Archive by date | January 2009

McKinsey: options for a low-carbon economy

McKinsey & Company has mapped out a couple of conceivable scenarios that would put humanity on a pathway to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations well below 550 parts per million, an oft-cited and somewhat arbitrary target that increases the odds of avoiding a temperature increase of more than 2 degrees Celsius. Whether or not such action would actually guarantee said result is a different matter, but McKinsey suggests it’s possible to come in at 480 ppm, which leaves a little room for error.  Read more

Ramping up the Montreal Protocol

The argument for using a cap-and-trade system, or a carbon tax for that matter, to control greenhouse gases comes down to marshaling the troops. Everybody needs to play this game, and the surest way to make everybody play is to make winning profitable – and conversely to make losing costly. In other words, make the market work for you instead of against you. It’s a noble and likely necessary goal, but it’s not necessarily fast, nor perfect.  Read more

Geoengineering by the numbers

Geoengineering by the numbers

Cross-posted from Heliophage A very useful paper (abstract|pdf|discussion space) comes out today in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics by Tim Lenton and his student Naomi Vaughan. Tim told me when I was reporting the Andy Ridgwell paper on leaf albedo (Nature story|blog entry) that he’d become pretty interested in evaluating geoengineering schemes, and was setting up a group at the University of East Anglia to assess them. This paper presumably represents the first fruits of that interest, providing a ranking of most of the geoengineering schemes proposed in the literature in terms of the amount of radiative forcing they can provide.  Read more

The ocean’s next 100,000 years

The ocean's next 100,000 years

Carbon dioxide emitted today – and the warming it causes – could stick around for centuries or millennia, reported Mason Inman over on Nature Reports Climate Change not long ago. New research (subscription) published online in Nature Geoscience this week looks at the impacts of CO2 emissions on the global ocean over a timescale even longer and less imaginable.  Read more

Prizewinning climate mini-documentaries focus on Bangladesh

Winners were announced Friday Thursday in a contest organized by the World Bank for short-short films – two to five minutes long – documenting the social dimensions of climate change. The ‘Vulnerability Exposed’ contest put out an open call last autumn for films to be posted on YouTube, with a special plea for documentation of developing-world impacts.  Read more

The truth about thermoelectrics

The truth about thermoelectrics

Among the many technologies contending for a role in the future energy mix, thermoelectricity is one area where researchers have hoped that a big breakthrough in technology could reap equally large benefits in improving energy efficiency. Up until this point thermoelectric technologies, which use materials to draw electricity from heat, haven’t been widely applied to electricity generation owing to their high cost and inefficiency. But changing the materials and their properties could — in theory at least — make a wide range of products more energy-efficient at a lower cost. Last year the field made some important gains and seemed  … Read more

Climate and society in the Arctic

Climate and society in the Arctic

Although the Inuit people of the North American Arctic are generally thought to be vulnerable to climate change, particularly in the wake of record sea ice loss, it can be difficult to quantify all of the risks to their way of life. In a new paper in Climatic Change, a group of researchers led by Gita Laidler of Carleton University assessed the ability of the residents of Igloolik, a coastal community north of the Arctic Circle, to adapt to changing conditions. The team reports that although the hunters have so far adapted to thinning ice and changing seasons, societal changes  … Read more

Q&A: Andrew Gouldson, director of the new Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy

Q&A: Andrew Gouldson, director of the new Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy

The UK will get an intriguing new climate research centre next week, with the launch of the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy at the London School of Economics and the University of Leeds. In a Q&A for Nature Reports Climate Change, I’ve interviewed Andrew Gouldson, who will co-direct the centre with Judith Rees under chairman Lord Nicholas Stern – and who envisions a strong focus on regional impacts of climate change.  Read more