Comments tomrobey has made

Turning around an oil tanker

We need to be realistic and think a bit deeper the simple approaches described so far.  Let us take solar energy as a simple example.  If we have a factory that produces a constant quantity of photovoltaic cells from now until 2050 that can be assume to displace carbon-emitting power plants what would be the effect?  Each photovoltaic cell we assume would last until 2050.  In the first year we have only 1/43 of the photovoltaic cells installed.  This scenario would probably be pretty close to the Sierra Club 2% per year.  However, we are adding factories for photovoltaic cells over time and we are progressively improving the efficiency of these cells (and learning which approaches toward reducing carbon emissions work).  In this example, carbon emission reductions would be slow at first and then gain speed towards 2050.  This suggests the curve is very backloaded.

More efficient cars also has essentially the same pattern or maybe even worse as it takes time for cars to be replaced.  Perhaps there are some low hanging fruit but we (and even more, China) are still building coal plants.

The reason it is important to realize this is that this is exactly what is happening in Europe.  If we expect 5% the first year or 2% the first year and find out as Europe did that there is almost no progress the first year then proponents will become discouraged and critics will argue that fighting global warming is useless.  We need to realize progress will be slow at first just like turning around a giant oil tanker.
On Your math teacher knew you'd need this stuff someday! posted 2 years, 5 months ago 27 Responses