Getting to net zero--and even net negative--is surprisingly feasible, and affordable

[NNadir]

8. Um, thank you for the Wikipedia chart and the cute tales about John Larroquette whoever he is.

I read the primary scientific literature, and I don't get my information from Wikipedia.

As I said, there are thousands of similar reports to those cited in the OP in the scientific literature, the most famous being the Socolow and Pacala line of horseshit that was published in 2004 with exactly the same arguments as this wonderful paper cited in the OP here makes almost 17 years later.

Again, in 2004 - this is a measurement and not interpretation of a measurement including wishful thinking and daydreaming - for the week beginning when Socolow and Pacala published the famous "wedge" paper, the week beginning August 10, 2004, the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere was 375.68 ppm. One can see this on the um, [idata page of the NOAA carbon dioxide observatory at Mauna Loa]. The most recent week reported on the website, that beginning on January 17, 2021, it was 415.18 ppm.

Now, Pacala and Socolow are professors at Princeton University, one of the most prestigious universities in the world. I've had the amusing experience of seeing them at various lectures around here. It should be clear that the so called "wedgies" didn't work. The use of dangerous natural gas, which is no way sustainable, the use of which is a crime against all future generations, which is repeated in the pabulum paper described in the OP here, almost verbatim, nearly to the point of plagarism, 17 years later, has grown by leaps and bounds, and is the second fastest growing source of energy this century after coal. Still despite the world wide embrace of this particular Socolow and Pacala wedgie, the planet is dying.

I sometimes hear from people who seem to believe that I understand very little about fossil fuels, although I have been writing here for about 20 years on these topics, usually citing the, um, primary scientific literature, which litters my journal in this space.

If one was to read, say, the annual International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook reports, which I do every year (except this one since access is more limited to me, you would recognize that it is delusional, totally delusional to argue that we are using less fossil fuels than previously.

The fastest growing source of energy in the 21st century has been coal.

To wit:

In this century, world energy demand grew by 179.15 exajoules to 599.34 exajoules.

In this century, world gas demand grew by 50.33 exajoules to 137.03 exajoules.

In this century, the use of petroleum grew by 34.79 exajoules to 188.45 exajoules.

In this century, the use of coal grew by 63.22 exajoules to 159.98 exajoules.

In this century, the solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal energy on which people so cheerfully have bet the entire planetary atmosphere, stealing the future from all future generations, grew by 9.76 exajoules to 12.27 exajoules.

12.27 exajoules is slightly over 2% of the world energy demand.

2019 Edition of the World Energy Outlook Table 1.1 Page 38] (I have converted MTOE in the original table to the SI unit exajoules in this text.)

A lot was made about the Dunning Krueger effect and Trump, but I recently saw a lecture by Dunning, on line, in which he pointed out that many people, most people, are subject to this effect on more than one topic, that it's not "just" Trump, although Trump extends his inflated view of himself into far more subjects than healthy people.

The topic of energy tends to bring out the largest number of people who unwittingly assert authority on a topic about which they clearly know nothing or little. After 30 decades of reading thousands upon thousands upon thousands of papers on Energy and the Environment, again, in the primary scientific literature and not all that much on Wikipedia, I have come to recognize that most people deigning to discuss energy, particularly with self declared authority are avatars of Dunning and Kruger with respect to energy and the environment.

I'm not a little kid. I'm an old man who has invested decades in the study, serious study of this topic. I've been listening to this line of wishful thinking bull my whole adult life.

Guess what? Despite 50 years of wild cheering for it, and the expenditure, again, of trillions of dollars - this on a planet where more than 3 billion people lack access to improved sanitation - so called "renewable energy" didn't save the world. It isn't saving the world. It won't save the world. The reason is physics, extremely low energy to mass ratios.

There is also a reason that humanity abandoned so called "renewable energy" in the 19th century and early 20th century, and all of the reactionary rhetoric in the world cannot change that fact. The reason is that most people, even more so than today, lived short miserable lives of dire poverty.

The sooner we stop lying to ourselves about energy and the environment, particularly in a setting that is clearly in the territory of Dunning & Kruger, the sooner we will be able to save what is left to be saved. And let's be clear, OK? There is less to save in 2021 than there was in 2004, since far more has been destroyed, like say, the great barrier reef, to name one thing among thousands of such things, as well as great coastal forests on multiple continents.

Oh and by the way, steel wind turbine posts, and steel pipes for transporting the thermodynamic nightmare of hydrogen, depend on access to coke, which is made by heating anthracite coal in a blast furnace heated by coal.

As for the remark on linguistics, clichés generally become clichés by being true, but it is not always the case. It is, for anyone who has engaged in a serious study of energy and the environment, clearly not the case that the Pacala/Socolow/blah...blah...blah clichés, repeated endlessly, year after year, decade after decade, and day after day have any relevance to truth. They are clearly delusional.

They do not generate results. They generate complacency.

It will never be "easy" or "simple" to address climate change, despite decades of declarations to the contrary, going all the way back to that asshole Amory Lovins in the 1970's. It is very, very, very, very hard, an engineering challenge of supreme difficulty. It needs to be addressed seriously, and not just for bourgeois brats bragging boisterously about their electric cars and the solar cells on the roofs of their McMansions, but also with respect to the basic human rights that are the subject of human development goals for those who live on less than $2/day, numbering in the hundreds of millions of people.

It is obscene to state otherwise, in my view, a crime against all future generations.

Have a wonderful Friday.