scholarly journals Telling the boiling frog what he needs to know: why climate change risks should be plotted as probability over time

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Sharpe
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Risk Assessment ◽  
First Principles ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Climate Change Risks ◽  
Science Community ◽  
Over Time

Abstract. Humanity's situation with respect to climate change is sometimes compared to that of a frog in a slowly-boiling pot of water, meaning that change will happen too gradually for us to appreciate the likelihood of catastrophe and act before it is too late. I argue that the scientific community is not yet telling the boiling frog what he needs to know. I use a review of the figures included in two reports of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change to show that much of the climate science communicated to policymakers is presented in the form of projections of what is most likely to occur, as a function of time (equivalent to: in 5 minutes' time, the water you are sitting in will be two degrees warmer). I argue from first principles that a more appropriate means of assessing and communicating the risks of climate change would be to produce assessments of the likelihood of crossing non-arbitrary thresholds of impact, as a function of time (equivalent to: the probability of you being boiled to death will be 1% in five minutes' time, rising to 100% in twenty minutes' time if you don't jump out of the pot). This would be consistent with approaches to risk assessment in fields such as insurance, engineering, and health and safety. Importantly, it would ensure decision-makers were informed of the biggest risks, and hence of the strongest reasons to act. I suggest ways in which the science community could contribute to promoting this approach, taking into account its inherent need for cross-disciplinary research and for engagement with decision-makers before the research is conducted, instead of afterwards.

scholarly journals Telling the boiling frog what he needs to know: why climate change risks should be plotted as probability over time

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Sharpe
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
First Principles ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Climate Change Risks ◽  
Science Community ◽  
Over Time

Abstract. Humanity's situation with respect to climate change is sometimes compared to that of a frog in a slowly boiling pot of water, meaning that change will happen too gradually for us to appreciate the likelihood of catastrophe and act before it is too late. I argue that the scientific community is not yet telling the boiling frog what he needs to know. I use a review of the figures included in two reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to show that much of the climate science communicated to policymakers is presented in the form of projections of what is most likely to occur, as a function of time (equivalent to the following statement: in 5 min time, the water you are sitting in will be 2 ∘C warmer). I argue from first principles that a more appropriate means of assessing and communicating the risks of climate change would be to produce assessments of the likelihood of crossing non-arbitrary thresholds of impact, as a function of time (equivalent to the following statement: the probability of you being boiled to death will be 1 % in 5 min time, rising to 100 % in 20 min time if you do not jump out of the pot). This would be consistent with approaches to risk assessment in fields such as insurance, engineering, and health and safety. Importantly, it would ensure that decision makers are informed of the biggest risks and hence of the strongest reasons to act. I suggest ways in which the science community could contribute to promoting this approach, taking into account its inherent need for cross-disciplinary research and for engagement with decision makers before the research is conducted instead of afterwards.

scholarly journals Climate Science Needs to Take Risk Assessment Much More Seriously

2019 ◽  
Vol 100 (9) ◽  
pp. 1637-1642 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rowan T. Sutton
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Climate Modeling ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Climate Research ◽  
Group I ◽  
Widespread View

AbstractFor decision-makers, climate change is a problem in risk assessment and risk management. It is, therefore, surprising that the needs and lessons of risk assessment have not featured more centrally in the consideration of priorities for physical climate science research, or in the Working Group I contributions to the major assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This article considers the reasons, which include a widespread view that the job of physical climate science is to provide predictions and projections—with a focus on likelihood rather than risk—and that risk assessment is a job for others. This view, it is argued, is incorrect. There is an urgent need for physical climate science to take the needs of risk assessment much more seriously. The challenge of meeting this need has important implications for priorities in climate research, climate modeling, and climate assessments.

scholarly journals Climate Change, Uncertainty and Policy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeroen Hopster
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Deep Uncertainty ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Moral Uncertainty ◽  
Climate Economics ◽  
Climate Change Uncertainty ◽  
Management Perspective ◽  
Climate Uncertainty

While the foundations of climate science and ethics are well established, fine-grained climate predictions, as well as policy-decisions, are beset with uncertainties. This chapter maps climate uncertainties and classifies them as to their ground, extent and location. A typology of uncertainty is presented, centered along the axes of scientific and moral uncertainty. This typology is illustrated with paradigmatic examples of uncertainty in climate science, climate ethics and climate economics. Subsequently, the chapter discusses the IPCC’s preferred way of representing uncertainties and evaluates its strengths and weaknesses from a risk management perspective. Three general strategies for decision-makers to cope with climate uncertainty are outlined, the usefulness of which largely depends on whether or not decision-makers find themselves in a context of deep uncertainty. The chapter concludes by offering two recommendations to ease the work of policymakers, faced with the various uncertainties engrained in climate discourse.

