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Eeh. Misguided article. The article itself starts by recognizing the challenge of making scenarios because of the feedback loop they embody. Then seemingly forg

by a1371 4y ago

Eeh. Misguided article. The article itself starts by recognizing the challenge of making scenarios because of the feedback loop they embody. Then seemingly forgets about all that and basically says "coal has likely peaked already, why are assuming it will grow in the future?" Well, because of that feedback loop. Coal is still a cheap way of making energy, as it is in the business-as-usual economics of the scenarios. If we say "coal is not a problem", the pressure shifts away from coal and its usage may linger longer than it should. The scenarios are about the forces impacting the trends, not the trends themselves.

ankit219 4y ago
The IPCC report made some really questionable assumptions, reached conclusions based on those, which were then exacerbated by the journalists treating the worst case scenarios as absolute certainties. Creating fear and panic around stuff usually works and has worked well for a long time. It's true that we reduced the usage of coal in last few years. It's a big assumption that it happened because of a worst case scenario popularized by IPCC. From this article[1], IPCC's 8.5 was based on the assumption that between 2017-2100 we will use 5x as much coal as we had done in our entire lifetime. That's a like a "coal boom". The world was already moving away from coal, even before the report, and at best the report and faulty scenario created more panic. > Everyone knew about the decades of coal-powered economic growth in China, but those working closely on the future of energy had already grown somewhat skeptical that the same model would be deployed across the developing world — and even more skeptical that the rich nations of the world would ever return to coal in a sustained way. > The most conspicuous example was an emissions pathway called RCP8.5, which required at least a fivefold growth of coal use over the course of the 21st century. Because it was the darkest available do-nothing path, RCP8.5 was reflexively called, in the scientific literature and by journalists covering it, “business as usual.” Feedback loop as you call it probably slowed down the pace turning the whole thing into a culture war, creating mass hysteria, and getting people to fight each other when they were likely already moving away from coal. We don't have a control group in this case, and climate action is needed, though I am not sure if creating panic was justified at any time. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/26/magazine/climate-change-warming-world.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/26/magazine/clim...
- acdha 4y ago
  > Feedback loop as you call it probably slowed down the pace turning the whole thing into a culture war, creating mass hysteria, and getting people to fight each other when they were likely already moving away from coal. What made it a culture war was the fossil fuel companies pumping billions of dollars into politics for decades. The Republicans didn’t used to be the anti-science party – that took years of investment building think tanks, the media bubble, etc. which turned that into a litmus test for candidates and making any sort of consensus off limits (a Republican lobbyist I know socially used to represent the fishing & hunting interests. Around the Obama era, those old coalitions fell apart as politicians would tell him that he was right but there was no way they could support environmental protections and survive the primary media cycle). It’s very easy to look at coal declining and say it was inevitable but that ignores how it was hard won at each step. As you had countries like China booming it’s really not hard to see how deniers having a little more clout could have lead to locking in decades of elevated emissions.
mymythisisthis 4y ago
Likes like coal production has increased since the 1990s https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-production-by-country https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-production-by-countr...

by a1371 4y ago

ankit219 4y ago

The IPCC report made some really questionable assumptions, reached conclusions based on those, which were then exacerbated by the journalists treating the worst case scenarios as absolute certainties. Creating fear and panic around stuff usually works and has worked well for a long time. It's true that we reduced the usage of coal in last few years. It's a big assumption that it happened because of a worst case scenario popularized by IPCC. From this article[1], IPCC's 8.5 was based on the assumption that between 2017-2100 we will use 5x as much coal as we had done in our entire lifetime. That's a like a "coal boom". The world was already moving away from coal, even before the report, and at best the report and faulty scenario created more panic. > Everyone knew about the decades of coal-powered economic growth in China, but those working closely on the future of energy had already grown somewhat skeptical that the same model would be deployed across the developing world — and even more skeptical that the rich nations of the world would ever return to coal in a sustained way. > The most conspicuous example was an emissions pathway called RCP8.5, which required at least a fivefold growth of coal use over the course of the 21st century. Because it was the darkest available do-nothing path, RCP8.5 was reflexively called, in the scientific literature and by journalists covering it, “business as usual.” Feedback loop as you call it probably slowed down the pace turning the whole thing into a culture war, creating mass hysteria, and getting people to fight each other when they were likely already moving away from coal. We don't have a control group in this case, and climate action is needed, though I am not sure if creating panic was justified at any time. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/26/magazine/climate-change-warming-world.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/26/magazine/clim...

acdha 4y ago
> Feedback loop as you call it probably slowed down the pace turning the whole thing into a culture war, creating mass hysteria, and getting people to fight each other when they were likely already moving away from coal. What made it a culture war was the fossil fuel companies pumping billions of dollars into politics for decades. The Republicans didn’t used to be the anti-science party – that took years of investment building think tanks, the media bubble, etc. which turned that into a litmus test for candidates and making any sort of consensus off limits (a Republican lobbyist I know socially used to represent the fishing & hunting interests. Around the Obama era, those old coalitions fell apart as politicians would tell him that he was right but there was no way they could support environmental protections and survive the primary media cycle). It’s very easy to look at coal declining and say it was inevitable but that ignores how it was hard won at each step. As you had countries like China booming it’s really not hard to see how deniers having a little more clout could have lead to locking in decades of elevated emissions.

mymythisisthis 4y ago

Likes like coal production has increased since the 1990s https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-production-by-country https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-production-by-countr...