Climate Change

Nasa's Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2) has returned its first global maps of the greenhouse gas CO2. The satellite was sent up in July to help pinpoint the key locations on the Earth's surface where carbon dioxide is being emitted and absorbed. This should help scientists better understand how human activities are influencing the climate. The new maps contain only a few weeks of data in October and November, but demonstrate the promise of the mission.

The U.S. and other nations were applauding this weekend’s climate change agreement on Monday, but the deal’s difficult negotiations showed all too clearly the major hurdles that lie ahead as officials try to reach a much more sweeping pact next year in Paris. The 196 nations gathered in the Peruvian capital agreed that each country should offer a plan next year for reducing its own greenhouse gas pollution. In a major win for the U.S. position, developing nations like China and India are also encouraged under the deal to join richer countries in agreeing to make cuts.

Through greater reliance on renewable power and energy efficiency measures already required under the state’s progressive energy laws, Arizona can achieve mandatory emissions reduction targets more easily and cheaply than federal guidelines anticipate, according to a group of University of Arizona researchers. The group’s comments are in response to the Clean Power Plan, an EPA proposal to reduce the country’s use of coal-dominated electric power to curb climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions. ...

The new agriculture: From food farms to solar farms Across the U.S., government agencies and energy developers are looking at agricultural land to develop renewable energy resources like wind and solar. Researchers will examine the policy shift from protecting farmland at all costs to promoting renewable energy over other uses. They will begin with a case study from California, which favors renewable energy development instead of agriculture, and make policy recommendations that could be applied to renewable energy development in Western New York.

A common refrain heard from boosters of the fossil fuel industry states that converting the US economy to run on renewables would be too costly and rely too heavily on unproven technologies. Why risk tanking the nation's economy, they ask, when coal, oil, and natural gas have powered our vehicles and heated our homes for over 150 years? It's a line of argument the green movement has struggled to counter, even as solar and wind prices plummet and nations such as Germany, Denmark, and even China have steeply ramped up their renewable energy production rates.

On Thursday night, climate negotiations had turned into a script for a thrilling film on international intrigue. A document so far held secret was inadvertently leaked well before it was planned to be released by the United nations climate change convention secretariat. That set off a series of high-drama sequences which by night time, when talks were suspended again, had plunged the conference into uncertainty. ...

Kelly Sims Gallagher, who is on temporary assignment with the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) , moderated a panel to highlight President Obama’s new commitments at the UN Climate Summit in September on global resilience, and to invite NGOs, the private sector, and developing country partners to join in the new consortium on climate information for global resilience. Read more

Using cost-benefit analysis to help design and evaluate regulatory policy is nothing new in government circles, but deploying it as a tool to help meet the challenge of global climate change is quite novel and could be very effective. New research presented in the December 5th edition of Science outlines a practical new approach to measure the social cost of carbon (SCC) to better inform policymakers on the economic and environmental impacts of reducing carbon pollution. The article is co-authored by Harvard Kennedy School Assistant Professor Joseph Aldy.