The right gular plate of an indeterminate coelacanth from the Westbury Formation (Upper Triassic, Rhaetian) of Blue Anchor Point, Somerset, southwest England is reported. This occurrence represents the first convincing evidence of coelacanths from the Triassic of the United Kingdom. The new specimen suggests a fish of approximately 0.61 m length. 相似文献
ABSTRACTIn this paper, we propose and discuss a methodology to map the spatial fingerprints of novels and authors based on all of the named urban roads (i.e., odonyms) extracted from novels. We present several ways to explore Parisian space and fictional landscapes by interactively and simultaneously browsing geographical space and literary text. Our project involves building a platform capable of retrieving, mapping and analyzing the occurrences of named urban roads in novels in which the action occurs wholly or partly in Paris. This platform will be used in several areas, such as cultural tourism, urban research, and literary analysis. The paper focuses on extracting named urban roads and mapping the results for a sample of 31 novels published between 1800 and 1914. Two approaches to the annotation of odonyms are compared. First, we describe a proof of concept using queries made via the TXM textual analysis platform. Then, we describe an automatic process using a natural language processing (NLP) method. Additionally, we mention how the geosemantic information annotated from the text (e.g., a structure combining verbs, spatial relations, named entities, adjectives and adverbs) can be used to automatically characterize the semantic content associated with named urban roads. 相似文献
The United Nations-led international climate change negotiations in Paris in December 2015 (COP21) trigger and enhance climate action across the globe. This paper presents a model-based assessment of the Paris Agreement. In particular, we assess the mitigation policies implied by the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) put forward in the run-up to COP21 by individual member states and a policy that is likely to limit global warming to 2 °C above pre-industrial levels. We combine a technology-rich bottom-up energy system model with an economy-wide top-down CGE model to analyse the impact on greenhouse gas emissions, energy demand and supply, and the wider economic effects, including the implications for trade flows and employment levels. In addition, we illustrate how the gap between the Paris mitigation pledges and a pathway that is likely to restrict global warming to 2 °C can be bridged. Results indicate that energy demand reduction and a decarbonisation of the power sector are important contributors to overall emission reductions up to 2050. Further, the analysis shows that the Paris pledges lead to relatively small losses in GDP, indicating that global action to cut emissions is consistent with robust economic growth. The results for employment indicate a potential transition of jobs from energy-intensive to low-carbon, service oriented sectors. 相似文献
The Green Climate Fund (GCF) is a significant and potentially innovative addition to UNFCCC frameworks for mobilizing increased finance for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Yet the GCF faces challenges of operationalization not only as a relatively new international fund but also as a result of US President Trump’s announcement that the United States would withdraw from the Paris Agreement. Consequently the GCF faces a major reduction in actual funding contributions and also governance challenges at the levels of its Board and the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP), to which it is ultimately accountable. This article analyzes these challenges with reference to the GCF’s internal regulations and its agreements with third parties to demonstrate how exploiting design features of the GCF could strengthen its resilience in the face of such challenges. These features include linkages with UNFCCC constituted bodies, particularly the Technology Mechanism, and enhanced engagement with non-Party stakeholders, especially through its Private Sector Facility. The article posits that deepening GCF interlinkages would increase both the coherence of climate finance governance and the GCF’s ability to contribute to ambitious climate action in uncertain times.
Key policy insights
The Trump Administration’s purported withdrawal from the Paris Agreement creates challenges for the GCF operating model in three key domains: capitalization, governance and guidance.
Two emerging innovations could prove crucial in GCF resilience to fulfil its role in Paris Agreement implementation: (1) interlinkages with other UNFCCC bodies, especially the Technology Mechanism; and (2) engagement with non-Party stakeholders, especially private sector actors such as large US investors and financiers.
There is also an emerging soft role for the GCF as interlocutor between policy-makers and non-Party actors to help bridge the communication divide that often plagues cross-sectoral interactions.
This role could develop through: (a) the GCF tripartite interface between the Private Sector Facility, Accredited Entities and National Designated Authorities; and (b) strengthened collaborations between the UNFCCC Technical and Financial Mechanisms.
The Paris Agreement establishes provisions for using international carbon market mechanisms to achieve climate mitigation contributions. Environmental integrity is a key principle for using such mechanisms under the Agreement. This paper systematically identifies and categorizes issues and options to achieve environmental integrity, including how it could be defined, what influences it, and what approaches could mitigate environmental integrity risks. Here, environmental integrity is assumed to be ensured if the engagement in international transfers of carbon market units leads to the same or lower aggregated global emissions. Four factors are identified that influence environmental integrity: the accounting for international transfers; the quality of units generated, i.e. whether the mechanism ensures that the issuance or transfer of units leads to emission reductions in the transferring country; the ambition and scope of the mitigation target of the transferring country; and incentives or disincentives for future mitigation action, such as possible disincentives for transferring countries to define future mitigation targets less ambitiously or more narrowly in order to sell more units. It is recommended that policy-makers combine several approaches to address the significant risks to environmental integrity.
Key policy insights
Robust accounting is a key prerequisite for ensuring environmental integrity. The diversity of nationally determined contributions is an important challenge, in particular for avoiding double counting and for ensuring that the accounting for international transfers is representative for the mitigation efforts by Parties over time.
Unit quality can, in theory, be ensured through appropriate design of carbon market mechanisms; in practice, existing mechanisms face considerable challenges in ensuring unit quality. Unit quality could be promoted through guidance under Paris Agreement Article 6, and reporting and review under Article 13.
The ambition and scope of mitigation targets is key for the incentive for transferring countries to ensure unit quality because countries with ambitious and economy-wide targets would have to compensate for any transfer of units that lack quality. Encouraging countries to adopt ambitious and economy-wide NDC targets would therefore facilitate achieving environmental integrity.
