Zero Carbon

Back to basics

Stephen Stretton — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 22:56:56 +0000

Back to basics (pdf) In the clamour of contention and controversy surrounding the climate change debate, sometimes it makes sense to return to first principles. I was reminded of this sharply during a conversation with a professor of solar energy technology, when he stated bluntly that speculation on solutions is worthless unless we have come up [...]

Biofuels Discussion - the views of the Cambridge parliamentary candidates

Penny Hall — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 11:35:06 +0000

I have recently been in touch with some of the Cambridge parliamentary candidates to ask their views on biofuels. The Green Party policy on biofuels is very clear and robust and amongst other things “calls for an immediate moratorium on agrofuels from largescale monocultures” (point C6 at policy.greenparty.org.uk/mfss/mcc.html). The Liberal Democrat, Labour and Conservative parties [...]

The Economist does not disappoint

eric — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 13:27:59 +0000

The March 20th -26th cover story of The Economist, “Spin, science and climate change,” deftly bypasses the politics surrounding ‘climategate’, to tackle the more important issue: whether any of this has any bearing on climate change science and policy. This is a refreshing bit of journalism that everyone should read. It is no secret that [...]

Putting the Pope on Trial

George — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 08:01:41 +0000

International law presents a radical challenge to the powerful: they could be judged by the same standards as the rest of us.

Wed 05 May 18:00: Sustainability in action at University of California San Diego: the campus as a living laboratory

Sustainability Talks — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 14:59:39 +0000

Sustainability in action at University of California San Diego: the campus as a living laboratory

Paul Linden is the chair of the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering, where he is the Blasker Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering. He also is director of UCSD ’s Environment and Sustainability Initiative and a fellow of both the American Physical Society and the Royal Meteorological Society. Prior to joining UCSD in 1998, Linden was a faculty member in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1971

Professor Linden’s research has applications in geophysical, environmental and industrial engineering. The flows encountered in natural and industrial contexts are usually turbulent and have variations in density which produce strong buoyancy forces. Linden’s research focuses on the physical processes involved to obtain a greater understanding of the underlying principles governing these flows. He has applied his work in fluid dynamics to environmental engineering to create more “energy efficient” buildings.

Speaker: Professor Paul Linden, Director Sustainability Solutions Institute, University of California, San Diego
Wednesday 05 May 2010, 18:00-19:30
Venue: Cambridge University Engineering Department, LR0.
Series: Sustainable Development Annual Lecture Series; organiser: Dr Dick Fenner.

Add to your calendar or Include in your list

Krugman weighs in

david — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 18:16:01 +0000

After weeks and months of press coverage seemingly Through the Looking Glass, Paul Krugman has sent us a breath of fresh air this morning in the New York Times Magazine, entitled “Building a Green Economy“. Krugman now joins fellow NYT columnist Tom Friedman as required reading in my Global Warming for English Majors class [...]

Cold FT

Tim Joslin — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 17:54:20 +0000

I wrote earlier, in relation to a story in today’s Guardian, that: “Solving the GW problem is difficult enough without the constant drip-feed of confusing reporting of the issue.” Even worse, though, is when influential media editors themselves appear to be confused by sceptics. A colleague has drawn my attention to a recent [...]

Ice Sickle

Tim Joslin — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 15:22:57 +0000

I continue to fret about the emphasis on the Arctic sea-ice extent as an indicator of global warming (GW). I have to chop down (got to justify my blog entry title somehow!) a Guardian story, “Arctic sea ice still low despite winter recovery” (p.20 in today’s print edition), the online version titled incoherently “Arctic [...]

Debate with Steve Easterbrook

George — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 00:53:20 +0000

We explore the mutual incomprehension across the climate emails divide

Climate scientist bashing

stefan — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 20:05:42 +0000

A new popular sport in some media these days is “climate scientist bashing”. Instead of dealing soberly with the climate problem they prefer to attack climate scientists, i.e. the bearers of bad news. The German magazine DER SPIEGEL has played this game last week under the suggestive heading “Die Wolkenschieber” – which literally translated can [...]

Science Story: the Making of a Sea Level Study

group — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 15:00:11 +0000

Sea level rise, semi-empirical models, peer review, Vermeer and Rahmstorf, getting published

Walled In

George — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 20:04:02 +0000

Science and humanities students view each other with incomprehension: blame our dumb, narrow schooling.

Climate and network connections

rasmus — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 06:18:33 +0000

by Rasmus & Jim Who would think that Internet, ideas, disease, money, birds, and climate literacy have anything in common? Recent progress on complex systems and network theory suggests that they all can be described in terms of a ‘Levy flight‘. A recent and lengthy paper with the title ‘A study on interconnections between climate [...]

First CRU inquiry report released

group — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 23:21:22 +0000

UK Parliamentary Select Committee, climategate, phil jones

Morality Policing

George — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 20:16:37 +0000

The police treat protests and festivals as a threat to their power

The Guardian responds

group — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 22:53:59 +0000

Guardian, "climategate", hacked emails, Realclimate, Gavin Schmidt, Fred Pearce

War With the Ghosts

George — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 08:59:16 +0000

What are our nuclear weapons for, and who controls them?

