Arguments
New research, May 21-27, 2018
Posted on 1 June 2018 by Ari Jokimäki
A selection of new climate related research articles is shown below.
Climate change mitigation
Climate change communication
Climate change as a polarizing cue: Framing effects on public support for low-carbon energy policies
"• We evaluate how framing affects support for four low-carbon energy policies among U.S. partisans.
• For Republicans, a climate change frame lowers support relative to pollution or security frames.
• We find framing effects for renewable energy, carbon tax, and fuel efficiency policies, but not nuclear power.
• No framing effects are observed among Democrats or Independents.
• Results support a motivated reasoning rather than heuristic processing mechanism."
Emission savings
Impact of cutting meat intake on hidden greenhouse gas emissions in an import-reliant city (open access)
Domestic energy consumption and climate change mitigation
Carbon footprints of grain-, forage-, and energy-based cropping systems in the North China plain
Profiling energy efficiency tendency: A case for Turkish households
Rising wages and energy consumption transition in rural China
Energy production
Promises and limitations of nuclear fission energy in combating climate change
"In a strategy to eliminate all non-CCS coal power stations, some 1600?MW of nuclear power would be required and sufficient to cover the base load for the electrical energy supply system. This nuclear expansion should be accompanied by effective international safety assurances, including a mandate to stop construction of unsafe nuclear power plants. In the long term, after 2065, we expect inherently safe molten salt thorium reactors to compete with fusion reactors."
"Wind’s association with CO2 emissions became increasingly negative after the Great Recession (i.e., suppressed emissions at a greater rate). Nuclear’s association with CO2resembled a distorted U-shaped curve over time. Biomass’ elasticity fluctuated between positive and negative values. Solar and geothermal’s elasticity remained fairly consistent over the course of the analysis, and hydro’s elasticity increased over time but remained negative throughout the study’s temporal period."
Scarcity in abundance: The challenges of promoting energy access in the Southern African region
Analysis on the synergistic effect of sustainable development of coal industry under 1.5°C scenario
Palm oil supply chain complexity impedes implementation of corporate no-deforestation commitments
The burden of sustainability: Limits to sustainable bioenergy development in Norway
Gone with the wind: A learning curve analysis of China's wind power industry
An information theory based robustness analysis of energy mix in US States
U.S. climate policy and the regional economics of electricity generation
Climate Policy
The global impacts of US climate policy: a model simulation using GCAM-TU and MAGICC
"Simulations by the Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse-gas Induced Climate Change (MAGICC) indicate that the temperature increase by 2100 would rise by 0.081°C–0.161°C compared to the three original RCPs (Representative Concentration Pathways) if US emissions were kept at their 2015 levels until 2100. The probability of staying below 2°C would decrease by 6–9% even if the US resumes mitigation efforts for achieving its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) target after 2025. It is estimated by GCAM-TU that, without US participation, increased reduction efforts are required for the rest of the world, including developing countries, in order to achieve the 2°C goal, resulting in 18% higher global cumulative mitigation costs from 2015 to 2100."
Can India grow and live within a 1.5 degree CO2 emissions budget?
