Will the climate reach a warm equilibrium and gradually cool? How will the climate respond to extreme warming on long time-scale variability? Will there be an abrupt glacial inception similar to previous glacials/interglacials?
Florence Colleoni (CMCC) looks at paleoclimate processes and focuses hypothesis about the Pliocene period, when the continental configuration was almost similar to present-day and when, until 3 Million years ago, the climate was warmer than today
Is the traditional format of the agreements under the Climate Change Convention still adequate to meet the two degree target? Corrado Clini, Director General of the Ministry of the Environment and Territory and Sea Protection of Italy, suggests that the challenge is new, complex and unprecedented. “Rather than focusing on complex legal structures and the construction of a new international bureaucracy on climate change – Dr. Clini writes – Europe should focus on promoting international projects. These projects will face the global technological challenge using the great potential of the European integrated economy, which has already achieved important levels of efficiency and innovation”.
“The first issue is that anything that results in foreign policy from any particular government whether it’s a developed country or a developing country is really based on the domestic policies of those countries. You can’t have foreign policy without a foundation of domestic policy”. To achieve a new climate agreement we need both domestic and global policy, Ray Kopp (Resources for the Future – RFF) says in this video interview to Climate Science&Policy
The “climate deadlock” prevented to sign a real substitute for the Kyoto Protocol. But two important novelties nonetheless emerged from Copenhagen. First, an informal, although politically relevant, declaration of national emissions reduction targets for 2020. Secondly, the definition of the Copenhagen Green Climate Fund.
How much good are these news? Announced mitigation targets are far from being adequate to control climate change, however there are chances to put the world on the right trajectory to reduce global warming significantly. The analysis of two economists explains why
At COP 15 in Copenhagen, China has put forward a proposal for cutting its carbon intensity by 40-45% from 2005 levels by 2020. The scheme has generated a variety of responses, which is unsurprising given the difficulty of assessing the intensity target. In particular, it gave the impression that China and the US may take the lead in the fight against climate change. By comparing figures from history and recent projections, this note is an attempt to shed some light on how ambitious is the Chinese climate proposal and, therefore, on China’s actual cooperative effort to control climate change
A potential global agreement on climate change will be limited to a political agreement, instead of being the long expected treaty that would extend the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012 and further enhance the Climate convention. Couldn’t President Obama offer a tangible political gesture to the world community and thereby restore leadership and credibility for the US in the climate negotiations?
In this article, economist Henry Tulkens suggest that the Obama administration negotiates a deal in Copenhagen by which the US would buy a quantity of emission units corresponding to all emissions exceeding its Kyoto target over the commitment period 2008-2012, some of the money being allocated to adaptation funding in developing countries.
A major factor in the reluctance of countries to make commitments to a low-carbon economy is fear that change will be costly and that others will hold back. Moving attention from national per capita values of CO2 emissions to the emissions of individuals provides an important tool for dealing with the decarbonization transition. Individual CO2 emissions are very unequally distributed not only across countries but also within countries, researchers at the Princeton Environmental Institute say. The allocation problem takes on important new dimensions when the focus shifts in this way from “high emitting” nations to “high emitting” individuals
