change — it is the root of the problem.
(Sorry — one thing led to another. Too many strange, illogical, and unjustified claims predominant here. I just couldn’t ignore them all. Going sailing again.)
Re The Prieto Principle @ https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/05/the-most-recent-climate-status/#comment-833565 (and to an extent, re @ https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/05/unforced-variations-may-2025/comment-page-2/#comment-833559 )
You seem to be assuming that Kevin McKinney (and perhaps some of the rest of us) are okay with continued total growth indefinitely. I think most participants here realize that, for a giving standard of living, and set of technologies (growth limited by physical laws), there is a finite carrying capacity on Earth; and also, growth into Space is difficult. Growth in clean alternatives to fossil fuels (*in the present context*) is good because it displaces the fossil fuels consumption, or at least slows its growth, relative to the total economy. The ultimate goal is to bring fossil fuel consumption (or at least oxidation) to 0, or sufficiently close to 0 for some time that we can get to net 0 emissions – or actually, net negative emissions. Optimism/support for the current growth and future potential of renewables and auxiliary/enabling tech (EVs, heat pumps, storage and transmission**, efficiency gains) doesn’t necessarily imply a belief that the problem(s) are solved and we don’t need to worry about it (or that there are not other environmental and social justice and quality of life concerns). (At least in the US, transmission+Distribution could use more focus, I think. I think we should launch a national public effort to create/grow “The Great American Busbar”… which can then combine with neighboring grids to become “The Great North American Busbar”. ) Public policy to speed & better enable the transition (eg., CO2eq tax) also makes sense.
Of course it makes a significant difference to long-term climate outcomes. Transforming transportation from carbon-emitting to non-emitting technology will drastically cut into our carbon emissions, which is precisely what we need to do.
And no, I’m not confusing sales figures with anything. I’m consciously using them a a direct proxy measurement for EV deployment, which in turn leads directly to emissions reductions from the transportation sector.
We’re not talking about “consuming our way out of a crisis caused by overconsumption,” we’re talking about substituting a harmful technology out for a less harmful one. EV sales are displacing ICE sales.
However, I would agree with you that substitution isn’t a complete answer, although I believe it’s necessary. It is also necessary to move away from an economy premised upon disposability. I’d love to hear more about what you think that would look like and what the path to such an economy might look like. Third invitation now, I think.
What say you?
Kevin McKinney says
27 May 2025 at 11:18 PM
fyi todays EVs and RE electrification are not non-carbon-emitting technology.
And you have missed the primary point by TPP above –
“<b<Exponential growth in manufacturing, energy use, and population isn’t evidence of a successful “energy transition.” It’s not progress — it’s the sound of a death knell ringing in your ears… just not yet heard.”
The current civilization cannot survive without Diesel engines. Once the oil goes there goes the population and all your EV manufacturing with it.
PP: The current civilization cannot survive without Diesel engines.
BPL: Of course it can. Just substitute electric engines.
PP: Once the oil goes there goes the population and all your EV manufacturing with it.
BPL: Unless the manufacturing uses renewable energy.
William said “The current civilization cannot survive without Diesel engines. Once the oil goes there goes the population and all your EV manufacturing with it.”
Wrong. Motors that use diesel like heavy trucks and shipping can also be powered by biodiesel, nuclear power, hydrogen fuel cell technology is being explored, and other low carbon energy sources and even petrol in many cases (but with loss of performance and it’s not my preferred option).
By the time diesel fuel is running low these technologies will be phased in. It will probably be a difficult process and it may lead to less trade and more local self sufficiency and possibly make technology more expensive. This is commonsense because alternative energy sources are not as energy dense as fossil fuels and we may have to convert existing shipping. But there’s no evidence the process is going to kill off the population or send us back to the stone age.
nigelj says
29 May 2025 at 3:53 PM
Nigel: By the time diesel fuel is running low these technologies will be phased in.
T: Who says these technologies will be phased in by then? You?
Hat tip to BPL.
William said “The current civilization cannot survive without Diesel engines. Once the oil goes there goes the population and all your EV manufacturing with it.”
Nigel: But there’s no evidence the process is going to kill off the population or send us back to the stone age.
T: Who says there’s no evidence? You?
Nigel, I think you’re underestimating the degree to which modern civilization — especially the global food system — is structurally dependent on fossil fuels. This isn’t doomerism; it’s just physical reality.
