Download or read book Making Climate Assessments Work written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2019-02-11 with total page 87 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate assessment activities are increasingly driven by subnational organizationsâ€"city, county, and state governments; utilities and private companies; and stakeholder groups and engaged publicsâ€"trying to better serve their constituents, customers, and members by understanding and preparing for how climate change will impact them locally. Whether the threats are drought and wildfires, storm surge and sea level rise, or heat waves and urban heat islands, the warming climate is affecting people and communities across the country. To explore the growing role of subnational climate assessments and action, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine hosted the 2-day workshop on August 14-15, 2018. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.
Download or read book Making Climate Assessments Work written by and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Climate assessment activities are increasingly driven by subnational organizations—city, county, and state governments; utilities and private companies; and stakeholder groups and engaged publics—trying to better serve their constituents, customers, and members by understanding and preparing for how climate change will impact them locally. Whether the threats are drought and wildfires, storm surge and sea level rise, or heat waves and urban heat islands, the warming climate is affecting people and communities across the country. To explore the growing role of subnational climate assessments and action, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine hosted the 2-day workshop on August 14-15, 2018. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop"--Publisher's description
Download or read book Making Climate Assessments Work written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2019-01-11 with total page 87 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate assessment activities are increasingly driven by subnational organizationsâ€"city, county, and state governments; utilities and private companies; and stakeholder groups and engaged publicsâ€"trying to better serve their constituents, customers, and members by understanding and preparing for how climate change will impact them locally. Whether the threats are drought and wildfires, storm surge and sea level rise, or heat waves and urban heat islands, the warming climate is affecting people and communities across the country. To explore the growing role of subnational climate assessments and action, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine hosted the 2-day workshop on August 14-15, 2018. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.
Download or read book Review of the Draft Fourth National Climate Assessment written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2018-06-18 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change poses many challenges that affect society and the natural world. With these challenges, however, come opportunities to respond. By taking steps to adapt to and mitigate climate change, the risks to society and the impacts of continued climate change can be lessened. The National Climate Assessment, coordinated by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, is a mandated report intended to inform response decisions. Required to be developed every four years, these reports provide the most comprehensive and up-to-date evaluation of climate change impacts available for the United States, making them a unique and important climate change document. The draft Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4) report reviewed here addresses a wide range of topics of high importance to the United States and society more broadly, extending from human health and community well-being, to the built environment, to businesses and economies, to ecosystems and natural resources. This report evaluates the draft NCA4 to determine if it meets the requirements of the federal mandate, whether it provides accurate information grounded in the scientific literature, and whether it effectively communicates climate science, impacts, and responses for general audiences including the public, decision makers, and other stakeholders.
Download or read book Characterizing Risk in Climate Change Assessments written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2016-10-25 with total page 101 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) was established in 1990 to "assist the Nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change."1 A key responsibility for the program is to conduct National Climate Assessments (NCAs) every 4 years.2 These assessments are intended to inform the nation about "observed changes in climate, the current status of the climate, and anticipated trends for the future." The USGCRP hopes that government entities from federal agencies to small municipalities, citizens, communities, and businesses will rely on these assessments of climate- related risks for planning and decision-making. The third NCA (NCA3) was published in 2014 and work on the fourth is beginning. The USGCRP asked the Board on Environmental Change and Society of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to conduct a workshop to explore ways to frame the NCA4 and subsequent NCA reports in terms of risks to society. The workshop was intended to collect experienced views on how to characterize and communicate information about climate-related hazards, risks, and opportunities that will support decision makers in their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce vulnerability to likely changes in climate, and increase resilience to those changes. Characterizing Risk in Climate Change Assessments summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.
Download or read book Making Climate Policy Work written by Danny Cullenward and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-10-07 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades, the world’s governments have struggled to move from talk to action on climate. Many now hope that growing public concern will lead to greater policy ambition, but the most widely promoted strategy to address the climate crisis – the use of market-based programs – hasn’t been working and isn’t ready to scale. Danny Cullenward and David Victor show how the politics of creating and maintaining market-based policies render them ineffective nearly everywhere they have been applied. Reforms can help around the margins, but markets’ problems are structural and won’t disappear with increasing demand for climate solutions. Facing that reality requires relying more heavily on smart regulation and industrial policy – government-led strategies – to catalyze the transformation that markets promise, but rarely deliver.
Download or read book Review of the U S Climate Change Science Program s Synthesis and Assessment Product 5 2 Best Practice Approaches for Characterizing Communicating and Incorporating Scientific Uncertainty in Climate Decision Making written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2007-03-23 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report reviews the U.S. Climate Change Science Program's new draft assessment product on characterizing and communicating uncertainty information for climate change decision making, one of 21 climate change assessment products that the program is developing to meet the requirements of the 1990 Global Change Research Act. Although the draft assessment is effective in discussing methods of characterizing uncertainty, it falls short in several ways. It is written for researchers involved in assessment efforts and will likely be of use to them, but does not address other key audiences, particularly policymakers, decision-makers, and members of the media and general public. In addition, it does not assess the full range of "best practice approaches" for characterizing, incorporating, and communicating uncertainty. These weaknesses were due in part to a change in the prospectus after the process had begun to include new target audiences and a different scope of work. It will take a substantial revision of the current draft or production of a companion document, both requiring additional authors, to address these issues.
