SENIORS CLIMATE  ACTION NETWORK (SCAN)
Key Publications

Introduction

The following peer reviewed publications provide a web of hard evidence that we have exposed ourselves to existential threats on a number of fronts.  Successful mitigation of climate change and returning to living within planetary boundaries depends on first acknowledging and accepting that growth in population and material consumption need to be curbed and then reduced. Greta Thunberg tells us that she doesn't believe in the “win-win'" of green growth. She tells us that real change is costly, real change requires giving things up, the loss of power and privilege, new systems, new ways of life. Greta Thunberg says that with her Asperger's syndrome, she sees the issue of climate change as being black and white. We don't need to have Asperger's syndrome to realise that the issue of climate change is black and white. We simply need to curb and reduce our burning of fossil fuels. Greta says she wouldn't give a pep talk about hope. If this approach had worked in the past, then greenhouse gas emissions would have gone down by now. Greta says if we are to have hope, then we must act now! The time for mere talk is over. Once we have action, then hope is everywhere.


The following list will be added to over time.


Capellán-Pérez, I., Mediavilla, M., de Castro, C., Carpintero, Ó., Miguel, L.J., (2015). More growth? An unfeasible option to overcome critical energy constraints and climate change. Sustainability Science 10, 397411: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-015-0299-3


Capellán-Pérez, I.; de Castro, C.; Miguel González, L.J. (2019). Dynamic Energy Return on Energy Investment (EROI) and Material Requirements in Scenarios of Global Transition to Renewable EnergiesEnergy Strategy Rev. 2019, 26, 100399: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X19300926


Chapman, I., (2014). The end of Peak Oil? Why this topic is still relevant despite recent denials. Energy Policy 64, 93101: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2013.05.010


Climate Action Tracker, (2021). Warming Projections Global Update, May 2021: https://climateactiontracker.org/documents/853/CAT_2021-05-04_Briefing_Global-Update_Climate-Summit-Momentum.pdf


Delannoy, L., Longaretti, P., Murphy, D., and Prados, E., (2021). Peak oil and the low-carbon energy transition: A net-energy perspective, Applied Energy, Elsevier, 2021, 304, pp.1-17: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03360253/document


Dryden, H. and D. Duncan, (2021). Climate regulating ocean plants and animals are being destroyed by toxic chemicals and plastics, accelerating our path towards ocean pH 7.95 in 25 years which will devastate humanity. Environmental Science eJournal, Vol1 , No. 28, June 17: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3860950


Giampietro, M, K. Mayumi, and J. Ramos-Martin, (2006) Can biofuels replace fossil energy fuels? a multi-scale integrated analysis based on the concept of societal and ecosystem metabolism: Part 1, International Journal of Transdisciplinary Research, Vol. 1, p 51-87:  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228743180_Can_biofuels_replace_fossil_energy_fuels_A_multi-scale_integrated_analysis_based_on_the_concept_of_societal_and_ecosystem_metabolism_Part_1


Hall, C.A.S., Lambert, J.G., Balogh, S.B., (2014), EROI of different fuels and the implications for society. Energy Policy 64, 141–152: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2013.05.049


Hansen, J.E, M.Sato, L.Simons, L.S. Nazarenko, K. von Schuckman, N.G. Loeb, M.B. Osman, P. Kharecha, Q.Jin, G. Tselioudis, A.Lacis, R. Reudy, G. Russell, J. Cao, and J. Li (2022) Global Warming in the Pipeline. https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.04474


Heard, B.P., Brook, B.W., Wigley, T.M.L., Bradshaw, C.J.A., (2017). Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 76, 11221133: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2017.03.114


Herrington, G., (2021). Update to limits to growth: Comparing the World3 model with empirical data, Journal of Industrial Ecology, 25(3): 614-626: https://advisory.kpmg.us/content/dam/advisory/en/pdfs/2021/yale-publication.pdf


Hickel, J., Kallis, G., (2020). Is Green Growth Possible? New Political Economy 25, 469–486: https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2019.1598964


IPCC (2022). Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Summary for Policymakers: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGII_SummaryForPolicymakers.pdf


IPCC (2022). Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change, Summary for Policymakers: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGIII_SPM.pdf


International Energy Agency, (2021). The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitionshttps://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-minerals-in-clean-energy-transitions


Keen, S. The appallingly bad neoclassical economics of climate change. Globalization website publication, (2021): https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2020.1807856


Lambert, J.G., C.A.S. Hall, S. Balogh, A. Gupta, and M. Arnold, (2014). Energy, EROI, and Quality of Life, Energy Policy vol. 64, pp. 153-167: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421513006447


Lenton, T.M., Held, H., Kriegler, E., Hall, J.W., Lucht, W., Rahmstorf, S., Schellnhuber, H., (2008). Tipping elements in the Earth’s climate system, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, v.105, pp. 1786–93: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0705414105


MacKay, D.J.C. (2009). Sustainable Energy — Without the Hot Air. Cambridge, UIT Cambridge Ltd, 378 pp: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/217849


McGlade, C. and P. Ekins, (2015). The geographical distribution of fossil fuels unused when limiting global warming to 2° C, Nature 517, 187-190, 2015: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14016


McGlade, C., Ekins, P., (2014). Un-burnable oil: An examination of oil resource utilisation in a decarbonised energy system, Energy Policy 64, 102–112: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2013.09.042


