James Hansen, asi není třeba představovat, dnes zveřejnil, společně s 2 spoluautory, článek.
Comments on Global Warming Acceleration, Sulfur Emissions, Observations

In this article, climate scientists James Hansen, Pushker Kharecha, and Makiko Sato discuss the acceleration of global warming. They note that global temperature continues to rise, reaching 1.56°C above pre-industrial levels as of April 2024. The authors attribute this acceleration to the decline in human-made aerosols, particularly from the shipping industry, which previously had a cooling effect on the Earth.

The reduction in aerosols, combined with the strong warming trend at middle latitudes and the switch from La Nina to El Nino conditions in the Pacific Ocean, has led to a significant temperature jump in 2023-24. The authors emphasize the importance of accurately evaluating the impact of human-made aerosols on the climate, as it has implications for understanding climate sensitivity.

They call for further research and modeling to better understand the complex interactions between aerosols, clouds, and the Earth's climate system. The authors also stress the need for continued monitoring of the Earth's radiation balance to improve our understanding of the factors driving global warming acceleration.

Link

Germany is a case study — perhaps the case study — of a Western middle power which made a strategic bet on a full embrace of interdependence and globalization in the late 20th century: it outsourced its security to the U.S., its export-led growth to China, and its energy needs to Russia. It is now finding itself excruciatingly vulnerable in an early 21st century characterized by great power competition and an increasing weaponization of interdependence by allies and adversaries alike. The war in Ukraine, which touches on almost every one of Germany’s bilateral, regional, and global interests, only accentuates its exposure. That this horrific conflict is taking place in the region that was part of the “Bloodlands” (the term coined by Yale historian Timothy Snyder), where Hitler and (to a lesser degree) Stalin murdered tens of millions of people is lost on few of my fellow citizens.

For much of the three decades after German reunification in 1990, Berlin saw Moscow (as well as Beijing) as a reliable strategic partner in a two-way bargain: Germany would import cheap energy, and export good governance in much the way that Eastern Europe had been transformed through entry into NATO and the EU. Ultimately, German policymakers hoped, this would transform not only these countries’ economies but also their political systems. And they believed — in an attempt to reconfigure West Germany’s Cold War Ostpolitik for a united Germany in the middle of Europe — that NATO and the European Union could and should be encompassed in a pan-European security architecture that included Russia.

The Kremlin, for its part, saw Germany as a friend, a partner, and as a strategic bridgehead into Europe — not least because it was importing roughly a third of its oil and gas from Russia. What the Germans called their “modernization partnership” with Moscow made for excellent business for a while; but in every other way, it proved to be a failure. Economic integration turned out to be strictly downstream, while many German businesses got burned by corruption and organized crime; political reform remained elusive.

Putin’s war and European energy security: A German perspective on decoupling from Russian fossil fuels | Brookings
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/putins-war-and-european-energy-security-a-german-perspective-on-decoupling-from-russian-fossil-fuels/

Risotto crisis: the fight to save Italy’s beloved dish from extinction | Rice | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/29/risotto-crisis-the-fight-to-save-italys-beloved-dish-from-extinction-aoe


In 2022, the worst drought in 200 years hit the Po, Italy’s longest river. The waterway forms the lifeblood of a complex web of canals built between the Middle Ages and the 1800s, which serve as the paddy fields’ main source of irrigation. That year, Italy lost 26,000 hectares (64,000 acres) of rice fields, according to Ente Nazionale Risi, the national rice authority, and rice production dropped by more than 30%. Last year, the drought persisted and the crop from another 7,500 hectares of rice fields was lost.

Today, rice farmers struggling to recover from the impact of the drought face an uncertain future. “The higher the temperatures, the more frequent and intense these extreme events will be,” says Marta Galvagno, a biometeorologist at the Environmental Protection Agency of Aosta Valley.

Over the past two years, Ferraris, like other farmers in the area, has tried to diversify his crops to reduce the risks brought by the climate crisis. He has reduced the acreage dedicated to paddies and started to grow crops such as maize, that require less water.

“The climate is changing and I am afraid there will be other droughts,” says Ferraris, whose farm lost about €150,000 [£129,000] in 2022. Rice remains his biggest crop, however. Recently, he has started monitoring snowfalls in the Alps and checking the water levels in Lake Maggiore every day. “It’s hard to sleep at night,” he says.

Ferraris is particularly worried about the production of carnaroli classico, a refined rice variety. Thanks to its ability to resist high cooking temperatures and absorb flavours, carnaroli is considered the “king of risotto”, but it is also extremely delicate and vulnerable to changes in the climate.

