Climate change

Category: EXPORT
Category: Climate
There is an enormous amount of evidence, and agreement amongst scientists working in relevant fields, that the Earth's Climate is getting warmer due to human activities.
== evidence ==
What's really warming the world? Bloomberg - graphic illustration of how observed temperatures match with models of changes due to earth's orbit, solar variation, volcanic activity, deforestation, ozone pollution, aerosol pollution, greenhouse gases
Climate Lab Book Ed Hawkins' blog
Skeptical Science
* Skeptic Arguments and What the Science Says 
* Global Warming & Climate Change Myths
:: Here is a summary of global warming and climate change myths, sorted by recent popularity vs what science says. Click the response for a more detailed response. You can also view them sorted by taxonomy, by popularity, in a print-friendly version, with short URLs or with fixed numbers you can use for permanent references.
=== CO2 levels ===
The Last Time CO2 Was This High, Humans Didn’t Exist Andrew Freedman; Climate Central; 3 May 2013 
: The last time there was this much carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth's atmosphere, modern humans didn't exist. Megatoothed sharks prowled the oceans, the world's seas were up to 100 feet higher than they are today, and the global average surface temperature was up to 11°F warmer than it is now. As we near the record for the highest CO2 concentration in human history — 400 parts per million — climate scientists worry about where we were then, and where we're rapidly headed now. According to data gathered at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, the 400 ppm mark may briefly be exceeded this month, when CO2 typically hits a seasonal peak in the Northern Hemisphere, although it is more likely to take a couple more years until it stays above that threshold, according to Ralph Keeling, a researcher at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography.
=== methane emission ===
Scientists attribute rising methane levels to agriculture phys.org; 11 Mar 2016
: A breakthrough in understanding about the causes of climate change has today been published online in the prestigious international journal Science.
: The findings of a study initiated by NIWA scientists, rule out fossil fuel production as the major cause in the rise of methane levels in the atmosphere since 2007.
: The research, led by NIWA atmospheric scientist Hinrich Schaefer, has concluded that increasing levels of methane in the atmosphere since 2007 are most likely due to agricultural practices, and not fossil fuel production as previously thought.
=== temperatures ===
http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/files/2016/05/spiral_optimized.gif
=== consensus ===
Scientific consensus: Earth's climate is warming NASA 
: Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals1 show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities. In addition, most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position. The following is a partial list of these organizations, along with links to their published statements and a selection of related resources.
CLIMATE SCIENCE SURVEY - Questions and Responses Bart Strengers, Bart Verheggen, Kees Vringer; PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency; 10 Apr 2015
: In the Spring of 2012, PBL, in collaboration with other researchers from the Netherlands and Australia, conducted a detailed survey about climate science. More than 1800 international scientists studying various aspects of climate change, including e.g. climate physics, climate impacts and mitigation, responded to the questionnaire. Certain results were selected from this survey, namely those pertaining to the causes of recent global warming (attribution), and have since been published in Environmental Science and Technology (ES&T).
: This document presents the responses to each survey question, both as an absolute number of responses and as a fraction of the total. In some cases, the responses were also divided into seven groups of respondents: co-authors of the Working Group I report of IPCC AR4 (‘AR4 authors’); signatories of public declarations critical of mainstream climate science as embodied by IPCC (‘unconvinced’); and four subgroups divided by their self-declared number of climate-related articles published in peer-reviewed scientific journals (0–3; 4–10; 11–30; more than 30). The four subgroups constitute similar numbers of respondents. 
The Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming
: Consensus is more like 99.9% than 97%
Essentially All Climate Scientists Agree: Man-Made Global Warming is Real Henry Auer; The Energy Collective; 4 May 2016
: Virtually Complete Unanimity of Acceptance of Man-Made Global Warming. James Lawrence Powell recently published an article (Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 1–4, 2016; DOI:10.1177/0270467616634958) which found that during 2013 and 2014 only 0.0058% of authors of peer-reviewed journal articles rejected the reality of man-made global warming. Of the almost 70,000 authors of those articles only 4 reached that conclusion, giving a ratio of 1:17,352.
