McKibben To Wall Street Journal: 'Fossil-Fuel Companies Have Become Outlaws Against The Laws Of Physics'

Bill McKibben has a letter responding to an error-riddled Wall Street Journal 0p-ed - though I guess that's redundant. This one attacks clean energy and the fossil-fuel divestment effort McKibben supports.

McKibben writes:

Robert Bryce's Dec. 17 op-ed ("Harvard Needs Remedial Energy Math") attacking campus efforts to have universities divest themselves of holdings in fossil-fuel companies is interesting for what it omits: even the slightest attempt to rebut the mathematical logic that shows fossil-fuel companies have become outlaws against the laws of physics. Here are the numbers: In order to prevent the two-degree Celsius rise in temperature that even the most conservative governments on earth have committed to avoiding, scientists tell us we can burn enough coal and oil and gas to produce 565 gigatons of CO2. Unfortunately, the planet's fossil-fuel companies, and the countries that operate like fossil-fuel companies (think Venezuela and Kuwait), have five times that much in their reserves. It's what their share prices are based on; they obviously plan to burn it; indeed, they spend hundreds of millions of dollars daily looking for more. If their business plan is carried out, the planet tanks.

Mr. Bryce is entirely correct that it will be hard to move away from fossil fuels, an enormous engineering challenge. But the Germans are demonstrating it can be done, and the most recent studies shows that we could rely on renewables for our power upwards of 99% of the time as early as 2030 if we got to work. Which we won't, if the fossil-fuel industry continues to exert its massive financial muscle to block change. That's why students in 189 campuses have so far risen up to demand divestment-this is the great moral challenge of our time, and maybe, given the stakes, of all time.

Bryce, of course, is one of the most debunked disinformers on the face of the Earth, who famously wrote (in the WSJ of course), "If serious scientists can question Einstein's theory of relativity, then there must be room for debate about the workings and complexities of the Earth's atmosphere" (see "Robert Bryce Makes Mockery of Science, Is Mocked in Return"). Hmm, if Bryce can be dead wrong about Einstein, then he's probably dead wrong about everything else.

Bryce works for the Manhattan Institute, which "has received millions of dollars from donors tied to the fossil fuel industry" and the Kochs to spread pro-fossil-fuel messages. Media Matters' post, "Who Is Robert Bryce?" has more detail. See also

• "Small IS Beautiful"! Robert Bryce Pushes Nuclear Power by Quoting Famous Author Who Called It "an Ethical, Spiritual, and Metaphysical Monstrosity"
• Debunking Robert Bryce's power hungry gusher of lies

Bryce's nonsense is not worth debunking in detail - one could waste a lifetime doing that. But given that he claims "Harvard Needs Remedial Energy Math," it's worth noting one of his own countless instances of innumeracy, the tired "wind power uses too much land" myth:

Here's where the math becomes college-freshman obvious: In 2011, the world had 240,000 megawatts of wind-generation capacity. That fleet of turbines produced 437 terawatt-hours of electricity. Therefore, just keeping up with the growth in global electricity demand-while not displacing any of the existing need for coal, oil and natural gas-would require the countries of the world to install about as much wind-generation capacity as now exists, and they'd have to do so every year.

Put another way, just to keep pace with demand growth, the wind industry will need to cover a land area of some 48,000 square miles with wind turbines per year, an area about the size of North Carolina. Even if that much land were available, no humans would want to live on the land because of the irritating noise generated by those turbines.

That paragraph would get any student in remedial energy math an 'F'. The actual footprint used up by the wind turbines is quite tiny - so most of the land they occupy can be used for other purposes, notably farming.

Let's go into the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's wind farm area calculator, plug in 0.25 acres per turbine and 240,000 megawatts (240,000,000 kW), and use 2 MW for wind turbines since "most of the commercial-scale turbines installed today are 2 MW in size. "The estimated land area required is: 30000 acres." [For more detail, see Land-Use Requirements of Modern Wind Power Plants in the United States.]

As one can quickly find out on Google, "1 square mile is equal to 640 acres." So these wind turbine would take out of use about 50 square miles of land. And that doesn't even count offshore wind.

Most of the best wind is not where many people live, so his non-issue about noise is, well, a non-issue.

Of course, global warming will devastate North Carolina and indeed all coastal areas and much of the cropland in this country and around the world - so using up a little land to save the rest seems like the smart choice.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/12/30/1377621/mckibben-to-wall-s

Error-Riddled Matt Ridley Piece Lowballs Climate Change, Discredits Wall Street Journal. World Faces 10°F.

