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Steep emissions reductions are needed in the coming decades to limit warming to 2°C or lower, followed by multiple gigatons of annual carbon dioxide removal (CDR) in the second half of the 21st century. In this presentation we make a first assessment of the “CDR gap” and ask whether countries are preparing for the CDR scale-up challenge. We find that most countries pledge only a small expansion of CDR by 2030 in their nationally determined contributions (NDCs), while only a subset have proposed CDR in their long-term mitigation strategies. There is a significant gap between these proposed CDR levels and levels in scenarios that limit warming to 2°C or lower. While some scenarios have low CDR requirements, these require even steeper emissions reductions that we are not on track to achieve. Most countries prioritize conventional CDR on land (i.e. the management of forest sinks) which has low permanence and may raise land use conflicts. Conventional CDR on land will be extremely difficult just to maintain, let alone expand to meet net zero emissions targets. By contrast, countries focus far less in their NDCs and long-term strategies on novel CDR methods such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, direct air capture, or blue carbon. For these technologies to make a meaningful contribution to long-term climate mitigation, urgent support is required in the formative phases of their development. Above all, rapid emissions reductions are needed to reduce our dependence on CDR and prevent a widening CDR gap by 2050.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments are the trusted source of scientific evidence for climate negotiations taking place under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), including the first global stocktake under the Paris Agreement that will conclude at COP28 in December 2023. Evidence-based decision making needs to be informed by up-to-date and timely information on key indicators of the state of the climate system and of the human influence on the global climate system. However, successive IPCC reports are published at intervals of 5–10 years, creating potential for an information gap between report cycles. We base this update on the assessment methods used in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) Working Group One (WGI) report, updating the monitoring datasets and to produce updated estimates for key climate indicators including emissions, greenhouse gas concentrations, radiative forcing, surface temperature changes, the Earth’s energy imbalance, warming attributed to human activities, the remaining carbon budget and estimates of global temperature extremes. The purpose of this effort, grounded in an open data, open science approach, is to make annually updated reliable global climate indicators available in the public domain (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7883758, Smith et al., 2023). As they are traceable and consistent with IPCC report methods, they can be trusted by all parties involved in UNFCCC negotiations and help convey wider understanding of the latest knowledge of the climate system and its direction of travel. The indicators show that human induced warming reached 1.14 [0.9 to 1.4] °C over the 2013–2022 period and 1.26 [1.0 to 1.6] °C in 2022. Human induced warming is increasing at an unprecedented rate of over 0.2 °C per decade. This high rate of warming is caused by a combination of greenhouse gas emissions being at an all-time high of 57 ± 5.6 GtCO2e over the last decade, as well as reductions in the strength of aerosol cooling. Despite this, there are signs that emission levels are starting to stabilise, and we can hope that a continued series of these annual updates might track a real-world change of direction for the climate over this critical decade.

BackgroundWith the Paris agreement in 2015, the international community set ambitious goals for limiting climate warming and adapting to the impacts of climate change. However, despite the increasing ambition of long-term targets, and progress on adaptation planning, current policies are insufficient to limit warming to safe levels or to adapt to climate impacts on the required scale. Climate policy is multifaceted, multisectoral and will require many different types of policy instruments. The scientific literature on climate change is rapidly expanding and contains a wealth of research on climate policies. Gaining an overview of climate policy research is therefore vital, but beyond the scope of traditional, hand-coded systematic maps.MethodsThis study aims to identify the literature on climate policies from a set of hundreds of thousands of studies on climate change. The studies will be classified according to the type of policy instrument discussed. Due to the scale of literature, only a sample of studies will be screened manually. Inclusion/exclusion, as well as policy and other labels, will be estimated using machine learning for the remaining studies. The map will report the numbers of papers on each policy type from each region and each sector, as well as the extent to which machine-learning is able to classify policy instruments correctly.

Climate mitigation research puts increasing emphasis on cities, but much more could be learned from urban case studies. The overall size, geographic scope and topic content of cases remains unknown, resulting in few attempts to synthesise the bottom-up evidence. Here, we use scientometric and machine-learning methods to produce a comprehensive map of the literature. Our database of approximately 4,000 case studies provides a wealth of evidence to search, compare and review. We find that cities in world regions with the highest future mitigation relevance are systematically underrepresented. A map of the evidence allows case studies to be matched with urban typologies in new and more ambitious forms of synthesis, bringing together traditionally separate strands of qualitative and quantitative urban research. Cities around the world are at the forefront of enacting climate mitigation policies, but effective action requires a better understanding of potential solutions. This Review offers a systematic exploration of the urban case study literature and discusses ways to best make use of the growing body of cases.

