It’s Time To Get Real About The Extreme Scenario Used To Generate Climate Porn

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Great article by Roger Pielke discussing the ways that the media exaggerate and sensationalises climate science. A good example being how the likes of the BBC, Guardian, WaPo or the NYT always discuss the worst case scenarios like RCP 8.5, which even the IPCC recognises is impossible.
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Climate change that results from the combustion of fossil fuels poses significant risks to the Earth’s environment and human society. Aggressive adaptation and mitigation policies make good sense. However, discussions of climate policy are thrown off track by the widespread misuse of an extreme climate scenario.

The case for any policy action on any issue can be characterized as a forked-road situation, to paraphrase American pragmatist John Dewey, one which proposes alternatives. We discuss and debate which fork in the road to take, based on where we believe it will take us. In order to glean what the different destinations might look like, we often turn to experts to offer predictions or projections of the future, conditional on implementing alternative policy options.

Climate policy has long focused on the use of formalized scenarios to characterize the future, based on a wide range of assumptions, data, theory and models. The alternative forks in the road for climate policy – which for mitigation, are focused on alternative future rates of greenhouse gas emissions - have typically been compared to what has been called “business as usual,” a fork in the road based on the idea that we take no purposeful action to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. These “business as usual” scenarios are called “baseline scenarios (no climate policy)” by their creators.


It is logical that the benefits of mitigation action can be estimated by comparing scenarios that take one of the forks in the road that adopts policies to reduce emissions against the alternative future of “business as usual.” Such comparisons are used in cost-benefit analyses and to calculate what is known as the “social cost of carbon.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has utilized several different generations of scenarios since the 1980s, and these scenarios have been an important basis for discussions of climate science, impacts and policy. Over the past decade, the misuse of one family of scenarios in particular has profoundly shaped discussions about climate in both the public and in policy. That family of scenarios goes by the name RCP 8.5 (RCP = representative concentration pathway, technically a “a scenario set containing emission, concentration and land-use trajectories” leading to “radiative forcing levels of 8.5, 6, 4.5 and 2.6 W/m2”).

The misuse of RCP 8.5 involves the transformation of what is more accurately described as a worst-case scenario into the sole “business as usual” or baseline scenario that has become a centerpiece of climate policy discussions. However, when the family of RCPs was initially introduced to the scientific community there were actually three families of baseline scenarios: RCP 4.5 (“very low baseline”), RCP 6.0 (“medium baseline”), and RCP 8.5 (“high baseline”).


None of the RCPs was presented as being more likely a future than another. As the creators of the scenarios explained: “The RCPs should not be interpreted as forecasts or absolute bounds … no likelihood or preference is attached to any of the individual scenarios of the set.” This means that “business as usual” under the RCPs actually spans many individual scenarios within the RCP 4.5, 6.0 and 8.5 families of scenarios.

Detlef van Vuuren, lead author of the paper that described the RCPs, explained to Carbon Brief that if any forcing level associated with business-as-usual was to be considered most likely, it was RCP 6.0: “even if the specific RCP6.0 scenario is not necessarily more likely than any other scenario, a forcing level in that order-of-magnitude might be more likely.” Van Vuuren further explains, “RCP8.5 was never meant to be a business-as-usual scenario, but as a high-end scenario, consistent with the highest emissions scenarios in the literature.”

Zeke Hausfather of Carbon Brief explains that RCP 8.5 “is more properly considered to be one of the worst case emissions outcomes, as according to van Vuuren and colleagues, more than 90% of the other no-policy baseline scenarios in the literature result in lower emissions.” Thus, RCP 8.5 is, by definition, no more likely a future than RCP 4.5 as a characterization of business as usual.

So why does all of this matter?

The most popular study used to project the future impacts on climate change is RCP 8.5 and is typically characterized uniquely as the “business as usual” scenario. I’ve spoken to many climate modelers who have explained that using the high emissions RCP 8.5 scenario is useful in their work to better separate the signal of a greenhouse gas forcing from the noise of natural variability and to maintain continuity with past studies that use high emissions scenarios. These justifications make good sense.


But the result of the disproportionate emphasis on RCP 8.5 combined with its mischaracterization as the “business as usual” scenario has been an avalanche of studies and corresponding media coverage that presents a worst-case scenario as the most likely future. At best, this represents a form of cherry picking. Imagine if studies instead focused solely on RCP 4.5 as “business as usual” and concluded that climate change would really not be that big a deal. Such selectivity would be highly misleading.

The misuse of RCP 8.5 is endemic. In fact, if you see a news story with dramatic projections of future climate impacts, you should expect that it comes from RCP 8.5.

For instance, just yesterday the IPCC released its most recent report, on oceans and the cryosphere, in which it emphasized RCP 2.6 as a “high mitigation future” and RCP 8.5 as a “a high greenhouse gas emission scenario in the absence of policies to combat climate change.”

The New York Times reported that the IPCC had concluded that: “The new report projects that, under the business-as-usual scenario for carbon emissions, seas by the end of the century will rise between 2 feet (61 centimeters) and 43 inches (110 centimeters), with a most likely rise of 33 inches (84 centimeters).” The Financial Times went even further, “by 2100 a rise of as much as 1.1m was likely under a business-as-usual scenario.”

