Artículo de referencia 1: El problema de la verdad climática
Artículo de referencia 2: Ética intrageneracional frente a ética intergeneracional
- Ted Trainer (2010) – Can renewables etc. solve the greenhouse problem? The negative case – Energy Policy 38:4107-4114 doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2010.03.037 – 07/05/2010 – Social Work, University of NSW, Australia – Peer reviewed
“Virtually all current discussion of climate change and energy problems proceeds on the assumption that technical solutions are possible within basically affluent-consumer societies. There is however a substantial case that this assumption is mistaken. This case derives from a consideration of the scale of the tasks and of the limits of non-carbon energy sources, focusing especially on the need for redundant capacity in winter. The first line of argument is to do with the extremely high capital cost of the supply system that would be required, and the second is to do with the problems set by the intermittency of renewable sources. It is concluded that the general climate change and energy problem cannot be solved without large scale reductions in rates of economic production and consumption, and therefore without transition to fundamentally different social structures and systems.” - Richard Heinberg (2009) – Searching For a Miracle: Net Energy Limits & the Fate of Industrial Society – Forum on Globalisation & The Post Carbon Institute – September 2009 – http://www.postcarbon.org/new-site-files/Reports/Searching_for_a_Miracle_web10nov09.pdf
«The scale of denial is breathtaking. For as Heinberg’s analysis makes depressingly clear, there will be NO combination of alternative energy solutions that might enable the long term continuation of economic growth, or of industrial societies in their present form and scale. Ultimately the solutions we desperately seek will not come from ever-greater technical genius and innovation. Far better and potentially more successful pathways can only come from a sharp turn to goals, values, and practices that emphasize conservation of material and energy resources, localization of most economic frameworks, and gradual population reduction to stay within the carrying capacities of the planet.» - Anthropogenic Climate Destabilization: A Worst-case Scenario – Foundation for the Future – Bellevue, Washington, 14/09/2008 – http://www.futurefoundation.org/documents/HUM_ExecSum_ClimateDestabilization.pdf
“David Wasdell, who uses a systems dynamics approach based not on modelling but on tracking complex feedback dynamics, said that climate stabilization is not about stopping catastrophic impacts but about stopping runaway behavior in a dynamic system, and he believes that the early stages of runaway climate changes have already commenced, with no naturally occurring negative feedback process able to contain the effect.” - Will Steffen (2009) – Climate Change 2009: Faster Change & More Serious Risks – Commonwealth of Australia – Australian Government – June 2009 – http://www.climatechange.gov.au/~/media/publications/science/cc-faster_change.ashx
“Long-term feedbacks in the climate system may be starting to develop now; the most important of these include dynamical processes in the large polar ice sheets, and the behaviour of natural carbon sinks and potential new natural sources of carbon, such as the carbon stored in the permafrost of the northern high latitudes. Once thresholds in ice sheet and carbon cycle dynamics are crossed, such processes cannot be stopped or reversed by human intervention, and will lead to more severe and ultimately irreversible climate change from the perspective of human timeframes.” - James Lovelock (2009) – The Vanishing Face of Gaia. A Final Warning – Allen Lane, Penguin Books – ISBN 978-1-846-14185-0
“Stop pretending that there is any possible way back to that lush, confortable and beautiful Earth we left behind sometime in the twentieth century. The further we go along the path as business as usual the more we are lost … Gaia may take hundreds of thousands of years before she becomes again the lush planet we once knew” - Mark Charlesworth (2008) – Tipping Points, Inertia, Ethics and Policy – Paper for the Future Ethics workshop ‘What price security?’ New Issues in the Ethics of Risk’- 19/09/2008 – University of Manchester – http://www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/lti/projects/religionandclimatechange/futureethics/worshop2/workshop2reports/fileuploadmax10mb,144490,en.pdf
“This paper outlines the reality of tipping points and inertia in the earth (and climate) system and society; concluding that it might already be too late to prevent catastrophe or even cataclism”. - James Lovelock (2006) – The Revenge of Gaia – Edició en català: La Venjança de Gaia – Columna Edicions, 2007 – ISBN: 978-84-6640792-2
“El moment d’un canvi advers irreversible potser és tan a la vora que seria poc aconsellable confiar en un conveni internacional per tal de salvar la civilització de les conseqüències de l’escalfament global” - George Monbiot – If we behave as if it’s too late, then our prophecy is bound to come true – The Guardian – 17/03/2009 – http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/17/monbiot-copenhagen-emission-cuts
“Quietly in public, loudly in private, climate scientists everywhere are saying the same thing: it’s over. The years in which more than 2 ºC of global warming could have been prevented have passed, the opportunities squandered by denial and delay. On current trajectories we’ll be lucky to get away with 4 ºC. Mitigation (limiting greenhouse gas pollution) has failed; now we must adapt to what nature sends our way. If we can” - David Adam – World will not meet 2 ºC warming target, climate change experts agree – The Guardian – 14/04/2009 – http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/14/global-warming-target-2c
“Guardian poll reveals almost nine out of 10 climate experts do not believe current political efforts will keep warming below 2 ºC.”