Climate Scientists Virtually Unanimous: Anthropogenic Global Warming Is True James Lawrence Powell; Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society; 2016
: The extent of the consensus among scientists on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) has the potential to influence public opinion and the attitude of political leaders and thus matters greatly to society. The history of science demonstrates that if we wish to judge the level of a scientific consensus and whether the consensus position is likely to be correct, the only reliable source is the peer-reviewed literature. During 2013 and 2014, only 4 of 69,406 authors of peer-reviewed articles on global warming, 0.0058% or 1 in 17,352, rejected AGW. Thus, the consensus on AGW among publishing scientists is above 99.99%, verging on unanimity. The U.S. House of Representatives holds 40 times as many global warming rejecters as are found among the authors of scientific articles. The peer-reviewed literature contains no convincing evidence against AGW.
=== persuaders ===
The arguments that convinced a libertarian to support aggressive action on climate
:Jerry Taylor, policy brief, "The Conservative Case for a Carbon Tax," which argues for a steadily rising "revenue-neutral" fee on fossil fuel producers.
=== denialism ===
==== legal harassment ====
Climate scientists are under attack from frivolous lawsuits Lauren Kurtz; Guardian; 7 Jul 2016
: Climate Science Legal Defense Fund is forced to defend climate scientists against constant frivolous lawsuits. On June 14th, an Arizona court ruled that thousands of emails from two prominent climate scientists must be turned over to the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E), a group that disputes the 97% expert consensus on human-caused climate change and argues against action to confront it. E&E and its attorneys are funded by Peabody Coal, Arch Coal, and Alpha Natural Resources, coal corporations with billions of dollars in revenue.
== effects ==
=== observed ===
Cold weather kills far more people than hot weather Science Daily; 20 May 2015
:Cold weather kills 20 times as many people as hot weather, according to an international study analyzing over 74 million deaths in 384 locations across 13 countries. The findings also reveal that deaths due to moderately hot or cold weather substantially exceed those resulting from extreme heat waves or cold spells.
Journal Reference:
: Antonio Gasparrini, Yuming Guo, Masahiro Hashizume, Eric Lavigne, Antonella Zanobetti, Joel Schwartz, Aurelio Tobias, Shilu Tong, Joacim Rocklöv, Bertil Forsberg, Michela Leone, Manuela De Sario, Michelle L Bell, Yue-Liang Leon Guo, Chang-fu Wu, Haidong Kan, Seung-Muk Yi, Micheline de Sousa Zanotti Stagliorio Coelho, Paulo Hilario Nascimento Saldiva, Yasushi Honda, Ho Kim, Ben Armstrong. Mortality risk attributable to high and low ambient temperature: a multicountry observational study. The Lancet, May 2015 DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(14)62114-0
----
Attributing human mortality during extreme heat waves to anthropogenic climate change Daniel Mitchell, Clare Heaviside, Sotiris Vardoulakis, Chris Huntingford, Giacomo Masato, Benoit P Guillod, Peter Frumhoff, Andy Bowery, David Wallom, Myles Allen; IOP Environmental Research Letters; 8 Jul 2016
: It has been argued that climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century. The extreme high temperatures of the summer of 2003 were associated with up to seventy thousand excess deaths across Europe. Previous studies have attributed the meteorological event to the human influence on climate, or examined the role of heat waves on human health. Here, for the first time, we explicitly quantify the role of human activity on climate and heat-related mortality in an event attribution framework, analysing both the Europe-wide temperature response in 2003, and localised responses over London and Paris. Using publicly-donated computing, we perform many thousands of climate simulations of a high-resolution regional climate model. This allows generation of a comprehensive statistical description of the 2003 event and the role of human influence within it, using the results as input to a health impact assessment model of human mortality. We find large-scale dynamical modes of atmospheric variability remain largely unchanged under anthropogenic climate change, and hence the direct thermodynamical response is mainly responsible for the increased mortality. In summer 2003, anthropogenic climate change increased the risk of heat-related mortality in Central Paris by ~70% and by ~20% in London, which experienced lower extreme heat. Out of the estimated ~315 and ~735 summer deaths attributed to the heatwave event in Greater London and Central Paris, respectively, 64 (±3) deaths were attributable to anthropogenic climate change in London, and 506 (±51) in Paris. Such an ability to robustly attribute specific damages to anthropogenic drivers of increased extreme heat can inform societal responses to, and responsibilities for, climate change.
