Wiki – Focal point (game theory) – Wikipedia – 27/01/2011 –http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory) “In game theory, a focal point (also called Schelling point) is a solution that people will tend to use in the absence of communication, because it seems natural, special or relevant to them. The concept was introduced by the Nobel Prize winning American economist Thomas Schelling in his book The Strategy of Conflict (1960). In this book (at p. 57), Schelling describes “focal point[s] for each person’s expectation of what the other expects him to expect to be expected to do.” This type of focal point later was named after Schelling.”
M. Hajer (1993) – Discourse coalitions and the institutionalization of practice: the case of acid-rain in Britain – En: F. Fischer and J. Forester (Eds.) – The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning – Duke University Press “Discourse provides the tools with which problems are constructed. Discourse at the same time forms the context in which phenomena are understood and thus predetermines the definition of the problem. Discourse structuration occurs when a discourse starts to dominate the way a society conceptualizes the world.”
Conference of the Parties 15 – Copenhagen Accord – United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – 18/12/2009 – http://unfccc.int/home/items/5262.php “To achieve the ultimate objective of the Convention to stabilize greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, we shall, recognizing the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be below 2 degrees Celsius, on the basis of equity and in the context of sustainable development, enhance our long-term cooperative action to combat climate change. We recognize the critical impacts of climate change and the potential impacts of response measures on countries particularly vulnerable to its adverse effects and stress the need to establish a comprehensive adaptation programme including international support.”
Badar Alam Iqbal and Farha Naaz Ghauri – Cancun Accord: Will It Be a Reality or Proved To Be a Myth? – Proceedings of the 1st International Technology, Education and Environment Conference, 08/09/2011 – Department of Commerce, Aligarh Muslim University; Department of Commerce, B.A.M University Aurungabad(Maharashtra), India – http://www.hrmars.com/admin/pics/231.pdf “The main reason for the optimism is the importance of the Accord lies in the fact that for the first time, a United Nations document has acknowledged that global warming must be kept below 2 degree Celsius compared to the pre-industrial temperature.”
Convención Marco de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático – Rio de Janeiro, 1992 – http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/convsp.pdf “Artículo 2: … lograr la estabilización de las concentraciones de gases de efecto invernadero en la atmósfera a un nivel que impida interferencias antropogénicas peligrosas en el sistema climático; ese nivel debería lograrse en un plazo suficiente para permitir que los ecosistemas se adapten naturalmente al cambio climático, asegurar que la producción de alimentos no se vea amenazada y permitir que el desarrollo económico prosiga de manera sostenible.”
International Energy Agency – World Energy Outlook 2008 – International Energy Agency – http://www.iea.org/w/bookshop/add.aspx?id=353 “Without a change in policy, the world is on a path for a rise in global temperature of up to 6°C… the OECD countries alone cannot put the world onto the path to 450-ppm trajectory, even if they were to reduce their emissions to zero … It is uncertain whether the scale of the transformation envisaged is even technically achievable, as the scenario assumes broad deployment of technologies that have not yet been proven. The technology shift, if achievable, would certainly be unprecedented in scale and speed of deployment.”
Fiona Harvey and Jim Pickard – Stern takes bleaker view on warming – Financial Times, 16/04/2008 –http://www.ft.com/cms/s/d3e78456-0bde-11dd-9840-0000779fd2ac “The Stern report on climate change underestimated the risks of global warming, its author said on Wednesday, and should have presented a gloomier view of the future. “We underestimated the risks … we underestimated the damage associated with temperature increases … and we underestimated the probabilities of temperature increases,” Lord Stern, former chief economist at the World Bank, told the Financial Times on Wednesday.”
Paul Baer and Dan Kammen – Climate scientists debate with prime minister – Environmental Research Web, 19/05/2009 –http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/opinion/39126 “I need your assistance to push this process in the right direction, and in that respect, I need fixed targets and certain figures, and not too many considerations on uncertainty and risk and things like that.”
Declaration of the leaders – The major economies forum on energy and climate 09/07/2009 – Major Economies Forum (2009) – http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Declaration-of-the-Leaders-the-Major-Economies-Forum-on-Energy-and-Climate “We recognize the scientific view that the increase in global average temperature above pre-industrial levels ought not to exceed 2 degrees C. In this regard and in the context of the ultimate objective of the Convention and the Bali Action Plan, we will work between now and Copenhagen, with each other and under the Convention, to identify a global goal for substantially reducing global emissions by 2050. Progress toward the global goal would be regularly reviewed, noting the importance of frequent, comprehensive, and accurate inventories.”
Mark Hertsgaard – A scary new climate study will have you saying ‘Oh, shit!’ – Grist – 13/10/2009 –http://www.grist.org/article/2009-10-13-a-scary-new-climate-study-will-have-you-saying-oh-shit/ “G-8 leaders agreed in July to limit the global temperature rise to 2 ºC (3.6 F) above the pre-industrial level at which human civilization developed. Schellnhuber, addressing the Santa Fe conference, joked that the G-8 leaders agreed to the 2 ºC limit “probably because they don’t know what it means.”
Outcome of the work of the Ad Hoc Working Group on long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention – United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 10/12/2010 – http://unfccc.int/files/meetings/cop_16/application/pdf/cop16_lca.pdf “Also recognizes the need to consider, in the context of the first review, as referred to in paragraph 138 below, strengthening the long-term global goal on the basis of the best available scientific knowledge, including in relation to a global average temperature rise of 1.5°C.”
James Hansen et al (2008) – Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim? – The Open Atmospheric Science Journal 2:217-231 – NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute –http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TargetCO2_20080407.pdf – 10 autores “If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm, but likely less than that.”
William Hare (2003) – Assessment of Knowledge on Impacts of Climate Change – Contribution to the Specification of Art. 2 of the UNFCCC: Impacts on Ecosystems, Food Production, Water and Socio-economic Systems – WBGU – Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research – http://www.wbgu.de/fileadmin/templates/dateien/veroeffentlichungen/sondergutachten/sn2003/wbgu_sn2003_ex01.pdf “Food Production 2-3ºC – 2ºC: increasing risk, with the risk increasing from the 2050s to the 2080s; 4-5 fold risk increase from the 2050s to the 2080s (for the same temperature); Many developed countries may still be gaining, although warning that this may not be robust for all regions or even in aggregate terms; Agricultural production in developed countries finely balanced between the effects of increased temperature and changes in precipitation. 2.5 ºC warming by the 2080s, the Parry et al. (1999) analysis indicates 45-55 million extra people at risk of hunger, with the number at risk rising very rapidly with temperature. 2-2.5°C above pre-industrial – Significant regional risks to food production, with varying degrees of severity – South Asia, southern Africa and parts of Russia. Above 2-2.5°C above pre-industrial – Risks grow in China, Africa, South Asia and Russia ´- risks in China severe if CO2 fertilization of crops is low but small to modest if CO2 fertilization is high.”
Convención marco de las Naciones Unidas sobre el cambio climático – Organización de las Naciones Unidas – 09/09/1992 – New York “Artículo 2: El objetivo último de la presente Convención y de todo instrumento jurídico conexo que adopte la Conferencia de las Partes, es lograr, de conformidad con las disposiciones pertinentes de la Convención, la estabilización de las concentraciones de gases de efecto invernadero en la atmósfera a un nivel que impida interferencias antropógenas peligrosas en el sistema climático. Ese nivel debería lograrse en un plazo suficiente para permitir que los ecosistemas se adapten naturalmente al cambio climático, asegurar que la producción de alimentos no se vea amenazada y permitir que el desarrollo económico prosiga de manera sostenible.”
Timothy Luke (1999) – A rough road out of Rio: The right-wing reaction against global environmentalism (In: Nicholas Low, ed. Consuming cities: The urban environment in the global economy after the Rio declaration. New York: Routledge) – En: Nicholas Low et al (Eds) – Consuming cities: The urban environment in the global economy after the Rio declaration – Routledge New York “These intense nationalist reactions to the Earth Summit in the United States add a distressing quality to post Cold War politics. They also are unlikely to fade any time in the near future… More liberal observers may discount these right wing reactions as the passing signs of a temporary fringe movement of extremists which really poses no serious threat to the emergent transnational regime on the environment. This analysis is wishful hinking. The sources of this right wing reaction have been building for a generation, and the greater geopolitical forces that once kept them at bay now have changed decisively.”
J. Murray Mitchell Jr. (1977) – The Changing Climate – En: Studies in Geophysics: Energy and Climate – National Research Council, 1977 – National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12024 “Can man establish which, if any, alternative scenarios would lead to ‘unacceptable’ climatic consequences and are therefore to be avoided? … What should the atmospheric carbon dioxide content be over the next century or two to achieve an optimum global climate?”
Spencer R. Weart (2003) – The Discovery of Global Warming – Harvard University Press, 228 págs. – ISBN 0-674-01157-0 – Director of the Center for History of Physics, American Institute of Physics – http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm
P.H. Gleick et al (2010) – Climate Change and the Integrity of Science – Science 328:689-690 doi:10.1126/science.328.5979.689 – U.S. National Academy of Sciences – http://www.pacinst.org/climate/climate_statement.pdf – 255 autoores “Climate change now falls into this category: there is compelling, comprehensive, and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten our societies and the ecosystems on which we depend. Many recent assaults on climate science and, more disturbingly, on climate scientists by climate change deniers, are typically driven by special interests or dogma, not by an honest effort to provide an alternative theory that credibly satisfies the evidence.”
Michael Oppenheimer (2005) – Defining Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference: The Role of Science, the Limits of Science – Risk Analysis 25:1399-1407 doi:10.1111/j.1539-6924.2005.00687.x – 15/11/2005 – WoodrowWilson School and Department of Geosciences, Princeton University
“Defining ‘dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system’ in the context of Article 2 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) presents a complex challenge for those developing long-term climate policy. Natural science has a key role to play in quantifying vulnerabilities of elements of the Earth system and estimating the risks from a changing climate. But attempts to interpret Article 2 will inevitably draw on understanding from social science, psychology, law, and ethics.
Convención marco de las Naciones Unidas sobre el cambio climático – http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/conveng.pdf “La naturaleza mundial del cambio climático requiere la cooperación más amplia posible de todos los países y su participación en una respuesta internacional efectiva y apropiada, de conformidad con sus responsabilidades comunes pero diferenciadas, sus capacidades respectivas y sus condiciones sociales y económicas”
Suraje Desai et al (2003) – Defining and experiencing dangerous climate change – Climatic Change 64:11–25 doi:10.1023/B:CLIM.0000024781.48904.45 – Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research – http://www.uea.ac.uk/~e120782/papers/dangerous.pdf – 6 autores “We argue that internal definitions of dangerous climate change – ‘danger as experienced’ – warrants as much attention as external definitions – ‘danger as defined’. Because less attention has been given to internal definitions, we have suggested some methods for considering this. The reflexivity between external and internal definitions in particular suggests participatory integrated assessment as a tool of unique insight for identifying what level of climate change might be regarded as dangerous by different communities and constituencies.”
