MEDEAS Project: The Next Step After the Paris Climate Agreement
Let me start with something to dispel the confusion about what models are for. When you deal with complex, adaptive systems, models are NOT meant to predict the future.
climate change
Brace for Impact: It’s Time to Build the Fight for Climate Adaptation
The fight to tackle climate change has two core branches: mitigation (curbing excessive greenhouse gas emissions) and adaptation (addressing the effects of climate change that are already unfolding). But although both areas are needed, the public tends to focus on the former in discussions on climate change.
Anthropocene Math in the Age of Trump
As the Trump administration and Republicans in power in Congress set to work destroying environmental regulations, scientists have added urgency to the resistance with a simple new equation that shows the staggering effect human activity has had on the climate. Their findings? Humans have altered the climate 170 times faster than natural forces.
Oroville Emergency a Warning for U.S. Dam Safety
The near-failure on Sunday evening of the auxiliary spillway at Oroville Dam and the ongoing emergency operations to contain flood waters in California’s second-largest reservoir and shore up its eroding outlet are a tale of caution for the nation’s aging dam fleet.
Climate Science Part 1
With President Trump fully embracing fossil fuels and indicating that he intends to abandon US efforts to address climate change (and even the scientific inquiry underlying those efforts), there is no time like the present to refresh what we know about climate change, what we can do about it, and what kinds of research still need to be done to improve our understanding.
The March for Science is Set to Happen on Earth Day
Scientists officially have a date where they’ll be taking to the streets. The March for Science has been scheduled for Saturday, April 22 in Washington, D.C. A growing constellation of marches are also scheduled for that day in cities across the U.S.
The World at 1°C ― January ‘17
2016 was a dark year for anyone paying attention to the gathering storm of climate change and social breakdown, and the change of calendar year does not mean a change of direction.
The Challenge of Defining the ‘Pre-Industrial’ Era
The UN Paris Agreement on climate change aims to ensure increases in global temperature are less than 2C above pre-industrial levels, with an aspirational limit of 1.5C. However, the starting line of the “pre-industrial” era is not defined by the UN agreements, or by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Antarctic Tipping Points for a Multi-Metre Sea Level Rise
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), comprising more than two million cubic kilometres of ice, is under pressure from a warming climate, with scientists saying its break-up –– and an eventual global sea-level rise of 3–5 metres –– is not matter of if, but when.
G20 Climate Risk Report is a Wake-up Call for Fossil-Fuel Investors
It is rare for a report to hold the potential to change the world, but one study published last month may do just that. The Recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD — a group of experts assembled by the G20’s Financial Stability Board) aims to give investors, lenders and insurers visibility of how climate-change risk will affect individual businesses, and a road map for reacting to it.
Water and Climate Dominate World Economic Forum Risk Report
Environmental risks, steadily rising in importance, are recognized as authentic and relentless obstacles to peace, wealth, and health, according to the World Economic Forum’s global risk report, an annual survey of business, academic, and political leaders.
A Power Zone Manifesto
What we are about to undertake is to write a prescription. Essentially, over the next 10 or 12 weeks, we are going to write a book comprised of a string of these blog posts, chapter by chapter.