Fertilizers: Most synthetic nitrogen fertilizers are made using natural gas (via the Haber-Bosch process). No gas, no high-yield industrial agriculture.
Machinery: Diesel powers the vast majority of tractors, harvesters, and irrigation systems worldwide — not just in wealthy countries but in every major grain-exporting region.
Transportation: Food moves by diesel trucks, ships, and trains. Global supply chains don’t run on batteries.
Electricity: Many developing countries rely on gas, coal, or oil-fired power plants. Even in developed nations, gas often backs up solar/wind variability.
So when people suggest we can painlessly “transition” away from oil and gas, they usually leave out the most vital sectors: food, freight, and grid stability. There’s no serious plan to replace these at the scale and the speed required — especially not globally. At the same time catastrophic climate events are repeatedly destroying agricultural regions and transportation corridors while a non-transition fails to arrive.
That’s the concern — not just losing comfort, but losing the functional systems that support billions of lives. Ignoring that reality doesn’t make it go away. People are going to die. They already are.
My comments and framing will always be always grounded in the real extensive scientific critiques that show:
Net Zero by 2050 is not what it pretends to be — a hard, practical roadmap — but instead a speculative balancing act relying heavily on future carbon removal magic.
Many official pathways effectively “cook the books” by hiding emissions with negative numbers that don’t exist yet.
This diverts attention from the urgent need for deep emissions cuts now, which is the real core of the scientific alarm.
The last line reflects the core consensus among climate scientists and major institutions worldwide: the urgent need for deep, immediate emissions cuts. Yet many commenters here consistently deny or undermine this reality with ideological distractions, flimsy excuses, pushing flawed pathways and misplaced outrage and blame—ironically mimicking the very science denial they claim to oppose.
Th: when people suggest we can painlessly “transition” away from oil and gas, they usually leave out the most vital sectors: food, freight, and grid stability.
BPL: That’s rather a large negative. Are you sure? Have you checked?
Thessalonia
Nigel: By the time diesel fuel is running low these technologies ( biodiesel, electric motors, nuclear power, etc,etc) will be phased in.
T: Who says these technologies will be phased in by then? You?
Nigel: Yes I say those technologies will be phased in, because we have those technologies already, and when the world starts running low on diesel, the world is not just going to lie down and quiver in a corner and do nothing. They will substitute whatever technologies they have and can find. They will at least try. Its the survival instinct and desire to prosper.
William said “The current civilization cannot survive without Diesel engines. Once the oil goes there goes the population and all your EV manufacturing with it.”
Nigel: But there’s no evidence the process is going to kill off the population or send us back to the stone age.
T: Who says there’s no evidence? You?
Nigel: I didn’t say that. I said there’s no evidence that “substituting other energy sources for diesel” would kill off the population or send us back to the stone age. And think about it like this. Even if the transition leaves us short of some energy its unlikely to be massive amounts of energy given the technology, so its not going to kill off the population. It could cause us challenges and some reduction in standard of living is the realistic take on it. You do promote realism yourself.
T: Nigel, I think you’re underestimating the degree to which modern civilization — especially the global food system — is structurally dependent on fossil fuels. This isn’t doomerism; it’s just physical reality.
Nigel: No I’m not. We are very dependent. I share your concerns. I showed that there are alternatives.
T: So when people suggest we can painlessly “transition” away from oil and gas, they usually leave out the most vital sectors: food, freight, and grid stability. There’s no serious plan to replace these at the scale and the speed required — especially not globally. At the same time catastrophic climate events are repeatedly destroying agricultural regions and transportation corridors while a non-transition fails to arrive.
Nigel: I didn’t say the transition would be painless. I specifically said we would face difficulties but that they would not send us back to the stone age or kill off the population, given the difficulties I listed. I showed there are alternatives to diesel. Heavy truck engines can be run on biodiesel. New engines can be fitted that run on hydrogen fuel cells or batteries. Some heavy trucks ALREADY use hydrogen fuel cells.
T: “My comments and framing will always be always grounded in the real extensive scientific critiques that show:
Net Zero by 2050 is not what it pretends to be — a hard, practical roadmap — but instead a speculative balancing act relying heavily on future carbon removal magic.”
Nigel: This is nothing to do with your comments on diesel or my response.
T: Many official pathways effectively “cook the books” by hiding emissions with negative numbers that don’t exist yet. This diverts attention from the urgent need for deep emissions cuts now, which is the real core of the scientific alarm.
