IPCC's Climate Report: Ind Land Use Change estimates:"highly uncertain, unobservable, unverifiable"

[Bill USA]

http://globalrfa.org/news-media/iluc-unverifiable-and-biofuels-economically-beneficial-says-ipcc

TORONTO, Canada – The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC) released their “Bioenergy and Climate Change Mitigation: An Assessment” report in Berlin on Sunday that confirmed that biofuels production is economically beneficial and that Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC) modelling is unverifiable.

~~
~~

The IPCC report contained another significant finding regarding Indirect Land Use Change, an attempt to predict future land use patterns globally. The report stated that[font size="3"] “These estimates of global LUC (Land Use Change) are highly uncertain, unobservable, unverifiable, and dependent on assumed policy, economic contexts, and inputs used in the modelling.”[/font]
(more)

[pscot]

1. This site is Ethanol Central

No knock on the IPCC, just sayin'.

[caraher]

2. Industry spin; as far as I can tell IPCC made no such broad conclusions about ILUC

After 20 minutes I finally located the quote, which appears as a caveat in the caption to a particular figure, and not as a blanket statement regarding our state of knowledge of land use change impacts. It's the caption to Figure 11.24 on p. 95 of the report of Working Group III – Mitigation of Climate Change, Chapter 11, Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU). The full caption reads (with the above quoted section in bold),

Figure 11.24. Estimates of GHGLUC emissions – GHG emissions from biofuel production-induced LUC (as gCO2eq/MJfuel produced) over a 30-year time horizon organized by fuel(s), feedstock, and study. Assessment methods, LUC estimate types and uncertainty metrics are portrayed to demonstrate the diversity in approaches and differences in results within and across any given category. Points labeled ‘a’ on the Y-axis represent a commonly used estimate of lifecycle GHG emissions associated with the direct supply chain of petroleum gasoline (frame A) and diesel (frame B). These emissions are not directly comparable to GHGLUC because the emission sources considered are different, but are potentially of interest for scaling comparison. Based on Warner et al. (2013). Please note: These estimates of global LUC are highly uncertain, unobservable, unverifiable, and dependent on assumed policy, economic contexts, and inputs used in the modelling. All entries are not equally valid nor do they attempt to measure the same metric despite the use of similar naming conventions (e.g., ILUC). In addition, many different approaches to estimating GHGLUC have been used. Therefore, each paper has its own interpretation and any comparisons should be made only after careful consideration. *CO2eq includes studies both with and without CH4 and N2O accounting.

I wonder whether they made the original source very hard to track down quite intentionally. Googling "Bioenergy and Climate Change Mitigation: An Assessment" mostly gives hits on biofuel promotion web pages.

If there really is a standalone IPCC document titled "Bioenergy and Climate Change Mitigation: An Assessment," please direct me to it. Thanks!

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. I'm pretty sure you have found the true document they've taken the quotes from

This document is the copy‐edited version of the final draft Report, dated 17 December 2013, of the
Working Group III contribution to the IPCC 5th Assessment Report "Climate Change 2014:
Mitigation of Climate Change" that was accepted but not approved in detail by the 12th Session of
Working Group III and the 39th Session of the IPCC on 12 April 2014 in Berlin, Germany.

That basically fits with saying 'Berlin on Sunday' on April 14th. It also has, on p.97 and 98, the "Bioenergy projects can be economically beneficial" and "Brazilian sugar cane ethanol production provides six times more jobs than the Brazilian petroleum sector" quotes. It goes on to point out things like

"The establishment of large‐scale biofuels feedstock production can also cause smallholders, tenants,
and herders to lose access to productive land, while other social groups such as workers, investors,
company owners, biofuels consumers, and populations who are more responsible for GHG emission
reductions enjoy the benefits of this production"
and
"Bioenergy deployment is more beneficial when it is not an additional land‐use activity expanding
over the landscape, but rather integrates into existing land uses and influences the way farmers and
forest owners use their land"
but those aren't so positive, so the PR job ignored them. I think you're right - they made up the document title (there are other non-IPCC documents fronm earlier years using that phrase), and it does make it hard to put the quotes in context. It does however show which sites take their PR from the central source without checking it.

[Bill USA]

5. could you provide a link to what you found. I tried to find it but could not.

your excerpt refers to "figure 11.24" so is this chapter 11, or Appendix 11?

I searched the IPCC report as I wanted to see the full context of what was said. But what you found exactly matches the quote used in the article i provided link to. Thus, you have confirmed the quote was accurate. Which makes your statement: "Industry spin; as far as I can tell IPCC made no such broad conclusions about ILUC"... well, rather hard to make any sense of.

NOw, if only you would provide us with a link.

[caraher]

6. The document is a .pdf and I provided the correct title

Here's the url for the .pdf of Chapter 11 of the IPCC document, "Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change." I found it again in seconds by googling the title I provided in the previous post - which is a helluva lot better than I did looking for the title your source gave (which I could only find in multiple biofuel industry articles quoting one another).

I found that link via the IPCC web page, "Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change"

Now can you return the favor and provide a link to the report your industry report cites? If not, it suggests your sources are trying to use the name of the IPCC to lend an air of disinterested authority to their claims. And no, in no way does what I find "confirm the quote was accurate." It confirms that those words existed in that order in some IPCC document, but not only was the document completely misidentified (perhaps to make the context of the quote hard to verify?), it micharacterizes what it refers to by implying it is a general claim about land use change impact, rather than a caution against reading more into a figure than is justified. That is flat-out dishonest.

[poopfuel]

4. Actually Muriel, this one statement is QUITE positive

Bioenergy deployment is more beneficial when it is not an additional land‐use activity expanding
over the landscape, but rather integrates into existing land uses and influences the way farmers and
forest owners use their land"

That's what I've been saying for years as a pro-biofuels advocate.

This company wants to do just that. Small to medium scale production close to agricultural source. On-site at the farm.

blumedistillation.com