Daniel Kahneman and AmosTversky (1979) – Prospect Theory: An analysis of decision under risk – Econometrica 47:263-292 – http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~camerer/Ec101/ProspectTheory.pdf “People generally discard components that are shared by all prospects under consideration. This tendency, called the isolation effect, leads to inconsistent preferences when the same choice is presented in different forms. An alternative theory of choice is developed, in which value is assigned to gains and losses rather than to final assets and in which probabilities are replaced by decision weights. The value function is normally concave for gains, commonly convex for losses, and is generally steeper for losses than for gains. Decision weights are generally lower than the corresponding probabilities, except in the range of low probabilities. Overweighting of low probabilities may contribute to the attractiveness of both insurance and gambling.”
Stephen M. Gardiner (2006) – A Perfect Moral Storm: Climate Change, Intergenerational Ethics and the Problem of Moral Corruption – Environmental Values 15:397-413 – Department of Philosophy and Program on Values in Society, University of Washington – http://hettingern.people.cofc.edu/Environmental_Philosophy_Sp_09/Gardner_Perfect_Moral_Storm.pdf “I shall call the first ‘the Global Storm’. This corresponds to the dominant understanding of the climate change problem; and it emerges from a predominantly spatial interpretation of the three characteristics … The Global Storm emerges from a spatial reading of these characteristics; but I would argue that another, even more serious problem arises when we see them from a temporal perspective. I shall call this ‘the Intergenerational Storm’ … The final storm I want to mention is constituted by our current theoretical ineptitude. We are extremely ill-equipped to deal with many problems characteristic of the long-term future. Even our best theories face basic and often severe difficulties addressing basic issues such as scientific uncertainty, intergenerational equity, contingent persons, nonhuman animals and nature. But climate change involves all of these matters and more.”
Michael Oppenheimer and Annie Petsonk (2004) – Article 2 of the UNFCCC: Historical Origins, Recent Interpretations – Climatic Change 73:175–226 doi:10.1007/s10584-005-0434-8 – Woodrow Wilson School and Department of Geosciences, Princeton University – http://www.princeton.edu/step/people/faculty/michael-oppenheimer/recent-publications/Article-2-of-the-UN-Framework-Convention-on-Climate-Change.pdf – “Nota 2: Lack of discussion of Article 2 reflects in part the objections of the Group of 77 developing countries and China to anything that might lead to emissions caps for them (Corfee-Morlot andH¨ohne, 2003); the United States has supported the G-77 position in declaring such discussions “premature” (PewCenter, 2002; Peel, K., personal communication). Neither the 2002 Delhi Declaration (UNFCCC Eighth Conference, 2002), nor the decisions adopted by the Ninth Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC in Milan in 2003 makes any explicit reference to Article 2 (Corfee-Morlot and Höhne, 2003; UNFCCC COP-9 Decisions, 2003).”
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (2008) – Global warming: Stop worrying, start panicking? – Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences PNAS 105:14239-14240 doi:10.1073/pnas.0807331105 – 23/09/2008 – Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research «Also, by construction, the IPCC vessel tends to steer clear of value judgments that might be easily converted into ‘‘policy-prescriptive’’ statements. The downside of this well-meaning attitude is that the 2007 report does not, for instance, make a systematic attempt to characterize what dangerous anthropogenic interference (DAI) with the natural climate system is all about. Again, all of the relevant information is implicitly contained in the IPCC tomes, most notably in chapter 19 of the Working Group II report (3) (see also ref. 4). Yet even that chapter shies away from updating the ‘‘burning embers diagram’’ (5), which provides a direct scientific way to gauge the political target of limiting global mean temperature (GMT) rise to less than 2°C (6) against avoided climate impacts.»
Climate Change and Article 2 of the UNFCCC – What is dangerous climate change? – Initial Results of a Symposium on Key Vulnerable Regions – 14/12/2004 – http://www.european-climate-forum.net/fileadmin/ecf-documents/publications/articles-and-papers/what-is-dangerous-climate-change.pdf “Crossing such critical levels or thresholds is likely to result in widespread, often irreversible, damage and could therefore be termed ‘dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system’. However, even global temperatures rises below 2 °C cannot be considered as ‘safe’, given the large uncertainty in some of the thresholds.”
Wallace S. Broecker (1997) – Thermohaline Circulation, the Achilles Heel of Our Climate System: Will Man-Made CO2 Upset the Current Balance? – Science 278:1582-1588 doi:10.1126/science.278.5343.1582 “The record in ancient sedimentary rocks suggests that similar abrupt changes plagued the Earth at other times. The trigger mechanism for these reorganizations may have been the antiphasing of polar insolation associated with orbital cycles. Were the ongoing increase in atmospheric CO2 levels to trigger another such reorganization, it would be bad news for a world striving to feed 11 to 16 billion people.”
Matthias Hofmann and Stefan Rahmstorf (2009) – On the stability of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation – Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences PNAS 106:20584-20589 doi:10.1073/pnas.0909146106 – Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research “We find that a characteristic freshwater hysteresis also exists in the predominantly wind-driven, low-diffusion limit of the AMOC. However, the shape of the hysteresis changes, indicating that a convective instability rather than the advective Stommel feedback plays a dominant role. We show that model errors in the mean climate can make the hysteresis disappear … we discuss evidence that current models systematically overestimate the stability of the AMOC.”
E. Hawkins et al (2011) – Bistability of the Atlantic overturning circulation in a global climate model and links to ocean freshwater transport – Geophysical Research Letters 38, L10605 doi:10.1029/2011GL047208 – 25/05/2011 – NCAS-Climate, University of Reading – http://www.met.rdg.ac.uk/~ed/publications/hawkins_etal_2011_hysteresis.pdf «Here we demonstrate AMOC bistability in the response to freshwater perturbations in the FAMOUS AOGCM – the most complex AOGCM to exhibit such behaviour to date. The results also support recent suggestions that the direction of the net freshwater transport at the southern boundary of the Atlantic by the AMOC may be a useful physical indicator of the existence of bistability. We also present new estimates for this net freshwater transport by the AMOC from a range of ocean reanalyses which suggest that the Atlantic AMOC is currently in a bistable regime, although with large uncertainties. More accurate observational constraints, and an improved physical understanding of this quantity, could help narrow uncertainty in the future evolution of the AMOC and to assess the risk of a rapid AMOC collapse.»
Marina Hirota et al (2011) – Global Resilience of Tropical Forest and Savanna to Critical Transitions – Science 334:232-235 DOI:10.1126/science.1210657 – Department of Aquatic Ecology and Water Quality Management, Wageningen University – 4 autores “We analyzed data on the distribution of tree cover in Africa, Australia, and South America to reveal strong evidence for the existence of three distinct attractors: forest, savanna, and a treeless state. Empirical reconstruction of the basins of attraction indicates that the resilience of the states varies in a universal way with precipitation. These results allow the identification of regions where forest or savanna may most easily tip into an alternative state, and they pave the way to a new generation of coupled climate models.”
Salvador Pueyo et al (2010) – Testing for criticality in ecosystem dynamics: the case of Amazonian rainforest and savanna fire – Ecology Letters 13:793–802 doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2010.01497.x – Institut Català de Ciències del Clima – 6 autores “We test for two critical phenomena in Amazonian ecosystems: self-organized criticality (SOC) and critical transitions. SOC is often presented in the complex systems literature as a general explanation for scale invariance in nature. In particular, this mechanism is claimed to underlie the macroscopic structure and dynamics of terrestrial ecosystems. These would be inextricably linked to the action of fire, which is conceived as an endogenous ecological process. We show that Amazonian savanna fires display the scale-invariant features characteristic of SOC but do not display SOC. The same is true in Amazonian rainforests subject to moderate drought. These findings prove that there are other causes of scale invariance in ecosystems. In contrast, we do find evidence of a critical transition to a megafire regime under extreme drought in rainforests; this phenomenon is likely to determine the time scale of a possible loss of Amazonian rainforest caused by climate change.”
Eric A. Davidson et al (2012) – The Amazon basin in transition – Nature 481:321-328 doi:10.1038/nature10717 – The Woods Hole Research Center – 5 autores “Although the basin-wide impacts of land use and drought may not yet surpass the magnitude of natural variability of hydrologic and biogeochemical cycles, there are some signs of a transition to a disturbance-dominated regime. These signs include changing energy and water cycles in the southern and eastern portions of the Amazon basin.”
Michael Oppenheimer and Richard Alley (2005) – Ice Sheets, Global Warming, and Article 2 of the UNFCCC. An Editorial Essay – Climatic Change 68:257-267 doi:10.1007/s10584-005-5372-y – Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and Department of Geosciences Princeton University “Without additional constraints on greenhouse gas emissions, it appears that both WAIS and GIS, particularly the latter, eventually could become vulnerable to complete disintegration due to forcing that may accumulate over this century. Yet the timescales of their potential contribution to sea level rise are unknown and may remain so for decades … But if emissions of the greenhouse gases are not reduced while uncertainties are being resolved, there is a risk of making ice-sheet disintegration nearly inevitable. Then avoidance of global calamity may depend on strategies like pumping carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere (Lackner, 2003). But it may not be possible to deploy such “overshoot” approaches fast enough (O’Neill and Oppenheimer, 2004) if rapid ice sheet process are already a reality.”
David G. Vaughan (2008) – West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapse – the fall and rise of a paradigm – Climatic Change 91:65-79 DOI 10.1007/s10584-008-9448-3 – British Antarctic Survey, Natural Environment Research Council – http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/769/1/The_return_of_a_paradigm_16_-_nora.pdf “In less than a decade, we have become more certain that there is a dynamic connection between the extent floating ice shelves and the glaciers that feed them, and observational studies have shown us a bewildering pattern of ice-sheet change across much of the Amundsen Sea sector of WAIS. Indeed, all of the elements of the positive-feedback cycle that would, according to Mercer, lead inexorably to collapse, have now been observed on Pine Island Glacier: thinning of the ice shelf, inland migration of the grounding line, acceleration of the main trunk of the glacier, and thinning rates on the interior basins. In short, if thirty years ago Mercer and his colleagues had described the changes they would have expected as diagnostic of emergent collapse, this is the list that they might have written. Furthermore, the changes are occurring in the area of WAIS, which was always considered to be most vulnerable to collapse.”
Neil Ross et al (2012) – Steep reverse bed slope at the grounding line of the Weddell Sea sector in West Antarctica – Nature Geoscience doi:10.1038/ngeo1468 – School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh – 10 autores “The bed of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is, in places, more than 1.5 km below sea level1, 2. It has been suggested that a positive ice-loss feedback may occur when an ice sheet’s grounding line retreats across a deepening bed1, 2, 3. Applied to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, this process could potentially raise global sea level4 by more than 3 m. Hitherto, attention has focussed on changes at the Siple Coast5, 6, 7 and Amundsen Sea embayment8, 9, 10 sectors of West Antarctica. Here, we present radio-echo sounding information from the ice sheet’s third sector, the Weddell Sea embayment, that reveals a large subglacial basin immediately upstream of the grounding line. The reverse bed slope is steep, with about 400 m of decline over 40 km. The basin floor is smooth and flat, with little small-scale topography that would delay retreat, indicating that it has been covered with marine sediment5, 11 and was previously deglaciated. Upstream of the basin, well-defined glacially carved fjords with bars at their mouths testify to the position of a former ice margin about 200 km inland from the present margin. Evidence so far suggests that the Weddell Sea sector of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has been stable, but in the light of our data we propose that the region could be near a physical threshold of substantial change.”