Nigel: I don’t like the high reliance on negative emissions with things like DAC. As people say we need substantial emissions cuts now. This is why I promote renewables for example.
T: The last line reflects the core consensus among climate scientists and major institutions worldwide: the urgent need for deep, immediate emissions cuts. Yet many commenters here consistently deny or undermine this reality with ideological distractions, flimsy excuses, pushing flawed pathways and misplaced outrage and blame—ironically mimicking the very science denial they claim to oppose.
Nigel: The only commenters here I’ve seen deny the need for emissions cuts and promote dubious solutions or non solutions are denialists like KIA or TK. None of the warmists here to my knowledge have opposed substantial emissions cuts, or said DAC will save us. Go on quote me a specific example otherwise.
We can get quite steep emissions cuts with a strong renewables programme and changes to agriculture etc,etc. It’s purely a question of motivation. Go on prove me wrong
I’ve always said the following: The main focus has to be on emissions cuts. Any reliance on negative emissions has to be minimal and cautious and based on proven approaches like planting trees, and even that has considerable limits. DAC looks like an expensive , impractical solution, and right now we cant assume it will achieve anything useful. but we should experiment with it to see what’s possible . I admit I’m not always crystal clear but that’s been the message,
nigelj says to Thessalonia
30 May 2025 at 4:58 PM
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/05/the-most-recent-climate-status/#comment-833928
N: Go on prove me wrong.
T: Cannot prove a negative. You go prove your opinions are right using substantive evidence.
And you don’t get to dump ‘Net Zero by 2050’ because you find it inconvenient to your consensus narratives. Because it is central to the dominant climate science consensus narrative from the IPCC to the next COP meeting.
Thessalonia says
30 May 2025 at 8:18 PM
Nigel:
“Yes I say those technologies will be phased in, because we have those technologies already…They will at least try. It’s the survival instinct…”
Thanks for the motivational speech, but “survival instinct” and good intentions aren’t energy systems. All you are offering are opinions. You confuse emotional reassurance with physical reality. Your position boils down to faith in spontaneous adaptation — without empirical support for feasibility, timeline, or scale.
nigelj says: “we have those technologies already.” Let’s examine that claim:
Biodiesel?
Marginal capacity. Global biodiesel production in 2022 was less than 1.5% of total diesel consumption. Even with full land and crop conversion, it’s physically incapable of scaling to meet freight, agri, and shipping demands without displacing food production. [Source: IEA, FAO]
Hydrogen fuel cells?
Still uneconomical, inefficient, and mostly produced from fossil gas. Infrastructure is nearly nonexistent outside of niche pilots. The DOE’s Hydrogen Shot aims for $1/kg by 2031 — that’s a goal, not a reality.
Nuclear?
Takes decades to plan, license, and construct. Even France can’t expand nuclear quickly enough to serve transport. It does not power mobile freight engines, tractors, or container ships.
Electric motors for heavy transport?
Yes, they exist — in prototypes and limited deployment. But the energy density and recharge logistics make large-scale rollout for broadacre agriculture, shipping, aviation, and long-haul freight a pipe dream under current supply chains. Just scaling lithium batteries alone is facing a wall of constraints.
So what exactly are we “phasing in”? Wishful thinking?
“I didn’t say the transition would be painless.”
No, you said it wouldn’t be catastrophic — without evidence. I provided a breakdown of critical sectors that are presently irreplaceably dependent on fossil fuels. You dismissed this structural dependence by asserting your baseless opinion that “the world will substitute whatever technologies they have.” That’s not evidence — it’s a political narrative.
Let’s be clear:
The IPCC, IEA, and major energy systems modelers consistently state that:
— Current transition plans are not fast enough, large enough, or inclusive of freight, food, and global south realities.
— Net Zero by 2050 scenarios rely on vast, unrealistic assumptions — particularly about CDR, biofuels, and future innovation.
— There is no global, binding, or funded roadmap to fully replace diesel and petrochemical dependency across agriculture, manufacturing, transport, and logistics by 2040–2050.
None!
This isn’t doomerism. It’s what the published science and engineering limits are saying.
nigelj says: “Even if the transition leaves us short of some energy…”
Do you realize how casually dangerous that statement is? “Some” energy shortfall in fertilizer, irrigation, harvest, and freight means global food shocks, famine, and collapse of trade routes — not just “challenges.” Civilization is a system. It’s not modular. You don’t get to safely unplug diesel until you build and test the full replacement system first.
