Adapting to climate change can’t be left to the wild west of the markets

Razmig Keucheyan in the Guardian (UK): ......This fiscal crisis of the state will weigh not only on reaction and adaptation to climate events, but on mitigation policies. Cutting greenhouse gas emissions implies an energetic transition on a massive scale towards clean energies. This requires investments by the state, which will be difficult given the already overstretched public finances. Rising debt levels inflicted on societies by neoliberal tax cuts for the rich gravely compromise our capacity to adapt to climate change.

So far, so good. But then the IPCC report takes a final step – in the wrong direction. To bridge the gap in public finances caused by recurrent extreme weather events, it recommends appealing to private investors. More precisely, it advocates the implementation of financial instruments such as catastrophe bonds or microinsurance as a means to lighten the burden on the state in the face of a changing climate. Where the state does not have the resources to act, financial markets should take charge.

This financialisation of adaptation was already encouraged, in the years preceding the release of the IPCC report, by organisations such as the World Bank and the OECD. Thus, a 2012 working paper published by the OECD spoke of the need to “immunise public finances” from the effects of climate change, by issuing so-called “sovereign” catastrophe bonds, ie catastrophe bonds issued by states.

Financialising adaptation is a bad idea for numerous reasons. Here are two. Firstly, finance is prone to crisis, as the subprime market’s collapse demonstrated in 2007. Thus, financialising adaptation would put adaptation policies – parts of them at least – at the mercy of the erratic behaviour of financial markets. Adding financial instability to environmental instability will only increase the scale of disasters. What is needed, on the contrary, is less reliance on the logic of markets, and more environmental long-term planning.

Secondly, finance is in its essence undemocratic, ie out of the control of democratic deliberation. It is a form not only of economic dispossession, but of political dispossession, where the few choose for the many.

Adaptation to climate change, however, will require the involvement of the people, the deepening of the democratic process, and even the invention of new democratic institutions. Without their active commitment, their knowledge and knowhow, it is doomed to fail. The reason for this is that adaptation will in a good part be a matter of reorganising the daily lives of the people, and that this will obviously not be done without them. Adaptation to climate change, from this perspective, may well be our chance to revitalise democracy “from below”...

Panic at the New York Stock Exchange in 1893

What do Google searches tell us about our climate change fears?

A press release from Springer: Republicans search the Net for information about the weather, climate change and global warming during extremely hot or cold spells. Democrats google these terms when they experience changes in the average temperatures. These are some of the surprising findings from a study by Corey Lang of the University of Rhode Island in the US, published in Springer’s journal Climatic Change. He tracked how the temperature fluctuations and rainfall that Americans experience daily in their own cities make them scour the Internet in search of information about climate change and global warming. To do so, he used data from Google Trends, local weather stations and election results.

Google Trends aggregates all Google searches that are made, and measures how popular a specific search term is. Users can fine tune this to be specific to a particular place (such as a country or city) and time (such as monthly or on a specific date). Lang specifically checked how often, when and where citizens in 205 cities in the US used the search terms “global warming,” “climate change” and “weather.” The terms “drought” and “flood” were also included because increases in these natural phenomena are important predicted impacts of climate change. Monthly statistics were collected for the period from January 2004 to May 2013. Lang then matched them with local weather station data, as well as the 2008 presidential election results in Dave Leip’s “Atlas of Presidential Elections.”

Lang found that search activity increased when extreme heat was felt in summer, when no rain fell over extended periods, and when there were fewer extreme cold snaps in winter. Such weather fluctuations are consistent with projected climate change. Interestingly though, searches also increased when average winter and spring temperatures dropped – events that are inconsistent with global warming. Lang believes this could mean that people who observe unusual extreme weather conditions are genuinely interested in learning more about climate change. It could, however, also mean that deniers, who experience an unusually cool winter, go online to confirm their skeptical views that the world is not really growing warmer.

People from varying political and educational backgrounds reach for their devices at different times to check out information on climate change. Republicans and people from less educated areas do more relevant searches during periods of extreme temperatures, while Democrats and residents of well-educated areas do so when they experience changes in average temperatures.

