Lethal Heating: 09/29/17

29/09/2017

One In Five Australians Believe Global Warming Is A Hoax

Fairfax - Felicity Caldwell

More than one in five Australians believe global warming is a hoax and more than one-third think aliens have visited Earth.
Essential Research has surveyed about 1000 Australians on various beliefs to reveal some eyebrow-raising results.

While 21 per cent of respondents believed global warming was a hoax perpetrated by scientists, 68 per cent did not believe that statement. Photo: Paul Jones

It found 21 per cent believed global warming was a hoax perpetrated by scientists - with 9 per cent strongly believing in the statement and 12 per cent somewhat believing. Another 11 per cent were not sure.
One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts has been among those to doubt climate change science, with a senior NASA official last year rejecting his claims the agency had falsified data to exaggerate warming in the Arctic.

One in three Australians think we've been visited by aliens. Photo: Keith Srakocic/AP

And in June, after being asked by Senator Roberts whether it was important for scientists to keep an open mind, chief scientist Alan Finkel agreed: "But not so open that your brain leaks out."
Griffith University Climate Change Response Program director Brendan Mackey said climate change was an established scientific fact backed up by hard data.
"We have a really solid scientific basis for knowing and understanding the way the climate is changing rapidly," Professor Mackey said.
"I find it interesting as a scientist when people say they don't believe in science because science is not a matter of faith - religion is a matter of faith.
"It's really a matter of having a scientific understanding or explanation in relation to the cause and effect."
Professor Mackey said many people had never been taught about climate change science so found it difficult to understand.
And he said it was not something you could look out the window and see or experience, such as using an iPhone.
"The technology [for smartphones] comes from scientific understanding about quantum mechanics," he said.
"There's hardly anyone who understands about quantum mechanics but the iPhone works and they're happy their phone works and they're not worried about the reason why.
"People don't say 'I don't believe in gravity' because they can feel the effect of it.
"Climate change is a more abstract concept so part of it is people don't have that direct personal experience of climate change."
However, Professor Mackey said the vast majority of people accepted the science around climate change, which was positive.
A study by Griffith University and Cardiff University found 6.5 per cent of Australians were strong climate change sceptics in 2010, while 74 per cent believed "the world's climate is changing".
About half of the respondents completely or very substantially trusted what scientists said about the environment.
Mean climate change concern levels were highest in Victoria and Western Australia and lowest in Queensland and New South Wales.
Meanwhile, the Essential Research survey showed 34 per cent of respondents believed extra-terrestrials had visited Earth - either strongly or somewhat.
The survey found 40 per cent believed heaven and hell both existed as destinations after life.
About 39 per cent said angels and demons were active in the world and 35 per cent said ghosts existed and could influence their will on the living.
It found 14 per cent believed vaccines could cause autism, while 34 per cent said the story of creation in the book of Genesis was a true account of the first man and woman.

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Hidden Costs Of Climate Change Running Hundreds Of Billions A Year

National Geographic - Stephen Leahy

A new report warns of a high price tag on the impacts of global warming, from storm damage to health costs. But solutions can provide better value, the authors say.

Debris from a damaged home in Spring, Texas, serves as a reminder of Hurricane Harvey's fury. Such storms may be spurred by a changing climate, with expensive consequences. PHOTOGRAPH BY LUKE SHARRETT, BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES

Extreme weather, made worse by climate change, along with the health impacts of burning fossil fuels, has cost the U.S. economy at least $240 billion a year over the past ten years, a new report has found.
And yet this does not include this past months’ three major hurricanes or 76 wildfires in nine Western states. Those economic losses alone are estimated to top $300 billion, the report notes. Putting it in perspective, $300 billion is enough money to provide free tuition for the 13.5 million U.S. students enrolled in public colleges and universities for four years.
In the coming decade, economic losses from extreme weather combined with the health costs of air pollution spiral upward to at least $360 billion annually, potentially crippling U.S. economic growth, according to this new report, The Economic Case for Climate Action in the United States, published online Thursday by the Universal Ecological Fund.
“Burning fossil fuels comes at a giant price tag which the U.S. economy cannot afford and not sustain," said Sir Robert Watson, co-author and director at the U.K's Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research.

Climate Change 101 With Bill Nye

“We want to paint a picture for Americans to illustrate the fact that the costs of not acting on climate change are very significant,” Watson, the former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told National Geographic.
Watson is quick to point out that extreme weather events, including heat waves, hurricanes, wildfires, and droughts, are not caused by climate change. However, there is no question their intensity and frequency in many cases has been made worse by the fact the entire planet is now 1.8 degrees F (1 degree C) hotter, he said in an interview.
While a 1.8 degree F (1 degree C) increase may seem small it’s having a major economic impact on the U.S. According to data provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the number of extreme weather events causing at least $1 billion in economic losses has increased more than 400 percent since the 1980s. Some of that increase is due to increased amounts of housing and commercial infrastructure along coastlines. “However that doesn’t account for big increases in the last decade,” Watson said.
And much more global warming is coming—3.6 degrees F (2 degrees C) temperature by 2050 and even greater warming beyond that—unless bigger cuts in fossil-fuel emissions are made than those promised in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, said Watson. “The impacts of climate change are certainly going to get more than twice as bad,” he said.

