This is an excellent, concise summary of the lock-in effect I've been droning on about for years, and I think it is still vastly un(der)appreciated by people concerned/engaged with climate change. There is some high-profile acknowledgement of this situation, e.g. IEA's top economist, Fatih Birol, has talked about it repeatedly, but the message doesn't seem to be reaching many of the right people, including many green activists I speak with.
There was a fairly recent report from WRI talking about the plans worldwide to build about 1,200 new coal plants. If one does a back-of-the-envelope calculation, assuming an average size, coal and water consumption, and CO2 emissions, it results in some quite dim numbers and conclusions. I'm quite aware that many people question whether we'll ever build anywhere near that many new plants worldwide, due to cooling water restrictions and, in some cases, regional coal availability. But cut the projected number of new plants significantly, and the cumulative emissions over the normal lifespan of a coal plant (40 to 60 years) are still very bad news. Getting us out of existing infrastructure and technology, with its associated emissions commitment, in anything approaching a good time frame is a gigantic political and economic challenge. On Saturday, June 1, 2013 1:05:00 PM UTC-4, Fred Zimmerman wrote: > > I think it's important to distinguish between the effects of advocacy and > the inertia of the energy system. I believe the inertia is huge relative > to the effects of advocacy because of the tremendous switching costt of > infrastructure, distribution, power systems. Advocacy affects choices at > the margins but consumers and businesses start to balk as soon as the cost > effect becomes significant. Even if ExxonMobil had never paid a climate > skeptic a dime, we would still have an energy system in which fossil fuel > emissions are dominant. > > > --- > Fred Zimmerman > Geoengineering IT! > Bringing together the worlds of geoengineering and information technology > GE NewsFilter: http://geoengineeringIT.net:8080 > > > On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 12:33 PM, Alan Robock > <rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu<javascript:> > > wrote: > >> Dear All, >> >> I also was at the NASA Ames meeting. It was my first geoengineering >> meeting, and it was there that I was struck with the very enthusiastic >> endorsement of geoengineering as a solution to global warming by people who >> did not seem to be aware of the potential negative impacts. But Lane and >> Kheshgi were not among those who were blindly advocating geoengineering, as >> I remember it. I agree with Clive that the reason we are even considering >> this Plan B is that Exxon and other fossil fuel companies have had a >> dedicated campaign to deny anthropogenic global warming, and that AEI has >> been part of this campaign, and that if they were to now advocate >> mitigation we would not be nearly as interested in geoengineering. But it >> was not such a black and white discussion at the Ames meeting – it was more >> of a general discussion of geoengineering and a learning opportunity for >> many. >> >> It was at the Ames meeting that I wrote down my 20 reasons why >> geoengineering may be a bad idea, as I listened to two days of >> presentations. (My research program since then has been to investigate >> those reasons. I have now crossed out three of them, but added nine new >> ones, so the total is now 26.) >> >> Alan >> >> -- >> Alan Robock, Distinguished Professor >> Editor, Reviews of Geophysics >> Director, Meteorology Undergraduate Program >> Associate Director, Center for Environmental Prediction >> Department of Environmental Sciences Phone: +1-848-932-5751 >> Rutgers University Fax: +1-732-932-8644 >> 14 College Farm Road E-mail: >> rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu<javascript:> >> New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551 USA http://envsci.rutgers.edu/~** >> robock <http://envsci.rutgers.edu/~robock> >> http://twitter.com/AlanRobock >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "geoengineering" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to geoengineerin...@**googlegroups.com <javascript:>. >> To post to this group, send email to >> geoengi...@googlegroups.**com<javascript:> >> . >> Visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/**group/geoengineering?hl=en<http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en> >> . >> For more options, visit >> https://groups.google.com/**groups/opt_out<https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out> >> . >> >> >> > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
