Looks like Guy McPherson was seriously wrong….

After debating with Dave Kimble for several months over the issue of whether we are at a tipping point, it appears he may have been right all along:  there’s no way we are even going to reach +2ºC above 1990 temperatures.  Looks like McPherson’s forecasts of Near Term Human Extinction was highly overcooked……  Why do I say this?  Read on…….

Dave Kimble

The IPCC detailed report is out and, as Dave predicted, the temperature response for RCP2.6 is +1.5°C, range 1.1 – 1.8 by 2045.  Thereafter they show the temperature remaining constant or microscopically getting slightly lower –  in the modelling I’ve seen, it was measurably getting lower by 2100.

So no “tipping point” according to IPCC, not even for the highest scenario, RCP8.5.

Gail Tverberg

Gail Tverberg’s latest article is a game changer in my opinion.  It completely agrees with Dave:

 

 

The Likely Effect of Oil Limits

The likely effect of oil limits–one way or the other–is to bring down the economy, and because of this bring an end to pretty much all carbon emissions (not just oil) very quickly. There are several ways this could happen:

• High oil prices – we saw what these could do in 2008.  They nearly sank the financial system. If they return, central banks have already done most of what they can to “fix” the situation. They are likely to be short of ammunition the next time around.

• Low oil prices – this is the current problem. Oil companies are cutting back on new expenditures because they cannot make money on a cash flow basis on shale plays and on other new oil drilling. Oil companies can’t just keep adding debt, so they are doing less investment. I talked about this in Beginning of the End? Oil Companies Cut Back on Spending. Less oil means either a rebound in prices or not enough oil produced to go around. Either way, we are likely to see massive recession and falling world GDP.

• Huge credit problems, such as happened in 2008, only worse. Oil drilling would stop within a few years, because oil prices would drop too low, and stay too low, without lots of credit to prop up prices of commodities of all types.

• Rapidly rising interest rates, as QE reaches its limits. (QE for the United States was put in place at the time of the 2008 crisis, and has been continued since then.) Rising interest rates lead to higher needed tax rates and high monthly payments for homes and cars. The current QE-induced bubble in stock, land, and home prices is also likely to break, sending prices down again.

• End of globalization, as countries form new alliances, such as Russia-China-Iran. The US is making false claims that we can get along without some parts of the world, because we have so much natural gas and oil. This is nonsense. Once groups of countries start pulling in opposite directions, the countries that have been using a disproportionate share of oil (particularly Europe, the United States, and Japan) will find themselves in deep trouble.

• Electric grid failures, because subsidies for renewables leave companies that sell fossil-fuel powered electricity with too little profit. The current payment system for renewables needs to be fixed to be fair to companies that generate electricity using fossil fuels. We cannot operate our economy on renewables alone, in part, because the quantity is far too small. Creation of new renewables and maintenance of such renewables is also fossil fuel dependent.

Given the choice between economic collapse and runaway climate change, collapse is the pick.  Collapse, however, brings surprising results according to Gail.  Have a look at this chart of hers showing Peak ALL energy happening next year:

See that pale blue strip at the top?  It’s energy produced by renewables.  By 2035, it is half the height of what it is today.  And the purple nuclear strip is maybe no more than a quarter of today’s…….  ALL high tech ‘solutions’ require complex systems driven by cheap and abundant fossil fuels.  And the demise of cheap and abundant fossil fuels is exactly what will bring all this complexity to its knees…..  If you want energy security for yourself using renewables, I urge you to waste no time, do it now…  Gail further states:

The IPCC’s Message Isn’t Really Right 

We are bumping up against limits in many ways not modelled in the IPCC report. The RCP2.6 Scenario comes closest of the scenarios shown in providing an indication of our future situation. Clearly the climate is changing and will continue to change in ways that our planners never considered when they built cities and took out long-term loans. This is a problem not easily solved.

One of the big issues is that energy supplies seem to be leaving us, indirectly through economic changes that we have little control over. The IPCC report is written from the opposite viewpoint:  we humans are in charge and need to decide to leave energy supplies. The view is that the economy, despite our energy problems, will return to robust growth. With this robust growth, our big problem will be climate change because of the huge amount of carbon emissions coming from fossil fuel burning.

Unfortunately, the real situation is that the laws of physics, rather than humans, are in charge. Basically, as economies grow, it takes increasing complexity to fix problems, as Joseph Tainter explained in his book, The Collapse of Complex Societies. Dissipative structures provide this ever-increasing complexity through higher “energy rate density” (explained in the Chaisson article linked above –).

We need to understand what are really up against, if we are to think rationally about the future. It would be helpful if more people tried to understand the physics of the situation, even if it is a difficult subject. While we can’t really expect to “fix” the situation, we can perhaps better understand what “solutions” are likely to make the situation worse. Such knowledge will also provide a better context for understanding how climate change fits in with other limits we are reaching. Climate change is certainly not the whole problem, but it may still play a significant role.

For the whole picture, I can’t recommend reading the original enough……  it may well be the most important article Gail has ever written….