Arquivo da tag: Mudanças climáticas

Welcome to the Thirsty West (Slate)

10/03/2014UncategorizedClima, Incerteza, Mudanças climáticas, Previsão, Secarenzotaddei

MARCH 6 2014 11:31 PMA monthlong series about the devastating drought facing a corner of the country.

140306_FUT_BridgeCanal Any examination of the Southwest’s drought must start in Arizona. Photo courtesy Eric Holthaus

Driving through the Arizona desert between Tucson and Phoenix, it’s easy to see the remnants of agricultural boom times. Irrigated agriculture in the Arizona desert peaked in the 1950s and has steadily declined as urbanization’s water demand has exploded. The road is flanked with abandoned cotton fields that have since turned into dust-storm factories. It’s not uncommon for the road to close and for day to turn into the night during the worst storms, which happen during the early summer months as the monsoon thunderstorms move north from the Sea of Cortez.

In some ways, it feels post-apocalyptic: Evidence suggests that human activity has moved somewhere else.

Improving technology has offset some of the more ridiculous uses of desert water. In the early days, farmers literally flooded fields of orange trees with water diverted from newly constructed dams. Wells have pumped at least two rivers dry in southern Arizona, where groundwater levels have dropped by hundreds of feet over the last century.

It took decades, but Arizona finally learned that it had to adapt to survive. Still, many obvious questions have no easy answer: How to balance economic growth and environment? Does fairness mean cities get first dibs over farmers, even though they were here first? Is climate change a game changer? The issue of water in the Southwest is a preview of 21st-century politics worldwide.

Everywhere there are signs of adaptation to this new reality, or at least attempts at it. A billboard just north of Tucson pitches FiberMax, a variety of genetically modified cotton seed originally developed by Bayer in Australia. It promises to increase production in semiarid climates like this one and has become one of the top-selling cotton brands in the nation.

The shift away from irrigated agriculture in Arizona hasn’t come without a fight. By some measures, farmers are still winning. According to the Arizona Department of Water Resources, more than two-thirds of Arizona’s water is still used to irrigate fields, down from a peak of 90 percent last century.

Decades ago, state officials in Arizona begin to plan for a future without water—and that meant sacrificing agriculture for future urban growth. A massive civil engineering project in the 1960s diverted part of the Colorado River to feed Phoenix and Tucson. Those cities could not exist in their current state without this unnatural influx of Rocky Mountain snowmelt. Now there’s tension across the region, as the realities of climate change and extreme weather catch up with the business-as-usual agricultural bedrock that laid the foundation for the economy here.

In some ways, what’s happened in Arizona could be a preview of California’s future.

This year in California, fields are being fallowed as the state battles a drought as intense as anything it has faced in centuries. Federal water allocation for many farms has been cut to zero for the first time. California’s vast energy-intensive infrastructure for moving water around the state has been choked off by lack of snowpack and low reservoir levels. In some places, there’s simply nothing left to do but wait for rain.

By all accounts, March is the make or break month for the California drought. That’s because snowpack peaks on or about April 1. A big storm last week boosted levels to their highest point so far this winter, but that’s not saying much. Snowpack is still 70 percent below normal, near record lows. California’s Sierra range is nearly devoid of snow, supplemental water from the Colorado River has been reduced for the first time, and groundwater levels are “falling at an alarming rate.” Whatever is up in the Sierras at the end of this month will form the basis for the reserve water that will get California through the summer—and what promises to be an epic fire season.

The present-day Southwest was born from a pendulum swing in climatic fortunes that has no equal in U.S. history. Research at the University of California, Berkeley shows that the 20th century was an abnormally wet era in the West and that a new mega-drought may be starting. With the added pressure of climate change, there’s simply no way to count on continued supplies of water at current usage rates.

Looking ahead, the U.S. Global Change Research Program projects 20 percent to 50 percent less water by the end of this century, with temperatures 5 to 10 degrees warmer (Fahrenheit). The newly released National Climate Assessment confirms the trend: The theme of the 21st century in the Southwest will be more people with less water.

140306_FUT_CentralAZProjectCanal Central Arizona Project Canal. Photo courtesy Eric Holthaus

Don’t get me wrong: This has always been an extreme environment. But over the thousands of years of human civilization in this corner of the world, people have adapted to little water. Problem is: The water supply/demand calculus has never changed this quickly before. About 100 years ago, the balance started to tip. Groundwater was invested for agricultural purposes. Massive civil engineering projects pulled more water from rivers. The human presence in the desert blossomed.

Now, the West is thirsty and getting thirstier.

All this month, I’ll be sending dispatches from the desert, discussing the water crisis that has been with the modern Southwest for decades, but seems to be coming to a head this year. I’ll be visiting produce warehouses on the Mexican border, talking to farmers in California’s drought-stricken Central Valley, examining which technologies could buy cities time if the taps are cut off, and asking questions about what people and governments are doing to prepare for a future with less water, with lots of stops along the way. It’s my attempt to trace the impacts of the current drought from plow to plate and beyond.

This week, on a hike through the saguaro cactus forest near Tucson, my wife and I were caught in the first rainstorm in two and a half months. For a brief few hours, the desert came alive: Birds were singing, and the mesquite trees became noticeably greener. But as quickly as it came, the rain was gone. Hours later, only a few puddles remained alongside city streets. The next day, the sun was back, baking the desert once again.

The Ocean Is Coming (Truthout)

28/02/2014UncategorizedCidadania, Clima, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Mudanças climáticas, Política, Previsãorenzotaddei

Thursday, 27 February 2014 09:06By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed

Storms. (Photo: Lance Page / Truthout )

It occurs to me that I spend an inordinate amount of time in this space pointing out the ludicrous, the extreme and the absurd in America. Doing so is just slightly less fun than emergency root canal during a national novocaine shortage. To be fair, however, there’s a hell of a lot to talk about in that particular vein, the fodder for these stories are the people running the country, and not nearly enough people in a position to inform the public are talking about it, so I do it.

When a Virginia GOP senator labels all women as incubators – “some refer to them as mothers,” he said – someone needs to shine a light.

When 65 miles of the Mississippi River gets shut down due to a massive oil spill, including the port of New Orleans, when that causes public drinking water intakes to be shuttered, and no bit of it makes the national news, someone needs to say it happened.

When the Tokyo Electric Power Company, a.k.a. Tepco, announces that radiation levels at the disaster zone formerly known as the Fukushima nuclear power plant are being “significantly undercounted,” and nary a word is said about it in the “mainstream” news, someone needs to put the word out.

These serial astonishments make for easy copy, and pointing them out is important for no other reason than they actually and truly fa-chrissakes happened, and people need to know…but merely pointing at absurdity for the sake of exposure changes nothing to the good, and turns politics into just another broadcast of a car chase that ends in a messy wreck.

So.

I believe the minimum wage should be somewhere between $15 and $20 an hour, and that all the so-called business “leaders” crowing against any raise to that wage are self-destructive idiots. Commerce needs funds in the hands of consumers to survive and thrive, and consumers today are barely handling rent. Put more money in the worker’s pocket, and he will spend some of it at your store, because he can. The minimum wage has been stagnant for 30 years, and is due for a right and proper boost. If people don’t have money, your store won’t sell any goods. Get out of your own way and pay your people, so they can have money to spend on what you’re selling. This strikes me as simple arithmetic.

I believe the weather is going crazy because there is an enormous amount of moisture in the atmosphere due to the ongoing collapse of the Arctic ecosystem. More water in the atmosphere leads to fiercer storms and higher tides, and every major city on the coast is under dire threat. The ocean is coming, higher and higher each year, so we can either run for high ground, or we can adjust our behavior. The ocean is coming, and it brooks no argument. It is stronger than all of us, and will take what it pleases.

I believe the Keystone XL pipeline, the drought-causing national practice of fracking, the coal-oriented water disasters in West Virginia and North Carolina, the serial poison spills nationwide, the oil train derailments, and the entire practice of allowing the fossil fuels industry to write its own regulations so as to do as it pleases, are collectively a suicide pact that I did not sign up for. The ocean is coming, unless we find a better way.

I believe President Obama, who talks about the environment while pushing the Keystone pipeline, who talks about economic inequality while demanding fast-track authority for the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal, is a Hall-of-Fame worthy bullshit artist. I believe the sooner people see this truth for what it is, the better. He is not your friend. He is selling you out.

I believe the 50% of eligible American voters who can’t be bothered to turn out one Tuesday every two years should be ashamed of themselves, because this is a good country, but if that goodness doesn’t show up at the polls, we wind up in this ditch with a bunch of self-satisfied non-voters complaining about the mess we’re in. Decisions are made by those who show up, and lately, the small minority of hateful nutbags showing up become a large majority because they’re the only ones pulling the lever.

And that’s for openers.

These things are happening nationally, but they are also happening locally, right in your back yard. These are your fights, in your communities, involving your air and drinking water and basic rights. The ocean is coming, boys and girls, and it will sweep us all away with a flick of its finger – rich and poor, powerful and powerless alike – unless we figure out a few home truths at speed and make serial changes to the way we operate on this small planet.

Stand up.

The March of Anthropogenic Climate Disruption (Truthout)

26/02/2014UncategorizedCapitalismo, ciência, Clima, Economia, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

Monday, 24 February 2014 09:11

By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | News Analysis

The March of Anthropogenic Climate Disruption

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout)

Last year marked the 37th consecutive year of above-average global temperature, according to data from NASA.

The signs of advanced Anthropogenic Climate Disruption (ACD) are all around us, becoming ever more visible by the day.

At least for those choosing to pay attention.

An Abundance of Signs

While the causes of most of these signs cannot be solely attributed to ACD, the correlation of the increasing intensity and frequency of events to ACD is unmistakable.

Let’s take a closer look at a random sampling of some of the more recent signs.

Sao Paulo, South America’s largest city (over 12 million people), will see its biggest water-supply system run dry soon if there is no rain. Concurry, a town in Australia’s outback, is so dry after two rainless years that their mayor is now looking at permanent evacuation as a final possibility. Record temperatures in Australia have been so intense that in January, around 100,000 bats literally fell from the sky during an extreme heat wave.

A now-chronic drought in California, which is also one of the most important agricultural regions in the United States, has reached a new level of severity never before recorded on the US drought monitor in the state. In an effort to preserve what little water remained, state officials there recently announced they would cut off water that the state provides to local public water agencies that serve 25 million residents and about 750,000 acres of farmland. Another impact of the drought there has 17 communities about to run out of water. Leading scientists have discussed how California’s historic drought has been worsened by ACD, and a recent NASA report on the drought, by some measures the deepest in over a century, adds:

“The entire west coast of the United States is changing color as the deepest drought in more than a century unfolds. According to the US Dept. of Agriculture and NOAA, dry conditions have become extreme across more than 62% of California’s land area – and there is little relief in sight.

“Up and down California, from Oregon to Mexico, it’s dry as a bone,” comments JPL climatologst Bill Patzert. “To make matters worse, the snowpack in the water-storing Sierras is less than 20% of normal for this time of the year.”

“The drought is so bad, NASA satellites can see it from space. On Jan. 18, 2014 – just one day after California governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency – NASA’s Terra satellite snapped a sobering picture of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Where thousands of square miles of white snowpack should have been, there was just bare dirt and rock.”

During a recent interview, a climate change scientist, while discussing ACD-induced drought plaguing the US Southwest, said that he had now become hesitant to use the word drought, because “the word drought implies that there is an ending.”

Meanwhile, New Mexico’s chronic drought is so severe the state’s two largest rivers are now regularly drying up. Summer 2013 saw the Rio Grande drying up only 18 miles south of Albuquerque, with the drying now likely to spread north and into the city itself. By September 2013, nearly half of the entire US was in moderate to extreme drought.

During a recent interview, a climate change scientist, while discussing ACD-induced drought plaguing the US Southwest, said that he had now become hesitant to use the word drought, because “the word drought implies that there is an ending.”

As if things aren’t already severe enough, the new report Hydraulic Fracturing and Water Stress: Water Demand by the Numbers shows that much of the oil and gas fracking activity in both the United States and Canada is happening in “arid, water stressed regions, creating significant long-term water sourcing risks” that will strongly and negatively impact the local ecosystem, communities and people living nearby.

The president of the organization that produced this report said, “Hydraulic fracturing is increasing competitive pressures for water in some of the country’s most water-stressed and drought-ridden regions. Barring stiffer water-use regulations and improved on-the-ground practices, the industry’s water needs in many regions are on a collision course with other water users, especially agriculture and municipal water use.”

Recent data from NASA shows that one billion people around the world now lack access to safe drinking water. Last year at an international water conference in Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan said: “For us, water is [now] more important than oil.” Experts now warn that the world is “standing on a precipice” when it comes to growing water scarcity.

Looking northward, Alaska, given its Arctic geo-proximity, regularly sees the signs of advanced ACD. According to a recent NASA report on the northernmost US state:

“The last half of January was one of the warmest winter periods in Alaska’s history, with temperatures as much as 40°F (22°C) above normal on some days in the central and western portions of the state, according to Weather Underground’s Christopher Bart. The all-time warmest January temperature ever observed in Alaska was tied on January 27 when the temperature peaked at 62°F (16.7°C) at Port Alsworth. Numerous other locations – including Nome, Denali Park Headquarters, Palmer, Homer, Alyseka, Seward, Talkeetna, and Kotzebue – all set January records. The combination of heat and rain has caused Alaska’s rivers to swell and brighten with sediment, creating satellite views reminiscent of spring and summer runoff.”

Another recent study published in The Cryosphere shows that Alaska’s Arctic icy lakes are losing their thickness and fewer are freezing all the way through to the bottom during winter. This should not come as a surprise, given that the reflective capacity of Arctic sea ice has is disappearing at twice the rate previously shown.

(Photo: Subhankar Banerjee)

Polar bear on Bernard Harbor, along the Beaufort Sea coast, Arctic Alaska, June 2001. (Photo: Subhankar Banerjee)

As aforementioned, science now shows that global temperatures are rising every year. In addition to this overall trend, we are now in the midst of a 28-year streak of summer records above the 20th century average.

In another indicator from the north, a new study by the UC Boulder Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research showed that average summer temperatures in the Eastern Canadian Arctic during the last 100 years are higher now than during any century in the past 44,000 years, and indications are that Canadian Arctic temperatures today have not been matched or exceeded for roughly 120,000 years. Research leader Gifford Miller added, “The key piece here is just how unprecedented the warming of Arctic Canada is. This study really says the warming we are seeing is outside any kind of known natural variability, and it has to be due to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”

As ACD progresses, weather patterns come to resemble a heart-rate chart for a heart in defibrillation. Hence, rather than uniform increases in drought or temperatures, we are experiencing haphazard chaotic extreme weather events all over the planet, and the only pattern we might safely assume to continue is an intensification of these events, in both strength and frequency.

Iran’s Lake Urmia, once the largest lake in the country, has shrunk to less than half its normal size, causing Iran to face a crisis of water supply. The situation is so dire, government officials are making contingency plans to ration water in Tehran, a city of 22 million. Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has even named water as a “national security issue,” and when he gives public speeches in areas impacted by water shortages he is now promising residents he will “bring the water back.”