This is not a movie. There’s no deus ex machina.
References & Support:
International Energy Agency (IEA, 2023) – Net Zero by 2050 Roadmap, Updated
“Current policy settings fall short of achieving net zero by 2050. Heavy reliance on unproven technologies and delayed reductions in hard-to-abate sectors jeopardize the target.”
Energy Transitions Commission (2021) – Making Mission Possible
“Heavy transport, chemicals, and agriculture will require either radical innovation or behavioral reductions. Transition unlikely without systemic overhaul.”
Anderson & Peters (2016) – The Trouble with Negative Emissions, Science
“Faith in future CDR enables delay today. That is both scientifically and politically irresponsible.”
Fertilizer Industry Association & UN FAO (2022)
Over 50% of global food production is dependent on Haber-Bosch synthetic fertilizers, overwhelmingly derived from natural gas.
Conclusion:
The conversation is not about whether substitution is “possible in theory.” It’s about feasibility at scale under real timeframes and real constraints — in a world where the climate crisis is already eroding food systems, infrastructure, political alliances, and financial resilience.
If we don’t address these structural dependencies honestly — and cut emissions now without banking on fantasy future tech — we are heading toward collapse and not Net Zero by 2050 nor anytime after that. .
You’re welcome to keep hoping in miracles and sticking to your opinions. I’ll stick with physics, agronomy, and the peer-reviewed literature from experts. Pleasing to see a few others here doing the same. I’m quite happy with my well-informed realist and referenced positions.
Thessalonia
“Cannot prove a negative”.
Fine I accept that. I was being a bit cheeky. Now you prove your claim: You started this issue.
You claimed above thread “The last line reflects the core consensus among climate scientists and major institutions worldwide: the urgent need for deep, immediate emissions cuts. Yet many commenters here consistently deny or undermine this reality with ideological distractions, flimsy excuses, pushing flawed pathways and misplaced outrage and blame—ironically mimicking the very science denial they claim to oppose.”
I asked you to quote specific examples of people here especially warmists, and copy and paste their text, and in context. I’m still waiting. You have a habit of making wild, evidence free allegations against people for example calling M Mann incompetent and a liar when using your Ned Kelly handle.
“Thanks for the motivational speech, but “survival instinct” and good intentions aren’t energy systems.”
Lets come back to your original claim that when the world runs out of diesel it will “kill off the population”. Your words are vague and open to interpretation, but I take it to mean many billions of people will die. You haven’t provided any evidence of this. None of your scientific quotes support that contention. All they suggest is the transition could be painful.
If you look at the number of ships and trucks and trains reliant on diesel it is self evident they be converted to other sources of energy without using a huge proportion of the worlds GDP and resources to the extent that billions of people would starve to death as a result. Your claims are just hype. It could however be a difficult process and reduce international trade flows but again its hard to get from that to many billions of people dying.
You also don’t understand that diesel is used because its efficient and has good torque. That doesn’t mean petrol wouldn’t work, or electric power wouldn’t work. It just means efficiency will reduce to a limited extent.
And you are conflating issues. Because the world is not going fast enough to develop renewables and politicians are acting like twits on the issue, doesn’t mean the same would apply if the world started running out of diesel. I’m sure you would understand the difference and reasons.
“…diesel is used because its efficient and has good torque. That doesn’t mean petrol wouldn’t work, or electric power wouldn’t work.”
Indeed!
Electric can and does work great for both efficiency and torque–so much so that the diesel locomotives aboard which I used to service radios in the early ’80s were diesel-electric hybrids, with electric motors driving the wheels and diesel keeping the electricity flowing. I believe that’s still the same tech predominantly in use today. The energy density of fossil fuels is hard to replace, but battery tech is getting there.
This is not the first energy transition. The others–wood to coal, coal to oil–took about 50 years. I see no reason this one should be shorter. Lots more energy to transition.
Thomas Fuller, the wood to coal and coal to oil transitions taking 50 years happened naturally while the oil to electric transition is being pushed by governments with carbon taxes, subsidies etcetera, so other things being equal could be faster than 50 years depending on how hard governments push the transition.
Reply to Thomas W Fuller
I’m here for genuine, mature dialogue on these issues. If that’s your interest too, great — let’s talk. But if it’s just dismissals, insults, or false accusations, I’ll pass — and likely stop engaging directly.