“Weather fluctuations have an impact on climate change related search behavior, however not always in ways that are consistent with the impacts of climate change. And the research suggests that different types of people experience weather differently or have different perceptions about what type of weather defines climate change, ” concludes Lang....

This rendition of Google's logo by Nyshita talluri, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0 license

Scientists unmask the climate uncertainty monster

A press release from the University of Bristol

: Increasing uncertainty in the climate system compels a greater urgency for climate change mitigation, according to new research from the University of Bristol. Scientific uncertainty has been described as a 'monster' that prevents understanding and delays mitigative action in response to climate change.  New research by Professor Stephan Lewandowsky of the University of Bristol, and international colleagues, shows that uncertainty should make us more rather than less concerned about climate change.

In two companion papers, published today in Climatic Change, the researchers investigated the mathematics of uncertainty in the climate system and showed that increased scientific uncertainty necessitates even greater action to mitigate climate change.

The scientists used an ordinal approach – a range of mathematical methods that address the question: 'What would the consequences be if uncertainty is even greater than we think it is?'

They show that as uncertainty in the temperature increase expected with a doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial levels rises, so do the economic damages of increased climate change.  Greater uncertainty also increases the likelihood of exceeding 'safe' temperature limits and the probability of failing to reach mitigation targets.  The authors highlight this with the case of future sea level, as larger uncertainty in sea level rise requires greater precautionary action to manage flood risk.

Professor Lewandowsky, Chair in Cognitive Psychology and member of the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol, said: "We can understand the implications of uncertainty, and in the case of the climate system, it is very clear that greater uncertainty will make things even worse. This means that we can never say that there is too much uncertainty for us to act.  If you appeal to uncertainty to make a policy decision the legitimate conclusion is to increase the urgency of mitigation."

Co-author, Dr James Risbey of Australia’s CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, said: "Some point to uncertainty as a way to minimize the climate change problem, when in fact it means that the problem is more likely to be worse than expected in the absence of that uncertainty.  This result is robust to a range of assumptions and shows that uncertainty does not excuse inaction."...

The Allegory of Immortality, Giulio Romano

Extreme weather images in the media cause fear and disengagement with climate change

AlphaGalileo via Taylor & Francis: The paper ‘ Images of Extreme Weather: Symbolising Human Responses to Climate Change’, by Brigitte Nerlich & Rusi Jaspal, published in Science as Culture, reveals that extreme weather images represent human suffering and loss. They are iconic of climate change and are symbols of its natural impacts.

Reporting on extreme weather has increased over the last few years. In the past social scientists, and media and communication analysts have studied how climate change is depicted in the text of media and social media. While researchers have become increasingly interested in climate change images, they have not yet studied them with respect to symbolising certain emotions.

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a draft report on extreme weather and climate change adaptation. The report was covered in the news and illustrated with images. Some of these depicted ‘extreme weather’, in particular with relation to floods, droughts and heat waves, hurricanes and ice/sea-level rise.

Researchers studied images published in the news to illustrate their coverage of the IPCC report. They used visual thematic analysis, examining the way they might symbolise certain emotional responses, such as compassion, fear, guilt, vulnerability, helpless, courage or resilience.

...New research has shown that images of extreme weather in the media create negative emotional meanings and might lead to disengagement with the issue of climate change. The images symbolised fear, helplessness and vulnerability and, in some cases, guilt and compassion. Appealing to fear of disaster can lead to denial and paralysis rather than positive behaviour change.

The research confirmed: “There is no indication of victimhood or desperation, but rather a mundane sense of routine. Crucially, these images represent flooding as a distant phenomenon, with which viewers are not invited or necessarily encouraged to identify. For readers in the West such images may not symbolise, or indeed convey, compassion...”....

A 1907 flood in Kofu, Japan 

Network of climate change practitioners launched in Zwedru, Liberia

Chris T. Nyenapee in AllAfrica.com via Heritage (Monrovia): The Liberia Network of Climate Change Practitioners Grand Gedeh branch has launched its activities in Zwedru, with Superintendent Peter Solo assuring local farmers of government's fullest cooperation in finding a solution to climate change.