In other parts of the world, while water scarcity is heightening already strained caste tensions in India, the UK is experiencing the opposite problems with water. January rains brought parts of England their wettest January since records began more than 100 years ago. The UK’s Met Office reported before the end of that month that much of southern England and parts of the Midlands had already seen twice the average rainfall for January, and there were still three days left in the month. January flooding across the UK went on to surpass all 247 years of data on the books, spurring the chief scientist at Britain’s Met Office to say that “all the evidence” suggests that the extreme weather in the UK is linked to ACD.

Another part of the world facing a crisis from too much water is Fiji, where residents from a village facing rising sea levels that are flooding their farmlands and seeping into their homes are having to flee. The village is the first to have its people relocated under Fiji’s “climate change refugee” program.

More bad news comes from a recently published study showing that Earth’s vegetation could be saturated with carbon by the end of this century, and would thus cease acting as a break on ACD.

More bad news comes from a recently published study showing that Earth’s vegetation could be saturated with carbon by the end of this century, and would thus cease acting as a break on ACD. However, this study could be an under-estimate of the phenomenon, as it is based on a predicted 4C rise in global temperature by 2100, and other studies and modeling predict a 4C temperature increase far sooner. (The Hadley Centre for Meteorological Researchsuggests a 4C temperature increase by 2060. The Global Carbon Project, which monitors the global carbon cycle, and the Copenhagen Diagnosis, a climate science report, predict 6C and 7C temperature increases, respectively, by 2100. The UN Environment Program predicts up to a 5C increase by 2050.)

Whenever we reach the 4C increase, whether it is by 2050, or sooner, this shall mark the threshold at which terrestrial trees and plants are no longer able to soak up any more carbon from the atmosphere, and we will see an abrupt increase in atmospheric carbon, and an even further acceleration of ACD.

And it’s not just global weather events providing the signs. Other first-time phenomena abound as well.

For the first time, scientists have discovered species of Atlantic Ocean zooplankton reproducing in Arctic waters. German researchers say the discovery indicates a possible shift in the Arctic zooplankton community as the region warms, one that could be detrimental to Arctic birds, fish, and marine mammals.

Another study shows an increase in both the range and risk for malaria due to ACD, and cat parasites have even been found in Beluga whales in the Arctic, in addition to recently published research showing other diseases in seals and other Arctic life.

Distressing signs of ACD’s increasing decimation of life continue unabated. In addition to between 150-200 species going extinct daily, Monarch butterflies are now in danger of disappearing as well. Experts recently reported that the numbers of Monarch butterflies have dropped to their lowest levels since record-keeping began. At their peak, the butterflies covered an area of Mexican pine and fir forests of 44.5 acres. Now, after steep and persistent declines in the last three years, they only cover 1.65 acres. Extreme weather trends, illegal logging, and a dramatic reduction of the butterflies’ habitat are all to blame.

A recently published study that spanned 27-years showed that ACD is “killing Argentina’s Magellanic penguin chicks.” Torrential rainstorms and extreme heat are killing the young birds in significant numbers.

Distressingly, the vast majority of these citations and studies are only from the last six weeks.

More Pollution, More Denial

Meanwhile, the polluting continues as global carbon emissions only continue to increase.

Another recent study shows that black carbon emissions in India and China could be two to three times more concentrated than previously estimated. Black carbon is a major element of soot, and comes from the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels. The study showed that parts of India and China could have as much as 130 percent higher black carbon concentrations than shown in standard country models.

India is now rated as having some of the worst air quality in the world, and is tied with China for exposing its population to hazardous air pollution.

Meanwhile, Australian government authorities recently approved a project that will dump dredged sediment near the Great Barrier Reef, a so-called World Heritage Site, to create one of the world’s largest coal ports.

Also on the front lines of the coal industry, miners now want to ignite deep coal seams to capture the gases created from the fires to use them for power generation. It’s called underground coal gasification, it is on deck for what comes next after the fracking blitz, and it is a good idea for those wishing to turn Earth into Venus.

Then we have BP’s “Energy Outlook” for the future, an annual report where the oil giant plots trends in global energy production and consumption. With this, we can expect nothing less than full steam ahead when it comes to vomiting as much carbon into the atmosphere in as short a time as possible.

BP CEO Bob Dudley announced at a January press conference that his company’s Outlook sees carbon emissions projected to rise “29% by 2035.”

Speaking of BP, the corporate-driven government of the United States continues to serve its masters well.

The US State Department recently released its environmental impact statement that found “no major climate impact” from a continuation in the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, a pipeline that will transport tar sands oil – the dirtiest fossil fuel on Earth, produced by the most environmentally destructive fossil fuel extraction process ever known.

US President Barack Obama claims he has yet to make a decision on the pipeline, but we can guess what his decision shall be.

In late January, the US House Energy and Commerce Committee voted down an amendment that would have stated conclusively that ACD is occurring, despite recent evidence that ACD has literally shifted the jet stream, the main system that helps determine all of the weather in North America and Northern Europe. The 24 members of the committee who voted down the amendment, all of them Republicans and more overtly honest about who they are working for than is Obama, have accepted approximately $9.3 million in career contributions from the oil, gas, and coal industries.

Systemic problems require systemic solutions, and thinking the radical change necessary to preserve what life remains on the planet is possible without the complete removal of the system that is killing us, is futile.

The fact that the planet is most likely long past having gone over the cliff when it comes to passing the point of no returnregarding ACD is a fact most people prefer not to contemplate.

And who can blame them? The relentless onslaught of distress signals from the planet, coupled with the fact that the governments of the countries generating the most emissions are those marching lock-step with the fossil fuel industries are daunting, to say the least.

Oil, gas, and coal are the fuels the capitalist system uses to generate the all-important next quarterly profit on the road toward infinite growth, as required by the capitalist system.

Systemic problems require systemic solutions, and thinking the radical change necessary to preserve what life remains on the planet is possible without the complete removal of the system that is killing us, is futile.

Half measures, as we have seen all too often, avail us nothing.

Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

Mudança climática já é parte dos modelos estratégicos centrais de empresas globais (Ecopolítica)

26/02/2014UncategorizedCapitalismo, Clima, Economia, Incerteza, Mudanças climáticasrenzotaddei

25/2/2014 – 11h55

por Sérgio Abranches, da Ecopolítica

As maiores empresas globais estão mudando de atitude com relação à mudança climática. Já incluíram a mudança climática como um fator de risco real em suas decisões. A maioria já avalia seu risco climático e desenvolve mecanismos de gestão desse risco. A primeira reação, havido sido a de negar sua existência ou a possibilidade de levá-la em consideração em seus cálculos e estratégias centrais. Depois, passaram a tratar a mudança climática como uma incerteza sobre a qual nada podiam fazer. Agora ela está no centro de suas decisões estratégicas.

Como se dá essa gestão de risco? Do mesmo modo que as empresas manejam seus riscos financeiros, econômicos, regulatórios e políticos. Tomam medidas preventivas, tentam se adaptar ao ambiente de risco, tornando-se mais resilientes, mudam suas estratégias para considerar o impacto possível desses riscos. Investem em pesquisa e desenvolvimento de novas tecnologias e métodos de operação que lhes permitam reduzir sua vulnerabilidade aos riscos.

Pesquisa revelou recentemente que 29 grandes empresas usam preço sombra para o carbono em seus modelos financeiros para avaliar o risco climático. O governo Obama também usa um preço para o carbono, um custo social do carbono, para orientar as decisões regulatórias da agência ambiental EPA, que fixou em US$ 36.00 a tonelada. A lei do ar limpo obriga a regulação a se basear em análise de custo-benefício e uma ordem executiva (espécie de decreto presidencial) regulamentou esse processo pelas agências, ficando a “filosofia regulatória do governo federal”, segundo a qual cada agência deve fazer estimativas que lhe permitam arrazoada determinação de que a regulação justifica seus custos.

Por que as empresas estão fazendo isso? Porque quando elas examinam o que os cenários de mudança climática mostram como futuro provável e verificam que alguns deles afetariam diretamente sua lucratividade. Eventos extremos cada vez mais frequentes, variabilidade climática imprevisível são fatores concretos de risco que rompem frequentemente as cadeias de suprimentos. Empresas, por exemplo, que dependem de água, já perderam muito com a escassez de água em várias regiões, com o aumento e a severidade da seca desde 2004 e com enchentes cada vez mais violentas, a cada dois anos. Empresas que usam algodão, no vestuário e na produção de equipamentos esportivos, ou milho e soja, para ração ou como matéria prima alimentar, estão em alerta após oito anos consecutivos de quebras de safra em vários países grandes produtores por causa de eventos climáticos extremos. E podemos estar entrando no nono ano em que essas perdas podem voltar a acontecer. Outro exemplo é o de empresas em áreas de de furacões e tornados, que estão ficando mais destrutivos. Esses eventos extremos reduzem a oferta de produtos agrícolas de que dependem, interrompendo as cadeias de suprimento e os fluxos logísticos (por causa de danos no sistema de transporte e interrupção do tráfego), elevando significativamente os custos de produção e, consequentemente, o preço final. Elas vêem o que está acontecendo como uma prévia dos extremos climáticos que vêm por aí.

O risco climático acendeu, definitivamente, uma forte luz amarela no painel de controle das maiores empresas globais. Tudo começou com as seguradoras, que já perderam muito com o pagamento de seguros por danos materiais associados a eventos climáticos extremos. Elas começaram a pressionar seus clientes para avaliar seu risco climático e tomar medidas a respeito. As empresas que não avaliam seus riscos têm dificuldade em comprar seguros ou devem pagar um prêmio proibitivo. Depois vieram os investidores que olham a mais longo prazo, como os fundos institucionais e os grandes fundos de pensão independentes. Também começaram a ameaçar retirar de seu portfólio as empresas que não avaliassem adequadamente seu risco climático e não o incorporassem ao seu bottom line, a linha que determina sua taxa de retorno. O risco climático é visto, hoje, como disruptivo das operações das empresas, danoso às suas taxas de retorno e passíveis de reduzir seu horizonte de vida rentável.

Por outro lado, do ponto de vista da equação financeira, as empresas já não têm dúvida de que o custo do carbono se imporá e aumentará, elevando, também, o custo da energia. Na última reunião do Fórum Econômico Mundial, houve uma sessão inteira, toda a sexta-feira, dedicada apenas à ameaça climática.

As práticas de gestão de risco das maiores empresas globais já estão contribuindo para a formação de um preço de carbono de mercado que, no futuro, pode vir a ser usado para calcular impostos sobre o carbono. Entre os economistas que colocaram a mudança climática em seu radar, já não há mais dúvidas sobre seu impacto econômico negativo e sobre o efeito econômico positivo das ações de gestão do risco climático, que aumentam o investimento em tecnologias e energias de baixo carbono ou carbono-zero. São as áreas de maior dinamismo da economia em várias países, e com melhores perspectivas de longo prazo, e geram mais e melhores empregos. Agora é uma questão de investir para reduzir os efeitos econômicos e financeiros e aumentar os benefícios decorrentes das mudanças que acabam tornando as empresas mais resilientes, mais competitivas e mais eficientes.

As empresas não estão ficando boazinhas. Falhas de mercado também têm impacto negativo sobre cadeias produtivas, cadeias de suprimento e cadeias logísticas. As grandes corporações globais continuam operando com a filosofia do interesse próprio e da ideologia empresarial do “lean and mean”, do tamanho ótimo e da máxima agressividade empresarial. É da natureza do animal e do seu ambiente, o capitalismo. Mas, quando algo de alto interesse coletivo atinge seus interesses particulares centrais, passa a ser problema delas e não apenas da sociedade. Elas preferem resolver o problema por conta própria a ter que enfrentar intervenções regulatórias cada vez mais exigentes.

* Publicado originalmente no site Ecopolítica.

Volcanoes contribute to recent global warming ‘hiatus’ (Science Daily)

26/02/2014Uncategorizedciência, Clima, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Visualidaderenzotaddei

Date: February 24, 2014

Source: DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Summary: Volcanic eruptions in the early part of the 21st century have cooled the planet, according to a new study. This cooling partly offset the warming produced by greenhouse gases.

LLNL scientist Benjamin Santer and his climbing group ascend Mt. St. Helens via the “Dogshead Route” in April 1980, about a month before its major eruption. The group was the last to reach the summit of Mt. St. Helens before its major eruption that May. New research by Santer and his colleagues shows that volcanic eruptions contribute to a recent warming “hiatus.” Credit: Image courtesy of DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Volcanic eruptions in the early part of the 21st century have cooled the planet, according to a study led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. This cooling partly offset the warming produced by greenhouse gases.

Despite continuing increases in atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases, and in the total heat content of the ocean, global-mean temperatures at the surface of the planet and in the troposphere (the lowest portion of Earth’s atmosphere) have shown relatively little warming since 1998. This so-called ‘slow-down’ or ‘hiatus’ has received considerable scientific, political and popular attention. The volcanic contribution to the ‘slow-down’ is the subject of a new paper appearing in the Feb. 23 edition of the journalNature Geoscience.

Volcanic eruptions inject sulfur dioxide gas into the atmosphere. If the eruptions are large enough to add sulfur dioxide to the stratosphere (the atmospheric layer above the troposphere), the gas forms tiny droplets of sulfuric acid, also known as “volcanic aerosols.” These droplets reflect some portion of the incoming sunlight back into space, cooling Earth’s surface and the lower atmosphere.

“In the last decade, the amount of volcanic aerosol in the stratosphere has increased, so more sunlight is being reflected back into space,” said Lawrence Livermore climate scientist Benjamin Santer, who serves as lead author of the study. “This has created a natural cooling of the planet and has partly offset the increase in surface and atmospheric temperatures due to human influence.”

From 2000-2012, emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere have increased — as they have done since the Industrial Revolution. This human-induced change typically causes the troposphere to warm and the stratosphere to cool. In contrast, large volcanic eruptions cool the troposphere and warm the stratosphere. The researchers report that early 21st century volcanic eruptions have contributed to this recent “warming hiatus,” and that most climate models have not accurately accounted for this effect.

“The recent slow-down in observed surface and tropospheric warming is a fascinating detective story,” Santer said. “There is not a single culprit, as some scientists have claimed. Multiple factors are implicated. One is the temporary cooling effect of internal climate noise. Other factors are the external cooling influences of 21st century volcanic activity, an unusually low and long minimum in the last solar cycle, and an uptick in Chinese emissions of sulfur dioxide.

“The real scientific challenge is to obtain hard quantitative estimates of the contributions of each of these factors to the slow-down.”

The researchers performed two different statistical tests to determine whether recent volcanic eruptions have cooling effects that can be distinguished from the intrinsic variability of the climate. The team found evidence for significant correlations between volcanic aerosol observations and satellite-based estimates of lower tropospheric temperatures as well as the sunlight reflected back to space by the aerosol particles.

“This is the most comprehensive observational evaluation of the role of volcanic activity on climate in the early part of the 21st century,” said co-author Susan Solomon, the Ellen Swallow Richards professor of atmospheric chemistry and climate science at MIT. “We assess the contributions of volcanoes on temperatures in the troposphere — the lowest layer of the atmosphere — and find they’ve certainly played some role in keeping Earth cooler.”

The research is funded by the Department of Energy’s Office of Biological and Environmental Science in the Office of Science. The research involved a large, interdisciplinary team of researchers with expertise in climate modeling, satellite data, stratospheric dynamics and volcanic effects on climate, model evaluation and computer science.