I strongly recommend to make yourself Thomas W Fuller aware of the output by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz: a historian of science, technology and the environment, currently doing postdoctoral research at Harvard University. He is not an outlier he is a trained academic expert on historical “energy transitions”. There is more going on here than is generally known acknowledged or included in energy related climate science research papers. WG3 of the IPCC gets ‘energy’ consumption and projections very wrong (imo).
This no nonsense fellow tried to get the message out– Kevin Anderson @KevinClimate
My interpretation, not widely shared, is that IPCC WG3 rapidly ‘emerged’ as a means of both legitimising the dominant economic paradigm & being its gate keeper. As such its deeply policy prescriptive, hidden behind veils of maths & elasticities, from where it polices alternatives. 3:16 PM · Feb 22, 2022
https://x.com/KevinClimate/status/1496141779560714244?cxt=HHwWiMCyhbHBrsMpAAAA
[ that’s 2, 22, 2022 btw ]
Some handy sources for Jean-Baptiste Fressoz are:
“Always Adding More: The Unpopular Reality about Energy Transitions”
https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/162-jean-baptiste-fressoz
The “Energy Transition” is a Myth on Decouple Media
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AxsZtwIhFw
The 500-Year History of Climate Concern how they managed in the past) on Decouple Media
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY1TA8NyY8M
Is a “renewable” energy transition possible?
With Steven Keen, Simon Michaux and Killian O’Brien on Clubhouse (audio)
https://www.clubhouse.com/room/xoabL87o
Considering the broader framework of capitalist economics and realism.
2024 Much of the climate movement and too many climate scientists are still pouring its energies into combating disinformation. But this focus fails to address real concerns about a green transition and obscures what is needed to win the public over to effective climate action.
https://jacobin.com/2024/08/climate-disinformation-green-transition-workers
TWF: This is not the first energy transition. The others–wood to coal, coal to oil–took about 50 years. I see no reason this one should be shorter. Lots more energy to transition.
BPL: The faster the better. We can’t take our slow, leisurely time with this one.
“Even if global annual emissions begin to decline—even slightly—they still add to the total atmospheric CO₂, just at a slower growth rate.”
Yes, but that’s not what you said, You said “reductions” would cause increases, which is semantically incoherent–as I expressed in my comment that “Presumably you mean the emissions continue to “add CO2”, which hardly qualifies as a keen insight…” Thank you for confirming that my supposition was correct.
I added “…but, thanks to the “reductions”, less is added than would have been the case.” Which is rather the point here.
You then go on to say ” matter how much so-called “renewable” infrastructure we build-still reliant on fossil fuels and concrete—we remain locked into rising greenhouse gas forcing, and with it, rising global temperatures for the foreseeable future.”
Yes, and nobody here, including me, said any differently. However, that does not mean that the reductions made by deployed are irrelevant. As Piotr said, there *is* a difference between 450 and 800 ppm. Proverbially, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. You seem to think that there is no value to any step except for the last. But each step is valuable, each valuable to attaining the final goal.
Your rhetoric would keep us from taking any steps at all, because you denigrate real steps, yet refuse to lay out your alternate route in any useful way. You denigrate my scientific literacy, but the truth is, the problem is your inability to deal with simple logic.
Now, do you think that you can keep “emissions” and “reductions” straight in the future?
Having just reviewed this topic on the thread, and posting a note to UV June, I can contribute to this confusion as well.
Ken Towe says
20 May 2025 at 1:11 PM
That obviously means more oil will be needed with more CO2 added. The same is true of “global” reductions in emissions that will slowly decline but will add CO2 during that decline to zero.
Kevin McKinney says
27 May 2025 at 11:05 PM
Well, that comment is a real jewel of incoherence! No, “reductions” can’t “add CO2.”
Note that you said that Kevin.
then – William says
28 May 2025 at 7:50 PM
Kevin McKinney says
27 May 2025 at 11:05 PM
No, “reductions” can’t “add CO2.”
That’s a stunning scientific blind spot.
Even if global annual emissions begin to decline—even slightly—they still add to the total atmospheric CO₂, just at a slower growth rate.
and then
Kevin McKinney says in reply to WILLIAM
1 Jun 2025 at 7:36 PM
“Even if global annual emissions begin to decline—even slightly—they still add to the total atmospheric CO₂, just at a slower growth rate.”