Leading Scientists Debunk Ridley Piece, Even Climatologist Cited by WSJ Says Ridley "Is Just Plain Wrong About Future Warming"

Memo to media, deniers: "Climate sensitivity" is NOT the same as projected future warming!

Projected warming even with (an unlikely) low climate sensitivity of between 1.5°C and 2.0°C from Michael Ring et al 2012. A WSJ op-ed that cites this work absurdly concludes "Evidence points to a further rise of just 1°C by 2100." Not. Not even close.

Every major projection of future warming makes clear that if we keep listening to the falsehoods of the anti-science crowd and keep taking no serious action to reduce carbon pollution we face catastrophic 9°F to 11°F [5°C to 6°C] warming over most of the United States and World (see literature review here).

The Wall Street Journal, however, has published a piece, "Cooling Down the Fears of Climate Change," that (falsely) asserts observations suggest global warming will be so low as to "be benificial." This risible piece by Matt Ridley is so riddled with basic math and science errors it raises the question of how the Journal can possibly maintain its reputation as a credible source of news and financial analysis.

Ridley and the Journal apparently don't know the difference between water vapor and clouds. They don't understand the basic concept of climate sensitivity. And they can't do simple math. Naturally, the climate deniers have embraced this nonsense and spread it across the internet.

I wasn't going to waste time with the umpteenth debunking of the Wall Street Journal's nonsense - especially one written by someone whose "family leases land for coal mining"! But one of Ridley many basic mistakes is one I have seen often in the media - the confusion of the "climate sensitivity" (to a doubling of CO2 levels to 560 parts per million) with projected warming (from actual greenhouse gas levels projected for this century). That confusion needs clearing up (again).

Fist, though, let me start by quoting some of the country's leading climate experts on an excellent debunking piece by Media Matters, "WSJ's Climate 'Dynamite' Is A Dud":

[A]s John Abraham, an IPCC reviewer and the director of the Climate Science Rapid Response Team, put it to Media Matters: the column "has such elementary errors in it that [it] casts doubt on the author's understanding of any aspects of climate change."

... Boston University's Robert Kaufmann, lead author of a 2011 sulfur emissions study, agreed:

I know of no evidence that would suggest that the temperature effect of sulfur emissions are small. This conclusion is totally at odds with my peer reviewed publication in the area, which indicate that sulfur emissions have a significant effect on temperature.

With regard to the feedback effect of water vapor: Kevin Trenberth, a scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told Media Matters in an email: "water vapor effects are well established as an amplifier (strong positive feedback)." Abraham further noted that Ridley has apparently confused water vapor with clouds, whose effects are not as well understood. He said, "it is very clear water vapor ... is an amplifying effect. It is a very strong warmer for the climate" and challenged Ridley to name the anonymous scientist who gave him his information.

With regard to the rate of ocean heat absorption: Trenberth wrote: "On the contrary there is now very good evidence that a LOT of heat is going into the deep ocean in unprecedented ways, which completely undermines this sort of argument. OHC [Ocean Heat Content] keeps increasing at a fairly steady rate, just as sea level keeps going up."

A good discussion of the latest science on ocean heat content can be found here.

To expand on what Abraham said, it is head-exploding and self-discrediting for Ridley and the Wall Street Journal to print this for millions to read:

And then, as one Nobel Prize-winning physicist with a senior role in combating climate change admitted to me the other day: "We don't even know the sign" of water vapor's effect-in other words, whether it speeds up or slows down a warming of the atmosphere.

Climate models are known to poorly simulate clouds, and given clouds' very strong effect on the climate system-some types cooling the Earth either by shading it or by transporting heat up and cold down in thunderstorms, and others warming the Earth by blocking outgoing radiation-it remains highly plausible that there is no net positive feedback from water vapor.

An unnamed physicist? Seriously, WSJ? What's next. "A guy I met in an underground parking lot"?

If Ridley did in fact talk to a Nobel prize-winning physicist then that person almost certainly did not make the mistake Ridley did and confuse "water vapor's effect" - where we most certainly know the sign (it speeds up warming) with cloud's effect (where there is a tad more uncertainty). Yet even in that case, the new IPCC draft report, upon which Ridley makes all his claims finds:

Various feedbacks associated with water vapour can now be quantified, and together they are assessed to be very likely positive and therefore to amplify climate changes. The net radiative feedback due to all cloud types is likely positive.

Ridley and the WSJ cite on their behalf recent work by Ring and Schlesinger to help make the case that we face a warming of only another 1°C this century for a total cumulative warning of under 2°C:

An impressive study published this year by Magne Aldrin of the Norwegian Computing Center and colleagues gives a most-likely estimate of 1.6°C. Michael Ring and Michael Schlesinger of the University of Illinois, using the most trustworthy temperature record, also estimate 1.6°C.