Journal Reference:

Benjamin D. Santer, Céline Bonfils, Jeffrey F. Painter, Mark D. Zelinka, Carl Mears, Susan Solomon, Gavin A. Schmidt, John C. Fyfe, Jason N. S. Cole, Larissa Nazarenko, Karl E. Taylor, Frank J. Wentz. Volcanic contribution to decadal changes in tropospheric temperature. Nature Geoscience, 2014; DOI:10.1038/ngeo2098

Better way to make sense of ‘Big Data?’ (Science Daily)

24/02/2014UncategorizedClima, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Matemática, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Visualidaderenzotaddei

Date: February 19, 2014

Source: Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics

Summary: Vast amounts of data related to climate change are being compiled by researchers worldwide with varying climate projections. This requires combining information across data sets to arrive at a consensus regarding future climate estimates. Scientists propose a statistical hierarchical Bayesian model that consolidates climate change information from observation-based data sets and climate models.

Regional analysis for climate change assessment. Credit: Melissa Bukovsky, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR/IMAGe)

Vast amounts of data related to climate change are being compiled by research groups all over the world. Data from these many and varied sources results in diﬀerent climate projections; hence, the need arises to combine information across data sets to arrive at a consensus regarding future climate estimates.

In a paper published last December in the SIAM Journal on Uncertainty Quantification, authors Matthew Heaton, Tamara Greasby, and Stephan Sain propose a statistical hierarchical Bayesian model that consolidates climate change information from observation-based data sets and climate models. “The vast array of climate data — from reconstructions of historic temperatures and modern observational temperature measurements to climate model projections of future climate — seems to agree that global temperatures are changing,” says author Matthew Heaton. “Where these data sources disagree, however, is by how much temperatures have changed and are expected to change in the future. Our research seeks to combine many different sources of climate data, in a statistically rigorous way, to determine a consensus on how much temperatures are changing.” Using a hierarchical model, the authors combine information from these various sources to obtain an ensemble estimate of current and future climate along with an associated measure of uncertainty. “Each climate data source provides us with an estimate of how much temperatures are changing. But, each data source also has a degree of uncertainty in its climate projection,” says Heaton. “Statistical modeling is a tool to not only get a consensus estimate of temperature change but also an estimate of our uncertainty about this temperature change.” The approach proposed in the paper combines information from observation-based data, general circulation models (GCMs) and regional climate models (RCMs). Observation-based data sets, which focus mainly on local and regional climate, are obtained by taking raw climate measurements from weather stations and applying it to a grid defined over the globe. This allows the final data product to provide an aggregate measure of climate rather than be restricted to individual weather data sets. Such data sets are restricted to current and historical time periods. Another source of information related to observation-based data sets are reanalysis data sets in which numerical model forecasts and weather station observations are combined into a single gridded reconstruction of climate over the globe. GCMs are computer models which capture physical processes governing the atmosphere and oceans to simulate the response of temperature, precipitation, and other meteorological variables in different scenarios. While a GCM portrayal of temperature would not be accurate to a given day, these models give fairly good estimates for long-term average temperatures, such as 30-year periods, which closely match observed data. A big advantage of GCMs over observed and reanalyzed data is that GCMs are able to simulate climate systems in the future. RCMs are used to simulate climate over a specific region, as opposed to global simulations created by GCMs. Since climate in a specific region is affected by the rest of Earth, atmospheric conditions such as temperature and moisture at the region’s boundary are estimated by using other sources such as GCMs or reanalysis data. By combining information from multiple observation-based data sets, GCMs and RCMs, the model obtains an estimate and measure of uncertainty for the average temperature, temporal trend, as well as the variability of seasonal average temperatures. The model was used to analyze average summer and winter temperatures for the Pacific Southwest, Prairie and North Atlantic regions (seen in the image above) — regions that represent three distinct climates. The assumption would be that climate models would behave differently for each of these regions. Data from each region was considered individually so that the model could be fit to each region separately. “Our understanding of how much temperatures are changing is reflected in all the data available to us,” says Heaton. “For example, one data source might suggest that temperatures are increasing by 2 degrees Celsius while another source suggests temperatures are increasing by 4 degrees. So, do we believe a 2-degree increase or a 4-degree increase? The answer is probably ‘neither’ because combining data sources together suggests that increases would likely be somewhere between 2 and 4 degrees. The point is that that no single data source has all the answers. And, only by combining many different sources of climate data are we really able to quantify how much we think temperatures are changing.” While most previous such work focuses on mean or average values, the authors in this paper acknowledge that climate in the broader sense encompasses variations between years, trends, averages and extreme events. Hence the hierarchical Bayesian model used here simultaneously considers the average, linear trend and interannual variability (variation between years). Many previous models also assume independence between climate models, whereas this paper accounts for commonalities shared by various models — such as physical equations or fluid dynamics — and correlates between data sets. “While our work is a good first step in combining many different sources of climate information, we still fall short in that we still leave out many viable sources of climate information,” says Heaton. “Furthermore, our work focuses on increases/decreases in temperatures, but similar analyses are needed to estimate consensus changes in other meteorological variables such as precipitation. Finally, we hope to expand our analysis from regional temperatures (say, over just a portion of the U.S.) to global temperatures.”

Journal Reference:

Matthew J. Heaton, Tamara A. Greasby, Stephan R. Sain. Modeling Uncertainty in Climate Using Ensembles of Regional and Global Climate Models and Multiple Observation-Based Data Sets. SIAM/ASA Journal on Uncertainty Quantification, 2013; 1 (1): 535 DOI: 10.1137/12088505X

Hershey’s Is Hiring a Chocolate Futurist (The Atlantic)

24/02/2014UncategorizedCapitalismo, Economia, Incerteza, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

Adapting to climate change, one candy bar at a time

ROBINSON MEYER, FEB 21 2014, 3:12 PM ET

Reuters

The Hershey Company—makers of the eponymous candy bar, York Peppermint Patties, and Reese’s Cups—is a big, complex organization. Not only is it the largest chocolate manufacturer in the United States, selling 40 percent of domestic dark chocolate, but it also operates a store/museum in Hershey, Pennsylvania. And one in Times Square. And one in Las Vegas.

And, oh, also an amusement park.

Now—in response to all this bigness, all this complexity, all these diversified models—it has prepared for a changing world. The Hershey Company is hiring a futurist.

That’s not what companies call it, exactly. Hershey’s is hiring a “Senior Manager” in “Foresight Activation,” someone with experience converting “existing foresight (trends, forecasts, scenarios) into strategic opportunities (SOs).”

The company’s posting never breaks down just what “foresight” means, though it does specify applicants should be “collaborate with and align multi-functional stakeholders.” But let me be clear, foresight means trying to understand the future. Hershey’s is hiring a chocolate futurist.

Of course, this is not an outlandish position, even if it will require regular excisions of jargon. Companies everywhere analyze trends, try to figure out what imperils their business, and make plans accordingly. If they depend on products of the land, they specifically try to plan for the big, amorphous future risk of climate change.

Little wonder: A 2011 Gates Foundation-funded study found that even small amounts of climate change could ravage the cocoa market, sending “yields crashing and prices soaring.” And Starbucks has long insisted that climate change, more than anything else, threatens the global supply chain of coffee, and, thus, its business.

James Lovelock: ‘enjoy life while you can: in 20 years global warming will hit the fan’ (The Guardian)

24/02/2014Uncategorizedciência, Clima, Desastre, discurso ambiental, Gaia, Incerteza, Meio ambiente, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

The climate science maverick believes catastrophe is inevitable, carbon offsetting is a joke and ethical living a scam. So what would he do? By Decca Aitkenhead

The Guardian, Saturday 1 March 2008

James Lovelock

James Lovelock. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe

In 1965 executives at Shell wanted to know what the world would look like in the year 2000. They consulted a range of experts, who speculated about fusion-powered hovercrafts and “all sorts of fanciful technological stuff”. When the oil company asked the scientist James Lovelock, he predicted that the main problem in 2000 would be the environment. “It will be worsening then to such an extent that it will seriously affect their business,” he said.

“And of course,” Lovelock says, with a smile 43 years later, “that’s almost exactly what’s happened.”

Lovelock has been dispensing predictions from his one-man laboratory in an old mill in Cornwall since the mid-1960s, the consistent accuracy of which have earned him a reputation as one of Britain’s most respected – if maverick – independent scientists. Working alone since the age of 40, he invented a device that detected CFCs, which helped detect the growing hole in the ozone layer, and introduced the Gaia hypothesis, a revolutionary theory that the Earth is a self-regulating super-organism. Initially ridiculed by many scientists as new age nonsense, today that theory forms the basis of almost all climate science.

For decades, his advocacy of nuclear power appalled fellow environmentalists – but recently increasing numbers of them have come around to his way of thinking. His latest book, The Revenge of Gaia, predicts that by 2020 extreme weather will be the norm, causing global devastation; that by 2040 much of Europe will be Saharan; and parts of London will be underwater. The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report deploys less dramatic language – but its calculations aren’t a million miles away from his.

As with most people, my panic about climate change is equalled only by my confusion over what I ought to do about it. A meeting with Lovelock therefore feels a little like an audience with a prophet. Buried down a winding track through wild woodland, in an office full of books and papers and contraptions involving dials and wires, the 88-year-old presents his thoughts with a quiet, unshakable conviction that can be unnerving. More alarming even than his apocalyptic climate predictions is his utter certainty that almost everything we’re trying to do about it is wrong.

On the day we meet, the Daily Mail has launched a campaign to rid Britain of plastic shopping bags. The initiative sits comfortably within the current canon of eco ideas, next to ethical consumption, carbon offsetting, recycling and so on – all of which are premised on the calculation that individual lifestyle adjustments can still save the planet. This is, Lovelock says, a deluded fantasy. Most of the things we have been told to do might make us feel better, but they won’t make any difference. Global warming has passed the tipping point, and catastrophe is unstoppable.

“It’s just too late for it,” he says. “Perhaps if we’d gone along routes like that in 1967, it might have helped. But we don’t have time. All these standard green things, like sustainable development, I think these are just words that mean nothing. I get an awful lot of people coming to me saying you can’t say that, because it gives us nothing to do. I say on the contrary, it gives us an immense amount to do. Just not the kinds of things you want to do.”

He dismisses eco ideas briskly, one by one. “Carbon offsetting? I wouldn’t dream of it. It’s just a joke. To pay money to plant trees, to think you’re offsetting the carbon? You’re probably making matters worse. You’re far better off giving to the charity Cool Earth, which gives the money to the native peoples to not take down their forests.”

Do he and his wife try to limit the number of flights they take? “No we don’t. Because we can’t.” And recycling, he adds, is “almost certainly a waste of time and energy”, while having a “green lifestyle” amounts to little more than “ostentatious grand gestures”. He distrusts the notion of ethical consumption. “Because always, in the end, it turns out to be a scam … or if it wasn’t one in the beginning, it becomes one.”

Somewhat unexpectedly, Lovelock concedes that the Mail’s plastic bag campaign seems, “on the face of it, a good thing”. But it transpires that this is largely a tactical response; he regards it as merely more rearrangement of Titanic deckchairs, “but I’ve learnt there’s no point in causing a quarrel over everything”. He saves his thunder for what he considers the emptiest false promise of all – renewable energy.

“You’re never going to get enough energy from wind to run a society such as ours,” he says. “Windmills! Oh no. No way of doing it. You can cover the whole country with the blasted things, millions of them. Waste of time.”

This is all delivered with an air of benign wonder at the intractable stupidity of people. “I see it with everybody. People just want to go on doing what they’re doing. They want business as usual. They say, ‘Oh yes, there’s going to be a problem up ahead,’ but they don’t want to change anything.”

Lovelock believes global warming is now irreversible, and that nothing can prevent large parts of the planet becoming too hot to inhabit, or sinking underwater, resulting in mass migration, famine and epidemics. Britain is going to become a lifeboat for refugees from mainland Europe, so instead of wasting our time on wind turbines we need to start planning how to survive. To Lovelock, the logic is clear. The sustainability brigade are insane to think we can save ourselves by going back to nature; our only chance of survival will come not from less technology, but more.

Nuclear power, he argues, can solve our energy problem – the bigger challenge will be food. “Maybe they’ll synthesise food. I don’t know. Synthesising food is not some mad visionary idea; you can buy it in Tesco’s, in the form of Quorn. It’s not that good, but people buy it. You can live on it.” But he fears we won’t invent the necessary technologies in time, and expects “about 80%” of the world’s population to be wiped out by 2100. Prophets have been foretelling Armageddon since time began, he says. “But this is the real thing.”

Faced with two versions of the future – Kyoto’s preventative action and Lovelock’s apocalypse – who are we to believe? Some critics have suggested Lovelock’s readiness to concede the fight against climate change owes more to old age than science: “People who say that about me haven’t reached my age,” he says laughing.

But when I ask if he attributes the conflicting predictions to differences in scientific understanding or personality, he says: “Personality.”

There’s more than a hint of the controversialist in his work, and it seems an unlikely coincidence that Lovelock became convinced of the irreversibility of climate change in 2004, at the very point when the international consensus was coming round to the need for urgent action. Aren’t his theories at least partly driven by a fondness for heresy?

“Not a bit! Not a bit! All I want is a quiet life! But I can’t help noticing when things happen, when you go out and find something. People don’t like it because it upsets their ideas.”

But the suspicion seems confirmed when I ask if he’s found it rewarding to see many of his climate change warnings endorsed by the IPCC. “Oh no! In fact, I’m writing another book now, I’m about a third of the way into it, to try and take the next steps ahead.”

Interviewers often remark upon the discrepancy between Lovelock’s predictions of doom, and his good humour. “Well I’m cheerful!” he says, smiling. “I’m an optimist. It’s going to happen.”

Humanity is in a period exactly like 1938-9, he explains, when “we all knew something terrible was going to happen, but didn’t know what to do about it”. But once the second world war was under way, “everyone got excited, they loved the things they could do, it was one long holiday … so when I think of the impending crisis now, I think in those terms. A sense of purpose – that’s what people want.”

At moments I wonder about Lovelock’s credentials as a prophet. Sometimes he seems less clear-eyed with scientific vision than disposed to see the version of the future his prejudices are looking for. A socialist as a young man, he now favours market forces, and it’s not clear whether his politics are the child or the father of his science. His hostility to renewable energy, for example, gets expressed in strikingly Eurosceptic terms of irritation with subsidies and bureaucrats. But then, when he talks about the Earth – or Gaia – it is in the purest scientific terms all.

“There have been seven disasters since humans came on the earth, very similar to the one that’s just about to happen. I think these events keep separating the wheat from the chaff. And eventually we’ll have a human on the planet that really does understand it and can live with it properly. That’s the source of my optimism.”

What would Lovelock do now, I ask, if he were me? He smiles and says: “Enjoy life while you can. Because if you’re lucky it’s going to be 20 years before it hits the fan.”

Física dos Sistemas Complexos pode prever impactos das mudanças ambientais (Fapesp)

19/02/2014UncategorizedClima, Complexidade, Física, Incerteza, Matemática, Mediação tecnológica, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

Avaliação é de Jan-Michael Rost, pesquisador do Instituto Max Planck (foto: Nina Wagner/DWIH-SP)

19/02/2014

Elton Alisson

Agência FAPESP – Além da aplicação em áreas como a Engenharia e Tecnologias da Informação e Comunicação (TICs), a Física dos Sistemas Complexos – nos quais cada elemento contribui individualmente para o surgimento de propriedades somente observadas em conjunto – pode ser útil para avaliar os impactos de mudanças ambientais no planeta, como o desmatamento.

