Humans have significantly altered the energy balance of the Earth’s climate system mainly not only by extracting and burning fossil fuels but also by altering the biosphere and using halocarbons. The ...3rd US National Climate Assessment pointed to a need for a system of indicators of climate and global change based on long-term data that could be used to support assessments and this led to the development of the National Climate Indicators System (NCIS). Here we identify a representative set of key atmospheric indicators of changes in atmospheric radiative forcing due to greenhouse gases (GHGs), and we evaluate atmospheric composition measurements, including non-CO2GHGs for use as climate change indicators in support of the US National Climate Assessment. GHG abundances and their changes over time can provide valuable information on the success of climate mitigation policies, as well as insights into possible carbon-climate feedback processes that may ultimately affect the success of those policies. To ensure that reliable information for assessing GHG emission changes can be provided on policy-relevant scales, expanded observational efforts are needed. Furthermore, the ability to detect trends resulting from changing emissions requires a commitment to supporting long-term observations. Long-term measurements of greenhouse gases, aerosols, and clouds and related climate indicators used with a dimming/brightening index could provide a foundation for quantifying forcing and its attribution and reducing error in existing indicators that do not account for complicated cloud processes.
The Way Things Go contains a mix of poetry, art writing, and life writing about anticipatory grief, or mourning someone or something before it’s gone. Each successive chapter in the book decreases in ...length by exactly one sentence, from a 71-sentence-long opening chapter, to a 70-sentence-long second chapter, to 69 sentences, 68 sentences, and so on down to 1 (a book-length Oulipian “melting snowball”). This shrinking form enacts the book’s concerns with loss, climate change, and the passage of time. At the level of its content, however, The Way Things Go is not fatalistic. Its title comes from a cult classic 1987 Fischli and Weiss film, in which objects such as bags of trash, car tires, and oil drums knock into one another in a Rube Goldberg-esque chain reaction. Moving through both personal history (his sister’s lupus and heroin addiction, his grandmother’s experience as a Holocaust survivor) and more global concerns (the Sixth Mass Extinction, COVID-19, the war in Ukraine), Bury considers the disruptions that occur as “things go,” as well as the continuity that remains. The book suggests that recent negotiations between optimism and pessimism with respect to the future reflect people’s feelings of vulnerability, particularly people who are used to taking their life’s stability for granted, in a world that seems increasingly precarious.
We present an overview of results from 11 integrated assessment models (IAMs) that participated in the 33
rd
study of the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum (EMF-33) on the viability of large-scale ...deployment of bioenergy for achieving long-run climate goals. The study explores future bioenergy use across models under harmonized scenarios for future climate policies, availability of bioenergy technologies, and constraints on biomass supply. This paper provides a more transparent description of IAMs that span a broad range of assumptions regarding model structures, energy sectors, and bioenergy conversion chains. Without emission constraints, we find vastly different CO
2
emission and bioenergy deployment patterns across models due to differences in competition with fossil fuels, the possibility to produce large-scale bio-liquids, and the flexibility of energy systems. Imposing increasingly stringent carbon budgets mostly increases bioenergy use. A diverse set of available bioenergy technology portfolios provides flexibility to allocate bioenergy to supply different final energy as well as remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by combining bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration (BECCS). Sector and regional bioenergy allocation varies dramatically across models mainly due to bioenergy technology availability and costs, final energy patterns, and availability of alternative decarbonization options. Although much bioenergy is used in combination with CCS, BECCS is not necessarily the driver of bioenergy use. We find that the flexibility to use biomass feedstocks in different energy sub-sectors makes large-scale bioenergy deployment a robust strategy in mitigation scenarios that is surprisingly insensitive with respect to reduced technology availability. However, the achievability of stringent carbon budgets and associated carbon prices is sensitive. Constraints on biomass feedstock supply increase the carbon price less significantly than excluding BECCS because carbon removals are still realized and valued. Incremental sensitivity tests find that delayed readiness of bioenergy technologies until 2050 is more important than potentially higher investment costs.
Climate change affects all segments of the agricultural enterprise, and there is mounting evidence that the continuing warming trend with shifting seasonality and intensity in precipitation will ...increase the vulnerability of agricultural systems. Agricultural is a complex system within the USA encompassing a large number of crops and livestock systems, and development of indicators to provide a signal of the impact of climate change on these different systems would be beneficial to the development of strategies for effective adaptation practices. A series of indicators were assembled to determine their potential for assessing agricultural response to climate change in the near term and long term and those with immediate capability of being implemented and those requiring more development. The available literature reveals indicators on livestock related to heat stress, soil erosion related to changes in precipitation, soil carbon changes in response to increasing carbon dioxide and soil management practices, economic response to climate change in agricultural production, and crop progress and productivity. Crop progress and productivity changes are readily observed data with a historical record for some crops extending back to the mid-1800s. This length of historical record coupled with the county-level observations from each state where a crop is grown and emerging pest populations provides a detailed set of observations to assess the impact of a changing climate on agriculture. Continued refinement of tools to assess climate impacts on agriculture will provide guidance on strategies to adapt to climate change.
