PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Delaying climate policy would triple short-term mitigation costs

2013-09-12
(Press-News.org) Higher costs would in turn increase the threshold for decision-makers to start the transition to a low-carbon economy. Thus, to keep climate targets within reach it seems to be most relevant to not further postpone mitigation, the researchers conclude.

"The transitional economic repercussions that would result if the switch towards a climate-friendly economy is delayed, are comparable to the costs of the financial crisis the world just experienced," lead-author Gunnar Luderer says. The later climate policy implementation starts, the faster – hence the more expensive – emissions have to be reduced if states world-wide want to achieve the internationally agreed target of limiting global warming to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels. A binding global agreement to implement the emissions reductions required to reach this target is currently still under negotiation, while global emissions have continued to rise.

"For the first time, our study quantifies the short-term costs of tiptoeing when confronted with the climate challenge," Luderer says. "Economists tend to look at how things balance out in the long-term, but decision-makers understandably worry about additional burdens for the people and businesses they are responsible for right now. So increased short-term costs due to delaying climate policy might deter decision-makers from starting the transformation. The initial costs of climate policies thus can be more relevant than the total costs."

Future energy price increases could be limited

The researchers investigated a number of cost dimensions, including climate policy effects on energy prices. If emissions reductions are delayed beyond 2030, global energy price levels are likely to increase by 80 percent in the short term. Such price increases are of particular concern because of the burden they put on the world's poor. In the past, comparable energy price increases in developing countries have resulted in massive public opposition and social unrest, like in Indonesia in 1998 after a cutback of fuel subsidies. If an agreement on emissions reductions compatible with the 2 degree target is reached until 2015, short-term energy price increases could be limited to 25 percent.

Besides timing, the availability of low-emission technologies is a second crucial factor for climate policy costs, the scientists point out. In the long term, technologies for carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere might be required for reaching climate targets. This applies in particular to the use of bio-energy, with plants consuming CO2, combined with CCS, storing underground the emissions from biomass combustion. If these technologies are unavailable, for technical or political reasons, the lower limit of achievable climate targets would rise by 0.3 degrees. The longer climate policies are delayed, the higher is the world's reliance on these technologies.

Delaying greenhouse-gas reductions for two decades would rise the lower limit of achievable climate targets by 0.4 degrees, hence drastically reducing the room left for flexibility. "This shows how a continuation of ineffective climate policies reduces the option space for future climate policy, and also increases the threshold for switching to a more climate-friendly economy," Luderer points out. Today already, due to past CO2 emissions and the inertia in the transformation of the global energy systems, the world is committed to 1.7 degrees global warming, the researchers estimate.

Mapping out the trade-offs

The scientists examined the challenge of economic climate mitigation with extensive computer simulations. They produced 285 alternative climate change mitigation scenarios, with varying assumptions on the course of international climate negotiations on the one hand and on the other hand the availability of low carbon technologies from solar and wind power to bio-energy, carbon capture and storage (CCS) and energy efficiency. For the economic evaluation, they considered indicators like mitigation costs, energy prices or potential financial transfers induced by an international carbon market.

„Our study is the first to map out the trade-offs between the stringency of climate targets and economic mitigation challenges at this very high level of detail," says Ottmar Edenhofer, co-author of the study and chief-economist of PIK. "We were able to pin down what we call the achievability frontier: depending on mitigation targets, timing and technology availability, costs of climate policy beyond a certain point grow disproportionally." Continuing a wait-and-see strategy with lack-luster climate policies could not only be a costly option, but also close the door for achieving climate targets in the long-term, the researchers conclude.

### The research leading to this publication was supported by the German Federal Environment Agency (UBA) under UFOPLAN FKZ 3710 41 135.

