This story contains spoilers for The Last of Us Season 1, Episode 7.
An abandoned mall at the end of the world is not a pretty sight. Stores, looted and left in disarray, offer only broken mannequins and empty shelves. Glass shards blanket the floors. Fluorescent bulbs flicker. A place once known as a center of commerce has become a dirt-strewn husk of its former self.
Yet when The Last of Us's teenage heroine, Ellie (played by Bella Ramsey), gazes upon one such building in the latest episode, she's entranced. Her face, bruised from a recent fistfight, lights up. Her eyes widen, and a small smile forms at the corners of her mouth. Long before she actually verbalizes it, she's clearly decided that this plaza is the greatest sight she's ever seen.
Like the drama's wonderfully poignant third episode, Sunday's installment, "Left Behind," follows an intimate, self-contained plot. In the present, Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie's journey to a lab that can study Ellie's immunity has come to a halt after Joel is hurt in an attack. Much of the hour instead chronicles a single evening that took place months before the two met, when Ellie and her best friend, Riley (Storm Reid), snuck out of the Boston quarantine zone. The episode thus delves into Ellie's backstory and how she experienced the kind of loss that instilled in her a potent fear of being alone.
But "Left Behind" isn't remarkable merely for filling in the blanks of Ellie's past. Rather, it's a quiet celebration of the world that once existed—a world the audience knows all too well and, the show posits, all too often takes for granted. In postapocalyptic stories, world building typically emphasizes the new reality: new vocabulary to learn, new systems of government to understand, new social norms to parse. The Last of Us has its share of this—the walking dead are not "zombies"; they're "infected"—but the series keeps a close eye, through Ellie, on what's been lost. Ellie's fondness for even a dilapidated shopping center offers a reminder of how simple pleasures can be as important as food and shelter. This ruined complex is meaningful not because it houses a sick collection of Halloween decorations, but because it's a monument to Ellie and Riley's friendship. Genuine human connection is rare enough in a normal world. For Ellie, who doesn't yet know of her immunity, it's a lifeline—which is why, after they're both bitten at the end of the episode, being with Riley for as long as she can is worth the cost of slowly losing her mind.
As Riley guides Ellie around the mall, she promises to show her "wonders." These turn out to be ordinary machines, including a photo booth, an arcade game, and a merry-go-round. Ellie has demonstrated a deep affection for cultural artifacts like these: She reads comic books, pins movie posters to her dorm-room walls, and listens to music through her Walkman as she jogs. Such objects may seem frivolous to others, but Ellie's delighted by them. When she spots the photo booth, she asks if it's a time machine. When she rides the carousel, she describes her plastic steed as "a magic horse." In Ellie's awe, The Last of Us, rather than assuming that humanity's worth saving, provides a compelling reason for doing so. Ellie is herself a "wonder," in other words: Yes, she's pivotal to the mission because she's genetically valuable, but she's also immensely capable of finding amusement and joy in what little she has. That capacity for imagination, the show argues, is a uniquely human quality that must be protected.
In its depiction of culture as essential to humanity, The Last of Us shares DNA with Station Eleven, another outstanding HBO adaptation (in its case, of a novel) set in a postapocalyptic landscape. But whereas the importance of art served as Station Eleven's focus, The Last of Us is more subtle, tracking art's ambient influence on its characters. In Episode 3, Frank (Murray Bartlett) paints portraits of Bill (Nick Offerman) that he proudly displays around their home. In Episode 5, the underground tunnels leading out of Kansas City are covered in colorful drawings, similar to the illustrations that Sam (Keivonn Woodard) made of superheroes while hiding out. And in Episode 6, the survivors living in the thriving Jackson settlement gather to watch a movie. The art shown in The Last of Us is also more lowbrow: Ellie cherishes her pun book, flips through a porn magazine she finds, and quotes from a series of comics with which she's obsessed. Portraits and pun books—these objects have significance because they help forge close bonds. They're expressions of care, as crucial as the thread Ellie finds to sew up Joel's wounds.
My colleague Ian Bogost wrote recently that turning The Last of Us into a television series revealed that "there just isn't that much to the story," not when you're now a viewer instead of a player concerned with getting Joel and Ellie past hordes of infected. I disagree. Sure, this episode included little forward momentum of the overarching plot, but that's the point: The show is not just about whether Joel and Ellie will save the world. It's about what is left to save, and why they should save it at all. As a TV series, the story now has room to meditate—on concepts as enormous and existential as the price of being human and caring for someone else, as well as on more minute details, such as the elegance of a working set of escalators in an abandoned mall. And just like Ellie when she first laid eyes on the structure, the show is finding many wonders to ponder—and to treasure.
TODAY
Two jewel-like planets will reach a close conjunction on 2 March before beginning to separate
As promised last week, the two brightest planets in the night sky, Jupiter and Venus, have been closing in on each another. This week, the two jewel-like planets will meet in a close conjunction on 2 March.
The chart shows the view looking west-south-west from London at 6pm GMT on 2 March. Venus will be the brighter of the two, becoming visible first as the sunlight drains from the sky. Jupiter's light will cut through the twilight next, gradually rising in brightness as the night gathers and the pair dip inexorably towards the horizon.
Continue reading…
Penny Chisholm picked up Nancy Hopkins in the cancer center an hour before their appointment with the dean on August 11, 1994. They walked across the street to collect Lisa Steiner and Mary-Lou Pardue in the biology department, then to the main campus to pick up JoAnne Stubbe and Sylvia Ceyer. The six MIT professors from the School of Science walked as a band across the shady expanse of Eastman Court, imagining that everyone must be watching them. It was ridiculous, Penny thought: here she was, a full professor, feeling as uncertain as a freshman on her first day of class.
They pulled open the heavy doors to Building 6 and began walking down the long, cool corridor. On a summer day, without the usual crush of students, they could hear their steps echo against the marble floors and the tall, painted cinder-block walls. No one said anything.
The dean's assistant showed them into his conference room. Nancy had always been curious to see it; this was where the Science Council argued over tenure decisions. It was a stately room, with high ceilings and wood paneling. Nancy's eyes went to the long polished-wood table that dominated the room. She thought of the opening scene of The Girls in the Balcony, which described when the newly formed Women's Caucus of the New York Timesmet with the publisher and other men of the newspaper's masthead across a 25-foot table, an obdurate, gleaming mahogany symbol of the 121-year-old institution the women were challenging. To the journalists in the book, it had seemed overpowering, "to go on as long as the eye could see." This table was smaller, Nancy thought, but no less daunting.
Someone had set out soft drinks, coffee, and cookies on a credenza next to the table. Above it was a large photograph, and Nancy could see that the other women's eyes had fixed on that. It was a picture of Robert Birgeneau, dean of the School of Science, and the school's five department heads. They were all men, as department heads had always been, and all grinning. One was wearing a tuxedo. They were holding their forefingers aloft to say, "We're number one!" Suddenly all Nancy could see of the room was the photograph. She felt sick. This had all been a bad idea. She remembered what Penny had said all summer: "We're not even on their radar screen."
The women had spent the past month meticulously preparing a proposal for the dean, asking him to form a committee to examine the data on space, salaries, resources, and teaching assignments to make sure that women were being treated fairly compared with men. The committee would meet with each woman on the faculty once a year to determine any problems, and then recommend ways the dean could solve them. Only 17 of the School of Science's 214 tenured faculty were women. Sixteen of them had signed a letter—polite, conciliatory, collaborative in tone—accompanying the proposal to the dean.
"We believe that discrimination becomes less likely when women are viewed as powerful, rather than weak, as valued, rather than tolerated by the Institute. The heart of the problem is that equal talent and accomplishment are viewed as unequal when seen through the eyes of prejudice."
"There is a widespread perception among women faculty that there is consistent, though largely unconscious, gender discrimination within the Institute," they wrote. "We believe that unequal treatment of women who come to MIT makes it more difficult for them to succeed, causes them to be accorded less recognition when they do, and contributes so substantially to a poor quality of life that these women can actually become negative role models for younger women. We believe that discrimination becomes less likely when women are viewed as powerful, rather than weak, as valued, rather than tolerated by the Institute. The heart of the problem is that equal talent and accomplishment are viewed as unequal when seen through the eyes of prejudice. If the Institute more visibly demonstrates that it views women as valuable, a more realistic view of their ability and accomplishments by their administrators, colleagues, and staff will ultimately follow."
They had worried over every detail, met in secret, and shredded early drafts, fearful of being found out as activists or, worse, radicals. They assumed the dean would have already alerted the Institute's lawyers.
But Penny was right. When Bob Birgeneau walked into his conference room for his three o'clock that afternoon, he didn't even know what the meeting was about. He hadn't read the letter or the proposal the women had so carefully written, shredded, and rewritten over the previous month. He was just back from Brookhaven National Lab, on Long Island, where he spent the better part of every summer running experiments on neutron scattering in the High Flux Beam Reactor. He had spent his early career avoiding administrative jobs, and while he liked his role as dean, he preferred being in the lab, especially at Brookhaven, where he did his own research without postdocs or graduate students to manage. He had returned recharged, as he always did. To the six women who sat waiting for him, he showed a picture of confidence and ease, a late-summer tan, and a broad smile.
If he had to, Birgeneau would have guessed they were there to talk about a dispute he knew well: the previous spring, Nancy had come to see him about having been removed from teaching the introductory biology course she'd developed, despite having earned high ratings from students. Instead, Nancy explained how they had come together over the summer, said that they wanted to work with the university, and explained their idea for the women's committee. She had typed out notes, knowing she'd have trouble keeping her nerves in check. In bold she'd typed: "Progress at universities comes when committed faculty meet up with a committed administration. Opportunity exists now at MIT to do something important about this very important problem."
The women went around the conference table, starting with Sylvia, then JoAnne. They described the arc of their careers: how optimistic they'd felt coming to MIT, only to end up feeling isolated, ignored, frustrated over resources. Lisa talked about salaries, relating how some women realized they'd been underpaid only after they got sudden raises. The women had known when they chose careers in science that they would have to make sacrifices in their personal lives, but they had not expected to be paid less than their male colleagues. None of the women in the room had children, Nancy told him: "They aren't even married."
"My personal life doesn't exist," Sylvia said. "I can't even buy a house."
At this the dean jumped in—Nancy thought he might lunge across the table. "Why didn't you come and see me about that?" Male faculty members had been getting loans to buy homes for years; none of the women in the room had realized they could ask. A whole world existed for men that the women were only now glimpsing.
Birgeneau had experienced a few eureka moments in his 30-year career, times when he was struggling to make sense of a set of facts that didn't seem to fit together and then suddenly, like a thunderclap, everything moved into place to reveal a fundamental truth, a shift in the weather. He still vividly remembered the time in 1978 when he'd been working on a problem about the phases of smectic crystals—an unsolved question first raised by French physicists a century earlier. He was driving south along the Connecticut Turnpike when the answer struck him, with such force that he pulled off the highway to find a pay phone and call his collaborator: "I've got it!"
Listening to the women now, one after the other, Birgeneau felt the same sudden clarity, a feeling so strong he later described it as a religious experience.
As dean of science, it was his job to know all the faculty members and the challenges they faced, so the women and even some of their stories were not unfamiliar to him. Had any of them come to him individually, as Nancy had in the spring about the biology course, he would have explained their complaints as the idiosyncrasies of a department, a situation, a relationship, a budget dispute, or internal politics. Now he had six women in front of him, and a letter with 16 signatures. Seeing the women all together and hearing the uniform unhappiness in their stories, he suddenly realized, We've got a big problem. This wasn't just about lab space or a course—it was a pattern. A problem in the system. These women were not difficult. He was struck by how much they'd managed to accomplish despite the environment they'd been working in. He hadn't realized how few of them had children. Few men had made that personal sacrifice, he thought—he himself was the father of four.
Vest liked to seek a lot of opinions before he made decisions, which could sometimes vex his lieutenants. But in this case, he didn't hesitate. He told Birgeneau to go ahead. If there were inequities, MIT needed to fix them.
Birgeneau asked the women if it was all right for him to speak now. He told them that when Nancy had come to him the previous year, he hadn't known her, so he couldn't evaluate what she was saying. He didn't think it was discrimination, but he'd asked his daughters and his wife, a social worker, and they had started him thinking. And now he understood what they were saying, what Nancy had said: women were—here he borrowed the word Sylvia had used earlier in the meeting—"marginalized."
Nancy asked if he thought their committee would work. Birgeneau was doubtful. What they were feeling was disrespect, and that was hard to quantify. He told the women he thought the issue might be tangled in the competitive, male-dominated culture of MIT, and no committee could fix that. But he told them they could try. He suggested they keep it small—three people—but agreed when they asked for four or five. He told them to meet with his assistant to draw up a charge outlining the committee's role—that was standard practice for establishing any new committee, like setting a hypothesis. His assistant would be back from vacation in two weeks.
"Our meeting with the dean went extremely well," Nancy wrote the other women. "In fact it's hard to see how it could have gone better. He was receptive, concerned, and prepared."
Her jubilation was short-lived. Two weeks later, Birgeneau appeared in the doorway of Nancy's office in the cancer center. It was at the other end of campus from his own. He laughed awkwardly. "I'm lost."
She invited him in.
"There is a snag."
"I'm being fired?" Nancy was still exulting from the meeting, and half joking, though it occurred to her that maybe she shouldn't be.
Birgeneau had told the Science Council—which included the department heads and the head of the cancer center—about the proposal for the women's committee, and some department heads were annoyed. They thought there were too many committees already, which Birgeneau thought was a concern he could work around. They also didn't like to be second-guessed. He was surprised at how vehemently they had resisted the idea.
"So what?" Nancy said.
"They'll resign."
"Good."
Birgeneau laughed. "You've probably noticed that deans don't have much power." It was true: the power in the School of Science had always been with the department chairmen, because they controlled teaching assignments and resources such as space and internal grants. Birgeneau told Nancy he had chosen strong chairmen on purpose. "Weak ones are boring. I like strong people—that's why I like you." But he had to rule by consensus.
The chairmen had reacted the same way Birgeneau himself had when Nancy told him her problem was "discrimination." There were so few women in each department that they couldn't see any pattern. They could explain all the reasons this woman or that woman was unhappy; as far as they could see, her difficulties were tied up with individual circumstances that had nothing to do with her being a woman. And MIT was just like all other elite universities in having so few women on its science faculty. All but three of the top 10 math departments in the entire country had not a single woman. As for the biology department, Harvard was worse.
A couple of the chairmen wanted to sit in when the committee's charge was drawn up. Birgeneau told Nancy he would let them; it would help get them on board.
Nancy asked if the women should go to the president instead—maybe with Birgeneau. Birgeneau said no. "In universities things don't work from the top down. Your movement is working because it's grassroots. You have to get the chairs on your side."
"Will it work?"
"I think so."
"Can you promise?"
"Promise?" Birgeneau laughed again.
Birgeneau had already gone to see President Vest. Chuck, as he was known, was a tall and rangy West Virginian, soft-spoken and self-effacing. His father had been a celebrated professor at West Virginia University in Morgantown, and his own classmates recalled him as the smartest kid in every class, but his colleagues appreciated that he never needed to be the smartest man in the room. He was warm and unpretentious and still thought of himself as a small-town boy with small-town values. He'd arrived as president four years earlier from the University of Michigan, where he'd been ever since finishing college in his hometown, and risen rapidly from professor through a succession of high-ranking posts. He had met with a cool reception at MIT; the faculty preferred presidents who had risen through its own ranks, and Vest had the additional stigma of being the second choice, having taken the job after Phil Sharp declined it. Vest confronted any skepticism head-on, joking that he'd gotten two letters from MIT in his life: one rejecting his application for assistant professor, the other hiring him to be president. His kidding aside, many faculty members sniped that MIT had hired a president who couldn't get tenure there.
Vest had proven himself a prolific money raiser among private donors and in Washington, where he saw it as his responsibility to explain the importance of research universities for American innovation in the post–Cold War era. He had opened MIT's first office in the nation's capital. And he had recently succeeded in fending off the federal government's attempt to force universities to give more financial aid based on merit rather than need, a fight the Ivies had declined to take on.
Standing up for needy students had made Chuck a hero to many faculty members, including Birgeneau, who had been among the early doubters. He had begun seeking Chuck's advice often. Now, Birgeneau told Vest that he thought the women had a good idea to look into salaries and other resources, but the department heads were pushing back.
Vest liked to seek a lot of opinions before he made decisions, which could sometimes vex his lieutenants. But in this case, he didn't hesitate. He told Birgeneau to go ahead, saying that he'd back him against the department heads if it came to that. If there were inequities, MIT needed to fix them. Birgeneau quoted Vest's exact words to Leigh Royden, one of the three women in Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences. Leigh relayed the words to Nancy, who wrote them on a sticky note that she attached to her computer monitor: "The president said, 'Do it.'"
Adapted from The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science, by Kate Zernike, and reprinted with permission from Scribner. Copyright 2023.
Nature Communications, Published online: 27 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36722-7
Printed organic and inorganic electronics continue to be of large interest for several applications. Here, the authors propose laser printing as a facile process for fabricating printed electronics with minimum feature sizes below 1 µm and demonstrate functional diodes, memristors, and physically unclonable functions.
Nature Communications, Published online: 27 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36676-w
Bergmann's and Allen's rules are speculated to describe alternative strategies of thermal adaptation. Here, Frӧhlich et al. explore global variation across avian species to show that the way in which relative length of beaks and tarsi co-vary with ambient temperature depends on body mass and vice versa.
Nature Communications, Published online: 27 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36841-1
This study combines computational chemistry and machine learning to provide insight on whether diamonds can form inside ice giants. This can help explain the dichotomy of Uranus and Neptune.
Nature Communications, Published online: 27 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36679-7
The functionalization of aryl
Nature, Published online: 27 February 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00490-7
Newly developed connectors allow scientists to link five quantum modules into a functional network.With homophones I mean using the wrong word… for example, meaning to write "you are safe with me" it turns into "you are save with me".
I never had issues with basic words like that… but recently when typing very fast I will sometimes catch myself writing "save" instead of "safe" and it's happening more than once. However, I catch it within one second and fix it immediately!
Is this a normal sign of aging? I am only mid 40's. I googled this issue and it's kind of scary because apparently it has to do with semantic memory and could be a precursor to Alzheimers….. I read that early MCI which leads to Alzheimers often involves spelling/writing issues.
I have been experiencing anxiety lately so I don't know if this is related to anxiety, aging or if I have MCI…
Have you noticed your homophone spelling decline as you age and if so at what age?
Seeing articles like this does not make me feel any better https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7788345/ "Decline in homophone spelling associated with loss of semantic influence on spelling in Alzheimer's disease"
It says " Based on these results, we suggest that homophone confusions are primarily due to impairment of semantic access to a functional orthographic output lexicon."
I guess this happens for dyslexic people too as they can get confused with these homophones but I've never been dyslexic.
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hi! is anyone here a graduate/currently studying for an MSc in cognitive (neuro)science at either of the universities mentioned above? can a student with a bachelor's in psychology with 40 credits worth of comp science courses have a decent chance at securing a spot in these programmes?
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Noise-canceling headphones have forever altered the way that we work, consume media, and enjoy music while sharing space with others. Unlike traditional headphones, which function as basic wearable drivers that deliver sound privately to users' ears, noise-canceling headphones employ built-in microphones and a little bit of physics to capture environmental sound and replay it to the wearer with the phase of the audio reversed. This phase-canceling is performed almost instantaneously, and to the user, the end result is a great reduction in perceived environmental noise and an overall clearer listening experience.
This makes noise-canceling headphones an incredibly robust tool for maintaining focus in loud environments or enjoying undisturbed sleep during a long commute. In this article, I'll detail some of the best noise-canceling headphones currently available and cover a few key considerations to keep in mind when shopping for any lifestyle.
— Best Overall: Jabra Elite 85h Wireless Noise-Canceling Headphones
— Best for Sleeping: Bose QuietComfort 35 II
— Best for Working Out: Beats Studio3 Wireless Noise Cancelling Over-Ear Headphones
— Best for Gaming: JBL Quantum ONE
— Best Budget: Sony MDRZX110NC Noise-Cancelling Headphones
How We Picked the Best Noise-Canceling Headphones
When compiling this list of the best noise-canceling headphones, I considered some of the most common uses for sound isolation, from studying and working to more niche uses like gaming and working out. Apart from looking at the usage scenarios themselves, I picked out products based upon several design traits, which I'll outline below.
Comfort: Headphones cover a large portion of users' heads, and their noise-canceling capabilities are usually required over long periods of time. For this reason, I zeroed in on designs that are comfortable to wear and feature soft padding material like memory foam on the headbands or earpads.
Connectivity: Bluetooth is one of the best innovations to ever meet traditional headphone design, as it offers users the ability to connect to multiple remote media devices without being encumbered by cables. Most of the noise-canceling headphones on this list are capable of wireless connections, but some are limited to wired connections only, and others offer both options.
Battery Life: Active noise cancellation is a complex electronic process that requires a hefty supply of power to execute. For this reason, the best noise-canceling headphones carry an onboard battery life of at least 20 hours to avoid running out of power when they're most needed.
