Climate, Energy & Transport

A third of Thailand is under water. Epic floods have taken people's lives, destroyed businesses and crops, and are now sweeping into Bangkok. As the capital braces itself, some people are beginning to point fingers at various culprits: the unusually heavy rains possibly linked to climate change, ineffective communications within government, and poor infrastructure decisions.

Climate skeptics have denounced studies of temperature rise because of alleged biases in data sets. So in an effort to get to the bottom of these critiques, a group of scientists launched the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study, using different methods with skeptics’ arguments in mind. Its findings are in, and they confirm that not only is the Earth’s land temperature warming, but the results mimic the very results of previous assessments that the skeptics had tossed aside.

Australia’s House of Representatives voted to pass the Clean Energy Future Legislation on October 12th. The legislative package will put a price on carbon pollution, promote investment in renewable and clean energy technologies and support action to reduce carbon pollution.

With the climate problem growing more urgent every year, the United States is not well prepared for a changing Arctic, and its continued dependence on fossil fuels only makes the situation more serious. The recent climate science, as explored in WRI’s Climate Science 2009-2010: Major New Discoveries, shows that the Arctic is indeed changing rapidly, with implications for a very different world.

Conditions are changing in our world. Some are feeling the impact now, from the heat wave and wildfires in Russia of the last two years, the devastating floods in Pakistan and Australia, tornadoes in the United States, mudslides in Brazil, drought in China. Others are worrying about the impacts to come: the tea growers in Kenya’s highlands who are seeing cases of malaria they didn’t see only five years ago; the cocoa farmers in Ghana who think about how changes in rainfall will affect their sensitive crops; the rice farmers in Vietnam who are increasingly concerned about rising water levels.

Countries around the world are bracing themselves for the impacts of climate change, and already learning to manage changing rainfall patterns, droughts, floods, and sea level rise. Adapting to these conditions will require countries to implement a range of new projects and innovations. The World Bank estimates that these kinds of efforts – including reinforcing critical infrastructure and dramatically improving agricultural productivity - could cost developing countries US$75-$100 billion annually. In many ways these countries are navigating uncharted territory, and they need to know if adaptation initiatives are creating benefits. That’s why finding ways to keep track of these efforts and their effectiveness is crucial.

Update, 10/21/11: Talks to design the Green Climate Fund (GCF) ended in tense negotiations at Cape Town, South Africa earlier this week. The completion of the GCF design is an integral part of the larger package of issues to be resolved in Durban, and so country negotiators were highly motivated to make progress.

Tomorrow’s leading companies will be those that pioneer innovative solutions to match climate change challenges. Today, this is largely uncharted territory; current best practices often focus on incremental product improvements (e.g., cars with moderate fuel efficiency gains) or are limited by existing business models (e.g., facility upgrades with high first costs). This type of change is not sufficient to achieve the 80 to 95 percent reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions the science tells us we need by mid-century.

Today, WRI releases Climate Science 2009-2010, the latest installment in our periodic review of the state of play of the science of climate change. Co-authors Kelly Levin and Dennis Tirpak describe some of the latest climate science developments.