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Reminder: the goal is not to get government or "society" to acknowledge high CO2 levels are a big deal. What matters is getting the problem fixed. Things like government or "society" recognizing it are at best tools to get it fixed, not the fix itself. 1/
When you think about the problem, you have to begin with what an actual fix is (say, replacing the existing power infrastructure with renewables or nuclear), and then from there you have to back out the steps needed to get to there from here. 2/
Getting widespread recognition may or may not be a matter of importance depending on what the path to the solution is. If, for example, the path towards the solution is economically advantageous, people will adopt it even without caring about the positive externalities. 3/
Indeed, given the coordination problem involved in getting large numbers of governments in developing nations to do much, the most advantageous paths are those that don't require cooperation from China or India or what have you, because that may never arrive. 4/
Another important factor: there are limits to the speed of technology transitions, though they can happen pretty fast. You could not get everyone on earth to replace all their cars in six months, and expecting that is silly, but it _could_ happen in 15-20 years. 5/
And, such transitions usually happen along an s-curve, which looks exponential at its peak, not according to a linear progression. That is, if you're expecting to replace all the world's cars with electric cars in 15 years, don't expect 1/15th will change every year. 6/
Technological change never happens that way. Instead, you expect that at first, very few electric cars will be bought, but that the number will be exponentiating. This is a natural consequence of the limits to technological transformation. 7/
Why? Because know-how needs to be accumulated, factories need to be built, skilled workers need to be trained, infrastructure needs to be constructed. So you can't start out building 40 million electric cars a year or what have you. 8/
But, as the industry takes over, and has more and more capital available because of more and more sales of products, and has more and more skilled employees and more and more infrastructure, it can grow exponentially, which is very different from linearly. 9/
Most people have no sense, intuitive or otherwise, for what this means, even though they've seen it in their lifetimes. The internet grew exponentially at its peak. The CRTs to flat screen transition happened this way. Mobile phone adoption happened this way. 10/
But most people were only paying attention at the very end, when, seemingly in just a few years, things went from 10-20% market penetration to 100% "overnight". People did not perceive the long but exponential buildup to this "sudden", "overnight" success. 11/
This is a major mistake if you're trying to predict the future. And of course, it's a common mistake. Supposed "experts" make this mistake all the time. And let me post, yet again, this picture of such a prediction failure in progress. 12/ 
Am I saying people should quit worrying about climate change? Hell no. Am I saying that people (including you, possibly) should focus more on deployment of engineering solutions and not on politics? Hell yes. 13/
Again, this problem cannot be solved by people wringing their hands or protesting. It has to be solved by deploying power sources that don't emit carbon dioxide. The former is only useful to the extent that it brings on the latter. 14/
Right now, there are a number of excellent technologies that are currently in the process of entering the market or being adopted. Focus on those. Especially focus on whether there are barriers to deployment of those that need to be removed. 15/
For example, if you care about climate change, calling your senator and saying you're pissed about high tariffs on imported photovoltaic panels is probably a lot more productive than demanding vague "public attention to the problem". 16/
There are many such issues right now; that's just one example. However, if you're interested in making a difference, focus on ways to get specific carbon dioxide free power sources deployed and removing barriers to the same. That's what will get the problem fixed. 17/17