Mertz, J.L. ets al., (2023). World scientists' warning: The behavioural crisis driving ecological overshoot  2023, National Library of Medicine https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37728669/

Michaux, S. (2019). ‘Oil from a Critical Raw Material Perspective’, Geological Survey of Finland Unit, 510 pp: https://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/70_2019.pdf


Michaux, S.P, (2019), The Mining of Minerals and the Limits to Growth, Geological Survey of Finland: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351712079_The_Mining_of_Minerals_and_the_Limits_to_Growth


Michaux, S.P., (2021), Assessment of the Extra Capacity Required of Alternative Energy Electrical Power Systems to Completely Replace Fossil Fuels, Geological Survey of Finland: https://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/42_2021.pdf


Millward-Hopkins, J., Steinberger, J.K., Rao, N.D., and Oswald, Y., (2020). Providing decent living with minimum energy: A Global scenario. Global Environmental Change, Volume 65: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102168


Mudd, G., (2009), Historical Trends in Base Metal Mining: Backcasting to Understand the Sustainability of Mining, Proceedings 48th Annual Conference of Metallurgists, Canadian Metallurgical Society, Sudbury, 2009 August. Update by Mudd, 2012: https://users.monash.edu.au/~gmudd/files/2009-CMS-03-Base-Metals.pdf


Murphy, D., Hall, C.A.S, Dale, M., Cleveland, C., (2011), Order from Chaos: a preliminary protocol for determining the EROI of fuels, Sustainability3,1888–1907: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227439246_Order_from_Chaos_A_Preliminary_Protocol_for_Determining_the_EROI_of_Fuels


Murphy, T., (2021), Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet: Assessing and Adapting to Planetary Limits, Published by eScholarship, University of California: https://escholarship.org/uc/energy_ambitions


Myers, K. FG, Doran, P.T., Cook, J., Koycher, J.E., and Myers, T.A., (2021) Consensus revisited, quantifying scientific agreement on climate change and climate expertise among Earth scientists 10 years later: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac2774


Parrique T., Barth J., Briens F„ C. Kerschner, Kraus-Polk A., Kuokkanen A., Spangenberg, J.H., (2019). Decoupling Debunked, Evidence and arguments against green growth as a sole strategy for sustainability. https://eeb.org/library/decoupling-debunked/


Pearse, R. and S. Bohm (2014).  Ten Reasons Why Carbon Markets Will Not Bring About Radical Emissions Reduction’, Carbon Management, 13 pp: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272786779_Ten_reasons_why_carbon_markets_will_not_bring_about_radical_emissions_reduction


Rockström, J. et al.. (2009). A safe operating space for humanity. Nature 461, 472–475: https://doi.org/10.1038/461472a


Seibert, M., and Rees, W., (2021). Through the Eye of a Needle: An Eco-Heterodox Perspective on the Renewable Energy Transition, Energies 14, no. 15: 4508:  https://doi.org/10.3390/en14154508


Sgouridis, S., Csala, D., and U. Bardi, (2016). The sowers way: quantifying the narrowing net-energy pathways to a global energy transition. Environ. Res. Lett. 11, 094009. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/11/9/094009


Shindell, D., Smith, C.J., (2019). Climate and air-quality benefits of a realistic phase-out of fossil fuels. Nature 573, 408–411: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1554-z


Sovacool, B.K, Ali, S.H., Bazilian, M., Radley, B., Nemery, B., Okatz, J, and Mulvaney, D., (2020). Sustainable Minerals and Metals for a Low-Carbon Future. Science 367 (6473 30-33: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaz6003


Steffen, W. et al, (2015). Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet, Science 347: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1259855


Steffen, W., Rockström, J., Richardson, K., Lenton, T.M., Folke, C., Liverman, D., Summerhayes, C.P., Barnosky, A.D., Cornell, S.E., Crucifix, M., Donges, J.F., Fetzer, I., Lade, S.J., Scheffer, M., Winkelmann, R., Schellnhuber, H.J., (2018). Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene, Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 115, 8252–8259: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1810141115


Taleb, N.N, Read, R., Douady, R., Norman, J., and Bar-Yam, Y., (2014). The Precautionary Principle (with Application to the Genetic Modification of Organisms). arXiv:1410.5787: https://necsi.edu/the-precautionary-principle


UNEP, (2011). Assessing Mineral Resources in Society: Metal Stocks & Recycling Rates: https://www.resourcepanel.org/reports/recycling-rates-metals


Winkelmann, R., A. Levermann, A. Ridgwell, and K. Caldeira, (2015). Combustion of available fossil fuel resources sufficient to eliminate the Antarctic Ice Sheet, Science Advances, vol. 1, e1500589: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281775304 Combustion_of_available_fossil_fuel_resources_sufficient_to_eliminate_the_Antarctic_Ice_Sheet


Wynes, S., Nicholas, K.A., (2017). The climate mitigation gap: education and government recommendations miss the most effective individual actions. Environ. Res. Lett. 12, 074024: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541


Xu, Y., Ramanathan, V., & Victor, D.G., (2018). Global warming will happen faster than we think, Nature, 564 30-32, 5 December 2018: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07586-5

SENIORS CLIMATE  ACTION NETWORK (SCAN)