Tech | November 09, 2011 | 32 comments

IEA Warning: We’re Headed Toward 11°F Global Warming and “Delaying Action Is a False Economy”

source: http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/11/09/364895/iea-global-warming-delaying-action-is-a-fals...

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JanforGore
International Energy Agency: “On planned policies, rising fossil energy use will lead to irreversible and potentially catastrophic climate change.”

“… we are on an even more dangerous track to an increase of 6°C [11°F]…. Delaying action is a false economy: for every $1 of investment in cleaner technology that is avoided in the power sector before 2020, an additional $4.30 would need to be spent after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions.”

The International Energy Agency has issued yet another clarion call for urgent action on climate. Their 2011 World Energy Outlook [WEO] release should end once and for all any notion that delay is the rational course for the nation and the world.

The UK Guardian‘s headline captures the urgency:

World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns


If fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed, the world will ‘lose for ever’ the chance to avoid dangerous climate change

We must start aggressively deploying clean energy now through myriad policies, including a price on carbon. That has been the conclusion of most authoritative studies, of course, including the recent one by California’s independent state science and technology advisory panel (see “Study Confirms Optimal Climate Strategy: Deploy, Deploy, Deploy, Research and Develop, Deploy, Deploy, Deploy“).

The IEA report deserves the label “bombshell,” though, because for most of the past two decades, the IEA was the source of bland, conservative, business-as-usual analysis. When I was Acting Assistant Secretary of Energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy in 1997, no one at DOE paid much attention to IEA reports. And that perspective continued through most of the 2000s.

But in just the last few years they have woken up to the risks posed to peak oil — see IEA top economist warns (8/09): “We have to leave oil before oil leaves us” — and especially climate change. In releasing its 2009 WEO, the IEA warned, “The world will have to spend an extra $500 billion to cut carbon emissions for each year it delays implementing a major assault on global warming.”

Now the IEA has done the calculation a different way, concluding, “Delaying action is a false economy: for every $1 of investment in cleaner technology that is avoided in the power sector before 2020, an additional $4.30 would need to be spent after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions.” Those who counsel waiting for breakthrough technologies are urging us on a path that is unsustainable, irreversible, potentially catastrophic, and economically indefensible, according to the IEA.

The IEA is one of the few organizations in the world with a sophisticated enough global energy model to do credible (i.e non-hand-waving) projections of the cost of different emissions pathways and the costs of delaying efforts to achieve them. Their 2008 analysis of the 2°C warming pathway demonstrated that the total shift in investment needed to stabilize at 450 ppm is only about 1.1% of GDP per year — and that is not a “cost” or hit to GDP, because much of that investment goes towards saving expensive fuel (see “IEA report: Climate Progress has the 450-ppm solution about right“).

The new analysis shows that because of soaring emissions, we are running out of time for the “450 Scenario.” We are at risk of irreversibly “locking in” dangerous warming — a point I agree with mostly, but not entirely:

More at the link
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32 comments // IEA Warning: We’re Headed Toward 11°F Global Warming and “Delaying Action Is a False Economy”

  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  

    • This stew pot we're in is getting very hot. Perhaps somebody should DO SOMETHING like that boy in Tremors advised eh?

      We appear to be reaching uhm 375 Fahrenheit I estimate. Too bad too. We were once a great country now we're nuthin'.

    • 7 months ago
  • Gravity_Man
  • Gravity_Man
  • coolplanet
    • -1
      coolplanet  

    • Only a few years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted a 4 to 6 degree F rise in global temperature by the 22nd Century caused by burning fossil fuels.
      That amount of atmospheric heat and carbon has not occurred on Earth in many millions of years!
      Now suddenly we discover it will be TWICE that amount by mid-century???
      Why can't we see that this is the greatest (fixable) problem we have faced as a species in the millions of years of our evolution?
      And not only our evolution, but that of millions of other (more important) species.
      Are we to end up being our own asteroid of extinction?

    • 7 months ago
  • tommic
    • 0
      tommic  

    • The simple fact is man is a reactive creature. Only disaster or catastrophie will spur mankind to action regarding climate change. With exponential acceleration of climate change the tipping point may have already arrived, no one knows as we have never experienced this before during mankinds last few thousand years. The last dramatic climate change prior to the little ice age was ten thousand years ago. people who pooh pooh climate change are nothing short of idiots.

    • 7 months ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • tommic:

      A case of an extremely large tail being unable to wag the doghead. The doghead btw is the end under the water. When the doghead dies so does the big idiot tail eh?

      I fail to see a positive outcome for head or tail.

    • 7 months ago
  • coolplanet
    • 0
      coolplanet  

    • At this late date we really need a few big volcanoes to cool it down and give us a few more years to get our sorry act together.
      If the tundra keeps melting like it is we are seriously screwed!