Jeff Ridley et al (2009) – Thresholds for irreversible decline of the Greenland ice sheet – Climate Dynamics doi 10.1007/s00382-009-0646-0 – Met Office Hadley Centre – http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2010/EGU2010-14154.pdf – 4 autores “Depending on the degree of warming and the sensitivity of the climate and the ice-sheet, this point of no return could be reached within a few hundred years, sooner than CO2 and global climate could revert to a pre-industrial state, and in that case global sea level rise of at least 1.3 m would be irreversible. An even larger irreversible change to sea level rise of 5 m may occur if ice sheet volume drops below half of its current size. The set of steady states depends on the CO2 concentration.”
T. Toniazzo et al (2004) – Climatic Impact of a Greenland Deglaciation and Its Possible Irreversibility – Journal of Climate 17:21-33 doi:10.1175/1520-0442(2004)017<0021:CIOAGD>2.0.CO;2- Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, Met Office – http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/ToniazzoEtAl2004.pdf “On the long-term average, there is no accumulation of snow. The implication of this result is that the removal of the Greenland ice sheet due to a prolonged climatic warming would be irreversible.”
Alexander Robinson et al (2012) – Multistability and critical thresholds of the Greenland ice sheet – Nature Climate Change doi:10.1038/nclimate1449 – Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research – 3 autores “We estimate that the warming threshold leading to a monostable, essentially ice-free state is in the range of 0.8–3.2 °C, with a best estimate of 1.6 °C. By testing the ice sheet’s ability to regrow after partial mass loss, we find that at least one intermediate equilibrium state is possible, though for sufficiently high initial temperature anomalies, total loss of the ice sheet becomes irreversible. Crossing the threshold alone does not imply rapid melting (for temperatures near the threshold, complete melting takes tens of millennia). However, the timescale of melt depends strongly on the magnitude and duration of the temperature overshoot above this critical threshold.”
Timothy M. Lenton et al (2008) – Tipping elements in the Earth’s climate system – Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences PNAS 105:1786-1793 doi:10.1073/pnas.0705414105 – School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia + Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research – http://www.pnas.org/content/105/6/1786.full.pdf – 7 autores “Society may be lulled into a false sense of security by smooth projections of global change. Our synthesis of present knowledge suggests that a variety of tipping elements could reach their critical point within this century under anthropogenic climate change. The greatest threats are tipping the Arctic sea-ice and the Greenland ice sheet, and at least five other elements could surprise us by exhibiting a nearby tipping point. This knowledge should influence climate policy, but a full assessment of policy relevance would require that, for each potential tipping element, we answer the following questions: Mitigation: Can we stay clear of crit? Adaptation: Can Fˆ be tolerated?”
Ayami Hayashiet al (2009) – Evaluation of global warming impacts for different levels of stabilization as a step toward determination of the long-term stabilization target – Climatic Change 98:87-112 doi:10.1007/s10584-009-9663-6 – 25/07/2009 – Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth (RITE), Japan – 5 autores “The world total population living in water-stressed basins (in which annual runoff per capita is less than 1000m3) will increase rapidly to 3.77 billion people in 2050 from 1.171 billion people in 1990 as a result of population growth, even if the annual water resources remain at 1990 levels … 1.4 billion people will experience an increase in the water stress in 2050 in terms of the world total … The global production potential of wheat and rice will increase in 2050, 2100 and 2150 for all emission pathways .. ”
Timothy M. Lenton (2011) – Beyond 2°C: redefining dangerous climate change for physical systems – Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 2:451–461 doi:10.1002/wcc.107 – 10/03/2011 – School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia “Some potential thresholds cannot be meaningfully linked to global temperature change, others are sensitive to rates of climate change, and some are most sensitive to spatial gradients of climate change. In some cases, the heterogeneous distributions of reflective (sulfate) aerosols, absorbing (black carbon) aerosols, and land use could be more dangerous than changes in globally well-mixed greenhouse gases.”
Martin Parry et al (2001) – Millions at risk: defining critical climate change threats and targets – Global Environmental Change 11:181–183 PII:S0959-3780(01)00011-5 – School of Environmental Sciences, Jackson Environment Institute, University of East Anglia – 10 autores – http://www.elsevier.com/framework_aboutus/pdfs/Millions_at_risk.pdf “Now we may argue, for example, that in order to keep damages below an agreed tolerable level (for example, a given number of additional people at risk) global temperature increases would need to be kept below a given amount; and emissions targets could then be developed to achieve that objective. Fourthly, it is clear that mitigation alone will not solve the problem of climate change.”
Gordon McGranahan, Deborah Balk and Bridget Anderson (2007) – The rising tide: assessing the risks of climate change and human settlements in low elevation coastal zones – Environment and Urbanization 19:17-37 doi:10.1177/0956247807076960 – International Institute for the Environment and Development (IIED), London; Institute for Demographic Research at the City University of New York (CUNY) and Associate Professor at Baruch College (CUNY), New York; Centre for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) at Columbia University, New York – 3 autores “In this paper, we undertake the first global review of the population and urban settlement patterns in the Low Elevation Coastal Zone (LECZ), defi ned here as the contiguous area along the coast that is less than 10 metres above sea level. Overall, this zone covers 2 per cent of the world’s land area but contains 10 per cent of the world’s population and 13 per cent of the world’s urban population. A disproportionate number of the countries with a large share of their population in this zone are small island countries, but most of the countries with large populations in the zone are large countries with heavily populated delta regions. On average, the Least Developed Countries have a higher share of their population living in the zone (14 per cent) than do OECD countries (10 per cent), with even greater disparities in the urban shares (21 per cent compared to 11 per cent). Almost twothirds of urban settlements with populations greater than 5 million fall, at least partly, in the zone.”
William D. Nordhaus and Joseph Boyer (2000) – Warming the World: Economic Models of Global Warming – The MIT Press – Yale University – Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) “This book presents in detail a pair of models of the economics of climate change. The models, called RICE-99 (for the Regional Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy) and DICE-99 (for the Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy), build on the authors’ earlier work, particularly their RICE and DICE models of the early 1990’s.”
Carlo C. Jaeger and Julia Jaeger (2010) – Three Views of Two Degrees – European Climate Forum – Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, European Climate Forum and Beijing Normal University; European Climate Forum – http://www.european-climate-forum.net/fileadmin/ecf-documents/publications/ecf-working-papers/jaeger__three-views-of-two-degrees__ecf-working-paper-2-2010.pdf “If we scholars claim that our quest for reliable knowledge is possible only because we restrict ourselves to “pure” facts, leaving value judgments aside, we implicitly suggest that the quest for reliable knowledge about ethical matters is illusory. And by then declaring that value judgments are a matter for policy, we foster the risk that policy becomes a meaningless power struggle, where debates do not generate insights but reproduce endless battles between various forms of fundamentalism and more or less sophisticated forms of cynicism.”
Carlo C. Jaeger and Julia Jaeger (2010) – Three Views of Two Degrees – European Climate Forum – Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, European Climate Forum and Beijing Normal University; European Climate Forum – http://www.european-climate-forum.net/fileadmin/ecf-documents/publications/ecf-working-papers/jaeger__three-views-of-two-degrees__ecf-working-paper-2-2010.pdf “If we scholars claim that our quest for reliable knowledge is possible only because we restrict ourselves to “pure” facts, leaving value judgments aside, we implicitly suggest that the quest for reliable knowledge about ethical matters is illusory. And by then declaring that value judgments are a matter for policy, we foster the risk that policy becomes a meaningless power struggle, where debates do not generate insights but reproduce endless battles between various forms of fundamentalism and more or less sophisticated forms of cynicism.”
Philip Shabecoff (1992) – Real Rio – The Environmental Journal 5, septiembre / octubre 1992
Timothy Luke (1999) – A rough road out of Rio: The right-wing reaction against global environmentalism (In: Nicholas Low, ed. Consuming cities: The urban environment in the global economy after the Rio declaration. New York: Routledge) – En: Nicholas Low et al (Eds) – Consuming cities: The urban environment in the global economy after the Rio declaration – Routledge New York “George H.W. Bush: «I am president of the United States, not the president of the world, and I’ll do what is best to defend the U.S. interests» (cited in Shabecoff, 1192:89).”
Robert Winnett – President George Bush: ‘Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter’ – The Daily Telegraph, 09/07/2008 – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/2277298/President-George-Bush-Goodbye-from-the-worlds-biggest-polluter.html “The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: «Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.» He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.”
Jean-Marie Robine et al (2007) – Report on excess mortality in Europe during summer 2003 – EU Community Action Programme for Public Health – Inserm, Health and Demography, CRLC, University of Montpellier – http://ec.europa.eu/health/ph_projects/2005/action1/docs/action1_2005_a2_15_en.pdf – 5 autores “In total, more than 80,000 additional deaths were recorded in 2003 in the twelve countries concerned by excess mortality compared to the 1998‐2002 period. Whereas 70,000 of these additional deaths occurred during the summer, still over 7,000 occurred afterwards. Nearly 45,000 additional deaths were recorded in August alone, as well as more than 11,000 in June, more than 10,000 in July and nearly 5,000 in September. The mortality crisis of early August extended over the two weeks between August 3rd and 16th. 15,000 additional deaths were recorded in the first week and nearly 24,000 in the second. The excess mortality in this second week reached the exceptional value of 96.5% in France and over 40% in Portugal, Italy, Spain and Luxembourg. Excess mortality exceeded 20% in Germany, Switzerland and Belgium and 10% in all the other countries.”
Le jour d’après – Wikipedia – Accedido: 12/05/2008 – http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Jour_d’apr%C3%A8s_(film,_2004) “Le Jour d’après est un film catastrophe fondé sur des hypothèses scientifiques mais dont certains points ont été exagérés. En effet, les événements se déroulent dans un délai extrêmement court dans le film (quelques jours) alors qu’en réalité, les scientifiques prévoient des changements climatiques sur plusieurs années, voire plusieurs siècles. Le producteur s’est toutefois démarqué au niveau des effets spéciaux.”
Thomas E. Bowman et al (2009) – Creating a Common Climate Language – Science 324:36-37 doi:10.1126/science.324.5923.36b – Climate Solutions Project Bowman Global Change Signal – 5 autores “We urge scientists and science journal editors to create a single, readily understood frame of reference for two critical concepts in climate science—atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and rising global temperatures—by using a standard unit of measure and a single temperature baseline. Specifically, because total anthropogenic forcing is the relevant policy measure (2, 3), we strongly recommend referencing atmospheric concentrations of all long-lived greenhouse gases as CO2-equivalent (CO2e), not only CO2. CO2e is the concentration of CO2 that would cause the same level of radiative forcing as a given mixture of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Moreover, because understanding total anthropogenic warming is important for assessing risk, we recommend referencing a standardized pre-industrial temperature baseline. Adopting these two references as elements of our common language will help reduce confusion that has been inadvertently caused by reporting results that appear to be similar.”
