Enlarge (credit: Jason Persoff / Getty Images) Recently, a network of climate modeling groups showed that it will cost more to overshoot the Paris Agreement temperature goals than it will to stay on a low-temperature trajectory. On the same day, that collaboration also published work showing that additional risks of overshooting come in part via […]
Enlarge / Capturing carbon, as this algae-growing plant does, may not be the most economical way to reach our climate targets. (credit: Santiago Urquijo / Getty Images ) What will it cost if the climate exceeds the Paris Agreement temperature goals this century—even if we later remove co2 dioxide from the air and manage to […]
Enlarge Past projections of energy costs have consistently underestimated just how cheap renewable energy would be in the future, as well as the benefits of rolling them out quickly, according to a new report out of the Institute of New Economic Thinking at the University of Oxford. The report makes predictions about more than 50 […]
Enlarge / The destabilization of ice sheets in West Antarctica would be a major climate tipping point. (credit: Alessandro Dahan / Getty Images ) Rising temperatures are producing some very predictable effects: gradually worsening droughts, a steady rise within sea levels, and so on. But we also risk crossing thresholds in which aspects of the […]
Enlarge / An image of the Bay Area at night shows why protecting some regions will likely lead to damaging floods elsewhere. (credit: NASA) Protecting the coasts in the United States from the impacts of climate change comes with a hefty price tag. But new research shows that using sea walls to safeguard land can […]
Enlarge / How much is preserving something like this worth? (credit: Karen Chan 16, Miguel.v, and Jorge Morales Piderit) Is there a way to put a dollar amount on pristine forests or marshlands? The United Nations believes so—and that the ability to do it might be a valuable step toward combating the slew of environmental […]
Enlarge (credit: Ina Fassbender/Getty Images) Arguments about our shift to renewable power often focus on the raw economics of doing so—the cost of the power itself and, in some cases, the cost of managing its intermittency. Those are often compared to the costs of producing electricity with fossil fuels. But that ignores one of the […]
Enlarge / A future green jet fuel? (credit: Picture Alliance/Getty Images) For many applications, liquid fuels remain the most practical energy supply—applications like aircraft and large ships being obvious examples. It’s possible to avoid using fossil fuels for these applications, since there are many ways of producing biofuels. But we can’t produce biofuels at a […]
Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, has threatened to stop the transaction discussions entirely when a deal isn’t in sight in a key EU Brexit summit happening in Brussels now. Even the EU’s main Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, for his part, also has attempted to advocate European politicians, especially in France and Belgium, to moderate […]