He described the impact of climate change as a negative phenomenon that requires the urgent attention of people from diverse backgrounds for a positive way out to sustainability and survival.

Supt. Solo emphasized that the country cannot continue to live on imported food, saying Liberians must grow what they eat.

The program held under the auspices of Climate Change Adoption Agriculture Project, CCAAP/ PMU/MOA at the County Health Team Guest House in Zwedru, was attended by agriculture technicians, professionals and practitioners....

Social sciences must respond to environmental change

Yojana Sharma in SciDev.net: The social and natural sciences must be more closely integrated to respond to the transformation in society due to global environmental change, according to a major report launched today in Paris, France.

Social sciences should more effectively research “human causes, vulnerabilities and impacts” of environmental change given that it affects people’s livelihoods, chances of survival, and ways of life, says the 'World Social Science Report 2013: Changing Global Environments' is produced jointly by UNESCO, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the International Social Science Council (ISSC). 

“North or South, human behaviour contributes significantly to climate change,” says ISSC president Olive Shisana, in the report's preface. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions “is inextricably linked with human behaviour and the model of development we choose to follow”.

In the North, people want to maintain their lifestyles; in the South, people want similar lifestyles, which “complicates the issue”, she notes.

Despite the role of human behaviour, “the social sciences have remained marginal to global environmental change research”, the report says, warning that “now is not the time to stay on the sidelines” as climate and environmental change create “staggering human-made crises, and as the world struggles to find a path toward a more secure and sustainable future”...

"Dejected," a 2008 painting by Adib.azadeh, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Poor and disabled when disaster strikes

Lucy Westcott in IPS: Upon first glance, the emergency checklist distributed in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake looks like any other. Organised into key categories like water, sanitation and hygiene, and psychosocial support, the information is typical of the kind circulated for emergency response.

But after a closer read, with recommendations for latrines to be built with a 90cm diameter so a wheelchair can turn around, and 80-cm-wide doors for wheelchair or crutch-users to pass through comfortably, it is clear that the checklist, distributed by Handicap International, was intended for persons with disabilities living in the disaster-ravaged country.

Natural disasters are common in many developing countries across the globe, and organisations like Handicap International are helping communities plan better for their disabled populations. There are between 2.9 and 4.2 million persons with disabilities among the world’s 42 million forcibly displaced population, according to data from the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

For many people living with disabilities in developing countries, social stigma and cultural barriers prevent community cohesion, which is essential for emergency planning and preparedness, Annie Lafrenière, social inclusion and technical adviser at Handicap International, told IPS. “People won’t speak about social barriers… they’ll talk about ramps [instead],” Lafrenière said. “[People with disabilities] are not considered the same as everyone else.”

Developing countries are vulnerable and at a higher risk of disasters because they are less prepared and equipped to deal with them, and not necessarily because they are more exposed to hazards, Lafrenière says. Persons with disabilities are often invisible to relief activities and unable to reach food or water checkpoints due to destroyed roads or non-accessible transportation....

Mental health an overlooked casualty of disaster

Lucy Westcott via IPS: Although Hurricane Sandy made her final sweep through the Northeastern United States nearly 10 months ago, for many people the stress caused by the storm lingers. In Lower Manhattan, two hotlines, the Disaster Distress Helpline (DDH) and Project Hope, which is part of the New York City-wide helpline Lifenet, and specifically for those affected by Sandy, are at the frontline of disaster counselling, listening to myriad concerns ranging from queries about post-storm open hours of drug rehabilitation programmes to anxious parents reluctantly sending their children back to school in the days after the Newtown, Connecticut school shooting last December. Both programmes are administered by the Mental Health Association of New York City.

As the United Nations launches the world’s first ever survey asking persons with disabilities around the world about their experience preparing for and living with disasters, IPS examines the impact of both natural and human-made disasters for people with disabilities in New York City and worldwide.