HUNDREDS OF DEATHS IN 2003 HEAT WAVE LINKED TO CLIMATE CHANGE Yale environment 360; 8 Jul 2016
: A new study suggests that human-caused climate change could be responsible for a significant portion of the 70,000 deaths that occurred during the record-breaking 2003 European heat wave. The research, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, combined climate modeling with health data for hundreds of fatalities that summer. Climate change, the study found, increased the likelihood of heat-related losses by nearly 70 percent in Paris and 20 percent in London. Out of 735 heat-related deaths in Paris, 506 were attributable to global warming, as were 64 out of 315 deaths in London. "Until recently, whenever we talked about climate change we talked about the globally averaged increase in temperature of 1 degree and people just don't really know or frankly care about that," lead study author and Oxford University scientist Daniel Mitchell told InsideClimate News. "But now… people can really start to understand that these are impacts we're seeing now, not in the future." 
==== floods ====
Why the Deadly Louisiana Flood Occurred Gayathri Vaidyanathan; Scientific American; 16 Aug 2016
: The Louisiana storm was a freak event driven by the atmosphere and the ocean. At present, scientists do not know enough to attribute dynamic storms of this sort to climate change. But broaden the focus a little, and some links appear. The frequency and intensity of heavy rainfall events have increased globally, said Kenneth Kunkel, a climate scientist at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. “Each decade, it has been higher than the previous decade, for about the last 30 to 40 years,” he said. Both the land and the oceans have been warming up, which has increased the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, he said. The oceanic moisture feeds into the storms that form over land. It is likely that the storm in Baton Rouge last week produced more rainfall than it would have 40 years ago, Kunkel said. But whether global warming made Louisiana storm more likely to occur is difficult to answer. Dynamic weather systems are governed by an element of randomness that has not yet been overwhelmed by climate change.
==== Himalayas ====
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-25/climate-change-the-third-pole-under-threat/7657672 Crisis on high] Matthew Carney; ABC.au; 25 Jul 2016
: At the top of the world a climate disaster is unfolding that will impact the lives of more than 1 billion people.
==== sea levels ====
Five Pacific islands lost to rising seas as climate change hits Reuters; Guardian; 10 May 2016
: Six more islands have large swaths of land, and villages, washed into sea as coastline of Solomon Islands eroded and overwhelmed
==== Syria / middle-east drought ====
Human-Induced Climate Change Triggered The Middle East’s Worst Drought In 900 Years, NASA Says
:a new report from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies further bolsters the claim that anthropogenic climate change-induced drought may be one of the root causes of the conflict in the region.
NASA Finds Drought in Eastern Mediterranean Worst of Past 900 Years NASA; 1 Mar 2016
: A new NASA study finds that the recent drought that began in 1998 in the eastern Mediterranean Levant region, which comprises Cyprus, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Turkey, is likely the worst drought of the past nine centuries.
: Scientists reconstructed the Mediterranean’s drought history by studying tree rings as part of an effort to understand the region’s climate and what shifts water to or from the area. Thin rings indicate dry years while thick rings show years when water was plentiful.
