Price of unsustainability. Economic impacts of climate change

Global problems, rapid and massive regional changes in the 21st century call for genuine long-term, awareness, planning and well focused actions from both national governments and international organizations. This book wishes to contribute to building an innovative path of strategic views in handling the diverse challenges, and more emphatically, the economic impacts of climate change. Although the contributors of this volume represent several approaches, they all rely on some common grounds such as the costbenefit analysis of mitigation and adaptation, and on the need to present an in-depth theoretical and practical dimension. The research accounted for in this book tried to integrate and confront various types of economics approaches and methods, as well as knowledge from game theory to country surveys, from agricultural adaptation to weather bonds, from green tax to historical experience of human adaptation. The various themes and points of views do deserve the attention of the serious academic reader interested in the economics of climate change. We hope to enhance the spread of good solutions resulting from world wide disputes and tested strategic decisions. WAKE UP! It is not just the polar bears' habitat that is endangered, but the entire human form of life.

Impact of climate change on the potential distribution of Mediterranean pines

The impact of climate change on the potential distribution of four Mediterranean pine species – Pinus brutia Ten., Pinus halepensis Mill., Pinus pinaster Aiton, and Pinus pinea L. – was studied by the Climate Envelope Model (CEM) to examine whether these species are suitable for the use as ornamental plants without frost protection in the Carpathian Basin. The model was supported by EUFORGEN digital area database (distribution maps), ESRI ArcGIS 10 software’s Spatial Analyst module (modeling environment), PAST (calibration of the model with statistical method), and REMO regional climate model (climatic data). The climate data were available in a 25 km resolution grid for the reference period (1961–1990) and two future periods (2011–2040, 2041–2070). The regional climate model was based on the IPCC SRES A1B scenario. While the potential distribution of P. brutia was not predicted to expand remarkably, an explicit shift of the distribution of the other three species was shown. Northwestern African distribution segments seem to become abandoned in the future. Current distribution of P. brutia may be highly endangered by the climate change. P. halepensis in the southern part and P. pinaster in the western part of the Carpathian Basin may find suitable climatic conditions in the period of 2041–2070.