    • 7 months ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • +1
      Gravity_Man  
    • coolplanet:

      Much more Methane we'll be JUPITER... and they'll be looking at us saying Wow, what a bright red glowing fireball that is over there next ta their Moon!!! An look at the stupid little satellites they launched going round & round cost billions of dollars doing ABSOLUTELY NUTHIN'.

    • 7 months ago
  • coolplanet
    • 0
      coolplanet  
    • Gravity_Man:

      I think Mars is a more apt analogy.
      Mars lost its ozone layer and atmosphere long ago according to proven theory.
      Nikola Tesla claimed a century ago that he detected a radio broadcast from Mars every Martian year which he mathmatically translated as a warning to Earthlings about not letting what happened on Mars happen here.
      I am not kidding!

    • 7 months ago
  • percipi224
    • 0
      percipi224  

    • you know that Australia has implemented a carbon tax. no cap and trade, they decided that would only allow companies to buy their way out. the honor system doesn't work.

    • 7 months ago
  • JanforGore
    • 0
      JanforGore  
    • Image
    • percipi224:

      http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/245749/20111109/23-tonne-carbon-tax-increase-infl...

      Yes and when it works, let's see all those denying progress on it here apologize. Sweden has one and saw greater economic prosperity with a shift to renewable energy that brought jobs. British Columbia touts theirs as a success as well. There have never been any reports of an economy collapsing due specifically to instituting a carbon tax. Matter of fact look at the world now running on fossil fuel....our world economies are already crashing so that is a red herring. This is simply something else the fossil fuel industry is lying to people about in order to keep their status quo. They are scared sh**less that their gravy train is being derailed. I say at this point they are getting off easy with a carbon tax. The amount spent on climate disasters ( that we not them pay for) exceeds this drop in the bucket and not just in dollars, but in biodiversity and lives. I guess they will simply have to cut out those extended vacations and golden parachutes, or maybe get a moral spine and start running their businesses more sustainably. At this point they need to be prosecuted as far as I am concerned.
      ~~~
      "Contrary to claims by the Opposition that the carbon tax passed Tuesday by the Australian Senate would cause economic slow down, a climate expert said that the impact of a $23 per tonne tax would be to increase inflation rate by less than 1 per cent.

      Climate Institute Chief Executive Officer John Connor, in an article in The Sydney Morning Herald, acknowledged that there would still be more drama ahead over the carbon tax which would peak in 2014 after the national election by the end of 2013.

      If the next government implements the recommendations of the Climate Change Authority, by 2015 pollution reduction machinery with a minimum declining annual limit would be in place and cut pollution by at least 12 million tonnes a year, Mr Connor said.

      That level of reduction is in line with the 2020 target of Australia to cut carbon emissions from 2000 levels by 5 per cent.

      Mr Connor said that by 2014 global economic troubles would likely continue to persist and may slow down global efforts on climate change.

      "They may also trigger shifts in economic priorities, boosting clean-energy investments, growing new low-carbon markets and bringing new approaches to prosperity," he added.

      Responses to Mr Connor's articles were mixed. On blogger accused Mr Connor of having a vested interest in supporting the tax.

      "Claims of actual carbon dioxide emission reduction are arrant nonsense. All that will happen is that we'll send billions of dollars to underdeveloped countries as a licence for us to continue to produce CO2," a blogger from Nelly Bay wrote.

      Another blogger recalled crossing the Maribrynong River by rail in the 1960s and 1970s when water pollution was starting to be felt.

      "Anyone who knew the area at that time would know what I'm talking about. Anyone who wasn't has no knowledge of the subject of polluters and their criminal negligence in not controlling their pollution. Finally they are starting to be called to account, probably with more compassion that they deserve," the blogger said."

    • 7 months ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • JanforGore:

      They all know about my engines Jan, and they also know about Tesla & Sweet's pure energy zero pollution systems. If they bow to your plan it's in order to take people's eyes off my systems & Tesla's & Sweet's. Giving in to a small concession that allows them continued life as a living organism is much preferred to my systems winning and leaving them dirt poor penniless laying bleeding in the gutter of Time.

      A wrist slap is much preferred to the Sunday dinner hatchet wielded by me, Tesla and Sweet. The hatchet should've won Jan. The exponential rises now in motion needed THE HATCHET then, if it turned out the hatchet was too stern a correction it would be easy to keep some of the bad fuel energies as your Control Valve.

      It is a sad thing that you backed a partial solution.

    • 7 months ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • JanforGore:

      Keeping billions of people sending in MONTHLY TOLL MONEY is a continuation of what we have now. People, having to be tethered outside the Rich Man's saloon standing in the heat, only allowed to enter at the end of the month, THEN GET OUT, GET BACK OUT THERE IN THE SUN'S HEAT.

      Continuation of Slavery is a poor solution.

    • 7 months ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • JanforGore:

      With my simple water-recycling engines EVEN THE POOR WOULD BE RICH [and be able to meet all their other bills], therefore my engines would be THE ANSWER to restoring this World's Economy AND THE U.S. ECONOMY.

