Utilizing the Dynamic Role of Objects to Enhance Cross-Cultural Climate Change Collaborations

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott E. Kalafatis ◽  
Julie C. Libarkin ◽  
Kyle Powys Whyte ◽  
Chris Caldwell
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Native American ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Research Effort ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Expert Elicitation ◽  
Boundary Object ◽  
Cultural Climate

Abstract Engagements between climate scientists and communities feature challenges but are also essential for successfully preparing for climate change. This is particularly true for indigenous peoples who are proactively responding to the threats that climate change poses by engaging in collaborations with climate decision-support organizations. The potential for risks and rewards associated with engagements like these makes developing tools for comprehensively, consistently, and equitably assessing cross-cultural climate collaborations a critical challenge. This paper describes a multicultural team’s efforts to develop a survey that can assess collaborations between Native American tribes in the United States and climate science organizations. In the process, the developing survey’s oscillations between acting as a boundary object and acting as an epistemic object in the project revealed common ground as well as existing differences across the cultural, disciplinary, and professional divides involved. Delphi expert elicitation was shown to be an effective approach for negotiating a cross-cultural research effort like this one because of its ability to establish consensus while delineating gaps. This experience highlights that assessing cross-cultural climate collaborations requires that both researchers and the tools that they use have the capacity to identify both common ground and distinctions between climate scientists and the communities with which they collaborate.

scholarly journals Estimating economic damage from climate change in the United States

Science ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 356 (6345) ◽  
pp. 1362-1369 ◽  
Author(s):  
Solomon Hsiang ◽  
Robert Kopp ◽  
Amir Jina ◽  
James Rising ◽  
Michael Delgado ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Economic Damage ◽  
Global Mean Temperature ◽  
Flexible Architecture ◽  
Econometric Analyses ◽  
Business As Usual

Estimates of climate change damage are central to the design of climate policies. Here, we develop a flexible architecture for computing damages that integrates climate science, econometric analyses, and process models. We use this approach to construct spatially explicit, probabilistic, and empirically derived estimates of economic damage in the United States from climate change. The combined value of market and nonmarket damage across analyzed sectors—agriculture, crime, coastal storms, energy, human mortality, and labor—increases quadratically in global mean temperature, costing roughly 1.2% of gross domestic product per +1°C on average. Importantly, risk is distributed unequally across locations, generating a large transfer of value northward and westward that increases economic inequality. By the late 21st century, the poorest third of counties are projected to experience damages between 2 and 20% of county income (90% chance) under business-as-usual emissions (Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5).

scholarly journals Community Forests Prepare for Climate Change

Eos ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Courtney Peterson ◽  
Leslie Brandt ◽  
Emile Elias ◽  
Sarah Hurteau
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Tree Planting ◽  
Community Forests ◽  
Urban Tree

Cities across the United States are feeling the heat as they struggle to integrate climate science into on-the-ground decisionmaking regarding urban tree planting and management.

scholarly journals Experiential Learning Processes Informing Climate Change Decision Support

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 681-694
Author(s):  
Scott E. Kalafatis ◽  
Jasmine Neosh ◽  
Julie C. Libarkin ◽  
Kyle Powys Whyte ◽  
Chris Caldwell
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Native American ◽  
Decision Support ◽  
Experiential Learning ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Learning By Doing ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Cultural Boundaries ◽  
The Right

Abstract Climate scientists are increasingly called upon to collaborate with policy makers to develop climate science–informed policy decisions. However, there are concerns that existing professional and cultural boundaries will remain persistent barriers to fulfilling the potential promise of these collaborations. The perception that scientists will be learning by doing while pursuing these efforts does little to assuage these concerns because more research is needed into how scientists actually learn to collaborate more effectively. Using interviews with 18 individuals identified by their peers as particularly successful participants in collaborations between Native American Tribes and climate science organizations, this paper offers suggested practices and examines learning processes underlying the development of these suggestions. The development of the list of suggested practices highlights the extent to which having the right attitude, taking the right actions, and cultivating the right processes are intertwined factors associated with success in these collaborations. Analysis of the learning processes underlying interviewees’ suggestions for suggested practices offered five sources of information that frequently led interviewees to reflect on their experiences and gain new knowledge from them. Despite these common trends, each interviewee described a reflection system that they had cultivated to continually monitor and enhance their work in collaborations that was personalized and distinctive from those the other interviewees used. Increased attention to these tailored reflection systems offers a path forward for understanding how experiential learning can most effectively enhance climate change decision support.

