Challenging Climate Science Orthodoxy
New research turns Climate Science UPSIDE DOWN!
Estimated read time: 1:20
Summary
In the recent video by Just Have a Think, new research is discussed that challenges the conventional climate science approach, specifically questioning the impact of land use change and deforestation compared to fossil fuel emissions on climate warming. The research, led by Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop from the World Preservation Foundation, suggests that land use-related activities play a significantly larger role in climate change than previously thought, contradicting traditional methods used by the IPCC. The video delves into this new analysis and explores how Effective Radiative Forcing could offer a more accurate metric for understanding human-induced warming. The narrative encourages a shift in focus towards both sustainable energy advancements and critically re-evaluating land and agricultural practices.
Highlights
- Bill Gates criticized the belief that planting enough trees could solve climate change, calling it 'nonsense.' 🤨
- Recent research re-evaluates the impact of land use change, indicating significant influence on climate that challenges IPCC norms. 📚
- Effective Radiative Forcing (ERF) is introduced as a more accurate method than Global Warming Potential for measuring greenhouse gas impacts. 🧮
- The role of aerosols in reflecting sunlight is under-discussed, yet reducing these pollutants reveals more warming effects. ☀️
- Agriculture, especially livestock production, significantly contributes to climate warming, potentially more than fossil fuels under new metrics. 🚜
Key Takeaways
- Bill Gates sparked debate at a New York Times event by dismissing the role of trees in solving climate change - his bluntness might mislead viewers from land use solutions. 🌿
- New research challenges the focus on fossil fuels, arguing land use change and deforestation are larger climate change factors than acknowledged by IPCC. 🌳
- Effective Radiative Forcing (ERF) is suggested as a better measure over Global Warming Potential (GWP) for comparing impact of greenhouse gases. 📊
- The video emphasizes the urgent need to reassess agricultural and forestry practices, alongside continuing the shift to renewable energy sources. 🌍
- Pollution particulates have a cooling effect, complicating how we measure and address climate change impacts. Fine particulate reduction has health benefits but reveals more of the warming effects. ☁️
- Agriculture, particularly livestock processing, is highlighted as a dominant source of radiative forcing, challenging focus purely on fossil fuels. 🐄
Overview
In a bold claim, Bill Gates dismissed the idea of solving climate change by simply planting trees, noting the need for real solutions also involving humans' technological innovations. This stance, however, can lead audiences away from considering all impactful climate solutions, especially those related to land use.
The video discusses groundbreaking research that suggests deforestation and changes in land use are more pivotal in current climate change scenarios than acknowledged by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This research advocates for the Gross emissions approach over the Net method currently in use, revealing a more nuanced understanding of how these activities contribute to global warming.
Furthermore, the discussion revolves around the potential of using Effective Radiative Forcing (ERF) rather than the Global Warming Potential (GWP) for a more accurate scientific lens on emissions' effects. The move towards understanding all aspects of radiative forcing, including aerosol impact, highlights the dual necessity: to shift rapidly towards clean energy and to rigorously audit and adapt our land and food production systems.
Chapters
- 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Climate Science Debate The chapter discusses a debate initiated at a New York Times event in September 2023, where Bill Gates was interviewed by David Gelles. The conversation highlighted the notion held by some that planting enough trees could alone solve the climate crisis. Gates argued against this belief strongly, suggesting that such a view oversimplifies the complexity of climate science and called for a more science-based approach rather than simplistic solutions.
- 00:30 - 01:00: Bill Gates' Perspective on Trees and Climate Change Bill Gates dismisses the notion that trees alone can solve climate change, emphasizing the importance of sustainable technologies and human inventions, although he warns against neglecting land use solutions.
- 01:00 - 01:30: Importance of Land Use Change The chapter discusses recent research on the impact of land use change and deforestation on climate. The new findings significantly challenge the established views of the climate science community, indicating a more substantial influence from these sectors than previously acknowledged.