Rachel Warren et al (2011) – Increasing Impacts of Climate Change upon Ecosystems with Increasing Global Mean Temperature Rise – Climatic Change 106:141-177 doi:10.1007/s10584-010-9923-5 – Received: 07/10/2008; accepted: 16/06/2010; published online: 21/08/2010 – Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia – http://www.sysecol2.ethz.ch/pdfs/Wa152.pdf – 5 autores “Information on the climate change scenario simulated by each original study was converted to a common pre-industrial reference point for temperature. Studies often refer to baselines of pre-industrial (<1850), 1960–1990 mean, 1990, or “present day” (e.g. 1980–1999). In this study the temperature rise between pre-industrial and the 1960–1990 mean is taken as 0.3◦C and the temperature rise between pre-industrial and 1990 is taken as 0.6◦C (Houghton et al. 2001); whilst that from the mid 1970s to 1990 is taken as 0.2◦C (Houghton et al. 2001). Where studies report impacts as caused by a particular GCM simulation using the HadCM3 model, Table 7 of Arnell et al. (2004) was used to convert the temperatures to a common pre-industrial baseline.”
Goddard Institute for Space Studies – GLOBAL Land-Ocean Temperature Index in 0.01 degrees Celsius base period: 1951-1980 – National Aeronautics and Space Administration – Accedido: 20/05/2012 – http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt “Best estimate for absolute global mean for 1951-1980 is 14.0 deg-C or 57.2 deg-F, so add that to the temperature change if you want to use an absolute scale (this note applies to global annual means only, J-D and D-N !).”
Phil D. Jones et al (2012) – Hemispheric and large-scale land-surface air temperature variations: An extensive revision and an update to 2010 – Journal of Geophysics Research 117 D05127 doi:10.1029/2011JD017139 – Climatic Research Unit, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia + Department of Meteorology, Center of Excellence for Climate Change Research, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia – 6 autores “The inclusion of much additional data from the Arctic (particularly the Russian Arctic) has led to estimates for the Northern Hemisphere (NH) being warmer by about 0.1°C for the years since 2001.”
Colin P. Morice et al (2012) – Quantifying uncertainties in global and regional temperature change using an ensemble of observational estimates: The HadCRUT4 data set – Journal of Geophysical Research 117 D08101 doi:10.1029/2011JD017187 – Met Office Hadley Centre – 4 autores “Fitted linear trends in temperature anomalies are approximately 0.07 C/decade from 1901 to 2010 and 0.17 C/decade from 1979 to 2010 globally. Northern/southern hemispheric trends are 0.08/0.07 ºC/decade over 1901 to 2010 and 0.24/0.10 ºC/decade over 1979 to 2010. Linear trends in other prominent near-surface temperature analyses agree well with the range of trends computed from the HadCRUT4 ensemble members.”
Phil D. Jones et al (1999) – Surface air temperature and its changes over the past 150 years – Review of Geophysics 37:173–199 doi:10.1029/1999RG900002- Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia – http://seaice.apl.washington.edu/Papers/JonesEtal99-SAT150.pdf – 5 autores “The climatology indicates that the annual average surface temperature of the world is 14.0°C (14.6°C in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) and 13.4°C for the Southern Hemisphere). The annual cycle of global mean temperatures follows that of the land-dominated NH, with a maximum in July of 15.9°C and a minimum in January of 12.2°C.”
James Hansen et al (2012) – Global Temperature in 2011, Trends, and Prospects – Columbia University – NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies + Columbia University Earth Institute – http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2012/20120119_Temperature.pdf – 4 autores “The 12-month running mean (Figure 3a) provides a useful alternative measure of temperature change on the annual time scale, and 60-month (5-year) and 132-month (11-year) running means (Figure 3b) reduce the variability caused by the Southern Oscillation (El Nino-La Nina cycle) and the solar cycle. The current status of these running means (Figure 3) adds some weak evidence for the frequent assertion that the rate of global warming has been less in the 21st century than in the last two decades of the 20th century.”
Kevin E. Trenberth et al (2007) – Observations: Surface and Atmospheric Climate Change – En: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – National Center for Atmospheric Research – 12 autores líderes – http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch3.html “Note that for shorter recent periods, the slope is greater, indicating accelerated warming.”
John D. Sterman (2008) – Risk communication on climate: Mental models and mass balance – Science 322:532-533 doi:10.1126/science.1162574 – MIT Sloan School of Management – http://stonehousestandingcircle.ca/sites/default/files/papers/StermanPolicyForum081024%20(2).pdf “People often assess system dynamics using a patternmatching heuristic, assuming that the output of a system should “look like”—be positively correlated with—its inputs (12, 13). Although sometimes useful, correlational reasoning fails in systems with important accumulations. Since 1950, the U.S. federal budget deficit and national debt have risen dramatically and are highly correlated (r = 0.84, P < 0.0001) … Training in science does not prevent these errors.”
BerkeleyEarth: R Emulation of Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature – Cran.r project – Published online: 19/02/2012 – http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/BerkeleyEarth/index.html “A selection of functioned designed to emulate the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project. Version 1.2 includes only those function to import data.”
Robert Rohde et al (2011) – Berkeley Earth Temperature Averaging Process – Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature – Novim Group, Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project – http://www.berkeleyearth.org/Resources/Berkeley_Earth_Averaging_Process
“A new mathematical framework is presented for producing maps and large-scale averages of temperature changes from weather station data for the purposes of climate analysis.
Michael E. Mann and Jeffrey Park (1999) – Oscillatory Spatiotemporal Signal Detection in Climate Studies: A Multiple-Taper Spectral Domain Approach – Advances in Geophysics, Vol 41 – Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts; Department of Geology and Geophysics, Yale University – http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/articles/mtmsvd.pdf “In order to properly assess the potential impact of forcings external to the climate system (e.g., possible anthropogenic enhanced greenhouse forcing), it is essential that we understand the background of natural climate variability on which external influences may be superimposed.”
Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature – Financial Support – Accedido: 20/05/2012 – http://berkeleyearth.org/donors/
“DONORS: The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund ($20,000); William K. Bowes, Jr. Foundation ($100,000); Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research (created by Bill Gates) ($100,000); Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation ($150,000); The Ann & Gordon Getty Foundation ($50,000). We have also received funding from a number of private individuals, totaling $14,500 as of June 2011.”
Novim:Just Science – Accedido: 20/05/2012 – http://www.novim.org/about/executive-board “Michael Ditmore, George Ittner, Jim Knight, Simon Raab, Doug Troxel … George Ittner served President of the direct marketing company Territory Ahead from 2004-2010.”
Richard Black – Global warming ‘confirmed’ by independent study – BBC News, 21/10/2011 – Environment correspondent – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15373071 “The Berkeley Earth Project has used new methods and some new data, but finds the same warming trend seen by groups such as the UK Met Office and Nasa.”
Richard A. Muller (2011) – The Case Against Global-Warming Skepticism – The Wall Street Journal, 21/10/2011 – Professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley – http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204422404576594872796327348.html “There were good reasons for doubt, until now … now let me explain why you should not be a skeptic, at least not any longer.”
Ferran P. Vilar – La nueva estrategia del negacionismo climático-económico – Usted no se lo Cree, 25/10/2011 – https://ustednoselocree.com/2011/10/25/nueva-estrategia-negacionismo/ “Según algún punto de vista, la situación creada por la eyección y publicitación de este informe sería una buena noticia. Podría significar que, por fin, una cosa está realmente clara y ya vamos por el buen camino. Pero que alguien diga a estas alturas que el planeta se calienta, y que eso sea un notición, nos debe hacer sospechar que hay gato encerrado. Yo veo dos. El primero es la idea estratégica de solidificar su espacio “al otro lado de debate”, y el segundo la de dárselas de honestos.”
Glenn Tamblyn – Breaking News…The Earth is Warming… Still. A LOT – Skeptical Science, 16/02/2012 – http://www.skepticalscience.com/Breaking_News_The_Earth_is_Warming_Still_A_LOT.html “This graph from the National Oceanographic Data Centre, looking at Ocean Heat Content in the upper half of the ocean shows the following: … Roughly 5 x 1022 Joules since 2003. Since the IPCC’s graph above up to 2003 shows that most of the energy from global warming is in the oceans, to a first approximation, Ocean Heat Content change since then is going to be close enough to the Total Heat Content change. So, total heat content change from 1961 to 2011 – 50 years – is approximately 21 x 1022joules = 210.000.000.000.000.000.000.000 joules (a joule is 1 watt for 1 second. So a 100 watt light bulb will use 100 joules in 1 second) A BIG number but somewhat unreal. So how much heat is this. What could it do? What is it in the real world, where we don’t routinely look at numbers that big. That is HOW Big…? This is a rate of heating of 133 Terawatts. Or 0.261 Watts/m2. 133 Terrawatts is 2 Hiroshima bombs a second. Continually since 1961.”
Sydney Levitus et al (in press) – World ocean heat content and thermosteric sea level change (0-2000), 1955-2010 – Geophysical Research Letters doi:10.1029/2012GL051106 – National Oceanographic Data Center, NOAA – 11 autores “We have estimated an increase of 24×10^22 J representing a volume mean warming of 0.09°C of the 0-2000 m layer of the World Ocean. If this heat were instantly transferred to the lower 10 km of the global atmosphere it would result in a volume mean warming of this atmospheric layer by approximately 36°C (65°F).”
Simon F.B. Tett et al (1999) – Causes of twentieth-century temperature change near the Earth’s surface – Nature 399:569-572 doi:doi:10.1038/21164 – Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research – 5 autores “… the temperature changes over the twentieth century cannot be explained by any combination of natural internal variability and the response to natural forcings alone. Second, the recent warming, 0.25 K, can be explained by the response of the climate to anthropogenic changes in greenhouse-gas concentrations partly offset by cooling due to anthropogenic sulphate aerosols.”
Tim Barnet tet al (2005) – Detecting and Attributing External Influences on the Climate System: A Review of Recent Advances – Journal of Climate 18:1291-1314 doi:10.1175/JCLI3329.1 – International ad hoc Detection and Attribution Group: – http://www.cccma.ec.gc.ca/papers/ngillett/PDFS/idag.pdf – 12 autores “The evidence indicates that natural drivers such as solar variability and volcanic activity are at most partially responsible for the large-scale temperature changes observed over the past century, and that a large fraction of the warming over the last 50 yr can be attributed to greenhouse gas increases. Thus, the recent research supports and strengthens the IPCC Third Assessment Report conclusion that “most of the global warming over the past 50 years is likely due to the increase in greenhouse gases.”