Like the children’s game of Chinese whispers or telephone, this is how the most extreme results from the most extreme family of scenarios becomes transformed into “likely under a business-as-usual scenario.” Multiply this dynamic across many thousands of climate studies and we get the wholesale transformation of climate change into something that looks far more apocalyptic than can be discerned from the actual science summarized by the IPCC.


If we are to use the notion of “business as usual” as a baseline for projecting a future with no further climate policy implementation, then it would be far more appropriate to use the full range of scenarios which could plausibly fit this characterization, and not focus on the most extreme. This would result in a fuller understanding of the range of plausible futures, and crucially, would be far more scientifically defensible than the steady stream of extreme claims about our climate future.

More fundamentally, we might start asking whether a “no policy” baseline even makes sense in a world in which climate policy is at the center of international and national political debates. In any case, it may be that successful climate policy depends more on the short-terms costs and benefits of alternative courses of action, than it does on long-term scenarios.

There are even deeper issues associated with RCP 8.5 than just its transformation from a worst case to “business as usual.” Recent research indicates that it may not even be a plausible worst-case scenario, because it requires improbably changes to our global energy policies, such as a wholesale return to coal throughout the 21st century and the abandonment of natural gas and renewables. But that is a subject for another time.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpi.../#644342904af0

[Cinnabar]

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Great article by Roger Pielke discussing the ways that the media exaggerate and sensationalises climate science. A good example being how the likes of the BBC, Guardian, WaPo or the NYT always discuss the worst case scenarios like RCP 8.5, which even the IPCC recognises is impossible.
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpi.../#644342904af0

One can always find opinion pieces which suit their agenda and if it is this guy, he certainly is not without his own critics...

Roger Pielke Jr. is a Senior Fellow at Breakthrough Insitute and seemingly their lead climate science ‘expert’. Breakthrough is a nest of public relations professionals advocating contrarian and misguided solutions to the climate crisis like more nuclear power and fracking, while attacking renewable energy and energy efficiency. Breakthrough have made their name over the past few years trashing the environmental movement and prevailing climate policy efforts, while making polluting and dangerous industries smile.

Pielke’s 3/19/2014 – FiveThirtyEight article that kicked it off: Disasters Cost More Than Ever – But Not Because of Climate Change

Think Progress 3/19/2014 – First Climate Article On Nate Silver’s Data Website Uses ‘Deeply Misleading’ Data, Top Climatologists Say

Huffington Post 3/27/2014 – Statistics and Climate Science: Roger Pielke Missed the Mark

Huffington Post 3/28/2014 – FiveThirtyEight Apologizes On Behalf Of Controversial Climate Science Writer

American Geophysical Union 3/29/2014 – Lies, Damned Lies and Statistical Truth

FiveThirtyEight – Kerry Emanuel 3/31/2014 MIT Climate Scientist Responds on Disaster Costs And Climate Change

Whitehouse.gov – Science Advisor John P. Holdren, 2/28/2014 – Drought and Global Climate Change: An Analysis of Statements by Roger Pielke Jr

Real Climate 12/9/2009 – Who you gonna call?

HillHeat – 7/31/2012 – The late great Stephen Schneider’s Criticism of Roger Pielke Jr.: A Self-Aggrandizer, Trickster, and Careerist

Science Magazine – Insurance in a Climate of Change

Grist – 111 ways Nate Silver hire Roger Pielke Jr doesn’t like you

https://climateinvestigations.org/br...rtyeight_post/

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One can always find opinion pieces which suit their agenda and if it is this guy, he certainly is not without his own critics...

Yes how dare he advocate fracking and nuclear power, why should the West become energy independent. Far better to live in the shadow of capricious Middle East potentates instead. Who the fuck are Climate investigations anyway, I bet you don't know either it was just the first hit piece you could find, amirite? Of course it hasn't also gone unnoticed that you're totally incapable of debating the many points he made choosing the lazy man's approach of googling and looking for some dirt. You're truly pathetic and ignorant to boot. So sunshine which of the four Representative Concentration Pathways outlined in the IPCC AR5 report do you consider the most likely. Should I give you some time to google for a answer?

[dukkha]

But the result of the disproportionate emphasis on RCP 8.5 combined with its mischaracterization as the “business as usual” scenario has been an avalanche of studies and corresponding media coverage that presents a worst-case scenario as the most likely future. At best, this represents a form of cherry picking.
Imagine if studies instead focused solely on RCP 4.5 as “business as usual” and concluded that climate change would really not be that big a deal. Such selectivity would be highly misleading.

The misuse of RCP 8.5 is endemic. In fact, if you see a news story with dramatic projections of future climate impacts, you should expect that it comes from RCP 8.5.

