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JASON. Long term impact of atmospheric carbon dioxide on climate. Technical report
Abstract
The questions of the sources of atmospheric carbon dioxide are addressed; distribution of the present carbon dioxide among the atmospheric, oceanic, and biospheric reservoirs is considered; and the impact on climate as reflected by the average ground temperature at each latitude of significant increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide is assessed. A new model for the mixing of carbon dioxide in the oceans is proposed. The proposed model explicitly takes into account the flow of colder and/or saltier water to great depths. We have constructed two models for the case of radiative equilibrium treating the atmosphere as gray and dividing the infrared emission region into nine bands. The gray atmosphere model predicts an increase of average surface temperature of 2.8°K for a doubling of COâ, a result about a degree less than the nine band model. An analytic model of the atmosphere was constructed (JASON Climate Model). Calculation with this zonally averaged model shows an increase of average surface temperature of 2.4° for a doubling of COâ. The equatorial temperature increases by 0.7°K while the poles warm up by 10 to 12°K. The JASON climate model suffers from a number of fundamental weaknesses. The role of clouds in determining the albedo is not adequately taken into account nor are the asymmetries between the northern and southern hemisphere. (JGB)
... Over 100 years ago, in 1896, the chemist Svante Arrhenius discussed what we today call the greenhouse effect, paradoxically about the same time that use of fossil fuels began to rise exponentially. Closer to our present frame of observations, in 1979, US natural scientists summed up "the long-term impact of atmospheric carbon dioxide on the climate" and concluded that the Earth's average temperature was set to increase by 2-3° C, which would cause serious droughts in North America, Asia and Africa, and simultaneously cause the ice at the poles to melt and the sea level to rise (MacDonald et al. 1979). This was 40 years ago. ...
Few revolutions have had such an impact in modern times as the Cuban Revolution in 1959. Numerous publications (books, articles, and dissertations) have been written about it. Opinions about it have diverged. The revolution has been an inspiration for many, contested and even detested by others. In 1961, the Cuban Revolution took a radical turn when Fidel Castro declared that the revolution was socialist and parliamentary elections were no longer on the agenda. This chapter is a review of major events, and turning points, in the life span of the now 60-year-old revolution. After the death of legendary and uncontested leader Fidel Castro, the island is confronted with a serious of problems and challenges—not least with a huge democratic deficit.
Since the early 2000s, proposals to deliberately modify the Earth's climate have gained political traction as a controversial last resort measure against dangerous global warming. The article provides a ‘longue durée’ picture of such climate engineering proposals. It traces their historical trajectory from the late 1950s to their most recent arrival on mainstream climate policy agendas. This perspective suggests that the history of climate engineering unfolds not only along historically specific modes of understanding climatic change. It also corresponds to changing alliances between climate science and the state. By bringing together historical scholarship with contributions from sociology and science policy studies, the article sheds new light on the rise of climate engineering proposals. It recontextualizes these proposals within the bigger history of the political cultivation of climate science. This perspective highlights how deeply entwined efforts to understand and efforts to govern climatic change have always been.
This article is categorized under: Climate, History, Society, Culture > Ideas and Knowledge
The Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Sociology/Anthropology of Climate Knowledge
The Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Knowledge and Practice
It is obvious that climate change has become a serious threat to humankind. Unfortunately, even though the scientists are near unanimity—which is rarely achieved in other fields—it is not seen as such by the masses. This chapter investigates the climate change consensus achieved between scientists, politicians, and the public. It maintains that the political aspect is the weak link, since courageous political decisions that benefit future generations can cause great dissatisfaction, among those who are potential voters and sponsors. Furthermore, the lack of a global understanding of what is sustainable impedes potential political agreements. This study clarifies that the public perception on the scientific consensus is largely inferior to the reality; even in highly educated populations, due to policies, educational programs, misinformation, and cultural difference. The study also shows that measuring consensus leads to a false debate about the value reached. Fuzzy logic is used to capture humans’ perceptions and proposes achieving the consensus by minimizing weighted incoherencies.KeywordsClimate changeCoherenceConsensusPolicyFuzzy logicTOPSIS
Notions of the impending climate crisis have pushed a set of highly contested techno-scientific measures onto policy agendas around the world. Suggestions to deliberately alter, to engineer, the Earth’s climate have gained political currency in recent years not as a positive vision of techno-scientific innovation, but as a daunting measure of last resort. The controversial status of various so-called climate engineering proposals raises a simple, yet pressing question: How has it has come to this? And, more specifically, how did such contested measures earn their place on policy agendas, despite enormous scientific complexities and fierce political contestation? Global societal problems, such as climate change, financial crises, or pandemics have brought the political relevance of scientific expertise to the foreground. This book speaks to scholarship in sociology and science studies, seeking to illuminate the essential entanglements between efforts to understand and efforts to govern such problems. By giving climate engineering a life of its own and following its dynamic trajectory as a contested object of expert work, this book sheds light on the reflexive and historically contingent interplay of science and politics as two distinct, yet increasingly interdependent, realms of society.
