The biggest news in the Global Carbon Budget 2021 is a very large downward revision in CO2 emissions from land use
The downward revision is about the same size as the total emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels from the EU17 or India
Of course caveats about uncertainties . . .
Compared to when I went to sleep last night, our perception of the magnitude of the net-zero challenge just improved (it is stull huge, but less huger than we thought)
This is absolutely great news
As a consequence of the updated understandings 2021 CO2 emissions are now lower than any year 2011-2019
In other words, flat for a decade
Again, very good news
The revision also moves the world a giant step further away from RCP8.5
For those who rely on massive increase in land use emissions to argue for RCP8.5?
Schwalm et al 2020 = RIP
Good news!
Finally, while LUC is undoubtedly important, we are reminded that the net-zero CO2 challenge is fundamentally one of energy production technologies (carbon intensity of energy for you Kaya wonks)
Keep your eye on the ball
/END
PS. For those scoring at home, I just sketched this out
RIP SGD20, RIP RCP8.5
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A time series of base (i.e., current-year) loses was first compiled from annual reports published in the Monthly Weather Review by Chris Landsea in 1989 for 1949-1989
I extended the data using same methods to 1996
Chris and I extended back to 1900 for Pielke and Landsea 1998
Then, Pielke et al. 2008 extend the dataset to 2005, again using the same methods
The heavy lifting was done by my then-student Joel Gratz
Joel graduated and went to an insurance company called ICAT . . .
Last month I revealed based on files part of the public record of the Michael Mann trial how Mann coordinated peer review of a paper of mine to ensure that it "would not see the light of day"
I only had a snippet of the relevant Mann email
Now I have the whole thing
And JFC...
First
New: the editor of GRL, Jay Familigetti, originally sent our submission to Mann!
That's right
A paper by Pielke & @ClimateAudit was sent to Mann to peer review
Mann wisely didn't accept but instead recommended hostile reviewers so that "it would not see the light of day"
@ClimateAudit Mann emails his partners Caspar Amann (NCAR) and Gavin Schmidt (NASA) to express his glee that this gives him an opportunity to cause harm
🧵
"The U.S. installed 1,700 miles of new high-voltage transmission miles per year on average in the first half of the 2010s but dropped to only 645 miles per year on average in the second half of the 2010s"
The US has 240,000 miles of high voltage transmission capacity
An expansion of 645 miles/year is just about 0.3%/yr
Take that 0.3%/year HV grid expansion to the next Tweet
The Princeton study (@JesseJenkins) used to promote the Inflation Reduction Act claimed the HV grid has been expanding at a rate of 1% per year based on a newsletter from JP Morgan
That 1% is >3x greater than actual recent grid expansion rates of 0.3%