The Best Noise Canceling Headphones: Reviews and Recommendations
Best Overall: Jabra Elite 85h Wireless Noise-Canceling Headphones
Why They Made The Cut: These headphones boast a total of eight onboard microphones to deliver super-clear phone call audio in even the noisiest environments, making them a great everyday noise-canceling option for busy people.
Specs:
— Connectivity: Wireless, wired
— App Control: Yes
— Microphone: Yes
Pros:
— Fast charge offers five hours of operation in 15 minutes
— Multiple microphones deliver very clear audio for phone calls
— HearThrough technology allows users to keep tabs on their environment
Cons:
— App control can be cumbersome
— Unable to pair wirelessly with computers
The Jabra 85h is a lightweight and comfortable pair of noise-canceling headphones that offers a well-rounded feature set suited for a variety of environments from home and work to long-distance travel. They come with a stylish zip case and a short USB-C charging cable as well as a thin 1/8-inch TRS cable for use with wired devices like computers. The Jabra 85h requires that users download an app to take advantage of its EQ and white-noise settings, which is a useful design detail that allows the headphones themselves to retain a minimalist design.
These headphones sport a water-resistant finish that allows them to be used in light rain and other wet conditions, making them useful for workouts and outdoor walking commutes. Phone calls remain crystal clear when using the 85h, which uses an array of eight microphones to separate users' voices from their environment. A useful, switchable "HearThrough" mode also harnesses these same microphones and allows the wearer to participate in conversations and remain aware of their surroundings without the need to remove the headphones or press pause on their media.
The Jabra 85h uses Bluetooth wireless technology and offers wired compatibility, but it's not natively compatible with non-smartphone devices via wireless technology. This makes them difficult to use with hard-to-access devices like desktop computers, and impossible to use with other Bluetooth-enabled devices that aren't phones. The inclusion of an 1/8-inch wire mitigates this reality somewhat, but this is something to keep in mind if you'll be working on a computer.
Best for Sleeping: Bose QuietComfort 35 II
Why They Made The Cut: The QuietComfort 35 II from Bose is a comfortable and lightweight pair of headphones that's perfect for traveling, studying, and resting.
Specs:
— Connectivity: Wireless, wired
— App Control: Yes
— Microphone: Yes
Pros:
— Long 20-hour battery life
— Comfortable to wear for long periods
— Easy to use; one-touch controls and Alexa-compatible
Cons:
— Uncomfortable shape for side sleepers
— Limited app features
Noise-canceling tech is particularly useful for users looking to enjoy uninterrupted rest, and the Bose Quiet Comfort 35 II hosts a few design features that make it one of the best noise-canceling headphones for this purpose. These headphones are light and compact, and they feature comfortable padding which makes them less cumbersome to wear than bulkier models. They're also compatible with Alexa, allowing users to control their smart devices, adjust volume, and switch playback sources without lifting a finger or looking at a phone. If users want more control over their level of noise-canceling, an onboard button allows one-touch toggling between three settings.
When it's time to make granular adjustments or update the headphones' firmware, the Bose Connect app grants users access to extra features. Unfortunately, the app lacks EQ options, as well as the white noise, presets available in Jabra's companion app. Also, like other headphones, the QuietComfort 35 II features an over-ear shape that's not comfortable for side sleepers. If you fall into that category, a pair of noise-canceling earbuds like the Bose QuietComfort Noise Cancelling Earbuds may be a better choice.
Best for Working Out: Beats Studio3 Wireless Noise Cancelling Over-Ear Headphones
Why They Made The Cut: The Beats Studio3 is a portable and snug-fitting pair of headphones with an extended range of operation, making it a great choice for people on the go.
Specs:
— Connectivity: Wireless, wired
— App Control: Yes
— Microphone: Yes
Pros:
— Above-average distance of operation
— Snug and secure fit
— 10-minute charge for 3 hours of operation
Cons:
— Hyped frequency response isn't ideal for audio production applications
— Button controls are difficult to use
The Studio3 from Beats is one of the best noise-canceling headphones for working out thanks to its light fit, snug-fitting ear cups, and convenient collapsible design. It features a maximum single-charge life of 22 hours and a fast-charge function that offers three hours of play with only a 10-minute charge, making it ideal for last-minute use and those with busy lifestyles. Its built-in Apple W1 chip delivers next-generation Bluetooth connectivity, which results in an above-average range of more than 33 feet and fewer connection dropouts.
Beats headphones are typically known for their custom-shaped and altered frequency response that enhances music and other listening material. The Studio3 includes built-in automatic calibration and improves incoming audio on-the-fly, making it a generally good choice for listening to a variety of programming in every genre, especially in noisy environments. However, this trait makes the headphones less desirable for critical applications such as audio mixing and editing. The Studio3 also offers a unique and streamlined single-button design which keeps the headphones looking sleek but requires users to acclimate to its ins and outs.
Best for Gaming: JBL Quantum ONE
Why They Made The Cut: JBL's Quantum One noise-canceling headphones deliver a reliable and customizable user experience with crystal-clear sound and a solid fit.
Specs:
— Connectivity: Wired
— App Control: No
— Microphone: Yes
Pros:
— Wide soundstage
— Built-in gyroscope offers real-time sound directionality
— Bright, customizable LED lights built in
Cons:
— Lacks wireless functionality
— Control software limited to PC
When it comes to gaming, headphones are one of the best choices for sound monitoring thanks to the sound isolation and high level of directional awareness that they provide. The JBL Quantum One gaming headset takes this principle and kicks it up a notch with the addition of active, noise-canceling technology to offer a convenient, comfortable, and easy-to-use listening experience aimed at giving gamers an extra edge. The soft memory-foam earpads make it easy to wear these headphones over long periods of time, and the equipped, detachable, boom microphone sits in close proximity to users' mouths for improved clarity over chat channels. Among the Quantum ONE's standout features is its built-in gyroscope, which detects the wearer's head position and adjusts the apparent location of on-screen sound sources as you move, enhancing the user's experience of immersion. This makes them a particularly good choice for VR gaming.
The Quantum ONE also features a host of wild and dazzling RGB lighting effects, which are fully customizable via JBL's downloadable software. Unfortunately, this software is compatible with PCs only, so users of other operating systems will be limited to the headphones' default lighting settings. The headphones also use a wired connection exclusively, which enhances connection reliability but somewhat limits users' freedom of movement.
Best Budget: Sony MDRZX 110NC Noise-Cancelling Headphones
Why It Made The Cut: A lightweight, foldable frame and up to 80 hours of battery life make these noise-canceling headphones from Sony a great value for the price.
Specs:
— Connectivity: Wired
— App Control: No
— Microphone: No
Pros:
— Affordable price
— 80 hours of battery life
— Lightweight, easy-to-transport construction
Cons:
— Noise reduction less effective in high frequencies
— Requires one AAA battery for operation
Though noise-canceling features usually come at a premium, these stripped-down headphones from Sony deliver admirable sound isolation without breaking the bank. They're not quite as decked out or stylish as their top-shelf counterparts—they operate using one-time-use AAA batteries, for example—but they cost nearly ten times less than many of their more comfortable Bluetooth-enabled competitors, and for that reason alone they're worth a look.
On a single AAA battery, these noise-canceling headphones can offer up to 80 hours of continuous use. Much of this is thanks to the capacity of a single AAA battery, but these headphones only operate using wired connections, which also saves on battery life compared to Bluetooth designs. Because the headphones are lightweight and foldable, they're very easy to stow in a backpack or bookbag for quick access. Compared to more expensive noise-canceling headphones, this model is less effective at eliminating high-frequency material, but their low-frequency elimination performs well, making them a good choice for canceling droning ambient noise such as that from airplanes or street activity.
Things to Consider Before Buying Noise-Canceling Headphones
Wired Connection: Wireless headphone designs are more common than ever before, but not all equipment is compatible with Bluetooth technology. If you're planning on using noise-canceling headphones with equipment that lacks wireless support, it's essential to choose a model that includes an optional 3.5-millimeter cable or that comes with a wired connection out of the box. If you're unsure which variety to buy, wired headphones are generally guaranteed to work with most non-smartphone audio equipment like computers, gaming consoles, and soundbars, as 3.5-millimeter audio outputs have been a standard for decades.
Microphones: Many noise-canceling headphones include built-in microphones designated to capture users' voices for phone call use and gaming. This feature is essential if you'll be pairing your noise-canceling headphones to a smartphone, as it allows you to enjoy seamless and unencumbered use of your phone without requiring that you remove your headphones. Gamers who are looking to use voice chat functionality can also benefit from a headset with a built-in microphone to streamline their setup without the need for extra equipment.
Fit: The best noise-canceling headphones are available in many shapes and sizes, with each best suited to a specific task. For example, users looking to use noise-canceling tech for sleeping will benefit from a lightweight and padded design, while active people who use headphones for working out will prefer a more snug around-the-ear design.
FAQs
Q: Is it worth buying noise-canceling headphones?
Noise-canceling headphones perform at a high level and are absolutely worth the investment if you're looking to block out external noise. While earplugs and actual over-ear hearing protectors can be just as effective or perform even better, they lack noise-canceling headphones' novel ability to play sound. This means that noise-canceling headphones are the only option for listeners who want to enjoy the audio of their choice while simultaneously rejecting environmental sound.
Q: Are noise-canceling headphones safe?
Active noise-cancellation itself is not a dangerous process and it doesn't require headphones to do anything unsafe or unconventional, so noise-canceling headphones are safe in that regard. However, all users of these headphones should take care to limit volume and duration of use, as the headphones are capable of producing sound pressure levels that can damage hearing, especially over time.
Q: Do noise-canceling headphones protect hearing?
While noise-canceling headphones can greatly diminish a user's perception of environmental noise, they're not appropriate to use as hearing protection devices. Headphones are generally capable of producing volumes that can damage users' hearing, and noise-canceling headphones are no exception. If you require hearing protection, there's no substitute for a certified safety product with a decibel-reduction rating.
Final Thoughts
For users seeking the best noise-canceling headphones experience overall, the Jabra Elite 85h offer long battery life, easy-to-use controls, and a stylish water-resistant finish in a foldable package. The Bose QuietComfort 35 II is a better choice for people who mainly want to use headphones for sleeping, thanks to its soft feel and lightweight band that sit comfortably on users' ears. Active people looking for a companion set of noise-canceling headphones for working out should consider the snug and sturdy construction of the Beats Studio3, and gamers looking for good imaging and immersive sound should check out the JBL Quantum ONE gaming headset.
The post The Best Noise-Canceling Headphones of 2023 appeared first on Futurism.
YESTERDAY
Story of the Week
Podcast: Goodbye to blue skies? The trouble with engineered solutions
- Humanity has created a lot of ecological problems, and many of the proposed solutions come with giant price tags — or the things lost can even be priceless, like the sight of a blue sky — with no guarantee of solving the situation in the long term.
- Many such solutions — like Australia's deliberate introduction of the toxic cane toad, which has wreaked havoc on the country's wildlife — create new problems.
- Solar geoengineering to slow climate change would have the most visible effect to all, likely making the sky appear white: No more blue skies—but how would this affect the global plant community's ability to photosynthesize, would it harm agriculture?
- Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Kolbert joins the Mongabay Newscast to talk about her latest book, "Under a White Sky," which examines these interventions, the problems they come with and humanity's seeming inability to stop turning to them.
From pumping aerosols into the atmosphere to combat climate change to gene-editing invasive species, human beings continue to conjure up technological or "miracle" fixes to ecological ills, many of which stem from previous things society has done. Whether it's electrifying rivers to prevent Asian carp from entering the U.S. Great Lakes or $14.5 billion levees to keep the city of New Orleans from sinking, temporarily, humanity continually creates mega solutions that often fail, while harming biodiversity.
"We seem incapable of stopping ourselves," argues journalist Elizabeth Kolbert. Her latest book, "Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future," explores many of these projects, chapter by chapter, in what she describes as "sort of a dark comedy."
She joins the Mongabay Newscast this week to talk about what she found while writing the book and why she urges readers to be skeptical of these machinations.
Click here to access the entire article as originally posted on the Mongabay website.
Podcast: Goodbye to blue skies? The trouble with engineered solutions by Mike DiGirolamo, Mongabay, Feb 21, 2023
Also see:
Exclusive: Inside a Controversial Startup's Risky Attempt to Control Our Climate by Alejandro de la Garza, Climate Adaptation, Time Magazine, Feb 21, 2023
Why Billionaires are Obsessed With Blocking Out the Sun by Alejandro de la Garza, Climate Adaptation, Time Magazine, Feb 24, 2023
Links posted on Facebook
Sun, Feb 19, 2023
- Will global warming make temperature less deadly? by Harry Stevens, Climate Environment, Washington Post, Feb 16, 2023
- Whale deaths exploited in 'cynical disinformation' campaign against offshore wind power, advocates say by Elizabeth Weise & Dinah Voyles Pulver, USA Today, Feb 11, 2023
- Just How Good for the Planet Is That Big Electric Pickup Truck? by Elena Shao, Climate, New York Times, Feb 18, 2023
- How Climate Change Is Making Tampons (and Lots of Other Stuff) More Expensive by Coral Davenport, Climate, New York Times, Feb 18, 2023
Mon, Feb 20, 2023
- Discovery could improve the lifespan of next-generation solar cells by E&T Editorial Staff, E&T (Engineering & Technology) Magazine, Feb 16, 2023
- An activist group is spreading misinformation to stop solar projects in rural America by Miranda Green & Michael Copley, KEDM Public Radio/NPR National News, Feb 18, 2023
- Public Lands in the US Have Long Been Disposed to Fossil Fuel Companies. Now, the Lands Are Being Offered to Solar Companies by Wyatt Myskow, Clean Energy, Inside Climate News, Feb 19, 2023
- South American drought in 2022 partly driven by 'triple-dip' La Niña by Ayesha Tandon, Exttrreme Weather, Carboln Brief, Feb 16, 2023
Tue, Feb 21, 2023
- Guest post: How quickly does the world need to 'phase down' all fossil fuels? by Greg Muttitt, Dr James Price, Dr Steve Pye & Dr Daniel Welsby, Carbon Brief, Feb 16, 2023
- Renewables will be world's top electricity source within three years, IEA data reveals by Simon Evans, Renewables, Carbon Brief, Feb 8, 2023
- At a glance – What were climate scientists predicting in the 1970s? by John Mason & BaerbelW, Skeptical Science, Feb 21, 2023
- Corporations push "insetting" as new offsetting but report claims it is even worse by Matteo Civillini, Finance, Climate Home News, Feb 20, 2023
Wed, Feb 22, 2023
- Venice canals run dry amid fears Italy faces another drought by Reuters, CNN, Feb 21, 2023
- Why Is the Amazon So Important for Climate Change? by Emma Bryjce, Environment, Scientific American, Feb 20, 2023
- A historic three-day storm will bring snow, ice and extreme cold across the US by Aya Elamroussi, CNN, Feb 22, 2023
- Stronger El Niño events may speed up irreversible melting of Antarctic ice, research finds by Adam Morton, Environment, The Guardian, Feb 21, 2023
Thu, Feb 23, 2023
- Podcast: Goodbye to blue skies? The trouble with engineered solutions by Mike DiGirolamo, Mongabay, Feb 21, 2023
- More than 850,000 power outages reported in cross-country winter storms, with more snow, icing and blizzard conditions ahead by Elizabeth Wolfe, Rob ShackelfordJoe Sutton, CNN, Feb 23, 2023
- Biden administration announces first-ever wind energy lease sale in Gulf of Mexico by Ella Nilsen, CNN, Feb 22, 2023
- How the U.S. Is Planning to Boost Floating Wind Power by David Iaconangelo, E&E News/Scientific American, Feb 23, 2023
Fri, Feb 24, 2023
- China provinces and Florida rank among the world's most climate-vulnerable areas by Emma Newburger & Gabriel Cortés, CNBC, Feb 22, 2023
- In New England, climate change is imperiling a winter tradition by, Joanna Slater, Postcards from America, Washington Post, Feb 20, 2023
- Climate change is increasing the risk of infectious diseases worldwide by Neha Pathak, Yale Climate Connections, Feb 22, 2023
- Exclusive: Inside a Controversial Startup's Risky Attempt to Control Our Climate by Alejandro de la Garza, Climate Adaptation, Time Magazine, Feb 21, 2023
Sat, Feb 25, 20234
- Why Billionaires are Obsessed With Blocking Out the Sun by Alejandro de la Garza, Climate Adaptation, Time Magazine, Feb 24, 2023
- Climate Misinformation Is Now Our Main Competitor by Harriet Kingaby, Common Dreams, Feb 22, 2023
- Skeptical Science New Research for Week #8 2023 byDoug Bostrom & Marc Kodack, Skeptical Science, Feb 23, 2023
- Filling an editorial policy hole by SkS Team, Skeptical Science, Feb 24, 2023
"Mind the gap."
A short while ago we published a blog post discussing the rate of modernization of our energy supply with updated, superior replacements for fossil fuel combustion. Given the point of the piece it attracted a good deal of attention and careful scrutiny. That review process exposed a material error, now corrected. The sequence of events illustrates the virtues of "peer review" (peers here meaning similar range of general competencies) and especially how owning errors and transparently repairing them is the best way forward.
More importantly, the experience exposed an editiorial policy hole. We're not going to let this insight go to waste.
By way of background, our central editiorial policy has been extremely simple: before we publish a new rebuttal or other "just the facts" treatment, we practice an internal review process which is sometimes very arduous and energetic— similar in general features to reviews of academic publications but with the added challenge of everybody being crystal clear on who's saying what.
Our review convention has worked well for us, for the purpose of creating climate myth rebuttals and other writing serving as a straight conduit for conveying "there's the best we know," sourced in peer reviewed academic literature.
The Gap:
But we need a bit more policy. Why? Here's the gist:
- Skeptical Science's main purpose is illumination of "here's the best we know" as reflected in academic research findings, by making densely technical reports digestible for a general readership.
- Given the broad scope of Skeptical Science's view of climate science and climate change, we may also serve a useful role by offering articles including synthesis, putting facts together to help people see and understand larger concepts, emerging progress or lack of it. This follows a general trajectory of improvement in the formal scientific community toward interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary projects.
- Given the passion needed to contribute energy to our work, it is inhumane to expect Skeptical Science authors to behave as though we have no thoughts or opinions or contributions of our own to offer.
- Perhaps most importantly, mixing commentary or opinion with straight delivery of scientific information to our readers— without distinguishing that we're in this mode— will inevitably cost us credibility, whether by error or by losing our usual neutral tone.
How to address these factors, in editorial policy? We need invent nothing new but only emulate what's known to work well elsewhere, farther down the scientific communications food chain where primary producers are found.
Policy outcome:
We'll henceforth be clearly indicating when a blog post is the equivalent of an academic journal's inclusion of commentary or synthesis articles.
Open access notables
Another update on attitudes and beliefs in of US residents is delivered by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication working in concert with George Mason University's Center for Climate Change Communication. Climate Change in the American Mind February 2023 extends a continuous year-on-year sampling, key information for assessing the United States' capacity to deal with climate, a matter requiring political impetus delivered by a majority of the US population. In this week's dense government/NGO section.
Two interesting and accessible articles this week investigate economic nudges specifically with an eye to informing policymakers. Erik Haite et al. explore ways to tackle mitigation in industries with high associated costs in Contribution of carbon pricing to meeting a mid-century net zero target. The authors describe policy tailored to work in the tough areas of aluminium, cement, chemicals, iron and steel, lime, pulp and paper. Via Carbon taxes and agriculture: the benefit of a multilateral agreement, Torbjörn Jansson et al. report a mixed bag: "We find that a global tax of EUR 120 per ton CO2-eq could reduce global agricultural emissions by 19%, but also jeopardizes food security in some parts of the world." It would be nice if we could snap our fingers to deal with our climate problem, but it's arguably mostly a matter of human nature at this point. Money looms large in our makeup.
Changing temperature profiles and the risk of dengue outbreaks by Imelda Trejo et al. finds an effect we shouldn't wish for: rising temperatures cooking mosquitoes out of the picture in certain regions of the US. Notably, while some are overheated, others thrive in newly warmed places. "To illustrate the role of spatial and temporal temperature heterogeneity, we select five US cities where the primary dengue vector, the mosquito Aedes aegypti, has been observed, and which have had dengue cases in the past: Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, Brownsville, and Phoenix. Our analysis suggests that an increase of 3°C leads to an approximate doubling of the risk of dengue in Los Angeles and Houston, but a reduction of risk in Miami, Brownsville, and Phoenix due to extreme heat."
Gourevitch et al. deliver a bit of a blockbuster with Unpriced climate risk and the potential consequences of overvaluation in US housing markets. A galvanizing extract from the abstract: We find that residential properties exposed to flood risk are overvalued by US$121–US$237 billion, depending on the discount rate. In general, highly overvalued properties are concentrated in counties along the coast with no flood risk disclosure laws and where there is less concern about climate change. Low-income households are at greater risk of losing home equity from price deflation, and municipalities that are heavily reliant on property taxes for revenue are vulnerable to budgetary shortfalls.
