Lethal Heating: February 2016

29/02/2016

Will We Ever Stop Using Fossil Fuels?

Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Peter Dizikes | MIT News Office

Not without a carbon tax, suggests a study by an MIT economist.

Christopher Knittel

In recent years, proponents of clean energy have taken heart in the falling prices of solar and wind power, hoping they will drive an energy revolution. But a new study co-authored by an MIT professor suggests otherwise: Technology-driven cost reductions in fossil fuels will lead us to continue using all the oil, gas, and coal we can, unless governments pass new taxes on carbon emissions.
"If we don't adopt new policies, we're not going to be leaving fossil fuels in the ground," says Christopher Knittel, an energy economist at the MIT Sloan School of Management. "We need both a policy like a carbon tax and to put more R&D money into renewables."
While renewable energy has made promising gains in just the last few years — the cost of solar dropped by about two-thirds from 2009 to 2014 — new drilling and extraction techniques have made fossil fuels cheaper and markedly increased the amount of oil and gas we can tap into. In the U.S. alone, oil reserves have expanded 59 percent between 2000 and 2014, and natural gas reserves have expanded 94 percent in the same time.
"You often hear, when fossil fuel prices are going up, that if we just leave the market alone we'll wean ourselves off fossil fuels," adds Knittel. "But the message from the data is clear: That's not going to happen any time soon."
This trend — in which cheaper renewables are outpaced by even cheaper fossil fuels — portends drastic climate problems, since fossil fuel use has helped produce record warm temperatures worldwide.
The study concludes that burning all available fossil fuels would raise global average temperatures 10 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100; burning oil shale and methane hydrates, two more potential sources of copious fossil fuels, would add another 1.5 to 6.2 degrees Fahrenheit to that.
"Such scenarios imply difficult-to-imagine change in the planet and dramatic threats to human well-being in many parts of the world," the paper states. The authors add that "the world is likely to be awash in fossil fuels for decades and perhaps even centuries to come."
The paper, "Will We Ever Stop Using Fossil Fuels?," is published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. The authors are Knittel, who is MIT's William Barton Rogers Professor in Energy; Michael Greenstone, the Milton Friedman Professor in Economics and the College at the University of Chicago; and Thomas Covert, an assistant professor at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. The scholars examine costs over a time frame of five to 10 years, stating that further forecasts would be quite speculative, although the trend of cheaper fossil fuels could continue longer.

More efficient extraction
At least two technological advances have helped lower fossil fuel prices and expanded reserves: hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which has unlocked abundant natural gas supplies, and the production of oil from tar sands. Canada, where this type of oil production began in 1967, did not recognize tar sands as reserves until 1999 — an energy-accounting decision that increased world oil reserves by about 10 percent.
"There are hydrocarbons that we can now take out of the ground that 10 or 20 years ago we couldn't," Knittel observes.
So whereas some energy analysts once thought the apparently limited amount of oil reserves would make the price of oil unfeasibly high at some point, that dynamic seems less likely now.
To see how much better firms are at extracting fossil fuels from the Earth, consider this: The probability of an exploratory oil well being successful was 20 percent in 1949 and just 16 percent in the late 1960s, but by 2007 that figure had risen to 69 percent, and today it's around 50 percent, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
As a result of these improved oil and gas extraction techniques, we have consistently had about 50 years' worth of accessible oil and natural gas reserves in the ground over the last 30 years, the scholars note.
All told, global consumption of fossil fuels rose significantly from 2005 through 2014: about 7.5 percent for oil, 24 percent for coal, and 20 percent for natural gas. About 65 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions are derived from fossil fuels, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Of those emissions, coal generates about 45 percent, oil around 35 percent, and natural gas about 20 percent.

Renewable hope
To be sure, renewable energy has seen an impressive decline in its prices within the last decade. But looking at the "levelized" cost of energy (which accounts for its long-term production and costs), solar is still about twice as expensive as natural gas. The need to handle sharp evening increases in power consumption — what energy analysts call the "duck curve" of demand — also means power suppliers, already wary of solar power's potential to reduce their revenues, may continue to invest in fossil fuel-based power plants.
The development of better battery technology, for storing electricity, is vital for increased use of renewables in both electricity and transportation, where electric vehicles can be plugged into the grid for charging. But the example of electric vehicles also shows how far battery technology must progress to make a large environmental impact. Currently only 12 percent of fossil fuel-based power plants are sufficiently green that electric vehicles powered by them are responsible for fewer emissions than a Toyota Prius.
Alternately, look at it this way: Currently battery costs for an electric vehicle are about $325 per kilowatt-hour (KwH). At that cost, Knittel, Greenstone, and Covert calculate, the price of oil would need to exceed $350 per barrel to make an electric vehicle cheaper to operate. But in 2015, the average price of oil was about $49 per barrel.
"It's certainly the case that solar and wind prices have fallen dramatically and battery costs have fallen," Knittel says. "But the price of gas is a third almost of what it used to be. It's tough to compete against $1.50 gasoline. On the electricity side … the cheap natural gas still swamps, in a negative way, the cost of solar and even wind."

Emphasizing the case for a carbon tax
That may change, of course. As Knittel observes, new solar techniques — such as thin-film layers that integrate solar arrays into windows — may lead to even steeper reductions in the price of renewables, especially as they could help reduce installation costs, a significant part of the solar price tag.
Still, the immediate problem of accumulating carbon emissions means some form of carbon tax is necessary, Knittel says — especially given what we now know about declining fossil fuel costs.
"Clearly we need to get out in front of climate change, and the longer we wait, the tougher it's going to be," Knittel emphasizes.
Knittel supports the much-discussed policy lever of a carbon tax to make up for the disparity in energy costs. That concept could take several specific forms. One compelling reason for it, from an economists' viewpoint, is that fossil fuels impose costs on society — "externalities" — that users do not share. These include the increased health care costs that result from fossil fuel pollution, or the infrastructure costs that are likely to result from rising sea levels.
"Taxes on externalities are not inconsistent with the free-market system," Knittel says. "In fact, they're required to make the free-market system achieve the efficient outcome. This idea that a pure free-market economy never has taxes is wrong."
Knittel adds: "The point of the paper is that if we don't adopt policies, we're not leaving fossils fuels in the ground."