A series of cobalt-promoted Ni-Mg-Al hydrotalcite-derived catalysts were tested towards CO2 methanation reaction. The best among examined catalysts was the one with 1 wt% of cobalt in fresh hydrotalcite, obtaining 77% of CO2 conversion and 99% of CH4 selectivity at 300 °C. Above that temperature, the catalyst was working with-near-equilibrium parameters. It was also stable for up to 24 h on stream. Other cobalt-containing samples were likewise very active and selective during the time on stream. Due to the use of a low amount of cobalt (0.5–4 wt%) the Co-Ni alloy was not the subject of research – both materials formed probably solid solution of cobalt in the nickel matrix. Although the behavior of cobalt as a textural and electronic promoter was confirmed. Co was found to improve reducibility of nickel species, hydrogen uptake, and the acidic/basic properties by increasing the number of medium strength and strong basic sites. Tendency to sintering of nickel crystallites on cobalt-promoted catalysts was not confirmed in this study, however, with increased content of Co, bigger metal crystallites were formed under the reduction conditions.
There are many dimensions to a look at ethics in climate change, the underlying science and the responses to societal challenges. The rapid changes occurring in the Earth's climate are impacting every part of our lives, economically, culturally and physically, and these are driving concerns about vulnerability, equity and justice. The good news is that the science is providing a clear message – climate change is one of the most important issues facing humanity and our planet. There is basically no debate about this conclusion any longer within the science community; this understanding is data-driven, based on extensive observations and associated analyses using many different research tools. Science shows that human influence has been the dominant cause of observed warming and other major changes in the Earth's climate since at least the mid-twentieth century. However, that doesn't keep misinformation and overstatement of remaining uncertainties from appearing in the news, social media or in various blogs, but to do so requires distortions and misrepresentations of the science, or refutation of the underlying premises for basic physics. Denial of climate change and why it is occurring adds its own ethical dimension. Finally, there are major ethical dilemmas complicating the debate of how to respond to the continuing changes in climate. How do we balance the rights and responsibilities of the developed and developing nations of our planet? How do we sort out the possible use of geoengineering approaches that are being proposed to reduce or reverse climate change and/or its adverse societal impacts? How do we assess our responsibility to future generations for the actions we take today and the resulting changes in climate they must live with? These are complex considerations requiring solutions that meet the needs of humanity across its many dimensions.
I suspect that everyone who reads this collection of essays already is cognizant of two major life- and planet-changing trends which have manifested themselves ever more strongly during the last 40 years:
The United States is facing many internal and external challenges. Internally, productivity growth rate has slowed down significantly; externally, rising powers, such as China and Russia are challenging American global competitiveness. In this article we argue that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a differentiator that enables the U.S. to help address these challenges. DARPA has been a core engine for breakthrough technologies and innovations. We examine how DARPA has delivered breakthrough technologies many that drive economic growth and the impacts of DARPA technologies on the U.S. economy. We also compare DARPAs performance against some of the world's leading technology venture capital firms. We conclude that DARPA is a major national differentiator buttressing U.S. strength in innovation, technology and the economy. Also, based on the observations in this study we provide a few managerial and organizational takeaways for private organizations.
William D. Nordhaus and Paul M. Romer received the 2018 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. This paper surveys Nordhaus’ contributions on “integrating climate change into long‐run macroeconomic analysis”, for which he was recognized with this Prize.
Claiming that history matters in climate change negotiations is a commonly accepted notion among policy makers and researchers. Nevertheless, there seems to be much difficulty in providing answers as to how history actually matters, and how things in the past are not only determining the current behavior of decision makers but also defining the sets of possible subsequent decisions. Looking at the climate change regime building process, which already started long before the Rio convention of 1992, involves a historical process that is difficult to grasp. The complexity of the climate change negotiations is a product of this unique historical process and understanding its complex trajectory requires reexamining the past.