- James Hansen et al (2006) – Global temperature change – Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences PNAS 103:14288-14293 doi:10.1073/pnas.0606291103 – 26/09/2006 – NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute – 6 authors – Peer reviewed
“We conclude that global warming of more than 1 °C, relative to 2000, will constitute ‘dangerous’ climate change as judged from likely effects on sea level and extermination of species.” - Katherine Richardson et al (2009) – Global Risks, Challenges & Decisions – International Scientific Congress Climate Change, Copenhaguen, 12-14/03/2009 – Australian National University, ETH Zürich, National University of Singapore, Peking University, University of California – Berkeley, University of Cambridge, University of Copenhagen, University of Oxford, The University of Tokyo, Yale University – http://www.climatecongress.ku.dk – Peer reviewed
“Keeping global warming below 2°C will require all our ingenuity for the climate-smart evolution of existing structures, yet large-scale transformational measures will also be needed. In particular, the current planetary land-use pattern may have to change fundamentally, as it is the sub-optimal result of erratic historical processes that were blind to global sustainability considerations. Future land-use on Earth must accommodate multiple competing demands for food and fibre, energy, services, infrastructure and conservation by some 9 billion people.” - Jonathan Hiskes – Gaia proponent Lovelock says it’s time to adapt to inevitable global heating – Grist – 16/06/2009 – http://www.grist.org/article/2009-06-16-lovelock-gaia-climate-change
“’Our main task, should the earth continue to heat, is to adapt and learn how to survive,’ he said. ‘We’re unlikely to become extinct by global heating, but we may be cut back to one billion people or less.’ That’s approximately a seventh the world’s current population.” - Barrie Pittock (2010) – From academic science to political hot potato: climatic change, risk and policy relevance – Climatic Change 100:203–209 doi:10.1007/s10584-010-9819-4 – 19/05/2010 – CSIRO, Marine & Atmospheric Research – Peer reviewed
“Given the wide range of views and self-interests of member countries, a problem area in the IPCC process is the requirement that member countries sign off on the wording of the ‘Summaries for Policymakers’. This has led to adoption by consensus of the country delegates, which is made easier by avoidance by the scientific authors of any language or conclusions that might sound alarming, or which might by logical extension into decision-making harm a given county’s self-perceived national interests. This has had the effect of favouring an emphasis on mid-range projections where there are ranges of possibilities, and an unwillingness to assign probabilities to or make order of magnitude estimates of possible but as yet unmodelled positive feedback effects. This tendency is made worse by many scientists unfamiliar with policy decision-making processes and who do not take a risk management approach. Emphasising the mid-range outcome is the lowest common denominator approach.” - Key Scientific Developments since the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report – Pew Center for Global Climate Change – Pew Center for Global Climate Change – June 2009 – http://www.pewclimate.org/docUploads/Key-Scientific-Developments-Since-IPCC-4th-Assessment.pdf
“The AR4 did not examine any research published after July 2006. In the years since then, a significant body of new peer-reviewed science has been published, much of which is relevant to policy decisions” - James Hansen et al (2007) – Climate Change and Trace Gases – Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 365:1925-1954 doi:10.1098/rsta.2007.2052 – 18/05/2007 – NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute – 6 authors – Peer reviewed
“There is little doubt that projected warmings under BAU would initiate albedo-flip changes as great as those that occurred at earlier times in the Earth’s history. The West Antarctic ice sheet today is at least as vulnerable as any of the earlier ice sheets. The processes that give rise to nonlinear ice sheet response (almost universal retreat of ice shelves buttressing the West Antarctic ice sheet and portions of Greenland, increased surface melt and basal lubrication, speed-up of the flux of icebergs from ice streams to the ocean, ice sheet thinning and thus lowering of its surface in the critical coastal regions, and an increase in the number of ‘icequakes’ that signify lurching motions by portions of the ice sheets) are observed to be increasing (see §8). Despite these early warnings about likely future nonlinear rapid response, IPCC continues, at least implicitly, to assume a linear response to BAU forcings. Yet BAU forcings exceed by far any forcings in recent palaeoclimate history.” - Joseph Romm – Are Scientists Overestimating – or Underestimating – Climate Change, Part II – Climate Progress – 22/08/2007 – http://climateprogress.org/2007/08/22/are-scientists-overestimating-or-underestimating-climate-change-part-ii/