Universities on Fire Alexander, Bryan
Johns Hopkins University Press,
2023, 2023-03-28, 2023-05-23
eBook, Book
Scientists agree that we are on the precipice of a global climate crisis. How will it transform colleges and universities?In 2019, intense fires in the San Francisco Bay Area closed universities and ...drove afflicted people to shelter at other campuses. At the same time, extraordinary fires ravaged eastern Australia. Several universities responded by promising material and research support to damaged businesses while also hosting refugees and emergency response teams in student residence halls. This was an echo of the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina on Tulane University in 2005.In Universities on Fire, futurist Bryan Alexander explores higher education during an age of unfolding climate crisis. Powered by real-world examples and the latest research, Alexander assesses practical responses and strategies by surveying contemporary programs and academic climate research from around the world. He establishes a model of how academic institutions may respond and offers practical pathways forward for higher education. How will the two main purposes of education—teaching and research—change as the world heats up? Alexander positions colleges and universities in the broader social world, from town-gown relationships to connections between how campuses and civilization as a whole respond to this epochal threat.Current studies of climate change trace the likely implications across a range of domains, from agriculture to policy, urban design, technology, culture, and human psychology. However, few books have predicted or studied the effects of the climate crisis on colleges and universities. By connecting climate research to a deep, futures-informed analysis of academia, Universities on Fire explores how climate change will fundamentally reshape higher education.
How can subnational governments best integrate climate change considerations across policy areas? Which factors contribute to successful integration? With a specific focus on transport, spatial ...planning policies, and energy and water in selected cases located at the border of the Alpine region between Italy and Austria, this volume shows that coordination (vertical and horizontal), public participation and information, leadership, and dedicated funding play fundamental and interlinked roles in climate change policy integration.
This report addresses the urgent issue of climate-related losses and damages. Climate change is driving fundamental changes to the planet with adverse impacts on human livelihoods and well-being, ...putting development gains at risk.
Human activities associated with greenhouse gas emissions have unequivocally caused global warming. Widespread adverse impacts on people, living organisms, and the environment are already being ...observed, mostly affecting vulnerable communities who are least responsible for current climate change. Unless drastic mitigation and adaptation measures are taken, continued greenhouse gas emissions will further exacerbate dangerous climate change. This expert report maps and analyses the complex justice issues that arise in the context of climate change and evaluates policy responses to the impacts of climate change from a climate justice perspective.
Environmental health indicators are helpful for tracking and communicating complex health trends, informing science and policy decisions, and evaluating public health actions. When provided on a ...national scale, they can help inform the general public, policymakers, and public health professionals about important trends in exposures and how well public health systems are preventing those exposures from causing adverse health outcomes. There is a growing need to understand national trends in exposures and health outcomes associated with climate change and the effectiveness of climate adaptation strategies for health. To date, most indicators for health implications of climate change have been designed as independent, individual metrics. This approach fails to take into account how exposure-outcome pathways for climate-attributable health outcomes involve multiple, interconnected components. We propose reframing climate change and health indicators as a linked system of indicators, which can be described as follows: upstream
climate drivers
affect
environmental states,
which then determine
human exposures
, which ultimately lead to
health outcomes
; these climate-related risks are modified by
population vulnerabilities
and
adaptation strategies
. We apply this new conceptual framework to three illustrative climate-sensitive health outcomes and associated exposure-outcome pathways: pollen allergies and asthma, West Nile virus infection, and vibriosis.
As wildfires rip across the western United States and sea levels
rise along coastal cities from Louisiana to Alaska, some people
nevertheless reject the mainstream scientific consensus on
...anthropogenic climate change. What leads people to doubt or
outright denial? What leads skeptics to change their minds?
Drawing from a rich collection of interviews and surveys with
self-identified climate change skeptics (and some former ones),
sociologists Kristin Haltinner and Dilshani Sarathchandra delve
into the underlying dynamics of climate skepticism in the United
States. In probing how ideas about science, religion, politics, and
media affect perceptions of climate change, they find a far greater
diversity of attitudes and beliefs than one might expect-including
some pro-environmental views. With this nuanced understanding of
climate change skepticism, Inside the World of Climate Change
Skeptics offers much-needed insights on improving
communication in ways that can move us toward a better future while
advancing environmental policies with widespread political
support.
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