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A United Nations special climate report suggests a tax on carbon dioxide emissions would need to be as high as $27,000 per ton at the end of the century to effectively limit global warming.
For Americans, that’s the same as a $240 per gallon tax on gasoline in the year 2100, should such a recommendation be adopted. In 2030, the report says a carbon tax would need to be as high as $5,500 — that’s equivalent to a $49 per gallon gas tax.
If you think that’s an unlikely scenario, you’re probably not wrong. However, it’s what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report, released Sunday night, sees as a policy option for reducing emissions enough to keep projected warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The IPCC’s report is meant to galvanize political support for doubling down on the Paris climate accord ahead of a U.N. climate summit scheduled for December. The report calls for societal changes that are “unprecedented in terms of scale” in order to limit future global warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius, the stretch goal of the Paris accord.
However, the costs of meeting that goal are high based on the IPCC’s own figures. (RELATED: Here’s What The Media Won’t Tell You About The U.N.’s New Climate Report)
In order to effectively keep future warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, the IPCC says carbon taxes would need to range from $135 to $5,500 per ton in 2030, $245 to $13,000 per ton in 2050, $420 to $17,000 per ton in 2070 and $690 to $27,000 per ton in 2100.
To meet the goals of the Paris accord, which seeks to limit future warming to below 2 degrees Celsius, the IPCC says carbon taxes would have range between $10 and $200 in 2030 and $160 and $2,125 in 2100.
That’s equivalent to a gas tax as high as $1.70 per gallon in 2030 to nearly $19 per gallon at the end of the century. That’s less onerous than limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, but still no walk in the park.
California and many European countries have policies to price carbon dioxide emissions and mandate green energy, including cap-and-trade systems and carbon taxes. But carbon prices under those systems are nowhere near where the IPCC says they need to be.
The IPCC said the “price of carbon would need to increase significantly when a higher level of stringency is pursued.” However, the group’s report tacitly acknowledges the unlikelihood that governments will enact astronomical taxes on energy.
“While the price of carbon is central to prompt mitigation pathways compatible with 1.5 [degree Celsius]-consistent pathways, a complementary mix of stringent policies is required,” reads the IPCC’s report.
In the U.S., Republican lawmakers overwhelmingly passed a resolution opposed to carbon taxes in July. Democrats called for a price on carbon dioxide in their 2016 party platform, but they haven’t made much effort on that front since the failure of cap-and-trade legislation in 2010.
Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo of Florida introduced carbon tax legislation shortly after all but five of his GOP colleagues in the House voted to oppose such a bill. Curbelo’s bill would tax carbon dioxide at $23 a ton — nowhere near what the IPCC calls for.
However, the IPCC suggested a lower carbon tax could be used in conjunction with command and control policies, like regulations and bans on coal plants, could achieve “generate a 1.5˚C pathway for the U.S. electric sector.”
But that point only serves to undermine Curbelo’s bill, which would put a moratorium on some environmental regulations and possibly eliminate some if emissions goals are reached.
The IPCC noted the “literature indicates that the pricing of emissions is relevant but needs to be complemented with other policies to drive the required changes in line with 1.5°C-consistent cost-effective pathways.”
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To see what climate effects such a regional nuclear conflict might have, scientists from NASA and other institutions modeled a war involving a hundred Hiroshima-level bombs, each packing the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT—just 0.03 percent of the world's current nuclear arsenal.
The researchers predicted the resulting fires would kick up roughly five million metric tons of black carbon into the upper part of the troposphere, the lowest layer of the Earth's atmosphere.
In NASA climate models, this carbon then absorbed solar heat and, like a hot-air balloon, quickly lofted even higher, where the soot would take much longer to clear from the sky.
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The global cooling caused by these high carbon clouds wouldn't be as catastrophic as a superpower-versus-superpower nuclear winter, but "the effects would still be regarded as leading to unprecedented climate change," research physical scientist Luke Oman said during a press briefing Friday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C.
Earth is currently in a long-term warming trend. After a regional nuclear war, though, average global temperatures would drop by 2.25 degrees F (1.25 degrees C) for two to three years afterward, the models suggest.
At the extreme, the tropics, Europe, Asia, and Alaska would cool by 5.4 to 7.2 degrees F (3 to 4 degrees C), according to the models. Parts of the Arctic and Antarctic would actually warm a bit, due to shifted wind and ocean-circulation patterns, the researchers said.
After ten years, average global temperatures would still be 0.9 degree F (0.5 degree C) lower than before the nuclear war, the models predict.
For a time Earth would likely be a colder, hungrier planet.
"Our results suggest that agriculture could be severely impacted, especially in areas that are susceptible to late-spring and early-fall frosts," said Oman, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
"Examples similar to the crop failures and famines experienced following the Mount Tambora eruption in 1815 could be widespread and last several years," he added. That Indonesian volcano ushered in "the year without summer," a time of famines and unrest. (See pictures of the Mount Tambora eruption.)
All these changes would also alter circulation patterns in the tropical atmosphere, reducing precipitation by 10 percent globally for one to four years, the scientists said. Even after seven years, global average precipitation would be 5 percent lower than it was before the conflict, according to the model.
In addition, researcher Michael Mills, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, found large decreases in the protective ozone layer, leading to much more ultraviolet radiation reaching Earth's surface and harming the environment and people.
"The main message from our work," NASA's Oman said, "would be that even a regional nuclear conflict would have global consequences."