“What are these “missing feedbacks” in the global carbon cycle? They include four key carbon sinks: The oceans — which likely become less able to take up carbon dioxide as they heat up and become more acidic. The soil — which also takes up less CO2 and starts emitting CO2 as it heats up. The tundra — which contains more carbon than the atmosphere does (much of it in the form of methane, a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2) and which is poised to release that carbon as we warm the planet. Tropical forests — which store carbon but in places like Brazil and Indonesia are being cut down. Deforestation coupled with warming-induced drought could lead to the complete collapse of the Amazon rain forest.” - J. Boé et al (2009) – Deep ocean heat uptake as a major source of spread in transient climate change simulations – Geophysical Research Letters 36 L22701 doi:10.1029/2009GL040845 – 17/11/2009 – Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles – 3 authors
“Many models may overestimate the efficiency of polar oceanic mixing and therefore may underestimate future surface warming. Thus to reduce climate change uncertainties at time-scales relevant for policy-making, improved understanding and modelling of oceanic mixing at high latitudes is crucial.” - Detlef P. van Vuuren and Keywan Riahi (2008) – Do recent emission trends imply higher emissions forever? – Climatic Change 91:237–248 doi:10.1007/s10584-008-9485-y – 10/09/2008 – Netherlands Environment Assessment Agency – Peer reviewed
“Emissions are expected to grow at an annual rate of about 1.4% to 3.4% between 2000 and 2010 in the SRES scenarios. However, the majority of the scenarios have lower growth rates than the observed trend of the recent years. This difference has led to concerns whether the scenarios are still up-to-date (Pielke et al. 2008; Raupach et al. 2007; Sheehan 2008). Obviously, such a finding would be very important for climate policy, since it could mean that climate change impact assessments based on SRES are underestimated, just as the effort involved in stabilising greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere.” - Paul A.T. Higgins (2009) – Carbon cycle amplification: how optimistic assumptions cause persistent underestimates of potential climate damages and mitigation needs. An Editorial Comment – Climatic Change doi 10.1007/s10584-00 – 23/06/2009 – American Meteorological Society – Peer reviewed
“Biological systems constitute a critical, but sometimes overlooked, component of the climate system because they influence key physical characteristics of the land surface and atmosphere … Unfortunately, it’s difficult to include these feedbacks accurately in climate projections because future responses of vegetation are hard to constrain using past observations and field experiments.” - James Lovelock (2006) – The Revenge of Gaia – Edició en català: La Venjança de Gaia – Columna Edicions, 2007 – ISBN: 978-84-6640792-2
“Els intents per representar ecosistemes naturals que no incloguin restriccions mediambientals, des del famós model de conills i guineus del biofísic Alfred Lotka i el seu col·lega Vito Volterra, fins als darrers intents que empren la teoria de la complexitat, fracassen sense excepció a l‘hora de reproduir la ferma estabilitat d’un ecosistema natural.” - John Bechhoefer – Feedback for physicists: A tutorial essay on control – Reviews of Modern Phisics – 01/07/2005 – Peer reviewed
“Feedback and control theory are important ideas that should form part of the education of a physicist but rarely do. … [they] are such important concepts that it is odd that they usually find no formal place in the education of physicists … Introductory engineering textbooks … are long (800 pages is typical) … their examples are understandably geared more to the engineers than to the physicist.” - James Lovelock (2006) – The Revenge of Gaia – Edició en català: La Venjança de Gaia – Columna Edicions, 2007 – ISBN: 978-84-6640792-2
“Els enginyers també poden dissenyar sistemes autorregulats complexos, com ara els pilots automàtics dels vaixells, avions i naus espacials; els enginyers de telecomunicacions i els criptòlegs ja elaboren estris que estudien l’embull quàntic. … [regulador de James Watt … James Clark Maxwell]. El desconcert de Maxwell no era tan sorprenent. Els reguladors de funcionament simple, els sistemes fisiològics del nostre cos que ens regulen la temperatura, la pressió de la sang i la composició química , i els models senzills com ara Daisyworld queden completament fora de les fronteres clarament definides del pensament cartesià de causa i efecte … ” - James Lovelock (2003) – Gaia and Emergence – A Response to Kirchner And Volk – Climatic Change 57:1–3 doi:10.1023/A:1022161029633 – 28/06/2002 – Peer reviewed