: In addition to identifying the driest years, the science team discovered patterns in the geographic distribution of droughts that provides a "fingerprint" for identifying the underlying causes. Together, these data show the range of natural variation in Mediterranean drought occurrence, which will allow scientists to differentiate droughts made worse by human-induced global warming. The research is part of NASA's ongoing work to improve the computer models that simulate climate now and in the future.
Syrian Drought, Triggered By Man-Made Climate Change, Spurred Civil War: Study
Spatiotemporal drought variability in the Mediterranean over the last 900 years
Benjamin I. Cook, Kevin J. Anchukaitis, Ramzi Touchan, David M. Meko, Edward R. Cook; Journal of Geophysical Research; 4 Mar 2016
:Recent Mediterranean droughts have highlighted concerns that climate change may be contributing to observed drying trends, but natural climate variability in the region is still poorly understood. We analyze 900 years (1100–2012) of Mediterranean drought variability in the Old World Drought Atlas (OWDA), a spatiotemporal tree ring reconstruction of the June-July-August self-calibrating Palmer Drought Severity Index. In the Mediterranean, the OWDA is highly correlated with spring precipitation (April–June), the North Atlantic Oscillation (January–April), the Scandinavian Pattern (January–March), and the East Atlantic Pattern (April–June). Drought variability displays significant east-west coherence across the basin on multidecadal to centennial timescales and north-south antiphasing in the eastern Mediterranean, with a tendency for wet anomalies in the Black Sea region (e.g., Greece, Anatolia, and the Balkans) when coastal Libya, the southern Levant, and the Middle East are dry, possibly related to the North Atlantic Oscillation. Recent droughts are centered in the western Mediterranean, Greece, and the Levant. Events of similar magnitude in the western Mediterranean and Greece occur in the OWDA, but the recent 15 year drought in the Levant (1998–2012) is the driest in the record. Estimating uncertainties using a resampling approach, we conclude that there is an 89% likelihood that this drought is drier than any comparable period of the last 900 years and a 98% likelihood that it is drier than the last 500 years. These results confirm the exceptional nature of this drought relative to natural variability in recent centuries, consistent with studies that have found evidence for anthropogenically forced drying in the region.
What is the role of climate change in the conflict in Syria? comic
Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought Colin P. Kelley, Shahrzad Mohtadi, Mark A. Cane, Richard Seager, and Yochanan Kushnir; PNAS; 16 Nov 2014
: There is evidence that the 2007−2010 drought contributed to the conflict in Syria. It was the worst drought in the instrumental record, causing widespread crop failure and a mass migration of farming families to urban centers. Century-long observed trends in precipitation, temperature, and sea-level pressure, supported by climate model results, strongly suggest that anthropogenic forcing has increased the probability of severe and persistent droughts in this region, and made the occurrence of a 3-year drought as severe as that of 2007−2010 2 to 3 times more likely than by natural variability alone. We conclude that human influences on the climate system are implicated in the current Syrian conflict.
Climate Change Helped Spark Syrian War, Study Says Craig Welch; National Geographic; 2 Mar 2015
: A severe drought, worsened by a warming climate, drove Syrian farmers to abandon their crops and flock to cities, helping trigger a civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, according to a new study published Monday.
: (based on PNAS paper)
==== wildfires ====
Did climate change contribute to the Fort McMurray fire? Zane Schwartz; MacLean's; 4 May 2016
: Experts say forest fires are more frequent, and more intense, due to climate change
==== Bolivia - Lake Poopo ====
Climate Change Claims a Lake, and an Identity NICHOLAS CASEY; NY Times; 7 July 2016
: LLAPALLAPANI, Bolivia — The water receded and the fish died. They surfaced by the tens of thousands, belly-up, and the stench drifted in the air for weeks. The birds that had fed on the fish had little choice but to abandon Lake Poopó, once Bolivia’s second-largest but now just a dry, salty expanse. Many of the Uru-Murato people, who had lived off its waters for generations, left as well, joining a new global march of refugees fleeing not war or persecution, but climate change.