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Scientists Settle On Low End Of Carbon Budget Spectrum

Climate Home - Alex Pashley

Economies must decarbonise rapidly to avert dangerous warming, say scientists (credit: UN)

Countries agreed last year to limit global warming to 2C this century and "pursue efforts" to hold it to 1.5C to avoid dangerous climate change.
Scientists have come up with a range of estimates for the cap on greenhouse gas pollution needed to have a likely chance of avoiding that threshold. It's known as the "carbon budget".
A review of the evidence on Wednesday published in journal Nature Climate Change recommended dismissing the more generous allowances.
From 2015 onwards, there is only room for another 590-1,240 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent, it found. That includes other gases like ozone, methane, and nitrogen dioxide.
Some studies have put the upper limit as high as 2,390 GtCO2. But the report authors said those figures were not robust as they did not account for all greenhouse gases or had other methodological limitations.The findings add urgency to international effort to curb global emissions, which stood at 40Gt CO2e in 2014 and at current rates will eat up the budget within 15-30 years. It requires overhauling centuries of fossil fuel-based development and the swift adoption of clean energy technologies.
"We have figured out this budget is at the low end of what studies indicated before, and if we don't start reducing our emissions immediately, we will blow it in a few decades," said Joeri Rogelj at the Vienna-based International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, who led the study.
"[M]any different factors can lead to carbon budgets that are either slightly smaller or slightly larger. We wanted to understand these differences, and provide clarity on the issue for policymakers and the public."

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Six Burning Questions For Climate Science To Answer Post-Paris

The Conversation - John Church Alistair Hobday Andrew Lenton Steve Rintoul

We still don't know enough about questions such as where the tipping points are for Arctic ice melt. Christine Zenino/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Much has been written about the challenge of achieving the targets set out in the Paris climate agreement, which calls for global warming to be held well below 2℃ and ideally within 1.5℃ of pre-industrial temperatures.
That's the headline goal, but the Paris agreement also calls for a strong focus on climate science as well as on curbing greenhouse emissions. Article 7.7c of the agreement specifically calls for:

Strengthening scientific knowledge on climate, including research, systematic observation of the climate system and early warning systems, in a manner that informs climate services and supports decision-making.

The next paragraph also calls on countries to help poorer nations, which have less scientific capability, to do the same.
But what are the many elements of climate science that need strengthening to achieve the aims of the Paris agreement? Here are six questions that need answers.

What do the targets mean?
What do the 2℃ and 1.5℃ targets imply for our climate and adaptation responses? Even warming of 2℃ will have significant impacts for humans and natural systems, albeit much less than would occur if we allowed warming to continue unchecked. Still, climate science needs to clarify what is gained by meeting the 1.5℃ and 2℃ targets, and the consequences of missing them.

Are we on track?
It will be essential to monitor the climate system over the coming years and decades to see whether our efforts at curbing warming are delivering the expected benefits, or if more measures are needed.
The path to these ambitious temperature targets will not be smooth – there will be periods of rapid warming interspersed with periods of slower warming. We will not meet the targets if the world relaxes on mitigation efforts because of a short-term slowing in the rate of warming as a result of natural variability, such as we saw between 1998 and 2013.
Greenhouse gas concentrations, global temperatures, rainfall and water balance changes, extreme weather events, ocean heat content, sea level and terrestrial and marine carbon sinks are all vitally important elements to track. A focus on surface temperature alone is not sufficient.

What are the tipping points in the climate system?

Tipping points are thresholds beyond which there will be large, rapid and possibly irreversible changes in the climate system. The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are one example – beyond a certain level, warming will cause large and irreversible loss of ice, and sea level rise of many metres over the ensuing centuries. Thresholds also exist for ecosystems, such as the Great Barrier Reef, and the services they provide, including food production and water supply.
We need to know what these thresholds are, the consequences of crossing them, and how much and how fast we will have to reduce emissions in order to avoid this.

How will climate and extreme events change?
Many places already experience weather extremes such as heatwaves, droughts, fire, floods, storm surges and cyclones, all with damaging consequences. Many of the negative impacts of climate change will occur through changes in the magnitude, duration and frequency of these extreme events.
To adapt to these changes and manage the risks, more detailed information is needed on local and regional scales. It is important to recognise that 2℃ of globally averaged warming does not imply 2℃ everywhere (many regions, particularly on land, will have larger temperature rises). Extremes may increase faster than averages.
We also need to understand the short-term (decades) and long-term (centuries) implications of choices made today.

What are the appropriate adaptation pathways?
Even if the Paris targets are achieved, some adaptation will be essential. So how do we reduce vulnerability, minimise costs and maximise opportunities? Given the changes already observed with the roughly 1℃ of global warming so far, it's fair to say that more severe impacts will occur during this century.
Keeping warming within 2℃ and moving to a lower-carbon world presents many challenges. Considerable work will be needed to help identify climate-resilient pathways and allow humans to adapt to the changes.
Successful adaptation will require an ability to foresee and prepare for inevitable changes in the likelihoods of extreme climate events from year to year. Development of climate forecasts on timescales of a year to decades may provide opportunities to reduce losses in critical sectors such as water, agriculture, infrastructure, tourism, fisheries, energy and natural resources.

Can we take greenhouse gases back out of the atmosphere?
Most scenarios for future emissions that keep warming below the agreed Paris target require not just a reduction in emissions, but also the ability to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere – so-called "negative emissions".
One proposed method of partially meeting our energy needs and reducing CO₂ concentrations is called BioEnergy Carbon Capture and Storage. It would involve growing biofuels for energy, then capturing and burying the carbon dioxide released by these fuels. While potentially important, its large-scale deployment poses important questions regarding its costs and benefits and how the large amount of agricultural land required would compete with food production to feed the world's growing population.
To keep climate change below 2℃, some have proposed a need for more radical geoengineering options if emissions are not phased out quickly enough. These include schemes to cool the Earth by reducing solar radiation. But these proposals fail to address other knock-on issues of carbon dioxide emissions, such as ocean acidification. They also pose large risks, are beset with ethical issues and beg the question of who is going to take responsibility for such schemes.
The Paris agreement proves that the world's nations know we need strong climate action. But society faces tough choices as we seek to find economically, socially and environmentally feasible ways to meet the targets. Informed decisions will depend on robust science at both local and global scales, which means that far from being done, climate science is now more important than ever.

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28/02/2016

Fossil Fuel Use Must Fall Twice As Fast As Thought To Contain Global Warming - Study

The Guardian - Tim Radford

Available carbon budget is half as big as thought if global warming is to be kept within 2C limit agreed internationally as being the point of no return, researchers say.

Smoke billows from a coal fired power plant in Shanxi, China. Photograph: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

Climate scientists have bad news for governments, energy companies, motorists, passengers and citizens everywhere in the world: to contain global warming to the limits agreed by 195 nations in Paris last December, they will have to cut fossil fuel combustion at an even faster rate than anybody had predicted. Joeri Rogelj, research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, and European and Canadian colleagues propose in Nature Climate Change that all previous estimates of the quantities of carbon dioxide that can be released into the atmosphere before the thermometer rises to potentially catastrophic levels are too generous.
Instead of a range of permissible emissions estimates that ranged up to 2,390 bn tons from 2015 onwards, the very most humans could release would be 1,240 bn tons.

