New tool directly links carbon emissions to amount of environmental and economic damage caused

AI Summary

Researchers have launched the Carbon Impacts Tracer, a tool that translates projected fossil-fuel emissions into estimated impacts such as heat exposure, food-production losses, and coral damage. The article applies the approach to the proposed Hunter Valley Operations coal mine in New South Wales, estimating its lifetime emissions at about 809 million tonnes of carbon dioxide if approved.

Carbon Impacts Tracer can be used to estimate climate impact from emissions across eight different factors, including lost food production The biggest coal project before authorities in New South Wales, the HVO mine, will emit the equivalent of about 809m tonnes of climate-warming carbon dioxide if it wins approval. That number, for most people, will carry little meaning, as might the calculation that adding that amount of greenhouse gas to the atmosphere will cause an extra 0.00036C of global heating. But what if the public was instead told that that amount of carbon dioxide would expose almost half a million people to unprecedented heat, or kill nearly 15 million coral colonies on the Great Barrier Reef every time it bleaches? All those statistics come from a new tool that translates the emissions from burning fossil fuels into estimated real-world climate effects taken from peer-reviewed climate studies. “Small numbers in global warming can mean catastrophic impacts,” says prof Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a climate scientist at the Australian National University who is part of a team launching the Carbon Impacts Tracer. Continue reading...