Of the 20 years or so that I’ve been observing climate change policy, global developments over the past year have been the most hopeful I can remember, particularly as regards electricity generation
* The Paris Conference was a big success, at least relative to expectations
* Coal-fired power stations are shutting down around the world
* China has reduced its coal use for two years in a row
* India has increased its coal tax, and greatly expanded use of renewables
Whether emissions reductions will be big enough and fast enough remains to be seen, but at least we are going in the right direction.
As far as climate science is concerned, the string of temperature records broken recently has killed any idea that we are in a ‘pause’ or ‘hiatus’. Even the favorite source of deniers, the satellite data from UAH, is now showing a new record. The only remaining issue is the second-order debate over whether there was a pause or perhaps slowdown at some point in the first decade of the 2000s.
At the same time, following the US election, I’ve been paying more attention than usual to rightwing blogs, most of which run climate denialist pieces fairly regularly. Given that nearly all the major US coal companies are now bankrupt, and that coal-fired electricity is declining rapidly, I’d have expected a lot of “wrecking ball” pieces on the supposed damage to the economy (in reality, the effects are small and mostly offset by the expansion of renewables) now that mitigation policies of various kinds are taking effect.
But I don’t see anything like that. Rather, most of the articles I’m reading are claims of victory in the debate over both science and policy. Here’s a fairly typical example, with the title “Is the Climate Crusade Stalling?”
We really do live in parallel universes.
John Quiggin 
Well, I am impressed that she used an impeccable source like the Daily Mail to support her arguments.
As far as I can see the entire US right wing and most US climate denialists are becoming more and more irrational. Not only are they in a parallel universe but the universal laws of nature are completely different in the two universes
David Frumm, President G. W. Bush’s speach writer at the time of 9/11 described the parallel world conservatives in the USA lived in back in 2011. The universes have diverged even more since then.
“Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics. Outside this alternative reality, the United States is a country dominated by a strong Christian religiosity. Within it, Christians are a persecuted minority. Outside the system, President Obama—whatever his policy errors—is a figure of imposing intellect and dignity. Within the system, he’s a pitiful nothing, unable to speak without a teleprompter, an affirmative-action phony doomed to inevitable defeat. Outside the system, social scientists worry that the U.S. is hardening into one of the most rigid class societies in the Western world, in which the children of the poor have less chance of escape than in France, Germany, or even England. Inside the system, the U.S. remains (to borrow the words of Senator Marco Rubio) “the only place in the world where it doesn’t matter who your parents were or where you came from.”
http://nymag.com/news/politics/conservatives-david-frum-2011-11/index2.html
Is Denyocat alive or dead? Either way, the kitty litter at the bottom of the box is full of cats**t.
Yes, you see this in threads at Catallaxy all the time: at the time all of the evidence is solidifying against them, they claim to be more convinced it is actually climate science that is on its last legs. I think it shows the insidious power of modern instantaneous publishing and communications (the internet and Fox News) to disseminate crank theories with greater ease and frequency than ever before. (And, of course, the power of political ideology to cloud ability to treat evidence with any sense of objectivity at all.)
How was Paris a big success?
You need to adjust Chinese decline in coal by the continuing decline in GDP and for the increase in crude oil and natural gas. China Coal GDP
Declining GDP’s will always reduce carbon emissions. Degrowth is the only way out.
It is the same universe, just a corner of it where some people will do anything at all for money. The current main stay of the denialists, having lost miserably on every other point of science is
“The CO2 Coalition bases its main argument on the following: “CO2 is a nutrient that is essential to life. CO2 at current levels and higher enables plants, trees, and crops to grow faster and more efficiently. It is essential for life.”
a little on Harnett-White reveals the strategy afoot
http://blogs.edf.org/texascleanairmatters/2015/08/24/hartnett-white-and-pals-twist-science-for-sake-of-fossil-fuel-interests/
It would be almost the better outcome for Ted Cruz to win the presidency as the end result of that would be the very rapid denigration of the entire denialist movement along with a huge loss of face for the United States. It is one thing to fight a guerrilla campaign with science, but outright war would require a rapid and concise conclusion.
The war on science is entering its final phase.
* The Paris Conference was a big success.
Opinions run the whole gamut. The claim it is a “big success” is a mere hopeful assertion. Hansen thinks it’s a fraud and a fake.
“It’s a fraud really, a fake.” It’s just bullshit for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.” – James Hansen.