Restricting transfers in instances of high environmental integrity risk – through eligibility criteria or limits – could complement these approaches.
The Paris Agreement is the last hope to keep global temperature rise below 2°C. The consensus agrees to holding the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and to aim for 1.5°C. Each Party’s successive nationally determined contribution (NDC) will represent a progression beyond the party’s then current NDC, and reflect its highest possible ambition. Using Ireland as a test case, we show that increased mitigation ambition is required to meet the Paris Agreement goals in contrast to current EU policy goals of an 80–95% reduction by 2050. For the 1.5°C consistent carbon budgets, the technically feasible scenarios' abatement costs rise to greater than €8,100/tCO2 by 2050. The greatest economic impact is in the short term. Annual GDP growth rates in the period to 2020 reduce from 4% to 2.2% in the 1.5°C scenario. While aiming for net zero emissions beyond 2050, investment decisions in the next 5–10 years are critical to prevent carbon lock-in.
Key policy insights
Economic growth can be maintained in Ireland while rapidly decarbonizing the energy system.
The social cost of carbon needs to be included as standard in valuation of infrastructure investment planning, both by government finance departments and private investors.
Technological feasibility is not the limiting factor in achieving rapid deep decarbonization.
Immediate increased decarbonization ambition over the next 3–5 years is critical to achieve the Paris Agreement goals, acknowledging the current 80–95% reduction target is not consistent with temperature goals of ‘well below’ 2°C and pursuing 1.5°C.
Applying carbon budgets to the energy system results in non-linear CO2 emissions reductions over time, which contrast with current EU policy targets, and the implied optimal climate policy and mitigation investment strategy.
The role of market mechanisms was far from certain in the lead up to the 2015 Paris Climate Conference. The use of ‘constructive ambiguity’ led to Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, with Article 6.2 specifying a mechanism with limited international oversight, and Article 6.4 establishing a ‘Sustainable Development Mechanism’ (SDM) subject to detailed rules. Clear operationalization of these mechanisms remains a challenge, especially regarding the critical accounting issue that could not be resolved at the 2018 Katowice Climate Conference (COP24) – how to apply corresponding adjustments, especially regarding sectors not covered by targets under nationally-determined contributions (NDCs). By using fictitious examples, we explain two possible approaches to using Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes (ITMOs) under Article 6.2 for achieving NDCs: a ‘target-based’ one where the acquiring Party adds the ITMO amount to the target level of its NDC; and a ‘tally-based’ one where the acquiring Party removes the ITMO amount from the final tally of its NDC. We discuss how these approaches influence the way to make corresponding adjustments and to avoid ‘double counting’. The first one leads to ‘target/budget-based accounting’, the second one to ‘emission-based accounting’. For mitigation outside the scope of the host Party's NDC, we propose using a tally-based interpretation of ITMO use, as opposed to the target-based variety used in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, and stress the need for additionality testing. This interpretation allows for mandatory corresponding adjustments for all ITMO usage, while the host Party NDC level remains unchanged. A buffer registry is created for corresponding non-NDC adjustments of the selling party.
Key policy insights
Under the Paris Agreement, transfers of emissions units between two countries through the Article 6 mechanisms need a corresponding adjustment on both sides to prevent double counting.
Corresponding adjustments can be applied either to emissions targets under NDCs or measured emissions levels.
The transfer of emissions reduction credits generated outside an NDC should lead to a corresponding adjustment of a buffer registry of the selling country, but not its emissions level/NDC target. Such credits should only be generated if additionality of the reductions is shown.
Current country-level commitments under the Paris Agreement fall short of putting the world on a required trajectory to stay below a 2°C temperature increase compared to pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. Therefore, the timing of increased ambition is hugely important and as such this paper analyses the impact of both the short and long-term goals of the Paris Agreement on global emissions and economic growth. Using the hybrid TIAM-UCL-MSA model we consider the achievement of a 2°C target against a baseline of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) while also considering the timing of increased ambition of the NDCs by 2030 and the impacts of cost reductions of key low-carbon technologies. We find that the rate of emissions reduction ambition required between 2030 and 2050 is almost double when the NDCs are achieved but not ratcheted up until 2030, and leads to lower levels of economic growth throughout the rest of the century. However, if action is taken immediately and is accompanied by increasingly rapid low-carbon technology cost reductions, then there is almost no difference in GDP compared to the path suggested by the current NDC commitments.
Key policy insights
Delaying the additional action needed to achieve the 2°C target until 2030 is shown to require twice the rate of emissions reductions between 2030 and 2050.
Total cumulative GDP over the century is lower when additional action is delayed to 2030 and therefore has an overall negative impact on the economy, even without including climate change damages.
Increased ratcheting of the NDC commitments should therefore be undertaken sooner rather than later, starting in conjunction with the 2023 Global Stocktake.
Early action combined with cost reductions in key renewable energy technologies can reduce GDP losses to minimal levels (<1%).
A 2°C future with technological advancements is clearly possible for a similar cost as a 3.3°C world without these advances, but with lower damages and losses from climate change.
Cretaceous transgressions in the epicontinental area of western Europe, and in particular in the Paris-London Basin, were controlled, to a large extent, by the eustatic rise of sea-level in direct relation to the creation of mid-oceanic ridges.On a regional and local scale, positive and negative vertical movements of the Earth's crust have moderated the effects of transgression. These variations are revealed by changes in the nature, or thickness, of sediment deposited on the tectonic blocks which form the basin. The method used for the delimitation of blocks is supported by the presentation of paleogeographical maps from various Mesozoic epochs, as well as a NE-SW section from the Boulonnais area to Normandy which displays tectonic control on sedimentation. 相似文献
