Questioning complacency: climate change impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation in Norway

Most European assessments of climate change impacts have been carried out on sectors and ecosystems, providing a narrow understanding of what climate change really means for society. Furthermore, the main focus has been on technological adaptations, with less attention paid to the process of climate change adaptation. In this article, we present and analyze findings from recent studies on climate change impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation in Norway, with the aim of identifying the wider social impacts of climate change. Three main lessons can be drawn. First, the potential thresholds and indirect effects may be more important than the direct, sectoral effects. Second, highly sensitive sectors, regions, and communities combine with differential social vulnerability to create both winners and losers. Third, high national levels of adaptive capacity mask the barriers and constraints to adaptation, particularly among those who are most vulnerable to climate change. Based on these results, we question complacency in Norway and other European countries regarding climate change impacts and adaptation. We argue that greater attention needs to be placed on the social context of climate change impacts and on the processes shaping vulnerability and adaptation.     

Contents Volume 7

Volume Contents

Contents Volume 7     

The adequacy of GWPs as indicators of damage costsincurred by global warming

This article looks at the ability of Global Warming Potentials (GWPs) towork as indicators of equivalence for temperature development and damagecosts. We look at two abatement scenarios that are equivalent when using100-year GWPs: one scenario reduces short-lived gases, mainly methane(CH₄); the other scenario reduces carbon dioxide (CO₂).Despite their equivalence in terms of CO₂ equivalents, the scenariosdo not result in equal rates or levels of temperature change. The disparitiescontinue as we move further down the chain of causality toward damagecosts, measured either in terms of rate of climate change or level of climatechange. Compared to the CH₄ mitigation scenario, the CO₂mitigation scenario gives present value costs 1.3 and 1.5 times higher forlevel- and rate-dependent damage costs, respectively, assuming a discountrate of 3%. We also test the GWPs for other time horizons and theconclusions remain the same; using GWP as an index to reflect equivalentclimate effects and damage costs from emissions is questionable.