Yes, but that’s not what you said, You said “reductions” would cause increases, which is semantically incoherent–as I expressed in my comment that “Presumably you mean the emissions continue to “add CO2”, which hardly qualifies as a keen insight…” Thank you for confirming that my supposition was correct.
………………..
Sorry but you are wrong. Your supposition is faulty and you are wrong to put this on William or Ken. Because that is not what William said at all before. You are confused here. It is not even what Ken implied.
Otherwise do show where William or Ken said : “reductions” would cause increases
and/or explain what or why that–is semantically incoherent they both used the terms “add to” or “add CO2” in the correct contact and semantics.
Meanwhile William provided the Physics Slam Dunk on this thread with his comment : “The reality is that atmospheric CO₂ concentrations will continue to rise each year until we achieve actual net zero—” that also created enormous cognitive dissonance among the consensus narrative traditionalists here.
The spurious allegations made against that standard science truth from William was exceptionally dysfunctional science literacy.
But thanks for the closing laughs:
Your rhetoric would keep us from taking any steps at all, because you denigrate real steps, yet refuse to lay out your alternate route in any useful way. You denigrate my scientific literacy, but the truth is, the problem is your inability to deal with simple logic.
Now, do you think that you can keep “emissions” and “reductions” straight in the future?
People in glass houses with rooms full of mirrors really should stop throwing stones. But it does explain why I stayed away.
Ah, Thessalonia.–who, I would agree, does sound an awful lot like other names appearing here–said:
True. However, that does not make net-zero “unreachable.” I’m not saying that the 2050 deadline is just arbitrary; I’m aware that missing it will have profound negative consequences; net zero in 2060, or 2070 will mean many more losses of species, a much more challenging environment for humans and most other lifeforms, and a lot of unnecessary pain, suffering, and death. But it would be much preferable to net zero in 2100, coming courtesy of a complete civilizational collapse.
Reply to Kevin McKinney
However, that does not make net-zero “unreachable.”
True, not in and of itself alone. But that was not what was being said. Was it?
Everything else combined makes Net Zero unreachable in any normal human time frame worth anything. 2050 or 2100 included.
Stop denying the obvious science involved and factually global data and basic logic. Thessalonia or someone else even provided some summarized source refs about it. Generalizing overall the people here are incredibly lazy and incompetent. While lacking any normal human curiosity!
Keith Woollard: “ To Piotr, that is exactly what I have done,
No, you have done the exactly the opposite of what I have asked – to my:
Piotr: “Polar amplification refers to the effects at the ground level, I.e. surface temperatures, not the tropospheric microwave radiation. Here is a NASA map of the
surface air temperature anomaly:
https://assets.science.nasa.gov/content/dam/science/esd/eo/woc/images/globaltemp/global_gis_2022.png” Where is your south pole -to-north pole “monotonic increase” now?”
you have … ignored the said NASA map of surfaces temperature – and instead posted
unreferenced graph and calculations of UAH. i.e. based on … tropospheric microwave radiation. .
So no, you have NOT done “exactly that”.
KW: “Your second comment is somewhat more intelligent”
My second post contains the same test for your claim (the same NASA map), it just is more EXPLICIT- i.e., not leaving it to your “intelligence”.
Ken Towe, we don’t need to get right back to preindustrial levels of co2. We just need to keep co2 from increasing further and to keep warming under 2 degrees maximum. This is the serious danger level.
Expert studies show we can get to net zero emissions for about 5 percent of gdp each year. This obviously wont send us back to the stone age or cause starvation or anything remotely like that, and you also offset this cost with a lot of cost savings for example the reduced health costs of renewable energy compared to fossil fuels.
Costs of building renewables is generally subsidized by governments so this offsets any increased costs of fossil fuels used in their manufacturing.
Quote: “Costs of building renewables is generally subsidized by governments so this offsets any increased costs of fossil fuels used in their manufacturing.”
Where does government get the money to subsidize the costs of building renewables?
KIA: Where does government get the money to subsidize the costs of building renewables?
BPL: Either from taxes or from selling bonds.
KIA: Where does government get the money to subsidize the costs of building renewables?
BPL: Either from taxes or from selling bonds.
Preferably from carbon taxes – which is part of the price for the damage to environment that until now the fossil fuel industrial complex has managed to evade. In fact the opposite is true – according to that leftist organization “International Monetary Fund”
Globally, fossil fuel subsidies were $7 trillion or 7.1 percent of GDP in 2022,
I presume our MAGA-KIA has nothing against the $7 trillion coming out of the pocket of the taxpayers to subsidize fuel industrial complex.
