• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
Wind and Solar Cheaper than Gas Plants in Ontario and Alberta, Study Shows February 7, 2023
AI Predicts World Over 1.5°C Limit by 2030, Undercuts Climate Progress Reports February 7, 2023
February Brings Record Cold, Widespread Power Outages to Much of North America February 7, 2023
Solar Geoengineering Banned in Mexico After ‘Rogue’ Stunt February 7, 2023
Lithium Mine Divides Nemaska Cree Over Impacts, Benefits February 7, 2023
Next
Prev

Science grapples with climate conundrums

March 31, 2016
Reading time: 4 minutes
Primary Author: Tim Radford

 

New research illustrates that reactions of people, plants and animals to the changing climate are a key factor in unravelling the complexities of global warming.

LONDON, 31 March, 2016 – The evidence of a series of new studies shows that climate change is keeping the gurus guessing.

  • The climate news you need. Subscribe now to our engaging new weekly digest.
  • You’ll receive exclusive, never-before-seen-content, distilled and delivered to your inbox every weekend.
  • The Weekender: Succinct, solutions-focused, and designed with the discerning reader in mind.
Subscribe

Even when the grasslands become hotter and drier, the grass may still be green. And when summer temperatures rise and yields fall, it isn’t just because heat takes a toll of the crops, it is also because the farmers have decided to plant less, and plant less often.

As economies slump, demand drops and oil prices plummet, then carbon dioxide emissions, paradoxically, start to soar again.

And, against all intuition, you shouldn’t recharge an electric car at night when prices are low, because that could increase greenhouse gas emissions.

Each study is a reminder that climate change is not a simple matter of atmospheric physics. The wild card, every time, is how people, plants and animals react to change.

Climate simulations

Koen Hufkens, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University, and colleagues decided to take a look at how the North American grasslands – the high plains, the prairies, the open range – would respond to climate change.

The predictions have been consistent: such places that are already dry will, on the whole, get drier.

But a report in Nature Climate Change by the Harvard team says that their climate simulations of locations from Canada to New Mexico, from California to Illinois, tell another story.

Warming may not mean overall lower productivity. In a warming world, winters will be milder and the growing season will begin earlier. So, overall, the grass stays green.

“You have an earlier spring flush of vegetation, followed by a summer depression where the vegetation withers, and then, at the end of the season, you see the vegetation rebound again,” Dr Hufkens says.

“Understanding how people respond in this kind
of environment is going to be really important”

Meanwhile, in Spain, scientists at Jaume I University in Castellón decided to look at the link between air pollution and economic performance in Spain between 1874 and 2011. With economic development, levels of contamination rose. As Spain’s wealth increased, so did concern about pollution – and carbon dioxide emissions began to drop.

They report in Ecological Indicators journal that they then matched their data against the international price of oil and found that when the price fell by 1%, carbon dioxide emissions went up by 0.4%. When the price of oil rose, the levels of emissions fell in the same proportion.

The implication is that if the price at the petrol pumps is lower, the mileage goes up. The scientists recommend “a cautious tax structure that would reduce overall consumption of fossil fuels and promote the use of cleaner and more efficient energies”.

That climate change will affect future food production is not disputed. Avery Cohn, then of Brown University but now assistant professor of environment and resource policy at Tufts University in the US, and colleagues report in Nature Climate Change that they tried to estimate what global warming would bring to the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, which in 2013 produced 10% of the world’s soybeans.

They looked at changes in rainfall and temperature between 2002 and 2008, and concluded that a 1°C rise in average temperature would produce a drop of between 9% and 13% in the overall yield of soy and corn.

But they also looked at satellite data, to give a more precise picture of what was happening, quite literally, on the ground.

They found that the total area under harvest, and the number of instances of double cropping, both fell with rising temperatures. So although climate change contributed to a drop in yield, the biggest factors were the decisions of the farmers.

Agricultural frontier

“This is an agricultural frontier in the tropics in a middle-income country,” says Leah VanWey, professor of sociology at Brown University, and a co-author of the report.

“This is where the vast majority of agricultural development is going to happen in the next 30 to 50 years. So understanding how people respond in this kind of environment is going to be really important.”

Meanwhile, a team at Carnegie Mellon University decided to examine a simple assumption: that it would be better to charge electric vehicles at night, when demand is low and electricity is cheapest to generate.

They report in Environmental Research Letters that they looked at what actually happened in one power grid area and concluded that, although vehicle owners might save money, the costs to society were considerable.

“We found that charging late at night reduces power generation costs by a quarter to a third, largely by shifting to cheaper coal-fired power plants,” says Jeremy Michalek, professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon.

“But the extra emissions released as a result can cause 50% higher costs to human health and the environment. In nearly all US regions, charging later at night increases greenhouse gas emissions.” – Climate News Network



in Climate News Network

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

U.S. Geological Survey/wikimedia commons
Biodiversity & Habitat

Climate Change Amplifies Risk of ‘Insect Apocalypse’

December 1, 2022
43
Alaa Abd El-Fatah/wikimedia commons
COP Conferences

Rights Abuses, Intrusive Conference App Put Egypt Under Spotlight as COP 27 Host

November 14, 2022
26
Western Arctic National Parklands/wikimedia commons
Arctic & Antarctica

Arctic Wildfires Show Approach of New Climate Feedback Loop

January 2, 2023
28

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

Peoplepoweredbyenergy/Wikimedia Commons

Wind and Solar Cheaper than Gas Plants in Ontario and Alberta, Study Shows

February 7, 2023
282
Beckyq6937/Wikimedia Commons

Solar Geoengineering Banned in Mexico After ‘Rogue’ Stunt

February 7, 2023
126
Michael E. Brunk/flickr

Green Building ‘Heroes’, Climate Contrarian ‘Zombies’, Shell Lawsuits, and ‘Sponge Cities’ to Solve Flooding

February 7, 2023
103
Peter Broster/wikimedia commons

Ottawa Mulls Higher-Speed Trains on Busy Toronto-Quebec City Corridor

February 7, 2023
88
The hottest summer days in a typical New York City year are now about 11 times more frequent than in the 19th century. Image: Andreas Komodromos via Flickr

AI Predicts World Over 1.5°C Limit by 2030, Undercuts Climate Progress Reports

February 7, 2023
80
Brian Robert Marshall/Geograph

Canada’s Solid Renewables Growth Falls Short of Net-Zero Ambitions

February 7, 2023
74

Recent Posts

Andre Carrotflower/wikimedia commons

February Brings Record Cold, Widespread Power Outages to Much of North America

February 7, 2023
43
Nemaska Lithium/Facebook

Lithium Mine Divides Nemaska Cree Over Impacts, Benefits

February 7, 2023
27
Mike Mozart/Flickr

BP Predicts Faster Oil and Gas Decline as Clean Energy Spending Hits $1.1T in 2022

February 4, 2023
366
Gina Dittmer/PublicDomainPictures

Canada Needs Oil and Gas Emissions Cap to Hit 2030 Goal: NZAB

January 31, 2023
213
CONFENIAE

Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty

January 31, 2023
82
Ken Teegardin www.SeniorLiving.Org/flickr

Virtual Power Plants Hit an ‘Inflection Point’

January 31, 2023
141
Next Post

Plants’ Cooling Effect Diminishes in Warmer World

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}