Article: Luderer, G., Pietzcker, R.C., Bertram, C., Kriegler, E., Meinshausen, M., Edenhofer, O. (2013): Economic mitigation challenges: how further delay closes the door for achieving climate targets. In: Environmental Research Letters (online)

Weblink to the article once it is published on tuesday: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/3/034033/article

For further information please contact: PIK press office
Phone: +49 331 288 25 07
E-Mail: press@pik-potsdam.de
Twitter: @PIK_Climate


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Pulsating dust cloud dynamics modeled

2013-09-12
The birth of stars is an event that eludes intuitive understanding. It is the collapse of dense molecular clouds under their own weight that offers the best sites of star formation. Now, Pralay Kumar Karmakar from the Department of Physics at Tezpur University, Assam province, India, and his colleague have proposed a new model for investigating molecular cloud fluctuations at sites of star formation and thus are able to study their pulsational dynamics, in a paper published in EPJ D. Dust molecular clouds are a type of astrophysical plasmas, which are composed of a primordial ...

More than just type 1 or type 2: DiMelli study points to different forms of diabetes

2013-09-12
The DiMelli (Diabetes Mellitus Incidence Cohort Registry) study examines the frequency and characteristics of diabetes phenotypes in children and young adults below the age of 20. The study was commissioned to investigate the increasing incidence of diabetes mellitus, particularly in childhood and early adulthood. The project is funded by the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD). Bioprobe measurements were performed centrally by the Central Medical Laboratory (LMZ) at the Helmholtz Zentrum München (HMGU) so as to guarantee the high quality and comparability of laboratory ...

Codeine could increase users' sensitivity to pain

2013-09-12
Using large and frequent doses of the pain-killer codeine may actually produce heightened sensitivity to pain, without the same level of relief offered by morphine, according to new research from the University of Adelaide. Researchers in the Discipline of Pharmacology have conducted what is believed to be the world's first experimental study comparing the pain relieving and pain worsening effects of both codeine and morphine. The University's Professor Paul Rolan, who is also a headache specialist at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, says codeine has been widely used as ...

Dogs' behavior could help to design social robots

2013-09-12
Designers of social robots, take note. Bring your dog to the lab next time you test a prototype, and watch how your pet interacts with it. You might just learn a thing or two that could help you fine-tune future designs. So says Gabriella Lakatos of the Hungarian Academy of Science and Eötvös Loránd University, lead author of a study¹ published in Springer's journal Animal Cognition that found that man's best friend reacts sociably to robots that behave socially towards them, even if the devices look nothing like a human. This animal behavior study tested the reaction ...

Study explores complex physical oceanography in East China Sea

2013-09-12
Just days before a team of researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and National Taiwan University set out to conduct fieldwork in the East China Sea, Typhoon Morakot—one of the most destructive storms ever to hit Taiwan—made landfall on the island, causing widespread damage and drastically altering the flow of water along the nearby continental shelf. The typhoon, which struck in Aug. 2009, caused catastrophic damage in Taiwan, killing several hundred people and dropping up to 2 meters of rain in just 5 days in the mountains. In their work to understand ...

Uros people of Peru and Bolivia found to have distinctive genetic ancestries

2013-09-12
RESEARCH CONCLUSIONS: New genetic research led by the Genographic Project consortium shows a distinctive ancestry for the Uros populations of Peru and Bolivia that predates the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores and may date back to the earliest settlement of the Altiplano, or high plain, of the central Andes some 3,700 years ago. Despite the fact that the Uros today share many lineages with the surrounding Andean populations, they have maintained their own divergent genetic ancestry. WHO ARE THE UROS?: The Uros are a self-identified ethnic group, about 2,000 ...

Women have higher rate of spontaneous clearance of hepatitis C virus

2013-09-12
A study of patients infected with acute hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection found that women had higher rates of spontaneous viral clearance—undetectable levels of the virus without initiating drug therapy. Findings published in Hepatology, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, indicate that the gene IL28B (rs12979860) and HCV genotype 1 are also independent predictors of spontaneous HCV clearance. In 2011, there were 1,229 cases of acute HCV reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Infection (CDC), which represents a 44% increase ...

