A reader and climate scientist contributes some information concerning this thread. First up, a new organization backed by Bill Gates and other corporate forces, concentrating on development of basic science and technologies for a low-emission future, the BREAKTHROUGH ENERGY COALITION:
Technology will help solve our energy issues. The urgency of climate change and the energy needs in the poorest parts of the world require an aggressive global program for zero-emission energy innovation. The new model will be a public-private partnership between governments, research institutions, and investors. Scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs can invent and scale the innovative technologies that will limit the impact of climate change while providing affordable and reliable energy to everyone. The existing system of basic research, clean energy investment, regulatory frameworks, and subsidies fails to sufficiently mobilize investment in truly transformative energy solutions for the future. We can’t wait for the system to change through normal cycles.
Founders include Bill Gates of Microsoft, Meg Whitman, CEO of HP, Ratan Tata of Tata (India), Jeff Bezos of Amazon, and other corporate titans. It’s interesting that on their website I’ve been unable to find any calls for higher taxes on undesirable forms of energy provision, or other regulatory attempts to herd the general populace along towards the proper goal. I’m not sure if they see such as a futile attempt in one of the most important nations of the planet, or if they see themselves as fulfilling the role themselves. I suspect they don’t:
But in the current business environment, the risk-reward balance for early-stage investing in potentially transformative energy systems is unlikely to meet the market tests of traditional angel or VC investors – not until the underlying economics of the energy sector shift further towards clean energy. Experience indicates that even the most promising ideas face daunting commercialization challenges and a nearly impassable Valley of Death between promising concept and viable product, which neither government funding nor conventional private investment can bridge. …
We are committed to doing our part and filling this capital need by coming together in a new coalition. We will form a network of private capital committed to building a structure that will allow informed decisions to help accelerate the change to the advanced energy future our planet needs. Success requires a partnership of increased government research, with a transparent and workable structure to objectively evaluate those projects, and committed private-sector investors willing to support the innovative ideas that come out of the public research pipeline.
Together we will focus on early stage companies that have the potential of an energy future that produces near zero carbon emissions and provides everyone with affordable, reliable energy. We will invest based on a few core investment principles …
The New York Times covers this new effort here. While the above web site makes it clear they’re investors, here it’s more baldly put:
“It won’t be as fast, but we do expect to make money out of this thing,” Mr. Gates said of the fund. “If you can drive a new approach, then the energy economy is absolutely gigantic. Now, getting it scaled up fast enough, so that you benefit from your invention or your trade secrets, that is tricky.”
The New York Times Blog supported Q&A with Mr. Gates. This particular question & answer gets to the heart of one issue:
Why does Gates ignore market-ready solutions that are at hand and ready to deploy? In so doing, he ignores hundreds of studies and scientists. While we need more research, Gates does a disservice by diminishing the potential for today’s solutions. —Andy Olsen
Gates: The rich countries have provided incentives and subsidies for solar and wind, and that’s had the beneficial effect of not only getting the installed capacity reducing CO2, but also getting the volume learning curve for those technologies to move costs down. Solar electric in particular has come down a lot. So, in some places, up to a certain percentage, it’s an economic part of the system.
People shouldn’t ignore the fact, though, that the demand is still somewhat driven by the tax credits and portfolio standards. So we still have quite a ways to go, particularly when you’re trying to get from 20 percent of the energy sources up to the eventual 100 percent we need, where then you run into the big challenge of intermittency [dips and peaks in power as wind and solar sources vary] and the cost of adding storage that would deal with that. This makes the economics dramatically tougher because batteries haven’t improved that much. Now I and many other people are investing in companies that are going to try and see what we can do with batteries. But it’s not guaranteed that their price will come down a lot. So solar and wind are great, but as they exist today, for countries like India, either in terms of cost or reliability, they aren’t going to get used substantially without innovations in cost and storage or alternative approaches.
On the technical end of things, our reader provides a link to Scientific American concerning the latest thinking on the Hiatus:
An apparent slowing in the rise of global temperatures at the beginning of the twenty-first century, which is not explained by climate models, was referred to as a “hiatus” or a “pause” when first observed several years ago. Climate-change sceptics have used this as evidence that global warming has stopped. But in June last year, a study in Science claimed that the hiatus was just an artefact which vanishes when biases in temperature data are corrected.
Now a prominent group of researchers is countering that claim, arguing in Nature Climate Change that even after correcting these biases the slowdown was real.
“There is this mismatch between what the climate models are producing and what the observations are showing,” says lead author John Fyfe, a climate modeller at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis in Victoria, British Columbia. “We can’t ignore it.”
Fyfe uses the term “slowdown” rather than “hiatus” and stresses that it does not in any way undermine global-warming theory.
Good scientists all, they worry about everything:
“It’s important to explain that,” Solomon says. “As scientists, we are curious about every bump and wiggle in that curve.”
But what of education? I ran across an article in the latest Skeptical Inquirer (March/April 2016) by Matthew Nisbet, entitled “Shifting the Conversation about Climate Change“, unfortunately not available online. A couple of tidbits, the first being something we should all know (any errors are probably mine):
Surveys of climate scientists and comprehensive reviews of thousands of peer-reviewed studies confirm the same basic fact: at least 97 percent [my emphasis] of climate scientists say that human-caused climate change is happening [citation omitted]. … Yet recent surveys find that only one out of ten Americans correctly estimate agreement among climate scientists as greater than 90 percent [citation omitted].
This is cited not merely as a fact, but in the context that many members of the public are not truly aware of the scientific unanimity on this point. Matthew goes on to briefly cover various communications methods used to communicate important information to the public, with this summary paragraph:
Across each of their experimental conditions, boosting awareness of scientific consensus increased beliefs that climate change is happening, that it is human caused, and that it is a worrisome problem. These shifts in beliefs in turn increased subjects’ support for policy action, with some of the biggest increases observed among Republicans, who tend to be more dismissive of the issue [citation omitted]. Interestingly, in comparison to the tested metaphors, subjects who received either the simple text statement or the pie chart displayed the greatest increase in their beliefs.
So it’s not so much denial as ignorance; and that once the true magnitude of consensus is understood, most people begin to understand this is a truly important issue.
As good a reason as any to write a blog.
