Tag: New publication

The main task of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is to provide comprehensive assessments of climate science, including climate policy options, holistically and objectively. We analyse the sources of all climate policy-related statements in the IPCC reports and Summaries for Policymakers since 1990 to investigate the influence of Integrated Assessment Models, a particular type of climate-economic model. We show that although both reports and SPM are broad and diverse, IAMs are strongly overrepresented in the evidence presented: IAMs are cited at least 10 times more often in the reports than their share of the scientific climate policy literature, and 20 times for often in the politically influential Summaries for Policymakers.

Wind power is an essential pillar of the current and future electricity system, but resistance is growing – and much of it based on false claims, such as wind power driving the whales crazy (Trump) or the Alternative für Deutschland wanting to tear down “wind mills of shame”. We took stock of the current state of the art of wind power, assessing current challenges and the knowledge and experience about solutions. We show that many claims are false, such as infrasound generation, others are true but have effective and often tested solutions, such as bird and bat protection measures. The present main challenges include too low electricity prices caused by abundant productions, and excessively long permission processes for new wind farms. The article can be read for free here, and is summarised as a research highlight here.