A avaliação foi feita por Jan-Michael Rost, pesquisador do Instituto Max-Planck para Física dos Sistemas Complexos, durante uma mesa-redonda sobre sistemas complexos e sustentabilidade, realizada no dia 14 de fevereiro no Hotel Pergamon, em São Paulo.

O encontro foi organizado pelo Centro Alemão de Ciência e Inovação São Paulo (DWIH-SP) e pela Sociedade Max Planck, em parceria com a FAPESP e o Serviço Alemão de Intercâmbio Acadêmico (DAAD), e fez parte de uma programação complementar de atividades da exposição científica Túnel da Ciência Max Planck.

“Os sistemas complexos, como a vida na Terra, estão no limiar entre a ordem e a desordem e levam um determinado tempo para se adaptar a mudanças”, disse Rost.

“Se houver grandes alterações nesses sistemas, como o desmatamento desenfreado de florestas, em um período curto de tempo, e for atravessado o limiar entre a ordem e a desordem, essas mudanças podem ser irreversíveis e colocar em risco a preservação da complexidade e a possibilidade de evolução das espécies”, afirmou o pesquisador.

De acordo com Rost, os sistemas complexos começaram a chamar a atenção dos cientistas nos anos 1950. A fim de estudá-los, porém, não era possível utilizar as duas grandes teorias que revolucionaram a Física no século 20: a da Relatividade, estabelecida por Albert Einstein (1879-1955), e da mecânica quântica, desenvolvida pelo físico alemão Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) e outros cientistas.

Isso porque essas teorias podem ser aplicadas apenas a sistemas fechados, como os motores, que não sofrem interferência do meio externo e nos quais as reações de equilíbrio, ocorridas em seu interior, são reversíveis, afirmou Rost.

Por essa razão, segundo ele, essas teorias não são suficientes para estudar sistemas abertos, como máquinas dotadas de inteligência artificial e as espécies de vida na Terra, que interagem com o meio ambiente, são adaptativas e cujas reações podem ser irreversíveis. Por isso, elas deram lugar a teorias relacionadas à Física dos sistemas complexos, como a do caos e a da dinâmica não linear, mais apropriadas para essa finalidade.

“Essas últimas teorias tiveram um desenvolvimento espetacular nas últimas décadas, paralelamente às da mecânica clássica”, afirmou Rost.

“Hoje já se reconhece que os sistemas não são fechados, mas se relacionam com o exterior e podem apresentar reações desproporcionais à ação que sofreram. É nisso que a Engenharia se baseia atualmente para desenvolver produtos e equipamentos”, afirmou.

Categorias de sistemas complexos

De acordo com Rost, os sistemas complexos podem ser divididos em quatro categorias que se diferenciam pelo tempo de reação a uma determinada ação sofrida. A primeira delas é a dos sistemas complexos estáticos, que reagem instantaneamente a uma ação.

A segunda é a de sistemas adaptativos, como a capacidade de farejamento dos cães. Ao ser colocado na direção de uma trilha de rastros deixados por uma pessoa perdida em uma mata, por exemplo, os cães farejadores fazem movimentos de ziguezague.

Isso porque, segundo Rost, esses animais possuem um sistema de farejamento adaptativo. Isto é, ao sentir um determinado cheiro em um local, a sensibilidade olfativa do animal àquele odor diminui drasticamente e ele perde a capacidade de identificá-lo.

Ao sair do rastro em que estava, o animal recupera rapidamente a sensibilidade olfativa ao odor e é capaz de identificá-lo em uma próxima pegada. “O limiar da percepção olfativa desses animais é adaptado constantemente”, afirmou Rost.

A terceira categoria de sistemas complexos é a de sistemas autônomos, que utilizam a evolução como um sistema de adaptação e é impossível prever como será a reação a uma determinada mudança.

Já a última categoria é a de sistemas evolucionários ou transgeracionais, em que se inserem os seres humanos e outras espécies de vida na Terra, e na qual a reação a uma determinada alteração em seus sistemas de vida demora muito tempo para acontecer, afirmou Rost.

“Os sistemas transgeracionais recebem estímulos durante a vida toda e a reação de uma determinada geração não é comparável com a anterior”, disse o pesquisador.

“Tentar prever o tempo que um determinado sistema transgeracional, como a humanidade, leva para reagir a uma ação, como as mudanças ambientais, pode ser útil para assegurar a sustentabilidade do planeta”, avaliou Rost.

Brasil já vive a crise climática global (Estadão)

17/02/2014Uncategorizedciência, Clima, Desastre, Incerteza, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

JC e-mail 4896, de 17 de fevereiro de 2014

Perturbações na Austrália e no Pacífico mudam padrões e causam calor no País e no Alasca, neve no leste dos EUA e cheia na Inglaterra

Calor extremo e seca no Sudeste brasileiro. Nevascas e frio intenso na costa leste dos Estados Unidos. Ondas de calor no Alasca e na China em pleno inverno. Enchentes na Inglaterra. Temperaturas escaldantes e incêndios florestais por toda a Austrália. Tudo isso acontecendo ao mesmo tempo; e não é por acaso, segundo os meteorologistas.

“Todos esses eventos estão conectados dentro de um sistema climático global”, disse ao Estado a pesquisadora Maria Assunção da Silva Dias, do Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciências Atmosféricas (IAG) da Universidade de São Paulo. Um sistema que, segundo ela – e a esmagadora maioria dos cientistas – está sendo alterado pelo acúmulo de gases do efeito estufa lançados na atmosfera pelo homem nos últimos 150 anos.

Treze dos 14 anos mais quentes já registrados pelo homem ocorreram nos últimos 14 anos, com a exceção de 1998. O ano passado foi o sexto mais quente. E o clima de 2014 parece ter começado fora dos trilhos também, com eventos extremos de temperatura e precipitação – para mais ou para menos – espalhados por todos os continentes.

O foco dessas perturbações atuais, segundo Assunção, está do outro lado do mundo. Mais especificamente no norte da Austrália e no sul da Indonésia, onde está chovendo muito, e na região central do Oceano Pacífico, onde está chovendo pouco.

Isso altera os padrões das correntes de jato (ventos fortes de altitude) nos dois hemisférios; o que altera os padrões de chuva típicos desta época, tornando o tempo extremamente estável e persistente em regiões de latitudes mais altas. O clima parece que “estacionou” nessas regiões, intensificando todos os efeitos. Um cenário que demonstra claramente como as mudanças climáticas são um problema global, que afetará todos os países, independentemente de sua posição geográfica ou situação econômica, dizem os especialistas.

Os modelos globais de previsão climática variam bastante entre si, mas todos preveem um aumento na ocorrência de eventos climáticos extremos nas próximas décadas, por causa do aquecimento global. “Os extremos vão ficar mais intensos e ocorrer com mais frequência”, resume Assunção.

Ligação. O que está acontecendo agora, portanto, é exatamente o que os cientistas do clima preveem que começará a ocorrer com mais frequência daqui para a frente. Estabelecer uma relação direta de causa e efeito entre o aquecimento global e um evento climático qualquer, porém, é extremamente difícil.

“Sempre que há algum fenômeno extremo em curso as pessoas perguntam se isso tem a ver com o aquecimento global, mas essa é uma pergunta muito difícil de responder”, explica o meteorologista Marcelo Seluchi, coordenador-geral de pesquisa e desenvolvimento do Centro Nacional de Monitoramento e Alertas de Desastres Naturais (Cemaden), vinculado ao Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação.

A resposta, segundo ele, depende de um análise estatística do comportamento do clima ao longo de várias décadas, para ter certeza de que se trata de uma mudança sistemática e não apenas de flutuação pontual. “Mesmo dez anos é pouco tempo”, avalia Seluchi, com a ressalva de que não é possível esperar por essa certeza para começar a agir, pois já será tarde demais para reverter o processo. O economista Nicholas Stern coloca os fatos de forma contundente. “A mudança climática está aqui, agora”, diz o título de um artigo escrito por ele, manchete do jornal britânico The Guardian, anteontem, com uma foto do Rio Tâmisa transbordando sobre Londres.

(Herton Escobar/Estadão)
http://www.estadao.com.br/noticias/vida,brasil-ja-vive-a-crise-climatica-global,1130765,0.htm

California drought similar to historic drought in Texas (Science Daily)

12/02/2014UncategorizedCalifórnia, Clima, Mudanças climáticas, Secarenzotaddei

Date: February 10, 2014

Source: Texas A&M University

Summary: The worst drought ever to hit California could rival the historic 2011 drought that devastated Texas, says a Texas A&M University professor.

Mojave Desert, California. The worst drought ever to hit California could rival the historic 2011 drought that devastated Texas. Credit: © Tomasz Zajda / Fotolia

The worst drought ever to hit California could rival the historic 2011 drought that devastated Texas, says a Texas A&M University professor.

John Nielsen-Gammon, professor of atmospheric sciences who also serves as Texas’ State Climatologist, says the current drought in California is so far comparable in many ways to the 2011 Texas drought, the worst one-year drought in the state’s history that caused more than $10 billion in damages and led to numerous wildfires and lake closings.

“This is the third year of California’s drought and it is on pace to be as dry as Texas was in 2011,” Nielsen-Gammon, a California native who grew up in the San Francisco area, explains.

“However, because our severe drought year came at the beginning of the drought, reservoirs across much of the state were full. In California, reservoir levels were low to begin with.

“In addition, they are dealing with environmental flows through the Sacramento Delta that weren’t explicitly laid out until a few years ago.”

Weather patterns for both states appear similar, he adds.

“The same ridge that has kept California dry has also been keeping Texas dry,” he notes. “As the pattern changes, California is finally getting some rain and snow and the chances for precipitation in Texas are increasing as well.”

California’s drought is especially worrisome because the state produces about one-half of the country’s fruits, vegetables and nuts. It is the No.1 agricultural state in the U.S.

The 2011 drought devastated Texas farmers and ranchers, and lake levels were down as much as 50 feet in some lakes while several West Texas lakes completely dried up.

Numerous Texas cities set heat records in 2011, such as Wichita Falls, which recorded 100 days of 100-degree heat, the most ever for that city. Dallas also set a record with 70 days of 100-degree heat.

Texas’ drought is now in its fourth year, Nielsen-Gammon says, and about 52 percent of Texas is still in some form of drought status, ranging from moderate to exceptionally dry.

“January was unusually dry with an average of only about one-half an inch of precipitation statewide,” he adds.

“Reservoir levels have actually declined at a time when they should be rising. So the drought is still here. In fact, the prevalence of drought in Texas has not dropped below 40 percent since 2010 when this drought first started.”

The Texas Panhandle area has been especially hard hit.

“The past three calendar years have been among the driest three on record for the Panhandle,” he notes. “Dalhart shattered its record with just 20.54 inches total in 2011-2013.

“This current drought started with more intensity than the drought of 1950-56, the driest on record. We again have a generally warm Atlantic Ocean, and that tends to mean dry conditions. An El Nino (warmer water in the tropical Pacific Ocean) might develop later this year, but it’s still a little too early to say.”

Modelo pode ajudar a prever como espécies da Mata Atlântica responderão às mudanças climáticas (Fapesp)

11/02/2014UncategorizedBiologia, Clima, Ecologia, Genética, Incerteza, Meio ambiente, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

Pesquisadores do Brasil e dos EUA buscam compreensão dos processos evolutivos, geológicos, climáticos e genéticos por trás do padrão atual da biodiversidade (foto:Samuel Iavelberg)

11/02/2014

Por Karina Toledo

Agência FAPESP – Compreender os processos evolutivos, geológicos, climáticos e genéticos por trás da enorme biodiversidade e do padrão de distribuição de espécies da Mata Atlântica e, com base nesse conhecimento, criar modelos que permitam prever, por exemplo, como essas espécies vão reagir às mudanças no clima e no uso do solo.

Esse é o objetivo central de um projeto que reúne pesquisadores do Brasil e dos Estados Unidos no âmbito de um acordo de cooperação científica entre o Programa de Pesquisas em Caracterização, Conservação, Recuperação e Uso Sustentável da Biodiversidade do Estado de São Paulo (BIOTA-FAPESP) e o programa Dimensions of Biodiversity, da agência federal norte-americana de fomento à pesquisa National Science Foundation (NSF).

“Além de ajudar a prever o que poderá ocorrer no futuro com as espécies, os modelos ajudam a entender como está hoje distribuída a biodiversidade em áreas onde os cientistas não têm acesso. Como fazemos coletas por amostragem, seria impossível mapear todos os microambientes. Os modelos permitem extrapolar essas informações para áreas não amostradas e podem ser aplicados em qualquer tempo”, explicou Ana Carolina Carnaval, professora da The City University of New York, nos Estados Unidos, e coordenadora do projeto de pesquisa ao lado de Cristina Miyaki, do Instituto de Biociências da Universidade de São Paulo (IB-USP).

A proposta, segundo Carnaval, é promover a integração de pesquisadores de diversas áreas – como ecologia, geologia, biogeografia, genética, fisiologia, climatologia, taxonomia, paleologia, geomorfologia – e unir ciência básica e aplicada em benefício da conservação da Mata Atlântica.

O bioma é considerado um dos 34 hotspots mundiais, ou seja, uma das áreas prioritárias para a conservação por causa de sua enorme biodiversidade, do alto grau de endemismo de suas espécies (ocorrência apenas naquele local) e da grande ameaça de extinção resultante da intensa atividade antrópica na região.

A empreitada coordenada por Carnaval e por Miyaki teve início no segundo semestre de 2013. A rede de pesquisadores esteve reunida pela primeira vez para apresentar suas linhas de pesquisa e seus resultados preliminares na segunda-feira (10/02), durante o “Workshop Dimensions US-BIOTA São Paulo – A multidisciplinary framework for biodiversity prediction in the Brazilian Atlantic forest hotspot”.

“Convidamos alguns colaboradores além de pesquisadores envolvidos no projeto, pois queremos críticas e sugestões que permitam aperfeiçoar os trabalhos”, contou Miyaki. “Essa reunião é um marco para conseguirmos efetivar a integração entre as diversas áreas do projeto e criarmos uma linguagem única focada em compreender a Mata Atlântica e os processos que fazem esse bioma ser tão especial”, acrescentou.

Entre os mistérios que os cientistas tentarão desvendar estão a origem da incrível diversidade existente na Mata Atlântica, possivelmente fruto de conexões existentes há milhões de anos com outros biomas, entre eles a Floresta Amazônica. Outra questão fundamental é entender a importância do sistema de transporte de umidade na região hoje e no passado e como ele permite que a Mata Atlântica se comunique com outros sistemas florestais. Também está entre as metas do grupo investigar como a atividade tectônica influenciou o curso de rios e afetou o padrão de distribuição das espécies aquáticas.

Desafios do BIOTA

Durante a abertura do workshop, o presidente da FAPESP, Celso Lafer, realçou a importância de abordagens inovadoras e multidisciplinares voltadas para a proteção da biodiversidade da Mata Atlântica. Ressaltou ainda que a iniciativa está em consonância com os esforços de internacionalização realizados pela FAPESP nos últimos anos.

“Uma das grandes preocupações da FAPESP tem sido o processo de internacionalização, que basicamente está relacionado ao esforço de juntar pesquisadores de diversas áreas para avançar no conhecimento. Este programa de hoje está relacionado a aspirações dessa natureza e tenho certeza de que os resultados serão altamente relevantes”, afirmou Lafer.