Povedomi ekonomu nabira uvedomely trend

‘Something is not working’: Economists urge EU Commission to overhaul its models – Euractiv
https://www.euractiv.com/section/economy-jobs/news/something-is-not-working-economists-urge-eu-commission-to-overhaul-its-models/

More than 200 economists called on the European Commission to overhaul the way it calculates its core economic forecasts and better integrate critical environmental factors into its baseline models in an open letter obtained exclusively by Euractiv on Thursday (15 February).
...
At present, the Commission – and therefore the EU at large, the group of high-profile economists argued – still relies on models that are strictly informed by general-equilibrium principles that may fail to capture the impact of growing climate-related variables on countries’ economic performance, including increased headwinds of financial and economic instability.
...
“I think there’s a growing realisation in the world of macroeconomics that something is not working,” he said.
...
“We are in the middle of a climate crisis and need to act rather fast,” she said.

Other independent experts contacted by Euractiv — none of whom were formerly aware of the letter — all supported the call for contemporary forecasting to include the lessons and principles of ecological economics.

Doing this, they added, would improve models’ ability to accurately predict ‘standard’ economic metrics such as inflation and enhance their capacity to measure the environmental impact of government policies.

“They don’t have the right input data [so they] will not get the right output data,” said Kristian Skånberg, an affiliated researcher at the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI).

“And as [environmental issues] are becoming increasingly important and there are repercussions from the climate and there are repercussions from shortages, [they] will affect inflation and … GDP,” he added.
...
Heather Grabbe, a senior fellow at Bruegel think tank, noted that economic models “have long treated environmental impacts as externalities” and that the way they are constructed tends to create a bias against large-scale green investments.

“Recent research on the macroeconomic impact of climate change and environmental degradation needs to be included in the models used by policymakers,” she said. “They need to include not only the costs of climate action but also the costs of inaction.”

Stefan Sipka, head of the Sustainable Prosperity for Europe programme at the European Policy Centre (EPC) agreed that, when designing economic policies, leaders need to take into account the impact of climate change and other sustainability challenges.

“I would say that our current approach to economics and related modelling is still based on old premises that don’t really take into consideration that we live in a world with limited resources,” he said.

Turning Point: A History of German Petroleum in World War II and its Lessons for the Role of Oil in Modern Air Warfare
No war for oil is a protest frequently heard whenever the United States responds with military power to a crisis in the Middle East. There are some who believe the 1990s Gulf War, and current U.S. conflicts in Iraq and Libya, were inappropriate responses driven purely by U.S. petroleum interests. Others would argue those claims are more rhetoric than reality, and that America has a larger strategic goal in the region. However, it does beg the question--Is oil really worth going to war over And perhaps more importantly for both politicians and war planners--Is protecting oil a valid strategic military objective When one examines history, the answer is a resounding yes. Since the birth of the industrial age, crude oil has not only been the life-blood of an increasingly global economy, but also a determining factor in success or failure on the battlefield. This is particularly true when one considers the application of air power. In a matter of a few short decades, powered flight drastically changed the face of warfare. And while nearly a century of evolution has transformed air power from a small, supporting actor on the battlefield into a dominant force that provides modern nations with rapid and decisive military response, one truth has remained constant. No air force can survive for long without adequate and unrestricted access to oil.

Turning Point: A History of German Petroleum in World War II and its Lessons for the Role of Oil in Modern Air Warfare
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/AD1020261

Köppen-Geiger - retreat and regroup https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-023-02549-6

We introduce Version 2 of our widely used 1-km Köppen-Geiger climate classification maps for historical and future climate conditions. The historical maps (encompassing 1901–1930, 1931–1960, 1961–1990, and 1991–2020) are based on high-resolution, observation-based climatologies, while the future maps (encompassing 2041–2070 and 2071–2099) are based on downscaled and bias-corrected climate projections for seven shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs). We evaluated 67 climate models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6) and kept a subset of 42 with the most plausible CO2-induced warming rates. We estimate that from 1901–1930 to 1991–2020, approximately 5% of the global land surface (excluding Antarctica) transitioned to a different major Köppen-Geiger class. Furthermore, we project that from 1991–2020 to 2071–2099, 5% of the land surface will transition to a different major class under the low-emissions SSP1-2.6 scenario, 8% under the middle-of-the-road SSP2-4.5 scenario, and 13% under the high-emissions SSP5-8.5 scenario. The Köppen-Geiger maps, along with associated confidence estimates, underlying monthly air temperature and precipitation data, and sensitivity metrics for the CMIP6 models, can be accessed at www.gloh2o.org/koppen.

