scholarly journals Climate Dialog, Climate Action: Can Democracy Do the Job?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred Young Phillips ◽  
LaVonne Reimer ◽  
Rebecca Turner
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Psychological Mechanisms ◽  
Ipcc Report ◽  
Climate Action

The latest IPCC report forcefully states that immediate, decisive, and large-scale actions are needed to avert climate catastrophe. This essay presumes that democratic governments are best and most desirably positioned to take these actions. Yet in the countries most pivotal to global climate, significant voting blocs are uninterested in environmental issues. The essay urges adding bottom-up dialog between environmental and anti-environmental voters, to current and future top-down technocratic “solutions.” To make this combination result in a unified pro-environment electorate, we must understand: religious objections to environmentalism; the capital-vs.-knowledge strife that slows polluting corporations’ green transitions; and the psychological mechanisms that can make inter-group dialog fruitful.

scholarly journals Estimating CO2 Emissions from Large Scale Coal-Fired Power Plants Using OCO-2 Observations and Emission Inventories

Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 811
Author(s):  
Yaqin Hu ◽  
Yusheng Shi
Keyword(s):  
Power Plant ◽  
Co2 Emissions ◽  
Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Gaussian Model ◽  
Point Sources ◽  
Emission Inventories ◽  
Bottom Up

The concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) has increased rapidly worldwide, aggravating the global greenhouse effect, and coal-fired power plants are one of the biggest contributors of greenhouse gas emissions in China. However, efficient methods that can quantify CO2 emissions from individual coal-fired power plants with high accuracy are needed. In this study, we estimated the CO2 emissions of large-scale coal-fired power plants using Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite data based on remote sensing inversions and bottom-up methods. First, we mapped the distribution of coal-fired power plants, displaying the total installed capacity, and identified two appropriate targets, the Waigaoqiao and Qinbei power plants in Shanghai and Henan, respectively. Then, an improved Gaussian plume model method was applied for CO2 emission estimations, with input parameters including the geographic coordinates of point sources, wind vectors from the atmospheric reanalysis of the global climate, and OCO-2 observations. The application of the Gaussian model was improved by using wind data with higher temporal and spatial resolutions, employing the physically based unit conversion method, and interpolating OCO-2 observations into different resolutions. Consequently, CO2 emissions were estimated to be 23.06 ± 2.82 (95% CI) Mt/yr using the Gaussian model and 16.28 Mt/yr using the bottom-up method for the Waigaoqiao Power Plant, and 14.58 ± 3.37 (95% CI) and 14.08 Mt/yr for the Qinbei Power Plant, respectively. These estimates were compared with three standard databases for validation: the Carbon Monitoring for Action database, the China coal-fired Power Plant Emissions Database, and the Carbon Brief database. The comparison found that previous emission inventories spanning different time frames might have overestimated the CO2 emissions of one of two Chinese power plants on the two days that the measurements were made. Our study contributes to quantifying CO2 emissions from point sources and helps in advancing satellite-based monitoring techniques of emission sources in the future; this helps in reducing errors due to human intervention in bottom-up statistical methods.

“Forward to David the Builder!” Georgia's (re)turn to language-centered nationalism

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 522-542 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christofer Berglund
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The State ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
The Past ◽  
Building Project ◽  
The Rose ◽  
State Language

After the Rose Revolution, President Saakashvili tried to move away from the exclusionary nationalism of the past, which had poisoned relations between Georgians and their Armenian and Azerbaijani compatriots. His government instead sought to foster an inclusionary nationalism, wherein belonging was contingent upon speaking the state language and all Georgian speakers, irrespective of origin, were to be equals. This article examines this nation-building project from a top-down and bottom-up lens. I first argue that state officials took rigorous steps to signal that Georgian-speaking minorities were part of the national fabric, but failed to abolish religious and historical barriers to their inclusion. I next utilize a large-scale, matched-guise experiment (n= 792) to explore if adolescent Georgians ostracize Georgian-speaking minorities or embrace them as their peers. I find that the upcoming generation of Georgians harbor attitudes in line with Saakashvili's language-centered nationalism, and that current Georgian nationalism therefore is more inclusionary than previous research, or Georgia's tumultuous past, would lead us to believe.