Available levels
In effect, that halves the levels of diesel and petrol available for petrol tanks, coal for power stations, and natural gas for central heating and cooking available to humankind before the global average temperature – already 1C higher than it was at the start of the Industrial Revolution – reaches the notional 2C mark long agreed internationally as being the point of no return for the planet.
In fact, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change summit in Paris agreed a target "well below" 2C, in recognition of ominous projections − one of which was that, at such planetary temperatures, sea levels would rise high enough to submerge several small island states.
The Nature Climate Change paper is a restatement of a problem that has been clear for decades. Carbon dioxide proportions in the atmosphere are linked to planetary surface temperatures and, as they rise, so does average temperature. For most of human history, these proportions oscillated around 280 parts per million.
The global exploitation, on a massive scale, of fossil fuels drove the expansion of agriculture, the growth of economies, a sevenfold growth in human population, a sea level rise of 14cms, and a temperature rise of, so far, 1C.
To stop temperatures increasing another 3C or more and sea levels rising by more than a metre, humans have to reduce fossil fuel emissions. By how much these must be reduced is difficult to calculate.
The global carbon budget is really the balance between what animals emit – in this context, the word animals includes humans with cars and aeroplanes and factories – and what plants and algae can absorb. So the calculations are bedevilled by uncertainties about forests, grasslands and oceans.
To make things simpler, climate scientists translate the target into the billions of tons of carbon dioxide that, ideally, may be released into the atmosphere from 2015 onwards. Even these, however, are estimates. There is general agreement that a limit of 590 bn tons would safely keep the world from overheating in ways that would impose ever greater strains on human society. The argument is about the upper limit of such estimates.
Dr Rogelj says: "In order to have a reasonable chance of keeping global warming below 2C, we can only emit a certain amount of carbon dioxide, ever. That's our carbon budget.
"This has been understood for about a decade, and the physics behind this concept are well understood, but many different factors can lead to carbon budgets that are either slightly smaller or slightly larger. We wanted to understand these differences, and to provide clarity on the issue for policymakers and the public.
"This study shows that, in some cases, we have been overestimating the budget by 50 to more than 200%. At the high end, this is a difference of more than 1,000 billion tons of carbon dioxide."
The same study takes a closer look at why estimates of the "safe" level of emissions have varied so widely.
One complicating factor has been, of course, uncertainty about what humans might do, and another has been about the other more transient greenhouse gases, such as methane and the oxides of nitrogen.
Although short-lived and released in smaller quantities, some of these are potentially far more potent than carbon dioxide as an influence on planetary temperatures.

Complex calculations
But Dr Rogelj and his colleagues found that a significant cause of variation was simply a consequence of the different assumptions and methodologies inherent in such complex calculations.
So the researchers have re-examined both the options and the approaches, and have worked out a global figure that, they suggest, could be relevant to "real-world policy".
It takes into account the consequences of all human activity, and it embraces detailed outlines of possible low-carbon choices. It also offers, they say, a 66% chance of staying within the internationally-agreed limit.
"We now better understand the carbon budget for keeping global warming below 2C," Dr Rogelj says. "This carbon budget is very important to know because it defines how much carbon dioxide we are allowed to release into the atmosphere, ever.
"We have figured out that this budget is at the low end of what studies indicated before, and if we don't start reducing our emissions immediately, we will blow it in a few decades."

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Taking Aim At Climate Change: Australia's Military Sees Rising Challenges

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Salome Ululagi stands in the remains of her house destroyed by Tropical Cyclone Winston in Tavua Village, Koro Island, Fiji. Photo: UNICEF

When Cyclone Winston barrelled into Fiji last week, Australia's first response was to dispatch RAAF Globemaster cargo planes with urgent aid and defence personnel to help the battered Pacific populace.
The amphibious vessel HMAS Canberra is also expected to make landfall on Tuesday, bringing more assistance to a nation hit by the strongest tempest – with sustained winds of 287km/h – ever recorded in the southern hemisphere.

Climate change is not a far-off threat for tomorrow's generals. It is here to be dealt with today.
Michael Thomas, retired Australian Army major

For years, Australia's military has regularly been called upon to assist with disasters in its backyard as well as during floods or cyclones at home.

Royal Australian Air Force pilots, Flight Lieutenant Simon Marshall (left) and Flying Officer Jake Nicholas, prepare to land a C-17A in Suva, Fiji, as part of Operation Fiji Assist.

Those demands will likely increase in the future as climate change presents "a major challenge for countries in Australia's immediate region", the new defence white paper declared last week in a little remarked upon tilt in the nation's military planning blueprint.
Most of the media attention focused on big-ticket purchases – such as 12 new submarines costing $150 billion to build and operate – and China's displeasure at being the unnamed paramount threat. But the guidelines for Australia's future defence posture also make multiple references to the near-term risks global warming will pose to some of our fragile neighbours.

Members of Australia's reconnaisance and assessment team prepare to disembark a RAAF C-17A Globemaster aircraft at the Nausori International Airport in Fiji. Photo: Supplied.

"Climate change will see higher temperatures, increased sea-level rise and will increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events," the report says.
"These effects will exacerbate the challenges of population growth and environmental degradation, and will contribute to food shortages and undermine economic development."
In short, the military will be called on more often to respond to instability or natural disasters.

Soldiers from 8th/9th RAR, and engineers from 2nd CER, clear the train line that runs through Grantham, Queensland, after flooding in 2011. Photo: Petty Officer Damian Pawlenko

Michael Thomas, a retired army major who has been advocating Australia join the US and other allies in paying greater heed to global warming, sees a shift in urgency compared with the Rudd government's 2009 version.
"Whereas the 2009 defence white paper stated the likely strategic consequences of climate change would not be felt until after 2030, this [paper] notes that climate change will be one of the key drivers that will shape the strategic environment 'to 2035'," Thomas says.
"This implies that climate change is not a far-off threat for tomorrow's generals. It is here to be dealt with today."