The ethics of climate activism by Francisco Garcia-Gibson addresses two questions: do we have a duty to engage in climate activism, and what are our moral boundaries of permissible climate action? Billed as an overview, this article delivers a wide-angle snapshot of surprising complexities found while seeking answers. As well, Garcia-Gibson signposts some newer, emerging ethical questions in connection with climate activism.
Vian, Garvey & Tuohy deliver a comprehensive review of forests' role in carbon sequestration schemes, leading to some firm conclusions, in Towards a synthesized critique of forest-based 'carbon-fix' strategies. "This article contributes to a deeper understanding of why relegating forests to a 'carbon-fix' function is insufficient to tackle climate change and, rather, poses threats to forest ecosystems and forest-dependent communities. This review ultimately calls into question the use of forests to delay crucial systemic changes, without diminishing the importance of forest conservation, restoration, governance, as well as technological innovation, in mitigating the ongoing harmful effects of climate change."
The title Suppressed basal melting in the eastern Thwaites Glacier grounding zone sounds pleasant but authors Davis et al. arrive here: "Our results demonstrate that the canonical model of ice-shelf basal melting used to generate sea-level projections cannot reproduce observed melt rates beneath this critically important glacier, and that rapid and possibly unstable grounding-line retreat may be associated with relatively modest basal melt rates." A chewy but digestible explanation of controls on basal melt rate here, leading readers to bump their heads into a range of related phenomena.
127 articles in 58 journals by 822 contributing authors
Physical science of climate change, effects
A Cloud-Controlling Factor Perspective on the Hemispheric Asymmetry of Extratropical Cloud Albedo
Blanco et al., Journal of Climate, 10.1175/jcli-d-22-0410.1
Indonesian Throughflow Slowdown under Global Warming: Remote AMOC Effect versus Regional Surface Forcing
Peng et al., Journal of Climate, Open Access pdf 10.1175/jcli-d-22-0331.1
Role of Atmosphere–Ocean–Ice Interaction in the Linkage between December Bering Sea Ice and Subsequent February Surface Air Temperature over North America
Zhao et al., Journal of Climate, Open Access pdf 10.1175/jcli-d-22-0265.1
The mutual interactions among ozone, fine particulate matter, and carbon dioxide on summer monsoon climate in East Asia
Ma et al., Atmospheric Environment, 10.1016/j.atmosenv.2023.119668
Observations of climate change, effects
Changing patterns of the East Asian monsoon drive shifts in migration and abundance of a globally important rice pest
Lv et al., Global Change Biology, 10.1111/gcb.16636
Compound climate extremes in China: Trends, causes, and projections
Yu et al., Atmospheric Research, 10.1016/j.atmosres.2023.106675
Long-term variability of the low-level cloud base height in Poland
Matuszko et al., International Journal of Climatology, 10.1002/joc.8041
Recent decrease of the impact of tropical temperature on the carbon cycle linked to increased precipitation
Zhang et al., Nature Communications, Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-023-36727-2
Substantial warming of Central European mountain rivers under climate change
Niedrist, Regional Environmental Change, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s10113-023-02037-y
Weakening of the summer monsoon over the past 150 years shown by a tree-ring record from Shandong, eastern China, and the potential role of North Atlantic climate
Chen et al., Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology, 10.1029/2022pa004495
Instrumentation & observational methods of climate change, effects
Diverging identifications of extreme precipitation events from satellite observations and reanalysis products: A global perspective based on an object-tracking method
Wang et al., Remote Sensing of Environment, 10.1016/j.rse.2023.113490
Global Radiative Flux Profile Dataset: Revised and Extended
Zhang & Rossow Rossow, [journal not provided], Open Access 10.1002/essoar.10511681.1
The flower garden banks Siderastrea siderea coral as a candidate global boundary stratotype section and point for the Anthropocene series
DeLong et al., The Anthropocene Review, 10.1177/20530196221147616
Wet Bulb Globe Temperature: Indicating Extreme Heat Risk on a Global Grid
Brimicombe et al., GeoHealth, Open Access 10.1029/2022gh000701
Modeling, simulation & projection of climate change, effects
Biogeophysical Effects of Land-Use and Land-Cover Change Not Detectable in Warmest Month
Grant, [journal not provided], 10.5194/egusphere-egu22-2345
Capturing and Attributing the Rainfall Regime Intensification in the West African Sahel with CMIP6 Models
Chagnaud et al., Journal of Climate, 10.1175/jcli-d-22-0412.1
Divergence in Climate Model Projections of Future Arctic Atlantification
Muilwijk et al., Journal of Climate, 10.1175/jcli-d-22-0349.1
Enhanced ENSO-Unrelated Summer Variability in the Indo–Western Pacific under Global Warming
Wang et al., Journal of Climate, Open Access pdf 10.1175/jcli-d-22-0450.1
Future projections of EURO-CORDEX raw and bias-corrected daily maximum wind speeds over Scandinavia
Michel & Sorteberg, Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 10.1029/2022jd037953
High-resolution climate projection over the Tibetan Plateau using WRF forced by bias-corrected CESM
Ma et al., Atmospheric Research, 10.1016/j.atmosres.2023.106670
Historical and projected changes in Extreme High Temperature events over East Africa and associated with meteorological conditions using CMIP6 models
Das et al., Global and Planetary Change, 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2023.104068
Revisiting interior water mass responses to surface forcing changes and the subsequent effects on overturning in the Southern Ocean
Tesdal et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 10.1029/2022jc019105
Temperature characteristics over the Carpathian Basin – projected changes of climate indices at regional and local scale based on bias-adjusted CORDEX simulations
Simon et al., International Journal of Climatology, 10.1002/joc.8045
Water balance components and climate extremes over Brazil under 1.5 °C and 2.0 °C of global warming scenarios
da Silva Tavares et al., Regional Environmental Change, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s10113-023-02042-1
Advancement of climate & climate effects modeling, simulation & projection
Against "Possibilist" Interpretations of Climate Models
Dethier, Philosophy of Science, Open Access pdf 10.1017/psa.2023.6
Challenges with interpreting the impact of Atlantic Multidecadal Variability using SST-restoring experiments
O'Reilly et al., [journal not provided], Open Access pdf 10.21203/rs.3.rs-1707393/v1
Climate change modelling at reduced floating-point precision with stochastic rounding
Kimpson et al., Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 10.1002/qj.4435
Drivers of Biases in the CMIP6 Extratropical Storm Tracks. Part II: Southern Hemisphere
Priestley et al., Journal of Climate, Open Access pdf 10.1175/jcli-d-20-0977.1
Cryosphere & climate change
Suppressed basal melting in the eastern Thwaites Glacier grounding zone
Davis et al., Nature, Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41586-022-05586-0
What is the global glacier ice volume outside the ice sheets?
Hock et al., Journal of Glaciology, Open Access pdf 10.1017/jog.2023.1
Sea level & climate change
Estuarine response to storm surge and sea-level rise associated with channel deepening: a flood vulnerability assessment of southwest Louisiana, USA
Mansur et al., Natural Hazards, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s11069-023-05841-1
Future sea-level projections with a coupled atmosphere-ocean-ice-sheet model
Park et al., Nature Communications, Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-023-36051-9
Steric Changes Associated With the Fast Sea Level Rise in the Upper South Indian Ocean
Qu & Melnichenko, Geophysical Research Letters, Open Access 10.1029/2022gl100635
Paleoclimate & paleogeochemistry
Climatic Extremes, Violent Conflicts, and Population Change in China in 1741–1910: An Investigation Using Spatial Econometrics
Lee & Qiang, Anthropocene, 10.1016/j.ancene.2023.100372
East Antarctica ice sheet in Schirmacher Oasis, Central Dronning Maud Land, during the past 158 ka
Roy et al., Proceedings of the Indian National Science Academy, 10.1007/s43538-023-00154-0
Equatorial Pacific dust fertilization and source weathering influences on Eocene to Miocene global CO2 decline
Wang et al., Communications Earth & Environment, Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-023-00702-y
Poleward amplification, seasonal rainfall and forest heterogeneity in the Miocene of the eastern USA
Reichgelt et al., Global and Planetary Change, 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2023.104073
Revisiting the Holocene global temperature conundrum
Kaufman & Broadman, Nature, 10.1038/s41586-022-05536-w
Biology & climate change, related geochemistry
Age-related patterns and climatic driving factors of drought-induced forest mortality in Northeast China
Ma et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 10.1016/j.agrformet.2023.109360
Climate change disrupts core habitats of marine species
Hodapp et al., Global Change Biology, Open Access 10.1111/gcb.16612
Environmental refuges from disease in host-parasite interactions under global change
Gsell et al., Ecology, 10.1002/ecy.4001
Fire modifies plant–soil feedbacks
Warneke et al., Ecology, 10.1002/ecy.3994
High-velocity upward shifts in vegetation are ubiquitous in mountains of western North America
Kellner et al., PLOS Climate, Open Access pdf 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000071
Individual and combined effect of organic eutrophication (DOC) and ocean warming on the ecophysiology of the Octocoral Pinnigorgia flava
Zelli et al., PeerJ, Open Access 10.7717/peerj.14812
Interactive effects of elevated temperature and drought on plant carbon metabolism: A meta-analysis
Wang & Wang, Global Change Biology, 10.1111/gcb.16639
Long-term soil warming decreases microbial phosphorus utilization by increasing abiotic phosphorus sorption and phosphorus losses
Tian et al., Nature Communications, Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-023-36527-8
Ocean acidification, warming and feeding impacts on biomineralization pathways and shell material properties of Magallana gigas and Mytilus sp
Mella et al., Marine Environmental Research, 10.1016/j.marenvres.2023.105925
Potential effects of future climate change on global reptile distributions and diversity
Biber et al., [journal not provided], Open Access pdf 10.1101/2022.05.07.490295
Resident species, not immigrants, drive reorganization of estuarine fish assemblages in response to warming
de Souza & Santos, Ecology, 10.1002/ecy.3987
Timing and magnitude of drought impacts on carbon uptake across a grassland biome
Felton & Goldsmith, Global Change Biology, 10.1111/gcb.16637
GHG sources & sinks, flux, related geochemistry
Across-model spread and shrinking in predicting peatland carbon dynamics under global change
Hou et al., Global Change Biology, 10.1111/gcb.16643
Distinguishing physical and biological controls on the carbon dynamics in a high-Arctic outlet strait
Burgers et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 10.1029/2022jc019393
Effect of rewetting degraded peatlands on carbon fluxes: a meta-analysis
Darusman et al., Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s11027-023-10046-9
Evaluation and improvement of the E3SM land model for simulating energy and carbon fluxes in an Amazonian peatland
Yuan et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 10.1016/j.agrformet.2023.109364
Functional diversity and soil nutrients regulate the interannual variability in gross primary productivity
Yan et al., Journal of Ecology, 10.1111/1365-2745.14082
Increased soil carbon storage through plant diversity strengthens with time and extends into the subsoil
Lange et al., Global Change Biology, 10.1111/gcb.16641
Long-term trend analysis of extreme climate in Sarawak tropical peatland under the influence of climate change
Sa'adi et al., Weather and Climate Extremes, 10.1016/j.wace.2023.100554
Meteorological responses of carbon dioxide and methane fluxes in the terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems of a subarctic landscape
Heiskanen et al., [journal not provided], Open Access pdf 10.5194/bg-2022-69
National GHG inventory capacity in developing countries – a global assessment of progress
Umemiya & White, Climate Policy, 10.1080/14693062.2023.2167802
Photoperiod drives cessation of wood formation in northern conifers
Mu et al., Global Ecology and Biogeography, 10.1111/geb.13647
Quantitative and mechanistic understanding of the open ocean carbonate pump – perspectives for remote sensing and autonomous in situ observation
Neukermans et al., Earth, 10.1016/j.earscirev.2023.104359
Recent decrease of the impact of tropical temperature on the carbon cycle linked to increased precipitation
Zhang et al., Nature Communications, Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-023-36727-2
Variability of Atmospheric CO2 Over the Arctic Ocean: Insights From the O-Buoy Chemical Observing Network
Graham et al., [journal not provided], Open Access 10.1002/essoar.10510058.1
CO2 capture, sequestration science & engineering
Opportunities for blue carbon restoration projects in degraded agricultural land of the coastal zone in Queensland, Australia
Rowland et al., Regional Environmental Change, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s10113-022-02013-y
Towards a synthesized critique of forest-based 'carbon-fix' strategies
Vian et al., Climate Resilience and Sustainability, Open Access 10.1002/cli2.48
Decarbonization
Adding wind power to a wind-rich grid: Evaluating secondary suitability metrics
Pearre & Swan Lukas G. Swan, Wind Energy, Open Access 10.1002/we.2809
Are 2050 energy transition plans viable? A detailed analysis of projected Swiss electricity supply and demand in 2050
Mearns & Sornette, Energy Policy, 10.1016/j.enpol.2022.113347
Efficient and stable organic solar cells enabled by multicomponent photoactive layer based on one-pot polymerization
Liu et al., Nature Communications, Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-023-36413-3
Electrolyte design principles for developing quasi-solid-state rechargeable halide-ion batteries
Yang et al., Nature Communications, Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-023-36622-w
Numerical investigation into selecting the most suitable shell-to-tube diameter ratio for horizontal latent heat thermal energy storage
Modi et al., Energy for Sustainable Development, 10.1016/j.esd.2023.02.004
Prediction of grid-connected photovoltaic performance using artificial neural networks and experimental dataset considering environmental variation
Kazem, Environment, Development and Sustainability, 10.1007/s10668-022-02174-0
Solar hydrogen production in India
Preethi, Environment, Development and Sustainability, 10.1007/s10668-022-02157-1
The estimation of urban air quality change in South Korea under the carbon net-zero scenario
Yeo & Koo, Urban Climate, 10.1016/j.uclim.2023.101438
The mega solar Twitter discourse in Japan: Engaged opponents and silent proponents
Doedt & Maruyama, Energy Policy, 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113495
Thermal batteries based on inverse barocaloric effects
Zhang et al., Science Advances, Open Access 10.1126/sciadv.add0374
Understanding manufacturers' and consumers' perspectives towards end-of-life solar photovoltaic waste management and recycling
Nain & Kumar, Environment, Development and Sustainability, 10.1007/s10668-022-02136-6
Aerosols
Can global warming bring more dust?
Zhou et al., Climate Dynamics, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s00382-023-06706-w
Climate change communications & cognition
Does belief in climate change conspiracy theories predict everyday life pro-environmental behaviors? Testing the longitudinal relationship in China and the U.S.
Chan et al., Journal of Environmental Psychology, 10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.101980
Growing convergence research: Coproducing climate projections to inform proactive decisions for managing simultaneous wildfire risk
Cullen et al., Risk Analysis, Open Access 10.1111/risa.14113
Social and political opposition to energy pricing reforms
Jones & Cardinale, Climate and Development, 10.1080/17565529.2023.2165875
The ethics of climate activism
Garcia?Gibson, WIREs Climate Change, Open Access 10.1002/wcc.831
Vulnerability portrayals across climate risk discourses in Bhubaneswar: an evolutionary perspective
Parida & Agrawal, Climate and Development, 10.1080/17565529.2023.2178254
What does it mean that all is aflame? Non-axial Buddhist inspiration for an Anthropocene ontology
Hannes & Bombaerts, The Anthropocene Review, Open Access 10.1177/20530196231153929
Agronomy, animal husbundry, food production & climate change
Carbon taxes and agriculture: the benefit of a multilateral agreement
Jansson et al., Climate Policy, Open Access 10.1080/14693062.2023.2171355
Changing patterns of the East Asian monsoon drive shifts in migration and abundance of a globally important rice pest
Lv et al., Global Change Biology, 10.1111/gcb.16636
Diffusion of climate-resilient seeds and information: evidence from semi-arid regions of Ghana
Mellon Bedi & Kornher, Climate and Development, 10.1080/17565529.2023.2172313
Evaluating the impact of a 2.5–3°C increase in temperature on drought-stressed German wheat cultivars under natural stress conditions
Kunz et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 10.1016/j.agrformet.2023.109378
Gendered perceptions of climate change and agricultural adaptation practices: a systematic review
Haque et al., Climate and Development, Open Access 10.1080/17565529.2023.2176185
How climate change and climate variability affected trip distance of a commercial fishery
Chan, PLOS Climate, Open Access pdf 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000143
Marginal Damage of Methane Emissions: Ozone Impacts on Agriculture
Sampedro et al., Environmental and Resource Economics, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s10640-022-00750-6
Smallholder farmers' intention to use climate forecast services in the Benin Republic, West Africa
Hounnou et al., Climate and Development, 10.1080/17565529.2023.2172314
Hydrology, hydrometeorology & climate change
An Innovative Scheme to Confront the Trade-Off Between Water Conservation and Heat Alleviation With Environmental Justice for Urban Sustainability: The Case of Phoenix, Arizona
Zhu et al., AGU Advances, Open Access 10.1029/2022av000816
Assessment of Hydrological Response with an Integrated Approach of Climate, Land, and Water for Sustainable Water Resources in the Khari River Basin, India
Mundetia et al., Anthropocene, 10.1016/j.ancene.2023.100373
Drought Attribution Studies and Water Resources Management
Olsen et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Open Access pdf 10.1175/bams-d-22-0214.1
Water balance components and climate extremes over Brazil under 1.5 °C and 2.0 °C of global warming scenarios
da Silva Tavares et al., Regional Environmental Change, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s10113-023-02042-1
Climate change economics
Education puzzle, financial inclusion, and energy substitution: Growth Scales
Tinta, Energy Policy, 10.1016/j.enpol.2022.113391
High discount rates by private actors undermine climate change adaptation policies
Alpizar et al., Climate Risk Management, 10.1016/j.crm.2023.100488
Impact assessment culture in the European Union. Time for something new?
Saltelli et al., Environmental Science & Policy, Open Access 10.1016/j.envsci.2023.02.005
Impact of climate change on output and inflation in Africa's largest economies
Iliyasu et al., Climate and Development, 10.1080/17565529.2023.2172315
Is the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis valid? A global analysis for carbon dioxide emissions
Kaya Kanl? & Küçükefe, Environment, Development and Sustainability, 10.1007/s10668-022-02138-4
Is the EU shirking responsibility for its deforestation footprint in tropical countries? Power, material, and epistemic inequalities in the EU's global environmental governance
Kumeh & Ramcilovic-Suominen, Sustainability Science, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s11625-023-01302-7
The effect of record-high gasoline prices on the consumers' new energy vehicle purchase intention: Evidence from the uniform experimental design
Sun et al., Energy Policy, 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113500
Unpriced climate risk and the potential consequences of overvaluation in US housing markets
Gourevitch et al., Nature Climate Change, Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41558-023-01594-8
Climate change mitigation public policy research
A contested agenda: Energy transitions in lower-income African countries
Pedersen & Andersen, Energy Policy, 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113496
Assessment of Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) climate scenarios and its impacts on the Greater Accra region
Siabi et al., Urban Climate, Open Access 10.1016/j.uclim.2023.101432
Carbon taxes and agriculture: the benefit of a multilateral agreement
Jansson et al., Climate Policy, Open Access 10.1080/14693062.2023.2171355
Policies to Promote Carbon Capture and Storage Technologies
Golombek et al., Environmental and Resource Economics, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s10640-023-00767-5
Social and political opposition to energy pricing reforms
Jones & Cardinale, Climate and Development, 10.1080/17565529.2023.2165875
Structural transformations and conventional energy-based power utilization on carbon emissions: empirical evidence from Pakistan
Ali et al., Environment, Development and Sustainability, 10.1007/s10668-022-02133-9
The impacts of carbon trading policy on China's low-carbon economy based on county-level perspectives
Gao, Energy Policy, 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113494
The mega solar Twitter discourse in Japan: Engaged opponents and silent proponents
Doedt & Maruyama, Energy Policy, 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113495
Theoretical and empirical analyses on the factors affecting carbon emissions: case of Zhejiang Province, China
Zeng & Wang, Environment, Development and Sustainability, 10.1007/s10668-022-02148-2
Climate change adaptation & adaptation public policy research
Develop medium- to long-term climate information services to enhance comprehensive climate risk management in Africa
Omukuti et al., Climate Resilience and Sustainability, Open Access 10.1002/cli2.47
Evaluating the comprehensiveness of municipal climate change adaptation plans in Ontario, Canada
Donoghue & Katz-Rosene, Regional Environmental Change, 10.1007/s10113-023-02036-z
Fire frequency and vulnerability in California
Hino & Field, PLOS Climate, Open Access pdf 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000087
How Homeownership, Race, and Social Connections Influence Flood Preparedness Measures: Evidence from 2 Small U.S. Cities
Zinda et al., Environmental Sociology, 10.1080/23251042.2023.2173487
Reimagining climate change research and policy from the Australian adaptation impasse
Waters et al., Environmental Science & Policy, 10.1016/j.envsci.2023.01.014
Social vulnerability shapes the experiences of climate migrants displaced by Hurricane Maria
Clark-Ginsberg et al., Climate and Development, 10.1080/17565529.2023.2176188
Uncertainty and Climate Change Adaptation: a Systematic Review of Research Approaches and People's Decision-Making
Moure et al., Current Climate Change Reports, 10.1007/s40641-023-00189-x
Climate change impacts on human health
Changing temperature profiles and the risk of dengue outbreaks
Trejo et al., PLOS Climate, Open Access pdf 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000115
Impact of El Niño–Southern Oscillation and Indian Ocean Dipole on malaria transmission over India in changing climate
Chaturvedi & Dwivedi, International Journal of Environmental Science and Technology, 10.1007/s13762-023-04836-6
Other
Challenges to govern a global sustainability science problem: Lessons from a domestic climate change research project
Kuo et al., Environment, Development and Sustainability, Open Access 10.1007/s10668-021-02067-8
Reconstruction of daily global solar radiation under all-sky and cloud-free conditions in Badajoz (Spain) since 1929
Montero?Martín et al., International Journal of Climatology, 10.1002/joc.8042
Informed opinion, nudges & major initiatives
Contribution of carbon pricing to meeting a mid-century net zero target
Haites et al., Climate Policy, Open Access 10.1080/14693062.2023.2170312
National GHG inventory capacity in developing countries – a global assessment of progress
Umemiya & White, Climate Policy, 10.1080/14693062.2023.2167802
The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report WGIII climate assessment of mitigation pathways: from emissions to global temperatures
Kikstra et al., EGUsphere, Open Access pdf 10.5194/egusphere-2022-471
Articles/Reports from Agencies and Non-Governmental Organizations Addressing Aspects of Climate Change
The Economic Impact of Michigan's Unreliable Power Grid, Karl Rabago and Robin Dutta, Local Solar for All
The electric grid is increasingly being defined not by what services it is providing, but by what services energy consumers are not receiving from electric utilities in periods of unreliability. They can occur due to a wide range of critical events, including cyber attacks, physical attacks on grid infrastructure, extreme weather causing downed power lines, and energy shortfalls exacerbated by weather. This is the reality in Michigan, just as in any state. Michigan suffers from below-average electric reliability. Michigan must already deal with poor grid reliability track records and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) has raised long-term concerns that the burdens Michiganders must shoulder in their daily lives as a result of this poorly performing electric grid could continue. The authors estimate the economic impact of Michigan's power outages, using data published by the U.S. Energy Information Agency for 2020 and 2021. The Federal Energy Management Agency (FEMA) has published values and criteria to measure the cost of disasters on communities, including how to calculate the economic impact of the loss of electric service. Using that method, the authors determined that Michigan power outages had an economic impact of over $1.6 billion during the 2020-2021 period. This calculation narrowly defines the value of lost electric service and does not include values such as the Value of Lost Time and the Loss of Communications/IT Services, which can be implications of the loss of electric service.