scholarly journals Emissions of Carbon Tetrachloride (CCl<sub>4</sub>) from Europe

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Graziosi ◽  
Jgor Arduini ◽  
Paolo Bonasoni ◽  
Francesco Furlani ◽  
Umberto Giostra ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Tetrachloride ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Stratospheric Ozone ◽  
Montreal Protocol ◽  
Scale Production ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Significant Discrepancy ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Atmospheric Observations ◽  
Global Emissions

Abstract. Carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) is a long-lived radiatively-active compound able to destroy stratospheric ozone. Due to its inclusion in the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, the last two decades have seen a sharp decrease in its large scale emissive use with a consequent decline of its atmospheric mole fractions. However, the Montreal Protocol restrictions do not apply to the use of carbon tetrachloride as feedstock for the production of other chemicals, implying the risk of fugitive emissions from the industry sector. The occurrence of such unintended emissions is suggested by a significant discrepancy between global emissions as derived by reported production and feedstock usage (bottom-up emissions), and those based on atmospheric observations (top-down emissions). In order to better constrain the atmospheric budget of carbon tetrachloride, several studies based on a combination of atmospheric observations and inverse modelling have been conducted in recent years in various regions of the world. This study is focused on the European scale and based on long-term high-frequency observations at three European sites, combined with a Bayesian inversion methodology. We estimated that average European emissions for 2006–2014 were 2.3 (± 0.8) Gg yr−1, with an average decreasing trend of 7.3 % per year. Our analysis identified France as the main source of emissions over the whole study period, with an average contribution to total European emissions of 25 %. The inversion was also able to allow the localisation of emission "hot-spots" in the domain, with major source areas in Southern France, Central England (UK) and Benelux (Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg), where most of industrial scale production of basic organic chemicals are located. According to our results, European emissions correspond to 4.0 % of global emissions for 2006–2012. Together with other regional studies, our results allow a better constraint of the global budget of carbon tetrachloride and a better quantification of the gap between top-down and bottom-up estimates.

scholarly journals Assessment of the Effectiveness of Global Climate Policies Using Coupled Bottom-Up and Top-Down Models

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maryse Labriet ◽  
Laurent Drouet ◽  
Marc Vielle ◽  
Richard Loulou ◽  
Amit Kanudia ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Global Climate ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Climate Policies

Large scale and cost effective generation of 3D self-supporting oxide nanowire architectures by a top-down and bottom-up combined approach

RSC Advances ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (51) ◽  
pp. 45923-45930 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peixun Fan ◽  
Minlin Zhong ◽  
Benfeng Bai ◽  
Guofan Jin ◽  
Hongjun Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Combined Approach ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Effective Generation

Large-scale and cost-effective generation of desired 3D self-supporting macro–micronano-nanowire architectures is realized by a top-down and bottom-up combined approach.

scholarly journals The Evolution of the UNFCCC

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 343-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Kuyper ◽  
Heike Schroeder ◽  
Björn-Ola Linnér
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Kyoto Protocol ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Industrial Country ◽  
Paris Agreement ◽  
Voluntary Contributions ◽  
Top Down ◽  
United Nations Framework Convention ◽  
Climate Action

This article takes stock of the evolution of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) through the prism of three recent shifts: the move away from targeting industrial country emissions in a legally binding manner under the Kyoto Protocol to mandating voluntary contributions from all countries under the Paris Agreement; the shift from the top-down Kyoto architecture to the hybrid Paris outcome; and the broadening out from a mitigation focus under Kyoto to a triple goal comprising mitigation, adaptation, and finance under Paris. This review discusses the implications of these processes for the effectiveness, efficiency, and equity of the UNFCCC's institutional and operational settings for meeting the convention's objectives. It ends by sketching three potential scenarios facing the UNFCCC as it seeks to coordinate the Paris Agreement and its relationship to the wider landscape of global climate action.