Communication on Climate Change and Energy Alternatives in the United States

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toby Bolsen ◽  
Matthew A. Shapiro
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Forthcoming Article ◽  
The Public ◽  
Scientific Consensus ◽  
The U.S

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science. Please check back later for the full article. Most of what people think about politics comes from information acquired via exposure to mass media. Media thus serve a vital role in democracy as a fundamental conduit of political information. Scholars study the factors that drive news coverage about political issues, including the rise of discourse on climate change and shifts in media coverage over time. Climate change first received sustained attention in the U.S. press in the late 1980s and early 1990s. As scientific consensus emerged on the issue, interest groups and other actors emerged who accentuated the inherent uncertainty of climate science as a way to cast doubt on the existence of scientific consensus. The politicization of climate science has resulted in uncertainty among the public about its existence, anxiety about the effects of a fundamental transformation of U.S. energy systems, and support for the status quo in terms of the use of traditional energy sources. Media coverage often magnified the voices of contrarian scientists and skeptics because journalistic norms provided equal space to all sides, a semblance of false balance in news coverage that has persisted through the mid 2000s. By this time, the U.S. public had fractured along partisan lines due to rhetoric employed to generate support by elites. Media fragmentation and the rise of partisan news outlets further contributed to polarization, especially given the tendency of individuals to seek political information about climate change from trusted and credible sources. More recently, new media has come to play an increasingly significant role in communicating information on climate change to the public. Ultimately, there is a need for knowledge-based journalism in communicating climate change and energy alternatives to all segments of the U.S. public, but doing this effectively requires engagement with a broader audience in the debate over how best to address climate change. “Honest brokers” must be referenced in the media as they are best equipped to discuss the issue with citizens of different political identities and cultural worldviews. The success of collective efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change requires not only scientific consensus but the ability to communicate the science in a way that generates greater consensus among the public.

scholarly journals Do No Harm: A Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Cultural Climate Ethics

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Casey Rentmeester
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Ethical Issue ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Climate Ethics ◽  
Do No Harm ◽  
Cultural Climate

Anthropogenic climate change has become a hot button issue in the scientific, economic, political, and ethical sectors. While the science behind climate change is clear, responses in the economic and political realms have been unfulfilling. On the economic front, companies have marketed themselves as pioneers in the quest to go green while simultaneously engaging in environmentally destructive practices and on the political front, politicians have failed to make any significant global progress. I argue that climate change needs to be framed as an ethical issue to make serious progress towards the path to a sustainable human civilization. In an effort to motivate the urgency needed to confront climate change, I argue that climate change seriously affects human beings living here and now, and if one cares about unnecessarily harming fellow innocent living human beings, then one should care about one’s own environmental impact related to climate change. Since this argument does not depend upon any specific philosophical, religious, or ethical tradition but applies regardless of one’s particular background, I hope to induce genuine concern among all human beings regarding this issue.

Journalistic Depictions of Uncertainty about Climate Change

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Painter
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
New Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Many

Media research has historically concentrated on the many uncertainties in climate science either as a dominant discourse in media treatments measured by various forms of quantitative and qualitative content analysis or as the presence of skepticism, in its various manifestations, in political discourse and media coverage. More research is needed to assess the drivers of such skepticism in the media, the changing nature of skeptical discourse in some countries, and important country differences as to the prevalence of skepticism in political debate and media coverage. For example, why are challenges to mainstream climate science common in some Anglophone countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia but not in other Western nations? As the revolution in news consumption via new players and platforms causes an increasingly fragmented media landscape, there are significant gaps in understanding where, why, and how skepticism appears. In particular, we do not know enough about the ways new media players depict the uncertainties around climate science and how this may differ from previous coverage in traditional and mainstream news media. We also do not know how their emphasis on visual content affects audience understanding of climate change.

scholarly journals The Prevalence and Rationale for Presenting an Opposing Viewpoint in Climate Change Reporting: Findings from a U.S. National Survey of TV Weathercasters

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin M. F. Timm ◽  
Edward W. Maibach ◽  
Maxwell Boykoff ◽  
Teresa A. Myers ◽  
Melissa A. Broeckelman-Post
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Public Perception ◽  
Response Rate ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Weight Of Evidence ◽  
Equal Weight ◽  
Reporting Practices ◽  
Differences Of Opinion