Persons with disabilities are often left out of municipal emergency planning meetings, and many believe that their voices fall silent when it comes to preparing for life-or-death situations. Over 80 percent of the world’s disabled population live in developing countries, according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and disabled people are more likely to die and become injured than non-disabled people in disasters.

...Building on the phrase used by the disabled community, “Nothing about us without us,” experts from FEMA to Handicap International, as well as those who specialise in emergency management training for disabled people, stress the need for more inclusive planning, and including those very people decisions are being made for in the planning process.

“Typically the kind of disasters that result in a spike of calls at the national level are those that are larger in scale. The impacts tend to be greater in terms of loss of life, loss of property or the potential for psychological distress on a sizeable population,” Christian Burgess, director of the DDH, told IPS.

...“It’s not therapy, it’s not a substitute for therapy. Really, it involves listening,” Burgess says, comparing the helpline to triage for mental health....

Sandy and the aftermath: October 29, 2012 in New York City, shot by JordanBalderas, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Psychological adaptation to urbanization, technology reflected in word usage over last two centuries

A press release from the Association for Psychological Science: New research shows that as culture has evolved over the last two centuries — with increasing urbanization, greater reliance on technology, and widespread availability of formal education — so has human psychology. The findings are forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “This research shows that there has been a two-century long historical shift towards individualistic psychological functioning adapted to an urban environment and away from psychological functioning adapted to a rural environment,” says psychological scientist Patricia Greenfield of the University of California, Los Angeles, author of the new study.

Greenfield measured culture-wide psychological change over two centuries using the Google Ngram Viewer, examining the frequencies of specific words in a corpus of over 1,160,000 English-language books published in the United States between 1800 and 2000. Drawing on her Theory of Social Change and Human Development, Greenfield hypothesized that the usage of specific words would wax and wane as a reflection of psychological adaptation to sociocultural change. Data from the corpus of books supported her hypothesis.

For example, the words “choose” and “get” — markers of the individualism and materialistic values that are adaptive in wealthier urban settings — rose in frequency between 1800 and 2000. Words that reflect the social responsibilities that are adaptive in rural settings — such as  “obliged” and “give” — declined over the same period. Interestingly, there was a short-term deviation from this overall trend: Usage of “get” declined between 1940 and the 1960s before rising again in the 1970s. Greenfield believes this deviation may reflect a decline in self-interest motivation during World War II and the Civil Rights movement.

Greenfield also observed a gradual rise in the use of “feel” and concomitant decline in the use of “act,” suggesting a turn toward inner mental life and away from outward behavior. The corpus also revealed a growing focus on the self, with the use of “child,” “unique,” “individual,” and “self” increasing from 1800 to 2000. Over the same period, the importance of obedience to authority, social relationships, and religion in everyday life seems to have waned, as reflected in the decline of “obedience,” “authority,” “belong,” and “pray.”...

A crowd outside the New York Stock Exchange after the crash in 1929

Citizen scientists rival experts in analyzing land-cover data

Linda See at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis: Over the past 5 years, IIASA researchers on the Geo-Wiki project have been leading a team of citizen scientists who examine satellite data to categorize land cover or identify places where people live and farm. These data have led to several publications published in peer-reviewed journals.

“One question we always get is whether the analysis from laypeople is as good as that from experts. Can we rely on non-experts to provide accurate data analysis?” says IIASA researcher Linda See, who led the study published in the journal PLOS ONE.

The researchers compared 53,000 data points analyzed by more than 60 individuals, including experts and non-experts in remote sensing and geospatial sciences.  The new study shows that non-experts were as good as experts at identifying human impact, a concept that has emerged from ecological sciences, in satellite land cover data.

However, the study showed, experts were better at identifying the specific land-cover types such as forest, farmland, grassland, or desert. When presented with control data where researchers knew the land-cover type, experts identified land cover correctly 69% of the time, while non-experts made correct classifications only 62% of the time. The researchers suggest that interactive training and feedback could help non-experts learn to make better classifications and continue to improve these numbers in the future.