- 01:30 - 02:00: New Research on Land Use and Climate Impact The chapter explores new research on the impact of land use on climate change, led by Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop from the World Preservation Foundation. The central question is: What human activities have led to current global warming? While fossil fuel combustion is a major factor, the chapter suggests there are other significant contributors that need to be considered.
- 02:00 - 02:30: Traditional Greenhouse Gas Accounting The chapter discusses the greenhouse gas accounting conventions established by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) nearly thirty years ago. At that time, the natural carbon cycles involving land-based carbon were considered to self-balance, contributing to a relatively stable biosphere carbon pool. Furthermore, there was limited data on how small atmospheric pollutants could affect climate by reflecting sunlight into space.
- 02:30 - 03:00: IPCC's Fossil Fuel Focus The chapter titled 'IPCC's Fossil Fuel Focus' discusses the collective decision by scientists and international lawyers guiding the IPCC's direction to center on fossil fuel emissions. Despite limited research on aerosol cooling and the interactions of different emissions in the atmosphere, the approach largely overlooks these factors. The established protocol includes a 'net land carbon accounting' practice while disregarding the effects of aerosol cooling and comparing all greenhouse gases to carbon based on arbitrary standards.
- 03:00 - 03:30: Aerosol Cooling Effect This chapter discusses the concept of 'net land carbon accounting' as outlined by the IPCC category Land Use/Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF). It explains that in managed land, the carbon uptake by newly planted trees and crops can offset the emissions from activities like tree felling or forestry burning, highlighting the balance between carbon emissions and absorption in land management practices.
- 03:30 - 04:00: Global Warming Potential (GWP) Issues The chapter titled 'Global Warming Potential (GWP) Issues' discusses the discrepancies in how emissions from fossil fuels and land use are accounted for in global emissions inventories. It highlights that currently only one third of carbon released from land use changes, like deforestation, is counted compared to fossil fuels, which are considered 'truly new carbon.' The authors argue that carbon emissions from deforestation, particularly that involving ancient forests, should also be fully accounted for, emphasizing its significance in the biosphere carbon pool.
- 04:00 - 04:30: Effective Radiative Forcing (ERF) Explained The chapter explains the concept of Effective Radiative Forcing (ERF). It discusses the impact of different sources of carbon atoms, noting that natural elements like trees and plants do not discriminate between carbon atoms from fossil fuels and those from land use. The chapter argues that for consistency, carbon emissions from all sources should be counted similarly as either net or gross, and for research purposes, the gross emissions number was adopted. The chapter also touches upon the aerosol cooling phenomenon.
- 04:30 - 05:00: Comparison of ERF and GWP This chapter discusses the noticeable improvement in air quality in major cities during the COVID-19 lockdowns, highlighting the public health impact of pollutants such as sulfur dioxide. These improvements draw attention to the severe health risks posed by air pollution, which is reported by UNICEF to cause eight million deaths annually and affect tens of millions more with chronic conditions. Consequently, there is now a significant focus on efforts to reduce pollution, particularly from heavy industry and vehicles.
- 05:00 - 05:30: Sector Contributions to Radiative Forcing The chapter discusses the impact of various sectors on radiative forcing, focusing on airborne particulates and their role in climate change. It highlights efforts to reduce these particulates, such as the 2020 regulation by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to cut down sulphur content in fuels used for freight shipping. While these reductions are beneficial for human health, they reveal underlying warming that was previously masked by the particulates.
- 05:30 - 06:00: Impact of Industry and Fossil Fuels The chapter discusses the impacts of industry and fossil fuels on the environment, with a focus on greenhouse gas emissions and their effect on atmospheric warming. The concept of 'aerosol cooling' is introduced, explaining how aerosols can reflect sunlight back into space, thus masking some of the warming effects. The chapter highlights that this aerosol cooling is not well accounted for in existing IPCC models. A new research paper is brought into the discussion, which attempts to better rectify this oversight. It is noted that this paper deviates significantly from traditional IPCC methodologies in assessing climate change factors.
