Asilomar Conference on Climate Geoengineering

Last week, 175 experts from a wide array of disciplines convened at the Asilomar conference center in Pacific Grove, California for the International Conference on Climate Intervention Technologies. I attended the meeting also and was impressed by the passion of the participants and the common resolve to approach climate geoengineering with the levels of humility [...]

Potential Ecosystem Impacts of Ocean Acidification

Contact: Laura Udakis l.udakis@sgm.ac.uk 44-118-988-1843 Society for General Microbiology Ecosystems under threat from ocean acidification Acidification of the oceans as a result of increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide could have significant effects on marine ecosystems, according to Michael Maguire presenting at the Society for General Microbiology’s spring meeting in Edinburgh this week. Postgraduate researcher [...]

LEAD journal issue on climate change

The Law, Environment and Development Journal (LEAD Journal) is a peer-reviewed academic publication based in New Delhi and London and jointly managed by the School of Law of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) – University of London and the International Environmental Law Research Centre (IELRC). LEAD is published biannually at www.lead-journal.org. I [...]

Another blow to the skeptics: Warming Hasn’t Stopped

In a paper to be submitted for peer review, NASA scientists say that the planet has not experienced a cooling trend in the last decade, as some have claimed. http://e360.yale.edu/content/digest.msp?id=2333 <http://e360.yale.edu/content/digest.msp?id=2333> 22 Mar 2010: NASA Study Concludes That No Cooling Evident in Past Decade A comprehensive analysis of global air and sea temperatures by NASA [...]

Society for Law and Economics

The Second Annual Meeting of the Society for Law and Economics is ongoing.  This year’s conference is hosted by Emory Law School and includes several papers/presentations on climate change.  Details are available here.

UNDP Study on Copenhagen

UNDP recently commissioned The Outcomes of Copenhagen — The Negotiations & The Accord to evaluate the substantive results of the Copenhagen climate talks, including the status of the negotiations on key issues under the formal negotiating tracks and the provisions of the Copenhagen Accord. The document has been authored by Alina Averchenkova, a senior analyst [...]

New Study on Private Financing of Adaptation/Mitigation Climate Change Efforts

While the outcome of the 15th COP in Copenhagen was clearly disappointing on a number of levels, one of the most propitious developments was the commitment by developing countries in the Copenhagen Accord to provide $30 billion in short-term (2010-2013) funding, and $100 billion annually in long-term funding by 2020 to meet the adaptation/mitigation needs [...]

Climate Change policy contains the seed of its own doom, critics say.

Conventionally policy solutions to the global problem of Climate Change have been dominated by the concept of mitigation, unfortunately this approach contains the seeds of its own doom, critics say. A mitigation approach is an intervention to reduce the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases (IPCC. 2001b), whereas the adaptation strategy; the second [...]

Virtual Environmental Law Guest Speakers Program

For those of you interested in climate geoengineering issues, or who may have students who are, I prepared an audio lecture (including a video Power Point) for Mercer Law Schools Environmental Law Guest Speakers series. We will be conducting a virtual discussion of the issue all week, and I hope some of you will join [...]

Potential impacts of CC on Species in Southeast Asia

A new study in the journal Biodiversity Conservation, Bickford, et al., Impacts of Climate Change on Amphibians and Reptiles of Southeast Asia, 19 Biodiversity Conservation 1043-1062 (2010) (subscription required), Among the take-aways from the article: Temperatures in the region could rise 6C; this would make migrations for species involving latitude or elevation extremely difficult; Most [...]