Cynthia Rosenzweig et al (2008) – Attributing physical and biological impacts to anthropogenic climate change – Nature 453:353-358 doi:10.1038/nature06937 – NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia Center for Climate Systems Research – http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2008/2008_Rosenzweig_etal_1.pdf – 14 autores “… we conclude that anthropogenic climate change is having a significant impact on physical and biological systems globally and in some continents.”
Markus Huber and Reto Knutti (2012) – Anthropogenic and natural warming inferred from changes in Earth’s energy balance – Nature Climate Change 5:31-36 doi:10.1038/ngeo1327 – Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich – http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/huber11natgeo.pdf “Based on a massive ensemble of simulations with an intermediate-complexity climate model we demonstrate that known changes in the global energy balance and in radiative forcing tightly constrain the magnitude of anthropogenic warming … Our method is complementary to optimal fingerprinting attribution and produces fully consistent results, thus suggesting an even higher confidence that human-induced causes dominate the observed warming.”
Richard S.J. Tol (2006) – Europe’s long-term climate target: A critical evaluation – Energy Policy 35:424-432 – Research unit Sustainability and Global Change, Hamburg University and Centre for Marine and Atmospheric Science “The 0.1 ºC/decade target can be traced to the late 1980s, but then the trace vanishes. Apocryphal evidence [ref] holds that the 0.1 ºC/ decade target is appropriate for a plant species on the shores of a lake in North America. This study was never published, but mentioned at dinner during an early climate conference. Someone else repeated the information the next day in plenary, and an urban legend was born.”
Samuel Randalls (2010) – History of the 2 ºC climate target – Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 1:598-605 DOI:10.1002/wcc.62 – Department of Geography, University College London
“Legend has it that the targets emerged from a dinner conversation about unpublished work on plant species on the shores of a North American Lake, which was subsequently reported in a plenary conference session.”
Carlo C. Jaeger and Julia Jaeger (2011) – Three Views of Two Degrees – Regional Environmental Change 11 (Suppl 1):S15–S26 doi:10.1007/s10113-010-0190-9 – Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, European Climate Forum and Beijing Normal University; European Climate Forum “According to Tol (2007), the 2º target was first raised in a statement of the German Advisory Council for Global Change (WBGU 1995). Tol … denies this referring to Nordhaus (1991) … Figure 1, however, taken from the original paper of Nordhaus (1977) along with the corresponding quote from Nordhaus (1975, pp. 22–23) clarifies that the 2º target is indeed more than two decades older than Tol assumes.”
William D. Nordhaus (1975) – Can we control carbon dioxide? – International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis – June 1975 – Department of Economics, Yale University – http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Admin/PUB/Documents/WP-75-063.pdf – “As a first approximation, it seems reasonable to argue that the climatic effects of carbon dioxide should be kept within the normal range of long-term climatic variation. According to most sources the range of variation between distinct climatic regimes is in the order of ±5˚C, and at the present time the global climate is at the high end of this range. If there were global temperatures more than 2˚ or 3˚ above the current average temperature, this would take the climate outside of the range of observations which have been made over the last several hundred thousand years.”
William D. Nordhaus (1975) – Can we control carbon dioxide? – International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis – Department of Economics, Yale University – http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Admin/PUB/Documents/WP-75-063.pdf “Within a stable climatic regime, the range of variation of ± 1 °C is the normal variation: thus in the last 100 years a range of mean temperature has been 0.7°C. On the other hand, studies of the effects of carbon dioxide on global temperature indicate that a doubling in concentration would probably lead to an increase in surface temperature of between 0.6 and 2.4 oc. (see p.2 above).”
William D. Nordhaus (1976) – Strategies for the control of carbon dioxide – Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University – http://cowles.econ.yale.edu/P/cm/m26/m26-08.pdf “As a first approximation, it seems reasonable to argue that the climatic effects of carbon dioxide should be kept within the normal range of long-term climatic variation. According to most sources the range of variation between distinct climatic regimes is in the order of ±5˚C, and at the present time the global climate is at the high end of this range. If there were global temperatures more than 2˚ or 3˚ above the current average temperature, this would take the climate outside of the range of observations which have been made over the last several hundred thousand years. Within a stable climatic regime, such as the current interglacial, a range of variation of 2 ºC is the normal variation.”
William D. Nordhaus (1977) – Economic growth and climate: The Carbon Dioxide Problem – American Economic Review 67:341-346 – Cowles Foundation and Yale University – http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/carbondixoideproblem.pdf “Figura 1, pág. 342.”
William D. Nordhaus (1977) – Economic growth and climate: The Carbon Dioxide Problem – American Economic Review 67:341-346 – Cowles Foundation and Yale University – http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/carbondixoideproblem.pdf “The most careful study to date (S. Manabe and R.T: Wetherald) predicts that a doubling concentration of carbon dioxide would eventually lead to a global mean temperature increase of 3 ºC.”
William D. Nordhaus (1977) – Economic growth and climate: The Carbon Dioxide Problem – American Economic Review 67:341-346 – Cowles Foundation and Yale University – http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/carbondixoideproblem.pdf “A doubling of the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is a reasonable upper limit to impose at the present stage of knowledge.”
James E. Hansen and Makiko Sato (2012) – Climate Sensitivity Estimated From Earth’s Climate History – Columbia University – NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute – http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2012/20120508_ClimateSensitivity.pdf – “Our best estimate for the fast-feedback climate sensitivity from Holocene initial conditions is 3 ± 0.5°C for 4 W/m2 CO2 forcing (68% probability).”
Carlo C. Jaeger and Julia Jaeger (2011) – Three Views of Two Degrees – Regional Environmental Change 11 (Suppl 1):S15–S26 doi:10.1007/s10113-010-0190-9 – Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, European Climate Forum and Beijing Normal University; European Climate Forum “Note 2: In 2010 Nordhaus told the first author of the present paper that in the meantime he had literally forgotten his earlier contribution to the 2 target.”
Shardul Agrawala (1999) – Early science-policy interactions in climate change: lessons from the Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases – Global Environmental Change 9:157-169 doi:10.1016/S0959-3780(99)00003-5 – Science, Technology and Environmental Policy Program, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University “The US position shaped the deliberations at the Tenth WMO Congress in May 1987. A week later the WMO Executive Council Meeting passed a resolution requesting WMO and UNEP to jointly establish ‘an intergovernmental mechanism to carry out internationally coordinated scientific assessments of the magnitude, impact and potential timing of climate change’. In March 1988, WMO Secretary General Obasi formally invited national governments to participate in the ‘Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’ (IPCC). The IPCC held its Þrst session in November 1988.”
F.J. Rijsberman and R.J. Stewart, eds. (1990) – Targets and Indicators of Climate Change. Report of Working Group II of the Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases – Stockholm Environment Institute “In the first half of the next century a rise of global mean temperature would occur which is greater than any in man’s history … scientists and policymakers should begin active collaboration to explore the effectiveness of alternative policies and adjustments.”
Shardul Agrawala (1999) – Early science-policy interactions in climate change: lessons from the Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases – Global Environmental Change 9:157-169 doi:10.1016/S0959-3780(99)00003-5 – Science, Technology and Environmental Policy Program, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University “The US position shaped the deliberations at the Tenth WMO Congress in May 1987. A week later the WMO Executive Council Meeting passed a resolution requesting WMO and UNEP to jointly establish ‘an intergovernmental mechanism to carry out internationally coordinated scientific assessments of the magnitude, impact and potential timing of climate change’. In March 1988, WMO Secretary General Obasi formally invited national governments to participate in the ‘Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’ (IPCC). The IPCC held its Þrst session in November 1988.”
Alan D. Hecht and Dennis Tirpak (1995) – Framework agreement on climate change: a scientific and policy history – Climatic Change 29:371-402 doi:10.1007/BF01092424 – U.S. Environmental Protection Agency “The authors participated in this meeting and have a clear record of the discussion. We are asserting that an element of the U.S. support for the IPCC concept, at least by some agencies, was based on the view that the IPCC would slow down the push for a climate convention. The U.S. attitude toward a climate convention was reversed after the 1988 Presidential Election.”
Conference Statement – Statement on Implications for Global Security – World Conference on the Atmosphere: Implications for Global Security, Toronto, 30/06/1988 – http://www.cmos.ca/ChangingAtmosphere1988e.pdf “Stabilizing the atmospheric concentrations of CO2 is an imperative goal. It is currently estimate to require reductions of more than 50% from the present emission levels … Reduce CO2 emissions by approximately 20% of 1988 leves by the year 2005 as an initial global goal … Establish a World Atmosphere Fund, financed in part by a levy on fossil fuel consumption of industrialized countries … Increase funding to non-governmental organizations … Allocate financial support for environmental education … Emission targets ought to be the subject of an international treaty between the nations that take the first step.”
Shardul Agrawala (1999) – Early science-policy interactions in climate change: lessons from the Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases – Global Environmental Change 9:157-169 doi:10.1016/S0959-3780(99)00003-5 – Science, Technology and Environmental Policy Program, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University “It was also around 1988 that the US government began to flex its muscle on the international arena, although efforts in that direction had begun at least two years earlier … The US occupied a fairly unique and influential position in the climate debate during the 1980s. Scientifically, it had the most cumulative expertise in climate research and assessments … Politically, the US had a huge stake in the problem, being the biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Powerful fossil fuel lobbies with active support from a Republican White House were opposed to any kind of action on climate change”
Heil et al (1990) – Rates and limits of ecosystem change – En: Rijsberman FR Swart RJ eds. Targets and Indicators of Climate Change: Report of Working Group II of the Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases – Stockholm Environment Institute 60-77 “The traffic light system.”
Pier Vellinga and Rob Swart (1991) – The greenhouse marathon: A proposal for a global strategy – Climatic Change 18:vii-xii doi:10.1007/ “To stay within the ‘green’, the rate of change of the global mean temperature should not exceed 0,1 ºC per decade and that of sea level rise should not surpass 2 cm per decade. Furthermore, in absolute terms the change in global mean temperature should stay below 1 ºC above preindustrial levels and sea level rise below 20 cm above present levels. The light turns red … when the rate of climate change would exceed 0.2 ºC per decade and sea level rise would exceed 5 cm per decade. In absolute terms we are in the ‘red’ zone when the increase in global temperature is 2 ºC or more above preindustrial levels and sea level rise exceeds 50 cm.”
Robert J. Swart and Pier Vellinga (1994) – The ‘ultimate objective’ of the framework convention on climate change requires a new approach in climate change research – An Editorial – Climatic Change 26:343-349 doi:10.1007/BF01094401 – “This paper addresses the possible contribution of science to translate this rather vague and ambiguous objective into more practicable terms.”
