Commentary in 2013

To understand what social learning approaches can offer the sciences of adaptation and mitigation, we need to assemble an appropriate evidence base.

Greenhouse gas emissions from ruminant meat production are significant. Reductions in global ruminant numbers could make a substantial contribution to climate change mitigation goals and yield important social and environmental co-benefits.

New Zealand is often seen as a leader when it comes to environmental policies, but it needs to do much more to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

The political opportunities for implementing a carbon tax high enough to induce large emission cuts will be better if at first the tax is charged on the difference between emissions and fixed thresholds, rather than on all emissions as is now practised.

Loss and damage is a relative newcomer to the climate change agenda. It has the potential to reinvigorate existing mitigation and adaptation efforts, but this will ultimately require leadership from developed countries and enhanced understanding of several key issues, such as limits to adaptation.

A small but growing number of companies are addressing climate risks; however, a range of barriers limit wider private-sector adaptation efforts, particularly in developing countries.

A flood insurance market with risk-based prices in the UK will only stimulate climate change adaptation if it is part of a wider strategy that includes land-use planning, building regulations and water management.

Climate protection advocacy can learn from the success of the International AIDS Conference in forging a powerful global movement of scientists, non-governmental organizations and civil society.

A substantial fraction of the terrestrial carbon sink, past and present, may be incorrectly attributed to environmental change rather than changes in forest management.

China has recently pushed for investments in large-scale coal-fuelled synthetic natural gas plants. The associated carbon emissions, water needs and wider environmental impacts are, however, mostly neglected and could lock the country into an unsustainable development path.

Recent observed global warming is significantly less than that simulated by climate models. This difference might be explained by some combination of errors in external forcing, model response and internal climate variability.

Use of state-of-the-art statistical methods could substantially improve the quantification of uncertainty in assessments of climate change.

The City of Los Angeles is nearly two thirds of the way towards its goal of generating a third of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020; cities around the world can glean valuable technical, economic and political lessons from its experience.

A new business plan that enables policy transformation and resource mobilization at the national and international level, while improving access to resources, will allow the Green Climate Fund to integrate development goals and action on climate change.

If research on attribution of extreme weather events is to inform emerging climate change policies, it needs to diagnose all of the components of risk.

We must forge network connections among rapidly changing communities of decision-makers and researchers to foster the social learning necessary for effective adaptation to climate risks.

Climate information alone cannot be sufficient for anticipating and reducing climate impacts. Enhanced vulnerability science is needed, including local to global monitoring, to support effective anticipatory efforts to increase societal resilience to potentially disruptive events.

Win–win messages regarding climate change mitigation policies in agriculture tend to oversimplify farmer motivation. Contributions from psychology, cultural evolution and behavioural economics should help to design more effective policy.

To understand how marine biota are likely to respond to climate change-mediated alterations in ocean properties, researchers need to harmonize experimental protocols and environmental manipulations, and make better use of reference organisms.

The world's coral reefs are in decline, threatening the food security of millions of people. Adopting an ecosystem-scale approach that protects deep as well as shallow reefs would deliver several social and economic benefits.