Assessing the costs of historical inaction on climate change

Belize and Climate Change : The Costs of Inaction

Climate Protection Assessment of Costs of Inaction or Delayed Action of Climate Protection and Climate Change

T he ultimate objective of the climate convention and of related instruments like the Kyoto protocol is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to a level that avoids dangerous climate change. In order to considerably reduce risks of climate change, the European Union already decided a climate protection target: to prevent global surface temperature to increase more than 2°C (Celsius) compared to pr...

The Economics of Inaction on Climate Change: A Critique

Economic models of climate change often take the problem seriously, but paradoxically conclude that the optimal policy is to do almost nothing about it. We explore this paradox as seen in the widely used DICE model. Three aspects of that model, involving the discount rate, the assumed benefits of moderate warming, and the treatment of the latest climate science, explain the timidity of the mode...

Assessing climate change impacts on daily streamflow

Assessing climate change impacts on daily streamflow in California: the utility of daily large-scale climate data E. P. Maurer, H. G. Hidalgo, T. Das, M. D. Dettinger, and D. R. Cayan Civil Engineering Dept., Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA, USA Escuela de Fı́sica, Universidad de Costa Rica, San José, Costa Rica Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, CA, USA US Geological Survey,...

Assessing Climate Change Impacts on Global Hydropower

Currently, hydropower accounts for close to 16% of the world’s total power supply and is the world’s most dominant (86%) source of renewable electrical energy. The key resource for hydropower generation is runoff, which is dependent on precipitation. The future global climate is uncertain and thus poses some risk for the hydropower generation sector. The crucial question and challenge then is w...