Forecasting what the Earth’s climate might look like a century from now has long presented a huge challenge to climate scientists. But better understanding of the climate system, improved observations of the current climate, and rapidly improving computing power are slowly leading to more reliable methods.
cop 16 supply chainCountries need to take ownership of their entire life-cycle emissions and when such agreements are based on data that attributes emissions fairly. But companies are not waiting around for any unlikely agreement that may come out of COP 16. Many are starting to see a sustainable supply chain as a way to not only cut costs, but also create new products that are less impacting to the environment and expand in developing-world markets that are likely to be hit hard by global warming.
For years, free-market fundamentalists opposed to government regulation have sought to create doubt in the public’s mind about the dangers of smoking, acid rain, and ozone depletion. Now they have turned those same tactics on the issue of global warming and on climate scientists, with significant success.
Environmentalists have long sought to use the threat of catastrophic global warming to persuade the public to embrace a low-carbon economy. But recent events, including the tainting of some climate research, have shown the risks of trying to link energy policy to climate science.
Even as the climate science becomes more definitive, polls show that public concern in the United States about global warming has been declining. What will it take to rally Americans behind the need to take strong action on cutting carbon emissions?
While the scientific evidence for climate change grows, the policy responses have so far had little or no impact on the build-up of emissions. Following the recent developments in Copenhagen, there are few signs that this will change in the near future. With this in mind, this article examines why there is still such a gap between what science says is needed, and what is actually achieved through policy.
Climate change officials are expressing confidence that the a comprehensive international climate change deal would be reached at UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.
Last week, at the National Clean Energy Summit 2.0 in Las Vegas, Energy Secretary Chu called for a revolution, “a second industrial revolution.” The first industrial revolution came with a “carbon dioxide cost” but “in the next industrial revolution, we must develop technologies that will enable us to get the energy the world needs to grow and prosper but “essentially reducing and eliminating the carbon dioxide,” he said. Chu said the United States has the greatest research and development centers in the world in universities, national labs and the private sector. “Once we get this great invention machine geared and going we’d be invincible. But the only trouble is, let’s get it going.”