To track progress towards keeping warming well below 2 °C, as agreed upon in the Paris Agreement, comprehensive and reliable information on anthropogenic sources of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) is required. Here we provide a dataset on anthropogenic GHG emissions 1970–2019 with a broad country and sector coverage. We build the dataset from recent releases of the “Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research” (EDGAR) for CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and industry (FFI), CH4 emissions, N2O emissions, and fluorinated gases, and use a well-established fast-track method to extend this dataset from 2018 to 2019. We complement this with data on net CO2 emissions from land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) from three bookkeeping models. We provide an assessment of the uncertainties in each greenhouse gas at the 90 % confidence interval (5th–95th percentile) by combining statistical analysis and comparisons of global emissions inventories with an expert judgement informed by the relevant scientific literature. We identify important data gaps: CH4 and N2O emissions could be respectively 10–20 % higher than reported in EDGAR once all emissions are accounted. F-gas emissions estimates for individual species in EDGARv5 do not align well with atmospheric measurements and the F-gas total exceeds measured concentrations by about 30 %. However, EDGAR and official national emission reports under the UNFCCC do not comprehensively cover all relevant F-gas species. Excluded F-gas species such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) or hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) are larger than the sum of the reported species. GHG emissions in 2019 amounted to 59 ± 6.6 GtCO2eq: CO2 emissions from FFI were 38 ± 3.0 Gt, CO2 from LULUCF 6.6 ± 4.6 Gt, CH4 11 ± 3.3 GtCO2eq, N2O 2.4 ±1.5 GtCO2eq and F-gases 1.6 ± 0.49 GtCO2eq. Our analysis of global, anthropogenic GHG emission trends over the past five decades (1970–2019) highlights a pattern of varied, but sustained emissions growth. There is high confidence that global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have increased every decade. Emission growth has been persistent across different (groups of) gases. While CO2 has accounted for almost 75 % of the emission growth since 1970 in terms of CO2eq as reported here, the combined F-gases have grown at a faster rate than other GHGs, albeit starting from low levels in 1970. Today, F-gases make a non-negligible contribution to global warming – even though CFCs and HCFCs, regulated under the Montreal Protocol and not included in our estimates, have contributed more. There is further high confidence that global anthropogenic GHG emission levels were higher in 2010-2019 than in any previous decade and GHG emission levels have grown across the most recent decade. While average annual greenhouse gas emissions growth slowed between 2010–2019 compared to 2000–2009, the absolute increase in average decadal GHG emissions from the 2000s to the 2010s has been the largest since the 1970s – and within all human history as suggested by available long-term data. We note considerably higher rates of change in GHG emissions between 2018 and 2019 than for the entire decade 2010–2019, which is numerically comparable with the period of high GHG emissions growth during the 2000s, but we place low confidence in this finding as the majority of the growth is driven by highly uncertain increases in CO2-LULUCF emissions as well as the use of preliminary data and extrapolation methodologies for these most recent years. While there is a growing number of countries today on a sustained emission reduction trajectory, our analysis further reveals that there are no global sectors that show sustained reductions in GHG emissions. We conclude by highlighting that tracking progress in climate policy requires substantial investments in independent GHG emission accounting and monitoring as well as the available national and international statistical infrastructures. The data associated with this article (Minx et al. 2021) can be found at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5053056.

Meeting human needs at low levels of energy use is fundamental for avoiding catastrophic climate change and securing the well-being of all people. In the current international political-economic regime, no country does so.Here, we assess which socio-economic conditions might enable societies to satisfy human needs at sustainable levels of energy use, and thus reconcile human well-being with ambitious climate mitigation. Applying a novel analytical framework and a novel regression-based moderation approach to data from 106 countries, we analyse how the relationship between energy use and six dimensions of human need satisfaction varies with a wide range of socio-economic factors relevant to the provisioning of goods and services (‘provisioning factors’).We find that higher achievements in provisioning factors such as income equality, public service quality, democracy and electricity access are associated with greater need satisfaction and lower energy dependence of need satisfaction. Conversely, higher levels of economic growth and extractivism are associated with lower need satisfaction and greater energy dependence of need satisfaction. Our analysis suggests that countries with beneficial configurations of key provisioning factors are much more likely to reach high levels of need satisfaction at low(er) levels of energy use. Based on our statistical models, countries with highly beneficial configurations of several key provisioning factors could likely achieve sufficient need satisfaction within levels of energy use found compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5 °C without negative emissions technologies. Achieving this would be very unlikely for countries with detrimental provisioning configurations.Improvements in relevant provisioning factors may thus be crucial for ending human deprivation in currently underproviding countries without exacerbating climate and ecological crises, and for tackling the ecological overshoot of currently needs-satisfying countries without compromising sufficient need satisfaction. However, as key pillars of the suggested changes in provisioning run contrary to the dominant political-economic regime, a broader political-economic transformation may be required to organise provisioning for the satisfaction of human needs within sustainable levels of energy use.Our findings have important implications for climate mitigation, poverty eradication, development discourses, and efforts towards Sustainable Development Goals and socio-ecological transformation.

