Posts Tagged ‘climate adaptation’
“Never underestimate the power of a fresh coat of white paint”*…
A new twist on an old-school climate adaptation technique– Lara Williams reports…
In a co-working space overlooking the west London neighborhood of White City, a host of startups are at work on flashy technologies ranging from a breath test that can detect multiple cancers to a pain-free tattoo. Surrounded by that kind of innovation, a visitor might overlook the lab stocked with little more than tubs of white powder and paint pots. After all, how interesting can white paint be?
When it comes to adapting to a hotter planet, the answer is: very.
As record temperatures baked Europe this summer, people desperately sought ways to cool their homes and workplaces. I stuck emergency foil blankets to my windows in an attempt to stop the heat from getting in; others tried coating the glass in yogurt or chalk. But of course, the most popular and effective option was air conditioning.
Sales of both conventional and portable units shot up this year, and the need for that cool breeze is only going in one direction: By 2035, the International Energy Agency predicts that global cooling demand could grow by about 2,300 terawatt-hours. (For context, that’s more than India’s total electricity demand in 2025.)
This is bad news for the energy transition. Consider that in 2023, the UK fired up a coal plant during a heatwave to meet AC demand. Yes, air conditioning can be a literal lifesaver, but if we want to avoid making the planet even hotter, it can’t be our only strategy.
That’s where paint comes in.
People in countries like Greece and Spain have been painting their homes white to keep them cool for centuries. White reflects most sunlight, making it better than other colors at preventing solar energy from being absorbed as heat. Commercial “solar-reflecting” paints reflect up to 90% of sunlight, but recent innovations in materials science promise to make white paint’s cooling properties even stronger.
The secret is something called daytime radiative cooling. Any object with a temperature above absolute zero emits heat as thermal infrared radiation. Some infrared wavelengths transfer more heat because they are able to pass through the atmosphere into the freezing depths of space. That process is how our planet cools itself.
Typically, net cooling only happens at night, when there’s no incoming sunlight — and therefore solar radiation — adding more heat. But in 2014, researchers at Stanford University demonstrated that it was possible to chill a surface to 5C below the ambient air temperature during the day by combining the power of reflective cooling (i.e. when white paint reflects sunlight) and radiative cooling (what happens when infrared radiation passes through the atmosphere).
More than a decade later, this technology is making its way into the marketplace…
[Williams describes the entrepreneurial efforts underway, examines their challenges, and explores their potential. She concludes…]
… Innovations that improve our lives don’t always look like talking computers or flying cars. As someone who suffered through too many sweaty, sleepless nights this summer, that humble bucket of white paint is starting to look pretty exciting.
“Why I’m Excited About a Bucket of White Paint” (gift link, or archived link), from @lararhiannon.bsky.social in @opinion.bloomberg.com.
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As we stay cool, we might spare a thought for Sir John Leslie; he died on this date in 1832. A Scottish mathematician and physicist, he best remembered for his research into heat. Leslie gave the first modern account of capillary action in 1802 and froze water using an air-pump in 1810, the first artificial production of ice. Then, in 1804, he helped lay the scientific groundwork for the advances considered in the article linked above: he experimented with radiant heat using a cubical vessel filled with boiling water. One side of the cube was composed of highly polished metal, two of dull metal (copper), and one side painted black. He showed that radiation was greatest from the black side and negligible from the polished side. The apparatus is known as a Leslie cube.
“Men argue. Nature acts.”*…
… and after Nature acts, so must we. But despite decades of warning, global emissions still aren’t falling.
As Madeleine Cuff reports, we should be springing into action…
It is now impossible for the world to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, with emissions on track to cause 2.8°C of warming by the end of the century, the UN says.
Despite increasingly urgent warnings from scientists outlining the dangers of warming above 1.5°C, global emissions aren’t yet falling and governments around the world aren’t doing anywhere near enough to decarbonise their economies.
The only way to meet the 1.5°C target now is by “overshooting” that goal in the short term, the UN said in its latest Emissions Gap report, before relying on vast amounts of global cooling, delivered via technologies such as direct air capture, in the latter half of the century.
This “lowest possible” overshoot scenario would see the global temperature rise peak at 1.7°C to 1.8°C, with a 50 per cent chance of temperatures falling back to 1.5°C by 2100. To deliver this, the world would need to cut emissions by 18 per cent by 2030, 45 per cent by 2035 and 69 per cent by 2040, relative to 2025 levels. Under current climate pledges, emissions will only fall by 5 to 8 per cent by 2030, and 11 to 15 per cent by 2035.