- 06:00 - 06:30: Deforestation and Its Effects The chapter "Deforestation and Its Effects" discusses the impact of global warming caused by human activities. It explains the concept of Global Warming Potential (GWP), which is a measure used to compare the warming impact of various greenhouse gases in relation to CO2. The chapter highlights how all other gases are measured against CO2's GWP of 1. A significant point of discussion is the time frame used by the IPCC, which spans 100 years, raising concerns among some about its relevance. Methane, as highlighted, is part of this conversation due to its considerable impact on global warming in the short term compared to CO2 over a century-long timeline.
- 06:30 - 07:00: Agriculture's Role in Warming This chapter discusses the impact of agriculture on climate change, focusing particularly on the potency of certain greenhouse gases like methane compared to carbon dioxide. Methane is highlighted as being significantly more potent than carbon dioxide over both short and long-term periods. The chapter also examines how different parts of the Earth's surface, such as rainforests, grasslands, and polar regions, interact with these gases based on their geological makeup.
- 07:00 - 07:30: Pie Chart Analysis of World Sectors This chapter titled 'Pie Chart Analysis of World Sectors' discusses the inadequacies of using Global Warming Potential (GWP) as a metric for assessing the relative planetary warming caused by different sectors. It suggests that Effective Radiative Forcing (ERF) would be a more appropriate measure for policymakers. The chapter explains how the upper atmosphere receives energy from the sun, and how scientists have calculated that energy.
- 07:30 - 08:00: Proposed Changes to Climate Accounting This chapter discusses the concept of Effective Radiative Forcing (ERF) in the context of climate accounting. The chapter explains how Earth's energy balance is maintained through the absorption and reflection of solar energy and describes the impact of greenhouse gases on this balance. It mentions that as long as the incoming and outgoing energy remains balanced, the Earth's average temperature remains constant. However, human activities have increased greenhouse gases, leading to a positive ERF, which indicates a warming effect on the planet. The chapter imparts the significance of these changes in understanding climate dynamics.
- 08:00 - 08:30: Conclusive Thoughts The chapter titled 'Conclusive Thoughts' discusses the substantial impact of additional energy on Earth's climate system. It highlights that the seemingly small figure of three watts per square meter results in an enormous total of 1.53 million gigawatts of extra energy. This amount is compared to having a million nuclear power stations continually adding heat to our planet's atmosphere, underscoring the scale of the climate issue.
- 08:30 - 09:00: Support and Patreon Acknowledgement The chapter titled 'Support and Patreon Acknowledgement' contains a discussion from the Skeptical Science website, highlighting an alarming statistic: since 1998, our climate has absorbed heat equivalent to over three and a half billion Hiroshima bombs. The text emphasizes the utility of using Effective Radiative Forcing rather than Global Warming Potential numbers to assess the potency of gases over non-arbitrary timelines, suggesting that this method provides more straightforward and undisputed figures. The content seeks to provide a clear understanding of how these measurements translate into practical comparative information.
- 09:00 - 09:30: Closure and Call to Action The chapter titled 'Closure and Call to Action' discusses a chart provided by the authors of a paper. This chart utilizes Effective Radiative Forcing instead of Global Warming Potential (GWP) numbers on the Y-axis. It bases its data for carbon emissions on the Global Carbon Budget, while land use data is drawn from prior peer-reviewed studies. Additionally, information for other greenhouse gases is sourced from the Potsdam Institute for climate research and the CMIP6 climate modeling project.
New research turns Climate Science UPSIDE DOWN! Transcription
- 00:00 - 00:30 Back in September twenty-twenty-three, at a New Times event, Bill Gates was asked this question by the interviewer, David Gelles. “There’s a lot of people who are very enamoured with trees, we’ve got trees on this stage. Some people would even say that if you just planted enough trees, it could take care of the climate issue altogether” “and that’s complete nonsense.” “OK” “I mean are we the science people or the idiots, I mean which one do we wanna be?” Prickly bugger, isn’t he? Strictly speaking, he’s not wrong though. On that SPECIFIC question – “if we just planted enough trees would we take care
- 00:30 - 01:00 of climate change altogether?”, the answer is clearly no, as Gates quite rightly asserts. The trouble is though, a glib, unquantified and somewhat irascible answer like that from such an influential figure risks deflecting the viewer from thinking about ANY kind of land use change solutions at all, with the emphasis instead placed firmly on so-called sustainable technologies, invented and built by human beings, many of which Mr Gates is heavily invested in.