=== projections ===
Climate and Health Assessment US Global Change Research Program
* Climate Change and Human Health
* Temperature-Related Death and Illness
* Air Quality Impacts
* Extreme Events
* Vector-Borne Diseases
* Water-Related Illness
* Food Safety, Nutrition, and Distribution
* Mental Health and Well-Being
* Populations of Concern
: References
* Brown, M. E., and others, 2015: Climate Change, Global Food Security and the U.S. Food System. 146 pp., U.S. Global Change Research Program. URL | Detail
* CDC, cited 2015: Lyme Disease: Data and Statistics: Maps- Reported Cases of Lyme Disease – United States, 2001-2014. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. URL | Detail
* Clayton, S., C. M. Manning, and C. Hodge, 2014: Beyond Storms & Droughts: The Psychological Impacts of Climate Change. 51 pp., American Psychological Association and ecoAmerica, Washington, D.C. URL | Detail
* Fann, N., C. G. Nolte, P. Dolwick, T. L. Spero, A. Curry Brown, S. Phillips, and S. Anenberg, 2015: The geographic distribution and economic value of climate change-related ozone health impacts in the United States in 2030. Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association, 65, 570-580. doi:10.1080/10962247.2014.996270 | Detail
* Melillo, J. M., T. (T. C. ) Richmond, and G. W. Yohe, eds., 2014: Climate Change Impacts in the United States: The Third National Climate Assessment. U.S. Global Change Research Program, 841 pp. doi:10.7930/J0Z31WJ2 | Detail
* NOAA, cited 2010: Weather Fatalities. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. URL | Detail
* Schwartz, J. D., and others, 2015: Projections of temperature-attributable premature deaths in 209 U.S. cities using a cluster-based Poisson approach. Environmental Health, 14. doi:10.1186/s12940-015-0071-2 | Detail
* Smith, A. B., and R. W. Katz, 2013: US billion-dollar weather and climate disasters: Data sources, trends, accuracy and biases. Natural Hazards, 67, 387-410. [doi:10.1007/s11069-013-0566-5 doi:10.1007/s11069-013-0566-5] | Detail
* Turner, B. L., and others, 2003: A framework for vulnerability analysis in sustainability science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 100, 8074-8079. [doi:10.1073/pnas.1231335100 doi:10.1073/pnas.1231335100] | Detail
Increasing CO2 threatens human nutrition Samuel S. Myers & others; Nature (letter);7 May 2014
: Dietary deficiencies of zinc and iron are a substantial global public health problem. An estimated two billion people suffer these deficiencies, causing a loss of 63 million life-years annually. Most of these people depend on C3 grains and legumes as their primary dietary source of zinc and iron. Here we report that C3 grains and legumes have lower concentrations of zinc and iron when grown under field conditions at the elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration predicted for the middle of this century. C3 crops other than legumes also have lower concentrations of protein, whereas C4 crops seem to be less affected. Differences between cultivars of a single crop suggest that breeding for decreased sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 concentration could partly address these new challenges to global health.
Climate change will kill more Italians and Greeks than Syrians
Global and regional health effects of future food production under climate change: a modelling study Marco Springmann, Daniel Mason-D'Croz, Sherman Robinson, Tara Garnett, Prof H Charles J Godfray, Prof Douglas Gollin, Prof Mike Rayner, Paola Ballon, Peter Scarborough; The Lancet; 2 Mar 2016
:One of the most important consequences of climate change could be its effects on agriculture. Although much research has focused on questions of food security, less has been devoted to assessing the wider health impacts of future changes in agricultural production. In this modelling study, we estimate excess mortality attributable to agriculturally mediated changes in dietary and weight-related risk factors by cause of death for 155 world regions in the year 2050.
: The health effects of climate change from changes in dietary and weight-related risk factors could be substantial, and exceed other climate-related health impacts that have been estimated. Climate change mitigation could prevent many climate-related deaths. Strengthening of public health programmes aimed at preventing and treating diet and weight-related risk factors could be a suitable climate change adaptation strategy.