In this article, we explore the concept of consumption corridors as it might apply to energy use, with specific attention to both wellbeing and power relations. We employ the distinction between energy provisioning and human-need satisfaction to explore different configurations of energy use, as well as their possible dynamics. Specifically, we draw on past research documenting the benefits of decoupling our thinking about energy services and needs satisfaction and use it as a basis to identify scenarios characterized by different degrees of access to energy services and levels of resource demand. We then translate this perspective to the logic of sustainable consumption corridors. We delineate how minimum and maximum consumption standards would relate to combinations of energy-service demand and needs-satisfier access. Finally, we explore how power dynamics, specifically exercises of discursive power, might move societal trajectories toward sustainable combinations of energy provisioning and needs satisfaction or away from them.

Should economic growth continue in a world threatened by the prospect of catastrophic climate change? The scientific and public debate has brought forth a broad spectrum of views and narratives on this question, ranging from neoclassical economics to degrowth. We argue that different positions can be attributed to underlying differences in views on (a) factors that determine human well‐being, (b) the feasibility and desirability of economic growth, (c) appropriate intervention points, and (d) preferences about governance and policy options. For each of these dimensions, we propose points of agreement on which a consensus between conflicting positions might be achieved. From this basis, we distill a sustainability transition perspective that could act as a basis for a renewed debate on how to align human well‐being with environmental sustainability. This article is categorized under: Climate Economics>Economics and Climate Change

Research on climate change mitigation tends to focus on supply-side technology solutions. A better understanding of demand-side solutions is missing. We propose a transdisciplinary approach to identify demand-side climate solutions, investigate their mitigation potential, detail policy measures and assess their implications for well-being.

Cities are key for achieving the 1.5 °C warming limit of the Paris Agreement. However, synthesizing policy insights from the urban literature is a challenge, due to its rapid growth, breadth of topics and relative lack of assessments so far. Here we introduce methods from computational linguistics to build a systematic overview of research on transport, buildings, waste management and urban form. We find that the epistemic core of the mitigation-focused urban literature is currently centered on urban form and emissions accounting, while extensive research into demand-side options remain overlooked, including congestion and parking polices, active travel, and waste management. In the IPCC Special Report on 1.5 °C, and for meeting the target itself, all such city-scale opportunities need to be examined.

There has been much debate about the assessment process of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Yet two of the most fundamental challenges that directly threaten the ability of the IPCC to fulfill its mandate have been largely neglected so far. Firstly, the magnitude and rapid expansion of the climate change literature makes it increasingly impossible for the IPCC to conduct comprehensive and transparent assessments without major innovations in assessment practices and tools. Secondly, the structure, organization and scientific practices across the social sciences and humanities prohibit systematic learning on climate change solutions and increasingly limit the policy-relevance of IPCC assessments. We highlight the need for responses along three avenues to prepare the IPCC for continued success in the future: 1) IPCC assessments must make better use of big-data methods and available computational power to assess the growing body of literature and ensure comprehensiveness; 2) systematic review practices need to be enshrined into IPCC procedures to ensure adequate focus and transparency in its assessments; 3) a synthetic research culture needs to be established in the social sciences and humanities in order to foster knowledge accumulation and learning on climate solutions in the future. As policymakers become more interested in understanding solutions, the future prospects of global environmental assessment enterprises will depend heavily on a successful transformation within the social sciences and humanities towards systematic knowledge generation. This article is part of a special issue on solution-oriented Global Environmental Assessments.

Climate policy advice is being undermined by value-laden choices over risky mitigation strategies, warn Dominic Lenzi and colleagues. Climate policy advice is being undermined by value-laden choices over risky mitigation strategies, warn Dominic Lenzi and colleagues.

Global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can be traced to five economic sectors: energy, industry, buildings, transport and AFOLU (agriculture, forestry and other land uses). In this topical review, we synthesise the literature to explain recent trends in global and regional emissions in each of these sectors. To contextualise our review, we present estimates of GHG emissions trends by sector from 1990 to 2018, describing the major sources of emissions growth, stability and decline across ten global regions. Overall, the literature and data emphasise that progress towards reducing GHG emissions has been limited. The prominent global pattern is a continuation of underlying drivers with few signs of emerging limits to demand, nor of a deep shift towards the delivery of low and zero carbon services across sectors. We observe a moderate decarbonisation of energy systems in Europe and North America, driven by fuel switching and the increasing penetration of renewables. By contrast, in rapidly industrialising regions, fossil-based energy systems have continuously expanded, only very recently slowing down in their growth. Strong demand for materials, floor area, energy services and travel have driven emissions growth in the industry, buildings and transport sectors, particularly in Eastern Asia, Southern Asia and South-East Asia. An expansion of agriculture into carbon-dense tropical forest areas has driven recent increases in AFOLU emissions in Latin America, South-East Asia and Africa. Identifying, understanding, and tackling the most persistent and climate-damaging trends across sectors is a fundamental concern for research and policy as humanity treads deeper into the Anthropocene.