Também durante a mesa de abertura, o diretor do IB-USP, Carlos Eduardo Falavigna da Rocha, afirmou que o programa BIOTA-FAPESP tem sido um exemplo para outros estados e outras fundações de apoio à pesquisa em âmbito federal e estadual.

Carlos Alfredo Joly, professor da Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) e coordenador do BIOTA-FAPESP, apresentou um histórico das atividades realizadas pelo programa desde 1999, entre elas a elaboração de um mapa de áreas prioritárias para conservação que serviu de base para mais de 20 documentos legais estaduais – entre leis, decretos e resoluções.

Joly também falou sobre os desafios a serem vencidos até 2020, como empreender esforços de restauração e de reintrodução de espécies, ampliar o entendimento sobre ecossistemas terrestres e sobre os mecanismos que mantêm a biodiversidade no Estado e intensificar as atividades voltadas à educação ambiental.

Para 2014, Joly ressaltou dois desafios na área de conservação. “Estamos iniciando uma campanha para o tombamento da Serra da Mantiqueira. Já fizemos alguns artigos de jornais, estamos lançando um website específico e vamos trabalhar para conseguir tombar regiões acima de 800 metros, áreas apontadas como de extrema prioridade para conservação no atlas do BIOTA”, disse.

Outra meta para 2014, segundo Joly, é trabalhar para que o Brasil ratifique o protocolo de Nagoya – tratado internacional que dispõe sobre a repartição de benefícios do uso da biodiversidade – até outubro, quando ocorrerá a 12ª Conferência das Partes da Convenção sobre Diversidade Biológica.

“É fundamental que um país megadiverso, que tem todo o interesse de ter sua biodiversidade protegida por esse protocolo internacional, se torne signatário do protocolo antes dessa reunião”, afirmou Joly.

Extremos climáticos mostram que futuro já chegou (O Globo)

10/02/2014UncategorizedClima, jornalismo, Mudanças climáticasrenzotaddei

JC e-mail 4890, de 07 de fevereiro de 2014

Editorial publicado em O Globo. Temperaturas máximas recordistas no Brasil, secas e nevascas intensas no Hemisfério Norte atestam que mundo perde tempo precioso para mitigar efeitos do aquecimento

No dia 31 de janeiro, das 10 estações meteorológicas que indicavam as maiores temperaturas do mundo, seis estavam no Rio e outras três no Brasil. A campeã mundial foi Joinville, em Santa Catarina, onde a sensação térmica chegou a 52 graus. O Rio ficou em segundo, com 51. A única fora do Brasil foi El Vigia, na Venezuela. O ranking é do Centro de Previsão de Tempo e Estudos Climáticos (CPTec), com base em informações de 4.232 estações acessadas pelo Inpe. Os que moram no Rio sentem isto na pele, agravado pela longa estiagem – as precipitações em janeiro foram de apenas 58mm, quando a média para o mês na cidade é de 202mm. Na terça-feira, a temperatura bateu novo recorde: 40,8 graus em Santa Cruz, com a sensação térmica de incríveis 57 graus.

Enquanto isso, nos EUA (Hemisfério Norte), nevascas das mais intensas já registradas criam problemas de todo o tipo. Nos últimos dias de janeiro, tempestades de neve atipicamente atingiram o Sul dos EUA, do Texas e Geórgia até as Carolinas, uma área de 60 milhões de habitantes. Sete pessoas morreram e o fechamento de rodovias e avenidas transformou Atlanta num caos. Na terça, 905 voos foram cancelados e 3.100 sofreram atrasos. Já no Alasca, a paisagem da costa muda rapidamente porque os lagos degelam mais cedo. Entre 1991 e 2011, a região perdeu 22% de sua camada de gelo, revelou estudo na revista “Cryosphere”, segundo o qual a causa são as mudanças climáticas.

Estudos americanos indicaram que a temperatura do planeta se manteve em alta em 2013. Segundo a Nasa, a média global foi de 14,6 graus centígrados, empatando com 2006 e 2009 como o sétimo ano mais quente desde 1880, quando as medições começaram. As temperaturas globais começaram a subir no final dos anos 1960, fenômeno associado ao acúmulo de gases estufa na atmosfera. A quantidade de dióxido de carbono é mais alta hoje do que em qualquer momento nos últimos 800 mil anos, adverte a Nasa.

Hoje, a maioria dos cientistas concorda que a ação humana contribui para as mudanças climáticas. Mas os principais líderes mundiais estão devendo muito em chegar a consensos que possibilitem ações essenciais para o futuro da Humanidade. Um grande avanço foi o governo dos EUA anunciar a criação de sete centros climáticos regionais para auxiliar fazendeiros e comunidades a enfrentar secas, inundações, incêndios e pestes. E a Agência de Proteção Ambiental (EPA) baixará normas severas para reduzir as emissões de termelétricas a carvão. Estão no caminho certo. No final de março, haverá nova avaliação do problema, com a divulgação, em Yokohama, no Japão, de novo relatório sobre o impacto das mudanças climáticas, elaborado por especialistas de mais de cem países reunidos no Painel Intergovernamental de Mudanças Climáticas (IPCC). Pode-se discutir em que proporção a Humanidade contribui para o aquecimento global. Porém, não se deveria mais colocar em dúvida a necessidade da redução das emissões de gases nocivos ao planeta.

(O Globo)
http://oglobo.globo.com/opiniao/extremos-climaticos-mostram-que-futuro-ja-chegou-11527392#ixzz2se99M9Es

Casa Branca anuncia a criação de sete centros climáticos (O Globo)

10/02/2014Uncategorizedciência, Clima, Estados Unidos, Mudanças climáticas, Políticarenzotaddei

JC e-mail 4890, de 07 de fevereiro de 2014

Núcleos ajudarão agricultores a evitarem a ocorrência de eventos extremos, como seca, incêndios e enchentes

Na esteira da aprovação no Senado americano de uma nova lei agrícola, conhecida como Farm Bill, a Casa Branca anunciou esta quarta-feira a criação de sete “centros climáticos” para ajudar os agricultores e comunidades rurais a responderem aos riscos de mudanças climáticas, inclusive secas, ocorrência de pestes, incêndios e enchentes.
Os centros climáticos serão nos estados de Iowa, New Hampshire, Carolina do Norte, Oklahoma, Oregon, Colorado e Novo México.

Autoridades do governo americano descreveram a iniciativa como uma das ações executivas que o presidente Barack Obama tomará para atacar as mudanças climáticas sem um movimento do Congresso.

A criação de centros climáticos é considerado um passo limitado, mas é parte de uma campanha mais ampla do Executivo para usar sua autoridade, onde for possível, em políticas ligadas às mudanças do clima.

O governo tenta, também, ganhar apoio político para engajar-se em outros projetos, principalmente na elaboração de uma forte regulamentação que determine cortes de emissões de carbono em usinas do país. A criação do programa está sendo debatida na Agência de Proteção Ambiental.

A criação dos centros climáticos foi anunciada pelo secretário de Agricultura, Tom Villsack. A intenção do governo é que o programa ajude agricultores de cada região a adaptarem-se às mudanças climáticas, antes da elaboração de um projeto mais ambicioso.

– As mudanças climáticas são um desafio novo e complexo enfrentado pelos agricultores, e seus impactos são sentidos nas florestas e nas áreas de cultivo.

(Carol Davenport do New York Times/O Globo)
http://oglobo.globo.com/ciencia/casa-branca-anuncia-criacao-de-sete-centros-climaticos-11526131#ixzz2se5UT4FG

Uma lei para salvar o planeta (O Globo)

10/02/2014UncategorizedCapitalismo, Clima, Economia, Estados Unidos, Mudanças climáticas, Políticas públicasrenzotaddei

JC e-mail 4889, de 06 de fevereiro de 2014

EUA debatem iniciativa histórica, que forçaria o corte nas emissões de gases-estufa por usinas a carvão

Enfrentando maratonas de reuniões, dezenas de advogados, economistas e engenheiros da Agência de Proteção Ambiental dos EUA (EPA, na sigla em inglês) lutam para criar o que pode vir a se tornar uma peça histórica no legado do presidente Barack Obama para o combate às mudanças climáticas. Se os autores forem bem sucedidos na elaboração de uma regulamentação forte e eficaz na determinação de cortes de emissões de carbono em 1.500 usinas a carvão americanas – a maior fonte de gases do efeito estufa do país -, o resultado pode ser a mais significativa ação já tomada pelos EUA no combate às mudanças climáticas. O país é um dos maiores responsáveis pelo aquecimento global.

Se a regulamentação for muito frouxa, o impacto ambiental pode ser mínimo. Mas, se for muito dura, pode levar ao fechamento de usinas antes que haja alternativas energéticas para substituí-las, o que poderia ocasionar blecautes de energia e anos de batalhas legais.

– O fracasso não é uma opção – afirmou o diretor-executivo da Associação Nacional de Limpeza, William Becker.

Em seu pronunciamento “Estado da União”, Obama deixou clara a intenção de usar sua autoridade – garantida pela Lei do Ar Limpo e por uma decisão de 2007 da Suprema Corte – para sancionar as novas regulamentações de redução das emissões de CO2. Ele está pressionando a agência a concluir os debates o mais rápido possível.

O presidente ordenou à EPA que apresente um rascunho da regulamentação já em 1º de junho. A nova lei deve orientar os estados a criar e executar planos para atender às metas nacionais para emissões de gases-estufa. Em princípio, as usinas poderiam não apenas cortar emissões, mas, por exemplo, usar tecnologias mais limpas, investir em fontes renováveis de energia e ainda fazer parte de um mercado de carbono – financiando, por exemplo, projetos em outros países.

Num primeiro momento, a nova lei atingiria as 600 usinas dos EUA que são movidas a carvão e pode, simplesmente, levá-las ao fechamento, dependendo de como a legislação for escrita. Estados em que a maior parte das usinas é movida a carvão estão fazendo um lobby pesado contra determinações mais radicais, alegando que ela pode levar ao colapso do fornecimento de energia.

Em geral, o carvão responde por 40% da energia elétrica produzida nos EUA. Mas em estados como Kentucky, Ohio e Missouri, o percentual vai de 80% a 90%. Por outro lado, se a legislação deixar muita abertura para cada estado decidir por si, corre o risco de não conseguir alcançar meta alguma e se tornar ineficaz.

(Coral Davenport do New York Times/O Globo)
http://oglobo.globo.com/ciencia/uma-lei-para-salvar-planeta-11516781#ixzz2sXw5gcLh

Nature can, selectively, buffer human-caused global warming, say scientists (Science Daily)

03/02/2014Uncategorizedciência, Clima, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

Date: February 2, 2014

Source: Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Summary: Can naturally occurring processes selectively buffer the full brunt of global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions resulting from human activities? Yes, says a group of researchers in a new study.

As the globe warms, ocean temperatures rise, leading to increased water vapor escaping into the atmosphere. Water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas, and its impact on climate is amplified in the stratosphere. Credit: © magann / Fotolia

Can naturally occurring processes selectively buffer the full brunt of global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions resulting from human activities?

Yes, find researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Johns Hopkins University in the US and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

In a detailed study, the researchers from the three institutions examined the causes of changes in the temperatures and water vapor in the tropical tropopause layer (TTL). The TTL is a critical region of our atmosphere with characteristics of both the troposphere below and the stratosphere above.

The TTL can have significant influences on both atmospheric chemistry and climate, as its temperature determines how much water vapor can enter the stratosphere. Therefore, understanding any changes in the temperature of the TTL and what might be causing them is an important scientific question of significant societal relevance, say the researchers.

The Israeli and US scientists used measurements from satellite observations and output from chemistry-climate models to understand recent temperature trends in the TTL. Temperature measurements show where significant changes have taken place since 1979.

The satellite observations have shown that warming of the tropical Indian Ocean and tropical Western Pacific Ocean — with resulting increased precipitation and water vapor there — causes the opposite effect of cooling in the TTL region above the warming sea surface. Once the TTL cools, less water vapor is present in the TTL and also above in the stratosphere.

Since water vapor is a very strong greenhouse gas, this effect leads to a negative feedback on climate change. That is, the increase in water vapor due to enhanced evaporation from the warming oceans is confined to the near- surface area, while the stratosphere becomes drier. Hence, this effect may actually slightly weaken the more dire forecasted aspects of an increasing warming of our climate, the scientists say.

The researchers are Dr. Chaim Garfinkel of the Fredy and Nadine Herrmann Institute of Earth Sciences at the Hebrew University and formerly of Johns Hopkins University, Dr. D. W. Waugh and Dr. L. Wang of Johns Hopkins, and Dr. L. D. Oman and Dr. M. M. Hurwitz of the Goddard Space Flight Center. Their findings have been published in theJournal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, and the research was also highlighted in Nature Climate Change.

Journal References:

C. I. Garfinkel, D. W. Waugh, L. D. Oman, L. Wang, M. M. Hurwitz. Temperature trends in the tropical upper troposphere and lower stratosphere: Connections with sea surface temperatures and implications for water vapor and ozone. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 2013; 118 (17): 9658 DOI: 10.1002/jgrd.50772
Qiang Fu. Ocean–atmosphere interactions: Bottom up in the tropics. Nature Climate Change, 2013; 3 (11): 957 DOI: 10.1038/nclimate2039

Influência humana é clara no aquecimento “inequívoco” do planeta, diz IPCC (Portal Terra)

31/01/2014UncategorizedClima, Incerteza, IPCC, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

JC e-mail 4885, de 31 de janeiro de 2014

Os cientistas do IPCC – que já foram premiados com o Nobel da Paz em 2007 – fizeram um apelo enfático para a redução de gases poluentes

Painel Intergovernamental de Mudanças Climáticas divulga primeira parte de estudo sobre aumento da temperatura no globo e afirma que últimas três décadas foram sucessivamente mais quentes que qualquer outra desde 1850.

O aquecimento do planeta é “inequívoco”, a influência humana no aumento da temperatura global é “clara”, e limitar os efeitos das mudanças climáticas vai requerer reduções “substanciais e sustentadas” das emissões de gases de efeito estufa. A conclusão é do Painel Intergovernamental de Mudanças Climáticas (IPCC), que divulgou nesta quinta-feira (30/01), em Genebra, a primeira parte do quinto relatório sobre o tema.

Os cientistas do IPCC – que já foram premiados com o Nobel da Paz em 2007 – fizeram um apelo enfático para a redução de gases poluentes. “A continuidade das emissões vai continuar causando mudanças e aquecimento em todos os componentes do sistema climático”, afirmou Thomas Stocker, coordenador e principal autor da Parte 1 do quinto Relatório sobre Mudanças Climáticas, cuja versão preliminar já foi apresentada em setembro de 2013.

O documento serviu de base durante a Conferência das Partes (COP) das Nações Unidas sobre o Clima em Varsóvia, na Polônia, no final do ano passado. Em 1500 páginas, cientistas de todo o mundo se debruçaram sobre as bases físicas das mudanças climáticas, apoiados em mais de 9 mil publicações científicas.

“O relatório apresenta informações sobre o que muda no clima, os motivos para as mudanças e como ele vai mudar no futuro”, disse Stocker.

Correções
A versão final divulgada nesta quinta é um texto revisado e editado e não tem muitas mudanças em relação ao documento apresentado em setembro do ano passado, que elevou o alerta pelo aquecimento global e destacou a influência da ação humana no processo.