India Will Be One Of The Worst Hit Countries By Climate Change, Claims Oxford University Study
:India will be among the worst hit countries and face a large number of deaths due to reduced crop productivity, according to a new study on climate change by the University of Oxford. A modelling study estimates climate change could kill more than 500,000 adults worldwide in 2050. The study from the university’s Martin Future of Food programme was published on Thursday in the medical journal 'The Lancet'.
Global and regional health effects of future food production under climate change: a modelling study Dr Marco Springmann, Daniel Mason-D'Croz, Sherman Robinson, Tara Garnett, Prof H Charles J Godfray, Prof Douglas Gollin, Prof Mike Rayner, Paola Ballon, Peter Scarborough, DPhil; The Lancet; 
:One of the most important consequences of climate change could be its effects on agriculture. Although much research has focused on questions of food security, less has been devoted to assessing the wider health impacts of future changes in agricultural production. In this modelling study, we estimate excess mortality attributable to agriculturally mediated changes in dietary and weight-related risk factors by cause of death for 155 world regions in the year 2050.
Climate change threat must be taken as seriously as nuclear war – UK minister
: Baroness Joyce Anelay, minister of state at the Commonwealth and Foreign Office, said the indirect impacts of global warming, such as deteriorating international security, could be far greater than the direct effects, such as flooding. She issued the warning in a foreword to a new report on the risks of climate change led by the UK’s climate change envoy, Prof Sir David King. The report, commissioned by the Foreign Office, and written by experts from the UK, US, China and India, is stark in its assessment of the wide-ranging dangers posed by unchecked global warming, including:
* very large risks to global food security, including a tripling of food prices
* unprecedented migration overwhelming international assistance
* increased risk of terrorism as states fail
* lethal heat even for people resting in shade
Climate-exodus expected in the Middle East and North Africa Prof. Dr. Johannes Lelieveld
; Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz; 2 May 2016
: Part of the Middle East and North Africa may become uninhabitable due to climate change
: The number of climate refugees could increase dramatically in future. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and the Cyprus Institute in Nicosia have calculated that the Middle East and North Africa could become so hot that human habitability is compromised. The goal of limiting global warming to less than two degrees Celsius, agreed at the recent UN climate summit in Paris, will not be sufficient to prevent this scenario. The temperature during summer in the already very hot Middle East and North Africa will increase more than two times faster compared to the average global warming. This means that during hot days temperatures south of the Mediterranean will reach around 46 degrees Celsius (approximately 114 degrees Fahrenheit) by mid-century. Such extremely hot days will occur five times more often than was the case at the turn of the millennium. In combination with increasing air pollution by windblown desert dust, the environmental conditions could become intolerable and may force people to migrate.
==== Hansen et al ====
Analysis: Dramatic climate predictions in James Hansen's paper drew heavy criticism DAN GARISTO; Columbia SPECTATOR; 21 Apr 2016
: In March, a paper that was authored by an all-star cast of scientists and predicted dangerous superstorms and accelerated rises in sea level was published in the European journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. But for many observers, the paper was old news—an earlier version of the article had been released to the web in July 2015. This was more than simply unusual. Unpublished papers are essentially never publicized and picked up by the media because they haven’t been peer-reviewed. The lack of initial peer review, combined with the paper’s extreme claims, has made the paper a source of contention among scientists, journalists, and just about anyone interested in the state of global warming.
==== drought ====
World Bank: The way climate change is really going to hurt us is through water Chris Mooney; Washington Post; 3 May 2016
: As India, the world’s second-most populous country, reels from an intense drought, the World Bank has released a new report finding that perhaps the most severe impact of a changing climate could be the effect on water supplies.
High and Dry: Climate Change, Water, and the Economy The World Bank
: A new World Bank reports finds that water scarcity, exacerbated by climate change, could hinder economic growth, spur migration, and spark conflict. However, most countries can neutralize the adverse impacts of water scarcity by taking action to allocate and use water resources more efficiently.