The problem is that Ridley apparently doesn't have the first clue what the climate sensitivity means, which is a key reason why Dr. Schlesinger has written a letter to the WSJ (below) explaining

"In his article, Mr. Ridley is just plain wrong about future global warming."

It bears repeating that the amount of warming we are going to subject our children and countless future generations to depends primarily on three factors:

1. The so-called "equilibrium climate sensitivity" - the sensitivity of the climate to fast feedbacks like sea ice and water vapor - or how much warming you get if we only double CO2 emissions to 560 ppm and there are no major "slow" feedbacks. We know the fast feedbacks, like water vapor, are strong by themselves (see Study: Water-vapor feedback is "strong and positive," so we face "warming of several degrees Celsius" and Skeptical Science piece here).
2. The real-world slower (decade-scale) feedbacks, such as tundra melt (see "Carbon Feedback From Thawing Permafrost Will Likely Add 0.4°F - 1.5°F To Total Global Warming By 2100".
3. The actual CO2 concentration level we are likely to hit, which is far beyond 550 ppm (see U.S. media largely ignores latest warning from climate scientists: "Recent observations confirm ... the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories are being realised" - 1000 ppm).

Given that the anti-science, pro-pollution forces seem to be succeeding in their fight to keep us on our current emissions path, it's no surprise that multiple recent analyses conclude that we face a temperature rise that is far, far beyond dangerous (see links below).

Schlesinger's full letter to the WSJ is:

In "Cooling Down the Fears of Climate Change" (WJS, 19 December 2012), Matt Ridley mentions the findings of my Climate Research Group's paper "Causes of the Warming Observed Since the 19th Century"

(http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?paperID=24283).
In his article, Mr. Ridley is just plain wrong about future global warming. In our paper "A Fair Plan to Safeguard Earth's Climate" (http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?paperID=20038), we show that by the middle of this century the warming will exceed the 2°C (3.6°F) maximum allowed by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to "prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system".

In that paper and its sequel, "A Revised Fair Plan to Safeguard Earth's Climate" (http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?paperID=23864), we phase out the emission of greenhouse gases this century such that the cumulative greenhouse-gas emissions by the Developing and Developed Countries are equal. Both Plans keep global warming below the UNFCCC allowable maximum of 2°C.

Schlesinger sent an email around to some journalists and scientists that included a figure from his work, which I posted at the top.

It is worth noting that there is a healthy debate about Schlesinger's low estimate (see here). Kevin Trenberth, for one, says the analysis is not correct.

Indeed, Trenberth coauthored a major new study of actual observations of relative humidity finds "that warming is likely to be on the high side of current projections ... projecting a global temperature rise for doubled carbon dioxide of more than 7 degrees F" - see "Science Stunner: Observations Support Predictions Of Extreme Warming And Worse Droughts This Century."

And Schlesinger himself says it would be unwise to plan on a low sensitivity given the very real risks that it is not so low. I queried Schlesinger about whether his analysis included the feedback from the permafrost. He wrote me back:

What will most likely happen is ... permanent outgassing of carbon dioxide from permafrost and methane from clathrates/hydrates. As you know, methane is a greenhouse gas that is 23 times more potent, molecule for molecule, than carbon dioxide. If we hedge not against this outgassing, it's game over.

My Climate Research Group is now writing a paper about sea-level rise throughout this century.

You and the world want not to know about this.

In the scheme of things, we human beings are not a very intelligent species.

All species have a finite lifetime.

Most species do not self exterminate.

While this is a bit hyperbolic, it may not be far from the truth.

So I think it is quite safe to say that it is irresponsible and indefensible to quote Schlesinger's work in an article that concludes the "net effect [of global warming] on the planet may actually be beneficial."

Related Posts:

• Hadley Center: "Catastrophic" 5-7¬∞C warming by 2100 on current emissions path
• M.I.T. doubles its 2095 warming projection to 10¬∞F "" with 866 ppm and Arctic warming of 20¬∞F
• Our hellish future: Definitive NOAA-led report on U.S. climate impacts warns of scorching 9 to 11¬∞F warming over most of inland U.S. by 2090 with Kansas above 90¬∞F some 120 days a year - and that isn't the worst case, it's business as usual!"
• "The Copenhagen Diagnosis" warns "Without significant mitigation, the report says global mean warming could reach as high as 7 degrees Celsius by 2100."

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/12/20/1365671/error-riddled-matt