10. Enquete-Kommission – Protecting the Earth: A Status Report with Recommendations for a New Energy Policy/Summary and Recommendations of the Third Report – Deutscher Bundestag, October 1990
1939th European Council meeting – Environment, Luxembourg, 26/06/1996 – European Union – http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=PRES/96/188&format=HTML&aged=1&language=ES&guiLanguage=es “El Consejo reconoce que, según el segundo informe del IPCC, la estabilización de las concentraciones atmosféricas de CO2 en un nivel igual al doble del nivel preindustrial, es decir, 550 ppm, exigirá que en última instancia la totalidad de las emisiones mundiales sea inferior al 50% del nivel actual de las mismas; dicho nivel de concentración ya provocará un aumento de la temperatura media mundial de aproximadamente 2 C por encima del nivel preindustrial. En vista del grave riesgo de dicho incremento y, en particular, del muy elevado ritmo de cambio, el Consejo considera que las temperaturas medias mundiales no deberían sobrepasar en más de 2 C las temperaturas preindustriales, por lo que los esfuerzos de reducción y limitación deberían orientarse hacia niveles de concentración inferiores a 550 ppm de CO2. ”
Angela Merkel (1995) – Conference of the Parties 1 – En: Bert Bolin (2007) – A History of the Science and Politics of Climate Change. The Role of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change – Cambridge University Press “In accordance with the principles of the Convention, particularly in view of the common but differentiated responsibility, we, the industrialised countries, must be the first to prove that we are bearing our responsibility in protecting the global climate. Only when we demonstrate this by convincingly taking the lead, can we demand actions from other countries regarding climate protection. After all, we are talking about preserving our single world, as we repeatedly stressed in Rio.”
Scenario for the derivation of global CO2 reduction targets and implementation strategies – Wissenschaftlicher Beirat der Bundesregierung Globale Umweltveränderungen (WBGU) – March 1995 – Statement on the occasion of the First Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change in Berlin – http://www.wbgu.de/fileadmin/templates/dateien/veroeffentlichungen/sondergutachten/sn1995/wbgu_sn1995_engl.pdf “Economists assume that resultant costs of climate change in the order of 3- 5% of annual GGP over a period of several decades would cause severe disruption of social conditions with far-reaching political consequences. (By way of illustration, one should note that the current annual volume of transfer payments from West to East Germany is about 5% of GNP).”
Carlo C. Jaeger and Julia Jaeger (2011) – Three Views of Two Degrees – Regional Environmental Change 11 (Suppl 1):S15–S26 doi:10.1007/s10113-010-0190-9 – Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, European Climate Forum and Beijing Normal University; European Climate Forum “Moreover, as we will see below, AGGG (1990) is another important step between Nordhaus (1975) and WBGU (1995). The real importance of the German advisory board—and specifically its later chairman, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber—in this matter lies elsewhere: by convincing Angela Merkel of the 2º target, it did indeed trigger the political process that fifteen years later led to the global visibility conferred to the 2º target by the G8, the Major Economies Forum, and the Conference of the Parties.”
Margaret Thatcher – Speech to the Royal Society – Prime Minister’s Office, 27/09/1988 – http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107346 “We are told that a warming effect of 1 ºC per decade would greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habit to cope. Such warming could cause accelerated melting of glacier ice and a consequent increase of the sea level of several feet over the next century . . . It is noteworthy that the five warmest years in a century of records have all been in the 1980s – though we may not have seen much evidence in Britain.”
Margaret Thatcher – Speech to the United Nations on Global Warming, 08/09/1989 – http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107817 “Mr President, the evidence is there. The damage is being done. What do we, the International Community, do about it? In some areas, the action required is primarily for individual nations or groups of nations to take … But the problem of global climate change is one that affects us all and action will only be effective if it is taken at the international level. It is no good squabbling over who is responsible or who should pay. Whole areas of our planet could be subject to drought and starvation if the pattern of rains and monsoons were to change as a result of the destruction of forests and the accumulation of greenhouse gases. We have to look forward not backward and we shall only succeed in dealing with the problems through a vast international, co-operative effort. Before we act, we need the best possible scientific assessment: otherwise we risk making matters worse. We must use science to cast a light ahead, so that we can move step by step in the right direction.”
Pieter Van Geel – 2632nd Council Meeting – Environment, Brussels – Council of the European Union, 20/12/2004 – http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=PRES/04/357&format=HTML&aged=1&language=EN&guiLanguage=en “RECONOCE que el cambio climático es uno de los mayores desafíos a los que se enfrenta la humanidad, que pudiera tener considerables repercusiones negativas medioambientales, económicas y sociales a escala mundial, y se cree que afectará negativamente al desarrollo sostenible y a las condiciones de vida de millones de personas en el planeta; REAFIRMA que, para alcanzar el objetivo último de la Convención de impedir las interferencias antropógenas peligrosas en el sistema climático, el incremento de la temperatura media anual mundial en superficie no debería superar los 2°C por encima de los niveles preindustriales; SUBRAYA que el protocolo de Kioto es un primer paso importante en la lucha mundial contra el cambio climático; PONE DE RELIEVE las conclusiones del tercer informe de evaluación del IPCC que confirman la necesidad de adoptar más medidas significativas para reducir las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero y limitar los efectos adversos del cambio climático … RECONOCE que las investigaciones científicas más recientes y los trabajos del IPCC indican que es improbable que la estabilización de concentraciones de gases de efecto invernadero por encima de 550 ppmv de equivalente en CO2 permita alcanzar el objetivo a largo plazo de 2°C y que para tener una posibilidad razonable de limitar el calentamiento de la Tierra a no más de 2°C, puede ser necesaria una estabilización de concentraciones muy por debajo de 550 ppmv de equivalente en CO2; OBSERVA que para que sea alcanzable a largo plazo este objetivo relativo a la temperatura será menester que las emisiones mundiales de gases de efecto invernadero alcancen el punto máximo en el plazo de dos décadas, seguido por una reducción sustancial del orden de al menos el 15% y quizá tanto como el 50% antes del 2050 en comparación con los niveles de 1990.”
Communication from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions – Winning the Battle Against Global Climate Change – Commission of The European Communities – 09/02/2005 – http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2005:0035:FIN:EN:PDF – “There is increasing scientific evidence that the benefits of limiting the global average temperature increase to 2 °C outweigh the costs of abatement policies (for detailed summaries see Annexes 1 and 2). If temperatures continue to rise beyond 2 °C a more rapid and unexpected response of the climate becomes more likely and irreversible catastrophic events may occur.”
Presidency Conclusions – European Commission, 23/03/2005 – http://www.consilium.europa.eu/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressData/en/ec/84335.pdf “Climate Change: 43. The European Council acknowledges that climate change is likely to have major negative global environmental, economic and social implications. It confirms that, with a view to achieving the ultimate objective of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the global annual mean surface temperature increase should not exceed 2ºC above pre-industrial levels.”
Texts adopted – European Parliament, 16/11/2005 – http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA+20051116+ITEMS+DOC+XML+V0//EN&language=EN “Calls on the EU to present, at the COP-11 and COP/MOP1, proposals for a future climate regime, based on the overall objective to limit the average global temperature increase to 2°C above pre-industrialisation levels … Stresses that the EU strategy on climate change mitigation should be based on a seven-pronged approach: – building on key Kyoto elements – binding greenhouse gas emission targets, a global cap-and-trade system, and flexible mechanisms, – undertaking strong emission reductions of 30% by 2020, using a combination of market incentives and regulation to stimulate investments in efficiency and/or carbon-free and low-carbon technologies, – adopting a pro-active approach to engage other main actors, in particular the United States, – developing a strategic partnership with countries such as China, South Africa, Brazil and India to assist them in developing sustainable energy strategies and secure their participation in mitigation efforts, – vigorously promoting research and innovation for sustainable energy technologies and removing «perverse» incentives such as fossil fuel subsidies, as well as internalising external costs, including those of climate change, into the price of energy production, – using European and national legislation to stimulate greater energy efficiency and reduce the price of technology which reduces climate impact, – encouraging much greater direct involvement in mitigation efforts at the level of the European citizen, a necessary prerequisite being the provision of detailed information about the carbon content of products and services and a future option being a system of personal tradable quotas;”
Prime Minister Tony Blair – Chair’s Summary – G8 Summit 2005 Gleneagles, 08/07/2005 – http://www.g8.utoronto.ca/summit/2005gleneagles/summary.html “We have issued a statement setting out our common purpose in tackling climate change, promoting clean energy and achieving sustainable development. All of us agreed that climate change is happening now, that human activity is contributing to it, and that it could affect every part of the globe. We know that, globally, emissions must slow, peak and then decline, moving us towards a low-carbon economy. This will require leadership from the developed world. We resolved to take urgent action to meet the challenges we face. The Gleneagles Plan of Action which we have agreed demonstrates our commitment. We will take measures to develop markets for clean energy technologies, to increase their availability in developing countries, and to help vulnerable communities adapt to the impact of climate change. We warmly welcomed the involvement of the leaders of the emerging economy countries in our discussions, and their ideas for new approaches to international co-operation on clean energy technologies between the developed and developing world. Our discussions mark the beginning of a new Dialogue between the G8 nations and other countries with significant energy needs, consistent with the aims and principles of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. This will explore how best to exchange technology, reduce emissions, and meet our energy needs in a sustainable way, as we implement and build on the Plan of Action. We will advance the global effort to tackle climate change at the UN Climate Change Conference in Montreal later this year. Those of us who have ratified the Kyoto Protocol remain committed to it, and will continue to work to make it a success.”
Conference of the Parties 16 – Meeting of the Parties 6 – The Cancun Agreements: Outcome of the work of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention – United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 10/12/2010 – http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2010/cop16/eng/07a01.pdf “Further recognizes that deep cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions are required according to science, and as documented in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, with a view to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions so as to hold the increase in global average temperature below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and that Parties should take urgent action to meet this long-term goal, consistent with science and on the basis of equity; Also recognizes the need to consider, in the context of the first review, as referred to in paragraph 138 below, strengthening the long-term global goal on the basis of the best available scientific knowledge, including in relation to a global average temperature rise of 1.5°C … 138. Decides to periodically review the adequacy of the long-term global goal referred to in paragraph 4 above, in the light of the ultimate objective of the Convention, and overall progress towards achieving it, in accordance with the relevant principles and provisions of the Convention.”
P.M. Kelly (1990) – Halting Global Warming – Greenpeace
J.H.V Karas (1991) – Back from the Brink: Greenhouse Gas Targets for a Sustainable World – Friends of the Earth
Christopher Monckton of Brenchley – Margaret Thatcher: the world’s first climate realist – Watts Up With That?, 16/06/2010 – http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/16/margaret-thatcher-the-world%E2%80%99s-first-climate-realist/ “In 1988 it was my successor at No. 10, George Guise, who travelled one bitterly cold October weekend down to Chequers, the prime minister’s country house, and sat in front of a roaring fire writing the speech that would announce a government subsidy to the Royal Society to establish what would become the Hadley Centre for Forecasting. George remembers how he and the prime minister chuckled at the irony of writing a speech about ‘global warming’ on an evening so cold that he could hardly hold his pen.”