Sailors on the flight deck of the HMAS Canberra during the Royal Australian Navy exercises off Jervis Bay last November. Photo: Kate Geraghty

Bipartisan view
The Gillard government's white paper in 2013 also identified the climate as a national security threat but this year's version is notable because it brings a bipartisan consensus for the first time.
"[I]t would probably not have happened under [former PM Tony] Abbott's leadership," Thomas says. "So credit [is] due to Malcolm Turnbull."
That view of a political shift under Turnbull is also shared from afar.
David Titley, a retired rear admiral of the US Navy who combines his scientific training as an oceanographer with his military rank to nudge the Pentagon to take climate change seriously, visited Australia's Defence Force Academy last October and detected the altered posture first-hand.
"The thing that struck me was ... how much under the previous leadership, the defence bureaucracy had been intimidated into 'do not touch this issue'," Titley says. "You could see with the new PM, at least you could have that discussion."
As with the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review – "the 100,000-foot" overview of the US military's threats and capabilities – having climate change identified in the defence white paper as a challenge "is a very good step in the right direction", he says.
It gives policymakers or defence planners being grilled by politicians or their chiefs some cover, allowing them to point back to the paper when asked why Australia is spending more time or resources on the issue.
Titley should know. He has testified before both sides of the polarised US political divide, including the mostly climate change-denying Republican leadership such as hard-right Texan presidential hopeful Senator Ted Cruz.

Extreme extremes
Titley sees parallels between the views of some Australian conservatives and those of the Texas Republicans, who typically dismiss the recent spate of record drought, heat and massive floods as merely a natural consequence of their highly variable climate.
"Their view is" 'The rest of the country says it's extreme, we say it's Texas'," Mr Titley says. "At some point, though, everyone has a breaking point – but we're not sure where it is."
Australia's recent equivalents were probably the extreme heat prior and during Victoria's 2009 Black Saturday bushfires or the Queensland floods in 2011. Record national heat in 2013 was also backed up by a very hot 2014 and a record hot final three months to end 2015.
Odd weather activity abounds even if the underlying climate signal may be hard to gauge.
Australia this summer has had its second latest start to a tropical cyclone season in the past half century of reliable records, producing a relatively dry wet season across the north, while the south of the country faces a long and active fire season well into autumn.
Sydney will post a February with just one day with a below average maximum temperature on current forecasts – the previous record low was five. The streak of 23 days above 26 degrees has eclipsed the previous record of 19 such days, and may run at least another week.
Extreme weather events are among the climate challenges for Australia's military not just because of the extra demand anticipated for their services but also since many bases are exposed to impacts.

Creeping change
But even the creeping background warming can't be ignored if it alters the ability of the military to train or operate.
Extra heat affects troops' health while ill-planned live-fire exercises can have huge consequences – witness the State Mine fire during the searing spring of 2013 that started at an army range, destroying about 50,000 hectares and threatening Blue Mountains towns.
Thomas says rising sea-levels are another encroaching risk the military has rightly identified, given naval facilities in particular typically hug the coast.
What he finds hard to square with the military's increased concern about the matter is why another arm of the government – the CSIRO – is preparing to axe its world-renowned sea-level research team.
The threat to the Hobart-based group is part of sweeping cuts to CSIRO's climate programs that could halve or worse its research capacity to predict what's coming and advise the military – and the wider population – how to deal with it.
"If these cuts proceed – who will do undertake this work?," he asks.
"If anything, given that the defence white paper has now cited sea-level rise as a risk to our defence bases, there is a requirement for improved understanding and increased granularity of how sea-level rise will unfold across this century – not less."

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$5.3 Trillion A Year In Fossil Fuel Subsidies Is Idiotic

CleanTechnica - Zachary Shahan

Ah, society — takes us decades to turn a simple, life-saving corner.
Subsidizing fossil fuels in the 21st century has got to be one of the dumbest things society has ever done… (and we've done a lot of dumb things).
We have cheaper alternatives that don't kill us and cause all kinds of health problems and suffering beforehand.
We've got locally available, renewable resources that don't have us exporting billions of dollars a year to countries in the Middle East, Venezuela, etc.
We've got zero-emission technologies that won't fry our planet and burn much of the human race.
But we choose to continue subsidizing dirty, toxic, expensive fossil fuels instead.

The G20 "wised up" to the idiocy and agreed two years ago to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, but a new study from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) finds that we continue to subsidize fossil fuels with trillions of dollars of citizen-earned cash.
According to the study, the US dumps a ridiculous $700 billion a year on the dirty subsidies for the dirty piles of coal, gas, and oil.
That's $2,180 per American per year.
Yep, aside from your electricity and gas bills, you are essentially sending $2,000+ to oil, gas, and coal companies because… because… well, they need our help, no?
Australia, where the recent G20 meeting was held, has its citizens helping these poor industries to the tune of $1,260 per person.
The UK gives $41 billion a year, which comes to $635 per person.
Developing countries Mexico, India, and Indonesia average $250 per person per year.
As a percentage of GDP, the subsidies come out as follows:

USA: 3.8%
Australia: 2%
UK: 1.4%
China: 20%
India: 12%
Ukraine: 60%

Staggering.
The world as a whole subsidizes fossil fuels with $5.3 trillion in subsidies per year.
Subsidies included in the report go beyond simple tax breaks, direct subsidies, etc., and also include externalities (something I consistently argue should be done).
Those include the pollution that causes innumerable health problems and premature deaths as well as the harmful effects of global warming and climate change.
If we were brave enough to cut these subsidies, the IMF estimates that 1.6 million premature deaths from outdoor air pollution a year would be prevented, about 50% of those that occur, and global CO2 emissions would be cut 20%.
It seems like common sense, no?
Cut the damn subsidies. Stop giving companies trillions of dollars a year to kill us faster.
The UAE is doing it… somewhat.

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27/02/2016

Overlooked Law Could Be Powerful Tool To Fight Climate Change, Scholars Say

Columbia Daily Spectator - Dan Garisto

Michael Gerrard, professor of climate law, is the director of the Sabin Center on Climate Law. Ethan Wu / Senior Staff Photographer

Attempting to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has been a key struggle for President Barack Obama, CC ’83, with both houses of Congress led by Republicans who have outright opposed even acknowledging the existence of climate change.
But a Columbia-led team of legal scholars may have found a promising, never-before-used route for enacting emission reductions that was previously overlooked. The Sabin Center for Climate Change Law published an article last month that details how Section 115 of the Clean Air Act can be used to compel the United States to cut emissions—without going through Congress.
When the article was released, Obama’s plan to reduce greenhouse emissions by 25 percent, the Clean Power Plan, was still going forward, albeit under intense legal scrutiny. But earlier this month, the Supreme Court issued an unprecedented stay to prevent the plan from moving forward.