=== psychological ===
This Is Your Brain On Climate Change
=== Ocean acidification ===
Applying organized scepticism to ocean acidification research Howard I. Browman; ICES Journal of Marine Science; Jan 2016
: “Ocean acidification” (OA), a change in seawater chemistry driven by increased uptake of atmospheric CO2 by the oceans, has probably been the most-studied single topic in marine science in recent times. The majority of the literature on OA report negative effects of CO2 on organisms and conclude that OA will be detrimental to marine ecosystems. As is true across all of science, studies that report no effect of OA are typically more difficult to publish. Further, the mechanisms underlying the biological and ecological effects of OA have received little attention in most organismal groups, and some of the key mechanisms (e.g. calcification) are still incompletely understood. For these reasons, the ICES Journal of Marine Science solicited contributions to this special issue. In this introduction, I present a brief overview of the history of research on OA, call for a heightened level of organized (academic) scepticism to be applied to the body of work on OA, and briefly present the 44 contributions that appear in this theme issue. OA research has clearly matured, and is continuing to do so. We hope that our readership will find that, when taken together, the articles that appear herein do indeed move us “Towards a broader perspective on ocean acidification research”.
Nighttime dissolution in a temperate coastal ocean ecosystem increases under acidification Lester Kwiatkowski, Brian Gaylord, Tessa Hill, Jessica Hosfelt, Kristy J. Kroeker, Yana Nebuchina, Aaron Ninokawa, Ann D. Russell, Emily B. Rivest, Marine Sesboüé & Ken Caldeira; Nature; 18 Mar 2016
: Anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing ocean acidification, lowering seawater aragonite (CaCO3) saturation state (Ωarag), with potentially substantial impacts on marine ecosystems over the 21st Century. Calcifying organisms have exhibited reduced calcification under lower saturation state conditions in aquaria. However, the in situ sensitivity of calcifying ecosystems to future ocean acidification remains unknown. Here we assess the community level sensitivity of calcification to local CO2-induced acidification caused by natural respiration in an unperturbed, biodiverse, temperate intertidal ecosystem. We find that on hourly timescales nighttime community calcification is strongly influenced by Ωarag, with greater net calcium carbonate dissolution under more acidic conditions. Daytime calcification however, is not detectably affected by Ωarag. If the short-term sensitivity of community calcification to Ωarag is representative of the long-term sensitivity to ocean acidification, nighttime dissolution in these intertidal ecosystems could more than double by 2050, with significant ecological and economic consequences.
== mitigation ==
Adaptation and Mitigation IPCC synthesis report: Topic 4
: Many adaptation and mitigation options can help address climate change, but no single option is sufficient by itself. Effective implementation depends on policies and cooperation at all scales and can be enhanced through integrated responses that link mitigation and adaptation with other societal objectives.
=== economic action ===
Time to Unleash the Carbon Market? Meredith Fowlie; Berkeley HAAS; 20 Jun 2016
: preference for using prescriptive policies rather than market mechanisms to coordinate abatement helps explain why carbon prices are so low
=== legal action ===
==== Netherlands ====
Netherlands loses landmark global warming case, ordered to cut emissions Sebastian Anthony; ars technica; 24 Jun 2015
: In a landmark case that may set a very important precedent for other countries around the world, especially within Europe, the Dutch government has been ordered by the courts to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent.
==== USA ====
Judge Denies Motions by Fossil Fuel Industry and Federal Government in Landmark Climate Change Case EcoWatch; 9 Apr 2016
: U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin of the Federal District Court in Eugene, Oregon, decided in favor of 21 young plaintiffs in their landmark constitutional climate change case against the federal government. Judge Coffin ruled Friday against the motion to dismiss brought by the fossil fuel industry and federal government.