“Canadian climatologist Gordon McBean, the president of the International Council for Science, told CBC News there’s a generally positive feeling about the Paris agreement in the scientific community.” So, McBean notes a “generally positive feeling”. On its own a “generally positive feeling” means little to nothing. The real physics is the only thing that counts. McBean says it’s “largely not possible” that the world will meet the 2 C target.
* Coal-fired power stations are shutting down around the world.
I would like to see the stats for this. Global coal consumption shot up from under 2,500 metric tons of oil equivalent in 2001 to about 3,700 metric tons of oil equivalent in 2013. After that is grew slowly and then dipped in 2015. Will the dip be sustained into a decline? It is certainly possible but it is too early to say for sure. What is clear is that is already (most likely), too little too late, especially after the massive growth of 2001-2013.
* China has reduced its coal use for two years in a row.
It’s called an economic slowdown. Clean air policies may also be having an effect. Again, it’s too early so say for sure what is happening.
* India has increased its coal tax, and greatly expanded use of renewables.
“The utility electricity sector in India had an installed capacity of 288 GW as of 31 January 2016. Renewable Power plants constituted 28% of total installed capacity and Non-Renewable Power Plants constituted the remaining 72%.” – Wikipedia.
This look hopeful in itself. However, climate tracker shows India’s emissions growing steadily into the future with zero noticeable effect from pledges.
http://climateactiontracker.org/countries/india.html
To repeat myself repeating myself, as an economist and policy analyst, James Hansen makes a great climate scientist.
“We really do live in parallel universes.”
I’ve maintained for some time that there are people who simply have minds that are alien to me. I simply cannot comprehend how they ‘know’ what they know, where their certainty comes from, and how they manage to go through 20, 30, 40 or more years of adult life and be completely oblivious to simple facts and basic logic.
I understand the motivations and actions of my dog far better than I do some of my fellow human beings.
Global Average Warming is not the only area where ‘parallel universes’ are created. The methods of hard core propaganda seem to have been recovered in ‘communications’. The underlying belief seems to be that words can affect reality. I believe a necessary condition for the said belief to work is that those who create the ‘parallel universes’ have institutional power.
Depending on the particulars of the case, dozends, hundreds, thousands, millions of individuals’ time is wasted by these communications experts. Without the effort of these individuals who fight the substitution of black for white, negative for positive, etc, the communications experts gain traction in institutional power.
One more piece of evidence in support of JQ’s conclusion. One of the current PM’s first actions was to retire the previous PM’s Business Adviser, Mr Newman.
@Ivor
China’s GDP isn’t declining. Read the graph again.
@Tim Macknay
You appear to have taken “parallel universes” to heart a bit much.
GDP is usually quoted as a % growth.
Or did you have your computer screen upside down?
@Ivor
I have to agree with Tim here, you need to be more clear with the statements – GDP is GDP and GDP growth is GDP growth. The 2 are different. When you say “Declining GDP’s will always reduce carbon emissions” – I immediately don’t interpret that as meaning GDP *growth* and carbon emission *growth* without it explicitly stated. We also have to be mindful that growth is a compounding thing so an economy growing at a steady (positive) rate each period will grow by more and more each period.
@Tim Macknay
I can’t tell from your very obtuse comment whether or not you read the graph again, as I suggested. So I’ll apply the principle of charity, and assume that your response was intended in good faith but you just misread the graph.
You are correct that GDP is usually quoted as % growth, and the graph you linked to does in fact do that. The graph shows that the rate of GDP growth in China was around 7.5% per annum in 2014-15 (having slowed somewhat from a higher rate of around 12% per annum in 2000-2005). A growth rate of 7.5% per annum is not a decline.
The graph does, however show that Chinese coal consumption in 2014-15 was declining at a rate of around 2% per annum (or if you prefer, growing at a rate of around -2% per annum), a rather precipitous change from the earlier growth rate of around 11% per annum in 2000-2005. Also, the direction of the curve suggests that the decline rate is set to increase (in contrast with the GDP curve which suggests that the GDP growth rate is stabilising.
So, if the graph is correct in showing that Chinese GDP is growing at around 7.5% per annum, then Chinese GDP is clearly not declining. I hope this clears up the misunderstanding.
My last comment was intended for Ivor.
“GDP is usually quoted as a % growth”
No. GDP GROWTH is usually quoted as a % growth. GDP is usually quoted in dollars or equivalent currency. You’re getting confused by sloppy use of language.