This paper explores the underlying development outcomes and cumulative emissions trajectories of 20 middle-income countries from Eastern Europe, Latin America, North Africa and South Asia. First, well-being outcomes are assessed, defined in terms of access to education, democratic and legal rights, and the infrastructures that support physical health. Second, emissions trajectories are estimated to 2050, taking into account current trends in energy consumption and carbon intensity, a likely start-date for stringent climate policy arising from the Paris Agreement (2020), and maximum feasible rates of mitigation. Comparing these estimates to a per capita allocation from the global carbon budget associated with 2 °C, ten countries have low-carbon development trends that will not exceed their allocation. Of these, Costa Rica and Uruguay are achieving very high well-being outcomes, while many more are delivering good outcomes in at least two domains of human need. However, most are seriously deficient in terms of social well-being (education, democratic and legal rights). These results call into question the socio-economic convergence of developing countries with industrialised countries; but they also reaffirm the low-emissions cost of extending good infrastructure access and physical health outcomes to all, demonstrated by the existence of multiple countries that continue to avoid carbon-intensive development.

A growing number of researchers and stakeholders have started to address climate change from the bottom up: by devising scientific models, climate plans, low-carbon strategies and development policies with climate co-benefits. Little is known about the comparative characteristics of these interventions, including their relative efficacy, potentials and emissions reductions. A more systematic understanding is required to delineate the urban mitigation space and inform decision-making. Here, we utilize bibliometric methods and machine learning to meta-analyze 5635 urban case studies of climate change mitigation. We identify 867 studies that explicitly consider technological or policy instruments, and categorize these studies according to policy type, sector, abatement potential, and socio-technological composition to obtain a first heuristic of what is their pattern. Overall, we find 41 different urban solutions with an average GHG abatement potential ranging from 5.2% to 105%, most of them clustering in the building and transport sectors. More than three-fourth of the solutions are on demand side. Less than 10% of all studies were ex-post policy evaluations. Our results demonstrate that technology-oriented interventions in urban waste, transport and energy sectors have the highest marginal abatement potential, while system-wide interventions, e.g. urban form related measures have lower marginal abatement potential but wider scope. We also demonstrate that integrating measures across urban sectors realizes synergies in GHG emission reductions. Our results reveal a rich evidence of techno-policy choices that together enlarge the urban solutions space and augment actions currently considered in global assessments of climate mitigation.

The Paris Agreement (PA) sets out to strengthen the global response to climate change, setting targets for mitigation, adaptation, and finance, and establishing mechanisms through which to achieve these targets. The effectiveness of the PA’s mechanisms in achieving its targets, however, has been questioned. This review systematically maps the peer-reviewed literature on the PA, categorizing the available evidence on whether or not the ‘Paris Regime’ can be effective. We split our analysis into three methodologically distinct sections: first we categorize the literature according to the mechanisms being studied. We find a diverse body of literature, albeit with a clear focus on mitigation, and identify adaptation and capacity building to be clear gaps. Second, we carry out a content analysis, identifying common drivers of, barriers to, and recommendations for effectiveness. Here we find mixed evidence, with potential drivers often qualified by more concrete barriers. Thirdly, we use scientometrics to identify six research clusters. These cover loss and damage, finance, legal issues, international politics, experimental evidence, and studies on tracking progress on the PA’s targets. We conclude with a narrative discussion of our findings, presenting three central themes. First, transparency is widely considered a precondition for the PA to be institutionally effective. However, a lack of clear reporting standards and comparable information renders the PA’s transparency provisions ineffective. Second, environmental effectiveness relies on national ambition, of which there is currently too little. It remains unclear to which extent the Paris Regime structure itself can induce significant ratcheting-up of ambition. Finally, the PA facilitates the diffusion of norms, enables learning and the sharing of best practices. This production of shared norms provides the most promising avenue for overcoming the current lack of ambition. One of the primary successes of the PA is in providing a platform for the exchange of experiences and ideas.

