Carbon Risk Premium and Worries about Climate Change and Energy Disruption

HOW TO MEASURE THE IMPORTANCE OF CLIMATE RISK FOR DETERMINING OPTIMAL GLOBAL ABATEMENT POLICIES?

Climate Change Economics ◽

10.1142/s2010007812500042 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 03 (01) ◽

pp. 1250004 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

ALEXANDER LORENZ ◽

ELMAR KRIEGLER ◽

HERMANN HELD ◽

MATTHIAS G. W. SCHMIDT

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Climate Policy ◽

Risk Premium ◽

Optimal Policy ◽

Integrated Assessment ◽

Global Climate ◽

Functional Relationships ◽

Abatement Policies ◽

Marginal Risk

We investigate the importance of explicitly accounting for uncertainty in the determination of optimal global climate policy. We demonstrate that the marginal risk premium determines the importance of adapting the optimal policy to uncertainty. Common integrated assessment models (IAM) of climate change suggest uncertainty has little effect because the marginal risk premium in these models is small. A rigorous investigation of the marginal risk premium and the marginal functional relationships within IAMs allows understanding the non-significance of (thin-tailed) uncertainty as a result of compensating factors in the climate cause-effect chain.

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TOWARD IMPACT FUNCTIONS FOR STOCHASTIC CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate Change Economics ◽

10.1142/s2010007815500153 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 06 (04) ◽

pp. 1550015 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

FRANCISCO ESTRADA ◽

RICHARD S. J. TOL

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Economic Impact ◽

21St Century ◽

Risk Premium ◽

Welfare Effects ◽

Natural Variability ◽

Climate Projections ◽

The Mean

Most functions of economic impact assume that climate change is smooth. We here propose impact functions that have stochastic climate change as an input. These functions are identical in shape and have similar parameters as do deterministic impact functions. The mean stochastic impacts are thus similar to deterministic impacts. Welfare effects are larger, and the stochasticity premium is larger than the risk premium. Results suggest that stochasticity is more important for past impacts than for future impacts. This outcome is partly caused by an underestimation of natural variability in the 21st century climate projections.

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Averting robo-bees: why free-flying robotic bees are a bad idea

Emerging Topics in Life Sciences ◽

10.1042/etls20190063 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 (6) ◽

pp. 723-729

Author(s):

Roslyn Gleadow ◽

Jim Hanan ◽

Alan Dorin

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Computer Simulation ◽

Food Security ◽

European Countries ◽

Plant Interactions ◽

Plant Insect Interactions ◽

Native Habitat ◽

Insect Pollinators ◽

Insect Interactions

Food security and the sustainability of native ecosystems depends on plant-insect interactions in countless ways. Recently reported rapid and immense declines in insect numbers due to climate change, the use of pesticides and herbicides, the introduction of agricultural monocultures, and the destruction of insect native habitat, are all potential contributors to this grave situation. Some researchers are working towards a future where natural insect pollinators might be replaced with free-flying robotic bees, an ecologically problematic proposal. We argue instead that creating environments that are friendly to bees and exploring the use of other species for pollination and bio-control, particularly in non-European countries, are more ecologically sound approaches. The computer simulation of insect-plant interactions is a far more measured application of technology that may assist in managing, or averting, ‘Insect Armageddon' from both practical and ethical viewpoints.

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Modelling ecosystem adaptation and dangerous rates of global warming

Emerging Topics in Life Sciences ◽

10.1042/etls20180113 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 (2) ◽

pp. 221-231 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Rebecca Millington ◽

Peter M. Cox ◽

Jonathan R. Moore ◽

Gabriel Yvon-Durocher

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Global Warming ◽

Diffusion Rate ◽

Individual Species ◽

Genetic Evolution ◽

Rates Of Change ◽

Rapid Climate Change ◽

Warming Climate ◽

Intraspecies Competition ◽

High Trait

Abstract We are in a period of relatively rapid climate change. This poses challenges for individual species and threatens the ecosystem services that humanity relies upon. Temperature is a key stressor. In a warming climate, individual organisms may be able to shift their thermal optima through phenotypic plasticity. However, such plasticity is unlikely to be sufficient over the coming centuries. Resilience to warming will also depend on how fast the distribution of traits that define a species can adapt through other methods, in particular through redistribution of the abundance of variants within the population and through genetic evolution. In this paper, we use a simple theoretical ‘trait diffusion’ model to explore how the resilience of a given species to climate change depends on the initial trait diversity (biodiversity), the trait diffusion rate (mutation rate), and the lifetime of the organism. We estimate theoretical dangerous rates of continuous global warming that would exceed the ability of a species to adapt through trait diffusion, and therefore lead to a collapse in the overall productivity of the species. As the rate of adaptation through intraspecies competition and genetic evolution decreases with species lifetime, we find critical rates of change that also depend fundamentally on lifetime. Dangerous rates of warming vary from 1°C per lifetime (at low trait diffusion rate) to 8°C per lifetime (at high trait diffusion rate). We conclude that rapid climate change is liable to favour short-lived organisms (e.g. microbes) rather than longer-lived organisms (e.g. trees).

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