Slower GDP growth should indeed, all else equal, mean slower coal usage growth. But John’s point is not that Chinese coal usage is growing slowly but that it is SHRINKING. That is unequivocally good news.
In related news (from the reality-based community), senior executives from the firm that controls China’s national electricity grid recently frightened Texan oil executives by telling them that China planned to phase out coal and oil on the grid and replacing them with renewables. A senior Chinese executive was also quoted as saying that there was no technical obstacle to doing this, further upsetting sensitive oil industry executives. Is there no end to Chinese perfidy ?!?
@Tim Macknay
Declining growth can either be declining rate of growth, or a decline in amount of growth.
If the rate of growth in one year is lower than previously – that is a decline.
If a car slows – its speed declines – even though it is still moving forward.
@Ivor
But not a decline in GDP, which was the original contention.
I must admit I’m at a bit of a loss as to why you want to keep arguing the point. If you weren’t originally talking about a decline in GDP (as opposed to a decline in the GDP growth rate), then it made no sense to raise the issue of Chinese GDP in the first place, since it doesn’t support your contention that emissions reduction requires de-growth.
@derrida derider
Shrinking coal consumption is good news only if the causes of the decline will not reverse and carbon emissions from oil and gas do not increase as part of the decline.
It is conditionally good news – not “unequivocally” good news.
@Tim Macknay
Yes, degrowth – for some economies – is the only way out now.
An association between declining CO2 emissions and declining growth does support this contention.
@John Quiggin
We’ll have to agree to disagree. I am not sure how being an (orthodox) economist confers more climate policy skills than being a climate scientist. I am not saying it confers less, but I certainly cannot see how it confers more. Orthodox economists’ claims to have special policy skills are dubious at best given the failure of their macro.
@Ivor
I think you’re reading far too much into the graph you linked to if you believe it provides any significant support for that contention. If it showed an actual decline in GDP accompanied by a proportionate decline in fossil fuel consumption (as a proxy for CO2 emissions) it would constitute much stronger support.
But it shows a moderate decline in the GDP growth rate, which appears to have stabilised, and a precipitous decline in the rate of growth of coal consumption, to the extent that coal consumption is now in absolute decline. And, on eyeballing the graph, the different shapes of the GDP and coal curves suggest at best a modest relationship between the two (i.e. the decline in the GDP growth rate may account for some of the decline in coal, but clearly not all of it).
I think as broad and sweeping a claim as the one that only de-growth can reduce GHG emissions needs somewhat more robust supporting evidence.
@Ikonoclast
So you agree with Hansen that only nuclear can save us then.
@Tim Macknay
The support is not insignificant. It is significant.
It does not have to be proportionate.
A modest association is an association.
Google “degrowth”.
@Ivor
I know what degrowth is, thanks. We’ll have to agree to disagree on the significance of your China graph. I’m not terribly inclined to argue with bare assertions.
@Ivor
A decline in the Chinese growth rate to a tad below 7% is not the same thing as a recession. You need to think that Chinese statistics are political fiction to get there. The IMF for one does not share that view.
@Ikonoclast
If you treat the INDC pledges as predictions. In China’s case, they are ridiculously cautious: peaking ” before 2030″ when the reality is “about now”. India is more difficult. They refused to pledge any cap at all and officially plan to double coal power generation. But the coal plants are not getting built and new solar is coming in at the same price, according to Piyush Goyal. The economics of new coal plants are not going to look better next year to Adani, Reliance and Tata. Modi and Xi could improve their NDCs when they sign the Paris Agreement at negligible cost.
Looks like the parallel universe is growing bigger every day.
@Donald Oats
Or noisier, at any rate.
@Tim Macknay
No, I don’t. Where did I say I agreed with Hansen on nuclear power? I said essentially that I agreed the Paris Conference was a farce, that the climate is in serious danger (to put it colloquially) and that the fossil fuel phase out is far too slow. You cannot validly infer from those points that I agree with Hansen on nuclear power. To be honest I don’t understand why Hansen pushes that nonsense. It’s irrelevant anyway. The nuclear renaissance is dead. That is one piece of J.Q.’s analysis that is spot on. I checked it, as far as I can check such things out, and J.Q. was 100% right on that.
However, I continue to take an opposing position to J.Q. on a couple of issues. The claim the Paris Conference was a big success strains all credulity. Basically, all the nations agreed to exactly… nothing. On the coal issue, recent developments are welcome, but it’s too early to call any real hope on that front. The real problem, once again, is the oil issue. The artificially engineered low price makes it harder for capitalism to break its oil habit. On the plus side, it could send fracking and tar sands out of business, forever one hopes. But the bottom line is we are changing far too slowly and capitalism as a system is the main reason that real, vital change is so difficult to get.