Atrianne Dolom / Staff Designer

“I thought it was the most environmentally destructive thing the Supreme Court has done in very many years,” Michael Gerrard, a professor of environmental law and co-author of the article, said. “It was shutting down the most important effort that the U.S. was undertaking to deal with the world's most pressing environmental problem.”
The drama surrounding the Clean Power Plan’s judicial struggles increased, as only days later, conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died.
Without Scalia on the court, the vote will likely be tied 4-4, making Scalia’s replacement the deciding vote.
However, according to Gerrard, using Section 115 of the Clean Air Act would allow Obama or the next president to bypass both the congressional and judicial gauntlet.
“The Clean Power Plan has limited coverage—it only applies to power plants. It doesn’t apply to any other part of the economy,” Gerrard said. “We wanted to see if there was some other legal pathway that might allow the administration to regulate greenhouse gases.”
Under Section 115, the Environmental Protection Agency can force states responsible for polluting other countries to cut emissions so long as those other countries agree to cut their own emissions. Agreements made at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference between 195 countries to reduce carbon dioxide production could make this reciprocity clause easy to fulfill.
In addition to the ability to bypass Congress, a regulation on the basis of Section 115 would also be supported by strong, broad language that could render judicial attacks null.
“[Congress] did not limit this use to bordering countries—and if you follow a textualist analysis, like Justice Scalia said he did, the plain text of it is quite broad,” Gerrard said.
Previously, Section 115 had been overlooked by lawyers because it was assumed to apply only to Canada and Mexico, the two countries bordering the U.S. The only previous attempt to use Section 115 occurred at the end of the Carter administration, and was promptly squashed when Reagan entered office.
Section 115 was subsequently out of the public eye and thought to be inconsequential.
“We saw it as something of a sideshow, but we decided to look into it more deeply, and the deeper we dove into it the more fruitful it became,” Gerrard said.
However, the scholars’ analysis, while promising, holds little potential for immediate change. Enacting regulations based on Section 115 would take a great deal of planning that Gerrard said was unlikely to happen due to the Obama administration’s investment in the Clean Power Plan.
“I think it's a very helpful tool for an administration that wants to act on climate change but can't get the help of Congress,” Gerrard said. “If Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders is the next president, they may well utilize this.”

Once-In-A-Generation Heatwaves Could Be A Yearly Event, New Research Finds

news.com.au - Benedict Brook

The sun rises on another hot day in Sydney.

IT’S been a sticky old week across southern Australia with the mercury topping 41C in the west of Sydney and severe heatwaves in parts of New South Wales and northern Western Australia.
But far from being an unusual occurrence, climate scientists are predicting heatwaves globally are on the rise with extreme heat events, which previously only occurred “once in a generation”, could happen every year.
And that means more than just some extra days at the beach, with predictions of more bushfires, stretched emergency services and severe impacts to farmers and food production.
In a paper published in the journal Climatic Change, researchers found heatwaves only experienced once in every 20 years could, in years to come, happen every year in some places. By 2075, 60 per cent of the Earth’s land mass could see these extreme heat events annually or even more frequently.
By 2050, heatwaves could be three degrees warmer across half the world and across 10 per cent of the Earth’s surface a scorching five degrees hotter.

The Bureau of Meteorology predicts Australia will almost certainly have above average temperatures during March. Source: BoM.

Fifth warmest year
The study’s co-author, Claudia Tebaldi, from the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research said “Mitigation is crucial. We have a lot to gain from limiting greenhouse gas emissions, and [those] benefits will be felt fairly soon,” reported Climate Control.
Although the northern hemisphere is more likely to be in the firing line, there’s little respite for us in Australia with a marked increase in heatwaves and their intensity, climate researchers have said.
On Thursday, the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) warned daytime temperatures during Autumn were likely to be warmer than average, particularly in March.
According to the BoM’s annual climate statement, 2015 was Australia’s fifth warmest year on record with temperatures 0.83C above average and exceptionally warm spells including heatwaves across north and central Australia in March and south and south eastern Australia in the latter part of the year.
Heatwave conditions in Australia are defined by three days of unusually hot minimum and maximum temperatures for any given area.

Beachgoers walk into the sea at Coogee on Thursday in Sydney as temperatures peaked at 41C in the city’s west. Photo: Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images.

Longer and more extreme
Speaking earlier this month, Dr Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, of the University of NSW’s Climate Research Centre, said the trend was for longer and more extreme heatwaves.
“We’re seeing heat and hot weather we’ve never seen before that [is] breaking lots of records.
“We’re not expecting to see heatwaves last all summer but those really rare heatwaves we might only have seen every 20 years we could now see every two years, which may not have happened if climate change hadn’t occurred.”
However, the pattern of heatwaves wasn’t uniform, said Dr Perkins-Kirkpatrick. Sydney had seen its heatwave season kicking in three weeks earlier, as had Melbourne — although the latter hadn’t seen an overall increase in the number of days experiencing extreme heat.
In Canberra, they really can’t bear it, with a doubling in the number of heatwave days although the intensity had remained stable.
The new research said if nations cut emissions, 95 per cent of land areas could see a reduction in worst-case temperatures on extreme heat days by 1C while half the earth’s land mass could see a 2C cut. Areas severely affected by heatwaves might drop to between 10 and 25 per cent rather than the 60 per cent predicted.
More than 100 countries have pledged to work towards keeping temperature rises to below 2C by the end of the century.

The only way to cool down. Photo: Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images

Cooking the planet
Activist group GetUp!’s Climate Change Campaigns Director, Sam Regester, said it was not surprising that the globe was seeing a rise in heatwaves and nations needed to do more to prevent climate-induced catastrophes.
“More extreme weather events mean more bushfires and natural disasters and emergency services are just not equipped to deal with once in a generation heatwaves every few years.
“It also puts a huge stress on farmers. In some heatwaves we see entire seasons of crops destroyed and unless we address climate change, food security becomes a real and urgent problem and we won’t be able to take abundant fresh food for granted.”
While 2015 was one of Australia’s hottest years on record, overall temperatures have been reducing, coming off a record peak in 2013. Aren’t things going in the right direction already?
“You just have to take a step back and look at the long term trends of 30 years in a row of above average temperatures,” said Mr Regester. “There’s no question — the world’s getting hotter and getting hotter at a dangerous rate.
“We need to transition urgently away from fossil fuels that are literally cooking the planet and move to 100 per cent renewable as fast as possible.”
While Australia’s south-east corner is in for cooler temperatures this weekend, with Sydney topping 28C on Sunday and Melbourne only reaching 23C, there are still spots of punishing heat elsewhere. Brisbane will reach 35C on Sunday with Perth sweltering with a whopping 38C the same day.
Global Weirding
Global weather really is getting more extreme - with bigger, badder storms and droughts every year. Is the sun to blame? Welcome to the new terrifying world of global weirding.