“Earth System Science is difficult to understand because we are not used to thinking about the Earth as a whole system. We often forget that almost all of the science of the 19th and 20th centuries was reductionist. The triumphs of evolutionary biology and of molecular biology revealed the nature of our genes. Those of physics let us see almost to the edge of the universe and know the intricate details of the inner parts of atoms. All this has come from reduction, the patient professional dissection of nature into its component parts. System science, or holistic science as it is sometimes called, did have its successes in physiology and led to the understanding of the way our minds and bodies work. But these achievements were dwarfed by the great success of reductionism until science grew almost unaware that there was anything else. The Nobel Laureate biologist, Jacques Monod, even called system scientists stupid. We had become so used to thinking in terms of cause and effect that we no longer seemed to realize that the whole could be more than the sum of its parts.” - Expert Credibility in Climate Change – Responses to Comments – Real Climate – 03/08/2010 – http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/08/expert-credibility-in-climate-change-%E2%80%93-responses-to-comments/
“We accept and rely upon the judgment and opinions of experts in many areas of our lives. We seek out lawyers with specific expertise relevant to the situation; we trust the pronouncement of well-trained airplane mechanics that the plane is fit to fly. Indeed, the more technical the subject area, the more we rely on experts. Very few of us have the technical ability or time to read all of the primary literature on each cancer treatment’s biology, outcome probabilities, side-effects, interactions with other treatments, and thus we follow the advice of oncologists. We trust the aggregate knowledge of experts – what do 97% of oncologists think about this cancer treatment – more than that of any single expert. And we recognize the importance of relevant expertise – the opinion of vocal cardiologists matters much less in picking a cancer treatment than does that of oncologists.” - Paul van der Linden and John F.B. Mitchell (eds.) 2009 – ENSEMBLES: Climate change and its impacts at seasonal, decadal and centennial timescales. Summary of research and results from the Ensembles project – Met Office Hadley Centre – November 2009 – Met Office Hadley Centre – http://ensembles-eu.metoffice.com/docs/Ensembles_final_report_Nov09.pdf
“As the century progresses the projected climate moves increasingly farther away from its current state, so that by 2100 the climate of Europe will be very different from today. Even under a mitigation scenario, the climate of Europe during the next few decades is still calculated to depart significantly from that of the present.” - James Hansen et al (2005) – Earth’s Energy Imbalance: Confirmation and Implications – Science 308:1431-1435 doi:10.1126/science.1110252 – 03/06/2005 – NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute – 15 authors – Peer reviewed
“The thermal inertia of the ocean, with resulting unrealized warming ‘‘in the pipeline,’’ combines with ice sheet inertia and multiple positive feedbacks during ice sheet disintegration to create the possibility of a climate system in which large sea level change is practically impossible to avoid.” - Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows (2008) – Reframing the climate change challenge in light of post-2000 emission trends – Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London A doi:10.1098/rsta.2008.0138 – Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, Mechanical, Civil and Aerospace Engineering, University of Manchester – Peer reviewed
“It is increasingly unlikely any global agreement will deliver the radical reversal in emission trends required for stabilization at 450 ppmv carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). Similarly, the current framing of climate change cannot be reconciled with the rates of mitigation necessary to stabilize at 550 ppmv CO2e and even an optimistic interpretation suggests stabilization much below 650 ppmv CO2e is improbable.” - H. D. Matthews and Ken Caldeira (2008) – Stabilizing climate requires near-zero emissions – Geophysical Research Abstracts 10 EGU2008-A-08242 ID:1607-7962/gra/EGU2008-A-08242 – 27/02/2008 – Department of Geography, Planning and Environment, Concordia University; Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Stanford – Peer reviewed
“To hold climate constant at a given global temperature requires near-zero future carbon emissions … future anthropogenic emissions would need to be eliminated in order to stabilize global-mean temperatures … any future anthropogenic emissions will commit the climate system to warming that is essentially irreversible on centennial timescales … if emissions were eliminated entirely, radiative forcing from atmospheric CO2 would decrease at a rate closely matched by declining ocean heat uptake, with the result that while future warming commitment may be negligible, atmospheric temperatures may not decrease appreciably for at least 500 years.” - Ted Trainer (2007) – Renewable energy cannot sustain a consumer society – ISBN: 978-1-4020-5548-5 – 200 PÁGS. – Springer – University of NSW, Kensington, Australia. – http://www.energybulletin.net/node/34520