Climate Change in the American Mind February 2023, Leiserowitz, Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication
The authors found that public understanding of global warming remained relatively stable in 2022. Americans who think global warming is happening outnumber those who think it is not happening by a ratio of more than 4 to 1 (70% versus 16%). More than half of Americans (58%) understand that global warming is mostly human-caused. About one in four (27%) think it is due mostly to natural changes in the environment. A majority of Americans (64%) say they are at least "somewhat worried" about global warming. This includes about one in four (27%) who say they are "very worried."
1.5°C – DEAD OR ALIVE?, Laybourn et al., Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs and the e Institute for Public Policy Research
The consequences of the worsening climate and ecological crisis could present threats and opportunities to the ability of societies to become more sustainable, equitable, and resilient. The authors explore one example of this dynamic: how the growing chance of breaching the Paris Agreement goal of 1.5°C is being used to justify slower action. The risks resulting from this growing chance are an example of strategic risk in practice. Those seeking to achieve transformational change – including in policy, civil society, and business – should more actively manage this risk. A systematic effort is needed to tackle threats and opportunities for rapid environmental action thrown up by the deepening consequences of the crisis: to make the green transition itself more resilient. Otherwise, the world could head further into a spiral of accelerating environmental shocks and counterproductive, defensive reactions.
Feasibility Assessment and Economic Evaluation: Repurposing a Coal Power Plant Site to Deploy an Advanced Small Modular Reactor Power Plant, X Energy and MPR Associates, X Energy
The authors assess the feasibility to deploy four advanced small modular reactors at a coal-fired power plant site in Maryland.
Lessons Learned from State-Level Climate Policies to Accelerate U.S. Climate Action, Lamm et al., WIlson Center
Recent federal developments—unprecedented investments and limited regulatory action—increase the importance of climate change activities at the state level. States, long the driver of climate action in the U.S., have continued to make steady progress even in the absence of comprehensive federal action. Progress at the state level has ranged from initial clean energy and climate action plans to ambitious new emissions reduction legislation and the first phaseout of gas-powered automobiles. In light of both the historic opportunities and challenges ahead at the federal level, these state climate policy experiences have the potential to accelerate federal action and investment. The authors highlight the key findings from multiple dialogs with state and federal leaders and then offer a set of strategies to make the most of new investments for climate actions that can then be implemented.
WeatherPower Year in Review: 2022, Climate Central
America's capacity to generate carbon-free energy from solar and wind power grew during 2022. The capacity to generate electricity from solar and wind increased across the country to more than 238 gigawatts (GW) in 2022—up nearly 13 GW from 2021. The U.S. generated 683,130 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electricity from solar (27%) and wind (73%) combined in 2022—up 16% from 588,471 GWh in 2021. The electricity generated from solar and wind in 2022 is enough to power the equivalent of 64 million average American households. At the average retail price of 12 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2022 this equates to $82 billion in revenue generation. The largest contributions to national solar and wind electricity generation came from a few states—for example, California generated 58,664,084 megawatt-hours (MWh) of solar and Texas generated 129,578,478 MWh of wind. But many states saw relative growth in capacity and generation for solar and wind.
Liquefied Natural Cash. How Methane Exports Reverse Climate Progress, Harm Consumers, and Endanger Communities, Friends of the Earth, Bailout Watch, and Public Citizen
The authors outline how U.S. fossil fuel companies use the war in Ukraine as a pretext to lock in profits and build out permanent infrastructure at the expense of frontline communities and the climate. The authors show that the industry exploited the Russian invasion of Ukraine to secure an explosion of new liquefied natural gas (LNG) contracts in 2022, guaranteeing decades of planet-destroying emissions. This stark increase in methane exports, much of which will be sent to Asia rather than Europe, comes as the one-year mark of Russia's invasion approaches.
Obtaining articles without journal subscriptions
We know it's frustrating that many articles we cite here are not free to read. One-off paid access fees are generally astronomically priced, suitable for such as "On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light" but not as a gamble on unknowns. With a median world income of US$ 9,373, for most of us US$ 42 is significant money to wager on an article's relevance and importance.
- Here's an excellent collection of tips and techniques for obtaining articles, legally.
- Unpaywall offers a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox that automatically indicates when an article is freely accessible and provides immediate access without further trouble. Unpaywall is also unscammy, works well, is itself offered free to use. The organizers (a legitimate nonprofit) report about a 50% success rate
- The weekly New Research catch is checked against the Unpaywall database with accessible items being flagged. Especially for just-published articles this mechansim may fail. If you're interested in an article title and it is not listed here as "open access," be sure to check the link anyway.
How is New Research assembled?
Most articles appearing here are found via RSS feeds from journal publishers, filtered by search terms to produce raw output for assessment of relevance.
Relevant articles are then queried against the Unpaywall database, to identify open access articles and expose useful metadata for articles appearing in the database.
The objective of New Research isn't to cast a tinge on scientific results, to color readers' impressions. Hence candidate articles are assessed via two metrics only:
- Was an article deemed of sufficient merit by a team of journal editors and peer reviewers? The fact of journal RSS output assigns a "yes" to this automatically.
- Is an article relevant to the topic of anthropogenic climate change? Due to filter overlap with other publication topics of inquiry, of a typical week's 550 or so input articles about 1/4 of RSS output makes the cut.
The section "Informed opinion, nudges & major initiatives" includes some items that are not scientific research per se but fall instead into the category of "perspectives," observations of implications of research findings, areas needing attention, etc.
Suggestions
Please let us know if you're aware of an article you think may be of interest for Skeptical Science research news, or if we've missed something that may be important. Send your input to Skeptical Science via our contact form.
Journals covered
A list of journals we cover may be found here. We welcome pointers to omissions, new journals etc.
Previous edition
The previous edition of Skeptical Science New Research may be found here.
An Error Caught by the Skeptical Science Peer-Review Process
In a recent post (read here) I compared electricity generated from fossil fuels and renewable energy, and incorrectly compared energy into fossil-fueled power plants with energy out of renewable-energy electric plants. I should have compared electricity generated by both fossil-fueled plants and renewable-energy sources. I will explain the effect of this incorrect comparison in the next section.
Skeptical Science is committed to the highest-quality science communication, and leans heavily on sources from respected peer-reviewed sources. The error in my post is a good example of how the peer-review process functions on this site to bring you high-quality science communication. The commenters to my post quickly pointed out my error. Not only are the authors at Skeptical Science professionals in their respective fields, but so are many of the readers and commenters. Between the articles and the comments, Skeptical Science provides information you can trust, even if some mistakes periodically slip through the cracks.
How is the Renewable-Energy Revolution Going?
In my post I incorrectly stated that renewable energy is currently only making up about 30% of the near-term increased electricity demand. In fact, growth in the nuclear plus renewable-energy sector is making up almost all of the growth in electricity demand (read here and here). The International Energy Agency states,
Renewables and nuclear energy will dominate the growth of global electricity supply over the next three years, together meeting on average more than 90% of the additional demand.
This is good news, but means that we are still only supplementing the fossil-fuel industry, and not supplanting it. We may be on the verge of turning the corner and meeting the need for more electricity generation with renewables plus nuclear, but we need increased pressure to more than cover the electricity demand growth.
Remember this when making decisions about how to power your home, car, and other parts of your life. Remember this when you vote. We may have made a turning point in our quest to supplant fossil-fuel use by halting the growth of fossil-fuel power plants, but now we need to begin retiring fossil-fuel plants in service.
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a "bump" for our ask. This week features "What were climate scientists predicting in the 1970s?". More will follow in the upcoming weeks. Please follow the Further Reading link at the bottom to read the full rebuttal and to join the discussion in the comment thread there.
At a glance
If you are aged 60 or over, you may remember this particular myth first-hand. For a brief time in the early to mid-1970s, certain sections of the popular media ran articles describing how we were heading for a renewed ice-age. Such silliness endures to the present day, just with a different gloss: as an example, for the UK tabloid the Daily Express, October just wouldn't be October without it publishing at least one made-up account of the impending 100-day snow-apocalypse.
There were even books written on the subject, such as Nigel Calder's mischievously-entitled The Weather Machine (1974), originally published by the BBC and accompanying a "documentary" of the same name, which was nothing of the sort. A shame, because the same author's previous effort, The Restless Earth (1972), about plate tectonics, was very good indeed.
Thomas Peterson and colleagues did a very neat job of obliterating all of this nonsense. In a 2008 paper titled The myth of the 1970s global cooling scientific consensus, they dared do what the popular press dared not to. They had a look at what was actually going on. Obtaining copies of the peer-reviewed papers on climate, archived in the collections of Nature, JSTOR and the American Meteorological Society and published between 1965 and 1979, they examined and rated them. Would there be a consensus on global cooling? Alas! – no.
Results showed that despite the media claims, just ten per cent of papers predicted a cooling trend. On the other hand, 62% predicted global warming and 28% made no comment either way. The take-home from this one? It's the old media adage, "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story"
Please use this form to provide feedback about this new "at a glance" section. Read a more technical version via the link below!
Click for Further details
In case you'd like to explore more of our recently updated rebuttals, here are the links to all of them:
| Myths with link to rebuttal | Short URLs |
| Ice age predicted in the 1970s | sks.to/1970s |
| It hasn't warmed since 1998 | sks.to/1998 |
| Antarctica is gaining ice | sks.to/antarctica |
| CRU emails suggest conspiracy | sks.to/climategate |
| What evidence is there for the hockey stick | sks.to/hockey |
| CO2 lags temperature | sks.to/lag |
| Climate's changed before | sks.to/past |
| It's the sun | sks.to/sun |
| Temperature records are unreliable | sks.to/temp |
| The greenhouse effect and the 2nd law of thermodynamics | sks.to/thermo |
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters
A sequence of nine atmospheric rivers hammered California during a three-week period in January 2023, bringing over 700 landslides, power outages affecting more than 500,000 people, and heavy rains that triggered flooding and levee breaches. On a statewide basis, about 11 inches of rain fell; 20 deaths were blamed on the weather, with damages estimated at over $1 billion.
But the storm damages were a pale shadow of the havoc a true California megaflood would wreak.
The Golden State has a long history of cataclysmic floods, which have occurred about every 200 to 400 years — most recently in the Great Flood of 1861-62. And a future warmer climate will likely significantly increase the risk of even more extreme floods. In particular, a 2022 study found that, relative to a century ago, climate change has already doubled the risk of a present-day megastorm, and more than tripled the risk of a trillion-dollar megaflood of the type that could swamp the Central Valley.
Given the increased risk, it is more likely than not that many of you reading this will see a California megaflood costing tens of billions in your lifetime.
This is the third part of a three-part series on California's vulnerability to a megaflood. Part One examined the results of a 2011 study introducing the potential impacts of a scenario, known as "ARkStorm," which would be a repeat of California's Great Flood of 1861-62 — though the study did not take climate change into account. Part Two looked at how California is preparing its dams for future great floods. Here, in Part Three, we'll look at the increasing future threat of a California megaflood in a warming climate.
The ARkStorm 2.0 scenario
A 2011 government study introduced the "ARkStorm" scenario, finding that a megaflood in California could swamp the state's Central Valley and cause more than $1 trillion in damage.
A 2022 study by Xinging Huang and Daniel Swain updates that work in a scenario called "ARkStorm 2.0," using data and computer modeling advances not available in 2011.
The new study used climate modeling to develop a plausible megastorm in the present-day climate (1995-2005), which they called ARkHist. They also developed a more extreme case in a much warmer world, called ARkFuture.
Both scenarios featured a weeks-long parade of atmospheric river storms during the winter months. A high-resolution weather model was then run, using the climate model as input, in order to produce detailed "synthetic weather forecasts" for California. (For readers familiar with weather models, it was WRF with grid boxes 3 km on a side.)
The modeled storms not only brought massive precipitation accumulations – they also produced very high precipitation intensities (that is, very heavy precipitation during a single hour or day). This would greatly increase flash flood and landslide/debris flow risk – especially since climate change is bringing California a major increase in large and intense wildfires, making denuded slopes more vulnerable to flooding.
The ARkHist scenario involved storms that produced slightly less precipitation than the Great Flood of 1861-62 but slightly more than the wettest winters of the past 100 years. This scenario was thought to have a recurrence interval of once every 90-100 years. That means it has a 1-1.1% chance of occurring in a given year, or 26-28% chance in 30 years. A storm of this magnitude would be capable of causing tens of billions of dollars in damage; a 2022 study estimated that a flood with a 1-in-100-year return period affecting only the Los Angeles area would likely inundate property worth $56 billion to a depth of a foot or more.
The ARkFuture scenario, which would be a catastrophic event capable of causing more than $1 trillion in damage, had a recurrence interval of every 400 years in the current climate. That works out to a 0.25% chance in a given year, or a 6% chance in 30 years.
The study concluded that every additional degree Celsius of global warming slightly more than doubles the risk of a megaflood. ARkHist-level events have a 1% chance per year of occurring (1-in-100-year recurrence) with Earth's current global warming level of 1.2 degree Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures. If global warming hits 2.2 degrees, an ARkHist-level megastorm would have a 2.2% chance of occurring per year (a 1-in-45-year recurrence interval) — a dramatic increase in risk, especially given the catastrophic nature of a megaflood.
A warmer climate is already leading to stronger atmospheric rivers hitting California
One of the best-understood impacts of global warming on weather is that it increases the odds of heavy precipitation events. A warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor, which leads to an increase in the heaviest downpours — including those in California's atmospheric rivers: "The frequency and severity of landfalling 'atmospheric rivers' on the U.S. West Coast … will increase as a result of increasing evaporation and resulting higher atmospheric water vapor that occurs with increasing temperature," according to a medium-confidence conclusion of the 2017 Fourth National Climate Assessment, a sweeping government report that outlines how climate change is affecting the U.S.
Wetter atmospheric rivers are already being observed. A 2022 case study found that human-caused climate change increased the amount of rainfall from two February 2017 atmospheric rivers by about 11% and 15%, respectively. As discussed in Part Two of this series, the Oroville Dam spillway nearly suffered a catastrophic failure because of these heavy rains, prompting the evacuation of over 180,000 people.
If the same events were to take place in an even warmer world with 541 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — projected to occur in the second half of the 21st century — the researchers found rainfall quantities in the two atmospheric rivers would have been another 9% and 26% higher, respectively.
Extreme rain does not necessarily mean extreme flooding
Although extreme precipitation is increasing because of climate change and will continue to increase as the planet warms, that doesn't necessarily mean that extreme flooding will also increase. Floods are influenced by a variety of factors, including, very importantly, how wet the soils are. California is suffering from increasing drought, and when heavy rains fall on dry soils, it usually takes a greater amount of rain to induce flooding — though very dry, drought-baked soils can be impervious to water, increasing runoff.
A 2015 study in the journal Climatic Change found that very heavy precipitation — in the 99th percentile — in the contiguous U.S. resulted in 99th-percentile flooding only 36% of the time. The odds of 99th-percentile flooding increased to 62% when the soils were already moist, though. With California increasingly suffering extreme drought conditions prior to experiencing intense stormy periods, this will raise the bar on the amount of rain required to generate a megaflood during some years. In addition, when reservoirs are low because of pervasive drought, the risk of flooding and dam failures is reduced, since reservoirs can store a lot of floodwater.
More rain, less snow in store for California
As the climate warms, more wintertime precipitation in California's mountains falls as rain instead of snow. This increases flood risk, since rain immediately creates runoff, while melting snow provides a more gradual release of water. The ARkStorm 2.0 model runs also found multiple potential "rain-on-snow" events at higher elevations, which could further add to runoff (though this is a very complex issue, and the uncertainty in how this phenomenon will change in the future is high).
In the Sacramento and San Joaquin River watersheds, the peak runoff in the future warmer climate scenario (ARkFuture) was as much as 200-400% higher than ARkHist runoff, despite precipitation totals that were only about 50% higher. At lower elevations (except in the southeastern deserts of California), peak runoff also increased by a considerably wider margin than precipitation (runoff increases of 60-100%, compared to precipitation increases of 30-60%).
In a blog post at weatherwest.com, report co-author Daniel Swain said, "Flood risk during an event like either of these scenarios will bring widespread and severe flood risk to nearly the entire state, but the extreme increases in projected surface runoff in the Sacramento and San Joaquin basins are of particular concern given the confluence of high pre-existing risk in these regions and a large population that has never experienced flooding of this magnitude historically."
El Niño brings higher megaflood odds
The ARkstorm 2.0 study found that the top eight simulated 30-day "megastorm" events occurred during El Niño conditions, and seven of them occurred during moderate to strong El Niño events. These results suggest that reservoir operators should be more aggressive managing for floods during El Niño events – something that forecasts can give advance warning of several months in advance. But it's not a guarantee: The floods of January 2023 and during the Great Flood of 1861-62 both occurred when El Niño was not present.
California must prepare for increasingly extreme floods and droughts
California's weather over the past two months has abruptly switched from extreme drought to extreme flooding. It's a particularly striking example of the exacerbation of precipitation extremes that a warming climate is likely to continue producing in an area naturally prone to weather whiplash, as documented by Daniel Swain and coauthors in a 2018 paper in Nature Climate Change, "Increasing precipitation volatility in twenty-first century California." California's water management system was designed for the climate of the 20th century, and a rapid and costly upgrade to the climate of the 21st century is urgently needed to prepare for a future of increasingly extreme droughts and floods.
For example, it is critical that flood planners give more room for rivers to flood by moving levees back to widen river channels and thus allow rivers to reclaim their ancestral floodplains.
Read: Could leaving 'room for the river' help protect communities from floods?
But giving more room for rivers requires purchase of riverside land, a difficult proposition in a state where land values are high and public finances are tight. Converting that land to flood relief and wildlife habitat also means losing the property taxes the government collects.
One success story, though, is in the city of West Sacramento, where a stretch of the Sacramento River has more room to flow thanks to a new "setback" levee — a second levee built in 2011 farther from the main levee lining the river. When the river is high, floodwater has room to flow through the tree-filled space between the two levees, instead of flooding the dozen or so homes that used to lie there, which the city bought out. An additional setback levee is being constructed just southeast of the Sacramento International Airport.
Improved forecast techniques could also inform reservoir operators on how to reduce flood risk. A pilot project for this has begun for two reservoirs in California, aided by data taken by both the NOAA and Air Force Hurricane Hunters. This project also studied how floodwaters might be used to recharge underground aquifers. Locating more underground features known as paleovalleys may aid in this effort.
