Climate Change - The Extreme Positions

Any attempt to make sense of man-made climate change must first address the inflammatory rhetoric and the political bias pervading social media. Until we can discuss it more rationally it will be difficult to change the way we deliver energy to combat climate change. Additionally, we will have to engage the whole world and somehow develop a comprehensive long-term plan. Biases, misinformation, and knee jerk reactions seem to be the norm and greatly confuse and contribute to having no coherent policies in the US or the world in general. If we can’t get past this dichotomy of voices (on the left and the right) rife with misinformation, we will never create a long-term solution. For this reason, I want to start by calling out some of this misinformation and in future blogs talk about the real facts and solutions. We must get through the noise to get to a long-term change in energy policies.

It is evident that changing the way we deliver energy in the world and moving away from carbon-based solutions is necessary but is also very complicated and requires a long-term systematic approach. Something the politicians of the world have never been able to do on almost any subject. There is an abundance of written material on the subject, which is regularly mis-reported and summarized.

To get started let’s discuss some of the basic misinformation and misuse of data the two very vocal sides are trying to sell to the public. Some of these statements come from the right and some come from the left.

• Man-made climate change is real – This is a true statement as the world is getting warmer primarily due to use of carbon fuels for energy. It is not the only cause which many would have you believe but is likely the most significant. Weather patterns, e.g. El Nino play a part in the big picture.

• The science behind climate change is evolving – You keep hearing that the science is settled. Science is very rarely settled, and we will continue to add to what we know about global warming and how much is man-made. We know that man has added significantly to warming but understanding what this means for the future is very far from settled.

• Weather is not climate! We need to stop equating the two. Climate is the long-term weather pattern in a region, typically averaging over 30 years. Weather is the state of the atmosphere at a particular place or time. You see this daily as left leaning media pronounces every extreme weather event as proof of man-made climate change. The right will try to use weather to say man-made climate change does not exist. Many examples of weather being blamed on man-made climate change can’t be backed up with data. Examples are hurricanes, forest fires, tornadoes, and droughts. Reading through the actual data in IPCC reports and others gives widely different answers. Again, while there is some evidence supporting increases in these events the science is not yet settled. We may be seeing increases but the effect of man-made increases have not been clearly defined.

• Politicians will not solve climate change - Clearly politicians are not capable of solving such a complicated problem. While man-made climate change and changes in energy delivery are political issues, we will need scientists, economists, and others to develop a long-range plan to change current trajectories. We will have to leave our politics and biases at the door to have a proper discussion. Scare tactics are not effective and making random laws or policies through agencies can be expensive and does not work. In the US we have no problem making policies to switch 100% to EV cars in 5 to 10 years without the technology or infrastructure in place to make this happen. We could do far better by eliminating power generation from coal, but we don’t seem to have the political will to make this change. Lacking a plan and the political will to find acceptable alternatives to coal, we instead plan to change out 280 million cars that will then likely still run on power generated from fossil fuels.

• Changing where we get our energy will take decades, cost trillions of $’s and requires major new innovation. – No serious climate expert or economist believes we can change how we deliver and use energy in the world in anything less than decades. All agree that we are missing some of the technology to make this all happen. A long-term detailed plan which would need to time-phase many changes as well as require innovations and technology that does not exist today. Done right, the possibility is very real that long-term innovation and technology changes could decrease our overall cost of energy.

• Climate change is not racist, a diversity problem, or only solved by union workers as proposals like the Green New Deal suggests. Such proposals divert the debate away from climate change and into these other social issues. Obviously, these social issues need to be addressed but right now the rhetoric is keeping us from moving forward with climate change plans.

• The United States is no longer the largest CO2 emitter. Any plan that does not include Asia will fail. Asia is currently 53% of the problem with North America 18% (mostly the US), EU 17%, and the rest of the world 12%. Given these numbers if NA and EU completely eliminate CO2 we would still fall anywhere from 6 to 26% short of limiting temperature increases to between 2 to 3C based on projections. This is if Asia emissions stayed the same and over the past 10 years their emissions have increased by over 30% with ours going down by 12%. The world needs to be on board. (Data from Our World in Data - 2021 numbers)

• Climate models’ predictions are not accurate enough to make some of the bold statements being made. – A look at the world’s reporting in the IPCC data and some of the WHO reports you find they both base their conclusions on climate and economic models. These models generally include significant economic growth resulting in more and more CO2 emissions but don’t include further adaptation and technological improvements which will surely occur. For this reason, they are likely very overstated. Economic growth will spur change that can help to mitigate many of the potential negative effects such as deaths due to disease and food shortages. Increased income also slows population growth. Based on adaptation and increased income people will not starve, food will still be available, and society will adapt to many of the extreme weather predicted. If you read beyond the summary in the IPCC reports, you will find that the summaries are somewhat biased and not supported by the data and statements that follow.