How Should the US Legislate on Climate Policy?

TheClimatePhilosopher — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 07:34:00 +0000

The passing of legislation in the United States congress is crucial to reducing greenhouse gases globally, for two reasons. Firstly, the US is significant in its own right, as the second-largest global emitter of greenhouse gases. Secondly, as the richest and most powerful country in the world, many other countries wait for the lead offered by the US, and the US will have a great influence on the structure of future agreements.

This short post set out in outline what I think the US should do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

First, scrap the Kyoto system. In the Copenhagen negotiations the US argued in favour of the replacement of the Kyoto protocol. There are good reasons for scrapping Kyoto with its distinction between developed and developing countries, and its extensive use of 'flexible mechanisms'. I have outlined the problems with Kyoto in an earlier paper.

Secondly, introduce an upstream approach. Rather than measure the CO2 emitted by companies and individuals at point of emission ('downstream'), it's easier to measure how much carbon is extracted or imported into the country and levy the tax there. The economic incidence of the tax will be broadly the same wherever in the chain you implement it.

Thirdly, have a broad tax base for the proposals. Any carbon price/tax should include all emissions, not just some sectors. An upstream approach that taxes the carbon at source(see previous section) should catch almost all CO2 emissions. The carbon tax should include petroleum for transportation and natural gas for home heating - all fossil fuels in short.

Fourth, adopt a consumption basis for the carbon price/tax rather than a production basis. This means that taxes should in principle be levied on imports of goods from any other countries that do not have comprehensive plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This means using border tax adjustments. This can be implemented by value according to the emissions intensity of the original relevant country-sector.

Fifth, reverse the direction of political realism: structure climate policy so that it is more politically acceptable the more stringent it is. Ways to achieve this might include a sectoral approach for negotiating the transitional measures to adapt to a high carbon price; and 'transformative contracts' for existing high-carbon interests (for example giving guaranteed electricity prices for solar power produced by fossil fuel companies), with 'frontloading' of subsidy and 'backloading' of costs (recognizing that political actors have a relatively short time horizon / high discount rates).

Sixth, ensure a carbon/tax price that is high enough to encourage clean fossil fuels with Carbon Capture and Storage and Concentrated Solar power, to provide scalable energy sources for the future (and possibly Air Capture of CO2 from thin air). This price would need to be at least $200/tCO2 over the next decade. Implementing carbon capture and storage with an upstream carbon tax approach requires implementing subsidies for verified carbon storage (a small proportion of which could be held in escrow pending long-term verification of carbon storage).

Implementing the preceding points may be more straightforward with a carbon tax than an emissions trading scheme. Furthermore, an international system of harmonized taxes has only one degree of freedom - the tax level - meaning that international negotiations may well be simpler when based around a common carbon tax level than level of emissions reductions. Furthermore, such an international club could be created from the 'bottom up', by agreements between the United States, Europe and Japan, and other OECD members.

Whilst in principle it is possible to adopt cap-and-trade scheme with most of the previous features, it would be very different from those adopted so far, for example the EU (in particular it would need to be upstream with a complete tax base, and a much higher carbon price). To keep things simple, therefore, my advice would therefore be to adopt a carbon tax of around $200/tCO2, with revenues rebated in the short term (1-5 years) to reduce taxes on domestic companies, and individuals and to reward resource owners for keeping carbon in the ground (so that major political actors are no worse off). In the long term (>~3 years) revenues should be used to reduce the fiscal deficit.

The carbon tax could be managed by a central agency in order to meet emissions targets, rather like a central bank sets interest rates in order to meet inflation targets. The price level would only need to be changed infrequently - every year or two - however, in order to ensure that the targets are at least met.

Ice Pie

Tim Joslin — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 21:22:39 +0000

I was prompted earlier to complete my previous post by an article in today’s Guardian which reported on “[n]ew research [that] does not question climate change is also melting ice in the Arctic, but finds wind patterns explain steep decline”. The word “also” is confusing – you can hardly consider “climate change” to be [...]

That Snow Calculation

Tim Joslin — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 16:55:34 +0000

I remain perturbed about the possibility that the recent rapid rate of Arctic sea ice melt is at least partly due to a natural cycle. My hypothesis is that warming causes sea ice melt which causes cooling which restores the sea ice and so on. Rather alarmingly, you can’t just subtract the natural cycle to obtain [...]

Saleska Responds (green is green)

eric — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 15:23:29 +0000

In a recent post here at RealClimate, Simon Lewis wrote regarding a 2010 paper by Samanta et al. on the effect of single-year drought conditions on the Amazon. Samanta et al. claimed to have contradicted a 2007 paper by Scott Saleska et al., and to have thereby overturned some IPCC conclusions. Lewis showed why Samanta’s [...]

Unforced variations 3

group — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:59:06 +0000

Another open thread. OT comments from the Amazon drying thread have been moved over. As usual, substantive comments only please and no abuse.

