Glen Peters

Speaking of hardware, no one noticed explosives in paging devices...

Well, given most electronic products can be accessed remotely and diagnosed, I am sure they can turn it off. It is about software, not hardware. But why is china the concern here, other countries could be more concerning.

I am sure there are groups saying they are doing diverse / granular scenarios, but how well they are doing it will remain to be seen.

The SSPs were updated recently, not the narratives, just the population and GDP numbers. I am sure the big groups will rerun their models with those. So there will be updated new generic SSP scenarios, I would assume. On the granular, hopefully, but I am not following the literature so closely.

We dont use 10 year averages, in the attached figure at least, you can see the spike in 2024. Though there are technical choices in the last 1-2 years they can change results, basically, how to include the latest data if not all models include the latest data (to put it abstractly).

I would just say the IPCC assesses the literature. So it is the literature, and therefore your bread and butter scientist, doing this stuff. IPCC authors provide framing, etc, but ultimately, it should be driven by the literature.

Anyway, my morning coffee complaint about SSP3 and our current world. It is nice to link the world to SSP3 (guilty as charged), but I don't think there is much evidence for it.

Frankly, we are just living in the BAU, SSP2...

6/6

Half these points are true, almost always, so not really SSP3. But many of the others are not things that are happening in the world today, and I am not sure the world is heading in that direction frankly. Sure, some pockets, but the entire world is not unravelling.

5/

So I am not sure that the key assertion of SSP3 is actually what we see. Yes, we see nationalism, we see Trump love tariffs, but we don't see other countries love the tariff path. So what is the evidence we are heading to SSP3? Other than the title of the narrative?

4/

The SSP3 sounds very like today, but the assumption / statement is that resurgent nationalism push countries to focus on domestic issues. This sounds intuitive, but in the real world, we have record trade, etc. Countries WANT to trade with each other. They don't like trade barriers.

3/

Our current world might be like SSP2, but the US behaves as SSP3.

But, if you look at the world, you will probably find countries that have SSP1, 2, 3, 4, 5 tendencies.

But each SSP has a story, and that story is not always the only story.

2/

The problem with SSPs, when thinking countries, is that all countries behave the same. So if Trump was an example of SSP3, then SSP3 would require all countries to behave like Trump. Despite rhetoric, countries still want strong trade, collaboration, etc.
1/

Well, the SSPs are really corner solutions. One would not expect them. (I think view we live in an SSP3 world is misguided).

You are asking for scenarios with rich and diverse regional granularity, that is not the SSPs...

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Here is a snapshot of one deliverable, identifying point sources of CH4 using satellites.

I continue to be fascinated by the phenomenon whereby an expert engages with any of the LLMs on their field of expertise and is instantly horrified by the wrong answers, and then goes on to use it for things they are not experts in as though it won’t be just as bad for those.

A good day for me is when I have no meetings, no distractions, and I can actually do science, whether that is a paper, analysis, whatever, is not really that important.

Most of my days as a scientist are probably no different to many other jobs these days: meetings, emails, messages, budgets, ...

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@ipcc.bsky.social

I am not going to disagree with any of that. I just think the E/GDP story in the last decade is potentially an interesting and overlooked one. All the focus is on renewables deployment, but there are probably many interesting stories that aggregate to give the E/GDP trends.

BTW, is your growth rate (-0.3%) leap year adjusted?

Sure, the data is what it is. If you did a plot from 2010 to 2016 it would look like emissions peaked. When you zoom in, your narrative makes perfect sense. When you zoom out, one would be more cautious. Forest & trees sort of thing.

If you were in to betting, you would bet on a peak.

Have Chinese CO2 emissions really peaked? We are really bad at predicting Chinese emissions. Why do we think we know what happens next?

I wish I published this (from 2017) in Science or something, not as a blog post: "We are really bad at predicting Chinese emissions. Why do we think we know what happens next?"
www.climatechangenews.com/2017/03/31/c...

If E/GDP returned to historical rates of change, emissions would decline at a few % (even 5%) per year. I don't think anyone is predicting that? (that would not be a renewables story though). If we don't understand what is causing E/GDP to slow, then how can we predict its evolution?

It would be interesting to understand why E/GDP changes were so bad since 2015. Is it because electricity use was growing so fast, was there some sliding on structural change (shift to services slowed, or shift back to primary / secondary), etc.

Looking at the Kaya Decomposition is sort of interesting. There is not a huge change (acceleration) in CO2/E. This would imply renewables are just maintaining the historical rate of change. Which is sort of depressing.

Yeah, I guess the New Normal never happened en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_nor....

My colleague @jikorsbakken.bsky.social puts the 2015-2020 growth down to construction & 2020-2025 down to advanced manufacturing (which is more electricity intensive). So, what will it be 2025-2030?

Norway has not weakened its NDC, for example.

Well, that is a pretty lame target. It is based on offsets. They would be better to reduce their emissions.

I think the climate story of the century is why China did not peak in 2015-2016. In the last 10 years or so, the improvements in Energy per GDP have basically stopped. Structurally, one would have expected the peak in 2015-2016. Who predicted the lack of change in E/GDP?