In the wake of the Paris Agreement, countries have yet to embark on deep decarbonisation pathways. This article explores the reasons for this limited response, taking a comparative political economy lens to identify national constraints that actively hinder climate policy progress. We discuss different metrics of climate policy progress, including emissions trends, climate legislation adoption, policy adoption, policy stringency, and policy outcomes. We then review literatures that explain varying national outcomes along these dimensions. Identified constraints include (but are not limited to) exposure to fossil fuel extraction activities, supply-side coal dependency, a lack of democratic norms, exposure to corruption, a lack of public climate awareness, and low levels of social trust. Correlation and principal component analysis of these variables demonstrates strong co-dependencies, including a North-South divide in institutional quality, trust and climate awareness that limits full participation in climate legislation and the removal of fossil subsidies. Recent trends indicate stability in corruption across the whole sample, and the continued durability of autocratic and extractivist states. We identify common constraints for five distinct country groups using cluster analysis: ‘oil & gas states’, ‘fragile states’, ‘coal-dependent development’, ‘fractured democracies’ and ‘wealthy OECD’. We highlight the need to scrutinise architectures of constraint – combinations of political economic factors that are mutually reinforcing and highly resistant to intervention.

Non-technical summary Manhattan, Berlin and New Delhi all need to take action to adapt to climate change and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While case studies on these cities provide valuable insights, comparability and scalability remain sidelined. It is therefore timely to review the state-of-the-art in data infrastructures, including earth observations, social media data, and how they could be better integrated to advance climate change science in cities and urban areas. We present three routes for expanding knowledge on global urban areas: mainstreaming data collections, amplifying the use of big data and taking further advantage of computational methods to analyse qualitative data to gain new insights. These data-based approaches have the potential to upscale urban climate solutions and effect change at the global scale. Technical summary Cities have an increasingly integral role in addressing climate change. To gain a common understanding of solutions, we require adequate and representative data of urban areas, including data on related greenhouse gas emissions, climate threats and of socio-economic contexts. Here, we review the current state of urban data science in the context of climate change, investigating the contribution of urban metabolism studies, remote sensing, big data approaches, urban economics, urban climate and weather studies. We outline three routes for upscaling urban data science for global climate solutions: 1) Mainstreaming and harmonizing data collection in cities worldwide; 2) Exploiting big data and machine learning to scale solutions while maintaining privacy; 3) Applying computational techniques and data science methods to analyse published qualitative information for the systematization and understanding of first-order climate effects and solutions. Collaborative efforts towards a joint data platform and integrated urban services would provide the quantitative foundations of the emerging global urban sustainability science.

The relationship between human health and well-being, energy use and carbon emissions is a foremost concern in sustainable development. If past advances in well-being have been accomplished only through increases in energy use, there may be significant trade-offs between achieving universal human development and mitigating climate change. We test the explanatory power of economic, dietary and modern energy factors in accounting for past improvements in life expectancy, using a simple novel method, functional dynamic decomposition. We elucidate the paradox that a strong correlation between emissions and human development at one point in time does not imply that their dynamics are coupled in the long term. Increases in primary energy and carbon emissions can account for only a quarter of improvements in life expectancy, but are closely tied to growth in income. Facing this carbon-development paradox requires prioritizing human well-being over economic growth.

Humanity faces the challenge of how to achieve a high quality of life for over 7 billion people without destabilizing critical planetary processes. Using indicators designed to measure a ‘safe and just’ development space, we quantify the resource use associated with meeting basic human needs, and compare this to downscaled planetary boundaries for over 150 nations. We find that no country meets basic needs for its citizens at a globally sustainable level of resource use. Physical needs such as nutrition, sanitation, access to electricity and the elimination of extreme poverty could likely be met for all people without transgressing planetary boundaries. However, the universal achievement of more qualitative goals (for example, high life satisfaction) would require a level of resource use that is 2–6 times the sustainable level, based on current relationships. Strategies to improve physical and social provisioning systems, with a focus on sufficiency and equity, have the potential to move nations towards sustainability, but the challenge remains substantial.