“If world population reaches 9+ billion, a global carbon use budget of 1 Gt would provide us all with about 150 kg of fossil fuel per year, which is around 2-3% of our present rich-world per capita use of fossil fuels… Alternatively only about 170million people, 2.5% of the world’s present population, could live on the present rich-world per capita fossil fuel use of over 6 tonnes per year …It is a mistake to think better technology is important in solving global problems, let alone the key … we could easily have an extremely low per capita rate of energy consumption, and footprint, based on local resources- but only if we undertake vast and radical change in economic, political, geographical and cultural systems.” - Bernard Barber (1961) – Resistance by Scientists to Scientific Discovery – Science 134:596-602 – Director of the Centre for the Study of Knowledge Expertise Science at Cardiff University, UK – Peer reviewed
«Too often, unfortunately, where resistance by scientists has been noted, it has been merely noted, merely alleged, without detailed substantiation and without attempt at explanation. Sometimes, when explanations are offered, they are notably vague and all-inclusive, thus proving too little by trying to prove too much. One such explanation is contained in the frequently repeated phrase, «After all, scientists are also human beings,» a phrase implying that scientists are more human when they err than when they are right (11). Other such vague explanations can be found in phrases such as «Zeitgeist,» «human nature,» «lack of progressive spirit,» fear of novelty, and «climate of opinion.» - James Hansen (2007) – Scientific reticence and sea level rise – Environmental Research Letters 2 024002 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/2/2/024002 – 24/05/2007 – NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute – Peer reviewed
“I believe there is a pressure on scientists to be conservative. Papers are accepted for publication more readily if they do not push too far and are larded with caveats. Caveats are essential to science, being born in skepticism, which is essential to the process of investigation and verification. But there is a question of degree. A tendency for ‘gradualism’ as new evidence comes to light may be ill-suited for communication, when an issue with a short time fuse is concerned. However, these matters are subjective. I could not see how to prove the existence of a ‘scientific reticence’ about ice sheets and sea level. Score one for the plaintiff, and their ally and ‘friend of the court’, the United States federal government.” - John Cook – A detailed look at Hansen’s 1988 projections – Skeptical Science – 20/09/2010 – http://www.skepticalscience.com/A-detailed-look-at-Hansens-1988-projections.html
“Had Hansen used a climate model with a climate sensitivity of approximate 3.4°C for 2xCO2 (at least in the short-term, it’s likely larger in the long-term due to slow-acting feedbacks), he would have projected the ensuing rate of global surface temperature change accurately. Not only that, but he projected the spatial distribution of the warming with a high level of accuracy. The take-home message should not be «Hansen was wrong therefore climate models and the anthropogenic global warming theory are wrong;» the correct conclusion is that Hansen’s study is another piece of evidence that climate sensitivity is in the IPCC stated range of 2-4.5°C for 2xCO2.” - Gerard H. Roe and Marcia B. Baker (2007) – Why Is Climate Sensitivity So Unpredictable? – Science 318:629-632 doi:10.1126/science.1144735 – 26/10/2007 – Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington – Peer reviewed
“We show that the shape of these probability distributions is an inevitable and general consequence of the nature of the climate system, and we derive a simple analytic form for the shape that fits recent published distributions very well. We show that the breadth of the distribution and, in particular, the probability of large temperature increases is relatively insensitive to decreases in uncertainties associated with the underlying climate processes.” - Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (2009) – Tipping elements in the Earth system – Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences PNAS 106:20561-20563 doi:10.1073/pnas.0911106106 – 08/12/2009 – Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research – Peer reviewed
“Many of the articles in this Special Feature sketch the research way forward, but it seems that we have to live with at least another decade of tantalizing ignorance concerning the most worrying potential impacts of global warming.” - M. Granger Morgan and Hadi Dowlatabadi – Best Practice Approaches for Characterizing, Communicating and Incorporating Scientific Uncertainty in Climate Decision Making – U.S. Climate Change Science Program, Synthesis and Assessment Product 5.2 – 16/01/2009 – National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap5-2/final-report/sap5-2-final-report-all.pdf – Peer reviewed