I think your presumption is entirely correct, Piotr–fossil fuel subsidies are no more objectionable to MAGA world than $30 million in Trump golf-related costs, or $40 million in Trump birthday-related expenses, or undisclosed sums meant to remodel bits of the White House to emulate Louis XIVs “Hall of Mirrors” at Versailles. I mean, it’s not as if it were wasted in cancer research, or hurricane forecasting, or making sure kids don’t go to school hungry, or something feckless like that.
Trump has you all twisted around his little finger while he lives rent free in all your minds 24/7.
Doing so he has already hit the primary goals set for him to achieve this term. More fool you.
The tax payers subsidise the costs of building renewables. Polling in America shows the majority of voters support Bidens Inflation Reduction ACT that subsidised renewables. The people who oppose governments being involved in subsidising renewables are a minority mostly comprising right wing ideologues who believe in very limited small government.
https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/who-is-most-supportive-of-the-ira/
https://www.dataforprogress.org/inflation-reduction-act-polling
Nigel: The people who oppose governments being involved in subsidising renewables are a minority mostly comprising right wing ideologues who believe in very limited small government.
According to IMF, explicit subsidies globally to fossil fuels in 2022 were $1.5 trillion in 2022 in explicit subsidies and $5.7 trillion in implicit subsidies. Limiting to G20 and explicit subsidies only, in 2023 fossil got more than 3 times those to renewables. MAGAts have nothing against those – quite the opposite – they cheer for increasing them: “Drill, baby, drill!”.
So they are not against subsidies as a rule, they are against subsidies to the alternatives to fossil fuels.
MKIA: Where does the government get the money to subsidize the costs of building renewables?
TPP: They create it — effectively “print it” — through a combination of Federal Reserve and Treasury operations. Technically, it’s done by issuing Treasury bonds (i.e. borrowing), but in practice, it often amounts to injecting newly created digital dollars into the system. Just numbers on a screen — deficit spending, monetary expansion, however you want to frame it.
The subsidies themselves are often disguised through political gimmicks — like tax credits on future income that may never materialize. It’s just another way of kicking the fiscal can down the road.
But eventually, reality asserts itself. These renewables won’t deliver what people have been led to believe. And when the grid fails or the power goes out, no narrative will soften the blow — it’s hard to deny a blackout when you’re the one sitting in the dark.
You see MKIA at the end of the day it will not matter where the government got the money to pay for the subsidies and tax credits to build all these renewables.
New and interesting notion. How true is it?
Robust method predicts beginning of new climate in Arctic based on warming, wetting and sea ice loss
by University of Groningen
https://phys.org/news/2025-05-robust-method-climate-arctic-based.html
When does “anomalous weather” become “a new climate”? The moment that variations in a specific climate variable turn into the new normal is termed Time of Emergence (ToE). Scientists from the University of Groningen and the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) have developed a method to predict the time of emergence in various Arctic regions, based on warming, wetting, and sea ice melting.
The ToE for temperature and sea ice is in the near future, i.e. somewhere before 2050, whereas the amount of rainfall will enter a new climate state at the end of the century. The results were published in the journal Scientific Reports on 12 April.
The scientists have used 14 global climate models and fed them with various greenhouse gas emission scenarios and aerosol amounts to reconstruct the past and predict future Arctic climate changes. The ToE was defined as the time when the values for a climate variable have been higher than 97.5% of the historical values for ten consecutive years.
There are large regional differences. For example, sea ice thickness has already reached a new climate state in the central Arctic region, as there is a relatively small variability in year-to-year thickness. This makes sea ice the most sensitive predictor for climate change.
The results show that, even though the Arctic is rapidly warming, ToE for temperature and sea ice cover has generally not yet been reached. This is mainly due to the extremely high natural variability in these Arctic variables.
“Seasonal and annual Arctic mean timeseries of (a) surface temperature, (b) sea ice thickness, (c) sea ice cover, (d) rainfall, and (e) total precipitation over 150 years (historical and SSP5.85 CMIP6 simulations, median of CMIP6 models). Vertical lines depict the Time of Emergence calculated using the Arctic mean (dotted lines) and per grid point method (comBPnn, continuous lines).”
Nicoleta Tsakali et al, The time of emergence of Arctic warming, wetting and sea ice melting,
Scientific Reports (2025)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-96607-1