“A influência humana no clima é clara”, afirma o texto. “Ela foi detectada no aquecimento da atmosfera e dos oceanos, nas mudanças nos ciclos globais de precipitação, e nas mudanças de alguns extremos no clima.”

Segundo o IPCC, desde a década de 1950, muitas das mudanças observadas no clima não tiveram precedentes nas décadas de milênios anteriores. “A atmosfera e os oceanos estão mais quentes, o volume de neve e de gelo diminuíram, os níveis dos oceanos subiram e a concentração de gases poluentes aumentou”, diz um resumo do documento.

“Cada uma das últimas três décadas foi sucessivamente mais quente na superfície terrestre que qualquer década desde 1850. No hemisfério norte, o período entre 1983 e 2012 provavelmente foi o intervalo de 30 anos mais quente dos últimos 800 anos”, prossegue.

Aquecimento dos oceanos
O grupo de cientistas também lembra que o aquecimento dos oceanos domina o aumento de energia acumulada no sistema climático, e que os mares são responsáveis por mais de 90% da energia acumulada entre 1971 e 2010.

“É praticamente certo que o oceano superior (até 700m de profundidade) aqueceu neste período, enquanto é apenas provável que tenha acontecido o mesmo entre 1870 e 1970”, diz o relatório.

O nível dos mares também aumentou mais desde meados do século 20 que durante os dois milênios anteriores, segundo estima o IPCC. Entre 1901 e 2010, o nível médio dos oceanos teria aumentado cerca de 20 centímetros, diz o documento.

As concentrações atmosféricas de dióxido de carbono, metano e protóxido de nitrogênio (conhecido como gás hilariante) aumentaram, principalmente por causa da ação humana. Tais aumentos se devem especialmente às emissões oriundas de combustíveis fósseis. Os oceanos, por exemplo, sofrem acidificação por absorver uma parte do CO2 emitido.

Futuro sombrio
A temperatura global deverá ultrapassar 1,5ºC até o final deste século em comparação com níveis estimados entre 1850 e 1900. O aquecimento global também deverá continuar além de 2100, mas não será uniforme, dizem os cientistas do clima. As mudanças nos ciclos da água no mundo também não serão homogêneos neste século, e o contraste entre regiões secas e úmidas e regiões de seca e de chuvas deverá aumentar.

O resumo do texto ainda constata que a acumulação de emissões de CO2 deverá ser determinante para o aquecimento global no final do século 21 e adiante. “A maioria dos efeitos das mudanças climáticas deverão perdurar por vários séculos, mesmo com o fim das emissões.”

Até outubro, o IPCC ainda vai publicar mais duas partes do relatório e também um documento final. A segunda parte será divulgada em março, no Japão, e detalhará os impactos, a adaptação e a vulnerabilidade a mudanças climáticas. Em abril, Berlim será palco das conclusões do IPCC sobre mitigação.

(Portal Terra)

Países desenvolvidos exportam emissões de carbono (Folha de São Paulo)

28/01/2014UncategorizedCapitalismo, Clima, Economia, Mercado, Mudanças climáticas, Pegada de carbonorenzotaddei

JC e-mail 4882, de 28 de janeiro de 2014

Matéria do “The New York Times” sobre efeitos climáticos publicada na Folha de São Paulo

Durante sua vida útil, o iPhone 5S emite o equivalente a 70 kg de dióxido de carbono. A boa notícia: isso é 4 kg a menos do que o iPhone 5.

Seja como for, cerca de três quartos desse dióxido de carbono são considerados de responsabilidade não dos Estados Unidos, mas de lugares como China, Taiwan, Coreia do Sul e Mongólia Interior (região autônoma da China), onde o telefone e seus componentes são fabricados.

A globalização -a qual, no processo de “exportar” produção e emprego dos países ricos para os pobres, “exportou” também o dióxido de carbono emitido para a fabricação dos produtos- adiciona um novo aspecto à alocação das responsabilidades pela emissão de carbono na atmosfera: será que essas emissões devem ser de responsabilidade dos países fabricantes ou dos países para os quais os produtos se destinam?

Dois anos atrás, algumas das localidades mais ambientalmente corretas dos EUA solicitaram à seção americana do Instituto Ambiental de Estocolmo que calculasse suas emissões de carbono. Em vez de contabilizar o carbono que produziam, elas queriam um inventário das emissões geradas na fabricação, no transporte, na utilização e na eliminação do que é consumido nesses lugares.

O resultado surpreendeu. San Francisco, por exemplo, gerou em 2008 apenas 8 milhões de toneladas de CO2 ou equivalente. O consumo da cidade, por outro lado, acrescentou quase 22 milhões de toneladas de carbono à atmosfera. Usando medições baseadas no consumo, as emissões do Oregon saltaram em 2005 de 53 milhões para 78 milhões de toneladas. “As pessoas que nos contrataram se viam como muito ‘verdes’ e inovadoras”, disse Frank Ackerman, que na época chefiava o Grupo de Economia Climática da entidade nos EUA. “Eles achavam que, por terem boas iniciativas em andamento, teriam um resultado menor, apesar de muitos dos produtos industriais por eles consumidos serem fabricados no exterior.”

O foco no consumo faz sentido. Compreender o seu impacto sobre a mudança climática é um primeiro passo necessário para que as pessoas e as cidades, grandes ou pequenas, tomem medidas concretas para reduzir as emissões de carbono. Este novo tipo de cálculo, no entanto, pode ter um efeito imprevisto sobre a política internacional de mudança climática, deslocando a responsabilidade em escala global.

Enquanto a concentração de CO2 disparou no primeiro semestre de 2013 para o seu maior nível desde que os mastodontes vagavam pela Terra, há 3 milhões de anos, as Nações Unidas, contrariando todas as probabilidades, esperam que 2014 finalmente traga os avanços necessários para que as grandes nações cuspidoras de carbono cheguem a um acordo sobre um plano climático até 2015.

“Desafio os senhores a trazer promessas ousadas para a cúpula”, disse o secretário-geral da ONU, Ban Ki-moon, ao convidar líderes mundiais para uma reunião em setembro próximo, em Nova York.

Um estudo publicado há dois anos na revista “PNAS”, da Academia Nacional de Ciências dos EUA, observou que, entre 1990 e 2008, a globalização exportou o equivalente a 1,2 bilhão de toneladas de emissões de carbono por ano do mundo desenvolvido para nações em desenvolvimento.

Cálculos com critérios estritamente geográficos dão a impressão de que os países industriais avançados conseguiram estabilizar suas emissões de carbono.

Mas eles apenas transferiram o aumento para fora das suas fronteiras. As emissões de carbono criadas pelo consumo dos americanos são cerca de 8% superiores às emissões produzidas nos EUA, de acordo com os cientistas do Projeto Global do Carbono. Por outro lado, cerca de um quinto das emissões da China são de produtos consumidos fora de suas fronteiras.

A União Europeia, satisfeita com seus resultados ambientais nos cálculos habituais, com base no lugar onde o carbono é emitido, parece menos virtuosa sob uma lente baseada no consumo. Em 2011, os europeus emitiram apenas 3,6 bilhões de toneladas de CO2, mas 4,8 bilhões de toneladas foram jogados na atmosfera para a produção das coisas que os europeus consumiram.

Aqui está o dilema. A abordagem habitual, a qual está sendo considerada para contabilizar o custo do carbono “comercializado”, consistiria em taxar as emissões registradas nas fronteiras. Não surpreende que países exportadores, como a China, não gostem dessa abordagem.

Um estudo recente corroborou a imposição de um imposto de carbono sobre as importações. Mas “a China tem tudo a perder”, disse GlenPeters, do Centro para o Clima Internacional e a Pesquisa Ambiental, em Oslo. “Se a China trouxesse isso para as negociações, estaria permitindo que os EUA e Europa regulamentassem as exportações chinesas.”

Outra pesquisa concluiu que a imposição de uma penalidade na fronteira incentivaria a China e outros países em desenvolvimento a tributarem suas próprias emissões de carbono -ficando com o dinheiro- em vez de deixar que outros as tributem. Mas, se o mundo quiser evitar uma mudança climática catastrófica, alguém -em algum lugar- deve arcar com o custo de consumir menos carbono. E ninguém está se voluntariando.

http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/fsp/newyorktimes/149511-paises-desenvolvidos-exportam-emissoes-de-carbono.shtml

Up the Financier: Studying the California Carbon Market (AAA, Anthropology and Environment Society Blog)

27/01/2014UncategorizedCapitalismo, Clima, Economia, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Matemática, Mudanças climáticas, Política, Previsãorenzotaddei

Posted on January 26, 2014

ENGAGEMENT co-editor Chris Hebdon catches up with University of Kentucky geographer Patrick Bigger.

Patrick Bigger at the Chicago Board of Trade

How would you explain your dissertation research on the California carbon market?

At the broadest level, my research is about understanding how a brand new commodity market tied to environmental improvement is brought into the world, and then how it functions once it is in existence. Taking as a starting point Polanyi’s (1944) observation that markets are inherently social institutions, my work sorts though the social, geographical, and ideological relationships that are being mobilized in California and brought from across the world to build the world’s second largest carbon market. And those constitutive processes and practices are no small undertaking.

Making a multi-billion dollar market from scratch is a process that entails the recruitment and hiring of a small army of bureaucrats and lawyers, the creation of new trading and technology firms, the involvement of offset developers and exchange operators who had been active in other environmental commodities markets, and learning from more than fifty years of environmental economics and the intellectual work of think tanks and NGOs. There are literally tens of thousands of hours of people’s time embodied in the rule-making process, which result in texts (in the form of regulatory documents) that profoundly influence how California’s economy is performed every day. These performances range from rice farmers considering how much acreage to sow in the Sacramento Delta to former Enron power traders building new trading strategies based on intertemporal price differences of carbon futures for different compliance periods in California’s carbon market.

My work uses ethnographic methods such as participant-observation in public rule-making workshops and semi-structured interviews with regulators, industry groups, polluters, NGOs, and academics to try to recreate the key socio-geographical relationships that have had the most impact on market design and function. It’s about how regulatory and financial performances are intertwined, as events in the market (and in other financial markets, most notably the deregulated electric power market in California) are brought back to bear on rule-making, and then how rule-making impacts how the market and the associated regulated industrial processes are enacted. And the key thing is that there isn’t some isolated cabal of carbon’s ‘masters of the universe’ pulling the strings––it’s bureaucrats in cubicles, academics writing books, and offset developers planting trees out there making a market. And they’re people you can go observe and talk with.

Who are buying and selling these carbon credits?

That’s a trickier question than it seems. Most of the credits (aka allowances) are effectively created out of thin air by the California Air Resources board which then distributes them via either free allocation or by auction to anyone who requests authorization to bid. A significant proportion of those are given away directly to regulated industries to ease their transition to paying for their carbon output. Another way the auction works is that electric utilities are given almost all the credits they need to fulfill their obligation, but they are required to sell (consign) those permits in the auction, while they are typically also buyers. This is to prevent windfall profits, like what happened in the EU, for the electric utilities. The utilities must return the value of what they make selling their permits at auction to ratepayers, which they have done to the tune of $1.5 billion so far.

More to the spirit of the question though, it’s a pretty big world. Literally anyone can buy California Carbon on the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), based in Chicago. From what I’ve been told, a lot of allowances pass through Houston because there is a major agglomeration of energy traders there, and carbon is often bundled into transactions like power purchase agreements that are traded over-the-counter (OTC). There’s an interesting division in who buys their credits where––companies that must comply with climate regulations tend to buy through the auction, while people trading for presumably speculative purposes tend to buy on the exchange. This isn’t even getting into who produces, sells, and buys carbon offsets, which is another market entirely unto itself. To attempt to be succinct, I’d say there is a ‘carbon industry’ in the same sense that Leigh Johnson (2010) talks about a ‘risk industry’; a constellation of brokers, lawyers, traders, insurers, and industrial concerns, and the size of these institutional actors range from highly specialized carbon traders to the commodities desk at transnational investment banks.

Would you be able to outline some ways your research could affect public policy? And how is it in dialogue with environmental justice literature and engaged scholarship?

There are a number of ways that my work could be taken up by policy makers, though to be clear I did not set out to write a dissertation that would become a how-to-build-a-carbon-market manual. Just being around regulators and market interlocutors has provided insights into the most challenging aspects to market creation and maintenance, like what sorts of expertise a bureaucracy needs, how regulators can encourage public participation in seemingly esoteric matters, or the order which regulator decisions need to be made. Beyond the nuts-and-bolts, there’s a fairly substantial literature on ‘fast policy transfer’ in geography that critiques the ways certain kinds of policy become wildly popular and are then plopped down anywhere regardless of geographical and political-economic context; I am interested in contributing to that literature because California’s carbon market was specifically designed to ‘travel’ through linkages with other sub-national carbon markets. I would also note that there are aspects of what I’m thinking about that problematize the entire concept of the marketization of nature in ways that would also be applicable to the broader ecosystem service literature and the NGOs and regulators who are trying to push back against that paradigm.

As far as the EJ literature is concerned, I’ll admit to having a somewhat fraught relationship. I set out to do a project on the economic geography of environmental finance, not to explicitly document the kinds injustices that environmental finance has, or has the potential, to produce. As a result some critics have accused me of being insufficiently justice-y. I’d respond by noting that my work is normative, even if it isn’t framed in the language of environmental justice; it certainly isn’t Kuhnian normal science. But EJ arguments, if they are any good, do depend on empirical grounding and I would hope that my work provides that.

“I’d be really happy if scholars of other markets could find parallels to my work that demonstrated that all markets, not just environmental ones, were as much about the state as they are about finance.”

Your advisor Morgan Robertson has written about “oppositional research,” and research “behind enemy lines,” drawing on his experience working inside the Environmental Protection Agency. What has oppositional research meant for you?

I think about it as using ethnographic methods to poke and prod at the logics and practices that go into building a carbon market. I think for Morgan it was more about the specific problems and opportunities of being fully embedded in an institution whose policies you want to challenge. That position of being fully ‘inside’ isn’t where I’m at right now, and it’s a difficult position to get into either because you just don’t have access, because the researcher doesn’t want to or isn’t comfortable becoming a full-fledged insider, or because academics often just don’t have time to do that sort research. It’s also contingent on what sort of conversational ethnographic tact you want to take––when you’re fully embedded you lose the option of performing the research space as a neophyte, which can be a very productive strategy. One thing that I will mention is that oppositional research is based on trust. You must have established some rapport with your research participants before you challenge them head-on, or they may just walk away and then you’ve done nothing to challenge their practices or world view, you’ve potentially sewn ill will with future research participants, and you won’t get any of the interesting information that you might have otherwise.

How about the method of “studying up”?

For starters, the logistics of ‘studying up’ (Nader 1969) are substantially different than other kinds of fieldwork. There’s lots of downtime (unless you’re in a situation where you’ve got 100% access to whatever you’re studying, e.g. having a job as a banker or regulator) because there aren’t hearings or rule-making workshops everyday, or even every week, and the people making the market are busy white-collar people with schedules. I feel like I’ve had a really productive week if I can get 3 interviews done.