Jonathan Porritt’s Strange Slurs

George — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:29:14 +0000

I learn, once again, that telling brutal truths isn’t the best way of winning friends

The Naming of Things

George — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 21:07:21 +0000

Here’s one small way in which the collapse of biodiversity could be slowed

Up is Down, Brown is Green (with apologies to Orwell)

eric — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:00:44 +0000

In the alternate universe of Fox News, Anthony Watts, and many others, up is down. Now, it appears, brown is green. Following the total confusion over the retraction of a paper on sea level, claims of another “mistake” by the IPCC are making the rounds of the blogosphere. This time, the issue is the impact [...]

CommonFuture: Another Perspective http://bit.ly/d8Y3su #fb

Twitter / CommonFuture — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:14:36 +0000

CommonFuture: Another Perspective http://bit.ly/d8Y3su #fb

Another Perspective

Shuo Zhang — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 23:25:21 +0000

Another Perspective (pdf), by Shuo Zhang. Inequality, development, and obesity: just a few reasons why the global public-health message is so important for the change to a low carbon future.

Why we bother

group — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:30:25 +0000

A letter from a reader (reproduced with permission): Dear RealClimate team: I have a background in biology and studied at post-grad level in the area of philosophy of science. For the last few years, I have been working on a book about the logic of argument used in debates between creationists and evolutionists. About a year ago [...]

The German Disease

George — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 04:08:19 +0000

The scheme for supporting renewables that the UK is importing from Germany has been a disaster there.

Sealevelgate

stefan — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:08:21 +0000

Imagine this. In its latest report, the IPCC has predicted up to 3 meters of sea level rise by the end of this century. But “climate sceptics” websites were quick to reveal a few problems (or “tricks”, as they called it). First, although the temperature scenarios of IPCC project a maximum warming of 6.4 ºC (Table [...]

Zero Carbon Society Accounts

Stephen Stretton — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:48:53 +0000

Here are the Cambridge Zero Carbon Society Accounts for 2008/9

Cambridge Climate Conference Accounts 2008 & 2009

Stephen Stretton — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:47:12 +0000

Here are the final, summary Cambridge Climate Summit 2008 Accounts and the cancelled Cambridge Climate Conference 2009 Accounts

More on sun-climate relations

rasmus — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 06:40:34 +0000

Four new papers discuss the relatiosnhip between solar activity and climate: one by Judith Lean (2010) in WIREs Climate Change, a GRL paper by Calogovic et al. (2010), Kulmala et al. (2010), and an on-line preprint by Feulner and Rahmstorf (2010). They all look at different aspects of how changes in solar activity may influence [...]

The Unpersuadables

George — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:41:39 +0000

In fighting for science, we subscribe to a comforting illusion: that people can be swayed by the facts.

CommonFuture: The UK Energy Crisis http://bit.ly/bdQHbd #fb

Twitter / CommonFuture — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 14:26:19 +0000

CommonFuture: The UK Energy Crisis http://bit.ly/bdQHbd #fb

CommonFuture: Evidence for Climate Change and Related Policy Issues http://bit.ly/bKQMjR #fb

Twitter / CommonFuture — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 13:59:17 +0000

CommonFuture: Evidence for Climate Change and Related Policy Issues http://bit.ly/bKQMjR #fb

The UK Energy Crisis

Stephen Stretton — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 02:56:32 +0000

What do we need to do to solve the simultaneous energy and climate crises? What do we mean by the energy crisis? There are various energy crises (high prices, unstable suppliers, resource depletion(?)). One possibly serious energy crisis is the potential shortage of electricity generation capacity. For example, by 2015, the UK might have only 80% of the [...]

How Sensitive Is The Climate?

Stephen Stretton — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 02:29:45 +0000

Why ‘Fast Feedbacks’ are quite slow and ‘Slow Feedbacks’ might be rather fast. This paper by Hansen et al. has lots of interesting material on climate sensitivity: http://www.planetwork.net/climate/Hansen2007.pdf The climate sensitivity is the temperature response of the whole climate to a forcing of greenhouse gases. We know that there are two basic sorts of feedback processes going [...]

Evidence for Climate Change and Related Policy Issues

Stephen Stretton — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 01:44:00 +0000

Science Issues Why do we think that the observed increased concentrations of CO2 and Methane will warm the earth?1) Basic physics2) Water vapour feedbacks from recent measurement of radiative outflow from satellites & Models integrating these observations3) Observations of the climate warming up already (see below for detailed refs)4) Observations CO2 of the ice ages (showing [...]

1740 And All That

Tim Joslin — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 18:42:29 +0000

The pain goes on. The Met Office announced yesterday that they are giving up seasonal forecasts. This is going to seem to most people – and I have to go along with the majority view on this – as if there’s something seriously wrong. I don’t believe we’re dealing with butterflies’ wings here. I simply [...]