Generally speaking, the judicial proceedings spawned by the corruption of the 1919 World Series are not accurately related or well understood in the Black Sox canon. In a forthcoming book to be published by McFarland, the writer will attempt to remedy this situation by offering a comprehensive, non-partisan factual account of Black Sox- related grand jury proceedings, the Black Sox criminal trial, and ensuing civil litigation involving scandal principals. Legal analysis will also be provided on certain aspects of these actions. This article is drawn from that work and recounts events attending late-September 1920 grand jury hearings, focusing on a four-day period when the simmering Black Sox scandal finally exploded. An introductory summary of preceding scandal developments is designed to place the article's narrative in perspective.Preceding Scandal DevelopmentsSuspicions about the bona fides of Chisox play were raised in post-1919 World Series columns by syndicated sportswriter Hugh F. Fullerton and a few other scribes.1 But for the most part, sportswriter concerns did not generate great public interest and the matter had become mostly forgotten by the time that the 1920 season commenced. Rather, the exposure of the Black Sox scandal was largely a byproduct of investigation of an altogether different Chicago baseball contretemps: the alleged fixing of a meaningless August 31, 1920 game between the Cubs and the Philadelphia Phillies. Shortly after the existence of an internal investigation of the contest was revealed by Cubs President William L. Veeck, Sr., the judiciary stepped in. On September 7, 1920, the suspect game was brought to the attention of a Cook County grand jury by Illinois Circuit Court Judge Charles A. McDonald, newly appointed chief justice of the local criminal courts and an avid Chicago baseball fan.2 In time, the scope of the grand jury's probe expanded into other matters: game-related skullduggery attributed to Hal Chase, the operation of baseball betting pools in the greater Chicago area, and the rumored fixing of the 1919 World Series.Early proceedings were slow-moving and unfocused but gathered steam following testimony about the alleged Series fix from White Sox owner Charles Comiskey, Chicago Tribune sportswriter James Crusinberry, and New York Giants pitcher and Chase teammate Rube Benton, all of which was immediately leaked to the press. Probe developments were also supplied by lead grand jury prosecutor Hartley Replogle and grand jury foreman Henry H. Brigham, both of whom spoke openly about matters revealed during the proceedings. All of this was highly irregular, if not unlawful. By statute and case law, grand jury proceedings are strictly confidential and proceeding principals, like the prosecutor and panel members, take an oath to keep grand jury testimony and other proof secret.3 Stranger still, this disregard of grand jury protocol appeared countenanced by Judge McDonald. According to one report, "officials of Chief Justice Charles McDonald's court, desirous of giving the national game the benefit of publicity in its purging, lifted the curtain on the grand jury proceeding." 4 By September 25, the transparency of grand jury proceedings permitted press publication of the names of eight White Sox players believed targeted for indictment- Eddie Cicotte, Chick Gandil, Lefty Williams, Swede Risberg, Happy Felsch, Joe Jackson, Fred McMullin, and Buck Weaver-and the nature of the charge likely to be preferred against them: conspiracy to defraud.5 But details of the series fix as well as the roles of the accused players in it remained unsettled. That would change two days later, for in Philadelphia, a figure from baseball's margins was giving the interview that would blow open the corruption of the 1919 World Series.Publication of the Billy Maharg StoryOn September 27, 1920, sportswriter James Isaminger provided readers of the Philadelphia North American with the first insider's account of the abasement of the 1919 Series. …

Quietly nestled among the renowned sports names charged in the Black Sox scandal is that of an obscure figure: one Rachael Brown.1 Based on surviving evidence, it appears that Brown was indicted by the Cook County grand jury almost entirely on the word of Lefty Williams, who identified the negotiators of the fix as "two fellows introduced as Brown and Sullivan ... the gamblers from New York."2 Defendant Brown, however, was never taken into custody on the indictment. Nor did he ever make an appearance, either personally or via counsel, in a Chicago courtroom. From the time of the scandal until today, Rachael Brown has remained largely a cipher, a scandal actor whose identity has never been conclusively established. In the order in which they appeared on the public stage, here are snapshots of the most likely candidates for the role of Black Sox defendant Rachael Brown.1. Abram Braunstein, Commonly Known as Rachel BrownA contemporary of Arnold Rothstein, Abram "Rachel" Braunstein was a smalltime Manhattan gambler who first came to public attention via his connection to Louis "Bridgie" Webber, a key prosecution witness in the trial of the notorious Rosenthal murder case. Those proceedings culminated in conviction with death sentences for five men, including corrupt NYPD Vice Squad Lieutenant Charles Becker. While in a jail cell awaiting his fate, Becker claimed that Rosenthal's killers had had an earlier target, namely "'Rachel' Braunstein, Webber's partner in a 42nd Street gambling house and known in the gambling fraternity as Rachel Brown."3 According to Becker, a prospective new trial witness named Jack Sullivan would testify that Rosenthal's slayers had plotted to kill Rachel Braunstein and take his half of the gambling partnership. Sullivan "learned of it ... told Braunstein and escorted him to a steamship" on which Braunstein escaped to Spain, as reported in the Boston Globe, The New York Times, the New Brunswick (N.J.) Times, and the Washington Post, Oct. 29, 1912. In due course, this allegation precipitated the issuance of a subpoena for "Rachel Brown of 123 Manhattan Avenue," served while Brown was appearing in magistrate's court to answer a disorderly conduct charge that stemmed from a fight. Indignant, Brown disclaimed knowledge of the reason why the subpoena had been issued and "asserted that since the Becker trial he had been hounded and threatened on many occasions," as per The New York Times, Mar. 6, 1914.After that, Brown apparently tried to stay out of the public eye. But four years later, "Rachie Brown, the old partner of Bridgie Webber" was back in the news after being netted in a police raid of the newly opened Picadilly Club in Manhattan. The arrestee identified himself as fish dealer Aaron Braun but vice detectives immediately recognized him as "the genuine 'Rachie Brown'" (Boston Globe, Dec. 9, 1918). The following summer, Brown was in custody again, arrested during a raid on a disreputable gambling resort in Saratoga, as reported in the Saratogian, Jul. 29, 1919. After much foot-dragging by local officials cozy with gaming interests, a specially convened Saratoga County grand jury returned gambling-related indictments against 48 targets, including Abram (Rachie) Brown, as per the Saratoga Sun, Aug. 20, 1920.4None of the above received mention when newspapers nationwide ran stories about the forthcoming indictment of Joseph "Sport" Sullivan and Brown, "an otherwise unidentified gambler from New York City," in connection with the Cook County probe of the 1919 World Series (see, e.g., Chicago Tribune, Sept. 30, 1920). Within days, however, it was reported that "Rachie Brown, a gambler said to have been deeply involved in the Series plot, has left New York City and gone to Europe. His departure is regarded by underworld gossips as proof that he was mixed up in the baseball plot. He [Brown] had been known as a 'steerer' for Rothstein's gambling operations" (see unidentified news item reprinted in The Sporting News, Oct. …

