Talk:Special Report on Emissions Scenarios

Peak oil and SRES
Somebody should read these scenarios sometime. Maybe me. Does anyone know if resource constraints are built in? It would be odd if not William M. Connolley 14:44, 13 September 2007 (UTC)


 * As far as I know they are not. With peak oil being a household concept (and we'll hear more about peak gas and peak coal later on), this is getting more important. Has any research been made here lately? It seems some of the fiercest criticism against IPCC now includes that Peak Oil hasn't been looked into. How much will this influence the scenarios? Narssarssuaq (talk) 07:31, 2 July 2008 (UTC)


 * The SRES scenarios incorporate a range of what they describe as "resource availability", but it is not a strong constraint on the possible futures described in SRES in large part because in the late 90s there wasn't a lot of agreement about when resource limitations would start to matter. Dragons flight (talk) 18:15, 2 July 2008 (UTC)


 * This thread also exists on Talk:Global Warming - it's been cross-posted here as it's also of relevance to this article. (Do take steps if this is inappropriate). Would the (supposed) increased knowledge today influence anything in the article to a noteworthy degree? Should it be mentioned at all? In that case, does anyone know any citations we could use? By the way, a rather academic site on oil production, demand and prices seems to be [www.theoildrum.com]. Although one-sided, it refers to empirical knowledge to back up claims. Maybe it can be of some help. Narssarssuaq (talk) 19:00, 2 July 2008 (UTC)


 * James Hansen and Pushker Kharecha wrote a paper titled Implications of Peak Oil for Atmospheric CO2 and Climate. The paper was accepted by Global Biogeochemical Cycles, is available at http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.2782 and was commented at http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/2559. They show that if conventional oil production peaks within the next few decades, it may have a large effect on future atmospheric CO2 and climate change. But that it depends upon subsequent energy choices (mainly use of coal and unconventional fossil fuels). Some papers (I will try to link later) claim that in recent years technological changes were not employed as presupposed by the SRES scenarios and explain it by unexpected use of old technologies in China and India. Taad Laet (talk) 21:51, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Recent emissions and the SRES
Motivated by recent edits by User:Andrewjlockley on Global warming, I've started to glance at the literature about recent emissions. I'm going from the editorial written by van Vuuren and Riahi in 2008, and I'm planning on changing the title of the Criticism subsection and adding this information. If anyone wants of these article, feel free to email me, tell me which article you want, and I'll reply to your email with the article(s) attached. - Enuja (talk) 21:20, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Pielke, R., Wigley, T., and Green, C. 2008. Dangerous assumptions. Nature. 542:531-532. doi:10.1038/452531a

Raupach, M.R., Marland, G., Ciais, P., Le Quéré, C., Canadell, J.G., Klepper, G. and Field, C.B.. 2007. Global and regional drivers of accelerating CO2 emissions. P NATL ACAD SCI USA. 104 p. 10288-10293  doi: 10.1073/pnas.0700609104

Sheehan, P. 2008. The new global growht path: implications for climate change analysis and policy. Climate change 91:211-231 DOI 10.1007/s10584-008-9415-z

van Vuuren, Detlef P. and Rianhi, Keywan. 2008. Do recent emission trends imply higher emissions forever? Climate Change 91:237-248 DOI 10.1007/s10584-008-9485-y


 * I would have thought that the last year might modify this picture somewhat William M. Connolley (talk) 07:43, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Rewrite and restructuring
I've done a fairly extensive revision of this article. The previous revision, in my view, had a number of flaws, which I'll explain in detail below. My main impression was that the previous revision was biased towards criticism of the SRES scenarios.

Intro section

I've rewritten this for clarity. I deleted the bit on emissions growth making the scenarios obsolete because it was unsourced. Also, I felt that it was biased to have this criticism in the intro: why not the MER v PPP issue, or the IPCC authors' rebuttals to the criticisms of the SRES?

