Category Archives: Policy

RCP8.5 and net-zero

There’s a narrative that seems to be developing that suggests that the requirement to reach (net) zero emissions is largely based on the high-emission RCP8.5 scenario. Since this is (according to some) no longer plausible, we should give up on … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, Global warming, Policy | Tagged , | 30 Comments

Approximate net zero

Since I have a few free moments, I thought I would briefly highlight a paper by Jenkins et al. on [t]he Multi-Decadal Response to Net Zero CO2 Emissions and Implications for Emissions Policy. Recent IPCC reports have highlighted that limiting … Continue reading

Posted in Climate sensitivity, Policy, Research | Tagged , , , | 42 Comments

Giving up on 1.5C?

One of the talking points of COP27 is giving up, or compromising, on the 1.5oC target. The main reason is simply that the remaining carbon budget is very small. Essentially, to stop global warming requires getting human emissions to (net) … Continue reading

Posted in advocacy, Climate change, Global warming, Policy | Tagged , , , , | 33 Comments

Considering Catastrophe

There’s been quite a lot of recent coverage of a paper suggesting that climate endgames, such as global societal collapse or human extinction, have been dangerously unexplored. For those who recall the contentious RCP8.5 debate, this may seem a surprising … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, Climate sensitivity, ClimateBall, Gavin Schmidt, Policy, Research, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 92 Comments

A bit of a holiday

You may have noticed that it’s been a little quiet here lately. That’s partly because I’ve had little to say, but also because I’ve been away on holiday with the family. We rented a cottage and spent a week on … Continue reading

Posted in Personal, Philosophy for Bloggers, Policy | Tagged , , | 27 Comments

Climate change and social justice

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) recently released a called Deny, Deceive, Delay: Documenting and responding to climate disinformation at COP26 and beyond. It highlighted a number of people who will be familiar to those who have followed the public … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, Philosophy for Bloggers, Policy | Tagged , , , | 93 Comments

Scenarios

Just before the release of the IPCC’s AR6 WGIII report (Mitigation of Climate Change) Joeri Rogelj had a Carbon Brief guest post on how not to interpret the emission scenarios in the IPCC report. It might have been to try … Continue reading

Posted in ClimateBall, Philosophy for Bloggers, Policy, The philosophy of science | Tagged , , , , | 39 Comments

Ignoring the Economists?

Andrew Dessler had an article in Rolling Stone suggesting that [t]he first step to saving the planet is ignoring the economists. Stoat has already written about it and, as you might imagine, doesn’t seem to like it. Even if suggesting … Continue reading

Posted in Carbon tax, economics, Philosophy for Bloggers, Policy | Tagged , , , , | 142 Comments

Moral models

I thought I would highlight a recent video presentation by Eric Winsberg, called Moral Models, Crucial Decisions in the Age of Computer Simulations. Some may remember that Eric co-wrote a post here about extreme weather event attribution. The theme of … Continue reading

Posted in ethics, Policy, Scientists, The philosophy of science | Tagged , , , , | 19 Comments

A coupled climate-social system

I came across an interesting paper by Frances Moore and colleagues that considers [d]eterminants of emissions pathways in the coupled climate–social system. In the context of climate science, models that consider both the climate and society tend to not be … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, Global warming, Policy, Research | Tagged , , , | 21 Comments