Many scientists are hugely sceptical that the lowest possible overshoot scenario is politically and technologically feasible, given the rapid pace of emissions cuts required and the huge volume of mechanical and natural cooling that would be needed to reduce global temperatures after 2050 to achieve it.
“We don’t know whether we can overshoot,” says Bob Watson, emeritus professor at the University of East Anglia in the UK and former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “We don’t know if any of those technologies are real, and so when people assume that we can meet 1.5°C or 2°C, and the assumption is based on overshooting and coming back, I think they’re in cuckoo land.”
Last year’s Emissions Gap report saw the UN warn that overshooting 1.5°C was now inevitable. This year’s analysis sets out new “overshoot pathways” designed to keep the 1.5°C goal – a political totem for many countries – on life support. It calls on nations to focus on delivering the “lowest possible” 1.5°C pathway.
“Overshoot is not surrender. We can still keep it as small and as short as possible – and bring temperatures back below 1.5 degrees by the end of the century,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement.
But the UN’s new report makes it clear how far off track the world still is to deliver even this “limited overshoot” pathway. Current national policies put the world on track for 2.8°C of warming by the end of the century. If nations meet all their climate promises, that is lowered to 2.1°C. This is worse than last year’s projection of 1.9°C of warming, driven mainly by the US’s exit from the UN climate process.
Joeri Rogelj at Imperial College London says overshoot should be seen “as a failure that we try to rectify”. But he says there is still value in using the 1.5°C goal, rather than adopting a higher temperature goal that could be achieved without overshoot. “The target is still to limit harm to vulnerable and poor populations, and that we don’t do by resetting the target to an inadequate limit of 2°C, or 2.5°C,” he says. “In the public debate, this failure to stay within this most ambitious limit should re-emphasise the need to stay as close to it as possible.”
The best-case scenario now is that the planet will only temporarily breach 1.5°C of warming, but current climate pledges fall way short of that hope: “UN says 1.5°C is over and world is on track for 2.8°C of global warming” [archived version], from @tinymaddie.bsky.social in @newscientist.com.
* Voltaire
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As we act to ameliorate and adapt, we might recall that it was on this date in 2015 that Hurricane Wilma made landfall in the Everglades in Florida with maximum sustained winds near 120 mph. The hurricane accelerated across south Florida and the Miami/Fort Lauderdale area, exiting the coast later the same day. There were 10 fatalities in Florida, and nearly 6 million people lost power, the most widespread power outage in Florida history. Preliminary estimates of insured losses in Florida were over $6 billion, while uninsured losses were over $12 billion.
Scientists suggest that, while climate change may not increase the total number of storms (indeed, this year’s El Nino reduced them in the Atlantic), it will intensify hurricanes, making them stronger, wetter, slower-moving, and more destructive.
“Adaptation and mitigation are two sides of the same coin. If mitigation is about preventing the unmanageable, adaptation is about managing the unavoidable.”*…
Adapting to climate change is quickly becoming part of everyday life. Nabig Chaudhry outlines seven trends we’re seeing for 2026 and beyond…
Within the climate and scientific communities, there’s growing concern about how quickly the world is approaching (and may exceed) 2°C of warming. 2024 was the first calendar year in which global average temperature exceeded 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. The impacts of rapid warming are becoming harder to miss: The climate is changing quickly almost everywhere, local and global climate risks are growing, progress on mitigation has become more politically constrained and uncertain, and many of our systems and policies aren’t prepared for the conditions ahead.
Growing climate risk is increasing the demand for new technologies, tools, strategies, and ways of thinking about climate adaptation. Since publishing our Insights on Climate Adaptation in 2025 report, the practice of climate adaptation has continued to develop, as more people, communities, organizations, and institutions work to understand and respond to climate risks.
People use different language to describe climate adaptation (including climate resilience), but the work centers on helping people, communities, and organizations manage the risks of a changing climate. Those activities are expanding, and we can already see signs. For example, new funding and investment vehicles are emerging, such as Tailwind Futures, and adaptation is receiving more dedicated space at major climate convenings, including The Adaptation Forum, a co-hosted gathering of thought leaders in the adaptation space during Climate Week NYC 2025.