Purpose section

Previous revision:

Because projections of climate change depend heavily upon future human activity, climate models are run against scenarios [...] 'Some have questioned whether peak oil means that fossil fuel reserves are adequate to support these scenarios [4]. A compilation of over 500 studies on future oil supply showed that a peak in conventional oil production before 2030 appears likely and there is a significant risk of a peak before 2020. Given the lead times required to both develop substitute fuels and improve energy efficiency, this risk needs to be given serious consideration [5]. The IPCC has been criticized for ignoring peak oil and resource depletion [6].'

I've moved the text in bold to the section on criticisms. There's no need to have it in this section. In addition, I've rewritten the critique of the scenarios to more closely reflect the cited sources. These sentences -

''[...] A compilation of over 500 studies on future oil supply showed that a peak in conventional oil production before 2030 appears likely and there is a significant risk of a peak before 2020. Given the lead times required to both develop substitute fuels and improve energy efficiency, this risk needs to be given serious consideration [5].''

- are based on a UKERC report that, as far as I can tell, makes no direct reference to the SRES. The UKERC report appears to be being used to strengthen criticism of the SRES. In my view, this use of the UKERC report inappropriate. Therefore I've deleted the cited text.

Criticism section

I've moved this section into a new section called "Views and analysis". I've rewritten the content on peak oil to more closely reflect the source material.

Trends after 2000 section

Moved into "Views and analysis" section. Enescot (talk) 03:35, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Projections and fossil fuel availability
I've deleted the section on trends after 2000 and replaced it with a new section called "observed emission rates". I've also added a new section called "post-SRES projections", and expanded the section on fossil fuel availability.

Previous revision:

Trends after 2000

''The growth rate of global emissions after 2000 has been about 3%, while the growth rates under the emissions scenarios is between 1.4% and 3.4% This has attracted attention and could be evidence that these scenarios are too conservative; this underestimation will continue into the coming decades according to some projections [29]. However, in the latter half of the twentieth century, the scenarios may overestimate future emissions due to their failure to consider resource availability constraints.''

I wasn't happy with this section. The article should be specific in attributing particular projections and analyses made by various authors. To speak in generalities, as the above paragraph does, is far less useful. It is also biased since it focuses attention on particular issues that particular authors have raised. This may present a biased summary of the issues that have received most attention in the literature. To address this issue, I've expanded the section to include a wider range of projections. All projections are referred to specifically. The summary of projections is taken from IPCC (2007), since this was a literature assessment. Enescot (talk) 01:55, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

IPCC citations
At some point I am going to revise the IPCC citations here to a canonical form I have developed (see IPCC Fourth Assessment Report and Global warming for examples), after I work out the equivalent form for the SRES report. There is a possible issue I would have clarified, regarding Enescott's comment above that "The article should be specific in attributing particular projections and analyses made by various authors." I think the meaning here is for specific attribution (implying citation) of particular projections, not various authors, in which case there should not be any problem. To make attribution to the authors of specific chapters would require some extra accomodation; not impossible, but extra work, and I hope won't be felt necessary.

I am also inclined to do a partial conversion of citations to Harv templates, which is a lot easier, and I think clearer. _ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:43, 18 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Sort of done. There were various citations of "IPCC (2001)" (not specifying which contribution, or  section/page number), doubtful or non-specific citations, uncited material, etc.  I've tried to fix up some of the omissions, but others I just tagged for further work.  Who knows, perhaps the original authors might come back clarify just what they were citing.  _ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:09, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Citations to House of Lords Select Committee
Something else someone could work on: the various citations to evidence of the Select Committee could have a single reference for the report, with each citation specifying which part of the report is being cited. (Just like the IPCC citations.) This would require a little thought as to the full and proper format of the reference. Have fun. _ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:03, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

About the FAILED tag added to Raupach cite (just how bad are emissions)
Our text says that since 2000, observed emissions have exceeded the highest scenario used by IPCC in the 2007 AR4 report. In support, we cite two references, a paper by Raupach et al, and a later publication by McMullen and Jabbour. The latter cites the same Raupach paper, so we are really just talking about that one.

Please note that the authors posted a clarification essay at RealClimate, and in that essay they disavow the interpretation made in our text!

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