Seasonal and Long-Term Changes to Pavement Life Caused by Rising Temperatures from Climate Change

2019 ◽  
Vol 2673 (6) ◽  
pp. 267-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jayne F. Knott ◽  
Jo E. Sias ◽  
Eshan V. Dave ◽  
Jennifer M. Jacobs
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Temperature Rise ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Global Climate Models ◽  
Climate Change Scenarios ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Pavement Damage ◽  
The Impact

Pavements are vulnerable to reduced life with climate-change-induced temperature rise. Greenhouse gas emissions have caused an increase in global temperatures since the mid-20th century and the warming is projected to accelerate. Many studies have characterized this risk with a top-down approach in which climate-change scenarios are chosen and applied to predict pavement-life reduction. This approach is useful in identifying possible pavement futures but may miss short-term or seasonal pavement-response trends that are essential for adaptation planning. A bottom-up approach focuses on a pavement’s response to incremental temperature change resulting in a more complete understanding of temperature-induced pavement damage. In this study, a hybrid bottom-up/top-down approach was used to quantify the impact of changing pavement seasons and temperatures on pavement life with incremental temperature rise from 0 to 5°C at a site in coastal New Hampshire. Changes in season length, seasonal average temperatures, and temperature-dependent resilient modulus were used in layered-elastic analysis to simulate the pavement’s response to temperature rise. Projected temperature rise from downscaled global climate models was then superimposed on the results to determine the timing of the effects. The winter pavement season is projected to end by mid-century, replaced by a lengthening fall season. Seasonal pavement damage, currently dominated by the late spring and summer seasons, is projected to be distributed more evenly throughout the year as temperatures rise. A 7% to 32% increase in the asphalt-layer thickness is recommended to protect the base and subgrade with rising temperatures from early century to late-mid-century.

Distributional semantics insights on agentive suffix rivalry in French

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 354-391
Author(s):  
Richard Huyghe ◽  
Marine Wauquier
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Statistical Analyses ◽  
Distributional Semantics ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Distributional Properties ◽  
Large Scale Study ◽  
New Perspective

The formation of French agent nouns (ANs) involves a large variety of morphological constructions, and particularly of suffixes. In this study, we focus on the semantic counterpart of agentive suffix diversity and investigate whether the morphological variety of ANs correlates with different agentive subtypes. We adopt a distributional semantics approach and combine manual, computational and statistical analyses applied to French ANs ending in -aire, -ant, -eur, -ien, -ier and -iste. Our methodology allows for a large-scale study of ANs and involves both top-down and bottom-up procedures. We first characterize agentive suffixes with respect to their morphosemantic and distributional properties, outlining their specificities and similarities. Then we automatically cluster ANs into distributionally relevant subsets and examine their properties. Based on quantitative analysis, our study provides a new perspective on agentive suffix rivalry in French that both confirms existing claims and sheds light on previously unseen phenomena.

Construction of a silicon-based solid state quantum computer

2001 ◽  
Vol 1 (Special) ◽  
pp. 82-95
Author(s):  
A.S. Dzurak ◽  
M.Y. Simmons ◽  
A.R. Hamilton ◽  
R.G. Clark ◽  
R. Brenner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Quantum Computer ◽  
Atomic Scale ◽  
Single Electron Transistor ◽  
Epitaxial Silicon ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Near Term ◽  
Silicon Based ◽  
Coincidence Measurements

We discuss progress towards the fabrication and demonstration of a prototype silicon-based quantum computer. The devices are based on a precise array of 31P dopants embedded in 28Si. Fabrication is being pursued via two complementary pathways – a ‘top-down’ approach for near-term production of few-qubit demonstration devices and a ‘bottom-up’ approach for large-scale qubit arrays. The ‘top-down’ approach employs ion implantation through a multi-layer resist structure which serves to accurately register the donors to metal control gates and single-electron transistor (SET) read-out devices. In contrast the ‘bottom-up’ approach uses STM lithography and epitaxial silicon overgrowth to construct devices at an atomic scale. Techniques for qubit read-out, which utilise coincidence measurements on novel twin-SET devices, are also presented.

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