- 01:00 - 01:30 The reason I’m moaning about this now instead of mentioning it eighteen months ago when Gates was interviewed, is that there’s some new research just been published reanalysing the effects of land use change, and deforestation in particular, on our climate. And that paper most definitely finds a very significant influence from those sectors. So much so in fact that it DIRECTLY challenges the accepted orthodoxy of the climate science establishment. So, I thought we should probably have a little look at it.
- 01:30 - 02:00 Hello, and welcome to Just Have a Think This latest research, led by Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop, Lead Scientist at the World Preservation Foundation, asks a very simple question: ‘What human activities have caused present-day warming?’ Most of us would probably say it’s mainly the combustion of fossil fuels. And we would certainly be right to highlight the enormous impact that the burning of oil, gas and coal have had on our atmosphere. But we would be basing that
- 02:00 - 02:30 assertion on the greenhouse gas accounting conventions set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, almost three decades ago. Back then, the ebbs and flows of land-based carbon were thought to be held in a self-balancing cycle that formed part of a more or less stable biosphere carbon pool. There also wasn’t much data quantifying the influence of tiny particles of pollution in the air that reflect the suns light back out into space – a
- 02:30 - 03:00 phenomenon the scientists now refer to as aerosol cooling. And there also hadn’t been much research done on the way different emissions interact when they get up into the atmosphere either. So the agreed convention adopted by the world’s scientists and international lawyers that steered the IPCC outcomes was to focus on fossil fuel emissions; adopt a practice for land use known as ‘net land carbon accounting’; to more or less IGNORE the effects of aerosol cooling, and to make a completely arbitrary choice to compare all greenhouse gases to carbon
- 03:00 - 03:30 dioxide over a one-hundred-year timescale. So, let’s have a think about that ‘net land carbon accounting’ thing first of all then. The IPCC has a category called Land Use/ Land Use Change and Forestry, or LULUCF which essentially says that on managed land the uptake of carbon by newly planted trees and crops can be set AGAINST the release of carbon from tree felling or forestry burning or any other land management practices that RELEASE carbon into the atmosphere. In number terms that means that while one hundred percent of emissions from
- 03:30 - 04:00 fossil fuels are counted in the global emissions inventory, only ONE THIRD of the carbon released by land use is added in. The IPCC justification for that distinction is that fossil fuel carbon is ‘truly new carbon’ that should be regarded as additional to the biosphere carbon pool. But the authors of this new paper argue that carbon emissions from the deforestation of well-established and in some cases ANCIENT forestry land should ALSO be regarded as
- 04:00 - 04:30 ‘truly new carbon’. AND they point out that trees and plants and soil don’t care which carbon atoms they draw down from the atmosphere during new growth. They could just as well be using fossil fuel-generated carbon atoms as land use generated carbon atoms. So, arguably, to be consistent, carbon emissions from ALL sources should either be counted as net or gross. For the purposes of this research, the GROSS emissions number was adopted. Then there’s that aerosol cooling phenomenon that I mentioned. You’ll no doubt remember
- 04:30 - 05:00 the lovely clear skies that some of our most polluted cities experienced during the COVID lockdowns. Those images really brought home just how badly people’s health was being affected by nasty particulates like sulphur dioxide coming from heavy industry and the exhaust pipes of millions of internal combustion engine vehicles. According to UNICEF about eight million people die each year from air pollution and tens of millions more suffer from chronic pollution-related health conditions. So huge efforts are now being made to reduce