Climate change represents the largest planning challenge humanity has ever faced. Past planning has not only failed to confront the global warming crisis, but has helped increase emissions. Climate action plans being developed by governments at all levels still do not address underlying drivers of the problem such as unsustainable levels of population, consumption, and inequity. Nor do debates around climate change planning address the core reasons why societies to date have been unable to deal with such sustainability challenges: dysfunctional democracy, poorly regulated capitalism, and unhealthy social ecologies. Achieving a sustainable, carbon-neutral society requires that planning confront these realities and develop a new conception of itself as a far more proactive endeavor to help societies prepare for a sustainable future.
This book provides theoretical and practical insights for effective decision making in situations that involve various types of conflict cleavages. Embedding historical analysis, negotiation analysis, political scientific analysis and game theoretical analysis in an integrated analytical framework allows a comprehensive perspective on various dilemmas and self-enforcing dynamics that inhibit decision making. The conceptualization of strategic facilitation highlights the value of leadership, chairmanship and the role of threshold states in facilitating decision making as the global climate change negotiations unfolds. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014. All rights are reserved.
A sensitivity analysis of potential evapotranspiration (PET) rates under both CO 2 and air temperature changes was conducted. PET was modeled with the Penman-Monteith equation so that the effects of atmospheric CO 2 concentrations on plant stomatal resistance, and the effects of temperature on land-surface–atmosphere water vapor exchanges were explicitly taken into account. A root-zone soil-water balance was performed using a physically based soil-crop-climate model to analyze the sensitivity of soil moisture to changes in atmospheric temperature and CO 2 concentrations, and the effects of CO 2 fertilization on plant photosynthesis and crop yield. A wide spectrum of directional climate change scenarios were analyzed, including both a 3°C increase and a 3°C decrease in air temperature, and both a 50 and a 100% increase in atmospheric CO 2 concentrations. An additive crop yield model and an optimal irrigation scheduling model were used to maximize agricultural benefits by maximizing crop yield and minimizing irrigation costs. The model was applied to an irrigated potato crop in the San Luis Valley of Colorado.
The characteristics of the different types of climate models are reviewed and are tabulated for the model simulations of CO2‐induced climatic change. These simulations are discussed in terms of the surface temperature change and the response times of the atmosphere, oceanic mixed layer and deep ocean. A calculation of the time‐dependent warming resulting from a time‐dependent increase in atmospheric CO2 is performed with a simple climate model, and is used to estimate the time of first detectability of the warming signal. Considering the decrease in the climatic noise level with increasing averaging period during the past century and the increase in signal with time in the future, it is found that the time of first detectability is relatively insensitive to the averaging period from 10 to 40 years. However, the time of first detectability is found to be uncertain by about ±10 years due to the uncertainty in the rate at which heat is exchanged between the oceanic mixed layer and deeper ocean. It is recommended that numerical simulations with coupled atmospheric and oceanic general circulation models be performed to reduce these uncertainties.
The 1983 National Academy of Sciences report entitled "Changing Climate," authored by a committee of physical and social scientists chaired by William Nierenberg, was an early comprehensive review of the effects of human-caused increases in the levels of atmospheric CO2. Study of the events surrounding the committee's creation, deliberations, and subsequent report demonstrates that the conclusions of the report were the consensus of the entire committee and in line with the scientific consensus of the time. This result contraverts a 2008 paper in which Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway, and Matthew Shindell asserted that the report contradicted a growing consensus about climate change, and that Nierenberg for political reasons deliberately altered the summary and conclusions of the report in a way that played down the concerns of the other physical scientists on the committee. Examining the production of the report and contextualizing it in contemporaneous scientific and political discussion, we instead show how it was a multi-year effort with work divided among the various members of the committee according to their expertise. The synthesis and conclusions were expressly a joint statement of the committee and were consistent with other assessments of that time expressing deep concern over the potential issues while stopping short of recommending major policy changes due to the uncertainties, and to a lack of good alternatives.
This paper estimates the historic relationship between carbon emissions and GDP using data across countries and across time. We combine this relationship with plausible projections for GDP and population growth to construct a model that offers insights into the likely path of global emissions in the next century. In addition, we experiment with a method for incorporating oil prices into the model. Our analysis provides independent confirmation of the business-as-usual forecasts generated by the larger structural models.
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