A mistaken message from IoP?

rasmus — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:08:39 +0000

Institute of Physics, CRU inquiry, transparency

Arctic Methane on the Move?

david — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 14:49:00 +0000

Methane is like the radical wing of the carbon cycle, in today’s atmosphere a stronger greenhouse gas per molecule than CO2, and an atmospheric concentration that can change more quickly than CO2 can. There has been a lot of press coverage of a new paper in Science this week called “Extensive methane venting to [...]

Treachery or Common Sense?

George — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:45:32 +0000

I’m being hounded for taking a stand against feed-in tariffs: here’s a riposte to the critics.

Is the Earth Flat?

George — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 11:45:38 +0000

A TV debate about whether climate change is happening

CommonFuture: Biofuels Are Not the Answer http://bit.ly/c5Sv2x #fb

Twitter / CommonFuture — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:19:59 +0000

CommonFuture: Biofuels Are Not the Answer http://bit.ly/c5Sv2x #fb

A Risky Business

Stephen Stretton — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 02:23:26 +0000

By Stephen Stretton. I was talking about risk last night with a couple of friends. I was asked why climate change is a risk to individuals, nations and the world. Here’s why. The following distribution describes the estimated chance of different warmings if we give up producing CO2 and other greenhouse gases now (actually if we [...]

Biofuels Are Not the Answer

Tim Joslin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 02:10:29 +0000

Biofuels Are Not the Answer (pdf), by Tim Joslin. Present policies to promote biofuels fail to adequately take into account the opportunity cost of the land required for the biofuel crop. A way to do this is by determining the payback period for biofuel cropping.

Climate change commitments

gavin — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:43:50 +0000

Climate change commitment, Matthews and Weaver, adaptation and mitigation. CO2 emissions and concentrations.

Engineering Cities for climate change

Asher Minns — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:09:23 +0000

This synthesis report of three year's research to develop the Cities programme's Urban Integrated Assessment Facility investigates how London can grow while reducing its emissions and vulnerability to climate change. Download the full report

The AMO in the CET?

Tim Joslin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:26:53 +0000

A couple of weeks ago a commenter suggested I “personally check” the “statistical significance” of “temperature trends”. Well, I’m not sure that’s really my role in life, but as it happens I did take a peek at the Central England Temperature (CET) record last week to see if I could see any evidence for an [...]

Close Encounters of the Absurd Kind

group — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:31:29 +0000

Ben Santer, IPCC, SAR, Chapter 8, discernible influence, "scientific cleasning", Guardian, Fred Pearce, Douglass and Christy

Why the AMO Overshoots

Tim Joslin — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:00:58 +0000

I’ve had a bit of off-line feedback on my previous post Spin Snow, not Sea Ice, the AMO is Real!, so I thought I’d try to correct any misconceptions arising from my clumsy presentation. 1. I am only attempting to explain general climate trends, not annual variation in the weather. In particular, I am assuming that [...]

The Guardian disappoints

gavin — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:26:41 +0000

The Guardian, Fred Pearce, Douglas Keenan, Tom Wigley, Phil Jones, Mike Mann, Keith Briffa, Chinese weather stations, fraud, peer review

Spin Snow, not Sea Ice: the AMO is Real!

Tim Joslin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:55:08 +0000

How unfortunate. Back in 2000, yes, that’s not a typo, in 2000, the Independent wrote that: “According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, within a few years winter snowfall will become ‘a very rare and exciting event’. ‘Children just aren’t going to [...]

Throw your iPhone into the climate debate

rasmus — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 08:01:24 +0000

Who says that the climate debate is not evolving? According to the daily newspaper the Guardian, a new application (‘app‘) has been written for iPhones that provides a list of climate dissidents’ arguments, and counter arguments based on more legitimate scientific substance. The app is developed by John Cook from ‘Skeptical Science‘. It’s apparently [...]

The Telegraph’s Sensibly But Mysteriously Changed Climategate Story

Tim Joslin — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:51:28 +0000

Now I am confused. Just by chance I noticed just now that a link in my post a couple of days ago is now broken. I quoted the Telegraph as saying: “In an interview for the BBC’s website, Professor Jones also conceded that global temperatures may have been higher during the medieval warm [...]

Harrabin’s Hamfisted Interview

Tim Joslin — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:00:46 +0000

In a post earlier this week, I traced back from an Express headline to a BBC Q&A with Professor Phil Jones. In fact, I only changed my title at the last minute when I realised the interview, and not just Express misreporting, was a large part of the problem. The UK sceptic-fuelled media [...]

Whatevergate

gavin — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 04:11:53 +0000

IPCC, glaciergate, climategate, UK media coverage, Jonathan Leake, David Rose, overton window

A Strangely Unhelpful Interview, Deniable Denial and the Daily Express

Tim Joslin — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:34:41 +0000

I passed a news-stand this afternoon and couldn’t help noticing that today’s front-page lead in the Express is The Great Climate Change Retreat. Yes indeed: “There has been no global warming for 15 years, a key scientist admitted yesterday in a major U-turn.” They went on: “Professor Phil Jones, who is at the centre [...]