- 05:00 - 05:30 those airborne particulates by cleaning up fuels or using alternative energy sources. A good example is the twenty-twenty regulation by the International Maritime Organisation or IMO, mandating a dramatic reduction in the sulphur content of fuels used for freight shipping. These reductions in atmospheric particulates represent a huge step forward in terms of human health. But the reality is that those particulates were masking a lot of the warming
- 05:30 - 06:00 caused by our greenhouse gas emissions. Why? Well because they’re really good at reflecting sunlight back out into space. The better we get at eliminating them, the more the real effect of atmospheric warming becomes apparent. That ‘aerosol cooling’ effect is very poorly factored into existing IPPC accounting conventions, which is something this new research paper attempts to rectify. Arguably the paper’s most significant departure from IPCC conventions though, is in the fundamental methodology used to assess
- 06:00 - 06:30 how much warming we humans are causing. I’ve talked about GWP, or Global Warming Potential several times in previous videos. It’s a way of comparing the warming effect of all known human caused greenhouse gases relative to carbon dioxide. So, CO2 has a GWP of 1 and all the other gases are calibrated accordingly. The IPCC uses the one-hundred-year timeline that I mentioned earlier. That’s already a bone of contention for many people though. According to the IPCC, methane
- 06:30 - 07:00 is roughly 6:44 twenty-eight times more potent than CO2 over that one hundred-year timeline, but over the twelve to twenty or so years that it typically lingers in the atmosphere, it’s actually more like eighty-two times more potent. Plus, different parts of our planet’s surface interact with these gases in different ways, depending on their geological make up and basically what they’re covered with, whether that’s a fully-fledged rainforest or an area of grassland or an ice-covered polar region, or one of our many
- 07:00 - 07:30 densely populated cities. You get the idea. This paper’s authors argue that using GWP to assess the relative planetary warming caused by various different sectors is therefore a deeply flawed metric. They propose that a better measure for policymakers to adopt would be something called Effective Radiative Forcing, or ERF. Essentially every part of our upper atmosphere receives energy from the sun at some point during our planet’s daily rotation. The science bods have calculated that number
- 07:30 - 08:00 to be about thirteen hundred and sixty-one watts per square metre. Our planet absorbs some of that energy and reflects some of it back out into space. As long as the amount of outgoing energy is the same as the amount of incoming energy then our planet remains at a constant average temperature. But when we start blanketing ourselves with greenhouse gases, more of that energy is trapped in the atmosphere. Effective Radiative Forcing measures the extent of that warming. Right now, overall, our human activities have caused a positive ERF of roughly
- 08:00 - 08:30 three watts per square metre That might not sound like much, but the surface area of our planet is roughly five hundred and ten million square KILOMETRES, so at 3 watts per square metre, that works out to be one-point-five three MILLION GIGAWATTS of additional energy constantly heating up our planet, which is like having a million nuclear power stations running at full tilt constantly adding warmth to our atmosphere. Or to borrow the analogy from our friends over at
- 08:30 - 09:00 the Skeptical Science website, since nineteen ninety-eight our climate has accumulated the equivalent of more than three and a half BILLION Hiroshima bombs worth of heat. Using Effective Radiative Forcing instead of Global Warming Potential numbers does away with any confusion or disagreement about relative potency of gases over arbitrary timelines. It is what it is, so to speak. No conversion necessary, just a measurable number. So, how does all that stuff shake down into some useable comparative information then?