Carnegie Mellon researchers say Twitter analysis can help gamblers beat the spread on NFL games

2013-09-12
PITTSBURGH—Analyses of Twitter feeds have been used to track flu epidemics, predict stock market changes and do political polling, but now that the National Football League season is underway, the natural question is: Can Twitter help beat the spread on NFL games? The answer, say computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University, is yes. Or, at least it can help a little bit at certain times during the season. They will report their findings Sept. 27 at the Machine Learning and Data Mining for Sports Analytics conference in Prague, Czech Republic. The study began as ...

New Hubble image of galaxy cluster Abell 1689

2013-09-12
Hubble previously observed this cluster back in 2002. However, this new image combines visible and infrared data from Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) to reveal this patch of sky in greater detail than ever before, with a combined total exposure time of over 34 hours. These new, deeper, observations were taken in order to explore the globular clusters within Abell 1689 [1]. This new study has shown that Abell 1689 hosts the largest population of globular clusters ever found. While our galaxy, the Milky Way, is only home to around 150 of these old clumps of stars, ...

Virginia Tech Carilion researchers find surprising relationships in brain signaling

2013-09-12
If the violins were taken away from the musicians performing Beethoven's 9th symphony, the resulting composition would sound very different. If the violins were left on stage but the violinists were removed, the same mutant version of the symphony would be heard. But what if it ended up sounding like "Hey Jude" instead? This sort of surprise is what scientists from the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute had during what they assumed to be a routine experiment in neurodevelopment. Previous studies had shown that the glycoprotein Reelin is crucial to developing ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Reality check: making indoor smartphone-based augmented reality work

Overthinking what you said? It’s your ‘lizard brain’ talking to newer, advanced parts of your brain

Black men — including transit workers — are targets for aggression on public transportation, study shows

Troubling spike in severe pregnancy-related complications for all ages in Illinois

Alcohol use identified by UTHealth Houston researchers as most common predictor of escalated cannabis vaping among youths in Texas

Need a landing pad for helicopter parenting? Frame tasks as learning

New MUSC Hollings Cancer Center research shows how Golgi stress affects T-cells' tumor-fighting ability

#16to365: New resources for year-round activism to end gender-based violence and strengthen bodily autonomy for all

Earliest fish-trapping facility in Central America discovered in Maya lowlands

São Paulo to host School on Disordered Systems

New insights into sleep uncover key mechanisms related to cognitive function

USC announces strategic collaboration with Autobahn Labs to accelerate drug discovery

Detroit health professionals urge the community to act and address the dangers of antimicrobial resistance

3D-printing advance mitigates three defects simultaneously for failure-free metal parts 

Ancient hot water on Mars points to habitable past: Curtin study

In Patagonia, more snow could protect glaciers from melt — but only if we curb greenhouse gas emissions soon

Simplicity is key to understanding and achieving goals

Caste differentiation in ants

Nutrition that aligns with guidelines during pregnancy may be associated with better infant growth outcomes, NIH study finds

New technology points to unexpected uses for snoRNA

Racial and ethnic variation in survival in early-onset colorectal cancer

Disparities by race and urbanicity in online health care facility reviews

Exploring factors affecting workers' acquisition of exercise habits using machine learning approaches

Nano-patterned copper oxide sensor for ultra-low hydrogen detection

Maintaining bridge safer; Digital sensing-based monitoring system

A novel approach for the composition design of high-entropy fluorite oxides with low thermal conductivity

A groundbreaking new approach to treating chronic abdominal pain

ECOG-ACRIN appoints seven researchers to scientific committee leadership positions

New model of neuronal circuit provides insight on eye movement

Cooking up a breakthrough: Penn engineers refine lipid nanoparticles for better mRNA therapies

[Press-News.org] Delaying climate policy would triple short-term mitigation costs