Beyond the logistics, one of the most challenging parts of studying a regulatory or financial process you’re not fully onboard with is walking the line between asking tough questions of your research participants and yet not alienating them. It has been easy for me to go in the other direction as well––even though I think carbon markets are deeply problematic and emblematic of really pernicious global trends toward the marketization of everything, I really like most of my research participants. They’re giving me their time, they tell me fascinating stories, and they’ve really bent over backward to help me connect with other people or institutions it never would have occurred to me to investigate. And that can make it tough to want to challenge them during interviews. After a while, it’s also possible to start feeling you’re on the inside of the process, at least as far as sharing a language and being part of a very small community. There aren’t many people in the world that I can have a coffee with and make jokes about one company’s consistently bizarre font choices in public comments documents. So even though the market feels almost overwhelmingly big in one sense, it’s also very intimate in another. I’m still working out how to write a trenchant political-economic critique with a much more sympathetic account of regulatory/market performance. Even many guys in the oil-refining sector are deeply concerned about climate change.

Would you ever take a job in a carbon trading firm?

Absolutely. There’s a rich literature developing that gets into the nuts and bolts of many aspects of finance, including carbon trading in the social studies of finance/cultural economics that overlaps with scholarship in critical accounting and even work coming out of some business schools. Some of those folks, like Ekaterina Svetlova (see especially 2012), have worked or done extended participant observation in the financial institutions that are being unpacked in broader literatures around performative economics and have provided useful critiques or correctives that is helping this literature to mature.

However, much of this work is subject to the same pitfalls as other work in the social studies of finance, especially the sense that scholars ‘fall in love’ with the complexity of their research topic and the ingenuity of their research participants qua coworkers and ultimately fail to link them back to meaningful critiques of the broader world. All that said, I’m not sure I’ve got the chops to work in finance. I’d be more interested in, and comfortable with, working in the environmental and economic governance realm where I could see, on a daily basis, how the logics of traders meet the logics of regulation and science.

What advice would you give to scholars who may do research on carbon markets in the future?

Get familiar with the language and logics of neoclassical economics. Really familiar. Take some classes. If you’re studying neoliberal environmental policy, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that regulation is shot through with the logics of market triumphalism at a level that just reading David Harvey (2003, 2005) probably wouldn’t prepare you for. A little engineering, or at least familiarity with engineers, wouldn’t be amiss either.

On a really pragmatic level, if you can get access, get familiar with being in an office setting if you haven’t spent much time in one. Being in a new kind of space can be really stressful and if you’re not comfortable in your surroundings you might not be getting the most out of your interviews.

If you’re studying a carbon market specifically, take the time to understand how the electricity grid works. I lost a lot of time sitting through workshops that were well over my head dealing with how the electric power industry would count its carbon emissions. I would have gotten much more out of them if I’d had even a cursory understanding of how the electricity gets from the out-of-state coal-fired power plant to my toaster.

Don’t expect to just pop in-and-out of fieldwork. Make yourself at home. Take some time to figure out what the points of tension are. That’s not to say you must do an ‘E’thnography, but taking the time at the beginning to understand the playing field will make it easier to understand the maneuvering later.

Read the specialist and general press every single day. Set up some news aggregator service to whatever market or regulation you’re looking at. It’s what your participants will be reading, and if they aren’t then you’ll really look like you know what you’re doing.

What are broad implications of your research?

I think starting to come to grips on the creation, from nothing, of a commodity market worth more than a billion dollars could have all sorts of impacts I can’t even imagine. I’d be really happy if scholars of other markets could find parallels to my work that demonstrated that all markets, not just environmental ones, were as much about the state as they are about finance, and not just in the way that Polanyi wrote about them. I’d also like to help people think through the relationship between the economic structures that people build, and then how they inhabit them through economic ideology, the performance of that ideology and their modern representation, the economic model. In some ways this is reopening the structure-agency debates that have been simmering for a long time. I also want to provide more grist for the mill in terms of unpacking variegated neoliberalisms––there are quite a few examples I’ve run across in my work where discourses about the efficiencies of markets run up against either therealpolitik of institutional inertia or perceived risks to the broader economy (which can be read as social reproduction).

In terms of policy, I hope that regulatory readers of my work will think about the relative return on investment (if I can appropriate a financial concept) in deploying market-based environmental policy as opposed to direct regulation, particularly around climate change. We’re in a situation that demands urgency to curb the worst impacts of carbon pollution, so it is of the utmost importance that the state take dramatic action, and soon. That said, wouldn’t it be interesting if this carbon market ended up accomplishing its goals? If it does, then I hope my work would take on different kinds of significance.

* * *

Harvey, David. 2003. The New Imperialism. New York: Oxford University Press.

Harvey, David. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. New York: Oxford University Press.

Johnson, Leigh. 2010. Climate Change and the Risk Industry: The Multiplication of Fear and Value. Richard Peet, Paul Robbins and Michael Watts, eds. Global Political Ecology. London: Routledge.

Nader, Laura. 1969. Up the Anthropologist: Perspectives Gained from Studying Up. Dell Hymes, ed. Reinventing Anthropology. New York: Random House.

Polanyi, Karl. 1944. The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon.

Svetlova, Ekaterina. 2012. On the Performative Power of Financial Models. Economy and Society 41(3): 418-434.

IPCC: próximos 15 anos serão vitais para frear aquecimento global (CarbonoBrasil)

25/01/2014Uncategorizedciência, Clima, Desastre, Incerteza, IPCC, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

20/1/2014 – 12h54

por Jéssica Lipinski , do CarbonoBrasil

Foto: Wikimedia commons

Rascunho do novo relatório da entidade afirma que evitar as piores consequências das mudanças climáticas custará até 4% da produção econômica mundial, valor que aumentará se demorarmos para agir.

Diversos veículos da imprensa internacional divulgaram nos últimos dias dados do próximo relatório do Painel Intergovernamental sobre Mudanças Climáticas (IPCC), que será publicado oficialmente apenas em abril.

De acordo com essas informações, o que o IPCC destaca é que a menos que o mundo aja agora para frear as emissões de gases do efeito estufa (GEEs), os efeitos negativos do aquecimento global representarão enormes desafios para a humanidade ainda neste século, tornando-se cada vez mais caros e difíceis de serem resolvidos.

Segundo o documento, manter o aquecimento global dentro de limites considerados toleráveis, algo perto de dois graus Celsius, vai exigir investimentos bilionários, grandes reduções nas emissões de GEEs e soluções tecnológicas caras e complexas para retirar tais gases da atmosfera.

Tudo isso deve ser feito nos próximos 15 anos, caso contrário será ainda mais difícil lidar com a questão. “Adiar a mitigação até 2030 aumentará os desafios… e reduzirá as opções”, alerta o sumário do relatório.

O estudo aponta que uma das principais razões para o aumento das emissões é o crescimento econômico baseado na queima de fontes de energia fóssil, como o carvão e o petróleo, atividade que estima-se que deve crescer nas próximas décadas.

Por isso, a pesquisa indica que as emissões de dióxido de carbono devem ser reduzidas de 40% a 70% até 2050 para que a meta de dois graus Celsius de aquecimento estipulada pela ONU seja atendida.

Isso significa que os governos terão que apoiar e utilizar uma série de tecnologias para retirar o CO2 da atmosfera, como a captura e armazenamento de carbono (CCS) e o plantio de mais florestas.

O relatório também sugere que, para limitar o aquecimento global de forma significativa, serão necessários investimentos da ordem de US$ 147 bilhões por ano até 2029 em fontes de energia alternativa, como eólica, solar e nuclear.

Ao mesmo tempo, investimentos em energias fósseis teriam que cair em US$ 30 bilhões por ano, enquanto bilhões de dólares anuais teriam que ser gastos na melhoria da eficiência energética em setores importantes como transporte, construção e indústria.

O documento, contudo, afirma que o caminho para mitigar as mudanças climáticas não será nada fácil, visto que vai em direção contrária do que está acontecendo atualmente. De acordo com o estudo, as emissões globais subiram, em média, 2,2% ao ano entre 2000 e 2010, quase o dobro em relação ao ritmo do período de 1970 a 2000, que era de 1,3% ao ano.

“A crise econômica global em 2007-2008 reduziu as emissões temporariamente, mas não mudou a tendência”, diz o relatório.

Além disso, o combate ao aquecimento global custaria 4% da produção econômica mundial, e exigiria uma diminuição gradativa no consumo de bens e serviços: entre 1% e 4% até 2030, entre 2% e 6% até 2050 e entre 2% e 12% até 2100.

“Sem esforços explícitos para reduzir as emissões de gases do efeito estufa, os fatores fundamentais do crescimento das emissões devem persistir”, afirma o estudo.

Outro problema que a pesquisa aponta é que as emissões de países desenvolvidos estão sendo transferidas para nações emergentes, ou seja, a suposta redução de emissões de alguns países ricos é na verdade menor do que se imagina.

Desde 2000, as emissões de carbono para China e outras economias emergentes mais do que dobrou para quase 14 gigatoneladas por ano, mas destas, cerca de duas gigatoneladas foram da produção de bens para a exportação.

“Uma parcela crescente das emissões de CO2 da queima de combustíveis fósseis em países em desenvolvimento é liberada da produção de bens e serviços exportados, principalmente de países de renda média-alta para países de renda alta”, colocou o documento.

Esse estudo é o terceiro documento da quinta avaliação do IPCC sobre o que se sabe sobre as causas, efeitos e futuro das mudanças climáticas.

Em setembro de 2013, o painel divulgou a primeira parte da avaliação, que confirma com 95% de certeza a influência humana sobre o aquecimento global.

O segundo relatório, sobre os impactos das mudanças climáticas, será concluído e divulgado em março, no Japão. Este terceiro será finalizado e divulgado em abril, na Alemanha. Um documento final, sintetizando as três partes, deve ser lançado em outubro deste ano.

Os cientistas do painel concordaram em comentar o estudo assim que ele estiver finalizado. “É um trabalho em progresso, e estamos ansiosos para discuti-lo quando ele for finalizado, em abril”, observou Jonathan Lynn, porta-voz do IPCC, em uma entrevista por telefone à Bloomberg.

* Publicado originalmente no site CarbonoBrasil.

Get Used to Heat Waves: Extreme El Nino Events to Double (Science Daily)

25/01/2014UncategorizedClima, Desastre, Incerteza, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

Jan. 19, 2014 — Extreme weather events fueled by unusually strong El Ninos, such as the 1983 heatwave that led to the Ash Wednesday bushfires in Australia, are likely to double in number as our planet warms.

Bush fires (stock photo). The latest research based on rainfall patterns, suggests that extreme El Niño events are likely to double in frequency as the world warms leading to direct impacts on extreme weather events worldwide. (Credit: © Dusan Kostic / Fotolia)

An international team of scientists from organizations including the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science (CoECSS), the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and CSIRO, published their findings in the journal Nature Climate Change.

“We currently experience an unusually strong El Niño event every 20 years. Our research shows this will double to one event every 10 years,” said co-author, Dr Agus Santoso of CoECSS.

“El Nino events are a multi-dimensional problem, and only now are we starting to understand better how they respond to global warming,” said Dr Santoso. Extreme El Niño events develop differently from standard El Ninos, which first appear in the western Pacific. Extreme El Nino’s occur when sea surface temperatures exceeding 28°C develop in the normally cold and dry eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. This different location for the origin of the temperature

increase causes massive changes in global rainfall patterns.

“The question of how global warming will change the frequency of extreme El Niño events has challenged scientists for more than 20 years,” said co-author Dr Mike McPhaden of US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“This research is the first comprehensive examination of the issue to produce robust and convincing results,” said Dr McPhaden.

The impacts of extreme El Niño events extend to every continent across the globe.

The 1997-98 event alone caused $35-45 US billion in damage and claimed an estimated 23,000 human lives worldwide.

“During an extreme El Niño event countries in the western Pacific, such as Australia and Indonesia, experienced devastating droughts and wild fires, while catastrophic floods occurred in the eastern equatorial region of Ecuador and northern Peru,” said lead author, CSIRO’s Dr Wenju Cai

In Australia, the drought and dry conditions induced by the 1982-83 extreme El Niño preconditioned the Ash Wednesday Bushfire in southeast Australia, leading to 75 fatalities.

To achieve their results, the team examined 20 climate models that consistently simulate major rainfall reorganization during extreme El Niño events. They found a substantial increase in events from the present-day through the next 100 years as the eastern Pacific Ocean warmed in response to global warming.

“This latest research based on rainfall patterns, suggests that extreme El Niño events are likely to double in frequency as the world warms leading to direct impacts on extreme weather events worldwide.”

“For Australia, this could mean summer heat waves, like that recently experienced in the south-east of the country, could get an additional boost if they coincide with extreme El Ninos,” said co-author, Professor Matthew England from CoECSS.

Journal Reference:

Wenju Cai, Simon Borlace, Matthieu Lengaigne, Peter van Rensch, Mat Collins, Gabriel Vecchi, Axel Timmermann, Agus Santoso, Michael J. McPhaden, Lixin Wu, Matthew H. England, Guojian Wang, Eric Guilyardi, Fei-Fei Jin.Increasing frequency of extreme El Niño events due to greenhouse warming. Nature Climate Change, 2014; DOI:10.1038/nclimate2100

Climate Change Research Is Globally Skewed (Science Daily)

24/01/2014Uncategorizedciência, Clima, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

Jan. 22, 2014 — The supply of climate change knowledge is biased towards richer countries — those that pollute the most and are least vulnerable to climate change — and skewed away from the poorer, fragile and more vulnerable regions of the world. That creates a global imbalance between the countries in need of knowledge and those that build it. This could have implications for the quality of the political decisions countries and regions make to prevent and adapt to climate change, warn the researchers behind the study from the University of Copenhagen.

Climate change research, shown here by number of publications, primarily concerns countries that are less vulnerable to climate change and have a higher emission of CO2. The countries are also politically stable, less corrupt, and have a higher investment in education and research. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Copenhagen)

“80 % of all the climate articles we examined were published by researchers from developed countries, although these countries only account for 18 % of the world’s population. That is of concern because the need for climate research is vital in developing countries. It could have political and societal consequences if there are regional shortages of climate scientists and research to support and provide contextually relevant advice for policy makers in developing countries,” says Professor Niels Strange from the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, University of Copenhagen, which is supported by the Danish National Research Foundation.

Together with PhD student Maya Pasgaard from the Department of Food and Resource Economics at the University of Copenhagen, Niels Strange analysed over 15,000 scientific papers on climate research from 197 countries. The analysis clearly shows that the research is biased towards countries that are wealthier, better educated, more stable and less corrupt, emit the most carbon, and are less vulnerable to climate change.

As an example, the study shows that almost 30 % of the total number of publications concerns the United States of America, Canada and China, while India is the only highly vulnerable country in the top 10 list. However, Greenland and small island states like the Seychelles and the Maldives that are generally considered vulnerable, also find their way into the top 10 list if it is calculated per capita.

The content of climate studies is also skewed

The study shows that not only the authorship, but also the choice of topic in climate research, is geographically skewed:

Articles from Europe and North America are more often biased towards issues of climate change mitigation, such as emission reductions, compared with articles from the southern hemisphere. In contrast, climate research from Africa and South and Latin America deals more with issues of climate change adaptation and impacts such as droughts and diseases compared to Europe.

“The tendency is a geographical bias where climate knowledge is produced mainly in the northern hemisphere, while the most vulnerable countries are found in the southern hemisphere. The challenge for the scientific community is to improve cooperation and knowledge sharing across geographical and cultural barriers, but also between practitioners and academics. Ultimately, it will require financial support and political will, if we as a society are to address this imbalance in the fight against climate change,” says Maya Pasgaard. The study was recently published online in the journal Global Environmental Change.