Download or read book The US National Climate Assessment written by Katharine Jacobs and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-08-09 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers valuable climate policy and climate assessment lessons, depicting what it takes to build a sustained climate assessment process. It explores the third U.S. National Climate Assessment (NCA3) report as compared with previous US national climate assessments, from both a process and content perspective. The U.S. Global Change Research Program is required by law to produce a National Climate Assessment report every four years, and these reports provide a comprehensive evaluation of climate science as well as observed and projected climate impacts on a variety of sectors. As the book describes, a key contribution of the NCA3 approach is a far more deliberate interdisciplinary process, as well as an engagement strategy that brought hundreds of public and private sector stakeholders into the assessment community. Among its most important conceptual contributions was an explicit focus on building the infrastructure to conduct better assessments over time and an experimental approach to analysis of the impacts of climate on cross-sectoral systems and inter-locking and cascading effects across sectors. Readers may explore innovations such as the development of regional climatologies and projections for every region of the US, as well as the development of the Global Change Information System. The book also highlights the need for decision-makers to be part of the assessment process, in order for assessment findings to be truly useful from a decision-maker's perspective. Many lessons have been learned by the NCA3 authors that can be useful in future assessments and adaptation processes, both within the US and internationally. This book passes on such lessons and includes an evaluation of the role of state climate assessments in ongoing national assessment processes.
Download or read book Review of the U S Climate Change Science Program s Synthesis and Assessment Product 5 2 Best Practice Approaches for Characterizing Communicating and Incorporating Scientific Uncertainty in Climate Decision Making written by Committee to Review the U S Climate Change Science Program's Synthesis and Assessment Product 5 2 and published by . This book was released on 2007-02-23 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report reviews the U.S. Climate Change Science Programa s new draft assessment product on characterizing and communicating uncertainty information for climate change decision making, one of 21 climate change assessment products that the program is developing to meet the requirements of the 1990 Global Change Research Act. Although the draft assessment is effective in discussing methods of characterizing uncertainty, it falls short in several ways. It is written for researchers involved in assessment efforts and will likely be of use to them, but does not address other key audiences, particularly policymakers, decision-makers, and members of the media and general public. In addition, it does not assess the full range of "best practice approaches" for characterizing, incorporating, and communicating uncertainty. These weaknesses were due in part to a change in the prospectus after the process had begun to include new target audiences and a different scope of work. It will take a substantial revision of the current draft or production of a companion document, both requiring additional authors, to address these issues."
Download or read book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster written by Bill Gates and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical—and accessible—plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe. Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide to certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal. He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions—suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise. As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.
Download or read book Assessment of Climate Change in the Southwest United States written by Gregg Garfin and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Climate Action Planning written by Michael R. Boswell and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2019-07-16 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change continues to impact our health and safety, the economy, and natural systems. With climate-related protections and programs under attack at the federal level, it is critical for cities to address climate impacts locally. Every day there are new examples of cities approaching the challenge of climate change in creative and innovative ways—from rethinking transportation, to greening city buildings, to protecting against sea-level rise. Climate Action Planning is designed to help planners, municipal staff and officials, citizens and others working at local levels to develop and implement plans to mitigate a community's greenhouse gas emissions and increase the resilience of communities against climate change impacts. This fully revised and expanded edition goes well beyond climate action plans to examine the mix of policy and planning instruments available to every community. Boswell, Greve, and Seale also look at process and communication: How does a community bring diverse voices to the table? What do recent examples and research tell us about successful communication strategies? Climate Action Planning brings in new examples of implemented projects to highlight what has worked and the challenges that remain. A completely new chapter on vulnerability assessment will help each community to identify their greatest risks and opportunities. Sections on land use and transportation have been expanded to reflect their growing contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. The guidance in the book is put in context of international, national, and state mandates and goals. Climate Action Planning is the most comprehensive book on the state of the art, science, and practice of local climate action planning. It should be a first stop for any local government interested in addressing climate change.