CSIRO Becoming A 'Glorified Consultancy', As Climate Adaptation Program At Risk

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Labor senator Kim Carr says some CSIRO answers to Senate estimated 'defied belief'. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

The drive to increase the share of CSIRO funding from external sources is turning Australia's premier scientific research institution into "a glorified consultancy", Labor's shadow industry minister Kim Carr said.
Senator Carr said the current round of job cuts, which will fall particularly hard on the CSIRO's climate change programs, revealed a distortion of the organisation's mandated role.
Of the roughly $500 million raised each year from external sources, only about $70 million came from the private sector. Since the bulk of the remainder came from federal agencies, the CSIRO is vulnerable to sharp cuts to funding - as has occurred during the Abbott-Turnbull years, Senator Carr said.

Fiji, hard hit by Cyclone Winston last week, has had Australian help with climate projection. Photo: APO

"Setting external [funding] targets is a farcical way to determine priorities," Senator Carr said. "It's an attempt to turn the CSIRO into a glorified consultancy."
"It's an assault on public benefit research and distorts the priorities of public-good science."
Senator Carr said he plans to hold the CSIRO management to account for what he viewed as misleading comments made at Senate estimates by Chief Executive Larry Marshall earlier this month.
When asked by Senator Carr whether CSIRO had reimposed external revenue targets, Dr Marshall, according to Hansard, replied: "We do not have a target."
"Claiming that they don't have external revenue targets defies belief," Senator Carr said.
The CSIRO told Fairfax Media that it plans to correct the record.
"The [Senate] hearing covered the topic of external revenue with questioning covering the time period of more than a decade," a CSIRO spokesman said. "Having reviewed the Hansard record, CSIRO believes that there are some parts of the Hansard record that could benefit from some clarification and is preparing a letter to the Chairman of the Committee."
"I'm deeply disappointed that it's taken so long to correct the record," Senator Carr said.
The CSIRO has been under pressure to explain the rationale behind plans to slice 350 jobs, with about 200 of them to come from Oceans & Atmosphere and Land & Water divisions. Many of jobs to go are climate scientists.
Dr Marshall has said that, since climate change had been proved, more funding could be spent on efforts to curb future global warming by limiting carbon emissions. Additional spending could also go to prepare for adaptation efforts to the future changes, such as more extreme weather, that are virtually inevitable.
Insiders, though, say that adaptation programs, such as the 18-member climate projections team, are at risk.
"It seems to be a strange place to start pruning," Lynne Turner, an associate professor at the University of Southern Queensland, said.
Prof Turner, formerly head of Queensland's Climate Change Centre of Excellence before it was closed when Campbell Newman's Liberal National Party took office in 2012, said every regional natural resource management group in the country used CSIRO's climate projections to inform their long-term planning.
"It's hard to turn that capacity on and off like a tap," Prof Turner said, adding CSIRO's modelling of projected changes to temperature, sea level, rainfall and extreme events was also a service to poorer neighbours in the South Pacific.
"These are highly vulnerable countries, with low technical expertise, which have been highly reliant on a big countries like Australia," she said.
Independent MP Andrew Wilkie is also likely to pursue Science Minister Christopher Pyne's answer to him in Question Time this week that while CSIRO would make 350 people redundant, "350 positions will be opened up".
Land & Water staff were told in an all-staff meeting this week that new hires were dependent on the division meeting revenue targets. Any shortfall could see further cuts, a senior scientist told Fairfax Media.

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26/02/2016

Climate Change Benefits The Rich At The Expense Of The Poor, Study Finds

Independent - Matt Payton

'We tend to think of climate change as just a problem of physics and biology'

A fisherman cuts a fish at the fishermen dock in La Libertad, El Salvador Reuters

Everyone knows that wealth feeds wealth and the rich are getting richer.
But now a new study has found that even what is seemingly the most universal of threats is also increasing the inequality gap.
Climate change, it has been found, is causing important natural resources to move towards the Earth's poles, thereby taking wealth away from the poorest nations nearest the equator.
Rises in temperature are forcing fish, plants, trees and other species to move away from temperate zones towards the poles.
According to a paper entitled "Wealth reallocation and sustainability under climate change", which was published in the journal Nature Climate Change, this mass redistribution of resources both natural and human benefits the wealthiest countries in the northern hemisphere.
The study used fish migration data and a mathematical formula to illustrate the correlation between the movement of resources and the movement of wealth.
Because the effects of climate change are unevenly spread across the world, such a physical redistriubtion of resources to the poles will be similary uneven.
Dr Malin Pinsky, from Rutgers University, said: "What we find is that natural resources like fish are being pushed around by climate change, and that changes who gets access to them.
"We tend to think of climate change as just a problem of physics and biology.
"But people react to climate change as well, and at the moment we don't have a good understanding for the impacts of human behavior on natural resources affected by climate change."

Defence White Paper: Climate Change Threatens Regional Security

New Matilda - Thom Mitchell

US Sea Hawk helicopters in Kuwait. (IMAGE: New York National Guard, Flickr).

Malcolm Turnbull's Defence White Paper has done what Abbott's energy equivalent failed to do, acknowledging climate change as a fundamental and overarching influence on Australia's long-term future and the stability of the region.
There is a growing awareness among international security experts, already embedded in the long-term plans of other nations, that climate change has huge potential to force geopolitical instability, shape conflicts, and require humanitarian deployments.
As New Matilda has previously reported, the toxicity of Canberra's debate on climate change had contributed to Australia's tardiness in incorporating it into strategic plans.
Indeed an issues paper released in 2014 by then Defence Minister David Johnston, when Tony Abbott was Prime Minister, didn't mention climate change at all.
But then, hardly either did the Abbott-era Energy White Paper, said to be 'technology neutral', which mentioned climate change only twice to reference the Coalition's Direct Action policy.

Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

The full Defence White paper released today goes a little further. "Climate change will be a major challenge for countries in Australia's immediate region," the paper concedes.
"Within the South Pacific, variable economic growth, crime and social, governance and climate change challenges will all contribute to uneven progress and may lead to instability in some countries," it states.
"Climate change will see higher temperatures, increased sea-level rise and will increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. These effects will exacerbate the challenges of population growth and environmental degradation, and will contribute to food shortages and undermine economic development."
The White Paper also acknowledges the threat that climate change poses to the 'defence estate' – Australia's Navy bases will be impacted by rising seas and "more extreme weather events more frequently putting facilities at risk of damage".
Ultimately, beyond 2025, climate change will contribute to a need to develop "new bases, wharves, airfields and training and weapons testing ranges".
That's pretty much the sum-total of the paper's focus on climate change, though. Despite anticipating climate change will be an important contributor to state fragility – one of six key drivers that the paper says will shape Defence thinking out to 2035 – it's mentioned less than 10 times, and only in a perfunctory sense.