In December 2022, the Central Valley Flood Protection Board approved a plan to spend more than $3 billion in the next five years and $30 billion over the next 30 years for infrastructure upgrades, emergency preparation and floodplain restoration in California's Central Valley. In addition, one of the authors of the ARkStorm 2.0 study, Dr. Swain, has been asked to testify in front of the state legislature Feb. 1 on the risk of California megafloods during a public hearing.
Given California's megaflood history and the potential increasing flood risk from climate change, it is essential for the state to continue to upgrade its flood infrastructure, policies, and flood-awareness efforts. It's good to see the state has taken positive steps in that direction.
The other two parts of this three-part series:
Part One: The other 'big one': How a megaflood could swamp California's Central Valley
Part Two: If a megaflood strikes California, these dams might be at risk
Story of the Week
Revealed: The Science Denial Network Behind Oxford's 'Climate Lockdown' Backlash
A traffic filter scheme in Oxfordshire has been "weaponised" by the anti-climate lobby, according to disinformation expert Jennie King.
Not Our Future put leaflets through letterboxes in Oxfordshire.
The "grassroots" backlash to a traffic reduction scheme in Oxfordshire is being boosted by an international network of established climate and Covid science deniers and amplified by right-wing media, DeSmog can report.
The group 'Not Our Future' made headlines last month by putting leaflets through Oxfordshire residents' letterboxes calling them "guinea pigs" in the UK's first "climate lockdown". This was a reference to a conspiracy theory about a government plan to curb people's freedoms.
False claims about the Oxfordshire County Council scheme to cut traffic and pollution went viral online, with one tweet by climate sceptic author Jordan Peterson being viewed 7.5 million times. The claims, which have seen local councillors receive death threats, have been fact-checked and debunked as misleading, and the council has described them as "harmful to public debate".
Not Our Future's director David Fleming, an anti-Covid lockdown and vaccine activist, presents his campaign as a people-powered movement opposed to a coming "authoritarian future" imposed by what he calls "The Blob".
However, DeSmog can report that the group was conceived by Fleming years before the pandemic or the Oxfordshire scheme, and is backed by a network of high-profile climate deniers and conspiracy theorists based in the UK, Canada, the United States and Australia.
It is also the latest sign of a growing alliance between opponents of climate action and anti-Covid vaccine conspiracy theorists. Not Our Future's founding signatories include Kathy Gyngell, a trustee of Tufton Street think tank the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK's main climate science denial group.
Gyngell's website TCW hosted an anti-vaccine event in London last week with climate denial author James Delingpole, anti-vax MP Andrew Bridgen, and 90s pop group Right Said Fred, the public face of Not Our Future.
Experts say fears generated by the Covid pandemic are being exploited to oppose green policies.
"Until 2020, fear-mongering about so-called 'green tyranny' had little to point towards, and often felt like an abstract, even lame Boogeyman," said Jennie King, head of climate research and policy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) think tank.
"The pandemic was a moment of genuine trauma for millions of people," she said. "That trauma has been weaponised by the anti-climate lobby, who now condemn any public policy as an 'infringement on civil liberties' and draw direct comparisons with Covid."
Click here to access the entire article as originally posted on the DeSmog website.
Revealed: The Science Denial Network Behind Oxford's 'Climate Lockdown' Backlash by Adam Barnett, Michaela Herrmann & Christopher Deane, Desmog, Feb 16, 2023
Links posted on Facebook
Sun, Feb 12, 2023
- Scientists fear a Great Toxic Dustbowl could soon emerge from the Great Salt Lake by Bill Weir, CNN, Feb 10, 2023
- As climate change disrupts ecosystems, a new outbreak of bird flu spreads to mammals by Zoya Teirstein, Climate & Health, Grist, Feb 10, 2023
- Antarctic Researchers Report an Extraordinary Marine Heatwave That Could Threaten Antarctica's Ice Shelves by Bob Berwyn, Science, Insiode Climate News, Feb 12, 2023
- Natural disasters, boosted by climate change, displaced millions of Americans in 2022 by Lucas Thompson, Environment, NBC News, Feb 121, 2023
Mon, Feb 13, 2023
- Not to be outdone, the EU commits $270 billion to its own Green New Deal by Brett Marsh, Grist, Feb 3, 2023
- A major dairy company plans to slash methane emissions — but there's an elephant in the room by Joseph Winters, Grist, Feb 7, 2023
- Skiers Seek Climate Change Moves: 'The Seasons Have Shifted' by Staff, AP/VOA, Feb 13, 2023
Tue, Feb 14, 2023
- Exxon Gives Up on Much-Hyped Algae Biofuels by Molly Taft, Gizmodo, Feb 13, 2023
- Google Hopes to Inoculate Internet Users Against Misinformation with Expanded 'Pre-bunking' Campaign by Lauren Leffer, Gizmodo, Feb 13, 2023
- Skeptical Science News: The Rebuttal Update Project by John Mason, Bärbel Winkler, Ken Rice & Doug Bostrom, Skeptical Science, Feb 14, 2023
- Sea Level Rise Could Drive 1 in 10 People from Their Homes, with Dangerous Implications for International Peace, UN Secretary General Warns by Bob Berwyn, Politics & Policy, Inside Climate News, Feb 14, 2023
Wed, Feb 15, 2023
- Myth-buster: Why two degrees of global warming is worse than it sounds by Daisy Simmons, Climate Explained, Yale Climate Connections, Feb 13, 2023
- Fossils in Colorado show rate of climate change over Earth's history by Cory Reppenhagen, Colorado Climate, 9News, Feb 14, 2023
- The Problem with Percentages by Evan, Skeptical Science, Feb 15, 2023
- Warming seas are carving into massive Antarctic glacier that could trigger sea level rise by Chris Mooney, Climate & Environment, Washington Post, Feb 15, 2023
Thu, Feb 16, 2023
- Fact check: False claim the rotation of Earth's core is responsible for climate change by Eleanor McCrary, USA Today, Feb 14, 2023
- How Climate Change Is Spreading Malaria in Africa by Apoorva Mandavilli, Health, New York Times, Feb 14, 2923Feb 14, 2023
- Greta Thunberg: Global leaders are dropping the ball on climate change, Op-ed by Greta Thunberg, Winston-Salem Journal, Feb 15, 2023
- What REALLY causes Climate Change? Overpopulation VS Wealth by Adam Levy, ClimateAdam on Youtube, Feb 16, 2023
Fri, Feb 17, 2023
- Cyclone Freddy, the year's first category 5 storm, heads toward vulnerable Madagascar by Jeff Masters, Eye on the Storm, Yale Climate Connections, Feb 16, 2023
- In Scramble for Clean Energy, Europe Is Turning to North Africa by Fred Pearce, Yale Environment 360, Feb 16, 2023
- World risks descending into a climate 'doom loop', warn thinktanks by Damian Carrington, Environment, The Guardian, Feb 16, 2023
- Skeptical Science New Research for Week #7 2023 by Doug Bostrom & Marc Kodack, Skeptical Science, Feb 16, 2023
Sat, Feb 18, 2023
- Do people yet to be born have climate change rights? by Jocelyn Timperley, Future Planet, BBC, Feb 15, 2023
- Revealed: The Science Denial Network Behind Oxford's 'Climate Lockdown' Backlash by Adam Barnett, Michaela Herrmann & Christopher Deane, Desmog, Feb 16, 2023
- Disappearing Saint-Louis byAri Shapiro, Ayen Bior, Noah Caldwell, Miguel Macias & Matt Ozug., NPR, Feb 13, 2023
- 6 Ways to Make Your Home More Energy Efficient by Michael Kolomatsky, Real Estate, New York Times, Feb 16, 2023
- Recently passed federal laws—the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law—provide unprecedented clean hydrogen support and are expected to significantly reduce clean hydrogen production costs.
Fossil-captured CCS debunked
Our weekly collection of freshly published research on anthropogenic climate change is a continuation and evolution of Skeptical Science volunteer Ari Jokimäki's AGW Obeserver, started in 2010 and migrated to Skeptical Science in 2012. Over intervening years the format has evolved a bit. Late in 2021 Marc Kodack kindly signed on to add a new feature, our government/NGO reports section. Here we present selected articles featuring many of the characteristics of journal articles but aimed more toward policymakers and the general public, broad situational awareness.
This week's government/NGO collection includes a prime example of its worth. Why Carbon Capture and Storage Is Not a Net-Zero Solution for Canada's Oil and Gas Sector by Laura Cameron and Angela Carter working on behalf of The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) is a calm, deliberative and deeply sourced evisceration of the Canadian oil industry's optically-aligned token efforts to simulate a semblance of conscience for an industry fundamentally dependent on imposing external costs. These costs can't be accounted for with carbon capture and storage (CCS); the disparity between CO2 that can be captured and that liberated "downstream" as a side-effect of the industry's outmoded and hazardous monetization scheme is a vast, uncrossable gulf. This report is what real skepticism looks like, and readers needing backup material for "don't be fooled by CCS" can look to it for reliable myth-busting evidence in bulk quantity. Although the authors' work emphasizes data on the infamous Canadian tar sands projects (which bear a striking resemblance to Saruman's industrial plant), the main payload is portable to wherever bogus claims about CCS may be found.
New Research recap
Our "main event" of academic publications this week includes no fewer than 70 open access publications, over half the total listing (look for green in the list for direct links to articles readable by "the rest of us.") As usual there is far too much material for any person to read in a week, or to understand in a month.
Given that it's a firehose tapped from a Niagara Falls, what's the point of New Research? Skeptical Science's foundations lie in "here's the best we know," which is to be found in academic research. Our best information grows and improves hour-by-hour, day-by-day, week-by-week. Fundamentally, the point of this weekly sampling of climate-related research is "do keep up," The reasons for keeping up vary from simple curiosity to "I'm engaged in climate science communications and am obliged to keep my finger on the pulse of climate inquiry." New Research makes this a little bit easier by saving users duplicative effort spent for various purposes.
We hypothesize several use cases for New Research. Readers with a general interest in human-caused global climate change can use this weekly listing as a watering hole for keeping up with the general arc of climate-related research. The "observations" section provides a ready supply of evidence for those who may be engaged in discussion with people claiming "it's not happening." The perennially full "GHG" section hints at our struggle to capture a full, comprehensively reliable accounting for the heat-trapping gases forming the basis of the changes we're seeing. Overall, each week's collation gives a feel for the massive total scope and complexity of the problem we've created for ourselves with fossil fuel combustion. As well, while the volume of reports here is not by any means comprehensive, it provides a strong clue to the urgency the scientific community attaches to our shared challenge.
One other purpose of New Research is to penetrate the veil of institutional press offices, the overall filter function of the foodchain leading from a scientific report to headlines in news sources. A wealth of fascinating and often significant work does not meet criteria rising to writing and circulating press releases. Press releases fall may fall silently. Climate change research is in the daily news as an iceberg floats in water; as with an iceberg's submerged bulk most research warning us of imminent harm isn't visible in popular media. This weekly listing tries to make the unseen mass of climate-related research easier to spot.
We attempt to categorize articles for quick access, such that a person with an interest in biological implications of anthropogenic climate change may easily see a concentration of such works, similarly for GHG sources, sinks and flux, etc. Some items are difficult to pigeonhole, straddle fields of interest; such articles may appear in two sections. Particularly for cryosphere and hydrometeorological research, model projections concerned with those arenas may be found in their respective native topic categories as opposed to the section of general modeling results.
We also include a "nudges" section with opinion, commentary and perspective pieces from academic journals. These are not unhinged from facts in the manner of op-ed pieces in newspapers and popular magazines but can be relied upon as viewpoints of experts, raised hands worth strong attention.
Finally, readers will generally see a "decarbonization" section. Skeptical Science includes "debunkings of discourses of delay" and "solutions denial" in our remit and this section may be useful for that purpose. Mostly— given the generally dire and depressing nature of many of the articles we list— this little section offers some rays of hope while also illustrating the excessive economy of "just" as in "let's just fix our climate problem." A frenzy of effort is going in that direction of remediation of our messy energy habits, most of it not splashy enough to make headlines. This work is intricate and not easy. At least a glancing, minor appreciation of that is helpful in terms of calibrating our ambitions.
134 articles in 54 journals by 869 contributing authors
Observations of climate change, effects
Amplified drought trends in Nepal increase the potential for Himalayan wildfires
Pokharel et al., Climatic Change, 10.1007/s10584-023-03495-3
Changes in marine hot and cold extremes in the China Seas during 1982–2020
Li et al., Weather and Climate Extremes, Open Access 10.1016/j.wace.2023.100553
Changes of upper-ocean temperature in the Southeast Indian Subantarctic Mode Water formation region since the 1950s
Jing et al., Climate Dynamics, 10.1007/s00382-023-06692-z
Classification and Causes of East Asian Marine Heatwaves during Boreal Summer
Oh et al., Journal of Climate, Open Access pdf 10.1175/jcli-d-22-0369.1
Homogenization of Swedish mean monthly temperature series 1860–2021
Joelsson et al., International Journal of Climatology, Open Access pdf 10.1002/joc.7881
Long-term Change of Summer Mean and Extreme Precipitations in Korea and East Asia
Do et al., International Journal of Climatology, 10.1002/joc.8039
Rapid range shifts in African Anopheles mosquitoes over the last century
Carlson et al., [journal not provided], Open Access pdf 10.1101/673913
What caused the salient difference in rapid intensification magnitudes of Northwest Pacific tropical cyclones between 1998 and 2010?
Li et al., Atmospheric Research, 10.1016/j.atmosres.2023.106654
Winter sea-ice growth in the Arctic impeded by more frequent atmospheric rivers
, Nature Climate Change, 10.1038/s41558-023-01601-y
Instrumentation & observational methods of climate change, effects
Assessing homogeneity of land surface air temperature observations using sparse-input reanalyses
Gillespie et al., International Journal of Climatology, 10.1002/joc.7822
Optimizing Soil Moisture Station Networks for Future Climates
Bessenbacher et al., Geophysical Research Letters, Open Access 10.1029/2022gl101667
The benefits of homogenising snow depth series – Impacts on decadal trends and extremes for Switzerland
Buchmann et al., The Cryosphere, Open Access pdf 10.5194/tc-17-653-2023
Modeling, simulation & projection of climate change, effects
140 Years of Global Ocean Wind-Wave Climate Derived from CMIP6 ACCESS-CM2 and EC-Earth3 GCMs: Global Trends, Regional Changes, and Future Projections
Meucci et al., Journal of Climate, 10.1175/jcli-d-21-0929.1
Bayesian retro- and prospective assessment of CMIP6 climatology in Pan Third Pole region
Liu et al., Climate Dynamics, 10.1007/s00382-022-06345-7
Climate zoning under climate change scenarios in the basin of Lake Urmia and in vicinity basins
Jani et al., [journal not provided], Open Access pdf 10.21203/rs.3.rs-1187656/v1
Dynamic downscaling of climate simulations and projected changes in tropical South America using RegCM4.7
da Silva et al., International Journal of Climatology, 10.1002/joc.8035
Evaluation and Projection of Changes in Daily Maximum Wind Speed over China Based on CMIP6
Zha et al., Journal of Climate, Open Access pdf 10.1175/jcli-d-22-0193.1
Evaluation and Projections of Extreme Precipitation precipitation extreme using a Spatial Extremes Framework
Yang et al., International Journal of Climatology, 10.1002/joc.8038
Heatwaves Similar to the Unprecedented One in Summer 2021 Over Western North America Are Projected to Become More Frequent in a Warmer World
Dong et al., Earth's Future, Open Access 10.1029/2022ef003437
Impacts of 2 and 4°C global warmings on extreme temperatures in Taiwan
Tsai et al., International Journal of Climatology, 10.1002/joc.7815
Increasing extreme flood risk under future climate change scenarios in South Korea
Kim et al., Weather and Climate Extremes, Open Access 10.1016/j.wace.2023.100552
Ocean Surface Warming Pattern Inhibits El Niño–Induced Atmospheric Teleconnections
Hao et al., Journal of Climate, 10.1175/jcli-d-22-0275.1
Projected changes in synoptic circulations over Europe and their implications for summer precipitation: A CMIP6 perspective
Herrera?Lormendez et al., International Journal of Climatology, Open Access pdf 10.1002/joc.8033
Sensitivity of the relationship between Antarctic ice shelves and iron supply to projected changes in the atmospheric forcing
Dinniman et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 10.1029/2022jc019210
The Spread of Ocean Heat Uptake Efficiency Traced to Ocean Salinity
Liu et al., Geophysical Research Letters, Open Access 10.1029/2022gl100171
Variation of lightning-ignited wildfire patterns under climate change
Pérez-Invernón et al., Nature Communications, Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-023-36500-5
Advancement of climate & climate effects modeling, simulation & projection
A modelling study of the impact of tropical SSTs on the variability and predictable components of seasonal atmospheric circulation in the North Atlantic–European region
Ivasi? & Herceg-Buli?, Climate Dynamics, 10.1007/s00382-022-06357-3
Application of the Pseudo-Global Warming Approach in a Kilometer-Resolution Climate Simulation of the Tropics
Heim et al., [journal not provided], Open Access 10.1002/essoar.10512541.1
Atmospheric teleconnection associated with the Atlantic multidecadal variability in summer: assessment of the CESM1 model
Si et al., Climate Dynamics, 10.1007/s00382-022-06331-z
Diurnal temperature range in winter wheat–growing regions of China: CMIP6 model evaluation and comparison
Xie et al., Theoretical and Applied Climatology, Open Access 10.1007/s00704-023-04385-5
Drivers of Biases in the CMIP6 Extratropical Storm Tracks. Part I: Northern Hemisphere
Priestley et al., Journal of Climate, 10.1175/jcli-d-20-0976.1
Evaluation of CORDEX-CORE regional climate models in simulating rainfall variability in Rwanda
Safari et al., International Journal of Climatology, 10.1002/joc.7891
Evaluation of E3SM land model snow simulations over the western United States
Hao et al., The Cryosphere, Open Access pdf 10.5194/tc-17-673-2023
How certain are El Niño–Southern Oscillation frequency changes in Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 models?