Climate Change Litigation - The Children Win In Court James Conca; Forbes; 1 Mar 2016
: Against all odds, the 21 children, ages 8 to 19, who are suing the government to protect the environment against the harm of global warming in their future, have won in court. Again. In a surprise ruling on Friday from the bench in the ongoing climate case brought by these youths against the State of Washington’s Department of Ecology, King County Superior Court Judge Hollis Hill ordered the Department of Ecology to promulgate a carbon emissions reduction rule by the end of 2016 and make recommendations to the state legislature on science-based greenhouse gas reductions in the 2017 legislative session. Judge Hill also ordered the Department of Ecology to consult with the young plaintiffs in advance of that recommendation.
Children Win Another Climate Change Legal Case In Mass Supreme Court James Conca; Forbes; 19 May 2016
: In another surprising victory for children suing the government over climate change, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court last Friday found in favor of four youth plaintiffs against the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. The Court found that the DEP was not complying with its legal obligation to reduce the State’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and ordered the agency to “promulgate regulations that address…greenhouse gas emissions, impose a limit on emissions that may be released…and set limits that decline on an annual basis.” This case is one of several similar cases in federal district courts in Oregon and Washington, and in the state courts of North Carolina, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Colorado. All of these legal cases are supported by Our Children’s Trust, that seeks the legal right of our youth to a healthy atmosphere and stable climate in the future.
=== political action ===
China’s climate actions turn the tables on American deniers Reuters; 26 Sep 2015
How a selfish world can still avoid catastrophic climate change New Scientist; 26 Oct 2015
: Each country generally defines “fair” according to what will mean the least effort for them, says Malte Meinshausen at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. Getting them all to agree on that point seems utopian, he says. “Every country agreed to a 2°C or lower climate target, and they all make up their own story about why their own target is fair,” says Meinshausen. But the voluntary pledges to cut national greenhouse gas emissions made ahead of December’s climate summit in Paris aren’t enough to keep warming below 2°C. So Meinshausen and colleagues looked at what is needed to reach the target and how to get nations to agree to them, allowing for every country to define “fair” the way that burdens them the least. The team’s imagined scenario involves one country or group of countries leading with ambitious emissions cuts, and every other country following. But each follower country interprets its fair contribution according to what costs it the least. “If any country wants to claim to be a leader – and they all say that they’re a leader – this is now the first litmus test,” says Meinshausen.
National post-2020 greenhouse gas targets and diversity-aware leadership Malte Meinshausen, Louise Jeffery, Johannes Guetschow, Yann Robiou du Pont, Joeri Rogelj, Michiel Schaeffer, Niklas Höhne, Michel den Elzen, Sebastian Oberthür & Nicolai Meinshausen; Nature Climate Change; 26 Oct 2015
Earth Hour: Turning out the lights plays into the hands of our critics George Marshall; The Guardian; 27 Mar 2009
: In my 25 years of environmental campaigning I have seen lots of inspired protests and lots of daft or pointless ones. But the WWF Earth Hour campaign has to be one of the most misguided and counterproductive actions I have ever seen.
== denialism ==
If climate scientists are in it for the money, they’re doing it wrong John Timmer; Ars Technica; 28 Feb 2011
: One of the more unfortunate memes that makes an appearance whenever climate science is discussed is the accusation that, by hyping their results, climate scientists are ensuring themselves steady paychecks, and may even be enriching themselves. So, are there big bucks to be had in climate science?
Work of prominent climate change denier was funded by energy industry Suzanne Goldenberg; Guardian; 21 Feb 2015
: A prominent academic and climate change denier’s work was funded almost entirely by the energy industry, receiving more than $1.2m from companies, lobby groups and oil billionaires over more than a decade, newly released documents show. Over the last 14 years Willie Soon, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, received a total of $1.25m from Exxon Mobil, Southern Company, the American Petroleum Institute (API) and a foundation run by the ultra-conservative Koch brothers, the documents obtained by Greenpeace through freedom of information filings show.