pro fajnsmekry…

Earth's global “climate sensitivity” is a fundamental quantitative measure of the susceptibility of Earth's climate to human influence. A landmark report in 1979 concluded that it probably lies between 1.5°C and 4.5°C per doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide, assuming that other influences on climate remain unchanged. In the 40 years since, it has appeared difficult to reduce this uncertainty range. In this report we thoroughly assess all lines of evidence including some new developments. We find that a large volume of consistent evidence now points to a more confident view of a climate sensitivity near the middle or upper part of this range. In particular, it now appears extremely unlikely that the climate sensitivity could be low enough to avoid substantial climate change (well in excess of 2°C warming) under a high-emission future scenario. We remain unable to rule out that the sensitivity could be above 4.5°C per doubling of carbon dioxide levels, although this is not likely. Continued research is needed to further reduce the uncertainty, and we identify some of the more promising possibilities in this regard.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019RG000678

SCHWEPZ: ta desetina je absurdně málo. Tady se málo mluví o tom, jakou roli hrajou televize s obříma uhlopříčkama, například. Vlastně jakýkoliv spotřebič, který má trvale přes 100W, bude mít větší spotřebu, než když člověk stejný čas stráví třeba jízdou na elektrokole...

Ve světě se dnes o tepelných čerpadlech mluví docela hodně, slyšel jsem o mini-čerpadlech zabudovaných do bojleru, což v zimě moc smysl nedává, ale v létě to může být dobrý - chceš si dát teplou sprchu a ještě máš příjemně vyklimatizovaný byt, když si necháš teda otevřený dveře do koupelny... ještě lepší by ale byly výměníky tepla v odtoku vody, ale to je tak stavebně složitý, že by se spíš vyplatilo dělat teplárny integrované v čistírnách odpadních vod (Vídeň).

Uhlíková stopa ČR souvisí s exportem energie a spotřebou těžkého průmyslu (montovny aut, apod.) a taky stavebním boomem (cement). Domácnosti jsou u nás spíše chudé a tak jako tak šetří z důvodu ekonomických tlaků. Není divu, že se u nás uhlobaroni snaží udržet kontrolu nad médii, aby jim náhodou veřejnost a demokratické mechanismy do tohohle eldoráda nevstoupily....

Když ale říkám, že miliardáři na to maj relativně malý vliv a spíš se vezou na vlně životního stylu mas, tak tím mám skutečně na mysli, že se prostě jen vezou na vlně agregované poptávky světových domácností. U nás se moc nevyrábí luxusní zboží pro miliardáře, ale spíše levné škodovky pro davy, hnědouhelná energie pro celou Evropu, cetky ze skla pro celý svět, staví se tu spekulativní byty do kterých budou investovat potentáti z rozvojových zemí... sem tam nějaký soukromý tryskáč nehraje roli, bude mít spotřebu jako 50 aut, ale když vidíme, jak malý vliv by měla eliminace VŠECH aut, tak to je právě úplný nic. Miliardáře je lepší ignorovat - když je budeme hejtovat, pouze k nim přitahujeme pozornost, jakou si nezaslouží. Vnímal bych je spíš jako relativně nejímavý přírodní jev, nebo tak něco... díky mediální pozornosti existujou, radikální levice je tou pozorností a fascinací pomáhá spoluvytvářet, místo eliminovat.. (pomáhá vlastně replikovat ten koncept, tu ideu...). Má to spíš terapeutický efekt - "my nic, to miliardáři". Větší díl viny ale nese dementní middle management, podle mě...

No ale rozklíčovat těch 90% uhlíkové stopy by stálo za to. Určitě velkou stopu bude mít stavebnictví - když bydlíte v betonové novostavbě, je úplně jedno, jestli v ní jíte maso nebo jste do ní přijeli autem. Zdroj energie určitě hraje velkou roli, přímotop poháněný elektřinou z uhlí bude mít 3x takovou stopu, než přímé pálení zemního plynu, jakkoliv se vám geopoliticky nelíbí (uhlí je prostě špaténka ať se na to podíváte odkudkoliv, jenže je lokální a tím politicky vydělává body, protože pořád všichni doufají, že uhlobaroni budou utrácet lokálně a ne si stavět mrakodrapy v Dubaji...).

Já mám spadeno na veřejné osvětlení a aktivoval bych ho jen on demand... sice by města blikala jak lunapark, ale nakonec by se to nějak uklidnilo...