“In some cases, all the research in the world may not eliminate key uncertainties on the timescales of decisions we must make.” - Ulrich Beck (2010) – Climate for Change, or How to Create a Green Modernity? – Theory, Culture & Society 27:254–266 DOI: 10.1177/0263276409358729 – 02/11/2009 – Peer reviewed
“We have to attack head-on the key question: Why is there no storming of the Bastille because of the environmental destruction threatening mankind, why no Red October of ecology? Why have the most pressing issues of our time – climate change and ecological crisis – not been met with the same enthusiasm, energy, optimism, ideals and forward-looking democratic spirit as the past tragedies of poverty, tyranny and war? This is my question which I shall discuss in eight theses.” - UN chief makes Antarctica visit – BBC News – 10/11/2007 – http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7088435.stm
“Ban Ki-Moon: The biggest challenge to humanity in the 21st Century … This is an emergency, and for emergency situations we need emergency action” - Marc Lewis (2011) – World’s leading climate sceptic sees his funding melt away fast – The Independent – 28/09/2011 – http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/worlds-leading-climate-sceptic-sees-his-funding-melt-away-fast-2362056.html “Ida Auken, who is widely tipped as the next Environment Minister in the new administration, told The Independent that Mr Lomborg could no longer expect government funding for his Copenhagen Consensus Centre. «The reason he received funding in the first place was ideological,» said Ms Auken, environment spokesman for SF, the junior partner in the incoming coalition. «We believe that it is wrong to give funding to specific ideological researchers.”
- James Hansen et al (2011) – Climate Variability and Climate Change: The New Climate Dice – Columbia University – Published online: 10/11/2011 – NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies + Columbia University Earth Institute – http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20111110_NewClimateDice.pdf – 3 authors “One of the strongest signals seems to be the summer warming in the (subtropical) Mediterranean, which includes Spain, Italy and Greece.”
- IPCC Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX) – Fact Sheet – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – Published online: 18/11/2011 – http://ipcc.ch/news_and_events/docs/srex/SREX_fact_sheet.pdf – Peer reviewed
“There is evidence, providing a basis for medium confidence, that droughts will intensify over the coming century in southern Europe and the Mediterranean region, central Europe, central North America, Central America and Mexico, northeast Brazil, and southern Africa. Confidence is limited because of definitional issues regarding how to classify and measure a drought, a lack of observational data, and the inability of models to include all the factors that influence droughts.” - John Gowdy (1997) – The Value of Biodiversity: Markets, Society, and Ecosystems – Land Economics 73:25-41 – Department of Economics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York – Peer reviewed
“The main conclusion is that, although market exchange values of environmental services may be used to justify biodiversity protection measures, it must be stressed that exchange value constitutes a small portion of total biodiversity value. The total value of existing biodiversity is largely unknown but indications are that it is essential to human existence.” - European Union (2004) – The value of Biodiversity – Insights from Ecology, Ethics and Economics – Biodiversity and the EU – Sustaining Life, Sustaining Livelihoods – http://ec.europa.eu/development/icenter/repository/biodiversity_MALAHIDE_Information_pape_biodiversity_en.pdf
“While to most economists biodiversity is just another commodity, subject to trade-offs and substitution for many biologists, the total value of biodiversity is infinite being essential to the sustainability of life on earth (Gowdy 1997).” - Chris D. Thomas et al (2004) – Extinction risk from climate change – Nature 427:145-148 doi:10.1038/nature02121 – Published online: 08/01/2004 – Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation, School of Biology, University of Leeds – http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/83/1/thomascd1.pdf – 19 authors – Peer reviewed
“Exploring three approaches in which the estimated probability of extinction shows a power-law relationship with geographical range size, we predict, on the basis of mid-range climate-warming scenarios for 2050, that 15–37% of species in our sample of regions and taxa will be ‘committed to extinction’.” - Ilya M. D. Maclean and Robert J. Wilson (2011) – Recent ecological responses to climate change support predictions of high extinction risk – Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences PNAS doi:10.1073/pnas.1017352108 – Published online: 11/07/2011 – Centre for Ecology and Conservation, University of Exeter – Peer reviewed