Whose carbon is burnable? Equity considerations in the allocation of a “right to extract”
The role of a low carbon fuel standard in achieving long-term GHG reduction targets
Achievability of the Paris Agreement targets in the EU: demand-side reduction potentials in a carbon budget perspective (open access)
Policy discussion for sustainable integrated electricity expansion in South Africa
Geoengineering
CESM1(WACCM) Stratospheric Aerosol Geoengineering Large Ensemble (GLENS) Project (open access)
Negative emissions: Part 1—research landscape and synthesis (open access)
Negative emissions—Part 2: Costs, potentials and side effects (open access)
Negative emissions—Part 3: Innovation and upscaling (open access)
Climate change
Temperature, precipitation, wind
Internal variability and regional climate trends in an Observational Large Ensemble
Detection of anthropogenic influence on fixed threshold indices of extreme temperature
Extreme events
Rainfall–vegetation interaction regulates temperature anomalies during extreme dry events in the Horn of Africa (open access)
Hurricane Harvey Links to Ocean Heat Content and Climate Change Adaptation (open access)
Urbanization effects on heat waves in Fujian Province, Southeast China
Weathering Storms: Understanding the Impact of Natural Disasters in Central America
Forcings and feedbacks
Ocean Carbon Cycle Feedbacks Under Negative Emissions
Memory of irrigation effects on hydroclimate and its modeling challenge (open access)
Cryosphere
Atmospheric and oceanic circulation
Carbon cycle
The impact of transport model differences on CO2 surface flux estimates from OCO-2 retrievals of column average CO2 (open access)
Climate change impacts
Mankind
Differences, or lack thereof, in wheat and maize yields under three low-warming scenarios (open access)
Economically robust protection against 21st century sea-level rise
Responding to multiple climate-linked stressors in a remote island context: the example of Yadua Island, Fiji (open access)
Crop productivity changes in 1.5 °C and 2 °C worlds under climate sensitivity uncertainty (open access)
Drought and Distress in Southeastern Australia
Biosphere
Temperature affects phenological synchrony in a tree-killing bark beetle
Other papers
General climate science
SODA3: a new ocean climate reanalysis (open access)
A climatological study of air pollution potential in China
On the Identification of Ozone Recovery
Palaeoclimatology
The rise and fall of the Cretaceous Hot Greenhouse climate
"Climate change as a polarizing cue: Framing effects on public support for low-carbon energy policies"
This appears to suggest that Republicans don't accept anthropogenic climate change and regard it almost like a swear word not be said in polite company, and prefer nuclear energy over wind and solar for some mysterious reason. (I confess, I have just scanned the abstract). The common factor might be a desire to understand the world by over simplifying the issues. For example regarding the science the most common myth is "climate has changed before so we arent responsible" which has the virtue of both being simple but wrong.
Nuclear energy has the one advantage of being continuous baseload power, and the magical appeal of being something wonderful that creates energy out of a few tonnes of uranium. What could be a simpler solution? We were all impressed with nuclear when we were children.
And wind and solar might be perceived as associated with Greenies and greenies are allegedly "watermelons" and bad, communist people, so therefore we don't have to listen to anything they say no matter how constructive it is. This is another simplification, and I guess we are all susceptible to such mental biases on various issues.
But these are all massive simplifications and hide multiple problems with nuclear power and climate denialist myths. It's literally an inability to deal with complexity and nuance, and hard realities about problems. There is a basic lack of intellectual rigour in the Republicans response to the issues at times. You see it with their economic policies as well, all based on massive simplifications that are so far detached from reality as to cause massive problems.
"This nuclear expansion should be accompanied by effective international safety assurances, including a mandate to stop construction of unsafe nuclear power plants"
Good luck with that. Another piece of wishful thinking. I don't see this as likely to happen, given countries self interest and cost pressures, especially when you have America attacking international agreements, if not indeed the entire international order. Wind and solar seems the best idea until genuinely safe nuclear power becomes a reality which I would welcome (but dont hold your breath, its been promised for a considerable time now).
I am so tired of the simple minded thinking on meat consumption. It is not meat/dairy consumption that is the problem it is the CAFO standard that has been fourced on the industry so a small number of corporations can rake in massive profits.
We need to go back to grazing livestock. Instead of growing millions of acres of grain, with all the connected FFs involved in that, then cramming it into animals we need to put the animals directly on the land. This has the effect of healthy animals and healthy meat/dairy, it also means healthy pasture lands from natural spread of manure so better CO2 up take. It could also provide millions of jobs.
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2 jef + mod,
I think it is fair to at least comment on the junk science found on this list here: Impact of cutting meat intake on hidden greenhouse gas emissions in an import-reliant city
The paper tries to make a case for consumption based accounting where production based accounting is far more appropriate. Primarily because management changes alone can change animal husbandry from a net emissions source to a net sink. It is the production that matters in this case for mitigation potential. You have posted this under the heading of Emission savings and the is no greater emissions savings than changing production from a net source to a net sink.
Ironically another paper on this same list Carbon footprints of grain-, forage-, and energy-based cropping systems in the North China plain
Shows the smallest footprint for grass!
Clearly both papers are at least partly in conflict with each other.
I agree though that further discussion besides mentioning those papers are on the weeks list and are at least partly in conflict would be better done on the animal husbandry threads because more solid science has been posted there already.