“Citizen science has actually been around for a very long time in many different guises,” says See. “But as the internet continues to proliferate in the developing world, and mobile devices and wearable sensors become the norm, we will see an explosion of activity in this area. Studies like this are critical for establishing the quality of data coming from citizens. What we need is more tools and techniques for helping us to continually improve this quality, and more partnerships with NGOs, industry, government and academia that actively involve and trust citizens.” ...

This map shows the 53,000 data points analyzed in the study, showing land cover classification around the world. From the IIASA website

Cool heads likely won't prevail in a hotter, wetter world

Morgan Kelly in News at Princeton: Should climate change trigger the upsurge in heat and rainfall that scientists predict, people may face a threat just as perilous and volatile as extreme weather — each other.

Researchers from Princeton University and the University of California-Berkeley report in the journal Science that even slight spikes in temperature and precipitation have greatly increased the risk of personal violence and social upheaval throughout human history. Projected onto an Earth that is expected to warm by 2 degrees Celsius by 2050, the authors suggest that more human conflict is a likely outcome of climate change.

The researchers analyzed 60 studies from a number of disciplines — including archaeology, criminology, economics and psychology — that have explored the connection between weather and violence in various parts of the world from about 10,000 BCE to the present day. During an 18-month period, the Princeton-Berkeley researchers reviewed those studies' data — and often re-crunched raw numbers — to calculate the risk that violence would rise under hotter and wetter conditions.

They found that while climate is not the sole or primary cause of violence, it undeniably exacerbates existing social and interpersonal tension in all societies, regardless of wealth or stability. They found that 1 standard-deviation shift — the amount of change from the local norm — in heat or rainfall boosts the risk of a riot, civil war or ethnic conflict by an average of 14 percent. There is a 4 percent chance of a similarly sized upward creep in heat or rain sparking person-on-person violence such as rape, murder and assault. The researchers report that climate-change models predict an average of 2 to 4 standard-deviation shifts in global climate conditions by 2050.

..."We think that by collecting all the research together now, we're pretty clearly establishing that there is a causal relationship between the climate and human conflict," Hsiang said. "People have been skeptical up to now of an individual study here or there. But considering the body of work together, we can now show that these patterns are extremely general. It's more of the rule than the exception....

The researchers analyzed 60 studies from a number of disciplines that have explored the connection between weather and violence in various parts of the world, and throughout human history. A sampling of existing results (graphed above) show a correlation between temperature on violent personal crime and rape in the United States (A, B); drought and global civil conflict (H); temperature and the ouster of leaders worldwide (J); deviation from normal rainfall and large-scale violence in Africa (K); and global civil conflict and the intensity of El Niño (L). The darker areas indicate a stronger connection between climate and violence. Panel titles indicate the type of violence studied, the location, the unit of analysis and sample size, and the study citation. (Image by Science/AAAS)

Environmental protests of the Middle East show eco awareness in Arab world

Moshe Terdiman in Green Prophet: During the last six years, the words energy security, water security, and food security could be found a lot in the Arab media. Since most of the Arab media is controlled by the Arab regimes, the appearance of these items shows that the environmental awareness of the Arab regimes has been on the rise.

Indeed, as a result of climate change and global warming the Middle East has been facing five major environmental security challenges: water security, food security, energy security, desertification, and land degradation.

These issues have been further aggravated by other socio-economic processes, which characterize the Middle East and include: the huge population growth, the rapid urbanization process and the development of mega-cities on the expense of rural areas.

The urban infrastructures, such as sewage and waste disposal, which have been inadequate anyway and are in dire need for modernization, could not stand the ever-growing human pressure and in a few cities, some of them have totally collapsed.

Moreover, the natural resources, such as water and food, which were just sufficient for the cities’ residents, have been stressed to the limit due to the huge population density within the cities. In addition, green spaces within the cities have given place to gray buildings which have been built whenever possible in order to supply the lodging needs of the incessant stream of new immigrants and local citizens....