Rob Faulkner, Flickr

As New Matilda reported in June last year, other countries have been making more serious and methodical attempts to integrate climate change into their long-term strategic thinking.
A former senior advisor to the UK government, Rear Admiral Neill Morisetti said at the time that other countries are now "instinctively saying 'we must factor in the impact of a changing climate along with all the other points'".
He said the "political context presents a challenge in Australia".
Defence was being hampered, and political influences dissuading proper acknowledgement of climate change's pervasive presence as a 'multiplyer' of other threats to geopolitical stability, a report from the Centre for Policy Development suggested.
Today's White Paper shows the first signs that those roadblocks to an un-politicised approach to strategic planning may be coming down under Turnbull's leadership.
Clearly, though, there's still plenty of work to be done to put flesh on the bare bones that are outlined in the Defence White Paper.

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New Australian Climate Developing

Australian Grains Export Innovation Centre

Seasonal rainfall zones shift across Australia since 2000

A new climate is emerging in Australia, according to new maps released by the Australian Export Grains Innovation Centre (AEGIC).
AEGIC analysed data from more than 8000 Bureau of Meteorology stations around the country and discovered that traditional rainfall zones have changed significantly since 2000.
The findings will be presented as part of a talk entitled “South-west Western Australia is losing its Mediterranean Climate” by AEGIC agro-meteorologist Dr David Stephens at the 2016 GRDC Perth Grains Research Update (Perth Convention Centre, 29 February-1 March 2016).
Dr Stephens said the new analysis revealed striking changes to the Australian climate over the past 16 years.
“Since 2000, there has been a general increase in summer rainfall across Australia, and a corresponding decrease in winter rainfall, leading to shifts in rainfall zones extending for hundreds of kilometres,” Dr Stephens said.
“Rainfall between May to October over much of the heavily populated regions of southern Australia has decreased 10-30%, while summer rain has increased up to 40% in some areas.
“This change in climate has major implications for farming and pastoral systems as the profitability of different crop types changes, disease risk changes, and the composition of rangeland grasses changes with stocking rates.”
The analysis revealed significant shifts in rainfall zones since 2000, which can be seen in the maps above.

Summary:

For regions with a Mediterranean climate, winter (and winter dominant) rainfall zones are contracting in a south-westerly direction.

In northern and eastern areas, summer (and summer dominant) rainfall zones are expanding southward.

Between these regions, there is a uniform rainfall zone where summer and winter rainfall are similar. The southern boundary of this zone has shifted from southern/central New South Wales down into central Victoria and the Mallee region of south-east South Australia.

In the south-west of Western Australia, a uniform rainfall zone has appeared along the eastern edge of the wheat-belt from Beacon to Southern Cross to Grass Patch.

Most rainfall zone boundaries have typically shifted 100-400km over the last 16 years. The only expansion of the winter rainfall zone has occurred in southeast Tasmania where winter rainfall has become more reliable.

Dr Stephens said the analysis highlighted that the shift to earlier sowing of winter crops measured recently by AEGIC should continue because early sown crops take advantage of any additional summer soil moisture.
“They also experience a lower evaporative demand through the growing season, and are less affected by declining rain in October and rising spring temperatures,” he said.
“In pastoral regions in much of Western Australia, increasing summer rain with a reduction in rainfall variability has assisted perennial C4 (tropical) plants at the expense of C3 (temperate) grasses (especially in southern areas), while in central and northern Queensland, an increase in rainfall variability has been detrimental on pasture production and stocking rates”.
“Australia is going to need some of the most water-efficient farming systems in the world to mitigate the effects of a drier and warmer climate in Southern Australia. Research in this area is vital because Australian crop yields have been among the most affected by climate change compared to other grain exporting nations.”

More Information
These changes appear to be related to changes in barometric pressure, sea surface temperatures and upper level westerly winds.

In the mid-1970s, there was a weakening of the Indian Ocean Trough to the west of Perth which appears to be related to a decline in winter rainfall since then. In the 2000s, this trough has weakened further in conjunction with strengthening high pressures over Australia.

In addition, sea surface temperatures have warmed in all seasons, which is beneficial for summer rainfall.

However, a more marked warming in oceans west of Perth in winter has an inverse relationship to rainfall and has contributed to weaker cloud-band activity in recent years.

At a Hemispheric scale, one of the drivers of weather is the temperature gradient between the equator and the South Pole. This gradient dropped at the beginning of the 2000s as westerly winds in May-July weakened over Australia.”

The variability in annual rainfall across Australia has changed since 2000. Reduced variability in some regions is due to the loss of wet years, as in south-west Australia, or more consistent average to above average rain, as in the north-western parts of the country and southern South Australia.”

In contrast variability in annual rainfall has increased in inland Victoria, southern New South Wales and much of central Queensland.

25/02/2016

Economics: Current Climate Models Are Grossly Misleading

Nature - Nicholas Stern

Nicholas Stern calls on scientists, engineers and economists to help policymakers by better modelling the immense risks to future generations, and the potential for action.

Sathkira District, Bangladesh, still flooded a year after 2009's Cyclone Aila. Jonas Bendiksen/Magnum

The twin defining challenges of our century are overcoming poverty and managing climate change. If we can tackle these issues together, we will create a secure and prosperous world for generations to come. If we don't, the future is at grave risk.
Researchers across a range of disciplines must work together to help decision-makers in the public, private and non-profit sectors to rise to these challenges. Economists, in particular, need more help from scientists and engineers to devise models that provide better guidance about what will happen if we succeed or if we fail.
As the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change made clear, we must achieve a net-zero carbon economy this century. Doing so will require policies that drive innovation, investment and entrepreneurship. The political will to make the necessary decisions depends partly on improving the analysis and estimates of the economics of climate change. Then the consequences of unmanaged global warming can be weighed much more transparently against the investments and innovations necessary to mitigate it.
Current economic models tend to underestimate seriously both the potential impacts of dangerous climate change and the wider benefits of a transition to low-carbon growth. There is an urgent need for a new generation of models that give a more accurate picture.

