It Doesn't Work That Way

Note: this article is a team effort between Susan Chapelle and myself.
I am sometimes too harsh, Susan is more diplomatic. We hope our collaboration will continue in the future and be fruitful.
Thank you, Susan!




There is a misconception that in order to solve a problem, the most important step is "finding a quick solution." In our current political climate, this seems most evident with global climate change.

For example, in this subject people may present any or several of the following "solutions:"

  • Implement heavy carbon taxes.
  • Subsidize renewables.
  • Ban Arctic drilling.
  • Aggressively ramp up nuclear power plant construction.
  • Offer generous tax incentives in the purchase of EVs.
  • Divest from fossil fuels

At times, these approaches do not work as intended, and may even be counterproductive. 

Why?

The world is infinitely more complex than a bunch of bureaucrats working on spreadsheets in a government office, and the climate is infinitely more complex than can be resolved by a single financial institution. 

Historically, when a problem is declared unsolvable, often there comes an entrepreneur and proves them wrong.  





Yes, Henry Ford saved the cities from being drowned in manure.
Fracking is helping the USA reduce its reliance on coal.

Who will "fix" Global Climate?

The answer might lie in a variety of not yet available solutions, but in the end it may be a bunch of entrepreneurs that find innovative ways to resolve an extremely complex issue.

The "manure" conferences achieved nothing aside from producing even more manure.

We wonder, is is time to discontinue climate conferences for good?

Is there a better way to examine global energy use?

Feel free to add to the conversation on Twitter.










Comments

Fernando Leanme said…
Not too long ago I read an overview of a paper co authored by K Tayhoe, in which their climate model predicted sea level would increase more if co2 emissions were reduced to the IPCC 2.6 pathway. It seems the model predicts increased snow fall offsets glacier ice melting as it contacts the oceans in the higher emissions cases.

I'm familiar with the 3d dynamic models we run in the oil industry and this makes me a bit skeptic about GCM long term predictions. This leads me to conclude a changing climate is a problem, but we definitely need to think through what the hell we are doing. Some of the moves proposed by Obama and Chrhstiana Figueres are either useless or stupid.
9/04/2015 1:14 PM
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