Daily Mangle

group — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:18:37 +0000

Yesterday, the Daily Mail of the UK published a predictably inaccurate article entitled “Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995″. The title itself is a distortion of what Jones actually said in an interview with the BBC. What Jones actually said is that, while the globe [...]

Fixing the IPCC (and the Motley CRU) Part 2

Tim Joslin — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:12:26 +0000

[Oops, this post initially appeared dated Feb 10th because that's when I created the draft it's based on. Deleting and reposting as it's now Feb 15th and more to the point so that Part 2 appears after Part 1!] As promised a few days ago, I’m now delving into what has gone wrong with climate [...]

IPCC errors: facts and spin

group — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 20:39:27 +0000

IPCC AR4 errors, glaciergate, amazongate

PhD Opportunity: Shipping Emission Modelling

Asher Minns — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 21:55:36 +0000

The Tyndall Centre in conjunction with the Sustainable Consumption Institute at The University of Manchester are seeking an interdisciplinary but highly numerate physical sciences/engineering graduate to join a team of researchers investigating low-carbon shipping.

Fixing the IPCC (and the Motley CRU): Part 1

Tim Joslin — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:40:51 +0000

Last night’s BBC News at 10 report on the University of East Anglia (UEA) investigation of the affair of the leaked emails made it seem like the climate scientists were on trial. What a travesty (as someone said recently). Just as with the financial crisis, where it’s easier to blame the bankers [...]

New Tyndall Working Paper: The smart meter visible energy trial

Asher Minns — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:14:38 +0000

Duet Meter

Tom Hargreaves of UEA interviewed people taking part in a trial of 'smart meters' to understand how they use and think about them, and how (or if) this leads to changes in electricity consumption.

Wed 21 Apr 18:00: Taming leviathan - dealing with (dis)integrated water management in England and Wales

Sustainability Talks — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 14:07:43 +0000

Taming leviathan - dealing with (dis)integrated water management in England and Wales

Professor Richard Ashley has been part of the Foresight Future Flooding team since 2002, including writing parts of the 2008 update, adviser to the House of Lords inquiry on water management, scientific adviser to Sir Michael Pitt’s 2007 flooding inquiry and lead author of the ICE ’s review report on flood risk management in the UK . He was awarded the International Water Association’s biennial prize for Research Excellence in Support of Sustainable Urban Water Management in September 2008. He is a visiting Professor at TU Delft, Netherlands and Monash University in Melbourne.

Speaker: Professor Richard Ashley, Peninne Water Group, Sheffield University
Wednesday 21 April 2010, 18:00-19:30
Venue: Cambridge University Engineering Department, LR0.
Series: Sustainable Development Annual Lecture Series; organiser: Dr Dick Fenner.

Add to your calendar or Include in your list

Good news for the earth’s climate system?

group — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 15:08:45 +0000

Frank et al, Nature, carbon cycle sensitivity to global warming.

The Earth is a Fridge

Tim Joslin — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:25:29 +0000

No, I’m not a teapot. I’m serious. The way the climate system works is that, over a year, there is a net gain of heat in low latitudes and a net loss at high latitudes. Heat is transported from more tropical regions and radiated away at the poles. Now, I’ve been [...]

Check out our New Vimeo Channel

Administrator — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 11:48:49 +0000

A ‘Sanitation’ Approach to Terrorism (and climate change?) Risk

TheClimatePhilosopher — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 21:07:00 +0000

I just found this great article (nepotism moi? ;)! http://lookinwonderment.blogspot.com/2010/01/sanitation-case-study-for-our-anti.html Maybe we need a 'sanitation' approach to climate change. Less hot air, more unsung heroes?

Irene Lorenzoni on: “Individual responses to heat waves and climate change adaptation”

Administrator — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 12:31:57 +0000

A Risky Business

TheClimatePhilosopher — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 14:40:00 +0000

I was talking about risk last night with a couple of friends. I was asked why climate change is a risk to individuals, nations and the world. Here's why. The following distribution describes the estimated chance of different warmings if we give up producing CO2 and other greenhouse gases now (actually if we stopped in 2005). You will see that we have a more than evens chance already of melting the greenland ice sheet (7m of sea level rise, enough to reach the shores of Cambridge). Over the next few years we will reach the same chance of destroying the amazon rain forest (it's even possible that if climate change was compounded by drought, a vast fire might erupt). Big risks.

from: http://www-ramanathan.ucsd.edu/dai/Ramanathan-Feng-PNAS-2008.pdf

The commentary "Stop Worrying Start Panicking?" on this is here:
http://www-ramanathan.ucsd.edu/dai/Schellnhuber-PNAS-2008.pdf

The other thing I've been thinking about is the basic evidence about why the planet is cooking (in particular, how we determine the radiative forcing of different gases). I've found this article which appears quite good: http://www-ramanathan.ucsd.edu/RamAmbio.pdf

Interestingly, Volcanoes can Trigger El Ninos

Tim Joslin — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:24:11 +0000

Once again, I’m starting this post as I’m halfway through another one that may or may not see the light of day. I was trying to put together a rant following the Royal Society’s (RS’s) panel discussion on geo-engineering (available on royalsociety.tv), which I attended on Tuesday evening. The meeting followed a report [...]