Dark impacts
The Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published in 2013 and 2014, provided a comprehensive overview of the literature on the costs of action and inaction. But the assessment understated the limitations of the research done so far. Essentially, it reported on a body of literature that had systematically and grossly underestimated the risks of unmanaged climate change. Furthermore, that literature had failed to capture the learning processes and economies of scale involved in radical structural and technical change, and the benefits of reducing fossil-fuel pollution, protecting biodiversity and forests, and so on.
The IPCC pointed out¹ that estimates of losses resulting from a 2 °C increase in mean global temperature above pre-industrial levels ranged from 0.2% to 2% of global gross domestic product. It admitted that the global economic impacts are "difficult to estimate" and that attempts depend on a large number of "disputable" assumptions. Moreover, many estimates do not account for factors such as catastrophic changes and tipping points.
It is these hard-to-predict impacts that are the most troubling potential consequences of inaction. The next IPCC report needs to be based on a much more robust body of economics literature, which we must create now. It could make a crucial difference.
Many estimates of economic losses are based on the outputs of integrated assessment models (IAMs). These models attempt to combine the key elements of biophysical and economic systems. This is a worthy endeavour. Sadly, most IAMs struggle to incorporate the scale of the scientific risks, such as the thawing of permafrost, release of methane, and other potential tipping points. Furthermore, many of the largest potential impacts are omitted, such as widespread conflict as a result of large-scale human migration to escape the worst-affected areas.
For instance, there is evidence that temperature increases of 1.5 °C and 2 °C would lead to differing extents of sea-level rise and extreme weather events², with obvious implications for small island states and coastal communities. These differences are simply not represented in the flawed estimates of economic losses.
IAMs are also used to calculate the social cost of carbon (SCC). They attempt to model the incremental change in, or damage to, global economic output resulting from 1 tonne of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions or equivalent. These SCC estimates are used by policymakers in cost–benefit analyses of climate-change-mitigation policies.
Because the IAMs omit so many of the big risks, SCC estimates are often way too low. As a first step, the consequences being assessed should include the damages to human well-being and loss of life beyond simply reduced economic output. And the very large uncertainty, usually involving downward bias, in SCC estimates should always be made explicit.
As the IPCC acknowledged², published SCC estimates "lie between a few dollars and several hundreds of dollars". These values often depend crucially on the 'discounting' used to translate future costs to current dollars. The high discount rates that predominate essentially assume that benefits to people in the future are much less important than benefits today.
These discount rates are central to any discussion of our hand in the fate of future generations. Most current models of climate-change impacts make two flawed assumptions: that people will be much wealthier in the future and that lives in the future are less important than lives now.
The former assumption ignores the great risks of severe damage and disruption to livelihoods from climate change. The latter assumption is 'discrimination by date of birth'. It is a value judgement that is rarely scrutinized, difficult to defend and in conflict with most moral codes.

Costing transition
The other role of IAMs — to estimate the costs of climate-change mitigation — also suffers from major shortcomings.
The IPCC's mitigation assessment³ concluded from its review of IAM outputs that the reduction in emissions needed to provide a 66% chance of achieving the 2°C goal would cut overall global consumption by between 2.9% and 11.4% in 2100. This was measured relative to a 'business as usual' scenario. Clearly, growth itself can be derailed by climate change from business-as-usual emissions.
So the business-as-usual baseline, against which costs of action are measured, conveys a profoundly misleading message to policymakers that there is an alternative option in which fossil fuels are consumed in ever greater quantities without any negative consequences to growth itself.
Crucially, IAMs generally omit the potentially huge costs of air pollution from fossil fuels — which are saved if alternative fuels are used⁴. IAMs struggle to describe developments in alternative energy. They fail, in general, to capture the feedback loops in the innovation process that interact across the economy, prompting institutional and behavioural change, possible discoveries and economies of scale. There is empirical evidence, for example, that the geographical location of researchers and inventors can affect whether a firm chooses to do clean or dirty innovation.

"Discount rates are central to any discussion of our hand in the fate of future generations."

The initial investment required to catalyse the transition to a low-carbon pathway might lead to great economic benefits in the long run. These could go well beyond avoided climate risks⁵. The knowledge spillover from low-carbon innovation into the wider economy — for instance, a battery developed for electric vehicles being used in wheelchairs — seems to be greater overall than that from high-carbon-energy technologies⁶.
As engineers learn how to install, connect and repair technology cheaply, unit costs fall faster for many new technologies than for existing ones. This has already allowed solar-photovoltaic and onshore-wind technologies to become competitive with natural gas and coal in several locations, even without emissions taxation.
Also influential will be the emergence of new networks, such as the integration of electric-vehicle-energy storage into smart grids, as well as rapid technical progress. And these steps can be accelerated if, for example, consumers change behaviour and demand support for resource efficiency, recycling and pedestrianization. It is clear that much will depend on urban management and design; as cities grow rapidly, damaging infrastructure can become 'locked in'.

What's needed?
There is much that can be done to make the assumptions in standard IAMs more realistic with respect to the scale and nature of damages^{7, 4}. But to give policymakers the reliable information that they need when implementing the Paris agreement, incremental improvements^{7, 8} to the present generation of IAMs may not be enough.
A comprehensive review of the problems of using IAMs in climate economics⁵ called for the research community to develop a "third wave" of models. The authors identify various types of model that might offer advances. Two are: dynamic stochastic computable general equilibrium (DSGE) models, and agent-based models (ABMs).
Like current IAMs, DSGE models can explicitly account for uncertainty about the future through the introduction of shocks, for instance, to economic output, consumption or climate damages⁹. ABMs, by contrast, seek to provide more-realistic representations of socio-economics by simulating the economy through the interactions of a large number of different agents, on the basis of specific rules. ABMs are widely used in finance, but have yet to be seriously applied to climate change. These are promising developments.
Now, a concerted effort is required by the research community to explore as many potential avenues as possible to better estimate the costs of action and inaction on climate change. The IPCC should distil what policymakers need to inform their decision-making. Learned societies and national academies must bring together researchers from a wide range of relevant disciplines to focus attention on improving economic modelling quickly.
Bangladeshi farmers and Cairo city-dwellers are at severe risk of flooding and storms; southern Europe and parts of Africa and the Americas are threatened by desertification. Perhaps hundreds of millions of people may need to migrate as a result, posing an immense risk of conflict.
There is huge potential in future technologies that can drive change. These are omitted or badly underestimated in our current climate modelling — deeply damaging our guidance for policymaking. The well-being and prosperity of future generations are worth more.

References

IPCC. Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge Univ. Press, (2014).
Schaeffer, M. et al. Nature Clim. Change 2, 867–870 (2012).
IPCC. Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014).
Stern, N. Why are We Waiting?: The Logic, Urgency, and Promise of Tackling Climate Change (MIT Press, 2015).
Aghion, P. et al. Path Dependence, Innovation and the Economics of Climate Change (Grantham Research Inst., 2014).
Dechezleprêtre, A., Martin, R. & Mohnen, M. Knowledge Spillovers from Clean and Dirty Technologies: A Patent Citation Analysis (Grantham Research Inst., 2013).
Dietz, S. & Stern, N. Econ. J. 583, 574–620 (2015).
Gillingham, K. et al. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 21637 (2015).
Golosov, M. et al. Econometrica 82, 41–88 (2014).

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