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The article presents information about the book "The Dragon's Head: Shanghai, China's Emerging Megacity." The book contains twenty-three papers, by members of the departments of Geography at the University of Victoria and the East China Normal University, that analyze the city of Shanghai from a geographical perspective. The papers discuss the geomorphology of Shanghai; the climate; the formation and use of Shanghai's soils; rainstorms in Shanghai; urban climate and atmospheric environmental quality; the vegetation of Shanghai; hydrology and water resources; Shanghai's water environment; Shanghai's agricultural production; Shanghai's land use; labor resources and related supply and demand; urban traffic; the twenty-first century construction of a port complex in the Changjiang Delta economic area.

Emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases can be reduced significantly using existing technologies, but stabilizing concentrations will require a technological revolution--a “revolution” because it will require fundamental change, achieved within a relatively short period of time. Inspiration for a climate-technology revolution is often drawn from the Apollo space program or the Manhattan Project, but averting dangerous climate change cannot be “solved” by a single new technology, deployed by a single government. The technological changes needed to address climate change fundamentally will have to be pervasive; they will have to involve markets; and they will have to be global in scope. My focus in this paper is not on the moderate emission reductions that can be achieved using existing technologies, but on the breakthrough technologies that are needed to reduce emissions dramatically. The challenges are formidable. Indeed, it is possible that the revolution needed to dramatically reduce emissions of greenhouse gases will fail. Should the climate change abruptly, the incentive to “engineer” the climate will be strong. There will be a climate-technology revolution, but its nature will depend on the institutions we develop to address the challenge we face. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the cost of reducing carbon emissions. Projecting the costs of reducing carbon emissions is extremely important, and exceedingly difficult. Such projections are an integral component of cost-benefit analyses of alternative policies. Moreover, the nature of the climate change problem dictates that costs be incurred long before benefits can be realized or accurately measured. Consequently, the political spotlight predictably focuses on the cost estimates whenever specific policy options are contemplated. Projecting the costs of reducing carbon emissions is difficult because many assumptions must be made about how the world will evolve over a very long period of time with and without a control program. Typically, some of these assumptions, like population growth, are taken from outside sources. Other factors, like the response of energy demand to changes in economic output or energy prices, are the result of modeling the behavior of economic actors in response to exogenous stimuli.

Past climatic changes were caused by a slowdown of the thermohaline circulation. We use results from experiments with three climate models to show that the expected cooling due to a slowdown of the thermohaline circulation is less in magnitude than the expected warming due to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. The integrated assessment model FUND and a meta-analysis of climate impacts are used to evaluate the change in human welfare. We find modest but by and large positive effects on human welfare since a slowdown of the thermohaline circulation implies decelerated warming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the book "Joint Implementation of Climate Change Commitments: Opportunities and Apprehensions," edited by Prodipto Ghosh and Jyotsna Puri. The book provides a wide spectrum of views from policy analysts on the provision of joint implementation of abatement commitments under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and focuses on minimum requirements for making the mechanism of implementation under the Climate Convention credible and operational.

A correction is presented to the article "The Economic Effects of Climate" by Richard S. J. Tol which was published in the Spring 2009 issue.

The article discusses the economic impacts of climate change. The authors provide cross-sectional evidence by examining the temperature-income relationship using cross-country data as well as subnational data at the city level for 12 countries in the Americas. It was found that there is a negative relationship between income and temperature within countries and also within states within countries of a one degree Celsius rise in temperature associated with over one percent decline in municipal per capita income. A theoretical framework for reconciling these temperature effects is provided.

The article focuses on the book "The Economics and Ecology of Biodiversity Decline: The Forces Driving Global Change," by Timothy M. Swanson. The book presents ecological and economic perspectives on climate change and biodiversity decline, examines the institutional interface between humans and biosphere and explains global change as the consequence of human noncooperation and conflict.

The article discusses the global economic implications of mitigating strategies for carbon dioxide problems. The issue is that human activities, such as burning fossil fuels and clearing forests, are adding vast quantities of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, about half of which remains for centuries or millennia. The carbon dioxide is transparent to incoming solar energy, but holds in energy that would be radiated into space. The increase in temperature and weather changes would likely cause vast changes in ecology. Eventually this temperature increase would melt the polar ice caps, raising the ocean level by 100 meters. In short, the increase in carbon dioxide concentration could have important planetary effects on weather, climate, plants and animals and on human settlement patterns and economic activity. The set of issues is fascinating to atmospheric physicists, oceanographers, glaciologists, biologists and agronomists because of the difficulty in understanding the direct physical changes. The problem should be even more fascinating to economists because of the secondary changes as people react to the opportunity set. Modeling energy demand requires modeling population change and the rate of economic activity. Economists have gone little beyond models that are essentially Malthusian or Panglossian.

This article discusses the different aspects of the theory of risk-bearing associated with global climate change. The first issue concerns the difficulty in assessing risks. Most climate-related risks are difficult to quantify. Indeed, in a classical statistical sense the probabilities describing them are unknowable. The second issue is endogenity of risks. The third issue is correlation of risks. Climate changes will affect large numbers of people in the same way. A rise in sea level, for example, will affect low-level coastal communities in most countries. Insurance in the traditional sense of risk-pooling works best for large numbers of small statistically independent risks.