Copenhagen COP15 Panel Discussion: What happened and what next?

Administrator — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 12:43:45 +0000

Following the Copenhagen international climate negotiations in December, many people are asking themselves what happens now. Was the Copenhagen conference a failure? What lessons can be drawn from the outcome of the conference? Next time, what should we do more of, what should we do less of?

01:01:10 minutes (31.22 MB)

New UK-China graduate training initiative

Asher Minns — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:11:10 +0000

Postgraduate students are invited to apply for a new British Council programme aimed at helping businesses in the UK and China fight climate change. Students will be selected from the Tyndall Centre partner Universities and the Chinese Universities of Fudan, Peking, Tongji and Tsinghua.

The IPCC is not infallible (shock!)

group — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 21:54:43 +0000

Like all human endeavours, the IPCC is not perfect. Despite the enormous efforts devoted to producing its reports with the multiple levels of peer review, some errors will sneak through. Most of these will be minor and inconsequential, but sometimes they might be more substantive. As many people are aware (and as John Nieslen-Gammon outlined [...]

Wed 05 May 18:00: Sustainability in action at University of California San Diego: the campus as a living laboratory

Sustainability Talks — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 10:28:39 +0000

Sustainability in action at University of California San Diego: the campus as a living laboratory

Abstract not available

Speaker: Professor Paul Linden, Director Sustainability Solutions Institute, University of California, San Diego
Wednesday 05 May 2010, 18:00-19:30
Venue: Cambridge University Engineering Department, LR0.
Series: Sustainable Development Annual Lecture Series; organiser: Dr Dick Fenner.

Add to your calendar or Include in your list

Musings of the Hemispheres

Tim Joslin — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 12:58:24 +0000

I should really try to finish one blog post before I start another on a similar topic. My last (published) post noted that the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), an atmospheric phenomenon, is not a climate driver, rather it’s a measure of the state of the climate – incidentally, I’m pleased to discover this morning [...]

New EU Network of Excellence

Kate Percival — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 11:53:04 +0000

Researchers in the Tyndall Centre are playing an important role in leading a new €7 million EU-wide Network of Excellence, which aims to provide a focus for international research on the use of evidence, science and assessment tools in policy-making.

Professor Andrew Jordan and Dr John Turnpenny are leading a critical area of work on understanding the needs of those producing and using policy analysis tools such as cost benefit analysis and computer models.

2009 temperatures by Jim Hansen

group — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 16:02:30 +0000

Jim Hansen, 2009 temperature summary, GISTEMP, HadCRUT, Arctic Oscillation, El Niño, global warming, and the difference between weather and climate

COP15: What happened and what next?

Asher Minns — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 13:41:15 +0000

A panel discussion with Professor Diana Liverman, Professor Yadvinder Malhi, journalist Mark Lynas, and BBC correspondent James Painter. Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Friday 15 Jan 2010 at 4pm.

New job opportunity: Research Development Officer at the University of Manchester

Asher Minns — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 13:29:46 +0000

Applications are invited for the above post at The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester.

Plass and the Surface Budget Fallacy

raypierre — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 10:26:41 +0000

RealClimate is run by a rather loosely organized volunteer consortium of people with day jobs that in and of themselves can be quite consuming of attention. And so it came to pass that the first I learned about Gavin’s interest in the work of Plass was — by reading RealClimate! In fact, [...]

Snow Madness and the North-West European Anti-Monsoon

Tim Joslin — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 13:09:19 +0000

In India, apparently, legions of weather-forecasters, from eccentrics to supercomputer-operating state-funded agencies, are devoted to attempting to forecast the characteristics of the annual monsoon. A collective snow madness grips the UK during cold winters. Legions of weather-forecasters, from eccentrics to supercomputer-operating state-funded agencies attempt to explain events, nowadays with particular reference to global warming. Now that [...]

L&C, GRL, comments on peer review and peer-reviewed comments

gavin — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 19:03:53 +0000

Lindzen and Choi (2009), GRL, peer review

CommonFuture: Stay tuned for Journal Weekend end Feb 2010 on ‘Green IT’. This issue 2 b launched at CeBIT http://www.cebit.de/homepage_e early March #fb

Twitter / CommonFuture — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:48:11 +0000

CommonFuture: Stay tuned for Journal Weekend end Feb 2010 on 'Green IT'. This issue 2 b launched at CeBIT http://www.cebit.de/homepage_e early March #fb

Designing a Book in Open Office

TheClimatePhilosopher — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 12:08:00 +0000

I've been searching for some tools to help me write a book. The word processing tool I intend to use is Open Office, which I find much more elegant and clean when it comes to the use of styles.