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But the result of the disproportionate emphasis on RCP 8.5 combined with its mischaracterization as the “business as usual” scenario has been an avalanche of studies and corresponding media coverage that presents a worst-case scenario as the most likely future. At best, this represents a form of cherry picking.
Imagine if studies instead focused solely on RCP 4.5 as “business as usual” and concluded that climate change would really not be that big a deal. Such selectivity would be highly misleading.

The misuse of RCP 8.5 is endemic. In fact, if you see a news story with dramatic projections of future climate impacts, you should expect that it comes from RCP 8.5.

Do you remember that woeful exercise in climate alarmism called the National Climate Assessment 2018? That was almost totally based on RCP8.5, a scenario that the IPCC themselves agree is impossible. Not that idiots like Arsecheese or Cinnabar would know that, they're just not very bright.

[dukkha]

Do you remember that woeful exercises in climate alarmism called the National Climate Assessment 2018? That was almost totally based on RCP8.5, a scenario that the IPCC themselves agree is impossible. Not that idiots like Arsecheese or Cinnabar would know that, they're just not very bright.

I've learned more "carbon science" from your threads over the years then 10x the noises broadcast by the media

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I've learned more "carbon science" from your threads over the years then 10x the noises broadcast by the media

That's because you've an open mind unlike most of the ignorant buggers on here.

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I've learned more "carbon science" from your threads over the years then 10x the noises broadcast by the media

Which means you've bought the false paradigm.

"Fogcatcher" posts opinion pieces and "studies" off of climate denier websites, an easy task, yet if you counter with something supporting climate change, of which falls the preponderance of evidence, he won't exchange on the content but dismiss it and the poster, or counter with what he thinks are the right semantics to make it appear he knows what he is talking about, been there, done that, waste of time

Examine both sides and the conclusion is obvious

[dukkha]

Which means you've bought the false paradigm.

"Fogcatcher" posts opinion pieces and "studies" off of climate denier websites, an easy task, yet if you counter with something supporting climate change, of which falls the preponderance of evidence, he won't exchange on the content but dismiss it and the poster, or counter with what he thinks are the right semantics to make it appear he knows what he is talking about, been there, done that, waste of time

Examine both sides and the conclusion is obvious

the result of the disproportionate emphasis on RCP 8.5 combined with its mischaracterization as the “business as usual” scenario has been an avalanche of studies and corresponding media coverage that presents a worst-case scenario as the most likely future. At best, this represents a form of cherry picking.

[cancel2 2022]

Which means you've bought the false paradigm.

"Fogcatcher" posts opinion pieces and "studies" off of climate denier websites, an easy task, yet if you counter with something supporting climate change, of which falls the preponderance of evidence, he won't exchange on the content but dismiss it and the poster, or counter with what he thinks are the right semantics to make it appear he knows what he is talking about, been there, done that, waste of time

Examine both sides and the conclusion is obvious

Sorry Arsecheese, but you haven't the foggiest idea about the science, not only that you don't even understand the nature of the debate itself. Don't bother in future you're out of your depth.

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Sorry Arsecheese, but you haven't the foggiest idea about the science, not only that you don't even understand the nature of the debate itself. Don't bother in future you're out of your depth.

And then he goes out and proves my point, thanks

[Centerleftfl]

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpi.../#644342904af0

INTERNET "EXTREME CLIMATE" PORN (VIDEO)



Used to be a lovely little RETIREES 'hot' spot. No more.

See the pretty greenery at Mexico Beach. Slide to see it disappear...


https://whnt.com/2018/10/12/before-a...ee-the-damage/



NUMBER of CAT 5 hurricanes over the past 50 years. Sure looks heavy on the right sight of the GRAPH? Just a coincidence with 'GLOBAL WARMING' concerns? Or a FAKE GRAPH?

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And then he goes out and proves my point, thanks

Man you're one seriously stupid old man, die soon!!

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Which means you've bought the false paradigm.

"Fogcatcher" posts opinion pieces and "studies" off of climate denier websites, an easy task, yet if you counter with something supporting climate change, of which falls the preponderance of evidence, he won't exchange on the content but dismiss it and the poster, or counter with what he thinks are the right semantics to make it appear he knows what he is talking about, been there, done that, waste of time

Examine both sides and the conclusion is obvious

Stupid cunt, the preponderance of evidence is from CMIP5 climate models, which have all run way too hot, they cannot even begin to model cloud behaviour, the effects of aerosols, lack of sunspots and cosmic rays. I frankly cannot be bothered with a stupid old fart like you, seriously just fucking die!!

[Centerleftfl]

Stupid cunt, the preponderance of evidence is from CMIP5 climate models, which have all run way too hot, they cannot even begin to model cloud behaviour, the effects of aerosols, lack of sunspots and cosmic rays. I frankly cannot be bothered with a stupid old fart like you, seriously just fucking die!!

WHY, WHY, WHY? So what happens if we take steps to remediate? WHAT THE FUCK DO WE HAVE TO LOSE? There is not LOSING. Well maybe the OIL COMPANIES. They have a worldwide market. How are they going to lose?

FUCK YOUR KIDS? FUCK YOUR GRANDKIDS? You don't give a shit about any future generations?

Belligerence is FUN? Ignorance is fun? What?