As part of the Administration's efforts to rescind the EPA's 2009 Endangerment Finding relating to carbon dioxide emissions, the Department of Energy has just released a 151 page report attempting to undercut consensus climate science, authored by 5 prominent climate skeptics.  This podcast reviews the report's basic findings, how scientists are reacting to the report, and the Climatographers' own interpretation of the report.   

The Trump administration wants to undo the 2009 Endangerment Finding from the EPA that set the stage for federal efforts to regulate greenhouse gases through fuel efficiency standards and other means.  The legal basis for such a step is questionable at best, but with today's Supreme Court it's hard to predict what will happen.  This episode provides a good look at the issues involved.  

The first business climate risk textbook, written for the London School of Economics, was published in 2011. It was co-authored by the Climate Roulette podcast's producer Dr. Mark Trexler.  It's main points and conclusions have stood the test of time remarkably well.  It represented one of the earliest calls for companies to place more emphasis on their "policy footprint" than their "carbon footprint." It pointed out that the only way to really manage the business risks of climate change would be to mitigate climate change, and that that would require public policies.  This extended episode provides an in-depth overview of that 2011 textbook: The Changing Profile of Business Climate Risk.   

This is our third Climate Roulette episode involving the recent ICJ Climate Ruling.  This one specifically explores the challenges the Advisory ruling faces in really changing climate outcomes. We use the metaphor of Climate Chess, also discussed in prior episodes of the podcast, to explore strategies that would make the ICJ ruling more consequential.    

According to a new paper fires are rapidly growing in importance as a source of so-called "forest disturbance" around the world.  This isn't unexpected as climate change increases the length of fire seasons, creates dryer fuels, and creates more weather events conducive to fires.  It's too early to say whether a "tipping point" has been reached, and the picture is complicated by how rapidly our ability to directly observe global forests is improving, but it's an element of the climate roulette picture that bears close watching.  

It's well known that the oceans and land-based ecosystems have historically absorbed about 50% of human emissions of CO2, with the other half remaining in the atmosphere.  But scientists have worried that this natural uptake of CO2 might not last forever.  This new paper suggests that as the world warms, land-based CO2 sinks might already be close to tipping, which would substantially accelerate the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere.      

There are lots of reasons we're failing to mitigate climate change at the scale scientists are calling for, and there's a lot of discussion of the need to focus more on adapting to the climate change that will occur.  But will adaptation be more successful than mitigation, or do they both face the same kinds of barriers.  This episode explores this very interesting and important question.  

Risk experts have been worried about the implications of climate change for food prices around the world for years.  This episode reports on one of the first studies to try and empirically link specific climate events with specific food price spikes.  No one study can be definitive, but it's an interesting exploration of not only the observed effect on food prices, but the impact of food prices on geopolitical stability.  

Part 1 of this episode series focused on the unanimous ruling delivered by the large bench of ICJ judges.  This Part 2 focuses on the supplemental opinions that almost all the judges also added to the record, in most cases wishing the court had been willing to go further than it did in specific areas of the ruling.  Even though the unanimous ruling itself is only advisory, these supplemental opinions are likely to provide climate advocates with ideas of where to try and take climate change litigation in the future.    

Climate advocates have been waiting for this ruling from the International Court of Justice for many months, and it largely delivers on what advocates were hoping for!  This Part 1 of the podcast focuses on the main ICF ruling, which was unanimous.  Part 2 focuses instead on a whole series of supplemental rulings and declarations from the very same judges, in many cases wishing the court had gone further in its decision.