Governance of City Resilience

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 70-93
Author(s):  
Graham Colclough ◽  
Andoni González-Gómez ◽  
Marc Velasco ◽  
John Stevens ◽  
Patrick Goodey ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Common Language ◽  
Urban Populations ◽  
City Hall ◽  
Climate Change Risks ◽  
Important Means ◽  
Substantial Change

Cities face a growing set of complex interdependent challenges. Increasing urban populations, ageing infrastructure, and uncertainties regarding the scale and manifestation of variety of contemporary challenges all highlight the increasing pressures facing decision makers to make substantial change. The influence of City Hall to convene, engage and involve, guide and steer, provide or liberate resources, demonstrate, and decide are all important means by which a city can accelerate and strengthen how it mitigates risks and rebounds from adverse situations better. This paper explores the experiences of cities involved in the RESCCUE project—Bristol, Barcelona, and Lisbon—in addressing climate change risks within pre-existing governance frameworks. The principal conclusion is that there is an absence of a common language and organising framework to strengthen the governance of city resilience, and to that end, the authors offer an emerging framework.

scholarly journals A Survey Instrument to Measure Skeptics’ (Dis)Trust in Climate Science

Climate ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Dilshani Sarathchandra ◽  
Kristin Haltinner
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Pacific Northwest ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Survey Design ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Survey Instrument ◽  
Scientific Authority ◽  
Survey Instruments ◽  
Science Community ◽  
Using Data

Existing survey instruments of trust in science and scientists that focus on the general public are potentially insufficient to assess climate skeptics’ perspectives towards climate science. They may miss important aspects of climate science about which skeptics raise concerns, and may not accurately measure climate skeptics’ distrust in climatology. We introduce a new survey instrument developed using data gathered from interviewing 33 self-identified climate change skeptics in Idaho. The survey items capture skeptics’ beliefs regarding climate scientists’ trustworthiness and credibility, their deference to scientific authority, and their perceptions of alienation from the climate science community. We validate our survey instrument using data from an online survey administered to 1000 residents in the U.S. Pacific Northwest who are skeptical of climate change. By employing standard survey design principles, we demonstrate how our new (dis)trust in climate science instrument performs in tandem with well-known predictors of science attitudes and pro-environmentalism.

scholarly journals Climate change risk assessment for the Republic of Korea: developing a systematic assessment methodology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Young-Il Song ◽  
Seunghan Lee
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Adaptive Capacity ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
National Level ◽  
Assessment Process ◽  
Adaptation Policy ◽  
Risk Assessment Process ◽  
Systematic Assessment ◽  
Climate Change Risks

AbstractClimate change risks have become a major concern of climate change adaptation, and a systematic risk assessment is required as the first step as well as a key principle of national adaptation policy processes. Although many countries conducted risk assessments, a debate over a systematic assessment process continues, and results of the risk assessment provide limited information to making adaptation policies. Based on a case study of South Korea, this research aims to establish a national-level risk assessment process which includes systematic methodologies given the current limited time/resource and insufficient climate change information. A four-step risk assessment process is proposed: (1) collecting scientific evidence, (2) making list of preliminary risks, (3) making lists of risks and prioritising the risks, (4) categorising the risks. Enough scientific evidence and data about climate change risks of Korea were retained through first two steps, and three components of risk (hazard, exposure, vulnerability) are systematically involved by assessing the magnitude and adaptive capacity of risks. As results of the risks assessment, 93 national-level climate change risks of Korea are identified, and most high priorities in risks have high risk magnitude but low adaptive capacity. This research provided insights for direction of national adaptation policy of each sector by categorising the risks into four categories.

scholarly journals Economic Risk Assessment of Climate Change at the Urban Scale: The Case of Cape Town, South Africa

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin de Wit ◽  
Jonty Rawlins ◽  
Belynda Petrie
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Risk Assessment ◽  
At Risk ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Climate Response ◽  
Economic Risk ◽  
Capital At Risk ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Economic Risks

Estimating the economic risks of climate shocks and climate stressors on spatially heterogeneous cities over time remain highly challenging. The purpose of this paper is to present a practical methodology to assess the economic risks of climate change in developing cities to inform spatially sensitive municipal climate response strategies. Building on a capital-based framework (CBF), spatially disaggregated baseline and future scenario scores for economic wealth and its exposure to climate change are developed for six different classes of capital and across 77 major suburbs in Cape Town, South Africa. Capital-at-risk was calculated by combining relative exposure and capital scores across different scenarios and with population impacted plotted against the major suburbs and the city’s 8 main planning districts. The economic risk assessment presented here provides a generic approach to assist investment planning and the implementation of adaptation options through an enhanced understanding of relative levels of capital endowment vis-à-vis relative levels of exposure to climate-related hazards over time. An informed climate response strategy in spatially heterogeneous cities need to include spatially sensitive estimates on capital-at-risk and populations disproportionally impacted by climate exposure over time. The economic risk assessment approach presented here helps in advancing to such a goal.