Journal Reference:

M. Pasgaard, N. Strange. A quantitative analysis of the causes of the global climate change research distribution. Global Environmental Change, 2013; 23 (6): 1684 DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2013.08.013

An insider’s story of the global attack on climate science (The Conversation)

24/01/2014UncategorizedCapitalismo, Clima, Economia, Incerteza, Mudanças climáticas, Negação, Previsãorenzotaddei

23 January 2014, 6.40am AEST

Stormy weather hits New Zealand’s capital, Wellington. Flickr.com/wiifm69 (Sean Hamlin)

A recent headline – Failed doubters trust leaves taxpayers six-figure loss – marked the end of a four-year epic saga of secretly-funded climate denial, harassment of scientists and tying-up of valuable government resources in New Zealand.It’s likely to be a familiar story to my scientist colleagues in Australia, the UK, USA and elsewhere around the world.But if you’re not a scientist, and are genuinely trying to work out who to believe when it comes to climate change, then it’s a story you need to hear too. Because while the New Zealand fight over climate data appears finally to be over, it’s part of a much larger, ongoing war against evidence-based science.

From number crunching to controversy

In 1981 as part of my PhD work, I produced a seven-station New Zealand temperature series, known as 7SS, to monitor historic temperature trends and variations from Auckland to as far south as Dunedin in southern New Zealand.A decade later, in 1991-92 while at the NZ Meteorological Service, I revised the 7SS using a new homogenisation approach to make New Zealand’s temperature records more accurate, such as adjusting for when temperature gauges were moved to new sites.

The Kelburn Cable Car trundles up into the hills of Wellington. Shutterstock/amorfati.art

For example, in 1928 Wellington’s temperature gauge was relocated from an inner suburb near sea level up into the hills at Kelburn, where – due to its higher, cooler location – it recorded much cooler temperatures for the city than before.With statistical analysis, we could work out how much Wellington’s temperature has really gone up or down since the city’s temperature records began back in 1862, and how much of that change was simply due to the gauge being moved uphill. (You can read more about re-examining NZ temperatures here.) So far, so uncontroversial.But then in 2008, while working for a NZ government-owned research organisation, theNational Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), we updated the 7SS. And we found that at those seven stations across the country, from Auckland down to Dunedin, between 1909 and 2008 there was a warming trend of 0.91°C.Soon after that, things started to get heated.The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, linked to a global climate change denial group, the International Climate Science Coalition, began to question the adjustments I had made to the 7SS.And rather than ever contacting me to ask for an explanation of the science, as I’ve tried to briefly cover above, the Coalition appeared determined to find a conspiracy.

“Shonky” claims

The attack on the science was led by then MP for the free market ACT New Zealand party, Rodney Hide, who claimed in the NZ Parliament in February 2010 that:

NIWA’s raw data for their official temperature graph shows no warming. But NIWA shifted the bulk of the temperature record pre-1950 downwards and the bulk of the data post-1950 upwards to produce a sharply rising trend… NIWA’s entire argument for warming was a result of adjustments to data which can’t be justified or checked. It’s shonky.

Mr Hide’s attack continued for 18 months, with more than 80 parliamentary questions being put to NIWA between February 2010 and July 2011, all of which required NIWA input for the answers.The science minister asked NIWA to re-examine the temperature records, which required several months of science time. In December 2010, the results were in. After the methodology was reviewed and endorsed by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, it was found that at the seven stations from Auckland to Dunedin, between 1909 and 2008 there was a warming trend of 0.91°C.That is, the same result as before.But in the meantime, before NIWA even had had time to produce that report, a new line of attack had been launched.

Off to court

In July 2010, a statement of claim against NIWA was filed in the High Court of New Zealand, under the guise of a new charitable trust: the New Zealand Climate Science Education Trust (NZCSET). Its trustees were all members of the NZ Climate Science Coalition.The NZCSET challenged the decision of NIWA to publish the adjusted 7SS, claiming that the “unscientific” methods used created an unrealistic indication of climate warming.The Trust ignored the evidence in the Meteorological Service report I first authored, which stated a particular adjustment methodology had been used. The Trust incorrectly claimed this methodology should have been used but wasn’t.In July 2011 the Trust produced a document that attempted to reproduce the Meteorological Service adjustments, but failed to, instead making lots of errors.On September 7 2012, High Court Justice Geoffrey Venning delivered a 49-page ruling, finding that the NZCSET had not succeeded in any of its challenges against NIWA.

The NZ weather wars in the news. The New Zealand Herald

The judge was particularly critical about retired journalist and NZCSET Trustee Terry Dunleavy’s lack of scientific expertise.Justice Venning described some of the Trust’s evidence as tediously lengthy and said “it is particularly unsuited to a satisfactory resolution of a difference of opinion on scientific matters”.

Taxpayers left to foot the bill

After an appeal that was withdrawn at the last minute, late last year the NZCSET was ordered to pay NIWA NZ$89,000 in costs from the original case, plus further costs from the appeal.But just this month, we have learned that the people behind the NZCSET have sent it into liquidation as they cannot afford the fees, leaving the New Zealand taxpayer at a substantial, six-figure loss.Commenting on the lost time and money involved with the case, NIWA’s chief executive John Morgan has said that:

On the surface it looks like the trust was purely for the purpose of taking action, which is not what one would consider the normal use of a charitable trust.

This has been an insidious saga. The Trust aggressively attacked the scientists, instead of engaging with them to understand the technical issues; they ignored evidence that didn’t suit their case; and they regularly misrepresented NIWA statements by taking them out of context.Yet their attack has now been repeatedly rejected in Parliament, by scientists, and by the courts.The end result of the antics by a few individuals and this Trust is probably going to be a six-figure bill for New Zealanders to pay.My former colleagues have had valuable weeks tied up with wasted time in defending these manufactured allegations. That’s time that could have profitably been used investigating further what is happening with our climate.But there is a bigger picture here too.

Merchants of doubt

Doubt-mongering is an old strategy. It is a strategy that has been pursued before to combat the ideas that cigarette smoking is harmful to your health, and it has been assiduously followed by climate deniers for the past 20 years.One of the best known international proponents of such strategies is US think tank, the Heartland Institute.

The first in a planned series of anti-global warming billboards in the US, comparing “climate alarmists” with terrorists and mass murderers. The campaign was canned after a backlash. The Heartland Institute

Just to be clear: there is no evidence that the Heartland Institute helped fund the NZ court challenge. In 2012, one of the Trustees who brought the action against NIWA said Heartland had not donated anything to the case.

However, Heartland is known to have been active in NZ in the past, providing funding to theNZ Climate Science Coalition and a related International Coalition, as well as financially backing prominent climate “sceptic” campaigns in Australia.

An extract from a 1999 letter from the Heartland Institute to tobacco company Philip Morris.University of California, San Francisco, Legacy Tobacco Documents Library

The Heartland Institute also has a long record ofworking with tobacco companies, as the letter on the right illustrates. (You can read that letter and other industry documents in full here. Meanwhile, Heartland’s reply to critics of its tobacco and fossil fuel campaigns is here.)

Earlier this month, the news broke that major tobacco companies will finally admit they “deliberately deceived the American public”, in “corrective statements”that would run on prime-time TV, in newspapers and even on cigarette packs.

It’s taken a 15-year court battle with the US government to reach this point, and it shows that evidence can trump doubt-mongering in the long run.

A similar day may come for those who actively work to cast doubt on climate science.

Industry Awakens to Threat of Climate Change (New York Times)

24/01/2014UncategorizedCapitalismo, Clima, Economia, Incerteza, Mudanças climáticas, Previsão, Secarenzotaddei

A Coke bottling plant in Winona, Minn. The company has been affected by global droughts. Andrew Link/Winona Daily News, via Associated Press

By CORAL DAVENPORT

JAN. 23, 2014

WASHINGTON — Coca-Cola has always been more focused on its economic bottom line than on global warming, but when the company lost a lucrative operating license in India because of a serious water shortage there in 2004, things began to change.

Today, after a decade of increasing damage to Coke’s balance sheet as global droughts dried up the water needed to produce its soda, the company has embraced the idea of climate change as an economically disruptive force.

“Increased droughts, more unpredictable variability, 100-year floods every two years,” said Jeffrey Seabright, Coke’s vice president for environment and water resources, listing the problems that he said were also disrupting the company’s supply of sugar cane and sugar beets, as well as citrus for its fruit juices. “When we look at our most essential ingredients, we see those events as threats.”

Coke reflects a growing view among American business leaders and mainstream economists who see global warming as a force that contributes to lower gross domestic products, higher food and commodity costs, broken supply chains and increased financial risk. Their position is at striking odds with the longstanding argument, advanced by the coal industry and others, that policies to curb carbon emissions are more economically harmful than the impact of climate change.

“The bottom line is that the policies will increase the cost of carbon and electricity,” said Roger Bezdek, an economist who produced a report for the coal lobby that was released this week. “Even the most conservative estimates peg the social benefit of carbon-based fuels as 50 times greater than its supposed social cost.”

Some tycoons are no longer listening.

At the Swiss resort of Davos, corporate leaders and politicians gathered for the annual four-day World Economic Forum will devote all of Friday to panels and talks on the threat of climate change. The emphasis will be less about saving polar bears and more about promoting economic self-interest.

In Philadelphia this month, the American Economic Association inaugurated its new president, William D. Nordhaus, a Yale economist and one of the world’s foremost experts on the economics of climate change.

“There is clearly a growing recognition of this in the broader academic economic community,” said Mr. Nordhaus, who has spent decades researching the economic impacts of both climate change and of policies intended to mitigate climate change.

In Washington, the World Bank president, Jim Yong Kim, has put climate change at the center of the bank’s mission, citing global warming as the chief contributor to rising global poverty rates and falling G.D.P.’s in developing nations. In Europe, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Paris-based club of 34 industrialized nations, has begun to warn of the steep costs of increased carbon pollution.

Nike, which has more than 700 factories in 49 countries, many in Southeast Asia, is also speaking out because of extreme weather that is disrupting its supply chain. In 2008, floods temporarily shut down four Nike factories in Thailand, and the company remains concerned about rising droughts in regions that produce cotton, which the company uses in its athletic clothes.

“That puts less cotton on the market, the price goes up, and you have market volatility,” said Hannah Jones, the company’s vice president for sustainability and innovation. Nike has already reported the impact of climate change on water supplies on its financial risk disclosure forms to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Both Nike and Coke are responding internally: Coke uses water-conservation technologies and Nike is using more synthetic material that is less dependent on weather conditions. At Davos and in global capitals, the companies are also lobbying governments to enact environmentally friendly policies.

But the ideas are a tough sell in countries like China and India, where cheap coal-powered energy is lifting the economies and helping to raise millions of people out of poverty. Even in Europe, officials have begun to balk at the cost of environmental policies: On Wednesday, the European Union scaled back its climate change and renewable energy commitments, as high energy costs, declining industrial competitiveness and a recognition that the economy is unlikely to rebound soon caused European policy makers to question the short-term economic trade-offs of climate policy.

In the United States, the rich can afford to weigh in. The California hedge-fund billionaire Thomas F. Steyer, who has used millions from his own fortune to support political candidates who favor climate policy, is working with Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, and Henry M. Paulson Jr., a former Treasury secretary in the George W. Bush administration, to commission an economic study on the financial risks associated with climate change. The study, titled “Risky Business,” aims to assess the potential impacts of climate change by region and by sector across the American economy.

“This study is about one thing, the economics,” Mr. Paulson said in an interview, adding that “business leaders are not adequately focused on the economic impact of climate change.”

Also consulting on the “Risky Business” report is Robert E. Rubin, a former Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration. “There are a lot of really significant, monumental issues facing the global economy, but this supersedes all else,” Mr. Rubin said in an interview. “To make meaningful headway in the economics community and the business community, you’ve got to make it concrete.”

Last fall, the governments of seven countries — Colombia, Ethiopia, Indonesia, South Korea, Norway, Sweden and Britain — created the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate and jointly began another study on how governments and businesses can address climate risks to better achieve economic growth. That study and the one commissioned by Mr. Steyer and others are being published this fall, just before a major United Nations meeting on climate change.

Although many Republicans oppose the idea of a price or tax on carbon pollution, some conservative economists endorse the idea. Among them are Arthur B. Laffer, senior economic adviser to President Ronald Reagan; the Harvard economist N. Gregory Mankiw, who was economic adviser to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign; and Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the head of the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank, and an economic adviser to the 2008 presidential campaign of Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican.

“There’s no question that if we get substantial changes in atmospheric temperatures, as all the evidence suggests, that it’s going to contribute to sea-level rise,” Mr. Holtz-Eakin said. “There will be agriculture and economic effects — it’s inescapable.” He added, “I’d be shocked if people supported anything other than a carbon tax — that’s how economists think about it.”

Uma (in)certa antropologia

An (un)certain anthropology

Arquivo da tag: Mudanças climáticas

Welcome to the Thirsty West (Slate)

The Ocean Is Coming (Truthout)

The March of Anthropogenic Climate Disruption (Truthout)

During a recent interview, a climate change scientist, while discussing ACD-induced drought plaguing the US Southwest, said that he had now become hesitant to use the word drought, because “the word drought implies that there is an ending.”

More bad news comes from a recently published study showing that Earth’s vegetation could be saturated with carbon by the end of this century, and would thus cease acting as a break on ACD.

Systemic problems require systemic solutions, and thinking the radical change necessary to preserve what life remains on the planet is possible without the complete removal of the system that is killing us, is futile.

Mudança climática já é parte dos modelos estratégicos centrais de empresas globais (Ecopolítica)

Volcanoes contribute to recent global warming ‘hiatus’ (Science Daily)

Better way to make sense of ‘Big Data?’ (Science Daily)

Hershey’s Is Hiring a Chocolate Futurist (The Atlantic)

James Lovelock: ‘enjoy life while you can: in 20 years global warming will hit the fan’ (The Guardian)

Física dos Sistemas Complexos pode prever impactos das mudanças ambientais (Fapesp)

Brasil já vive a crise climática global (Estadão)

California drought similar to historic drought in Texas (Science Daily)

Modelo pode ajudar a prever como espécies da Mata Atlântica responderão às mudanças climáticas (Fapesp)

Extremos climáticos mostram que futuro já chegou (O Globo)

Casa Branca anuncia a criação de sete centros climáticos (O Globo)

Uma lei para salvar o planeta (O Globo)

Nature can, selectively, buffer human-caused global warming, say scientists (Science Daily)

Influência humana é clara no aquecimento “inequívoco” do planeta, diz IPCC (Portal Terra)

Países desenvolvidos exportam emissões de carbono (Folha de São Paulo)

Up the Financier: Studying the California Carbon Market (AAA, Anthropology and Environment Society Blog)

IPCC: próximos 15 anos serão vitais para frear aquecimento global (CarbonoBrasil)

Get Used to Heat Waves: Extreme El Nino Events to Double (Science Daily)

Climate Change Research Is Globally Skewed (Science Daily)

An insider’s story of the global attack on climate science (The Conversation)

From number crunching to controversy

“Shonky” claims

Off to court

Taxpayers left to foot the bill

Merchants of doubt

Industry Awakens to Threat of Climate Change (New York Times)