IPCC’s Landmark Report: Climate Change is Well Underway

Climate Change is well underway and many of the physical changes observed globally have baked in forces that will create increasingly worsening conditions for decades or centuries to come. This is among many findings reported by the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report's Working Group 1 report, Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis.
More than 200 scientist-authors reviewed, aggregated and then distilled down the findings from 14,000 peer-reviewed papers to produce the most comprehensive report on the physical state of the planet in the IPCC's 30-year history, clocking in at 13 distinct chapters totally 1,300 pages. These pages and each line of findings were then reviewed, vetted and approved by the scientific representatives of 195 nations, which itself reflects stunning concensus among nations about how bad things are—even if agreement about what to do about the problem is harder to come by.
The briefest of summaries issued in conjunction with the full report is the Headline Statements from the Summary for Policymakers, which has 14 top-level statements synthesized from the Summary for Policymakers (SPM), which is itself 39 pages long. The SPM provides a high-level summary of the understanding of the current state of the climate, including how it is changing and the role of human influence, the state of knowledge about possible climate futures, climate information relevant to regions and sectors, and limiting human-induced climate change.

IPCC reports can be very difficult to read because they cover a range of findings that are reported as either statements of fact or which, because of the difficulty of ascertaining truth with respect to many findings, are thus notated with an assessed level of confidence using pre-set calibration language. Nevertheless, the number 1 finding is:

It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.

Read the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report's Working Group 1 report, Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis, released August 9, 2021.

Published by Nucleation Capital in Carbon emissions, Climate change, Climate mayhem, History Timeline, LINKS

June 23, 2021

Severe climate impacts coming sooner than expected

AFP, a news and fact checking organization, broke a story based upon having reviewed a 4,000 page draft of an IPCC report that is being updated by thousands of IPCC scientist-volunteers, which provides the starkest and most dire status update on the state of the climate of any report. While the IPCC's own timetable has the report publication scheduled for early 2022, the AFP's review indicates that the report will establish that the impacts of our CO2 pollution will cause catastrophic changes, especially on our coasts, well before previously estimated. The AFP was so alarmed, they produced a series of videos highlighting the findings in the draft report, such as this one below (click on the image to leave NucleationCapital.com and go to the AFP's own site, where the video is hosted).

After AFP broke the story, many other news outlets cited the reporting, including Phys.org, in an article titled "Crushing climate impacts to hit sooner than feared: draft UN report," published on June 23, 2021, which reviews how climate impacts will "fundamentally reshape life on Earth in the coming decades," even if we can succeed in reducing emissions going forward, because of baked-in warming effects.
Dangerous thresholds are closer than previously believed and many of the most dire consequeces—unliveable heat, species extinctions, widespread disease, cities lost from sea level rise and water encroachment, collapse of ecosystems including coral reefs—which are already being felt today, will accelerate to menace the lives of the younger generation and those being born today.
See more at the AFP website at: "AFP has world scoop on a draft climate science report," June 23, 2021 (no authors listed) and at Phys.org, "Crushing climate impacts to hit sooner than feared: draft UN report," June 23, 2021, by Marlowe Hood, Patrick Galey and Kelly MacNamara.

Published by Nucleation Capital in Carbon emissions, Climate change, Climate mayhem, Extreme weather, LINKS

October 29, 2019

All Pathways to 1.5°C Limit Include Nuclear

Hoesung Lee, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), delivered an address on the opening day of the International Conference on Climate Change and the Role of Nuclear Power, held in Vienna in the second week of October. 2019. He will review the findings of the report released a year ago by the IPCC, which featured four model pathways for limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, the threshold at which most experts believe the worst impacts from climate change can still be avoided. All four model pathways included increases in nuclear power generation by 2050, ranging between 59% and 501%.

To support the low-carbon energy transformation needed to achieve climate change goals, the conference focused on opportunities and challenges for nuclear power development. To this end, organizers brought together representatives of low-carbon energy sectors, international organizations and national experts.

IAEA Acting Director General Cornel Feruta opened the conference. Other prominent speakers included Liu Zhenmin, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs at the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs; William D. Magwood, IV, Director-General of the NEA ; Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency; LI Yong, Director General of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization; and senior officials and scientists from 75 countries including Argentina, China, Egypt, France, India, Mongolia, Morocco, the Russian Federation and the United States of America.

“Nuclear power has long made a major contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and currently produces one-third of the world’s low carbon electricity while also supporting sustainable development and fulfilling growing energy demands,” said IAEA Deputy Director General Mikhail Chudakov, Head of the Department of Nuclear Energy. “We are honoured that Dr. Hoesung Lee, one of the world’s leading scientific voices on climate change, is bringing his expertise to this first-of-a-kind conference.”

Read more at the International Atomic Energy Agency, "IPCC Head to Speak at International Conference on Climate Change and the Role of Nuclear Power," by Jeffrey Donovan, August 29, 2019.

Published by Nucleation Capital in 100% Renewables, Advanced Nuclear, Carbon emissions, Climate change, Climate policy, Environmental support for nuclear, Future of Energy, History Timeline, LINKS, Politicians supporting nuclear, Scientific debate, Solving climate

July 3, 2019

Michael Liebreich talks about nuclear power

Michael Liebreich, founder and senior contributor to BloombergNEF, takes a hard look at the decisions that we need to make about how we plan to transition our energy systems to eliminate emissions over the next 11 years and conducts what might be called a "come to Jesus" discussion with his readers, demanding that they review the data and get real about nuclear power.

First Liebreich provides some very compelling evidence that it would be utterly unrealistic to believe that wind and solar alone could grow at rates that are multiples of their historic rates in order to provide enough zero-carbon power to decarbonize the economy in the near term, even with their low prices.

Among the easiest, cheapest and most impactful actions nations can take to ensure their decarbonization pathway remain headed in the right direction—the "no brainer" decisions upon which any number of countries are already failing—would be to set an "overwhelming priority is to keep existing nuclear plants open."

Liebreich takes exception when it comes to the question of building new traditional nuclear power plants, and makes the case that the Gen III generation of plant designs won’t cut it on based upon economic grounds—given the failure of the industry to deliver Gen III projects on time or on budget. However, he is willing to be convinced that Gen IV nuclear, once developed, might be what we need assuming we can get these designs out within a reasonable time frame—something yet to be determined. But, given the likelihood that we will miss our targets, Liebreich calls for getting "serious about developing SMRs and researching the generation of nuclear technologies that might even follow them."

Read Michael Leibreich's "get real" talk in "Liebreich: We need to talk about nuclear power," published at BNEF.

Published by Nucleation Capital in Advanced Nuclear, Carbon emissions, Climate policy, Construction costs, Future of Energy, LINKS, Solving climate

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