Michael Fisher – Monckton Sent «Cease and Desist» Letter by the House of Lords – Desmogblog, 18/07/2011- http://www.desmogblog.com/monckton-sent-cease-and-desist-letter-house-lords “Monckton is no stranger to controversy. He recently apologized for comparing the Australian Climate Advisor to a Nazi. This has created challenges for Monckton’s lecture tour in Australia, where university students recently petitioned to stop Monckton’s lecture at the University of Notre Dame.”
Pascale Braconnot et al (2012) – Evaluation of climate models using palaeoclimatic data – Nature Climate Change 2:417–424 doi:10.1038/nclimate1456 – Insitut Pierre Simon Laplace/Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, unité mixte de recherches CEA-CNRS-UVSQ – 8 autores
“Evaluation of model simulations against palaeodata shows that models reproduce the direction and large-scale patterns of past changes in climate, but tend to underestimate the magnitude of regional changes.”
Fredrik Boberg and Jens H. Christensen (2012) – Overestimation of Mediterranean summer temperature projections due to model deficiencies – Nature Climate Change 2:433–436 doi:10.1038/nclimate1454 – Danish Meteorological Institute “Here, we show that owing to a broad tendency for climate models (regional and global) to show systematic biases in warm, dry climates, it is likely that, at present, many climate models overestimate regional amplification of global warming. We study Europe using the central Mediterranean as an example. To correct for individual model deficiencies, we apply a bias correction conditioned on temperature. The results demonstrate that projections of intense mean summer warming partly result from model deficiencies, and when corrected for, the Mediterranean summer temperature projections are reduced by up to one degree, on average by 10–20%. Individual models may be overestimating warming by several degrees.”
James S. Risbey and Terence J. O’Kane (2011) – Sources of knowledge and ignorance in climate research – Climatic Change doi:10.1007/s10584-011-0186-6 – Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research; CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research “The deficiencies of ocean GCMs can be understood in contrast with the more mature NWP GCMs (Section 3.1). These deficiencies reflect the fact that ocean modelling is a more difficult problem. There are a number of reasons for this, but the relevant one for the purpose of this discussion is that the critical instability scale in the ocean occurs on spatial scales an order of magnitude finer than in the atmosphere and we simply don’t yet have powerful enough computers to resolvethese scales … The confidence level for quantifying such changes is currently best characterized by ‘effective ignorance’.”
Peter Cox and David Stephenson (2007) – A Changing Climate for Prediction – Science 217:207-208 doi:10.1126/science.1145956 – School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics, University of Exeter “On lead times of less than 10 years, the signal of anthropogenic climate change is relatively small compared to natural decadal climate variability, and uncertainties in initial conditions dominate the overall uncertainty of the prediction (see the first figure) (1). By contrast, climate predictions on time scales of a century are much less sensitive to initial conditions, because the signal of anthropogenic climate change is typically much larger at longer time scales and because most elements of the climate system have a ‘memory’ of past climate-forcing factors that is shorter than a few decades. The major source of uncertainty here lies in the future anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols (see the first figure) (2). This uncertainty can be seen as humankind’s free will concerning future climate change.”
S. Şerban Scrieciu et al (2011) – Pushing the boundaries of climate economics: critical issues to consider in climate policy analysis – Ecological Economics doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2011.10.016 – Economics for Equity and the Environment (E3) Network, United States & Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge – 3 autores “However, economic models for climate policy may not include ITC at all or include it with restrictive assumptions and in a partial form so that it has only weak effects. Furthermore, the models may not include all the policy instruments that affect ITC. In consequence, the results of the models exaggerate, from this perspective, the costs of mitigation and give the impression that stringent mitigation is not possible without economic collapse.”
David Fisk (2011) – Thermodynamics on Main Street: When entropy really counts in economics – Ecological Economics 70:1931–1936 doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2011.06.012 – Imperial College London “The implications of thermodynamics for economic theory have been a source of debate for 40 years. Adopting the framing used in modern engineering rather than physics suggests that the market place has already recognised most of these thermodynamic truths as self-evident rather than challenging basic concepts. The exception is the relatively small market for heat where the idea of thermodynamic grade, conveniently represented by the exergy or available work content of a heat source, exposes inconsistencies especially in monopoly supply and economic instruments. Earlier commentators were not wrong in the thrust of their criticisms of economic theory but may have been overly elaborate in their attack.”
H. E. Goeller and Alvin M. Weinberg (1978) – The Age of Substitutability – The American Economic Review 68:1-11 – 28825 – Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Institute For Energy Analysis, Oak Ridge – http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2951003.pdf “On the basis of their scrutiny of these geological and technological data, Goeller and Weinberg pronounce the principle of infinite substitutability: With the exception of phosphorus and some trace elements for agriculture, mainly cobalt, copper and zinc, and finally the CH_x (coal, oil and gas), society can exist on near-inexhaustible resources for an indefinite period.”
Donald Saari (1995) – Mathematical complexity of simple economics – Notices of the AMS 42:222-230 – Department of Mathematics, Northwestern University – http://cema.cufe.edu.cn/admin/data/uploadfile/200907/20090720082740710.pdf “It follows immediately from this construction that any assertion trying to relate the aggregate excess demand functions from different subsets of commodities must impose strict restrictions on preferences. Therefore, constraints based only on the structure of the excess demand (as is typical) are doomed for failure. Also, since individual preferences drive the social sciences, this situation, with the accompanying troublesome complexity, undoubtedly extends to most other areas.”
125. Carlo C Jaeger and Bernd Kasemir (2012) – Climatic risks and rational actors – Global Environmental Change 6:23–36 doi:10.1016/0959-3780(95)00073-9, – Darmstadt University and Swiss Federal Institute for Environmental Science and Technology (EAWAG); Bernd Kasemir is with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) “In the present paper, we argue that a way out of this impasse can be found if a misleading assumption is corrected. This is the assumption that a system involving a multitude of rational actors operating on interdependent markets has only one possible equilibrium … The story told by Figure 3 is often used as a paradigmatic metaphor to discuss the incentive structure faced by rational actors operating in a market setting. However, there is a serious problem with this metaphor: it refers to a market considered in isolation although the market in question belongs to a system of interdependent markets … The existence of multiple equilibria means that the logic of rational action on interdependent markets does not lead to a unique best outcome. One may consider this indeterminacy as a weakness of current economic theory.”
Kenneth J. Arrow and Gerard Debreu (1954) – Existence of an equilibrium for a competitive economy – Econometrica 22:265–290 – Stanford University – http://www.stanford.edu/class/msande311/arrow-debreu.pdf“From the viewpoint of welfare economics, it is the principle that the consumption vector chosen should be the one which achieves the given utility at least cost which is primary, and the principle of maximizing utility at a given cost only relevant when the two give identical results.16 For a descriptive theory of behavior under perfect competition, on the other hand, it is, of course, the concept of utility maximization which is primary. To the extent that the duality is valid, the principle of cost minimization leads to much simpler derivations, for example, of Slutzky’s relations. Actually, minimization of oost for a given utility is essentially minimization of a linear function when tho argument is limited to a convex set; mathematically, the problem is identical with that of maximizing profits subject to the transformation conditions, so that the theories of the consumer and the firm become identical.16 However, the failure of the duality to hold in all cases shows that there are delicate questions for which t,he principle of utility maximization cannot be replaced by that of cost minimization.”
J. Doyne Farmer and Duncan Foley (2009) – The economy needs agent-based modelling – Nature 460:685-686 doi:10.1038/460685a – Santa Fe Institute; New School for Social Research “The best models they have are of two types, both with fatal flaws. Type one is econometric: empirical statistical models that are fitted to past data. These successfully forecast a few quarters ahead as long as things stay more or less the same, but fail in the face of great change. Type two goes by the name of ‘dynamic stochastic general equilibrium’. These models assume a perfect world, and by their very nature rule out crises of the type we are experiencing now. As a result, economic policy-makers are basing their decisions on common sense, and on anecdotal analogies to previous crises such as Japan’s ‘lost decade’ or the Great Depression (see Nature 457, 957; 2009). The leaders of the world are flying the economy by the seat of their pants. This is hard for most non-economists to believe.”
Patricia Cohen – Ivory Tower Unswayed by Crashing Economy – The New York Times, 04/03/2009 – http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/books/05deba.html “The former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has admitted that he was shocked to discover a flaw in the free-market model and has even begun talking about temporarily nationalizing some banks … Unquestioning loyalty to a particular idea is what Robert J. Shiller, an economist at Yale University, Connecticut, says is the reason the profession failed to foresee the financial collapse. He blames ‘groupthink,’ the tendency to agree with the consensus.”
Dalibor Roháč (2012) – On economists and garbagemen: Reflections on Št’astný (2010) – The Review of Austrian Economics 25:173–183 doi:10.1007/s11138-011-0160-6 – Legatum Institute, London “Arguably, the current status of economic science is even worse than it appears given that a large part of econometric tools available to economists are flawed too … “If empirical economics worked well, choosing between alternative hypotheses and theories would be easy. Yet, the economic profession does not progress by discarding rejected theories and improving upon those that have stood the test of time. Various contradictory models and theories co-exist and the discrimination between them is usually less than perfect … As a result, the researcher enjoys a substantial degree of discretion over the final results that they report. The worry is that they might be tempted to report only those models and specifications that yield their preferred results. Moreover, model selection that is based on significance tests can easily lead to deceptive conclusions … Short of minimising some generally agreed-upon criterion function—such as the mean squared error or the median squared error—it allows experts to pick the estimation procedure which will yield a result closest to their preferences, whether they be motivated by ideology, material interest or anything else … at the level of empirical testing, experts have a certain degree of discretion in choosing those techniques of estimation which will be the most likely to confirm the preferred results. Even more disturbingly, empirical testing of hypotheses can be replaced by” the method of calibration which is essentially uninformative with regard to the selection of different models.”
Floris Heukelom (2007) – Kahneman and Tversky and the origin of behavioral economics – Social Science Research Network – Amsterdam School of Economics, Max Planck Institute for Human Development – http://dieoff.org/_Economics/Origin%20of%20Behavioral%20Economics07003.pdf “To cut the story short, in an extension to the normative-descriptive distinction, Kahneman and his collaborators in RSF behavioral economics argue for a ‘prescriptive’ theory of decision-making [ref]. They promote a re-interpretation of economics in terms of a normative-descriptive-prescriptive distinction. ‘Normative’ is what is objectively correct and how people should and either consciously or unconsciously want to behave. ‘Descriptive’ is how people actually behave in reality. Deviations of real world behavior from the normative theory may occur for a number of reasons and are not likely solved by explaining the theory to the individuals. ‘Prescriptive’, then, is about how policies should be designed in order to make people behave more in accordance with the normative theory.”
Ronald Inglehart and Wayne E. Baker (2000) – Modernization, Cultural Change, and The Persistence of Traditional Values – American Sociological Review 65:19–51 – University of Michigan “Economic development is associated with shifts away from absolute norms and values toward values that are increasingly rational, tolerant, trusting, and participatory. Cultural change, however, is path dependent. The broad cultural heritage of a society—Protestant, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Confucian, or Communist—leaves an imprint on values that endures despite modernization. Moreover, the differences between the values held by members of different religions within given societies are much smaller than are cross-national differences. Once established, such cross-cultural differences become part of a national culture transmitted by educational institutions and mass media. We conclude with some proposed revisions of modernization theory.”