Using Open Office, I've been searching the web for tools to improve the design and give hints on writing a book in OO. Here is my list of links:

Overall this is the best link: http://www.linux.com/archive/articles/51448

A basic tutorial on Open Office is Available here: http://www.kaaredyret.dk/openoffice.html

Further resources on taming OO are here: http://www.taming-openoffice-org.com/newsite/?page_id=27

A general guide to writing a book is available here: http://www.taming-openoffice-org.com/newsite/?page_id=18

Experience is http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=8545

There are two ways to write a book: as a single file or as a master document. For information about the single file method see here: http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/create_book_template_with_writer

or here: http://maketecheasier.com/layout-a-book-with-openoffice-org-part-1/2009/07/13

Interestingly, the other Open Office apps have styles too: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/graphic-styles-openofficeorg-draw-and-impress

Information on graphic design and pagelayout is on Wikipedia here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphic_design and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_layout

I also use Zotero for references, which I'm finding very helpful. Go here http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Bibliographic/Style

Templates

You can get a full book template here: http://www.lulu.com/content/multimedia/6x9-book-template-for-openofficeorg-writer/232670

The open office templates are here: http://templates.services.openoffice.org/en/search/node/book

I've downloaded all the templates but I'm not that impressed by the graphical design.

The 'Advanced book template' has space for notes.

One template with active development is here: http://templates.services.openoffice.org/en/node/1577

This is intended for novelists, but has a lot of detailed help, including styles to create notes that won't be part of the final book. There is even a google group

http://groups.google.com/group/open-office-writers

First published response to Lindzen and Choi

gavin — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:02:24 +0000

Lindzen and Choi, Trenberth, Fasullo, O'Dell and Wong, climate sensitivity and how the scientific literature deals with anomalies.

Lindzen and Choi Unraveled

group — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:00:37 +0000

Lindzen and Choi, Trenberth Fasullo, O'Dell and Wang, tropical ocean temperatures, TOA radiative fluxes, climate sensitivity

The carbon dioxide theory of Gilbert Plass

gavin — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 13:18:54 +0000

Gilbert Plass, Lewis Kaplan, the history of the "carbon dioxide theory", climate sensitivity and how well it stands up 50 years later.

Unforced variations 2

gavin — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 16:35:42 +0000

Open thread on climate science issues. Knorr 2009 CO2 airborne fraction changes, John Coleman, KUSI, NCDC and NASA 'manipulation' of temperature data

Updates to model-data comparisons

gavin — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 22:17:42 +0000

It’s worth going back every so often to see how projections made back in the day are shaping up. As we get to the end of another year, we can update all of the graphs of annual means with another single datapoint. Statistically this isn’t hugely important, but people seem interested, so why not? For example, [...]

CommonFuture: Join the discussion at http://common-future.org/wiki/Join_the_discussion for our action plan in 2010. #fb

Twitter / CommonFuture — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 07:32:32 +0000

CommonFuture: Join the discussion at http://common-future.org/wiki/Join_the_discussion for our action plan in 2010. #fb

Unforced variations

group — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 16:50:00 +0000

Open thread for various climate science-related discussions. Suggestions for potential future posts are welcome.

More independent views: Myles Allen and Ben Santer

eric — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 20:36:26 +0000

Three more commentaries by experts not associated with RealClimate. Ben Santer, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Ben Santer again Myles Allen, University of Oxford It’s worth noting that Allen has published commentary that is critical of RealClimate. Comments on this should be posted under the Hansen post.

Kim Cobb’s view

eric — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 20:02:53 +0000

Guest Commentary: An Open Essay on “ClimateGate” Kim Cobb, Georgia Tech Since the widespread distribution of stolen e-mails originating from the University of East Anglia, I have become increasingly distressed by the way that the internet and media machinery has digested their content. As a climate scientist, I have always been sensitive to the direction the wind [...]

Jim Hansen’s opinion

eric — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:54:39 +0000

Several people have written saying that it would be useful to have an expert opinion on the state of the surface temperature data from someone other than RealClimate members. Here you go: TemperatureOfScience.pdf You don’t get more expert than Jim Hansen.

Please, show us your code

rasmus — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:38:45 +0000

The 1991 Science paper by Friis-Christensen & Lassen, work by Henrik Svensmark (Physical Review Letters), and calculations done by Scafetta & West (in the journals Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of Geophysical Research, and Physics Today) have inspired the idea that the recent warming is due to changes in the sun, rather than greenhouse gases. We have [...]

Global Climate Policy: An Agenda For Effective Action

TheClimatePhilosopher — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:15:00 +0000

Full Paper

"Rules must be binding; Violations must be punished; Words must mean something."