Behind all arguments for different power mixes, we find, mainly, what are simply different camps of capitalism apologists who always frame their arguments like this. “No matter the problem, capitalism is the answer. Just use the markets this way, or regulate capitalism that way.” They’ve been saying this for 40 years. Meanwhile, the system has continued on an ever worsening and more damaging path. Now, in the 41st year (about) capitalism seems to be turning a little. Oh gee, thanks for that. What a responsive system! It only takes 40 years to make a course change of 5 degrees (when we needed a 180 two decades ago).
Stop press on Chinese emissions: Lord Stern agrees with me: China’s emissions will peak before 2025 and may already have done so. The Chinese government disagrees. Whom do you trust more? China’s leaders have a vested interest in caution, and they are under no political pressure to change their official forecasts.
@James Wimberley
It is probably best to keep scare words such as “recession” or “depression” out of this context.
A decline in growth is not necessarily a recession in terms of increasing unemployment and bankruptcies etc.
PS. A tidbit from the (very readable) Green/Stern paper:
“In the first half of 2015 …. crude steel production fell by 1.3 %, and cement production fell by 5.3 %, compared with the same period in 2014.”
They also claim that the inequality connected to the old material-intensive growth model is one of the reasons given by leaders to Stern for the policy shift. Take it with a pinch of salt, but it makes sense in Realpolitik: overmighty subjects are a traditional threat to autocracies.
@Ivor
“Recession” isn’t a scare word but a term of art: two consecutive quarters of absolutely lower GDP than the previous peak.
You were wrong, admit it.
@James Wimberley
It is probably best to keep scare words such as “recession” or “depression” out of this context.
A decline in growth is not necessarily a recession in terms of increasing unemployment and bankruptcies etc.
It was your choice of words not mine.
Enough on Ivor’s derailment. He’s confused a declining rate of growth (what’s happened to GDP) with a declining level (what’s happening for coal consumption). That’s wrong, and no further correspondence will be entered into (any attempts to revive this subthread will be deleted).
Ikonoklast, I’m not standing on my credentials as an “orthodox economist” vs Hansen’s as a climate scientist. You can assess my arguments right here. The problem is that you are quoting Hansen as an authority when he is no more qualified than you are. Looking at his actual arguments, he gets things wrong all the time, his support for nuclear power being typical. If you’re impressed by Hansen’s analysis, make the same case here, don’t just cite his conclusions as if they had some authority behind them.
@Donald Oats
You beat me to it. The smh article you linked to puts a little damper on my optimism.
@Donald Oats
I must say I like the Liberal Party’s idea. Lord Moncton up against a couple of well coached IPCC spokesmen. I want the popcorn franchise.
@Kevin O’Neill
Start with Oreskes & Conway’s Merchants of Doubt and then for some interesting reading try Bob Altemeyer’s The Authoriarians http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians.pdf . BTW it is an early attempt at self-publishing using Word. I read it with two PDF readers.
All you need in this case is a strong religious belief in unfettered Free Marked Economics, lots of self interest, complete immorality on some peoples’ part and a bunch of willing dupes (see Altemeyer) who can believe three impossible things before breakfast and it’s easy to explain climate denial.
It also seems that there is a subset of the human race that easily believes in conspiracy theories (some of Altemeyer’s people who also can can believe three impossible things before breakfast) and you’re away.
Err that should read “Market”
@jrkrideau
All the IPCC would need to do is welcome the opportunity for a debate with qualified climate scientists, understood as authors or co-authors of at least 50 peer-reviewed articles on aspects of climate change.
It also seems that there is a subset of the human race that easily believes in conspiracy theories (some of Altemeyer’s people who also can can believe three impossible things before breakfast) and you’re away.
There are realistically two possibilities worthy of consideration:
+ Altermeyer — and not only Altermeyer, there’s been a lot of fairly-recent work by reasonably large numbers of people — are mistaken, and “authoritarian follower” types — are mistaken, and have not found anything real.
+ Altermeyer-et-al have found a real phenomenon, which is known to cognitive scientists under a different label. And presumably a fairly well-known one, given the numbers.
The other possibilities can be dismissed:
+ the variability of what constitutes “political” means that “it’s a real phenomenon, but limited in its effects to ‘politics’ so the psychologists never spotted it” isn’t plausible: it also doesn’t mesh with Altermeyer’s results showing that authoritarian followership had impact in small-scale decision-making.
