As I’ve frequently noted, the misuse of RCP8.5 is pervasive. While there are some legitimate uses of high forcing levels in exploratory research, that is not what I am referring to here. Below, an example of RCP8.5 being put to use in a consulting sales pitch, which then finds its way to a Reuters news story about the real world, taking the misuse of RCP8.5-as-BAU into broader circulation. Posted here just so I have it …
Continue reading “The Misuse of RCP8.5 Often Involves a Sales Pitch”
I’ve spent the afternoon reading the most-recent materials from the lawsuit between U.S. women national team soccer players and the U.S. Soccer Federation (USSF). And in a word, they are incredible …
Continue reading “USSF & The Worth of Male and Female Soccer Players”
Updated: 25 Feb 2020
This post is simply to collect some notes for my future use. Details after the break …
Continue reading “Misuse of Scenarios in the Fourth U.S. National Climate Assessment”
Our new paper on IPCC scenarios is now posted as a preprint. Details below and I have summarized it in a new column at Forbes.
Burgess, M. G., Ritchie, J., Shapland, J., & Pielke, R., Jr. (2020, February 18). IPCC baseline scenarios over-project CO2 emissions and economic growth. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/ahsxw SocArXiv
Abstract
Scenarios used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are central to climate science and policy. A recent Nature commentary found observed trends and International Energy Agency (IEA) projections of global CO2 emissions substantially diverging from high-emission scenarios such as RCP8.5, which are often treated as equivalent to ‘business as usual’ in climate research and assessment. Here, we quantify the bases for this divergence by comparing “baseline” (or “no policy”) scenario projections of key fossil-fuel CO2 emission drivers to observations from 2005-2017, and also to projections through 2040 from world energy outlooks. We find most of the baseline scenarios used in the Fifth (AR5) and designed for the forthcoming Sixth (AR6) IPCC Assessment Reports have over-projected per-capita GDP growth—severely in most developing regions, and slightly in other regions—and have slightly over-projected carbon intensity (CO2 emissions/primary energy) in most regions. These baseline scenarios will likely continue to over-project carbon intensity through 2040 and beyond, in part due to unrealistic assumptions about fossil-fuel expansion. Long-term economic growth outlooks lack consensus among economists, but we argue that most of these baseline scenarios will likely continue over-projecting per-capita GDP to at least 2040 due to inertia. Our results inform the rapidly evolving discussion on uses of scenarios in climate science and policy.
The University of Colorado Boulder now posts online the curriculum vitae of all of its faculty.
You can see mine here in PDF.
Roger Pielke Jr. 