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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Climate Change And Its Implication On Agriculture In Nigeria, E B. Audu, H O. Audu, N L. Binbol, J N. Gana Jan 2013

Climate Change And Its Implication On Agriculture In Nigeria, E B. Audu, H O. Audu, N L. Binbol, J N. Gana

Abuja Journal of Geography and Development

This paper focused on climate change and agricultural activities in Nigeria. The aim of the study was to examine the implication of climate change on agricultural activities in Nigeria and the objectives included to: identify the various variables of climate change which tend to affect agriculture and proffer measures to mitigate them. Part of the data used for this paper were derived from recent studies by various authors such as the onset and cessation of rains in Kaduna, Kano and Sokoto and reasons for the shift in crops production in the semi – arid region of Nigeria. The mean decadal …


Can We Actually Calculate The Social Cost Of Carbon?, Kyle Mckay Jan 2013

Can We Actually Calculate The Social Cost Of Carbon?, Kyle Mckay

Kyle McKay

Social cost of carbon calculations poorly integrate the risk of worse-case scenarios and their impact on social equity, primarily due to the fundamental limitations of cost-benefit analysis. Continued use of the social cost of carbon is preferable to policy that assumes no social cost to carbon emissions, but risks overconfidence in modeling and political clashes around insufficiently important regulatory changes that could impair necessary larger scale policy changes.


A Simple Model To Account For Regional Inequalities In The Effectiveness Of Solar Radiation Management, Juan B. Moreno-Cruz, Katharine L. Ricke, David W. Keith Jan 2012

A Simple Model To Account For Regional Inequalities In The Effectiveness Of Solar Radiation Management, Juan B. Moreno-Cruz, Katharine L. Ricke, David W. Keith

Juan B. Moreno-Cruz

We develop a simple measure of the potential effectiveness of solar radiation management (SRM) in compensating for anthropogenic climate change and test this measure using data from an ensemble of modeling experiments conducted with a general circulation model (GCM). Assuming a linear relationship between the amounts of SRM implemented globally and the regional temperature and precipitation responses to that change, we calculate the amount of SRM that minimizes impacts using three different social objectives: egalitarian, utilitarian and ecocentric. While inequalities in the effectiveness of SRM between regions are important, they may not be as severe as is often assumed. When …


Climate Policy Under Uncertainty: A Case For Solar Geoengineering, Juan B. Moreno-Cruz, David W. Keith Jan 2012

Climate Policy Under Uncertainty: A Case For Solar Geoengineering, Juan B. Moreno-Cruz, David W. Keith

Juan B. Moreno-Cruz

It appears to be technically feasible to engineer an increase in albedo, a planetary brightening, as a means to offset the warming caused by carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases through Solar Radiation Management (SRM). This option has two characteristics that make it attractive for managing climate risk: it is quick and cheap. However, SRM cannot exactly compensate for the CO2-driven climate change. Moreover, SRM introduces risks in the climate system that are unique to this type of intervention.We introduce SRM in a model of climate change economics and analyze the optimal policy under uncertainty. We find that the …


Combining Multiple Climate Policy Instruments: How Not To Do It, Jisung Park Jan 2011

Combining Multiple Climate Policy Instruments: How Not To Do It, Jisung Park

Jisung Park

Putting a price on carbon is critical for climate change policy. Increasingly, policymakers combine multiple policy tools to achieve this, for example by complementing cap-and-trade schemes with a carbon tax, or with a feed-in tariff. Often, the motivation for doing so is to limit undesirable fluctuations in the carbon price, either from rising too high or falling too low. This paper reviews the implications for the carbon price of combining cap-and-trade with other policy instruments. We find that price intervention may not always have the desired effect. Simply adding a carbon tax to an existing cap-and-trade system reduces the carbon …


Heroes And Villains: Cultural Narratives, Mass Opinions, And Climate Change, Michael Jones May 2010

Heroes And Villains: Cultural Narratives, Mass Opinions, And Climate Change, Michael Jones

Michael D. Jones

Global climate change is easily identified as one of the most pressing and contentious policy problems facing not only the United States, but the human race. In a democratic society such as our own, understanding the public’s capacities and tendencies in processing information and forming opinions about climate change has serious and far-reaching policy implications. Historically quite low, public knowledge about climate change is now on the rise, as is the importance of the issue on the public agenda (Leiserowitz, 2005). Consequently, it is not unreasonable to expect the public, for better or worse, to play a larger role in …


Mitigation And The Geoengineering Threat, Juan B. Moreno-Cruz Jan 2010

Mitigation And The Geoengineering Threat, Juan B. Moreno-Cruz

Juan B. Moreno-Cruz

Recent scientific advances have introduced the possibility of engineering the climate system to lower ambient temperatures without lowering greenhouse gas concentrations. This possibility has created an intense debate given the ethical, moral and scientific questions it raises. In this paper I examine the economic issues introduced when geoengineering becomes available in a standard two-period two-country model where strategic interaction leads to suboptimal mitigation. Geoengineering introduces the possibility of technical substitution away from mitigation, but it also affects the strategic interaction across countries: mitigation decisions made in the first period directly affect the geoengineering decisions made in the second period. With …


China In Context: Energy, Water, And Climate Cooperation, Prof. Elizabeth Burleson Jan 2010

China In Context: Energy, Water, And Climate Cooperation, Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Climate resilient communities can be achieved with the support of global research, development, deployment, and diffusion of environmentally sound low GHG emission technologies and processes. Technology cooperation should lower emissions remaining mindful of biodiversity, ecosystem services and livelihoods. China and the United States need to respond effectively to both economic and climate crises and can do so in part by cooperating on environmentally sound technology that transforms the global use of energy.


Collaborative Community-Based Natural Resource Management, Prof. Elizabeth Burleson Jan 2010

Collaborative Community-Based Natural Resource Management, Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

This article analyzes the importance of increasing civil society actor access to and influence in international legal and policy negotiations, drawing from academic scholarship on governance, conservation and environmental sustainability, natural resource management, observations of civil society actors, and the authors’ experiences as participants in international environmental negotiations.


The Abcs Of Global Warming, Robert C. Shelburne Apr 2009

The Abcs Of Global Warming, Robert C. Shelburne

Robert C. Shelburne

An article providing a broad methodological overview of how to think about the problem of climate change or gobal warming associated with increased carbon emissions.