Praying in Tahrir, shot by Sherine Tadros, Al-Jazeera English, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license 

Conservatives can be persuaded to care more about the environment, study finds

Yasmin Anwar in the UC Berkeley News Center: When it comes to climate change, deforestation and toxic waste, the assumption has been that conservative views on these topics are intractable. But new research from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that such viewpoints can be changed after all, when the messages about the need to be better stewards of the land are couched in terms of fending off threats to the “purity” and “sanctity” of Earth and our bodies.

A UC Berkeley study has found that while people who identified themselves as conservatives tend to be less concerned about the environment than their liberal counterparts, their motivation increased significantly when they read articles that stressed the need to “protect the purity of the environment” and were shown such repellant images as a person drinking dirty water, a forest filled with garbage, and a city under a cloud of smog.

Published today (Dec. 10)  in the online issue of the journal Psychological Science, the findings indicate that reframing pro-environmental rhetoric according to values that resonate strongly with conservatives can reduce partisan polarization on ecological matters.

“These findings offer the prospect of pro-environmental persuasion across party lines,” said Robb Willer, a UC Berkeley social psychologist and coauthor of the study. “Reaching out to conservatives in a respectful and persuasive way is critical, because large numbers of Americans will need to support significant environment reforms if we are going to deal effectively with climate change, in particular.”

Researchers conducted a content analysis of more than 200 op-eds published in such newspapers as The New York Times, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal, and found the pro-environmental arguments were most often pitched in terms of moral obligations to care about the natural environment and protect it from harm, a theme that resonates more powerfully with liberals, they added, than with conservatives....

Dirty water spilling from a jug, shot by Ildar Sagdejev (Specious), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Blowing hot and cold: US belief in climate change shifts with weather

AlphaGalileo via Springer: Being exposed to climate variations - temperature fluctuations in particular - can influence our opinions about climate change, according to a new study by Simon Donner and Jeremy McDaniels from the University of British Columbia in Canada. Their work shows that a cold snap may lead to skepticism over climate change, whereas a particularly hot spell may increase concern over climate change. Their work is published online in Springer's journal, Climatic Change.

Over the past 20 years, public opinion about human-caused climate change has varied in the United States. Individual attitudes to climate change are thought to be influenced by many factors, including personal values, political views, the media environment and personal experience. Donner and McDaniels' work explores the role of climate itself on their attitudes to climate change. Can the weather over the past few months influence public opinion about climate change and their willingness to change behavior or support climate policy?

The researchers used 1990-2010 data from national public opinion polls and a detailed analysis of opinion articles from major US newspapers, including The New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today.. They evaluated the relationship between average national temperatures and both the 'belief in' and 'worry about' climate change expressed in the polls, as well as attitudes to climate change expressed in editorial and opinion articles.

They found that climate variability may be one of the factors driving differences in opinion about climate change in the US. During seasons when average temperatures were warmer than normal, Americans tended to be more convinced and more worried about human-caused climate change. The researchers also suggest that headline-making weather strongly influences climate beliefs of individuals without strong convictions for or against climate change. In addition, the major newspapers tended to publish more opinion articles expressing either support for the scientific consensus on climate change, concern about climate change, or arguments for climate action.

Prof. Donner says, "Our findings help to explain some of the significant fluctuations and inconsistencies in U.S. public opinion on climate change. The study demonstrates just how much local weather can influence people's opinions on global warming. We find that, unfortunately, a cold winter is enough to make some people, including many newspaper editors and opinion leaders, doubt the overwhelming scientific consensus on the issue."...

NOAA graphic of the formation of a heat wave

New study highlights impact of environmental change on older people

EurekAlert via the University of York: Recent natural disasters illustrate vulnerability of older people: majority of deaths from the Great East Japan Earthquake (2011) and Hurricane Katrina (2005) occurred among older people.

Researchers at the Stockholm Environment Institute at the University of York and Simon Fraser University's Gerontology Research Centre in Canada are calling for better awareness among policy makers and the public of the impact climate change and deteriorating environmental quality will have on an ageing population.