Fix et al., International Journal of Climatology, 10.1002/joc.7901
Polar and Topographic Amplifications of Inter-model Spread of Surface Temperature in Climate Models
Wang et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 10.1029/2022jd037509
Cryosphere & climate change
Arctic sea ice mass balance in a new coupled ice–ocean model using a brittle rheology framework
Boutin et al., The Cryosphere, Open Access pdf 10.5194/tc-17-617-2023
Climate model differences contribute deep uncertainty in future Antarctic ice loss
Li et al., Science Advances, Open Access 10.1126/sciadv.add7082
Complex motion of Greenland Ice Sheet outlet glaciers with basal temperate ice
Law et al., [journal not provided], Open Access pdf 10.31223/x5mm1k
Heterogeneous melting near the Thwaites Glacier grounding line
Schmidt et al., Nature, Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41586-022-05691-0
Winter sea-ice growth in the Arctic impeded by more frequent atmospheric rivers
, Nature Climate Change, 10.1038/s41558-023-01601-y
Sea level & climate change
Mapping 21st Century Global Coastal Land Reclamation
Sengupta et al., Earth's Future, 10.1029/2022ef002927
Paleoclimate & paleogeochemistry
Atmospheric CO2 concentration based on boron isotopes versus simulations of the global carbon cycle during the Plio-Pleistocene
Köhler, Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology, 10.1029/2022pa004439
Carbon cycle responses to changes in weathering and the long-term fate of stable carbon isotopes
Jeltsch?Thömmes & Joos Joos, Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology, Open Access 10.1029/2022pa004577
Terrestrial amplification of past, present, and future climate change
Seltzer et al., Science Advances, 10.1126/sciadv.adf8119
Volcanic CO2 degassing postdates thermogenic carbon emission during the end-Permian mass extinction
Wu et al., Science Advances, Open Access 10.1126/sciadv.abq4082
Biology & climate change, related geochemistry
A resilient and connected network of sites to sustain biodiversity under a changing climate
Anderson et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 10.1073/pnas.2204434119
Can a present-day thermal niche be preserved in a warming climate by a shift in phenology? A case study with sea turtles
Laloë & Hays, Royal Society Open Science, 10.1098/rsos.221002
Climate and sex in turtles
Fuller et al., Marine Ecology Progress Series, Open Access pdf 10.3354/meps10419
Climate mediates roles of pollinator species in plant–pollinator networks
Saunders et al., Global Ecology and Biogeography, Open Access pdf 10.1111/geb.13643
Climate, pesticides, and landcover drive declines of the western bumble bee
Williams & Hemberger, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 10.1073/pnas.2221692120
Climate-trait relationships exhibit strong habitat specificity in plant communities across Europe
Kambach et al., Nature Communications, Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-023-36240-6
Cloudiness delays projected impact of climate change on coral reefs
González-Espinosa & Donner, PLOS Climate, Open Access pdf 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000090
Effects of climate change and anthropogenic activity on ranges of vertebrate species endemic to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau over 40 years
Jiang et al., Conservation Biology, 10.1111/cobi.14069
Evolutionary constraints mediate extinction risk under climate change
Garcia?Costoya et al., Ecology Letters, Open Access 10.1111/ele.14173
Long-term field study reveals that warmer summers lead to larger and longer-lived females only in northern populations of Natterer's bats
Stapelfeldt et al., Oecologia, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s00442-023-05318-9
Long-term, large-scale experiment reveals the effects of seed limitation, climate, and anthropogenic disturbance on restoration of plant communities in a biodiversity hotspot
Orrock et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 10.1073/pnas.2201943119
Monitoring and modelling marine zooplankton in a changing climate
Ratnarajah et al., Nature Communications, Open Access 10.1038/s41467-023-36241-5
Plants maintain climate fidelity in the face of dynamic climate change
Wang et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 10.1073/pnas.2201946119
Substrate availability and not thermal acclimation controls microbial temperature sensitivity response to long-term warming
Domeignoz?Horta et al., Global Change Biology, Open Access pdf 10.1111/gcb.16544
The timing of heat waves has multiyear effects on milkweed and its insect community
Cope et al., Ecology, 10.1002/ecy.3988
GHG sources & sinks, flux, related geochemistry
Consistent centennial-scale change in European sub-Arctic peatland vegetation toward Sphagnum dominance—Implications for carbon sink capacity
Piilo et al., Global Change Biology, 10.1111/gcb.16554
Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Australian states and territories: Determinants and policy implications
Nasim & Nasim, PLOS Climate, Open Access pdf 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000091
Implications of changes in land use on soil and biomass carbon sequestration: a case study from the Owabi reservoir catchment in Ghana
Amissah et al., Carbon Management, Open Access 10.1080/17583004.2023.2166871
Mangrove reforestation provides greater blue carbon benefit than afforestation for mitigating global climate change
Song et al., Nature Communications, Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-023-36477-1
Moisture-driven divergence in mineral-associated soil carbon persistence
Heckman et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 10.1073/pnas.2210044120
Partial cutting of a boreal nutrient-rich peatland forest causes radically less short-term on-site CO2 emissions than clear-cutting
Korkiakoski et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Open Access 10.1016/j.agrformet.2023.109361
Salp blooms drive strong increases in passive carbon export in the Southern Ocean
Décima et al., Nature Communications, Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-022-35204-6
The changing climate could lead to carbon losses in the tropics
, Nature Climate Change, 10.1038/s41558-023-01602-x
Well-to-Wheels emission inventory for the passenger vehicles of Bogotá, Colombia
Cuéllar-Álvarez et al., International Journal of Environmental Science and Technology, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s13762-023-04805-z
CO2 capture, sequestration science & engineering
Carbon dioxide removal–What's worth doing? A biophysical and public need perspective
Sekera et al., PLOS Climate, Open Access pdf 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000124
Comparison of carbon content between plantation and natural regeneration seedlings in Durango, Mexico
Soto-Cervantes et al., PeerJ, Open Access 10.7717/peerj.14774
Decarbonization
Aerodynamic upgrades of a Darrieus vertical axis small wind turbine
Eltayesh et al., Energy for Sustainable Development, 10.1016/j.esd.2023.01.018
Key factors influencing urban wind energy: A case study from the Dominican Republic
Vallejo Díaz et al., Energy for Sustainable Development, 10.1016/j.esd.2023.01.017
Monte Carlo modeling of tornado hazard to wind turbines in Germany
Bouchard & Romanic, Natural Hazards, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s11069-023-05843-z
Power-to-X in energy hubs: A Danish case study of renewable fuel production
Kountouris et al., Energy Policy, Open Access 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113439
Spatiotemporal variations of 100-m wind in Mongolia and implications for wind energy resources
Hong et al., International Journal of Climatology, 10.1002/joc.8037
Geoengineering climate
Risk from response to a changing climate
Kithiia, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, Open Access 10.1016/j.cosust.2010.12.002
Aerosols Climate change communications & cognition
Climate obstruction and Facebook advertising: how a sample of climate obstruction organizations use social media to disseminate discourses of delay
Holder et al., Climatic Change, Open Access 10.1007/s10584-023-03494-4
Collective responsibility for climate change
Vanderheiden, Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, Open Access 10.1007/978-94-007-1878-4_12
Self-focused value profiles relate to climate change skepticism in young adolescents
Grapsas et al., Journal of Environmental Psychology, Open Access 10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.101978
The impact of perceived partisanship on climate policy support: A conceptual replication and extension of the temporal framing effect
Herberz et al., Journal of Environmental Psychology, 10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.101972
"Our burgers eat carbon": Investigating the discourses of corporate net-zero commitments
Christiansen et al., Environmental Science & Policy, Open Access 10.1016/j.envsci.2023.01.015
Agronomy, animal husbundry, food production & climate change
Assessing long-term impacts of cover crops on soil organic carbon in the central U.S. Midwestern agroecosystems
Qin et al., Global Change Biology, 10.1111/gcb.16632
Carbon footprint of transhumant sheep farms: accounting for natural baseline emissions in Mediterranean systems
Pardo et al., [journal not provided], Open Access pdf 10.21203/rs.3.rs-1838904/v1
Challenges and Opportunities in Communicating Weather and Climate Information to Rural Farming Communities in Central Zimbabwe
Makuvaro et al., Weather, Climate, and Society, 10.1175/wcas-d-22-0016.1
Modelling adaptation and transformative adaptation in cropping systems: recent advances and future directions
Farrell et al., Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 10.1016/j.cosust.2023.101265
Pathways to achieving nature-positive and carbon–neutral land use and food systems in Wales
Jones et al., Regional Environmental Change, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s10113-023-02041-2
Production variability and adaptation strategies of Ugandan smallholders in the face of climate variability and market shocks
Wichern et al., Climate Risk Management, Open Access 10.1016/j.crm.2023.100490
Silver lining to a climate crisis in multiple prospects for alleviating crop waterlogging under future climates
Liu et al., [journal not provided], Open Access pdf 10.21203/rs.3.rs-1863270/v1
The revival of the drylands re-learning resilience to climate change from pastoral livelihoods in East Africa
Semplici & Campbell, Climate and Development, Open Access 10.1080/17565529.2022.2160197
The role of rice cultivation in changes in atmospheric methane concentration and the Global Methane Pledge
Wang et al., Global Change Biology, 10.1111/gcb.16631
Trends in climate and influence of climate-driven crop yields in southern coastal region, Bangladesh
Real et al., Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 10.1007/s00704-023-04382-8
Using bioclimatic indicators to assess climate change impacts on the Spanish wine sector
Gaitán & Pino-Otín, Atmospheric Research, 10.1016/j.atmosres.2023.106660
Hydrology, hydrometeorology & climate change
Climatological changes in rainfall distributions at different rain-rates under Qinghai-Tibet Plateau warming during 1981–2060
Ayantobo et al., Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 10.1007/s00704-023-04383-7
Evaluation and Projections of Extreme Precipitation precipitation extreme using a Spatial Extremes Framework
Yang et al., International Journal of Climatology, 10.1002/joc.8038
Hydrological responses to Co-impacts of climate change and Land Use/Cover Change based on CMIP6 in the Ganjiang River, Poyang Lake basin
Gong et al., Anthropocene, 10.1016/j.ancene.2023.100368
Increasing extreme flood risk under future climate change scenarios in South Korea
Kim et al., Weather and Climate Extremes, Open Access 10.1016/j.wace.2023.100552
Rapid attribution analysis of the extraordinary heat wave on the Pacific coast of the US and Canada in June 2021
Philip et al., Earth System Dynamics, Open Access pdf 10.5194/esd-13-1689-2022
Temporally compounding heatwave–heavy rainfall events in Australia
Sauter et al., International Journal of Climatology, Open Access pdf 10.1002/joc.7872
Climate change economics
Reforming a pre-existing biodiversity conservation scheme: Promoting climate co-benefits by a carbon payment
Kangas & Ollikainen, Ambio, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s13280-023-01833-4
Temporal and spatial evolution of embodied carbon transfer network in the context of the domestic economic cycle
Zhang & Dong, Carbon Management, Open Access 10.1080/17583004.2023.2176005
The challenge of border carbon adjustments as a mechanism for climate clubs
Winter, PLOS Climate, Open Access pdf 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000135
The linkage between carbon emissions, foreign direct investment, economic growth, and gross value added
Singh & Dhiman, Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 10.1007/s13412-022-00809-2
Climate change mitigation public policy research
Decoupling analysis and peak prediction of carbon emission in less developed provinces: A case study of sichuan province, china
Chen et al., Greenhouse Gases: Science and Technology, 10.1002/ghg.2200
Does China's regional emission trading scheme lead to carbon leakage? Evidence from conglomerates
He & Chen, Energy Policy, 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113481
Exploring the value of electric vehicles to domestic end-users
Ejeh et al., Energy Policy, Open Access 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113474
Implications of changes in land use on soil and biomass carbon sequestration: a case study from the Owabi reservoir catchment in Ghana
Amissah et al., Carbon Management, Open Access 10.1080/17583004.2023.2166871
Implications of the energy transition for government revenues, energy imports and employment: The case of electric vehicles in India
Rajagopal, Energy Policy, Open Access 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113466
Institutions for effective climate policymaking: Lessons from the case of the United Kingdom
Gransaull et al., Energy Policy, Open Access 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113484
Interactions between land and grid development in the transition to a decarbonized European power system
Guillot et al., Energy Policy, 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113470
Let it grow: How community solar policy can increase PV adoption in cities
Nuñez-Jimenez et al., Energy Policy, Open Access 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113477
Overbuilding transmission: A case study and policy analysis of the Indian power sector
Athawale & Felder, Energy Policy, Open Access 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113437
Overcoming the shock of energy depletion for energy policy? Tracing the missing link between energy depletion, renewable energy development and decarbonization in the USA
Hossain et al., Energy Policy, 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113469
Refining wind and solar potential maps through spatial multicriteria assessment. Case study: Colombia
Ángel-Sanint et al., Energy for Sustainable Development, Open Access 10.1016/j.esd.2023.01.019
Reforming a pre-existing biodiversity conservation scheme: Promoting climate co-benefits by a carbon payment
Kangas & Ollikainen, Ambio, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s13280-023-01833-4
The policy dimension of energy transition: The Brazilian case in promoting renewable energies (2000–2022)
Werner & Lazaro, Energy Policy, 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113480
Urban congestion pricing based on relative comfort and its impact on carbon emissions
Yang et al., Urban Climate, 10.1016/j.uclim.2023.101431
Climate change adaptation & adaptation public policy research
A combined cognitive and spatial model to map and understand climate-induced migration
Cárdenas-Vélez et al., Environment, Development and Sustainability, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s10668-023-02987-7
Classifying Social Adaptation Practices to Heat Stress—Learning from Autonomous Adaptations in Two Small Towns in Germany
Teebken et al., Weather, Climate, and Society, 10.1175/wcas-d-22-0003.1
Climate change adaptation methods at the community level: Evidence from the Oghan watershed, north of Iran
Abedi Sarvestani & Shahraki, Environmental Science & Policy, 10.1016/j.envsci.2023.01.011
Climate change adaptation with limited resources: adaptive capacity and action in small- and medium-sized municipalities
Fila et al., Environment, Development and Sustainability, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s10668-023-02999-3
Climate justice in higher education: a proposed paradigm shift towards a transformative role for colleges and universities
Kinol et al., Climatic Change, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s10584-023-03486-4
Exploring the meteorological impacts of surface and rooftop heat mitigation strategies over a tropical city
Khan et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 10.1029/2022jd038099
Risk from response to a changing climate
Kithiia, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, Open Access 10.1016/j.cosust.2010.12.002
Unraveling the challenges of Japanese local climate change adaptation Centers: A Discussion and Analysis
Fujita et al., Climate Risk Management, Open Access 10.1016/j.crm.2023.100489
Climate change impacts on human health
Rapid range shifts in African Anopheles mosquitoes over the last century
Carlson et al., [journal not provided], Open Access pdf 10.1101/673913
Short-term exposure to temperature and mental health in North Carolina: a distributed lag nonlinear analysis
Minor et al., International Journal of Biometeorology, 10.1007/s00484-023-02436-0
Other
Searching the ocean for secrets to help fight climate change
Mitchell Crow, Nature, Open Access pdf 10.1038/d41586-023-00404-7
Snow and land cover induced surface albedo changes in Northeast China during recent decades
Li et al., Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 10.1007/s00704-023-04392-6
Informed opinion, nudges & major initiatives
Indigenous peoples and inclusion in the green climate fund
Bertilsson & Soneryd, Environmental Sociology, Open Access 10.1080/23251042.2023.2177091
Science under pressure: how research is being challenged by the 2030 Agenda
Büttner et al., Sustainability Science, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s11625-023-01293-5
Vulnerability and loss and damage following the COP27 of the UN framework convention on climate change
Naylor & Ford, Regional Environmental Change, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s10113-023-02033-2
Book reviews
Alex Roberts and Sam Moore. The rise of ecofascism: climate change and the far right
Bernstein, Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 10.1007/s13412-022-00808-3
Articles/Reports from Agencies and Non-Governmental Organizations Addressing Aspects of Climate Change
Starting with Solar: A Preliminary Assessment of Solar Energy Systems in Residential New Construction, Grace Brittan and Ben Hoen, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
New homes provide a ready option for states hoping to reduce energy use, as evidenced by the steady increase in energy efficiency requirements in new home building codes. A less common approach is to specifically encourage or require new homes to produce their own carbon-free energy, through the installation of a solar energy system. Adopting these practices nationwide might significantly reduce new home energy use, but the drivers of the new solar home market have not been well studied. Partly filling this gap, the authors look at historical deployment trends of solar on over 500,000 new homes built through 2020 across 19 states and the District of Columbia, most of which were in California. California is a useful test case because it first incentivized in 2007, and more recently required 2018, new homes to have solar. The authors find that solar adoption rates at roughly 40% in recent years in California eclipse—by a wide margin—rates in other states, which top out near 4%. The presence of California's New Solar Home Partnership (NSHP) incentives appears strongly correlated with deployment levels, as does builder market share. The top-10 builders in California installed solar in recent years at rates almost three times the average of non-top-10 builders in the state. Interestingly, the authors found the same large builders did not install solar at the same elevated rates outside California, which might be related to the lack of incentives, they hypothesize. The authors also investigate the characteristics of new solar homes, such as living area (i.e., square feet), solar system size, frequency of battery installations, and use of third-party ownership.
Big Ag, Big Oil, and the California Water Crisis, Food & Water Watch
Climate change is wreaking havoc on California's water stability. The state is mired in long-term drought, punctuated by relatively brief periods of extreme precipitation and catastrophic flooding. But the impacts of climate change on state water supplies only tell part of the story. Most of California's water goes not for individual use, but instead to corporate agricultural and fossil fuel interests (Big Ag and Big Oil). These users reap tremendous profits, while more than 1 million Californians lack access to clean water. California must develop new water policy that makes good on the promise that Californians should have access to clean, reliable water and that stops the expansion of (and begins to roll back) the damaging industries using the most water. The authors map out an approach that would move California, boldly and with justice, into a sustainable water future.
Hydrogen's Water Problem, Food & Water Watch
Hydrogen is everywhere, but the molecule is n0t often found on its own in nature. To use it for transporting, storing, and delivering energy, you need to isolate hydrogen using other energy sources. That requires a feedstock, often fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas, a chemical reaction powered by energy, and lots of water. The process also uses more water for cooling, water treatment, and disposal. Powering and sourcing hydrogen production with fossil fuels raises water requirements even higher. That is because extracting and processing fossil fuels have their own huge water demands. Given all this, the authors knew that hydrogen production was thirsty. But they were not sure exactly how thirsty — so they did the math. First, they looked at U.S. goals for growing the hydrogen industry. The Department of Energy aims to boost U.S. hydrogen production from 10 million metric tons in 2020 to 50 million metric tons a year by 2050. Then, they looked at a projection of hydrogen production's energy mix by 2050. One organization projects that, worldwide, two-thirds of hydrogen will come from renewables, and one-third from natural gas in 2050. The authors found that if the U.S. meets its goals with that energy mix, water supplies would be in big trouble. Hydrogen production would gulp down so much water, it would equal the annual water use of 34 million Americans.
Polestar and Rivian pathway report, Kearney
All industries face a significant challenge over the next decade if we are to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, and automotive is no exception. Today, passenger vehicle emissions alone account for 15 percent of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions globally. Recognizing this, the automotive industry has taken steps over the past decade to decarbonize. So far, the primary focus for the industry has rightly been on electrification of the fleet, targeting the significant portion (60 to 65 percent for internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles) of emissions that come from the tailpipe. The challenge: when modeling a hypothetical well-to-wheel scenario of aggressive battery electric vehicle (BEV) adoption, powered by the hypothetical full switch to fossil-free power sources in parallel, there is still a GHG emission overshoot, unless upstream scope 3 (supply chain emissions) are simultaneously tackled. The authors look at well-to-wheel emissions of the projected passenger vehicle fleet globally to 2050, explore the monumental challenges the industry faces, and outline a suite of actions that merit collective action.
The U.S. Hydrogen Demand Action Plan, Bajema et al., Energy Futures Initiative
The authors present a plan to rapidly accelerate hydrogen use across regions and sectors through new policies and industrial strategies, with a focus on leveraging regional hydrogen hubs as growth engines. Recently passed federal laws—the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law—provide unprecedented clean hydrogen support and are expected to significantly reduce clean hydrogen production costs. The authors show that additional measures are necessary to get from those cost reductions to a national, commoditized clean hydrogen market, and now is the time to take action.
Loss and Damage Associated with the Effects of Climate Change: Recent Developments, Jane Leggett, Congressional Research Service
Many low-income countries, especially small island states, have long sought assistance and recourse through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its subsidiary Paris Agreement to cope with climate change-related loss and damage. In the early 1990s, some negotiators of the UNFCCC proposed means to address loss and damage that were not adopted. Now, many Parties and stakeholders view addressing loss and damage as the "third pillar" of climate action, along with GHG mitigation and adaptation.
Why Carbon Capture and Storage Is Not a Net-Zero Solution for Canada's Oil and Gas Sector, Laura Cameron, and Angela Carter, International Institute for Sustainable Development
Reducing emissions from Canada's oil and gas production is a priority, yet it presents unique challenges. Industry representatives consider carbon capture and storage (CCS) to be the sector's primary emission reduction solution, but there is a lack of evidence on the efficacy of this approach and its consistency with Canada's net-zero commitment. Investing in CCS is a risky investment for taxpayers and comes with a significant opportunity cost for near-term, more cost-effective solutions.
Climate Security Scenarios for Sweden, Erin Sikorsky and Brigitte Hugh, The Center for Climate and Security
In the coming decades, Sweden will face increased security risks due to climate change. These risks stem primarily from climate hazards outside Sweden's borders, though warming temperatures and increasingly erratic and intense precipitation may strain the country's domestic military, energy, and economic infrastructure. External climate security game changers for Sweden include the potential for aggressive Russian and Chinese behavior in a more navigable Arctic, strains on the European Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) due to increase humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR) demands, and the potential for reactionary European political responses to climate-related migration from the Middle East and North Africa. These threats are unlikely to develop on straightforward linear pathways, as climate change intersects with other developments to cause cascading or complex risks. Tipping points – whether from climate change or from societal developments – could amplify these risks on a shorter timeline than expected. Navigating these risks requires a whole-of-society approach across Sweden that breaks down planning and programmatic siloes among government ministries, civil society, and the private sector. To that end, in October 2022, the Swedish Defence University and the Center for Climate and Security convened a cross-section of leaders from the military, academia, civil society, and the private sector to explore potential future climate security scenarios for Sweden over the next five years. The authors provide an overview of the key findings of the scenarios discussion, including a discussion of drivers of climate security risk, entry points for action, and further research going forward.
How Can DoD Compare Damage Costs Against Resilience Investment Costs for Climate-Driven Natural Hazards? Overview of an Analytic Approach, Its Advantages, and Its Limitations, Narayanan et al., RAND
There is currently no Department of Defense-validated model or method for systematically comparing climate hazard damage costs against the costs of investing in resilience options. The authors begin to address this gap by assessing the relevance and limitations of this one analytic approach. Climate change is likely to increase the frequency and/or severity of extreme weather events, but it is difficult to predict with certainty which installations will be hit and when, or even by what type of hazard. It is important for DoD to account for this uncertainty by setting priorities for where and how much to invest in installation resilience to climate-driven hazards. Tools such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency's natural hazard analysis tool (Hazus) could be used to further understand the value of investing in installation resilience to climate-driven hazards. In 19 case studies, the annualized cost of a resilience option was compared with the averted damage over that option's lifetime under a variety of disaster scenarios to screen for potentially attractive resilience investment options.