+ The idea that there’s a major and widespread set-of-patterns-of-behaviour-and-attitude that has some pretty significant effects on social outcomes but that was missed by psychologists until the political scientists found it is, you know, not plausible either.
So. It strikes me that either “authoritarian follower” is no real thing at all, or it’s already better-known under the name the psychologists gave it, whatever that might be.
@John Quiggin
I am slightly baffled by parts of your comment. However, I accept my arguments for my position in this thread have been, in the main, poor. I’ll put it down to a bad day. We all have those.
(I see Donald Oates picked this story up earlier)
You need look no further than our own back yard to find Alternative Universe Nutters…
http://joannenova.com.au/2016/03/nsw-state-branch-of-liberals-calls-for-national-climate-debate/
If you go there to look my advice is don’t comment, it only encourages them, but it shows how destabilised the LNP is. How delightful that they want Abbott back. We have to hope that they get there wish.
You have to wonder why the Libs would want to humiliate themselves in this way after Ted Cruz’s Senate “Debate” on climate science a little while ago, from which Cruz emerged looking like a total fool. But then it is not about science at all, it is about creating the impression that there is still a debate.
Most arguments for and against AGW, as an emerging reality requiring preventative action, are not really arguments about climate change at all. They are proxy “system justification” arguments. The AGW denialist position is very obviously a system justification position. The current system, capitalism, is morally right, beneficial to all mankind and any concerns for the environment are entirely misplaced. This is the ideological supertext of the right-wing denialist position. The real, material position is, of course, the short term self-interest of a rich minority.
It is less obvious, but the AGW arguments of the moderate left, those we might call social democrats, liberals, Keynesians and capitalist mixed economy advocates, are still proxy “system justification” arguments. Again, these arguments function within an ideological supertext where capitalism is implicitly regarded as indispensable for solving the very problems it has created. The practical result of such arguments is merely the continued justification of capitalism and not any search for real solutions to climate change problems.
Great to know from JQ – yet again – that things are really on the improve. Just wish there was any evidence of this from the Keeling Curve.
The US, and Australian, conservative approach to block change is just crazy. In a time of rapid social and technology change, if you try to block change in the name of protecting existing companies, you end up with yesterday’s industries. How many columnists said that we shouldn’t have a carbon price as it stuffed our core area of competitiveness ie energy (goal and gas). Well, so much for coal. Gas prices are so low its a worry. Yes, we may have done better with a carbon price done differently. A real private enterprise party (ie the Liberals) would embrace change as a way to create new business opportunities, not block change to protect current businesses.
@tony lynch
How unreasonable of you to require empirical evidence in the measurable physical outcomes. 😉
What I fear might happen is this. Industrial-information capitalism will now belatedly change. Over the next 20 years, it will appear to change quite rapidly compared to its former snail pace of change. This will be trumpeted as proof that capitalism has delivered the solutions. However, the solutions will be too late; indeed they are already too late. But the real damage will be at least 50 years down the track when all the current culprits, apologists and enablers are dead.
At the same time, I suspect the current system will go bad well before then. I do not see how the USA is on a sustainable path socially and economically even if climate and environmental damage do not bite for another 50 years. The destruction of education in the USA now is an astonishing and frightening phenomenon. There is really no way they are going to be able to run a technologically and socially advanced society of the back their currently devolving “education” system. The implications are frightening but outside this particular tread topic.
As Robert Manne writes;
“Yet, as many people now realise, something much more profound than all this (statist action) is required: a re-imagining of the relations between humans and the Earth, a re-imagining that will be centred on a recognition of the dreadful and perhaps now irreversible damage that has been wrought to our common home by the hubristic idea at the very centre of the modern world – man’s assertion of his mastery over nature.”
IMO, the real challenge will be to develop an ecological humanism and/or an ecologically aware metaphysics without regress to mere mythicism, religionism or theocratic rule. A key issue might entail a moral elevation of impact science over production science. Our productive power is not our problem now. Our impact power on the natural and human world is our problem now.
Tony Lynch
There is evidence from the Keeling Curve. If you look at global oil consumption this has increased some 10 million barrels per day over the last 6 years to 94 million barrels per day. At the same time the oil consumption per person has dropped as has coal consumption per person.
So the improvement in the Keeling curve is that it has not become as steep as it otherwise would have given the global population increase which is driving the oil consumption increase.