We can finally measure the damage each new coal, gas or oil project will do to people and nature

We have long known every tonne of carbon dioxide matters to the climate. But governments keep approving new fossil fuel projects – even as climate change worsens.

我们早已知晓每一吨二氧化碳都对气候至关重要。然而，即便气候变化日益恶化，各国政府仍不断批准新的化石燃料项目。

Until now, it’s been difficult to say how much damage and extra warming a specific project will do. Fossil fuel companies – and government agencies approving their projects – have often relied on what’s known as the “drop in the ocean” defence.

在此之前，很难确切说明某个特定项目会造成多少损害及额外的升温。化石燃料公司——以及批准其项目的政府机构——往往依赖一种被称为“沧海一粟”的辩护策略。

While backers concede a new project will add more carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere, they say these are tiny compared to the global tally and that it’s almost impossible to track damage attributable to the emissions of an individual project.

尽管支持者承认新项目会增加大气中的二氧化碳排放，但他们辩称，与全球总排放量相比，这些排放微不足道，且几乎不可能追踪到由单个项目排放所造成的具体损害。

This defence won’t work any more. In recent years, attribution science has advanced rapidly, allowing scientists to pinpoint the role of climate change in making disasters and extreme weather more likely.

这种辩护已不再奏效。近年来，归因科学飞速发展，使科学家能够精准定位气候变化在增加灾害和极端天气发生概率中所扮演的角色。

Our new open-source climate tool – the Carbon Impacts Tracer – goes one step further. It shows how much a new project will warm the planet – and how much damage it will do across eight areas, from loss of crops to heatwave deaths in Europe.

我们的新型开源气候工具——“碳影响追踪器”——更进一步。它展示了新项目将使地球升温多少，以及将在八个领域造成多大损害，从农作物损失到欧洲的热浪致死人数。

This will help make fossil fuel companies and governments approving these projects accountable for the damage they will do.

这将有助于让化石燃料公司及其批准项目的政府为所造成的损害承担责任。

To measure the damage attributable to a single fossil fuel project, we connected the dots between emissions produced, extra warming and the damage done to people and the environment.

为了衡量单个化石燃料项目所造成的损害，我们将排放产生的温室气体、额外升温以及对人类和环境造成的损害这三者之间的联系串联起来。

Last year, experts from six universities in Australia and the United Kingdom released research on the damage that corresponds with emissions from the newly approved Scarborough gas project in Western Australia. Three of this article’s authors were involved.

去年，来自澳大利亚和英国六所大学的研究人员发布了关于西澳大利亚新批准的斯卡伯勒（Scarborough）天然气项目排放所对应损害的研究。本文三位作者参与了该研究。

This found that 876 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions from the Scarborough project would expose an extra 516,000 people worldwide to unprecedented heat. They would also result in 484 heat-related deaths in Europe by 2100 and destroy millions more coral colonies during every future mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef.

研究发现，斯卡伯勒项目产生的8.76亿吨二氧化碳排放，将使全球额外51.6万人面临前所未有的高温。到2100年，这还将导致欧洲484人死于热相关疾病，并在大堡礁未来的每次大规模白化事件中摧毁数百万珊瑚群落。

Our new tool gives users the ability to use the same robust methodology on any fossil fuel project.

我们的新工具使用户能够利用同样的稳健方法论来评估任何化石燃料项目。

The more carbon dioxide we add to the atmosphere, the hotter the planet gets. The relationship is nearly linear. For every trillion (thousand billion) tonnes of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere, the globe will warm about 0.45°C, according to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report.

我们向大气中添加的二氧化碳越多，地球就越热。这种关系几乎是线性的。根据政府间气候变化专门委员会（IPCC）的最新评估报告，每向大气中排放一万亿（千亿）吨二氧化碳，全球气温将上升约0.45°C。

Our Carbon Impacts Tracer uses this relationship to calculate the extra warming caused by a new project’s publicly documented carbon emissions. It then calculates the damage it will do across eight areas, including how many more people will be exposed to dangerous heat globally, how much glaciers will melt and how many Europeans will die due to heatwaves.

我们的“碳影响追踪器”利用这一关系，计算新项目公开记录的碳排放所造成的额外升温。随后，它计算该项目将在八个领域造成的损害，包括全球有多少人将暴露于危险高温下、冰川融化多少以及欧洲有多少人将死于热浪。

The tool uses only published studies robust enough to quantify the link between higher global temperatures and a specific type of damage. This high evidence threshold is why we only include eight types of damage at present. We will add more types of damage once the evidence base is robust enough.

该工具仅采用那些足够稳健、能够量化全球气温升高与特定类型损害之间联系的已发表研究。这一高证据门槛解释了为何我们目前仅包含八种损害类型。一旦证据基础足够稳健，我们将增加更多损害类型。

For instance, the link between European heatwave deaths and climate change is robust and reproducible. But we don’t yet have research which meets our criteria for heatwave deaths in Australia or elsewhere.

例如，欧洲热浪致死与气候变化之间的联系是稳健且可复现的。但我们目前还没有符合我们标准的关于澳大利亚或其他地区热浪致死的研究。