‘A green transition that leaves no one behind’: world leaders release open letter | Emmanuel Macron, Mia Mottley, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Ursula von der Leyen, Charles Michel, Olaf Scholz, Fumio Ki...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/21/a-green-transition-that-leaves-no-one-behind-world-leaders-release-open-letter

We, leaders of diverse economies from every corner of the world, are united in our determination to forge a new global consensus. We will use the Paris Summit for a New Global Financing Pact on June 22-23 as a decisive political moment to recover development gains lost in recent years and to accelerate progress towards the SDGs, including just transitions. We are clear on our strategy: development and climate commitments should be fulfilled and, in line with the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, we recognise that we need to leverage all sources of finance, including official development assistance, domestic resources and private investment.

Delivering on that consensus should start with existing financial commitments. Collective climate-finance goals must be met in 2023. Our total global ambition of $100bn (£78bn) of voluntary contributions for countries most in need, through a rechannelling of special drawing rights or equivalent budget contributions, should also be reached.

No country should have to wait years for debt relief. We need greater and more timely cooperation on debt, for both low- and middle-income countries. This starts with a swift conclusion of solutions for debt-distressed countries.

A top priority is to continue ambitious reform of our system of multilateral development banks, building on the existing momentum. We are asking development banks to take responsible steps to do much more with existing resources and to increase financing capacity and private capital mobilisation, based on clear targets and strategies in terms of private finance contribution and domestic resource mobilisation. These financial resources are essential, but this reform is about far more than money. It should deliver a more effective operational model, based on a country-led approach. We also need our development banks to work together as an ecosystem, closely with other public agencies and streamlined vertical funds – and, where appropriate, with philanthropists, sovereign wealth funds, private finance and civil society – to deliver the greatest impact.

Technology, skills, sustainability, and public and private investment will be at the core of our partnerships, to promote voluntary technology transfer, a free flow of scientific and technological talents, and contribute to an inclusive, open, fair and non-discriminatory economy. We will promote an agenda of sustainable and inclusive investment in developing and emerging economies, based on local economic value added and local transformation, such as fertiliser value chains. This comprehensive approach will require new metrics to update our accountability instruments.

Public finance will remain essential to achieving our goals. We should start with strengthening our instruments (the International Development Association, the International Monetary Fund’s Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust and Resilience and Sustainability Trust, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the Green Climate Fund, and other concessional windows of our banks, as well as the Global Shield against Climate Risks). But we acknowledge that meeting our development and climate goals, including the fight against hunger, poverty, and inequality; adapting to climate change; and averting, minimising and addressing loss and damage, will require new, innovative, and sustainable sources of finance, such as debt buy-backs, engagement from sectors that prosper thanks to globalisation, and more trusted carbon- and biodiversity-credit markets.

If you step back in time to 2014, global CO2 emission told a pretty frightening story. Emissions had rapidly increased at a rate of 3% per year in the 2000s, and there was not much sign yet of a slowdown in the early 2010s. Global emissions appeared to be following the worst case (RCP8.5) scenario.
But over the last decade things have started to change.
Global CO2 emissions (both fossil and land use) have been relatively flat during the 13 years after 2010, and are now closer to the middle-of-the-road RCP4.5 scenario than the high-end RCP8.5 one1. This is even more clear if we look at fossil CO2, which is the most important factor in long-term growth (as its responsible for 90%+ of future emissions in high-end scenarios).

Emissions are no longer following the worst case scenario
https://theclimatebrink.substack.com/p/emissions-are-no-longer-following

"What would it take to keep global heating to no more than 1.5 degrees? The single most important intervention is the one that so far no government has been willing to touch: cap fossil fuel use and scale it down, on a binding annual schedule, until the industry is mostly dismantled by the middle of the century. That’s it. "

What Would It Look Like If We Treated Climate Change as an Actual Emergency? ❧ Current Affairs
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/11/what-would-it-look-like-if-we-treated-climate-change-as-an-actual-emergency

Extreme poverty could be eradicated globally by 2050 – report | Global development | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/mar/13/extreme-poverty-could-be-eradicated-globally-by-2050-report

“We know the world is going to look very different in 2050, and climate change is a huge concern for the future,” said Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at CGD and one of the report’s authors. “But we can’t let it overshadow the fact that continued economic growth should leave almost no one in the most desperate poverty that was the lot of the vast majority of humanity for most of history, albeit decades after it could have been eradicated.”