Understanding climate-related risks to infrastructure in Chinese cities, Climate Risk Assessment of Infrastructure Tool

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Sunyer ◽  
Louise Parry ◽  
Oliver Pritchard ◽  
Harriet Obrien ◽  
Astrid Kagan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Future Climate ◽  
Climate Risk ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Infrastructure Systems ◽  
Climate Risks ◽  
Resilient Infrastructure

<p>Climate resilient infrastructure is essential for the safety, wellbeing, sustainability and economic prosperity of cities. An understanding of current and future climate risks is an essential consideration for the planning, design, delivery and management of new and existing resilient infrastructure systems. While there is a growing number of tools which focus on assessing specific components of climate risk there is a need for tools which help bridge the gap between climate science, resilience practitioners, infrastructure owners and policy makers.</p><p>The Climate Risk Infrastructure Assessment Tool developed within the Climate Science for Service Partnership China (CSSP China) aims to help planners and policy-makers understand how climate change may impact a city’s infrastructure systems. CSSP China seeks to bring together climate practitioners in China and the UK, and to forge links between climate scientists and industry practitioners to develop practical tools that translate the science into valuable insights for policymaking, planning and design. The development of this tools builds on earlier work carried out with the Shanghai Met Service and the British Embassy in Beijing to develop a qualitative tool to guide the assessment of climate risks for infrastructure.</p><p>The tool guides the user through a semi-quantitative climate risk assessment for a section of an infrastructure system. At present it uses ensemble data from global climate models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) to estimate and visualise future climate change projections helping cities understand the current and future likelihood of weather events. The tool then enables cities to assess the overall impact of severe weather on infrastructure by determining its vulnerability and criticality. Risk is estimated as a combination of event likelihood and impact. For key risks, guidance on implementing appropriate adaptation measures is provided to support planners and policy-makers to consider what action is needed.</p>

The Power of Narrative

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raul P. Lejano ◽  
Shondel J. Nero
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Genetic Code ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Climate Skepticism ◽  
Climate Change Science ◽  
Over Time

Narrative is the stuff of community. The Power of Narrative embarks on a quest to understand how narrative works in taking an inchoate group of individuals and turning it into a powerful social movement. To understand the force of narrative, the authors examine the particular phenomenon of climate skepticism. Somehow, the narrative of climate skepticism has been able to forge a movement and stake a challenge to the hegemony of the larger community of scientists on what is ostensibly a matter of science. The book asks: How is this achieved? What is the narrative of climate skepticism, and how has it evolved over time and diffused from place to place? Is it possible that this narrative shares with other issue narratives an underlying genetic code of sorts, a story that is more fundamental than all of these? How has the climate skeptical narrative contended with its other, which is the narrative-network of climate change science, and forged its own social movement? The outcome of this struggle between climate science and its denial has implications for society that go far beyond climatology. Using narrative and discourse analysis, the authors demonstrate how the narrative lens allows us unique insights into these questions. The book takes the reader on a journey, across times and places and social realms; throughout, we see the power of narrative at work, making believers, or skeptics, of us all.

scholarly journals Climate for women in climate science: Women scientists and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (9) ◽  
pp. 2060-2065 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Gay-Antaki ◽  
Diana Liverman
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Women Scientists ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Community Benefits ◽  
Full Participation ◽  
Global North ◽  
Disciplinary Affiliation ◽  
Disproportionate Number ◽  
Over Time

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an authoritative and influential source of reports on climate change. The lead authors of IPCC reports include scientists from around the world, but questions have been raised about the dominance of specific disciplines in the report and the disproportionate number of scholars from the Global North. In this paper, we analyze the as-yet-unexamined issue of gender and IPCC authorship, looking at changes in gender balance over time and analyzing women’s views about their experience and barriers to full participation, not only as women but also at the intersection of nationality, race, command of English, and discipline. Over time, we show that the proportion of female IPCC authors has seen a modest increase from less than 5% in 1990 to more than 20% in the most recent assessment reports. Based on responses from over 100 women IPCC authors, we find that many women report a positive experience in the way in which they are treated and in their ability to influence the report, although others report that some women were poorly represented and heard. We suggest that an intersectional lens is important: not all women experience the same obstacles: they face multiple and diverse barriers associated with social identifiers such as race, nationality, command of English, and disciplinary affiliation. The scientific community benefits from including all scientists, including women and those from the Global South. This paper documents barriers to participation and identifies opportunities to diversify climate science.

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