“Mean extinction probability across studies making predictions of the future effects of climate change was 7% by 2100 compared with 15% based on observed responses … These results suggest that predictions are robust to methodological assumptions and provide strong empirical support for the assertion that anthropogenic climate change is now a major threat to global biodiversity.”James Hansen et al (1985) – Climate Response Times: Dependence on Climate Sensitivity and Ocean Mixing – Science 229:857-859 doi:10.1126/science.229.4716.857 – Published online: 30/08/1985 – NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies – 6 authors “The factors that determine climate response times were investigated with simple models and scaling statements. The response times are particularly sensitive to (i) the amount that the climate response is amplified by feedbacks and (ii) the representation of ocean mixing. If equilibrium climate sensitivity is 3°C or greater for a doubling of the carbon dioxide concentration, then most of the expected warming attributable to trace gases added to the atmosphere by man probably has not yet occurred. This yet to be realized warming calls into question a policy of «wait and see» regarding the issue of how to deal with increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide and other trace gases.” - James Hansen et al (1985) – Climate Response Times: Dependence on Climate Sensitivity and Ocean Mixing – Science 229:857-859 doi:10.1126/science.229.4716.857 – Published online: 30/08/1985 – NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies – 6 authors – Peer reviewed
“The factors that determine climate response times were investigated with simple models and scaling statements. The response times are particularly sensitive to (i) the amount that the climate response is amplified by feedbacks and (ii) the representation of ocean mixing. If equilibrium climate sensitivity is 3°C or greater for a doubling of the carbon dioxide concentration, then most of the expected warming attributable to trace gases added to the atmosphere by man probably has not yet occurred. This yet to be realized warming calls into question a policy of «wait and see» regarding the issue of how to deal with increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide and other trace gases.” - Gerard Wynn – Cost of extra year’s climate inaction $500 billion: IEA – Reuters – 10/11/2009 – http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-GreenBusiness/idUSTRE5A91U420091110
“The world will have to spend an extra $500 billion to cut carbon emissions for each year it delays implementing a major assault on global warming, the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday … “Much more needs to be done to get anywhere near an emissions path consistent with … limiting the rise in global temperature to 2 degrees,” said the IEA’s 2009 World Energy Outlook. “Countries attending the U.N. climate conference must not lose sight of this.” - Valentina Bosetti et al (2009) – Delayed action and uncertain stabilisation targets. How much will delay cost? – Climatic Change 96:299-312 doi:10.1007/s10584-009-9630-2 – Published online: 23/07/2009 – Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei + CMCC, Lecce, Italy – 4 authors – Peer reviewed
“We quantify the cost of a 20-year delay in action as an increase of GWP losses of about 140%, or in the range (depending on discounting) of 2.2–5.7 trillion USD per year of delay. We also show how committing to a mild abatement effort in the short term might substantially reduce the cost of delaying action.” - Stephen M. Gardiner (2010) – Ethics and climate change: an introduction – WIRES Climate Change doi:10.1002/wcc.26 – Department of Philosophy and Program on Values in Society, University of Washington – Peer reviewed
“Much resistance to mitigation seems implicitly bound up with the idea that it will be difficult for existing economic systems to ‘adapt’ to emissions restrictions, but not to climate impacts. This is a surprising assumption.” - W. Neil Adger (2000) – Social and ecological resilience: are they related? – Progress in Human Geography 24:347-364 doi:10.1191/030913200701540465 – Published online: 01/01/2000 – School of Environmental Sciences and CSERGE, University of East Anglia – http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/people/adgerwn/prghumangeog2000.pdf – Peer reviewed
“There is a clear link between social and ecological resilience, particularly for social groups or communities that are dependent on ecological and environmental resources for their livelihoods. But it is not clear whether resilient ecosystems enable resilient communities in such situations.” - Carmen Velayos (2008) – Ética y Cambio Climático – Ed. Desclée de Brouver – ISBN: 978-84-330-2221-9 – 162 págs.