SEEKING SOLUTIONS
The report also looks at low-carbon solutions that can cut emissions and air pollution and benefit the U.S. economy. For instance, doubling the current share of renewable energy could create 500,000 new jobs while substantially cutting the amount of electricity currently generated using coal—improving air quality and reducing health costs.
Renewable energy, even when subsidised, will save America billions of dollars, according to the first national study of the future costs and benefits of renewable portfolio standards (RPS). Twenty-nine states have RPS—regulations requiring increased production of energy from renewable energy sources.
If existing RPS programs continue unchanged from now until 2050 they’d generate about 40 percent of U.S. electricity and save $97 billion in air pollution health costs and $161 billion in climate damage reductions, the Assessing the Costs and Benefits of U.S. Renewable Portfolio Standards study found. But if all states meet their Clean Power Plan obligations solely with renewables they’d generate 35 percent of U.S. electricity by 2030 and 49 percent by 2050.
The health benefit savings and climate impact cost reductions in this scenario would be over $1.1 trillion. However, the Trump Administration signed an Executive Order calling for a review of the Clean Power Plan last March and the new head of the EPA has told states they no longer have to comply.
RPS policies do increase electric system costs and may increase rates in some states but the overall costs are far less than the health benefits and cost reductions, said lead author Ryan Wiser, a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
“RPS programs provide a big social benefit to all Americans,” Wiser said in an interview. However, RPS policies are not the most efficient way to reduce fossil fuel use, he added.
“Pretty well every economist will tell you that a carbon tax or cap and trade are better.”
In the 1980s acid rain air pollution was curbed through a cap and trade program championed by George H.W. Bush. It was the first such program in the world and worked quite well, said Wiser.

ADDITIONAL BENEFITS TO TACKLING EMISSIONS
Switching to renewables will also save enormous amounts of freshwater. Electricity generation is the nation’s biggest water user because coal and gas boil large amounts of water to make electricity. If 35 percent of this generation was renewable it would reduce water use enough to meet the needs of 1.9 million homes, according to Wiser’s study. However, the cost benefits of this water savings is not included in the report, nor are other environmental costs and health benefits.
The Economic Case for Climate Action report also doesn’t include a number of climate-related losses such as reduced crop yields from drought. Those amounted to $56 billion since 2012. Nor does it include economic losses from health impacts of heat waves or impacts on ecosystems and water resources.
“Our report is an under estimate of the real costs of continued use of fossil fuels,” Watson said.
“Anything we estimate now is an underestimate,” said Amir Jina of the University of Chicago and co-author of yet another new study looking at impacts of climate change on the U.S. “Climate change is not isolated to small increases in global temperature, but to local impacts to our health and well-being that could be enormous.”

SOUTH AND MIDWEST TO BE HARDEST HIT
Estimating Economic Damage from Climate Change in the United States is a state-of-the-art analysis that projects future costs and benefits county by county based on current and past data. It found counties in states in the South and lower Midwest would be the hardest hit economically without strong action to curb climate change.
“The Gulf Coast will take a massive hit. Its exposure to sea-level rise—made worse by potentially stronger hurricanes—poses a major risk to its communities. Increasingly extreme heat will drive up violent crime, slow down workers, amp up air conditioning costs,” said co-author Robert Kopp, director of the Institute of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Rutgers University.
Programs like federal flood insurance insulate coastal communities from some of these risks but it means citizens a long way from the coast bear the financial costs. The same applies to disaster relief.
Billions of local, state and federal taxpayer dollars will rightly go towards the recovery efforts from the devastating impacts of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria. However, those monies could have gone elsewhere to grow our economy and that affects every American, said Jina. "What would we have done with this rebuilding money if we didn't have to use it to rebuild?"
The study shows that these big storms lower the long-run growth of the U.S. economy and that their economic and human impacts ripple through the country for up to two decades. New Orleans hasn’t fully recovered from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Many small businesses never bounced back. Ten years after the storm the unemployment rate was still higher than pre-Katrina levels. Research shows that after most hurricanes more people tend to rely heavily on unemployment insurance and Medicaid, increasing the strain on those publicly funded programs, Jina said.
"The 'hidden costs' of carbon dioxide emissions are no longer hidden, since now we can see them clearly in the data,” he said.

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Hedge Fund Asks Climate Deniers To Put Their Money Where Their Mouth Is

ThinkProgress - Jeremy Deaton (Nexus Media)

Do you want to wager on the future of the planet?