In my role as Director of Climate Adaptation Research at Probable Futures and through my PhD program at the University of California, Berkeley, I speak with experts, read emerging research, and study adaptation developments every day. Through these conversations and insights, I’ve reflected on which adaptation trends are likely to emerge and strengthen…
Chaudhry npacks seven different trends; here, let me highlight two. The first is one that (Roughly) Daily has visited before, insurance…
Elevating insurance as a force in adaptation planning, policy, and behavior
Insurance is a valuable adaptation tool, as it can transfer risk, support recovery after climate shocks, and help signal where danger is increasing through premiums, deductibles, coverage limits, or insurer retreat. It can also shape incentives, because the way risk is priced can influence whether and how people and institutions reduce exposure, strengthen buildings, or avoid certain kinds of development.
As climate risks grow, damage to property and homes becomes more frequent and severe. Property owners are experiencing those shocks both physically (flooding, fire, wind damage, etc.) and financially as insurance markets adjust and recalibrate in response to changing probabilities and severities. Insurance markets have begun reflecting climate risk, and those changes are starting to influence where and how people build homes and infrastructure, where they invest in property, and where they choose to live.
A useful example of how insurance is beginning to influence adaptation efforts in the public sphere is Strengthen Alabama Homes, a program of the Alabama Department of Insurance. The program provides grants to help homeowners retrofit their homes and roofs to reduce wind damage from extreme winds and storms. Homeowners who participate can receive discounts on the wind portion of their homeowner’s insurance premium, which makes insurance not only a tool for recovery but also a tool for encouraging adaptation before exposure occurs.
Insurance pricing is one way climate risk is made visible, priced, and acted on through adaptation. I expect that insurance will increasingly influence adaptation planning, policy, and behavior, not only by helping people recover after climate shocks, but by shaping the choices people make before those shocks occur. The development of the insurance industry will therefore be an important factor in adaptation. If insurers become a source not only of risk pricing but also of risk information, adaptation guidance, and incentives to reduce risk, they could help more people act before losses occur. But that would require a meaningful shift in the role of insurance companies, from mainly pricing and transferring risk to also helping people reduce it…
The second goes to the contentious topic of geoengineering…
Expanding debate around the role of climate intervention
As warming continues, risks keep growing. We have more, clearer, worrisome signals that irreversible change, tipping points, and local climate changes so severe that adaptation is impractical if not impossible, are not far off. In response, people and institutions are starting new conversations about global-scale responses. One of those responses is climate intervention, sometimes called geoengineering.
Climate intervention generally refers to intentional efforts to alter Earth’s systems in order to counteract some of the effects of climate change. It can include approaches that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, as well as approaches that reflect a portion of sunlight back into space, such as stratospheric aerosol injection.
Its relationship to adaptation is uneasy, but important. If climate intervention is, at its core, an effort to manage the otherwise unmanageable risks of global climate change, then is it another tool for adapting to climate change, or is it something fundamentally different? There is no consensus, and there may never be, not least because global action will cause uneven responses locally. We don’t know much about the potential impacts of some climate interventions, how they could affect different regions unequally, or what long-term consequences they may have for Earth’s climate and natural systems.
There are good reasons to have informed conversations and do fundamental research on intervention. People with adaptation expertise can help explore, illuminate, and explain what climate intervention could mean for society and nature. There are also likely to be benefits for adaptation professionals to participate in these conversations and research projects. Even if climate intervention is never widely deployed, the debate itself may shape adaptation thinking, climate policy, research funding, public trust, and international governance.
Climate change requires people to consider risks and options, whether for mitigation, adaptation, or intervention. Treating strategies for managing the rate, pace, and impacts of climate change as distinct and separate is unlikely to lead to good outcomes. I am hopeful that there will be more collaboration across these new fields as society faces new challenges that have a common root cause. This may include more discussion about how these technologies should be governed, whether they should receive more investment, and whether climate intervention is a possible third leg alongside mitigation and adaptation…
Eminently worth reading in full: “The near-term future of climate adaptation: emerging trends.”
* U. N. Environmental Program
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As we prepare, we might recall (wistfully) that it was on this date in 1942 that Bing Crosby, with the Trotter Orchestra and the Darby Singers, recorded Irving Berlin’s song, “White Christmas.” According to the Guinness Book of World Records, this version is the best-selling single of all time with an excess of 50 million copies sold worldwide. (In fact, the version most often heard today is not the original. After frequent use, the master had become damaged, so on March 18, 1947, Crosby re-recorded the holiday hit.)
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