The Global Warming Potential Metric: Simple but Misleading

​Deliberate intervention into the course of climate change is a multi-trillion dollar project.  Mathematical models represent our best hope of optimizing the outcomes of actions we take today.  A widely used metric, the Global Warming Potential (GWP), uses simple numerical multipliers to account for the differing effects of emitting various greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.  Among other things, GWP has been used to harmonize the nationally determined contributions of the Paris Agreement.  However, despite its widespread acceptance, GWP is oversimplified and in some cases potentially misleading.  As examples we compare the climate modeling of international oil and gas companies used to rationalize their pivot toward clean energy production; the greenhouse gas impact of European power generation fueled by domestic European coal vs Russian pipeline gas, and the impact of US liquefied natural gas exports on global warming.