This article presents information on the book "Economics and Policy Issues in Climate Change," edited by William D. Nordhaus. The book focuses on eight papers presented at a workshop held in Colorado, in August 1996, which provide an independent review of aspects of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report, addressing major analytical issues and specific climate-change policy issues. Some of the topics discussed in these papers are, policy analysis for decision making about climate change, equity and discounting in climate change decisions, the applicability of cost-benefit analysis to climate change and greenhouse policy architectures and institutions.

This article presents information on the book "Manmade Climate Change: Economic Aspects and Policy Options: Proceedings of an International Conference Held at Mannheim, Germany, March 6-7, 1997," edited by Olav Hohmeyer and Klaus Rennings. The book presents fifteen papers which focus on the economic aspects of climate change and the options for policy. Some of the topics discussed in the papers are, science and impacts of climate change, decision-making frameworks for addressing climate change, linking weak and strong sustainability indicators in assessing climate change, the applicability of cost-benefit analysis to global warming and an applied general equilibrium analysis of the double dividend of climate protection and the role of international policy coordination in the European Union.

The article presents information on the book "Technologies for Rainfed Agriculture in Mediterranean Climates; A Review of World Bank Experiences," by Peter A. Oram, and Cornelis De Haan. The book assesses the effectiveness of crop and livestock technologies in World Bank projects for agricultural areas with a Mediterranean climate, including zones in West Asia, North Africa, Latin America and northern China. It reviews the main environmental parameters that determine land use and tile rainfed agricultural potential in the regions selected. It describes farming systems in the marginal rainfed environments and in the semi-arid ecological zones and examines technical options for improved crop management based on research and experiences in World Bank projects. Considers the problem of managing soil and water resources in the low-rainfall areas. The book discusses the prospects for technological change in rainfed crop production, focusing on the genetic improvement of key food crops, crop protection, fertilizer use, and mechanization.

The article presents information on the book "The UNUTERI Protocol on Climate Change: A Blueprint for Kyoto." The book presents recommendations to the world community in its attempt to negotiate a protocol or a legally binding instrument on greenhouse gases at the Third Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP-3) under the Convention on Climate Change. Builds a case for urgent action on the problem of climate change. It also reviews the climate change negotiations to the present.

Scientists describe the scale of the risks from unmanaged climate change as potentially immense. However, the scientific models, because they omit key factors that are hard to capture precisely, appear to substantially underestimate these risks. Many economic models add further gross underassessment of risk because the assumptions built into the economic modeling on growth, damages and risks, come close to assuming directly that the impacts and costs will be modest and close to excluding the possibility of catastrophic outcomes. A new generation of models is needed in all three of climate science, impact and economics with a still stronger focus on lives and livelihoods, including the risks of large-scale migration and conflicts. (JEL C51, Q54, Q58) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the book "Measuring the Impact of Climate Change on Indian Agriculture," by Ariel Dinar and others. The book consists of five papers that examine farm performance across climates in India, test whether farmers currently adjust to their local climates and estimate the impact of potential global climate change on Indian agriculture in light of this evidence. Dinar and scholar Heather Beach review the literature on measuring the impact of and the adaptation to, climate change in agriculture and other sectors.

The article discusses the book "World Agriculture and Climate Change: Economic Adaptations," by Roy Darwin. The book evaluates the effects of future global climate change on the U.S. and world agriculture, using a model that links climatic conditions to l

This article provides a sketch of some of the uncertainties and research questions associated with the issue of global climate change. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere warm the Earth by reducing the radiation of heat into space, thus increasing the net inflow of radiative energy (radiative forcing). The most important of these gases by far is water vapor, which is not appreciably affected directly by human activity. The relations between changes in the atmosphere and changes in the global climate are extraordinarily complex, in large part because of a variety of important and poorly understood feedback processes--particularly those involving clouds and oceans. Despite a great deal of international debate and negotiation in recent years and the adoption of taxes aimed at carbon dioxide emissions in some European countries, the best characterization of the mean global policy toward climate change is: "Wait and see what we learn." Evaluation of this and alternative policies must confront serious economic problems and uncertainties.

This article provides a non-technical introduction to the economics of climate change. What is the greenhouse effect? It is the process by which radiatively active gases like carbon dioxide selectively absorb radiation at different points of the spectrum and thereby warm the surface of the earth. The greenhouse gases are transparent to incoming solar radiation but absorb significant amounts of outgoing radiation. There is no debate about the importance of the greenhouse effect, without which the Earth's climate would resemble the moon's. In thinking about the impact of climate change, one must recognize that the variable discussed on in most analyses--globally averaged surface temperature-- has little salience for impacts. Rather, variables that accompany or are the result of temperature changes--precipitation, water levels, extremes of droughts or freezes, and thresholds like the freezing point or the level of dikes and levees--will drive the socioeconomic impacts.