      We would all be wealthy beyond avarice, no more Food Stamps, no more reduced school lunches insulting our children needing Gubbermint help as if the children of chattel.

      No more begging a doctor clinic or hospital to cut us some slack on our indebtedness because normalization and EQUALITY would begin becoming the Norm for All.

      A hatchet is required to do that, not centimeters marked off on a rug.

    • 7 months ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • JanforGore:

      This world wants fluffy people like a Carl Sagan. I'm a JW and I don't fluff well. I don't climb up on a pedestal like a darkie negro in their Confederacy Glory Days at a Slave Auction in 1860 either...

    • 7 months ago
  • JanforGore
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • JanforGore:

      Hmm. A little over a week ago a round place came on my inner thigh, mostly bright red with extry white spots around in the center, a skin melanoma. It has disappeared now, gone.

      My engine solutions are as good as my cancer solutions. You've thrown the weight of your argumenting skills to the other man's partial solution.

      Is it harassment for me to know that and say it? You chose the half empty cup that has bugs in it. My cup doesn't abide their moth-riddled solutions.

      I have never harassed you I publish what I know to help other thinking people realize the Paradise given to Adam & Eve was never negated or rescinded. We have had water since before mankind ever walked here and it was PROVIDED IN ADVANCE by a Creator who put it there to run our engines as I have shown how to do, thereby proving His Intelligence preceded yours and ours.

      If you deny that you will forfeit your future, the real future about to commence => http://tinyurl.com/2520jobopenings . Choosing to drown outside of Noah's ark was a very poor & pitiable choice for them too.

      I don't have to build engines Jan. The ones who survive Armageddon soon will => the smart people not all doped up on Prozac and Wellbutrin and Xanax while stuffing cigarette smoke into their lungs & bloodstream. Read my link above, ruminate on the contents, and ask your financially-squeezed choice be overlooked. Maybe it will happen for you. You may be able to eke it through according to Zephaniah 2 verse 3 => http://concordance.biblebrowser.com/al3/zephaniah/2-3.htm

      Break from the pack Jan. They're headed over the falls.

    • 7 months ago
  • coolplanet
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • coolplanet:

      No. IceKat is secure as the Chart-meister while I am the Calendar-meister and Bible Chronology-meister. Perhaps a budding Earthquake-meister for instance I bet you didn't know that from the Mineral VA 8/23 quake to the Sparks OK 11/05 quake was 74 days.

      IceKat wouldn't have told ya that. He has one-track mind I do multi-track.

    • 7 months ago
  • coolplanet
    • 0
      coolplanet  
    • Gravity_Man:

      The end of time is merely the end of calendars, chronologies and doomsday every day.
      More than money we are slaves to Father Time.
      Won't it be nice when time is no longer valued as only money
      but rather the enjoyment of G~d's Earth?

    • 7 months ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • coolplanet:

      That time is very near. The thing to do now is make sure you belong to the one group the Bible says will be saved. That group is identified in Ch. 7 of Revelation. They alone are the only people to survive Armageddon.

      If everybody survived we'd just have the same thing we have now.

    • 7 months ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  

    • With Carl Sagan we had Hope. Carl Sagan, he WAS the man! With Carl Sagan in our midst we were doing just fine. Oh, if only someone like Carl Sagan was alive that one would save us for sure!!! We just desperately need Carl Sagan back. Carl Sagan would not have allowed us to go down this dark, dark path to Global Warming/Climate Change Death.

    • 7 months ago
  • Johnny_Los_Angeles
    • 0
      Johnny_Los_Angeles  

    • Does anyone seriously think that the human race will do what is necessary to stop this?

      I didnt think so........

      With 7 billion humans and climbing, increased not decreased consumption of fossil fuels per capita there is no end in sight to this folly.

      And here is something else to consider hypothetically if in an instant all of the human race could stop causing global warming today current temperatures would continue to rise as it takes decades for the co2 levels to drop. Dont doubt it for a second we are DOOMED to a radically different near future.

      At this point I think people need to start thinking of their individual and family survival in a new and more inhospitable world.

    • 7 months ago
  • JanforGore
  • Johnny_Los_Angeles
  • JanforGore
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • Johnny_Los_Angeles:

      Actually just a majority are Doomed. Some are food-poisoned, some are air-poisoned, some are radiation-poisoned and all are a little of all the above-poisoned.

      My guess right offhand is that mostly means Poorer Folks. You might call it a Selective Service Armageddon.

    • 7 months ago
  • artemis6
  • JanforGore
  • JanforGore
  • JanforGore
  • JanforGore
    • +2
      JanforGore  

    • "The world will have to spend an extra $500 billion to cut carbon emissions for each year it delays implementing a major assault on global warming.”

      So what was that again about a carbon tax breaking our economy? Hell, people opposing this are pimping for the Koch brothers and the fossil fuel industry and they don't even know it! Or do they?

    • 7 months ago
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