Robert H. Nelson (2001) – Economics as Religion: from Samuelson to Chicago and beyond – The Pennsylvania State University – ISBN 0-271-02095-4, 405 págs – http://www.scribd.com/doc/36508451/Economics-as-Religion-Robert-Nelson#download “Economists think of themselves as scientists, but as I will be arguing in this book, they are more like theologians. The closest predecessors for the current members of the economics profession are not scientists such as Albert Einstein or Isaac Newton; rather, we economists are more truly the heirs of Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther. Economists think that their role in society is to provide technical knowledge to operate the economic system. The members of the economics profession do make important contributions in this regard. The inflation, unemployment, and other data collected by economists, for example, are critical to monitoring the current state of the economy. However, another basic role of economists is to serve as the priesthood of a modern secular religion of economic progress that serves many of the same functions in contemporary society as earlier Christian and other religions did in their time … In the economic profession, there are disagreements on major issues that are persistent and that, furthermore, do not seem to be mitigated by empirical evidence.”
Gretchen C. Daily et al (2000) – The value of nature and the nature of value – Science 298:395-396 DOI:10.1126/science.289.5478.395 – Beijer Institute, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences – http://www.ci.uri.edu/ciip/FallClass/Docs_2008/Daily_etal2000.pdf – 19 autores “Ecosystems are capital assets: When properly managed, they yield a flow of vital goods and services. Relative to other forms of capital, however, ecosystems are poorly understood, scarcely monitored, and–in many important cases–undergoing rapid degradation. The process of economic valuation could greatly improve stewardship. This potential is now being realized with innovative financial instruments and institutional arrangements.”
Herman E. Daly and Kenneth N. Townsend (1993) – Sustainable Growth: An Impossibility Theorem – En ‘Valuing the Earth: Economics Ecology Ethics’ MIT Press – http://dieoff.org/page37.htm “In its physical dimensions the economy is an open subsystem of the earth ecosystem, which is finite, non-growing, and materially closed. As the economic subsystem grows it incorporates an ever greater proportion of the total ecosystem into itself and must reach a limit at 100 percent, if not before. Therefore its growth is not sustainable. The term «sustainable growth» when applied to the economy is a bad oxymoron—self-contradictory as prose, and unevocative as poetry.”
Geir B Asheim (1994) – Net National Product as an Indicator of Sustainability – Scandinavian Journal of Economics 96:257-265 – Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration – http://folk.uio.no/gasheim/A-SJE94.pdf “Hence, it would see impossible to develop the concept of NNP into an indicator of sustainability, even if prices for the valuation of natural and environmental resources were readily available through a perfect intertemporal competitive equilibrium.”
Alex Bowen and Samuel Fankhauser (2011) – The green growth narrative: Paradigm shift or just spin? – Global Environmental Change 21:1157-1159 doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2011.07.007 – Grantham Research Institute and Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, London School of Economics “The ‘green growth’ agenda abandons this narrow focus, throwing the debate wide open and bringing broader, more nuanced and richer strands of economics to bear. In doing so the emerging green growth literature can draw on many long traditions of economic thinking that encompass the work of, among others, John Maynard Keynes, Arthur Cecil Pigou, Joseph Schumpeter, and Henry George. The agenda also opens up important new research questions which policy-makers will need answered.”
Silvio O. Funtowicz and Jerome R. Ravetz (1994) – The worth of a songbird: ecological economics as a post-normal science – Ecological Economics 10:197-207 doi:10.1016/0921-8009(94)90108-2 – CEC-Joint Research Centre, Institute for Systems Engineering and Informatics; The Research Methods Consultancy Ltd. “The arguments based on the virtues of an unregulated market require so many special and artificial assumptions that they belong to the realm of inspirational visions rather than to that of scientific analysis … Economics has traditionally been able to maintain its credibility by relegating uncertainties in knowledge and complexities in ethics firmly to the sidelines.”
Duane Chapman and Neha Khanna (2000) – Crying No Wolf: Why Economists Don’t Worry About Climate Change, and Should. An Editorial Comment – Climatic Change 47:225-232 doi:10.1023/A:1005685115053 – Cornell University; Binghamton University, Department of Economics – http://www2.binghamton.edu/economics/research/working-papers/pdfs/wp00/WP2003.pdf “The results of economic models are only as credible as the assumptions upon which they are based. We identify a set of assumptions and characteristics that together define the standard for climate-economy models currently in use. The general apathy toward controlling the growth of CO2 emissions, both at the global level and particularly in high income countries, is derived in part from conclusions based on these assumptions. In the following five sections, each of these assumptions are examined critically.”
Anastasios C. Petkou – Reading the Economic Cosmos – The Economist, 28/05/2012 – Associate professor of physics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki – http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/opinion/reading-the-economic-cosmos.html
“In “Germany’s outlook born in past pain” (News, May 26), Hans-Werner Sinn, president of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research, is quoted as saying of Greek politicians: ‘They speak of the primacy of policy over the laws of economics because they don’t understand economics. But in the end the economic laws prevail.’ Natural laws prevail only if they are unambiguously established, e.g. the laws of gravity. Since there are as many “economic laws” as economists, to the scientifically minded reader Mr. Sinn’s views have the risk of associating his institute’s predictions with the equivalent of astrology readings.”
Myles R. Allen and David J. Frame (2007) – Call Off the Quest – Science 318:582-583 doi:10.1126/science.1149988 – Department of Physics, University of Oxford; Oxford University Centre for the Environment “The lower bound of 2°C is slightly higher than the 1.6°C proposed in the 1970s (2); progress on the upper bound has been minimal. On page 629 of this issue, Roe and Baker (3) explain why. The fundamental problem is that the properties of the climate system that we can observe now do not distinguish between a climate sensitivity, S, of 4°C and S > 6°C. In a sense, this should be obvious: Once the world has warmed by 4°C, conditions will be so different from anything we can observe today (and still more different from the last ice age) that it is inherently hard to say when the warming will stop. Roe and Baker formalize the problem by showing how a symmetric constraint on the strength of the feedback parameter f (which determines how much energy is radiated to space per degree of surface warming) gives a strongly asymmetric constraint on S. The reason is simple: As f approaches 1, S approaches infinity.”
Salvador Pueyo (2012) – Solution to the paradox of climate sensitivity – Climatic Change doi:10.1007/s10584-011-0328-x – Institut Català de Ciències del Clima (IC3) “In an analysis of the economics of catastrophic climate change, Weitzman (2009) mentions that scale invariance is a desirable property for prior distributions. Therefore, he uses a power law with exponent β … I show that strict scale invariance corresponds to β=1.”
Karen Akerlof et al (2012) – Communication of climate projections in US media amid politicization of model science – Nature Climate Change doi:10.1038/nclimate1542 – Department of Environmental Science and Policy, George Mason University – 4 autores “Almost two times the number of media outlets featured negative content (that suggested that climate-model projections were not likely to be valid) (12), than had positive content (suggesting they were likely to be accurate) [ref] … There were not only fewer magazines and programmes that featured positive content, but the amount provided was smaller – a maximum of seven positive sentences over the year (PBS NewsHour), compared with 21 negative ones (The Nation).”
James Delingpole (2011) – Watermelons: the green’s movements true colours – Publius Books – Periodista de News Inc.- ISBN-13: 978-0983347408, 304 págs.
Joseph E. Stiglitz (2001) – Nobel Prize lecture: Information and The Change in the Paradigm in Economics, 08/12/2001 – http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2001/stiglitz-lecture.pdf “I hope to show that Information Economics represents a fundamental change in the prevailing paradigm within economics. Problems of information are central to understanding not only market economics but also political economy, and in the last section of this lecture, I explore some of the implications of information imperfections for political processes.”
Cutler J Cleveland and Matthias Ruth (1997) – When, where, and by how much do biophysical limits constrain the economic process?: A survey of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen’s contribution to ecological economics – Ecological Economics 22:203-223 doi:10.1016/S0921-8009(97)00079-7 – Department of Geography and Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, Boston University – http://www.publicpolicy.umd.edu/files.php/faculty/ruth/biophysical_limits.pdf “The classical economic model fares no better under the light of physical realities. Perrings (1986) develops a variant of the von Neumann- Leontief-Sraffa neo-Ricardian general equilibrium model in the context of a jointly determined economy- environment system subject to a conservation of mass constraint. The model demonstrates that the conservation of mass contradicts the free disposal, free gifts, and non-innovation assumptions of such models. Accounting for the conservation of mass destroys the determinacy of the closed, time variant system in the classical model. An expanding economy causes continuous disequilibrating change in the environment. Since market prices in an interdependent economy-environment system often do not accurately reflect environmental change, such transformations of the environment often will go unanticipated.”
Milton Friedman (1953) – Essays in Positive Economics Part I – The Methodology of Positive Economics – University of Chicago Press – University of Chicago – http://dieoff.org/_Economics/TheMethodologyOfPositiveEconomics.htm “Viewed as a body of substantive hypotheses, theory is to be judged by its predictive power for the class of phenomena which it is intended to ‘explain.’ Only factual evidence can show whether it is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ or, better, tentatively ‘accepted’ as valid or ‘rejected.’ As I shall argue at greater length below, the only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison of its predictions with experience.”
Daniel Kahneman et al (1990) – Experimental tests of the endowment effect and the coase theorem – Journal of Political Economy 98:1325-1348 – University of California – http://teaching.ust.hk/~econ325/Lecture/90KahnemanKnestchThalerJPE.pdf – 3 autores “Contrary to theoretical expectations, measures of willingness to accept greatly exceed measures of willingness to pay. This paper reports several experiments that demonstrate that this «endowment effect» persists even in market settings with opportunities to learn. Consumption objects (e.g., coffee mugs) are randomly given to half the subjects in an experiment. Markets for the mugs are then conducted. The Coase theorem predicts that about half the mugs will trade, but observed volume is always significantly less. When markets for «induced-value» tokens are conducted, the predicted volume is observed, suggesting that transactions costs cannot explain the undertrading for consumption goods.”
A su vez, más de una cincuentena de personalidades apoyaron una Declaración al respecto. La emisión masiva de esta declaración, por ejemplo aquí, llevó a Facebook a levantar su veto.
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Este blog ha sido agraciado con el 1r Premio de la Fundación Biodiversidad en la categoría de comunicación del cambio climático - blogs (convocatoria 2010)
La humanidad se encuentra frente a una de las mayores disyuntivas que cabe imaginar. El sistema climático terrestre parece haber sido definitivamente desestabilizado, mientras la inmensa mayoría de la población vive ajena a un fenómeno llamado a marcar nuestras vidas de forma determinante y abrumadora. Comunidad científica, medios de comunicación y clase política se encuentran aturdidos por el fenómeno y sin respuestas adecuadas a la magnitud del desafío. Cuando las élites fracasan, es la hora de la gente.
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