Quantifying the Financial Impacts of Electric Vehicles on Utility Ratepayers and Shareholders, Satchwell, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Widespread electric vehicle (EV) adoption is critical for meeting economy-wide decarbonization goals and, as a result, states are considering enabling policies and rate designs to accelerate EV deployment. EVs can provide possible financial upside to electric utilities and ratepayers in several ways. For example, from the utility perspective, EVs could drive increased electricity sales and new earnings opportunities through increased capital investments. From the ratepayer perspective, increased electric loads from EVs could reduce average all-in retail rates. The degree to which there are net benefits or costs to shareholders and/or ratepayers depends on how EVs are integrated and managed through enabling grid investments and charging strategies. Using Berkeley Lab's Financial Impacts of Distributed Energy Resources (FINDER) model that mimics the electric utility investment planning and rate-making processes, we estimate the utility earnings and customer rate impacts of EVs using a bookend approach of "managed" (i.e., best-case) and "mismanaged" (i.e., worst case) charging strategies for a generic summer-peaking, investor-owned, and vertically integrated utility. The analysis also examines the sensitivity of results to different assumptions of EV deployment characteristics, EV impacts on retail electricity sales, incremental distribution system costs, EV charging location, and utility EV enablement costs (i.e., utility costs to invest in EV charging, controls, and communication to deliver and administer EV programs). The results are intended to inform EV policies and deployment strategies that maximize utility system benefits and minimize ratepayer costs.
Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor 2023, Day et al., NewClimate Institute and Carbon Market Watch
The authors assess the climate strategies of 24 major global companies, critically analyzing the extent to which they demonstrate corporate climate leadership. They evaluate the integrity of climate pledges against good practice criteria to identify examples for replication and highlight areas where improvement is needed. The companies analyzed have put themselves forward as climate leaders. The 24 global companies that were assessed comprise the largest three global companies from eight major-emitting sectors, including only those that are members of an initiative affiliated with the Race to Zero campaign. Through this, they have committed themselves to preparing and implementing decarbonization plans that align with the objective to limit warming to 1.5°C. These companies serve as role models for other large, medium, and small companies around the world. The analysis of these companies should provide the best prospects for the identification of replicable good practices. Scrutiny of their plans is also necessary to identify whether these companies set the right examples. Overall, the climate strategies of 15 of the 24 companies are of low or very low integrity. Most of the companies' strategies do not represent examples of good practice climate leadership. Companies' climate change commitments often do not add up to what their pledges might suggest.
Obtaining articles without journal subscriptions
We know it's frustrating that many articles we cite here are not free to read. One-off paid access fees are generally astronomically priced, suitable for such as "On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light" but not as a gamble on unknowns. With a median world income of US$ 9,373, for most of us US$ 42 is significant money to wager on an article's relevance and importance.
- Here's an excellent collection of tips and techniques for obtaining articles, legally.
- Unpaywall offers a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox that automatically indicates when an article is freely accessible and provides immediate access without further trouble. Unpaywall is also unscammy, works well, is itself offered free to use. The organizers (a legitimate nonprofit) report about a 50% success rate
- The weekly New Research catch is checked against the Unpaywall database with accessible items being flagged. Especially for just-published articles this mechansim may fail. If you're interested in an article title and it is not listed here as "open access," be sure to check the link anyway.
How is New Research assembled?
Most articles appearing here are found via RSS feeds from journal publishers, filtered by search terms to produce raw output for assessment of relevance.
Relevant articles are then queried against the Unpaywall database, to identify open access articles and expose useful metadata for articles appearing in the database.
The objective of New Research isn't to cast a tinge on scientific results, to color readers' impressions. Hence candidate articles are assessed via two metrics only:
- Was an article deemed of sufficient merit by a team of journal editors and peer reviewers? The fact of journal RSS output assigns a "yes" to this automatically.
- Is an article relevant to the topic of anthropogenic climate change? Due to filter overlap with other publication topics of inquiry, of a typical week's 550 or so input articles about 1/4 of RSS output makes the cut.
The section "Informed opinion, nudges & major initiatives" includes some items that are not scientific research per se but fall instead into the category of "perspectives," observations of implications of research findings, areas needing attention, etc.
Suggestions
Please let us know if you're aware of an article you think may be of interest for Skeptical Science research news, or if we've missed something that may be important. Send your input to Skeptical Science via our contact form.
Journals covered
A list of journals we cover may be found here. We welcome pointers to omissions, new journals etc.
Previous edition
The previous edition of Skeptical Science New Research may be found here.
This paper demonstrates the peer review process that occurs at Skeptical Science. Several commenters in the comment thread pointed out an error in the analysis and made other suggestions. Whereas I suggest that renewables are likely to only contribute 30% of the near-term growth of electric-energy demand, in fact, renewables are likely to makeup all of the near-term growth in electric-energy demand. I will be redoing this paper to correct this error and to refine the analysis. However, the basic tenets of this paper will not change: 1) percentages can be used to hide the actual trend and 2) renewable energy is currently only supplementing, and not supplanting fossil fuels.
At a young age I learned that global population was increasing and worried about whether there would be sufficient resources for all of the new mouths added each year. I was relieved when I learned that overpopulation would be solved within my lifetime because population growth was decreasing. I put that problem out of my mind.
That was when the global population was 3 billion and I was naïve. Whether intentional or not, I had been snookered by the media because they were broadcasting population growth as a percentage of current population, shown in Fig. 1. In absolute terms, however, population growth has been increasing my entire life and we are still nowhere near solving this age-old problem (no pun intended).
This exemplifies how percentages can be misleading.
Figure 1. Annual, global population growth as a percentage of current population (dashed line) and as actual growth (solid line). Data is here.
Our "progress" towards reaching net-zero emissions is being communicated using methods that can similarly cloud our actual progress. We are awash with optimism about how well the energy revolution to renewable energy is going, at a time when global fossil-fuel usage is still increasing. An article in the New York Times (read here) recently noted that Europe already gets 22% of its energy from renewable sources and that globally renewable energy installations grew by 25% in 2022. Seemingly impressive numbers. At 25% growth/yr we might believe that Europe will be fully converted to renewable energy within a matter of years. Although it is unlikely such a revolution will occur that quickly in Europe, what is more important is understanding global trends, because that is ultimately what controls Global Warming/Climate Change (GW/CC) Let's illustrate the problem using a simple example.
Figure 2 shows electricity generated from renewable energy, Fig. 3 shows trends for energy derived from fossil-fuels, and Fig. 4 compares energy demand over the next 10 years with that likely to be provided by renewable energy.
Figure 2. Renewable electricity generation during the recent, rapid growth of renewable energy. The continued rise over the next decade, based on historical trends, is also shown. Data is here,
Figure 3. Global fossil-fuel usage from 2000 onward, showing the temporary effects of the housing crisis and of Covid on energy usage. The continued increase over the next decade, based on historical trends, is also shown. Data is here.
Figure 4. Using data from Figs. 2 and 3, comparison of likely growth of energy demand (light gray triangular wedge), showing the fraction provided by renewable energy (dark gray triangular wedge). The dark-gray wedge is superimposed on top of the light-gray wedge to indicate that based on historical trends, that renewable energy growth will likely only provide about 30% of the increased energy demand over the next 10 years.
There are many ways to extrapolate trends into the future. The method I show in Figs. 2 to 4 is to simply extrapolate recent trends into the future. Whether or not this is what actually happens over the next 10 years is, of course, not known. But because this method is based on what we've actually been doing in the recent past, extrapolating recent trends over a short time frame going forward provides a good means for assessing and adjusting our plans if such analysis shows us coming up short of our goals. Because GW/CC is a global issue, the following analysis uses global data only.
As of 2021, Figs. 2 and 3 suggest …
- Global fossil-fuel usage about 140,000 TWh/yr.
- Global renewable energy electricity generation about 8,000 TWh/yr.
- Fig. 2 indicates renewable energy increasing about 6,000 TWh/yr over a 10-yr period.
- Fig. 3 indicates energy demand increasing about 20,000 TWh/yr over a 10-yr period.
- Based on recent, historical trends, Fig. 4 indicates that over a 10-yr period that renewable energy will only provide 30% of expected growth in energy demand.
Therefore, renewable energy is currently supplementing, and not supplanting fossil fuels. However impressive it sounds to say that global renewable energy grew 25% in a single year, recent, historical trends indicate that the growth of renewables is not even keeping up with growing, global energy demand.
If we were to define an energy revolution as one where renewable energy begins to replace fossil-fuel use, leading to a steady reduction in fossil-fuel usage, then this simple analysis suggests that although we may be laying the groundwork for an energy revolution, it has yet to begin. Think about this the next time you step into the voting booth. Think about this the next time you make a decision about home heating, home power, or what type of car to buy.
Do you see how working with percentages, even impressive-sounding percentages, hides the real problem? Fossil-fuel consumption continues to grow and the current growth of renewable energy is not keeping up with, much less replacing fossil-fuel use. What will it take to get to net-zero emissions?
Because the hope is that we will do better in the future than we've done in the past, such projections need to be continually updated. The main point here is to not rely on isolated, impressive-sounding percentages, because they can easily hide the trends that matter, especially when they relate to regional trends only.
Putting Europe's 22% Renewable Electricity Generation in Context
In 2022, the state of Texas in the US got 28% of its energy from renewables (read here). Thus, in 2022 Europe, with its reported 22% of electricity coming from renewables, is lagging behind one of the "oil capitals" of the world in terms of renewable-energy installations. If an oil-rich, Republican stronghold is ahead of Europe in the amount of energy it gets from renewables, perhaps this number of 22% is not as impressive as it sounds. Is it possible that the renewable energy in Texas is supplementing fossil-fuel generation rather than replacing it? Can the same be said for renewable-energy installations elsewhere? Has the shift from fossil-fuels to renewables really begun, or is the growth of renewable energy up to now merely providing surplus generating capacity to fuel our ever-expanding lust for power? In the context of our goals to reach net-zero emissions, how easy will it be to get to meaningful annual renewable percentages like 50%, 75% or more? Do a search on the percentage of the power created by renewables in any given geographical location. You will repeatedly find numbers in the range of 20-30%. If you read that such and such a place generated all of their electricity from renewables, it is usually only for a relatively short period of time. When averaged over an entire year, it is very difficult, without using energy storage, to generate more than about 30% of the energy from renewables. To get to net-zero emissions we must roll out renewable energy across the entire world, with energy storage, and simultaneously ramp down fossil-fuel use.
"Crossing The Chasm" Analogy
For those familiar with the business concept of "Crossing the Chasm", what we've achieved so far can be likened to expanding renewable energy to early adopters. We've yet to cross the chasm to the mainstream: the rest of the world. Businesses sometimes fail because they project penetration of their product into the general market based on the rate of penetration into the early-adopter market. It may be that with renewable energy all that we've done so far is to pick the low-hanging fruit. To reach net-zero emissions, renewable energy must not only penetrate the general market, it must dominate the entire energy market and displace all existing, fossil-fuel based energy systems in a little over 25 years, if we're to make our goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.
The NYT's article identifies the Chasm-Crossing problem as the cost of capital in emerging markets vs the cost of capital in developed countries.
"If you want to develop a solar project in Brazil or India, Birol said, you're likely to pay three times more for financing than if you were to build the same project in Europe.
That has huge climate implications. The energy demands of these big emerging economies are growing fast. If they can't finance renewables, they'll turn to gas instead. Or worse, to coal."
Clean Energy in China
There is a somewhat different problem in China. Although China is clearly a leader in developing and deploying renewable energy, their motivation likely has less to do with a desire to lessen the impacts of GW/CC and more to do with their own development goals. China is running out of water with which to cool traditional fossil-fueled power plants that have traditionally been behind their rapid economic expansion. Is renewable energy in China supplanting or supplementing existing fossil-fueled power plants?
At the same time, there is a strong push to transition to EV's in to ease local pollution. It is much easier in China to get a license to operate an EV in a large city than to operate a gas-powered vehicle. The rise of EVs in China may not represent a decrease in emissions associated with people decreasing use of gas-powered vehicles, but rather an increase in the total number of vehicles. Because EV's have a carbon footprint, albeit lower than gas-powered vehicles, whether there is a net drop in carbon emissions associated with increasing EV sales in China will depend on whether the decrease in operation of gas-powered vehicles outpaces the increase in EV's.
Be careful about assuming that a growth in renewable energy and EVs in China implies a decrease in carbon emissions. The situation is more complex.
We are pleased to announce that a major new project is well underway at Skeptical Science. The work involves not only updating our popular rebuttals for the most-used climate myths but also adding entry-level sections to each topic, thereby widening the accessibility of the resource to as many folk as possible. And we want you, the readers, to join in with the project.
Some context
Why was Skeptical Science put together in the first place? Because of climate science deniers. Who? Deniers, or denialists, are people motivated to argue against reality. Climate change is just one example of a topic that attracts such attention. Previously, campaigns were run, for example, to gloss over the harmful effects of tobacco smoke. Tellingly, some of the same actors were involved in both campaigns.
What was the root cause of climate science denial? Profit, or more precisely perceived loss of profit. The response of the fossil fuels sector to the perceived changes required to address global warming was to engage in a concerted campaign to play down its seriousness. Climate change thereby became politicised. Creation and circulation of the political talking-points was easy: the pre-existing network of free market and Conservative-leaning think-tanks and media channels was ready and waiting.
Talking-points were carefully crafted and then tested with focus groups to determine their "stickiness" – meaning that a sticky message would take hold in peoples' minds, no matter how untrue it was. They were not messing around. In this game, all that was needed was to spread doubt and confusion.
From this embryonic start, climate science denial spread like a deadly plague. Books, bogus journals, fake conferences and documentaries also played their part as people increasingly fell victim to the onslaught of misinformation. Those actively promoting climate change denialism (Tier 1 deniers) relied on such an effect taking place: they needed a citizens' army to repeat those sticky messages (Tier 2 deniers) and they got one.
For those interested in further reading on this matter, well-documented in its entirety, it's worth getting hold of a copy of the excellent book, Climate Cover-up, by James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore. It has aged well since its publication in 2009 – by which time much of the damage had been done. The first chapter is available here in PDF format as a taster.
Above – Front cover of Climate Cover-up – an account of how the organised climate change denial campaign evolved. As Bill McKibben commented about that campaign: "Forget about the crime of the century – this probably qualifies as the crime of the geological epoch."
Skeptical Science, founded by John Cook in 2007, was always the David fighting Goliath in this very unevenly-sided battle, but it has continued to root out misinformation ever since its inception. Its aim was always to provide a science-based response to climate science denialism. It was a remarkable, even heroic effort, built by a small but determined team of volunteers.
Updating our rebuttals
Our well-used database of denialist talking points has had over 36 million views since 2017 alone. The database carries entries on over 200 climate change denial talking points, referred to as "Myths", and the science-based rebuttals to each of them. Many of these rebuttals date back to 2010 or earlier and in some cases developments in science have rendered these originals out of date (and the myths even more ridiculous). We started an updating programme some years ago, but now we are taking a more structured approach.
We decided that rather than fix these rebuttals in an ad-hoc fashion, a full review would be useful as a first step. The review found that most rebuttals lacked an entry-level version, an easy read for people unfamiliar with the terminology and methods of science. This is a major accessibility issue. Some rebuttals had a "basic" version but no "intermediate" or "advanced" equivalents. In other cases, there was only an intermediate entry. Some basic-level rebuttals were written in a more accessible style than others. So we have identified a number of tasks to undertake.
As an initial step we took a sample of the most frequently-read rebuttals and updated them to include entry-level versions. These "at-a-glance" sections are short (ideally under 500 words) and written in a style intended to hold the reader from start to finish.
Three key principles are employed with the "at a glance" sections, based on the assumption that we may at times be visited by readers who are interested but who are relatively new to the subject. Firstly, we strive to write engagingly, as if we are having a friendly fire-side conversation, using analogies with everyday life where possible. Secondly, we try to avoid anything that could be distracting such as links or anything off-putting like unnecessary or unintroduced technical terms. Last but not least, the end of each short rebuttal should be memorable, so it sticks in the reader's mind.
Above – a new-style rebuttal for a well-known climate myth now including the "at a glance" section.
Beneath each such entry-level section is the existing "basic" rebuttal, updated where necessary and headed "Further details". The reader will therefore already be in the existing system, familiar to regular readers of Skeptical Science, that includes links to the more heavily-referenced intermediate and advanced-level rebuttals. Note that some excellent updating work has already been done – but only for some rebuttals.
This first batch of new rebuttals is a pick from a larger number we have completed. They were selected to provide a range of topics that vary in their complexity. At one end there are frankly daft statements like "the climate's changed before". Daft because it's a meaningless statement to make, without revealing what happened when it did. At the other, we deal with contentious claims such as the greenhouse gas theory breaking the second law of thermodynamics, where a minor treatise is required to explain Earth's energy budget and heat transfer within the atmosphere. It's easy to create denialist talking-points about such things but it's a lot harder to properly rebut such claims because it becomes necessary to tell the reader what is actually going on.
Many advanced rebuttals are pretty much journal-standard pieces, often written by a specialist working at that level. Based on our stats, the demographic that reads these is relatively small. Our priority for this first round of updates is therefore to add an at-a-glance section to each basic rebuttal and applying updates to these and the intermediate rebuttal versions as needed. After all, the vast majority of people we need to reach exist outside of the world of science and almost certainly outside of climate science, where the consensus that humans are causing global warming is very strong indeed. If we are to create a resource that is universally useful, we need to address that particular point. Nevertheless, if you once authored an advanced rebuttal and feel you can now add an update, then please feel free to get in touch with us!
Above – another section of the same rebuttal, with the feedback form linked above "Further details".
Quality Control-CHECK
Where do you, our regular readers, come into the equation? Well, before we further develop this system, we would like to get some feedback from you. A special kind of feedback in fact. We invite you to look at the selection of rebuttals we've now completed and fill out the Google-form you'll see at the end of "at a glance" in the blue box. We'd also very much appreciate it if you shared our ask with friends and relatives to read the at-a-glance sections and to gauge their usefulness by providing feedback as well. We want to know whether those short pieces have improved their understanding of climate-related issues.
Ideally, the people you forward this to will be from outside the world of science and ambivalent with regard to the whole area of climate change. Why? We want to determine how we can play our part to help people understand, especially those in a fence-sitting position (a huge demographic), why action on climate change is so important. Get enough of those on-board and a movement becomes a torrent. Please follow the links below to view the updated rebuttals.
| Myths with link to rebuttal | Short URLs |
| Ice age predicted in the 1970s | sks.to/1970s |
| It hasn't warmed since 1998 | sks.to/1998 |
| Antarctica is gaining ice | sks.to/antarctica |
| CRU emails suggest conspiracy | sks.to/climategate |
| What evidence is there for the hockey stick | sks.to/hockey |
| CO2 lags temperature | sks.to/lag |
| Climate's changed before | sks.to/past |
| It's the sun | sks.to/sun |
| Temperature records are unreliable | sks.to/temp |
| The greenhouse effect and the 2nd law of thermodynamics | sks.to/thermo |
This is a re-post from the CCL blog
Dana Nuccitelli was honored this week with the 2022 SEAL Environmental Journalism Award.
In addition to being a valued member of CCL's research team, Dana writes for Yale Climate Connections. His stellar work for that outlet — including pieces on clean energy permitting reform, the Inflation Reduction Act, and carbon dioxide removal by healthy forests and other methods — earned him this recognition.
"Environmental journalism is an essential public good," said Matt Harney, Founder of the SEAL Awards in a statement. "Environmental journalists' work of translating scientific research and policy developments into digestible writing requires real expertise and is under-appreciated. The SEAL environmental journalism award was created to reward journalistic excellence while encouraging news organizations to invest in more climate crisis coverage."
Dana's journalistic excellence extends to the CCL blog, where he has helped volunteers make sense of complicated topics such as the IPCC's take on carbon pricing, the cost of the clean energy transition, and how clean technologies stack up against fossil fuels.
"I'm incredibly honored that the SEAL awards recognized me alongside so many brilliant climate and environmental journalists," Dana said. "I look forward to continuing to work with my wonderful colleagues and volunteers at Yale Climate Connections and CCL to educate people about the climate crisis and its solutions."
CCL is proud to have Dana as a part of our staff, and we look forward to continuing to learn from his informative, inspiring writing.
Open access notables
In this week's government/NGO section, a bit of a smack in the face. Hamburg Climate Futures Outlook 2023 comes via the CLICC center at Universität Hamburg, authored by a powerhouse team. With a comprehensive look at our state of natural and human affairs, the report's main payload is quick to read:
Reaching worldwide deep decarbonization by 2050 is currently not plausible, given the observable trajectories of social drivers. The select physical processes of public interest only moderately, if at all, inhibit the plausibility of attaining the Paris Agreement temperature goals, although they can substantially modify the physical boundary conditions for society. Meeting the 1.5°C Paris Agreement temperature goal is not plausible, but limiting the global temperature rise to well below 2°C can become plausible if ambition, implementation, and knowledge gaps are closed.
Do however note a glimmer of hope: "given the observable trajectories of social drivers." We have control over the throttle and steering to create our trajectory, levers we're not fully effectively employing. This report's conclusion implies we should grip and use our levers of control harder, waste no capacity. The main methods and locations of our control options are conveniently provided in the report's circumspect, meticulous body. It's our challenge to provide means of falsfication of the authors' projections— here in our world.
Jeremy Moulton reviews a new book built on a premise that is both provocative and unsurprising: The performative state: public scrutiny and environmental governance in China by Iza Ding. As summarized by Moulton: "The Performative State hinges on a simple and effective argument: when there is a high level of public scrutiny and demand for action, but state capacity is simultaneously weak, the state will proceed to act performatively to appear to be meeting public demands." This is not indicative of a lack of sincerity; it's more complicated than "just lying" and is perhaps even arguably reflective of trying too hard with too little.
