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Europe threatens U.S. with carbon tariffs to combat climate change – POLITICO

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Europe threatens U.S. with carbon tariffs to combat climate change – POLITICO

MADRID — European countries frustrated by inaction on climate change are taking a lesson from President Donald Trump’s trade wars — and threatening carbon tariffs on laggards like the United States.

By imposing tariffs on goods from the U.S. and other countries that lack tough climate policies, the Europeans would help their own industries avoid being handicapped by the EU’s greenhouse gas efforts. But if they hit the U.S., they would risk a worsening trade war with the Trump administration, which has already threatened hefty tariffs on goods such as French champagne and German autos over a range of competition disputes.

NPR

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In A Warming Greenland, A Farming Family Adapts To Drought — And New Opportunities : NPR

The Nielsen family has owned and run Kangerluarsorujuk since 1972. The farm sits on a plateau at one end of a fjord. The barns for the sheep and two small, sturdy houses for the Nielsens are built to withstand Greenland's winter cold. Sign Up For The NPR Daily Newsletter

Kanuk has spent his entire life on this sheep farm. He says the summers are longer now than when he was a child — lasting from May to October — and drought has become a problem.

From the beginning, models have been remarkably accurate – Vox

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Climate change: From the beginning, models have been remarkably accurate – Vox

The researchers did a comprehensive literature review for pre-1990 models; for post-1990 models, they followed the literature reviews of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). They ended up choosing 17 models to closely analyze, dating from 1970 through 2007 — models old enough to be testable against decades of observational data.

To be clear, almost all the models chosen are no longer in use, having been superseded by more sophisticated models since. Some of the earlier ones, especially those from the 1970s and early ’80s, are fairly crude energy-in, energy-out models, with a single variable for forcing (CO2) and a crude measure of climate sensitivity (the amount temperature rises per additional ton of CO2). It wasn’t until the late ’80s that James Hansen and other scientists developed multivariable general-circulation models.

It turns out that even those crude early models were fairly accurate, which is remarkable given the sophistication of the science and the available computing power. None of the models the authors analyzed got it badly wrong.