The most recent IPCC assessment has shown an important role for negative emissions technologies (NETs) in limiting global warming to 2 °C cost-effectively. However, a bottom-up, systematic, reproducible, and transparent literature assessment of the different options to remove CO2 from the atmosphere is currently missing. In part 1 of this three-part review on NETs, we assemble a comprehensive set of the relevant literature so far published, focusing on seven technologies: bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), afforestation and reforestation, direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS), enhanced weathering, ocean fertilisation, biochar, and soil carbon sequestration. In this part, part 2 of the review, we present estimates of costs, potentials, and side-effects for these technologies, and qualify them with the authors' assessment. Part 3 reviews the innovation and scaling challenges that must be addressed to realise NETs deployment as a viable climate mitigation strategy. Based on a systematic review of the literature, our best estimates for sustainable global NET potentials in 2050 are 0.5–3.6 GtCO2 yr−1 for afforestation and reforestation, 0.5–5 GtCO2 yr−1 for BECCS, 0.5–2 GtCO2 yr−1 for biochar, 2–4 GtCO2 yr−1 for enhanced weathering, 0.5–5 GtCO2 yr−1 for DACCS, and up to 5 GtCO2 yr−1 for soil carbon sequestration. Costs vary widely across the technologies, as do their permanency and cumulative potentials beyond 2050. It is unlikely that a single NET will be able to sustainably meet the rates of carbon uptake described in integrated assessment pathways consistent with 1.5 °C of global warming., Environmental Research Letters, 13 (6), ISSN:1748-9326, ISSN:1748-9318

They had been bitter antagonists, frequently clashing in the councils of National League team owners. They had even come to blows in the barroom of a posh New York hotel. But in October 1899, Andrew Freedman, the NL's wealthiest magnate, and John T. Brush, its most influential one, reconciled their differences and began working in concert. The resulting collaboration would be a fearsome one, with far-reaching (if mostly unintended) consequences for the turn-of-the-century baseball world.The two were an unlikely pair. Brush, the oldest of the league's team owners, was a dour man whose gaunt, afflicted frame concealed a resilient nature and an iron will. Generally tight-lipped in public, Brush exercised his considerable power over fellow magnates via backroom cajolery and relentless scheming. Although his maneuvers were invariably self-interested, Brush also possessed a genuine love of baseball. He actively participated in the administration of league affairs and served on virtually all important NL committees, privately reveling in the game's management controversies, many of which he stirred up himself. For the last 25 years of Brush's life, baseball was the centerpiece of his existence.Freedman was an entirely different case. A capable but difficult man, Freedman treated baseball-team ownership as a pastime, a diversion from the weighty business and political concerns that dominated his life. When he deigned to attend, Freedman was a faction unto himself at NL executive gatherings, by turns sullen or combative when his proposals encountered resistance. The stewardship of his team was likewise mercurial, with Freedman alternating the issuance of ultimatums, fits of pique, and the display of an incendiary temper with lengthy periods of indifference to his baseball interests. Disliked in almost equal measure by players, fellow magnates, the sporting press, and fans alike, Freedman was easily the most hated figure in the game.In due course, this article will assay the most noteworthy of the Freedman-Brush joint ventures: (1) the campaign to contract the 12-team NL into an eight-club circuit; (2) their infamous baseball trust plan; and (3) the plot to gut the Baltimore franchise of the new American League (AL) and thereby cripple that fledgling rival to the NL. The story begins, however, with a recounting of the biographical and sporting circumstances that drew our protagonists together.John T. Brush: Self-Made Man and Baseball MagnateThe inner character that sustained the magnate was forged in the rural poverty of upstate New York. Born in Clintonville on June 15, 1845, John Tomlinson Brush was named for the father who died some three months before his birth.1 The death of mother Sarah Farrar Brush four years thereafter made orphans of young John and his three siblings. Taken in by their paternal grandparents, the children were raised on a farm in remote Hopkinton where cramped living quarters forced John and older brother George to sleep in an unheated barn. Escaping farm drudgery as a teenager, Brush grew up quickly. By age 20, he had attended business college in Poughkeepsie, gotten his first taste of the retail clothing trade in Boston, and served as an artilleryman in a New York regiment of the Union Army. Mustered out of uniform at the Civil War's end, Brush proceeded to Troy where, in time, he was befriended by George Pixley, a principal in the newly formed retail clothing business of Owen, Pixley & Company. Within a few years, Brush advanced from clothing salesman to store manager to firm partner in Owen, Pixley.2 Along the way, Brush met and married Agnes Ewart. But the union was not a happy one and the couple divorced shortly after the birth of daughter Eleanor in 1871.In 1874, Brush was dispatched to Indianapolis as the firm branched westward. Benefiting from Brush's retailing acumen and his improbable flair for promotion, the new outpost prospered, rapidly expanding operations from a modest storefront to an elegant four-storey building that commanded a city block. …

