Almost everything you know about climate change solutions is probably outdated

[kristopher]

#1

Almost Everything You Know About Climate Change Solutions Is Outdated

Almost everything you know about climate change solutions is outdated, for several reasons.

First, climate science and climate politics have been moving unexpectedly quickly toward a broad consensus that we need to keep total human-caused global warming as far as possible below 2°C (3.6°F) — and ideally to no more than 1.5°C. This has truly revolutionary implications for climate solutions policy.

Second, key climate solutions — renewables, efficiency, electric cars, and storage — have been advancing considerably faster than anyone expected, much faster than the academic literature anticipated. The synergistic effect of all these light-speed changes is only now beginning to become clear (see, for instance, my recent post, “Why The Renewables Revolution Is Now Unstoppable”.

Third, the media and commentariat have simply not kept up with all these changes and their utterly game-changing implications. As a result we end up with recent articles in such prestige publications as Foreign Affairs and the New York Times that are literally out-of-date the instant they are published, as I’ll discuss below.

That’s why ClimateProgress is committed to staying ahead of this rapidly-moving subject and a key reason why I have begun writing more about climate solutions, the area in which I have the most personal experience and expertise. Indeed, now that there is basically a high-level political consensus around the globe about what the science says should be our temperature target, the need to move quickly on solutions has never been clearer...

https://thinkprogress.org/almost-everything-you-know-about-climate-change-solutions-is-outdated-part-1-84aefadbad3d



#2

We Can Stop Searching For The Clean Energy Miracle. It’s Already Here.

Key climate solutions have been advancing considerably faster than anyone expected just a few years ago thanks to aggressive market-based deployment efforts around the globe. These solutions include such core enabling technologies for a low-carbon world as solar, wind, efficiency, electric cars, and battery storage.

That’s a key reason almost everything you know about climate change solutions is probably outdated. In Part 1 of this series, I discussed other reasons. For instance, climate science and climate politics have moved unexpectedly quickly toward a broad understanding that we need to keep total human-caused global warming as far as possible below 2°C (3.6°F) — and ideally to no more than 1.5°C. But the media and commentariat generally have not kept up with the science or solutions and their utterly game-changing implications.

This post will focus on the light-speed changes in clean energy technology that have left even the most informed journalists and experts behind, which in turn means the public and policy-makers are receiving outdated information.

The Clean Energy Miracle Is Already Here
Consider solar power. In recent days, both the Council on Foreign Affairs and the New York Times have published claims that were literally out-of-date the instant they were put on the internet....

https://thinkprogress.org/we-can-stop-searching-for-the-clean-energy-miracle-its-already-here-fcf5ec3b355f

http://preview.tinyurl.com/lo8fbvy


See also:

The adoption curve

When an innovation is introduced into a market, it takes a number of year to ‘diffuse’ and penetrate the market. The adoption typically looks like an S-curve as shown in the following chart. The adoption curve provides a useful way to break down customers in five segment: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards.


Adoption curve

Innovators are the first to adopt new products and services. They are technology freaks par excellence, and like experimenting and playing around to find out what they can do with their new toys. Innovators typically represent a few percent of the target user base.

Early adopters also invest early on in new technologies, not as technologists, but to address their concrete problems.

- They typically represent about 10% of the target population.
- In companies, early adopters are opinion influencers. Often they will not be decision makers themselves, but are key to convince others. Early adopters are usually at the centre of extensive communication networks, for instance internal management circles, industry fora, or are very sociable individuals in their private sphere.
- When a critical mass of early adopters has developed, the process of technology diffusion becomes self-sustaining and like a snow-ball effect, it spills over to the early majority. On the other hand, competing and incompatible standards slow down the rate of adoption and the transition from early adopters to the early majority.

more at: http://www.business-planning-for-managers.com/main-courses/marketing-sales/marketing/the-adoption-curve/

[ms liberty]

1. K&R. n/t

[Warpy]

2. Climate change is inevitable after 3 centuries of heavy industrialization

using fossil fuels. However, people have been moderating their carbon footprints since the early 70s without realizing it every time they buy a small city car, an Energy Star appliance, or put a CFL into a hard to reach light fixture because they were sick of hauling out a ladder to change bulbs every few weeks.

I've also seen solar generating fields and wind turbines sprouting around here like mushrooms.

What's really worrying is the increasing rate of methane release from the deep sea bed and permafrost. That's what has the potential to change climate change into runaway global warming. We can survive the former, not the latter.

[Rhiannon12866]

3. K&R! Thanks for posting!

Bookmarking...

[Boomer]

4. Yeah, good luck with that

Every indication is that climate change is accelerating faster than predicted. That has been the constant refrain for DECADES now. "Oh... we didn't expect that to happen in this century...."

Moving ahead with green technologies is obviously a game changer for our lives right now. Right now it's a wonderful turn of events and I'm all for it. But it's not going to stop climate change from disrupting our species in major ways toward the latter half of this century.

The game is already over.