According to UN projections, by 2050, nearly 25 per cent of the global population will be aged 55 or over. An aging population and environmental change are two key policy challenges which need to be addressed to ensure a safe, secure, equitable and sustainable future. But international policy makers have given little attention to the effects global environmental change will have on older people.

...Dr Gary Haq, of SEI, said: "Our study shows that older people are particularly vulnerable to environmental change – but awareness among policy makers and older people is lagging behind. There is an urgent need for policy makers to better understand the interaction between global ageing and the environment to prevent and minimise disproportionate negative impacts on older people."

...Professor Gloria Gutman, Research Associate at Simon Fraser University's Gerontology Research Centre said: "Older people themselves, and especially those with chronic illnesses, need to recognise that environmental change can affect them personally. Data from around the world show that weather-related disasters kill older people at a disproportionate rate."...

This man, an evacuee from New Orleans after hurricane Katrina, waits to be seen by a DMAT team member at the airport. Photo by: Liz Roll of FEMA

Public acceptance of climate change affected by word usage

Timothy Wall in the University of Missouri News Bureau: Public acceptance of climate change’s reality may have been influenced by the rate at which words moved from scientific journals into the mainstream, according to anthropologist Michael O’Brien, dean of the College of Arts and Science at the University of Missouri. A recent study of word usage in popular literature by O’Brien and his colleagues documented how the usage of certain words related to climate change has risen and fallen over the past two centuries. Understanding how word usage affects public acceptance of science could lead to better science communication and a more informed public.

“Scientists can learn from this study that the general public shouldn’t be expected to understand technical terms or be convinced by journal papers written in technical jargon,” O’Brien said. “Journalists must explain scientific terms in ways people can understand and thereby ease the movement of those terms into general speech. That can be a slow process. Several words related to climate change diffused into the popular vocabulary over a 30-50 year timeline.”

O’Brien’s study found that, by 2008, several important terms in the discussion of climate change had entered popular literature from technical obscurity in the early 1900s. These terms included:

• Biodiversity – the degree of variation in life forms within a given area
• Holocene – the current era of the Earth’s history, which started at the end of the last ice age
• Paleoclimate –the prehistoric climate, often deduced from ice cores, tree rings and pollen trapped in sediments
• Phenology – the study of how climate and other environmental factors influence the timing of events in organisms’ life cycles

Not every term was adopted at the same rate or achieved the same degree of popularity. Biodiversity, for example, came into popular use quickly in only a few years in the late 80s and early 90s. Other terms, like Holocene or phenology, have taken decades and are still relatively uncommon....

A word sculpture in Potsdam, shot by Bruno Girin from London, United Kingdom, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Climate change action focuses on tourist traps, say researchers

University of Queensland, Australia: Efforts to help Queensland's tourism industry to adapt to the effects of climate change are likely to be focused on areas that attract the most tourist dollars rather than those with the greatest need, according to new UQ research.

Researchers at The University of Queensland Business School fear that natural heritage such as The Great Barrier Reef and northern tropical rainforests could lose out if investment decisions are made on the basis of economic values that fail to take into account its environmental value.

The research by UQ Business School Masters students suggests that Queensland tourism could be badly affected by climate change.  With the industry generating close to $19 billion in annual revenue and accounting for one in 10 jobs, measures to adapt to overcome the adverse effects would be necessary.

Using different climate change scenarios, the students compared leading tourist destinations on their tourism revenue, their vulnerability to climate change, and their ability to adapt to it. They found the south-east coast, from a purely business perspective, should be given the highest priority for climate change action, with the lowest priority given to the Australian outback and northern tropical rainforest regions.

UQ Business School Lecturer and corporate sustainability expert Dr Martina Linnenluecke said: “This research is one of the first studies to combine insights into the costs of adaptation, as well as the vulnerabilities of different regions....

The Pelican Waters brush fire in Queensland, 2006, shot by thinboyfatter, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Cultural dimensions of climate change are underestimated, overlooked and misunderstood

Terra Daily: The impact of climate change on many aspects of cultural life for people all over the world is not being sufficiently accounted for by scientists and policy-makers. University of Exeter-led research by an international team, published in Nature Climate Change, shows that cultural factors are key to making climate change real to people and to motivating their responses.