Kenny said inequality is likely to remain and poverty will still exist, but higher growth should mean most people have stable employment and incomes, rather than relying on precarious informal labour or subsistence farming. He added that by 2050, no country will be classed as low-income, currently defined as having a GNI per capita of $1,085 (£910) or less.

Kenny, the author of the book Getting Better: Why Global Development is Succeeding, said he and Zack Gehan, who worked with him on the paper, took historical data on income, demographic changes, education and temperature to forecast the future shape of the world economy.

According to the forecast, extreme poverty – living on less than $2.15 a day – would fall below 2% globally by 2050 from about 8% in 2022. In Africa, where it is highest, it would fall from 29% to 7%.

More than two-thirds of the world could be living on more than $10 a day by 2050, up from about 42% today.

The authors predicted much slower growth in high-income countries over the next two decades, with GDP per capita growing only about 20% from 2019, while doubling in low and middle-income countries.


Scenarios for Future Global Growth to 2050
https://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/scenarios-future-global-growth-2050.pdf

TUHO: Zajimavej nahled na Novou hedvabnou stezku - Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)

With its BRI, China is propagating the global vision of a Global Energy Interconnection (GEI; see Map 1). This study focuses on three macro-regions within the EuropeAsian continental area: Europe (consisting of the EU and its eastern, southern and southeastern neighbourhoods as well as the Middle East and North Africa); two Eurasian subregions (the South Caucasus and Central Asia); and Asia (with its subregions South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Northeast Asia).

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19452829.2019.1633734

The first reason for the argument that the richest should be the primary funders of climate actions is the one given in the previous section, which relates to overall welfare improvement: the surplus money of the superrich cannot be used to enhance their well-being; however, it could be more beneficial if it were invested wisely in climate action strategies. A modified version of the first reason is as follows. More and more climate experts and writers on climate change (e.g., Gardiner 2011) are claiming that we are dealing with a real disaster. Thus, if the issue of climate change is unlike our many everyday problems, then it is appropriate to apply the principle that anyone who can help, should help, although the ablest are expected to carry the most onerous burdens. This approach has led several philosophers to conclude that we should adopt “the ability to contribute principle” and that we should focus on those who are in a position to make a difference (Caney 2014; Shue 2015).

The second reason for the argument that the richest should be the primary funders of climate actions is related to the unfairness in the current situation. If one compares countries, then historically Europe has been responsible for many emissions, although North America’s current average emissions per capita are much higher than the average emissions of other geographic regions. For example, the global average emissions arising from consumption amount to about 6.2 tons per person per year (and this should stand closer to zero in a few decades if we intend to avoid dangerous climate change). Nonetheless, the differences are enormous: 22.5 tons for North America; 13.1 tons for Europe; 7.4 tons for the Middle East; 6 tons for China; 4.4 tons for Latin America; 2.2 tons for South Asia and 1.9 tons for Africa (Chancel and Piketty 2015). These averages tend to hide the vast inequalities within the countries in these regions, and that rich people everywhere can have lifestyles that cause emissions of up to 300 tons. Hence, Chancel and Piketty (2015) suggest imposing a global flat tax on air tickets, which could be used to fund climate adaptation measures. While I endorse this idea and have argued elsewhere that a tax on air travel is needed not only for climate reasons but also for economic fairness among different transport sectors (Robeyns 2019), I believe that this measure hardly goes far enough. Ideally, we should levy a worldwide ecological crisis tax on the superrich to finance the climate action funds. If that is not possible, governments should take the initiative to establish international agreements on what each country contributes to the global funds, and each country could on their own tax their most affluent citizens. Either way, the aim is to let the superwealthy contribute first to the climate action funds.

There are at least two aspects to the fairness reason for charging the rich for climate actions funds. The first argument is based on principles of rectification or compensation. Most superrich people have acquired their wealth by engaging in economic activities with negative environmental externalities. Market prices in themselves do not reflect the environmental damage embedded in the production and transport of commodities. If the environmental damage linked to economic production were appropriately incorporated in the prices (or as economists would put it, the negative externalities had been internalised), the prices would increase, causing demand and profits to fall. Hence, the fortunes of the superrich partially consist of non-paid compensation for environmental damage. The second aspect is that in some countries, the situation is even worse, mainly because the government directly or indirectly subsidises fossil fuel industries. Thus, part of the wealth of the superrich who own companies or work for them in these countries represents the ecological damage that has been passed onto society at large. Hence, from a fairness point of view, one can argue that compensation for these past negative ecological externalities could now be used to fund the climate action funds.