AbstractThe journalistic norm of balance has been described as the practice of giving equal weight to different sides of a story; false balance is balanced reporting when the weight of evidence strongly favors one side over others—for example, the reality of human-caused climate change. False balance is problematic because it skews public perception of expert agreement. Through formative interviews and a survey of American weathercasters about climate change reporting, we found that objectivity and balance—topics that have frequently been studied with environmental journalists—are also relevant to understanding climate change reporting among weathercasters. Questions about the practice of and reasons for presenting an opposing viewpoint when reporting on climate change were included in a 2017 census survey of weathercasters working in the United States (N = 480; response rate = 22%). When reporting on climate change, 35% of weathercasters present an opposing viewpoint “always” or “most of the time.” Their rationale for reporting opposing viewpoints included the journalistic norms of objectivity and balanced reporting (53%), their perceived uncertainty of climate science (21%), to acknowledge differences of opinion (17%), to maintain credibility (14%), and to strengthen the story (7%). These findings show that climate change reporting from weathercasters sometimes includes opposing viewpoints, and possibly a false balance, but further research is necessary. Moreover, prior research has shown that the climate reporting practices among weathercasters are evolving rapidly and so the problem of false-balance reporting may already be self-correcting.

ICNet Global: Infrastructure and Climate Networks of Networks

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Stoner ◽  
Jennifer Jacobs ◽  
Jo Sias ◽  
Gordon Airey ◽  
Katharine Hayhoe
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Policy Research ◽  
Climate Extremes ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Transportation Infrastructure ◽  
Social Infrastructure ◽  
Science And Policy ◽  
The World

<p>Climate change is already impacting the performance and integrity of transportation infrastructure around the world and is anticipated to have serious ramifications for infrastructure safety, environmental sustainability, economic vitality, mobility and system reliability. These impacts will disproportionately affect vulnerable populations and urban locations as well as compromising the resilience of the larger interconnected physical, cyber, and social infrastructure networks. For this reason, increasing the resilience of transportation infrastructure to current and future weather and climate extremes is a global priority.</p><p>The complexity of this challenge requires a convergence approach to foster collaboration and innovation among technically and socially diverse researchers and practitioners. The multi-institutional <strong>ICNet Global</strong> Network of Networks unites domestic and international research and practice networks to facilitate integrated engineering, climate science, and policy research to advance the development of resilient transportation infrastructure and systems. ICNet Globalcollaborators represent networks based in Korea, Europe, United Kingdom, and the United States and link researchers at the forefront of scientific, engineering, and policy research frontiers, drawing expertise from many disciplines and nations to share and enhance best practices for transportation resilience.</p><p><strong>ICNet Global’s</strong> long-term mission is to prepare the world’s existing and future transportation infrastructure for a changing climate. To that end, we are working to: (1) build a network of existing research networks who are tackling the challenges climate change poses to transportation infrastructure; (2) establish a common base-level knowledge, capacity, and vision to support the convergence of novel and diverse ideas, approaches, and technologies for creating climate resilient transportation infrastructure; and (3) grow the next generation of critical and diverse thinkers with the expertise to address and solve climate-related infrastructure challenges. Although just one year into our work, and dispite challenges represented by COVID-19, we have surveyed over 100 potential members worldwide to learn about fields of interest and held five productive virtual workshops to discuss current research, how to encorporate climate change information into engineering education, and how practitioners are currently including climate information into planning and design. In this presentation we highlight our goals and recent accomplishments while laying out future plans and inviting interested researchers and practitioners to join us.</p>

scholarly journals Climate Change and Economics 101: Teaching the Greatest Market Failure

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 1340 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Liu ◽  
Yoram Bauman ◽  
Yating Chuang
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Market Failure ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Emission Trading ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Small Subset ◽  
Pigouvian Tax

In this paper, we explore how principles of economics courses prepare undergraduate students to think about climate change. We collected a comprehensive list of twenty-seven introductory economics textbooks in the United States and analyzed their coverage of climate change. Our finding shows that not all texts touch upon climate science, and a small subset deviates from the scientific consensus on the human causes of climate change. All texts conceptualize climate change as a problem of carbon emission’s negative externalities and the preferred market-based solutions, such as emission trading and Pigouvian tax. Besides externality, some authors include various useful points of engagement through GDP (Gross domestic product) accounting, economic growth, collective action problems, cost–benefit analysis, and global inequality. In the end, we provide suggestions for economics educators to innovate the current introductory curriculum to better cope with the climate crisis.

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