There are a couple new papers out on how we get our carbon problem fixed.
Here is place where you can read the first and follow the links to the Sir Bob paper (I haven't had time to read it yet).
"Meeting a target of keeping global temperature from rising above 2C is still possible, according to 30 leading climate and energy experts.
The authors, who include former UK government scientific adviser Sir Bob Watson, conclude that staying under 2C needs “immediate, urgent action” at the highest levels of governments. The Tackling the Challenge of Climate Change report was presented at Ban Ki-moon’s UN climate summit in New York last month.
Watson rejects any suggestion that 2C is an inappropriate target saying it “plays into the hands of climate deniers” and would be a step backward from the urgent action that’s needed.
Waiting until 2025 or 2030 to bend the CO2 emissions curve will be too late to meet the 2C target. That would hit most of Africa, many small island states and the world’s poorest very hard.
The report is a “short, punchy document focused on near-term solutions,” said Watson while acknowledging there is little new in it. The steps outlined to achieve 2C are “hardly rocket science”."
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/10/we-can-meet-c2-climate-target-and-heres-how-say-energy-expertsAnd Jacobson and Delucchi have an updated version of their 2009 paper on how we move the world to renewables in 20 years.
"According to a new study coauthored by Stanford researcher Mark Z. Jacobson, we could accomplish all that by converting the world to clean, renewable energy sources and forgoing fossil fuels.
"Based on our findings, there are no technological or economic barriers to converting the entire world to clean, renewable energy sources," said Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering. "It is a question of whether we have the societal and political will."
He and Mark Delucchi, of the University of California-Davis, have written a two-part paper in Energy Policy in which they assess the costs, technology and material requirements of converting the planet, using a plan they developed.
The world they envision would run largely on electricity. Their plan calls for using wind, water and solar energy to generate power, with wind and solar power contributing 90 percent of the needed energy.
Geothermal and hydroelectric sources would each contribute about 4 percent in their plan (70 percent of the hydroelectric is already in place), with the remaining 2 percent from wave and tidal power.
Vehicles, ships and trains would be powered by electricity and hydrogen fuel cells. Aircraft would run on liquid hydrogen. Homes would be cooled and warmed with electric heaters – no more natural gas or coal – and water would be preheated by the sun.
Commercial processes would be powered by electricity and hydrogen. In all cases, the hydrogen would be produced from electricity. Thus, wind, water and sun would power the world.
The researchers approached the conversion with the goal that by 2030, all new energy generation would come from wind, water and solar, and by 2050, all pre-existing energy production would be converted as well."
You can read about the paper here, the actual paper does not seem to be on line at this time -
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/january/jacobson-world-energy-012611.htmlAnd one more tasty treat. The Jacobson and Delucchi 2009 paper is available on the web. Scientific American put it behind a paywall but you can access it here via Mark's site -
http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/sad1109Jaco5p.indd.pdfAnd to top it off, here's a page where you can find a few other of Mark's papers -
http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/susenergy2030.html