From enjoying beaches or winter sports and visiting iconic natural spaces to using traditional methods of agriculture and construction in our daily lives, the research highlights the cultural experiences that bind our communities and are under threat as a result of climate change.

The paper argues that governments' programmes for dealing with the consequences of climate change do not give enough consideration to what really matters to individuals and communities.

Culture binds people together and helps them overcome threats to their environments and livelihoods. Some are already experiencing such threats and profound changes to their lives....

From Piranesi's "Imaginary Prisons," 1761

Acting on disaster warnings: Don't miss the human factor

Sudhir Kumar in SciDev.net: The Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent tsunami of 11 March 2011 challenged global ideas about responding to disasters. It showed that structural defences alone, such as breakwaters, coastal dykes and tidal barriers, cannot provide protection from tsunamis of such magnitude. The events of that day also emphasised the importance of 'end-to-end' early warning systems (systems spanning all steps from hazard detection through to community response). A Japanese government study, published in the Japan Times in August 2011, has found that only 58 per cent of people in coastal areas of Fukushima, Iwate and Miyagi prefectures heeded tsunamiwarnings immediately after the earthquake and headed for higher ground.

Of those who attempted to evacuate after hearing the warning, just five per cent were caught by the tsunami.  The report's findings raise the question of why some people act on early warnings while others ignore them. 

As climate change alters the risks posed by extreme weather events, how a community responds to early warnings will be a decisive factor in how people fare in hydro-meteorological events, including cyclones, blizzards, heavy snowfall, avalanches, coastal storm surges, floods, drought, heat-waves and cold spells.

There are barriers to action. The first may be the technical language used by warning systems. Individuals and communities may not be able to understand the meaning of obscure terms such as 'Cyclone Category 4', or the significance of a given wind speed.

Even when a community receives a warning, people's perception of risk may discourage them from heading for safety. In 2008, for example, Myanmar's Department of Meteorology and Hydrology detected Cyclone Nargis at an early stage, but people underestimated its intensity and believed that staying indoors would offer protection from winds, floods, and sea surge. 

The early warning system itself may underestimate the risk, as occurred when floods struck Mumbai, India, on 26 and 27 July 2005. A subsequent fact-finding committee found a significant gap between rainfall forecast (between 65 millimetres and 124.9 millimetres) and actual rainfall (944 millimetres — the eighth heaviest rainfall during a 24-hour period on record). Several hundred people lost their lives in the flooding.... 

Glenwood Springs, CO, June 8, 2002 -- The evening sun barely penetrates the smoke and ash as evacuees flee West Glenwood because of the spreading wildfires in Garfield County. Photo by Bryan Dahlberg/FEMA News Photo

Poorest countries may adapt better to climate change

PhysOrg: A new study involving experts in the School of Geography at the University of Nottingham found that the very poor and the relatively wealthy countries are less vulnerable — it was the group in the middle that was most at risk. This unexpected result was found at several different scales and by different members of the research team. They’ve called on policy-makers and NGOs to take their findings into account.

Dr Simon Gosling, who specialises in the impacts of climate change, was one of the authors of the study. He said: “We’re finding a real trade-off between adaptation and development, that’s not to say we should discourage development, but you can’t assume that by promoting it you’re also helping people adapt to climate change. It’s not that traditional is always better, but as people move from traditional to modern they lose things; policy-makers need to think about how to help them make the transition.”

The study highlights areas that are at particular risk of climate-induced crop failures — these include south-eastern South America and the north-eastern Mediterranean.

Dr Gosling said: “You might assume getting richer would always make a country safer from drought and famine, but that turns out not to be the case. Instead, the very poorest countries seem to become more vulnerable in the early stages of development. There’s a crucial period, before the benefits of modernisation start to kick in, when developing countries become more vulnerable to problems like drought than when they started.”...

Walking an unpaved road in India's West Khasi Hills in the district of Meghalaya, shot by Rikynti Marwein, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license