The IPCC Sixth assessment report still has not solved the miscalculations in temperature rise.

The 6th IPCC assessment report still suffers from the same fatal flaw that was in the first assessment report regarding greenhouse gases. It assumes greenhouse gases are additive when in fact it is impossible to absorb more energy than is available in any given energy band! This misunderstanding on how nature works leads to a gross misunderstanding of the importance of CO2 and Methane.

Here are their opinion on

One: Retire coal plants. As part of the Paris accord we are allowing China, India, South-east Asia, Africa and other developing countries to build coal plants until 2030, and we will have to pay for some of the expenses to make them cleaner. China alone is allowed to build over 1000 new coal plants. Right now China already exceeds the U.S. in coal fired electric generation per capita, and only U.S, the European Union, Oceania and Latin America are retiring coal plants. See Chart: See details here

Top line:China. next:The U.S. followed by India and South and East Asia,

Two: invest in clean energy. Wind and solar alone will not solve the problem since they are intermittent. They also require a large amount of mining of rare earth and other metals, the total life cycle cost must be included in any calculation. Only a Manhattan type project to facilitate the development of Thorium based nuclear power, and revamp the electric grid will suffice. See the advantages of Thorium nuclear power here

Three: Retrofit and decarbonize buildidngs. They probably mean to insulate old buildings and make more efficient heating and cooling systems, but decarbonize?

Four: Decarbonize cement, steel and plastics. Cement is made by decarbonizing limestone from CaCO3 to CaO, generating yearly about 7% of the world’s CO2. China alone produces over half of the world’s cement. Decarbonizing steel makes it iron, and there are very few uses for pure iron. I don’t understand how to decarbonize plastics.

Five: Shift to electric vehicles. This shift should occur as soon as nearly all coal fired plants have been decommissioned. Again small, sealed Thorium powered units should be used for trains and ships, and maybe even for cargo planes.

Six: Increase public transport, biking and walking. The most important thing about public transport, biking and walking is to make it safer. Lack of safety hinders its growth.

Seven: Decarbonize aviation and shipping. Ships, from Mississippi river size tugboats to large ships should be converted to nuclear. Aviation should be made nuclear in two steps. First make large cargo planes nuclear, then when safety records are established convert passenger traffic to nuclear. This may take some time since lightweight Thorium nuclear reactors are not developed yet.

Eight: Halt deforestation and restore degraded lands. Now we are talking. This is of utmost importance. Should have been number one.

Nine: Reduce food loss and waste and improve agricultural practices. This is why it is of utmost importance to reliably electrify the third world with reliable energy. Rotating and long blackouts are damaging to farming, ranching, the food supply and the economy.

Ten: Eat more plants and less meat. Don’t micromanage our eating habits. Let the farmers produce what the land will support and the people desire. This is the best way.

Published by

lenbilen

Retired engineer, graduated from Chalmers Technical University a long time ago with a degree in Technical Physics. Career in Aerospace, Analytical Chemistry, computer chip manufacturing and finally adjunct faculty at Pennsylvania State University, taught just one course in Computer Engineering, the Capstone Course.

2 thoughts on “The IPCC Sixth assessment report still has not solved the miscalculations in temperature rise.”

  1. Len, the IPCC’s AR6 Report gets many things spectacularly wrong, but not this: “It assumes greenhouse gases are additive when in fact it is impossible to absorb more energy than is available in any given energy band!”

    Anything which reduces the escape of energy from the Earth will cause warming, by the following process:

    1. A reduction of energy loss (e.g., by absorbing some of the outgoing radiation, either from the surface, or from within the atmosphere) causes a “radiative imbalance,” in which incoming radiative energy (almost entirely sunlight) exceeds outgoing radiative energy (mostly LW IR: from the surface, and also from radiatively active gases & clouds in the air, but also some microwave radiation).

    The radiative imbalance cannot be directly measured, but it can be approximately inferred from other things. It is currently probably about 0.3 W/m². (Alarmist climate scientists often estimate it to be at least twice that, but those high estimates are inconsistent with what else we know about the Earth’s climate.)

    Some people think that because nearly all 15 µm radiation emitted by the surface is absorbed in the atmosphere that means the warming effect is so thoroughly saturated that additional CO2 must have no effect. (Or, if their understanding is deeper than most, because the 15 µm average emission height is near the tropopause.) That is incorrect, because additional CO2 also affects absorption at the fringes of CO2’s absorption band, where it absorbs only weakly.

    2. The radiative imbalance causes a gradual warming, as absorbed energy accumulates in the oceans, air, and soil.

    3. That warming, in turn, causes increased radiative emissions, thus shrinking the radiative imbalance: a negative feedback.

    4. If, due to warming, the radiative emissions from the Earth increase to the point that the radiative imbalance has been eliminated, the Earth ceases warming (until and unless there’s another, subsequent forcing, such as an additional increase in GHG levels).

    The consequence of that negative feedback loop is that an increase in GHG levels should cause a limited amount of warming.

    One of the big sources of disagreement among climatologists is the magnitude of that limited amount. The hypothetical difference between an old plateau in global average temperatures, with CO2 at level 𝑿 (e.g., 300 ppmv), and a new plateau in global average temperatures, with CO2 at level 2⋅𝑿 (e.g., 600 ppmv) and all other factors unchanged, is called Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (to a doubling of CO2), or “ECS.” The best evidence indicates that ECS is probably less than than 1¾°C, yet all the CMIP6 GCMs have built-in assumed ECS values which are larger than that.

    The GCMs’ baked-in assumed ECS values range from 1.83°C to 5.62°C, a ratio of more than 3-to-1. That’s proof that the climate modelers do not understand the system which they’re trying to model. If the modelers knew what they were doing, such wildly varying assumptions about basic climate parameters like ECS would be impossible.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.