- Garrett Hardin (1968) – The Tragedy of the Commons – Science 162:1243-1248 doi:10.1126/science.162.3859.1243 – Professor Emeritus of Human Ecology in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara – http://www.cs.wright.edu/~swang/cs409/Hardin.pdf – Peer reviewed
“Analysis of the pollution problem as a function of population density uncovers a not generally recognized principle of morality, namely: the morality of an act is a function of the state of the system at the time it is performed” - Thomas Dietz et al (2003) – The Struggle to Govern the Commons – Science 302:1907-1912 doi:10.1126/science.1091015 – Environmental Science and Policy Program and Departments of Sociology and Crop and Soil Sciences, Michigan State University; Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change and Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University; Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Education, The National Academies, Washington – 3 authors – http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/DietzOstromStern.pdf – Peer reviewed
“Devising effective governance systems is akin to a coevolutionary race. A set of rules crafted to fit one set of socio-ecological conditions can erode as social, economic, and technological developments increase the potential for human damage to ecosystems and even to the biosphere itself. Furthermore, humans devise ways of evading governance rules. Thus, successful commons governance requires that rules evolve.” - Stephen M. Gardiner (2003) – The pure intergenerational problem – The Monist – Published online: 01/07/2003 – http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb1364/is_3_86/ai_n29035254/
“The PIP is a problem of a particularly challenging kind. For it has a particularly harsh structure, and one which makes it unusually difficult to resolve.” - Stephen M. Gardiner (2004) – Ethics and Global Climate Change – Ethics 114:555-600 – Department of Philosophy and Program on Values in Society, University of Washington – http://hettingern.people.cofc.edu/Environmental_Philosophy_Sp_09/Gardner_Ethics_and_Climate_Change.pdf – Peer reviewed
“At the outset, I offered some general reasons why philosophers should be more interested in climate change. In closing, I would like to offer one more. I have suggested that climate change poses some difficult ethical and philosophical problems. Partly as a consequence of this, the public and political debate surrounding climate change is often simplistic, misleading, and awash with conceptual confusion. Moral philosophers should see this as a call to arms. Philosophical clarity is urgently needed. Given the importance of the problem, let us hope that the call is answered quickly.” - The World Factbook – Central Intelligence Agency – Published online: 10/11/2011 – https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html
“GDP (purchasing power parity): $74.54 trillion (2010)” - Olivier Ragueneau (2009) – CO2 arithmetics and geopolethics – IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 6:112041 doi:10.1088/1755-1307/6/1/112041 – Institut Universitaire Européen de la Mer, Laboratoire des Sciences de l’Environnement Marin – http://iopscience.iop.org/1755-1315/6/11/112041/pdf/1755-1315_6_11_112041.pdf
“What is behind this idea of recognizing the existence of an ecological debt (a conservative estimate, as it deals only with CO2 emissions) and buy (through massive investment, now) our future emissions to the developing world and our children, is to give Earth citizens a first, strong, signal, that there is a real willingness to turn the message provided by the Nobel Academy in 2007, into real action at global scale.” - Joan Martínez-Alier (2002) – The Ecological Debt – Kurswechsel 4:5-15 – http://www.beigewum.at/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/005_joan_martinez-alier.pdf
- Carl Folke et al (2010) – Resilience thinking: integrating resilience, adaptability and transformability – Ecology and Society 15:20 – Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University + Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences – http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol15/iss4/art20/ – Peer reviewed
“Resilience is about dynamic and complex systems3 and is here defined as the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks.”
Artículo de referencia 1: El problema de la verdad climática
Artículo de referencia 2: Ética intrageneracional frente a ética intergeneracional
Though I don\’t agree with you in details, your post is insightful
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