CREDIT: Pexels

In an appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson challenged former GM executive — and ardent climate denier — Bill Lutz to make a bet. “You take all the scientists who author these papers, get them to pool their money and invest in companies that would benefit from global warming,” Tyson said. “And take all the people who are in denial of global warming, take all their money and invest in companies that would presume there is no global warming. And I would predict [the climate deniers] will all go broke in the next 50 years.”
As the country’s foremost science communicator knows, sometimes there is no point in waving around the same peer-reviewed studies. Sometimes you have to put your money where your mouth is. You have to turn empirical truths into cold, hard cash.
To that end, UK hedge fund Winton Capital is setting up the first market to make predictions about climate change. Climate scientists will bet on the future state of the climate, and the market will pay out yearly to those who make the most accurate predictions. The aim is to find a consensus among experts about the future of the climate.
The climate prediction market will rely on something known as the wisdom of the crowd. This phenomenon was discovered more than a century ago when English statistician Francis Galton studied a contest to guess the weight of 1,198-pound ox. Nearly 800 villagers entered the contest, and their estimations varied widely, but the average of their guesses was 1,197 pounds, almost the exact weight of the ox. The numbers showed that a large number of reasonably informed people with a diverse set of opinions can, in the aggregate, make accurate guesses.

An ox of undetermined weight. CREDIT: Pixabay

To understand how it will work, look to Vegas odds makers. In last weekend’s match-up between the University of Washington Huskies and the Fresno State Bulldogs, Washington was the clear favorite. If every bettor put money on Washington and the Huskies won, the casino would lose money on the payouts. Casinos want an equal number of bettors on both sides to guard against losses. So, instead of allowing bettors to gamble which team will win or lose, casinos make the bet on whether a team will win by a lot or just a little.
This where the wisdom of the crowd comes into play. In the lead-up to the weekend’s game, Vegas had the Huskies as a 33-point favorite— bets were placed on whether Washington would win the game by more or less than 33 points. If the crowd got bullish on Washington, casinos might change their prediction to 34 or 35 points.
This is the crucial part. Because bettors tend to be sports aficionados steeped in the latest news and analysis, their predictions, on the whole, tend to be pretty accurate. Ultimately, Washington beat Fresno State by 32 points. That’s the wisdom of the crowd in action.

University of Washington defensive lineman Vita Vea. CREDIT: University of Washington Athletics

Back in the UK, Winton is trying to channel that wisdom to make predictions about climate change. The hedge fund will have experts make guesses about future temperatures and greenhouse gas concentrations. (Later, Winton may expand the project to accommodate more specific predictions about regional warming and sea-level rise.)
U.S. gambling laws are murky when it comes to prediction markets, so Winton is setting up its climate prediction market in the United Kingdom. But the climate prediction market isn’t intended as a money-making scheme. This is a philanthropic endeavor, the goal of which is to produce useful information. It’s likely that Winton will lose money on the project, as it pays dividends to scientists who correctly predict the future.
“With a prediction market, getting the information is the primary objective,” said Mark Roulston, the scientist overseeing the climate prediction market.“There’s not necessarily a consensus on all the implications of climate change. The idea is have a benchmark which could track any emerging consensus.”
Other methods exist for determining what scientists think about climate change. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) aggregates the finding of researchers from around the world to estimate future temperatures under different emissions scenarios. But the IPCC doesn’t generate forecasts. Rather, it provides a road map of the future, showing how the choices we make today are likely to shape the climate in the decades to come.

Hurricane Irene, 2011. CREDIT: Pixabay

Roulston certainly isn’t the first scientist to suggest people should bet on climate change. Last year, Bill Nye bet climate-denying meteorologist Joe Bastardi $20,000 that 2016 would be one the ten warmest years on record. Bastardi turned down the offer. Too bad for Nye — 2016 clocked in as the hottest year ever recorded.
University of New Mexico physicist Mark Boslough has repeatedly challenged climate deniers to bets on near-term warming of the climate, but no one has taken him up on the offer. Other scientists have had more success turning climate predictions into cold, hard cash, and they have encouraged others to do the same.

The Long Now Foundation has created a forum for anyone to make bets on the future, though there are no climate bets posted at the moment. Some wagers are rather interesting — like the bet that the population of Earth would decline over the next half-century. Others are more frivolous. One man wagered the Large Hadron Collider would destroy the Earth by 2018. If he wins the $1,000 bet, he will most assuredly be dead.
Money, however, is a measure of seriousness. It is hard to doubt the convictions of scientists willing to wager on the future of the planet. This fact may make Winton’s climate prediction market a useful tool for persuading business leaders who are on the fence about climate change. Scientists willing to bet on the climate are unlikely to misrepresent what they think.
Winton believes the climate prediction market could make meaningful forecasts that account for predicted policy shifts or technological breakthroughs. The market may predict the rise in temperature will continue unchecked, or it may predict that nations take the steps necessary to avert catastrophic climate change.
Someday, the climate prediction market may offer a way to evaluate the credibility of scientists. Scientists who take part in the prediction market may be more credible by being willing bettors. The market will also allow the public to determine how the views of a particular scientist compare to those of her peers.
Winton’s founder, David Harding, studied theoretical physics at Cambridge and firmly believes in using the scientific method to guide his business decisions. The climate prediction market is an extension of that philosophy. Winton plans to open the market to climate scientists at universities later this year. Next year, it will expand the project to allow anyone in the United Kingdom to participate.

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