"//My original point was that … each unit of GSP requires less energy input and therefore less emissions.//

No one disputes that. That's been true for over a century."

Oh good. Glad you caught on or caught up.

mhaze,

Once again, that point was never the point in dispute. So saying "glad you caught up" doesn't advance your case. It just comes across as limp and performative.

Declining emissions intensity has been acknowledged throughout. What you claimed - and still haven't shown - is that absolute decoupling (GDP rising while total emissions fall) would have occurred anyway, primarily due to fossil-fuel efficiency, regardless of renewables, fuel switching, or policy.

That claim remains unsupported.

Until then, repeating "we agree" on the easy part, while pretending I was slow to catch on, doesn't resolve the hard part - it just avoids it.

"What you claimed - and still haven't shown - is that absolute decoupling (GDP rising while total emissions fall) would have occurred anyway"

No that's just you trying to reframe the discussion away from a losing argument to one you think you can win. My point was that the decline in emissions even as GDP rose was not solely due to renewables which was the claim in the articles WTF relied on, when the decline in emissions per unit of GSP was occurring long before the renewables boondoggle became a thing, and was due in no small part of more efficient ustulation of fossil fuels.

That's a retreat, mhaze, not a clarification.

You originally argued that the observed decoupling would have occurred anyway, driven primarily by fossil-fuel efficiency, and that renewables and climate policy were essentially incidental. That is a strong counterfactual claim. It's the one that's been under discussion.

Now you're saying something much weaker and much less controversial:

- emissions intensity has been falling for a long time
- fossil-fuel efficiency has contributed to that
- renewables are not the sole factor

No one has disputed any of that. It's been acknowledged repeatedly.

But that is not the same as saying renewables and policy are unimportant, nor does it explain why we now see absolute decoupling in many economies when intensity improvements alone failed to stop emissions rising with GDP for decades.

And no, the articles did not claim renewables were the sole cause. They described a multi-factor transition: efficiency, fuel switching, electrification, and low-emissions generation. You've been arguing against a strawman version of that claim throughout.

So let's be clear about where things now stand:

- Declining emissions intensity: agreed
- Fossil efficiency contributes: agreed
- Renewables alone didn't do everything: agreed

What remains unshown is the claim you started with: that the decoupling we now observe would have happened regardless of renewables, fuel switching, or policy.

If that's no longer your position, then fine - we've converged. But if it is still your position, then the burden hasn't changed.

Efficiency improvements long pre-date the period in which absolute decoupling appears. Explaining why the pattern broke when it did still requires more than "efficiency has been improving".

At this point, either you're defending the original counterfactual claim - in which case it still needs evidence - or you're acknowledging that renewables, fuel switching, and policy are doing non-trivial work.

Those are the two options. Everything else is just relabelling the disagreement.