(US President Barack Obama)

The negotiations currently taking place at Copenhagen at the fifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP-15) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) aim at the fundamental objective of the UNFCCC, namely to stabilize atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations at non-dangerous levels. It is argued that the existing institutional tools at our disposal – international treaties and in particular the Kyoto protocol – are insufficient to achieve this goal. Furthermore, the framework put in place at Kyoto suffers multiple and fundamental flaws which fatally undermine its effectiveness; any new treaty must have a structure which mostly evades these flaws if it is to be effective. Treaties, legal structures, and other institutions more commensurate with the scale of the climate change challenge are suggested to inform discussions around the structure of any future climate agreement. An agenda for effective global action is outlined here:

Strong global institutions – e.g. a world environmental agency – including an agreed framework (such as coordinated carbon taxes) for collective policy, to replace national commitments.
A framework action plan to eliminate carbon emissions sector-by-sector, region-by-region, over the next two to three decades. In particular a plan to develop, transfer and deploy the safe, responsible, and very large-scale use of enhanced energy efficiency, renewable-electric, nuclear, and carbon capture and storage energy technologies; and to encourage responsible land use and agriculture, including the sustainable use of water¹.
A significant ($100-$200/tCO₂e), sectorally complete, substantially geographically complete, agreed, and guaranteed minimum carbon price, levied upstream at the national level (including embodied carbon from any regions not otherwise carbon-constrained), with revenues used at national discretion. It is possible that a carbon tax may have net economic benefits at the national level if used to replace taxes with higher 'deadweight' costs. The removal of fossil fuel subsidies has already been agreed as part of the Kyoto protocol, but has not been fully implemented.
A plan to protect forests and other natural carbon stores.
A plan to keep high carbon fuels in the ground (following Hansen et al. 2008).
An enabling framework for enforceable state-corporation climate contracts (e.g. guaranteeing the carbon price for investors) (Ismer & Neuhoff 2006).
An enabling framework for the use of trade sanctions to enforce state-state climate commitments, such as border tax adjustments (Ismer & Neuhoff 2007).
Unimpeachable monitoring and verification of all commitments.

Full Paper

Why The ‘Kyoto’ Approach Fails

TheClimatePhilosopher — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:08:00 +0000

Full Paper

The structures for climate change mitigation agreed at Kyoto were flawed in a number of different ways. The most obvious flaw was the lack of effectiveness – it is not clear that the Kyoto treaty has reduced emissions at all. There are three main reasons for this lack of effectiveness:

Firstly, the treaty does not give binding commitments for all major emitters – in particular, the developing countries has no binding commitments and the United States signed but did not ratify the treaty.

Secondly, among the countries that implemented the agreement, many did not achieve the Kyoto targets. Little real action was noticeable – those who have achieved the targets (such as the UK and the former Soviet states) seemed to do so largely by accident rather than design.

Thirdly, the targets, although binding in international law, included no enforcement mechanism, beyond a threat that future targets would be more stringent for those countries that failed to achieve the target. There are also the following problems with international treaties in general:

Countries can in principle withdraw from treaties once signed, although this is rare.
Treaties face significant barriers in the US congress, with two thirds of United States senators required for ratification.

The Kyoto approach requires national emissions targets, negotiated country-by-country. It is possible that emissions reductions, whilst key to the end goal, are a politically and psychologically negative way of 'framing' commitments. (In other words, if commitments are expressed in different, but likely equivalent, terms, the balance of perceived national benefits may be different, for a given level of expected stringency). Countries may not know if they are able to reduce emissions by a large amount. Fast developing countries such as China or India may wish to play safe, avoiding emissions targets, whereas a more practical action plan (see below) may be perceived more positively by nations.

The Kyoto treaty and the actions since the treaty encourage downstream emissions trading. There are a few fundamental flaws to this approach:

Low coverage of sectors (the European Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS) covers only 40% of the EU domestic emissions, and none of the net emissions embodied in its net imports);
An emissions trading scheme gives a volatile price for structural reasons related to the short-run price insensitivity (inelasticity) of fuel demand and the fact that carbon based fuels are ubiquitous in a modern economy (and so fuel demand is sensitive to the economic cycle and the weather). This volatility can lead to delayed investment and higher economic costs;
Emissions trading schemes encourage 'quota seeking' behaviour by nations in any original agreement and by companies in the political process of allocation rights to emit;
Perverse incentive to avoid stringent commitments – the structure of the agreement with national emissions caps fails to transform incentives of nation states;
The use of 'offsets', such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has multiple problems in addition to the lack of a developing country cap. Most fundamentally, it encourages 'double counting'. Offsets provide perverse incentives to developing countries to inflate expected emissions in order to demand payment to reduce them back to more reasonable levels.
No incentives to preserve existing forests and other natural carbon stores.

More fundamentally, none of the major powers (with the possible exception of the EU) have agreed to cede any sovereignty to a global institution. There also seems to be a fundamental difference in opinion between developed countries – which expect developing countries to accept binding commitments – and developing countries, who seek financial assistance from the developed world.

Finally, there is a lack of any necessary or direct connection between a treaty being agreed, and any real action to reduce emissions. We need a new treaty that has an 'action plan' to reduce emissions.

Make a deal or go home?
Given the multiple flaws in a possible Copenhagen agreement, there are two possible approaches. Firstly, the countries could avoid making a deal; Secondly, the countries could make a flawed deal that is ineffective. Both outcomes have major drawbacks. We might not get a better opportunity to reduce emissions, yet a flawed treaty would be little better than none at all. I think the best that could be expected would be a global agreed target and then leave implementation of those targets to a further treaty