Download or read book The Regional Impacts of Climate Change written by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Working Group II. and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Download or read book A Review of the Draft 2013 National Climate Assessment written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2013-04-11 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As mandated by the Global Change Research Act (GCRA), the U.S. Global Change Research Program is currently producing a "National Climate Assessment" (NCA). The NCA is a report to inform the President, the Congress, and the American people about the current state of scientific knowledge regarding climate change effects on U.S. regions and key sectors, now and in the coming decades. This document contains an evaluation of the draft NCA report, presented through consensus responses to the Panel's Task Statement questions, and through a large collection of individual Panel member comments and suggestions for specific chapters, statements, figures, etc. While focusing primarily on practical suggestions for immediately improving the current draft, the Panel also raises some broader considerations about fundamental approaches used in certain parts of the NCA report, and about the scope of USGCRP research that underlies the NCA findings. Some suggestions can be viewed as longer-term advice for future versions of NCA work. This NCA has been a significantly more ambitious effort than previous assessments, in terms of the scope of topics addressed and the breadth of public engagement processes involved. Some of the important new areas include the use of "traceable accounts," the articulation of needs for future research and a vision for an ongoing assessment process, the outreach efforts to help various stakeholders define their climate-related information needs, and the initial (though incomplete) effort to assess the current state of climate change response activities around the nation. Given the current state of the science and the scope of resources available, we believe the NCA did a reasonable job of fulfilling its charge overall. Although more needs to be done to fully meet the nation's needs for information and guidance, such needs cannot be met without an expanded research effort on the part of the USGCRP and future assessments. The Panel suggests that the NCA report would be improved by addressing the numerous specific problems and concerns and the more cross-cutting issues raised in the consensus answers to the Task Statement questions-which include, for instance, the need to: 1. provide a clear overarching framework for the report that helps readers understand climate change as part of a complex system with interacting physical, biological, and human social/economic dimensions, and offers practical guidance on using iterative risk management strategies to make decisions in the face of large uncertainties; 2. clearly acknowledge how climate change affects and is affected by other types of major global environmental changes and other societal developments; 3. offer an explicit discussion about the uncertainties associated with the regional model projections presented in the NCA draft; 4. take full advantage of the e-book format planned for this document through strategic use of hyperlinks among different parts of the report and other innovative approaches that help guide the experience of the NCA's diverse audiences. As the nation continues to engage with the threats, opportunities, and surprises of climate change in its many manifestations, the 2013 NCA should prove to be a valuable resource, as a summary of the state of knowledge about climate change and its implications for the American people.
Download or read book North Sea Region Climate Change Assessment written by Markus Quante and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-08-31 with total page 555 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers an up-to-date review of our current understanding of climate change in the North Sea and adjacent areas, as well as its impact on ecosystems and socio-economic sectors. It provides a detailed assessment of climate change based on published scientific work compiled by independent international experts from climate-related disciplines such as oceanography, atmospheric sciences, marine and terrestrial ecology, using a regional evaluation and review process similar to that of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It provides a comprehensive overview of all aspects of our changing climate, discussing a wide range of topics including past, current and future climate change, and climate-related changes in marine, terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems. It also explores the impact of climate change on socio-economic sectors such as fisheries, agriculture, coastal zone management, coastal protection, urban climate, recreation/tourism, offshore activities/energy, and air pollution.
Download or read book A Pragmatist Orientation for the Social Sciences in Climate Policy written by Martin Kowarsch and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-09-01 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While economic and other social science expertise is indispensable for successful public policy-making regarding global climate change, social scientists face trade-offs between the scientific credibility, policy-relevance, and legitimacy of their policy advice. From a philosophical perspective, this book systematically addresses these trade-offs and other crucial challenges facing the integrated economic assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Based on John Dewey’s pragmatist philosophy and an analysis of the value-laden nature and reliability of climate change economics, the book develops a refined science-policy model and specific guidelines for these assessments of climate policy options. The core idea is to scientifically explore the various practical implications of alternative climate policy pathways in an interdisciplinary manner, together with diverse stakeholders. This could facilitate an iterative, deliberative public learning process concerning disputed policy issues. This volume makes novel contributions to three strands of the literature: (1) the philosophy of (social) science in policy; (2) the philosophy of economics; and (3) debates about the design of scientific assessments, including the continuous IPCC reform debate. This work is thus interesting for philosophers and other scholars reflecting on the science-policy interface, but also for assessment practitioners, climate policy-makers, and economists. The science-policy approach developed in this volume has already influenced the recent socio-economic IPCC assessment.
Download or read book Climate in Context written by Adam S. Parris and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-03-16 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Society is increasingly affected by climate impacts, from prolonged water shortages to damaging coastal floods and wildfires. Scientists studying climate variations are eager to have their knowledge used in adaptive decision making. To achieve this, science and society must engage productively around complex management and policy challenges. For over 20 years, the science-society interface has been fertile ground for the Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA) programs sponsored by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Climate in Context describes what it takes to help scientists and stakeholders work together to “co-produce” climate science knowledge, policy, and action. This state-of-the art synthesis reflects on lessons learned by RISA programs, and provides a sober assessment of the challenges ahead. Through case studies from various US regions, this book provides lessons and guidance for organizations and individuals who want to work at the science-society interface on a range of climate challenges.
