Environment

The Evolution of Climate Change

Ever wonder how ideas proliferate, gather momentum, and then are taken as fact? Take climate change. Regardless of its factual basis, it was not mainstream even in the late 1990s. From whence did it come?

I did some research that presents insights into how climate change as an issue has evolved. But its even more revealing to understand how such ideas get studied, reported, and adopted. Long, technical, and interesting only for geeks, so read at your own risk.

The Diffusion of Innovations

But first, I would ask that you familiarize yourself with the diffusion of innovations theory (Wikipedia), and introduce yourself to the S-curve. The basic theory, presented in 1962 by Everett Rogers, is that the adoption of new innovations or ideas follows a bell-curve, consisting of innovators (2.5%), early adopters (13.5%), early majority (34%), late majority (34%) and laggards (16%). This translates into an S-shaped cumulative adoption curve.

While the theory probably has critics, such S-shaped curves have been empirically. Consider, for example, the adoption rate of various products by American households (Source: Federal Reserve of Dallas). All innovations follow a somewhat S-shaped curve, with the only difference being the rate of adoption.

The Evolution of Climate Change

What does any of this have to do with climate change? Well, I was interested in how climate change went from being not really important, to being the defining issue of our time. Just when and how did this happen?

For the answer I looked at three factors: the number of academic paper citations on the issue, the number of news articles, and investment by venture capital (VC) firms in cleantech. For the first two, I relied on Google Scholar and Google News respectively, searching for the keywords (”global warming” “climate change”). For VC investment, I turned to the Cleantech Venture Network and this graph. The results follow.

Evolution of Climate Change (I): Academia

Let us start with how the idea evolved within academia. I was fairly certain that the number of academic papers published would show a gradual, then a sudden rise towards the early part of this decade. But the beauty of the results surprised even me (see figure below). As expected, academic paper citations for saw a dramatic rise in 1997, then again around the year 2000.

Let us, however, be clear about what we are seeing here. While this looks like an S-shaped cumulative adoption curve, this is actually the first half of (what should eventually be) a bell curve (the plot is for papers published per unit of time). If you plot this as a cumulative, what this means is we are still at the lower half of the S-shaped adoption curve, and the rate of growth of papers published is positive.

Evolution of Climate Change (II): Media

Now, lets add news reports published. Here is what we get.

Again, we see a rise in news reports, though this time it occurs later – around 2003-04. This too, should eventually become a bell curve.

Evolution of Climate Change (II): Venture Capital in Cleantech

The cleantech industry is currently booming, with billions flowing in through venture capital. Some describe it as the next bubble. So, how has VC investment expanded? See figure 3, below, and you realize that it took off in 2004-05.

Conclusion

Now, if we put this all together, this kind of proves how ideas become mainstream. A few interesting points.

• If you thought that Al Gore and ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ (2006), were ahead of the curve and somehow contributed to mainstreaming the issue, you’re wrong. Mainstream media had already adoped the issue in 2004. Gore just caught the wave at the right time.
• There is a time lag between when issues are discussed by academics and when they are accepted more widely. Climate change started gaining currency amongst academics in 2000 – these were the ‘innovators’. It began to gather momentum in media in 2003. The ‘early majority’ (VC funds) finally started pouring money into cleantech in 2004-05.

What can we expect now? Academic paper citations will start to drop, as early as late this year. News articles will continue to increase, possibly for another 1-2 years, before dropping. As for VC investment, it is anybody’s guess. The attraction of cleantech as an investment is closely linked to the policy environment as well as the oil price. If both remain favorable, expect VC investment to stay up, though slow down in growth from its heyday.

© 2007 The Discomfort Zone.