The effect that morning in May 1911 was part comic, part surreal. Seated somewhat anxiously in a packed courtroom were such baseball notables as National League Secretary John Heydler and team owners Charles Comiskey, Frank Farrell, and Barney Dreyfuss. On all sides was a baseball-savvy gallery eager to see blood spilt at the trial of the libel suit that retired star John Montgomery Ward had instituted against American League president Ban Johnson. The proceedings had just gotten underway, however, when the mounting tension was shattered by the presiding judge. A look of bewilderment on his face, the judge inquired, "What are the White Sox?"1Happily for the litigants and for posterity, that judge, the brilliant federal jurist Learned Hand, proved a quick study and the case was well tried. Its outcome, a modest $1,000 judgment in Ward's favor, was a reasonable one and afforded both parties the chance to claim vindication. The verdict also cleared the air between two of baseball's most prominent figures and, in time, provided the basis for a reconciliation of sorts between them.This article takes a look back at the now almost hundred-year-old case from two perspectives. One is courtroom specific and describes the roles played in the proceedings by Ward, Johnson, Comiskey, John T. Brush, Clark Griffith, and sportswriter/ humorist Ring Lardner, among others. The other attempts to place the litigation in the broader context of turn-of-the-century baseball strife. The central event here is, of course, the fierce conflict between the established National League (NL) and its new competitor, the fledgling American League (AL). Although ostensibly settled in January 1903, interleague hostilities, both public and private, flared up for years thereafter. In a very real sense, the conflict did not finally come to rest until two of its foremost combatants had had it out before Judge Hand in 1911-the Ward v. Johnson libel case thus becoming the last battle in the Great Baseball War.The Brush ConnectionAlthough both had long been important figures in baseball, John Montgomery Ward and Ban Johnson were not personally well acquainted. At trial, Johnson would testify that he had only met Ward a few times and that he harbored no animus toward him.2 What the two did have in common were paramount roles in the formation of professional baseball leagues: Ward, the Players League of 1890; Johnson, the American League in 1901. Another thing that Ward and Johnson had in common-and which eventually contributed to the 1911 lawsuit-was longstanding, often adversarial, relations with another formidable member of the baseball scene: the influential (if unloved) team magnate John T. Brush. While largely forgotten today, Brush was the dominant NL owner for more than twenty years. A self-made man whose wealth derived from the operation of a large department store, Brush was the principal owner of NL franchises in Indianapolis (1887-1889), Cincinnati (1891-1902), and New York (1902-1912). Along the way, Brush had made his share of enemies. Perhaps the foremost of these was Ban Johnson.The rancor between the two men can be traced to Brush's tenure as Cincinnati owner. There he was frequently the target of criticism from Johnson, then the young sports editor of the Cincinnati Commercial-Gazette. The situation only worsened in 1894 when Johnson assumed the presidency of a newly reconstituted Western League (WL). Among the owners whom Johnson had to deal with was none other than John T. Brush, owner of the league's premier Indianapolis team. Taking ruthless advantage of his simultaneous ownership of a major league team, Brush wreaked havoc in the WL by revolving players between his two nines. The competitive imbalance in the WL fostered by Brush's methods continued until the conclusion of the 1897 season when Johnson and the other team owners finally compelled Brush to relinquish the Indianapolis franchise.3John Montgomery Ward's relationship with Brush also began on an adversarial note. …