- 09:00 - 09:30 Well, here’s the chart that the paper’s authors provide us with, which you will notice uses Effective Radiative Forcing going up the Y-axis instead of GWP numbers. Based on data for carbon emissions taken from the Global Carbon Budget, land use data taken from previous peer reviewed studies, and numbers for all the other greenhouse gases taken from the Potsdam Institute for climate research, the CMIP6 climate modelling project and
- 09:30 - 10:00 the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, PLUS FIRE data taken from the Global Fire Emissions database or GFED4, the researchers were able to start putting some colour into the picture. Anything above the zero line represents warming and anything below that line represents cooling. So, let’s start with fossil fuels. Since seventeen fifty, a combination of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, carbon black, and a few other volatile organic compounds have caused just over one-point-five watts per square metre of radiative forcing. BUT the polluting particulates
- 10:00 - 10:30 like sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and organic carbon that come from the production, processing, transport and combustion of those fossil fuels have effectively resulted in more than one watt per square metre of COOLING. Global industry also produces CO2 and methane, and it’s largely responsible for many of the other chemicals that can cause extremely strong atmospheric warming reactions. But it’s pollution particulates also have a cooling effect,
- 10:30 - 11:00 almost cancelling out it’s warming emissions. I should just stress here that this paper’s authors are not remotely suggesting we continue killing millions of people each year just to retain the benefit of having reflective pollution particulates in our atmosphere. That would be insane. But the effect is real, so it has to be accounted for. Deforestation is overwhelmingly a cause of positive radiative forcing. Mitigated only very
- 11:00 - 11:30 slightly by the higher reflectivity or albedo of the bare land that gets left behind in its wake. Our human waste produces huge amounts of methane which contribute about zero-point-two watts per square metre of radiative forcing, and there are some other emission sources right at the far end here that broadly come out neutral. So, what’s this big gap in the middle for then, I hear you ask. Well, it’s agriculture, isn’t? Massive amounts of CO2, methane and nitrous
- 11:30 - 12:00 oxide are generated by our human agricultural practice, the majority of which come from animal agriculture. Together, since seventeen fifty, they’ve resulted in almost one-point-eight watts per square metre of radiative forcing, barely compensated for by the relatively small cooling effects of organic carbon and increased albedo. The paper’s authors then converted all that data into a set of pie charts to show the relative impact of each sector under various different measuring methods. The conventional chart uses Global Warming Potential figures over
- 12:00 - 12:30 a one-hundred-year timeline, includes only very minimal data for the cooling effect of aerosols, and assumes the NET land use accounting numbers that we looked at earlier. This is the chart that most closely represents IPCC data provided to our policymakers today, and it clearly shows fossil fuels as the worst global warming culprit, at forty seven percent of the mix compared to only thirty-three percent for agriculture. A second way to look at the numbers is to retain all the same IPCC assumptions but to assess each sector using the Effective Radiative Forcing,
- 12:30 - 13:00 or ERF, method instead of the GWP method. Fossil fuels are still out front on this measure, but the gap to agriculture closes significantly. OR alternatively you could RETAIN the GWP accounting methodology but apply GROSS emissions numbers for ALL sectors, INCLUDING agriculture. Now, that pushes agriculture ahead of fossil fuels as the largest warming sector at
- 13:00 - 13:30 forty-three percent versus thirty-six percent. And just to complete the slightly confusing juggling act with variables and parameters, let’s have a chart using ALL the conventional measuring methods, but with the real effects of aerosol cooling thrown in there as well. And we get a similar result. But of course, the authors of this paper are proposing that we should be DOING AWAY with ALL the conventions currently used by the IPCC. In other words, they say we should use ERF instead of GWP, apply gross emissions accounting to every sector, AND include the cooling effects of aerosols.
- 13:30 - 14:00 When you apply ALL those things together, you get a DRAMATICALLY different outcome, with agriculture accounting for no less than SIXTY percent of all effective radiative forcing since seventeen fifty, and fossil fuels representing only eighteen percent. Does that mean we can relax and not worry so much about a rapid transition away from coal, oil and gas towards renewable technologies like solar, wind and batteries? No, of course it doesn’t. It means we need to accelerate that progress
- 14:00 - 14:30 as aggressively as possible AND ALSO take a long hard look at the way we produce food, especially the industrial processing of livestock, and the way we strip out forestry land for other industrial processes like mining, logging and the production of biomass and biofuels. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions though. I’ve left a link in the description section to the open-source research paper so you can scrutinise the numbers and methodology
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