Towards more impactful energy research: The salient role of social sciences and humanities makes the case for us not fighting with no legs and only one arm. Eventually it'll sink into our heads: with our success at confronting and solving our climate problem being mostly governed by human nature, ignoring human nature in our effort to do this is remarkably dense. Gracia Brückmann et al. remind us of this in a more productive and thorough fashion, because the lesson still hasn't been absorbed. The authors are very kind, given obtusely slow uptake on the part of us pupils.
Climate change vs energy security? The conditional support for energy sources among Western Europeans: Chistoph Arndt does a really nice job of testing three hypotheses, with the third essentially an extension of the first two: "Higher worries about climate change increase the support for renewable energies and decrease the support for fossil forms of energy," and "Higher worries about energy security decrease the support for renewable energies and increase the support for fossil forms of energy." We may not find the formally derived answers so surprising, but oddly enough these questions have never before been properly tested for predictable conclusions. Not least, this paper features a positive torrent of interesting citations setting up "the state of the art" leading to this new investigation, especially as it includes an explicit literature review in its introductory section.
Bromley, Khan & Kenyon have instantly elicited some remarkably hysterical reactions with their paper Dust as a solar shield. These astrophysics researchers are conducting what for practical purposes is only a thought experiment given the effectively impossibly insurmountable mountain of deployment challenges entailed in their model. Meanwhile, assuming enough people were so genuinely naive as to imagine there's a plausible chance of living a happy future behind a lunar dust cloud, how are we doing with actual moral hazards down on the ground, in reality? Is it truly the case that we'll form a connection and excuse between this impracticable scheme and our frequently compromised decisions, such as to jaunt to Ibiza, Spain for a weekend via jet? How do we explain our behavior before such putative temptations emerged? Is geoengineering research such dangerous thought crime? Research listed here only a short while ago calls abstract worry over moral hazards posed by work into question.
113 articles in 52 journals by 715 contributing authors
Physical science of climate change, effects
Climate responses under an extreme quiet sun scenario
Liu et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 10.1029/2022jd037626
Controls on Surface Warming by Winter Arctic Moist Intrusions in Idealized Large-Eddy Simulations
Dimitrelos et al., Journal of Climate, Open Access 10.1175/jcli-d-22-0174.1
Effects of Surface Heating on Coastal Upwelling Intensity
Jung & Cho, Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 10.1029/2022jc018795
The Late 1970s Shift in ENSO Persistence Barrier Modulated by the Seasonal Amplitude of ENSO Growth Rate
Jiang et al., Journal of Climate, Open Access pdf 10.1175/jcli-d-22-0507.1
Thermohaline patterns of intrinsic Atlantic Multidecadal Variability in MPI-ESM-LR
Zanchettin et al., Climate Dynamics, 10.1007/s00382-023-06679-w
Observations of climate change, effects
Arctic warming contributes to increase in Northeast Pacific marine heatwave days over the past decades
Song et al., Communications Earth & Environment, Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-023-00683-y
Frontal collapse of San Quintín glacier (Northern Patagonia Icefield), the last piedmont glacier lobe in the Andes
P?tlicki et al., [journal not provided], Open Access 10.5194/tc-2023-10
Glacial lake outburst floods threaten millions globally
Taylor et al., Nature Communications, Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-023-36033-x
Satellite-based long-term spatiotemporal trends of wildfire in the Himalayan vegetation
Mamgain et al., Natural Hazards, Open Access 10.1007/s11069-023-05835-z
Spatiotemporal Trends in Near-Natural New Zealand River Flow
Queen et al., Journal of Hydrometeorology, 10.1175/jhm-d-22-0037.1
The Hydrometeorology of Extreme Floods in the Lower Mississippi River
Su et al., Journal of Hydrometeorology, 10.1175/jhm-d-22-0024.1
Instrumentation & observational methods of climate change, effects
Remote sensing for cost-effective blue carbon accounting
Malerba et al., Earth, Open Access 10.1016/j.earscirev.2023.104337
Modeling, simulation & projection of climate change, effects
Changes in Winter Temperature Extremes From Future Arctic Sea-Ice Loss and Ocean Warming
Lo et al., Geophysical Research Letters, Open Access pdf 10.1029/2022gl102542
Data-driven predictions of the time remaining until critical global warming thresholds are reached
Diffenbaugh & Barnes, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 10.1073/pnas.2207183120
Future Simulated Changes in Central U.S. Mesoscale Convective System Rainfall Caused by Changes in Convective and Stratiform Structure
Dougherty et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 10.1029/2022jd037537
Geospatial-based climate variability analysis, in Central Ethiopia Rift Valley
Mekonnen et al., Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 10.1007/s00704-023-04376-6
Multi-model ensemble projection of global dust cycle by the end of 21st century using CMIP6 data
Zhao et al., [journal not provided], Open Access 10.5194/acp-2022-760
Understanding the diversity of the West African monsoon system change projected by CORDEX-CORE regional climate models
Tamoffo et al., Climate Dynamics, 10.1007/s00382-023-06690-1
Advancement of climate & climate effects modeling, simulation & projection
Fine-Scale Climate Projections: What Additional Fixed Spatial Detail Is Provided by a Convection-Permitting Model?
Rowell & Berthou, Journal of Climate, 10.1175/jcli-d-22-0009.1
Light under Arctic sea ice in observations and Earth System Models
Lebrun et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, Open Access 10.1029/2021jc018161
Cryosphere & climate change
Landsystem analysis of a tropical moraine-dammed supraglacial lake, Llaca Lake, Cordillera Blanca, Perú
Narro Pérez et al., Boreas, Open Access 10.1111/bor.12611
More frequent atmospheric rivers slow the seasonal recovery of Arctic sea ice
Zhang et al., Nature Climate Change, 10.1038/s41558-023-01599-3
Sea level & climate change
Land loss in the Mississippi River Delta: Role of subsidence, global sea-level rise, and coupled atmospheric and oceanographic processes
Blum et al., Global and Planetary Change, 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2023.104048
Biology & climate change, related geochemistry
Assessing the role of family level variation and heat shock gene expression in the thermal stress response of the mosquito Aedes aegypti
Ware-Gilmore et al., Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 10.1098/rstb.2022.0011
Attributing long-term changes in airborne birch and grass pollen concentrations to climate change and vegetation dynamics
Verstraeten et al., Atmospheric Environment, 10.1016/j.atmosenv.2023.119643
Climate-related range shifts in Arctic-breeding shorebirds
Anderson et al., [journal not provided], Open Access 10.22541/au.165794046.69362127/v1
Coastal Upwelling under Anthropogenic Influence Drives the Community Change, Assembly Process, and Co-Occurrence Pattern of Coral Associated Microorganisms
Zhu et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 10.1029/2022jc019307
Dealing with disjunct populations of vascular plants: implications for assessing the effect of climate change
Varaldo et al., Oecologia, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s00442-023-05323-y
Deeper habitats and cooler temperatures moderate a climate-driven seagrass disease
Graham et al., Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 10.1098/rstb.2022.0016
Differential effects of ocean acidification and warming on biological functioning of a predator and prey species may alter future trophic interactions
Greatorex & Knights, Marine Environmental Research, 10.1016/j.marenvres.2023.105903
Effects of thermal fluctuations on biological processes: a meta-analysis of experiments manipulating thermal variability
Slein et al., Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 10.1098/rspb.2022.2225
Functional substitutability of native herbivores by livestock for soil carbon stock is mediated by microbial decomposers
Roy et al., Global Change Biology, 10.1111/gcb.16600
Heat stress does not induce wasting symptoms in the giant California sea cucumber (Apostichopus californicus)
Taylor et al., [journal not provided], Open Access pdf 10.1101/2022.06.02.494586
Imprints of climate stress on tree growth (the past as harbinger of the future): ecological stress memory in Tibetan Plateau juniper forests
Julio Camarero, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 10.1098/rspb.2022.2241
Infection burdens and virulence under heat stress: ecological and evolutionary considerations
Hector et al., Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 10.1098/rstb.2022.0018
Is the future female for turtles? Climate change and wetland configuration predict sex ratios of a freshwater species
Roberts et al., Global Change Biology, 10.1111/gcb.16625
Local-scale impacts of extreme events drive demographic asynchrony in neighbouring top predator populations
Ventura et al., Biology Letters, 10.1098/rsbl.2022.0408
Mechanistic models to meet the challenge of climate change in plant–pathogen systems
Jiranek et al., Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 10.1098/rstb.2022.0017
Rising temperature drives tipping points in mutualistic networks
Bhandary et al., Royal Society Open Science, Open Access 10.1098/rsos.221363
Shrinking body size and climate warming: Many freshwater salmonids do not follow the rule
Solokas et al., Global Change Biology, 10.1111/gcb.16626
Speed it up: How temperature drives toxicokinetics of organic contaminants in freshwater amphipods
Raths et al., Global Change Biology, 10.1111/gcb.16542
Temperature modifies trait-mediated infection outcomes in a Daphnia–fungal parasite system
Sun et al., Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Open Access 10.1098/rstb.2022.0009
Transgenerational plasticity in a zooplankton in response to elevated temperature and parasitism
Sun et al., Ecology and Evolution, Open Access 10.1002/ece3.9767
GHG sources & sinks, flux, related geochemistry
A spatially integrated dissolved inorganic carbon (SiDIC) model for aquatic ecosystems considering submerged vegetation
Nagatomo et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 10.1029/2022jg007032
Meridional Variability in Multi-decadal Trends of Dissolved Inorganic Carbon in Surface Seawater of the Western North Pacific along the 165°E Line
Ono et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 10.1029/2022jc018842
Microbial sensitivity to temperature and sulfate deposition modulates greenhouse gas emissions from peat soils
AminiTabrizi et al., Global Change Biology, 10.1111/gcb.16614
Microbial sensitivity to temperature and sulfate deposition modulates greenhouse gas emissions from peat soils
AminiTabrizi et al., Global Change Biology, 10.1111/gcb.16614
Net loss of biomass predicted for tropical biomes in a changing climate
Uribe et al., Nature Climate Change, 10.1038/s41558-023-01600-z
Nitrogen availability mediates soil carbon cycling response to climate warming: a meta-analysis
Bai et al., Global Change Biology, 10.1111/gcb.16627
Processes Controlling Methane Emissions from a Tropical Peatland Drainage Canal
Somers et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 10.1029/2022jg007194
CO2 capture, sequestration science & engineering
Strategy to Enhance Geological CO2 Storage Capacity in Saline Aquifer
Li et al., Geophysical Research Letters, 10.1029/2022gl101431
Decarbonization
High-throughput Li plating quantification for fast-charging battery design
Konz et al., [journal not provided], Open Access pdf 10.21203/rs.3.rs-1805434/v1
How does falling incumbent profitability affect energy policy discourse? The discursive construction of nuclear phaseouts and insufficient capacity as a threat in Sweden
Faber, Energy Policy, Open Access 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113432
Parametric assessment of a Pelton turbine within a rainwater harvesting system for micro hydro-power generation in urban zones
Zamora-Juárez et al., Energy for Sustainable Development, 10.1016/j.esd.2023.01.015
Unveiling the mysteries of operating voltages of lithium-carbon dioxide batteries
Xiao et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 10.1073/pnas.2217454120
Geoengineering climate
Dust as a solar shield.
Benjamin C. Bromley et al., PLOS Climate, Open Access pdf 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000133
Climate change communications & cognition
An Assessment of Attitudes and Perceptions of International University Students on Climate Change
, Journal of Development and Social Sciences, Open Access pdf 10.47205/jdss.2021(2-iv)74
Climate change vs energy security? The conditional support for energy sources among Western Europeans
Arndt, Energy Policy, Open Access 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113471
Using self-affirmation to increase intellectual humility in debate
Hanel et al., Royal Society Open Science, Open Access 10.1098/rsos.220958
Value attributed to text-based archives generated by artificial intelligence
Darda et al., [journal not provided], 10.31234/osf.io/s92am
Agronomy, animal husbundry, food production & climate change
A climate-driven compartmental model for fungal diseases in fruit orchards: The impacts of climate change on a brown rot-peach system
Bevacqua et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Open Access 10.1016/j.agrformet.2022.109293
Adaptation Strategy Can Ensure Seed and Food Production With Improving Water and Nitrogen Use Efficiency Under Climate Change
Chen et al., Earth's Future, 10.1029/2022ef002879
Agricultural diversification for crop yield stability: a smallholder adaptation strategy to climate variability in Ethiopia
Menesch et al., Regional Environmental Change, 10.1007/s10113-022-02021-y
Early–maturing cultivar of winter wheat is more adaptable to elevated [CO2] and rising temperature in the eastern Loess Plateau
Zhang et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 10.1016/j.agrformet.2023.109356
Functional substitutability of native herbivores by livestock for soil carbon stock is mediated by microbial decomposers
Roy et al., Global Change Biology, 10.1111/gcb.16600
Impacts of climate change on regional cattle trade in the central corridor of Africa
Amin et al., Regional Environmental Change, 10.1007/s10113-022-02017-8
Implications for the global tuna fishing industry of climate change-driven alterations in productivity and body sizes
Erauskin-Extramiana et al., SSRN Electronic Journal, 10.2139/ssrn.4059543
Prospects for Enhancing Climate Services in Agriculture
Kim et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Open Access pdf 10.1175/bams-d-22-0123.1
Research priorities for seafood-dependent livelihoods under ocean climate change extreme events
Ojea et al., Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, Open Access 10.1016/j.cosust.2023.101264
The contribution of livestock to climate change mitigation: a perspective from a low-income country
Bateki et al., Carbon Management, Open Access 10.1080/17583004.2023.2173655
World forests, global change, and emerging pests and pathogens
Guégan et al., Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, Open Access 10.1016/j.cosust.2023.101266
Hydrology, hydrometeorology & climate change
Cost-effective adaptation strategies to rising river flood risk in Europe
Dottori et al., Nature Climate Change, Open Access 10.1038/s41558-022-01540-0
Spatiotemporal Trends in Near-Natural New Zealand River Flow
Queen et al., Journal of Hydrometeorology, 10.1175/jhm-d-22-0037.1
The Hydrometeorology of Extreme Floods in the Lower Mississippi River
Su et al., Journal of Hydrometeorology, 10.1175/jhm-d-22-0024.1
Climate change economics
For whom the bell tolls: Climate change and income inequality
Cevik & Jalles, Energy Policy, 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113475
How to Support Residential Energy Conservation Cost-Effectively? An analysis of Public Financial Schemes in France
Chlond et al., Environmental and Resource Economics, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s10640-022-00754-2
Quantifying GHG emissions enabled by capital and labor: Economic and gender inequalities in France
Pottier & Le Treut, Journal of Industrial Ecology, 10.1111/jiec.13383
Tracking the drivers of global greenhouse gas emissions with spillover effects in the post-financial crisis era
Li et al., Energy Policy, 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113464
Climate change and the circular economy
At the intersection of life cycle assessment and indirect greenhouse gas emissions accounting
Agyei Boakye et al., The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 10.1007/s11367-023-02137-1
Climate change mitigation public policy research
A way forward for climate technology transfer and sustainable development goals
Kim et al., Environmental Science & Policy, 10.1016/j.envsci.2023.01.009
Adoption of Renewable Energy Systems in common properties of multi-owned buildings: Introduction of 'Energy Entitlement'
Poshnath et al., Energy Policy, Open Access 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113465
Auctions to phase out coal power: Lessons learned from Germany
Tiedemann & Müller-Hansen, Energy Policy, Open Access 10.1016/j.enpol.2022.113387
Can renewable energy portfolio standards and carbon tax policies promote carbon emission reduction in China's power industry?
Meng & Yu, Energy Policy, 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113461
Cooling is hotting up in the UK
Khosravi et al., Energy Policy, Open Access 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113456
Energy efficiency in the Indian transportation sector: effect on carbon emissions
Irfan et al., Environment, Development and Sustainability, 10.1007/s10668-023-02981-z
Energy transition scenarios in the transportation sector in Brazil: Contributions from the electrical mobility
Grangeia et al., Energy Policy, 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113434
Implementing the EU renewable energy directive in Norway: from Tailwind to Headwind
Skjærseth & Rosendal, Environmental Politics, 10.1080/09644016.2022.2075153
Krabi's renewable energy transition towards sustainable energy: drivers, barriers, and challenges
Senpong & Wiwattanadate, Environment, Development and Sustainability, 10.1007/s10668-023-02986-8
Optimal allocation of urban new energy vehicles and traditional energy vehicles considering pollution and cost
Guo et al., Environment, Development and Sustainability, 10.1007/s10668-023-02948-0
Policy prescriptions to address energy and transport poverty in the United Kingdom
Sovacool et al., Nature Energy, Open Access 10.1038/s41560-023-01196-w
Powering past coal is not enough
Gambhir, Nature Climate Change, 10.1038/s41558-022-01574-4
Socio-political feasibility of coal power phase-out and its role in mitigation pathways
Muttitt et al., Nature Climate Change, 10.1038/s41558-022-01576-2
The significance of achieving carbon neutrality by 2060 on China's energy transition pathway: a multi-model comparison analysis
Kong et al., Advances in Climate Change Research, Open Access 10.1016/j.accre.2023.01.010
Climate change adaptation & adaptation public policy research
Carbon emissions and economic impacts of an EU embargo on Russian fossil fuels
Liu et al., [journal not provided], Open Access pdf 10.21203/rs.3.rs-1683339/v1
City-wide, high-resolution mapping of evapotranspiration to guide climate-resilient planning
Vulova et al., Remote Sensing of Environment, Open Access 10.1016/j.rse.2023.113487
Climate change impacts and adaptation strategies in watershed areas in mid-hills of Nepal
Ranabhat et al., Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 10.1007/s13412-023-00817-w
Cost-effective adaptation strategies to rising river flood risk in Europe
Dottori et al., Nature Climate Change, Open Access 10.1038/s41558-022-01540-0
Understanding perceptions of climate vulnerability to inform more effective adaptation in coastal communities
Nelson et al., PLOS Climate, Open Access pdf 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000103
Upscaling climate change adaptation in small- and medium-sized municipalities: current barriers and future potentials
Fünfgeld et al., Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 10.1016/j.cosust.2023.101263
Climate change impacts on human health
Heatwaves and mortality in Queensland 2010–2019: implications for a homogenous state-wide approach
Franklin et al., International Journal of Biometeorology, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s00484-023-02430-6
Infectious disease ecology and evolution in a changing world
King et al., Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 10.1098/rstb.2022.0002
Machine learning prediction of climate-induced disaster injuries
Haggag et al., Natural Hazards, 10.1007/s11069-023-05829-x
Other
Climate implications of the sun transition to higher activity mode
Egorova et al., Journal of Atmospheric and Solar, 10.1016/j.jastp.2023.106020
Diffusion of Circumpolar Deep Water towards Antarctica
Yamazaki et al., [journal not provided], Open Access 10.1002/essoar.10512708.1
Foundations as sustainability partners: climate philanthropy finance flows in China
Ni et al., Climate Policy, 10.1080/14693062.2023.2169235
Informed opinion, nudges & major initiatives
Financing a greener future
, Nature Communications, Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-023-36036-8
How climate winners may actually help climate justice
Leroux & Mintz-Woo, PLOS Climate, Open Access pdf 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000127
Improving the relevance of paleontology to climate change policy
Kiessling et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 10.1073/pnas.2201926119
Rapidly evolving global energy transition greatly benefits GHG mitigation
Ke-Jun, Advances in Climate Change Research, Open Access 10.1016/j.accre.2023.01.009
Sky views
Ruesch, Subtext, Open Access 10.4324/9781315714851-23
The effect of disaster insurance on community resilience: a research agenda for local policy
French & Kousky, Climate Policy, 10.1080/14693062.2023.2170313
Towards more impactful energy research: The salient role of social sciences and humanities
Brückmann et al., PLOS Climate, Open Access pdf 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000132
Book reviews
The performative state: public scrutiny and environmental governance in China
Moulton, Environmental Politics, 10.1080/09644016.2023.2172653
Articles/Reports from Agencies and Non-Governmental Organizations Addressing Aspects of Climate Change
Hamburg Climate Futures Outlook 2023, Engels et al., Cluster of Excellence Climate, Climate Change, and Society, Universität Hamburg
Among the many possible climatic futures, not all are plausible. The authors systematically assess the plausibility of a climate future in which the Paris Agreement temperature goals are attained, namely holding global warming to well below 2°C and, if possible, to 1.5°C, relative to pre-industrial levels. Assessing plausible climate futures involves addressing a complex combination of social and physical dynamics. The authors analyze the dynamics of 10 dominant social drivers of decarbonization and six select physical processes of public interest.
Charting a Pathway to Maryland's Equitable Clean Energy Future, Gona et al., EarthJustice
The authors begin by assessing four main sets of housing- and energy-related policies, programs, and opportunities that currently exist in Maryland, and identifies barriers to implementation and openings. They then explain an alternative scenario, where the current disparate programs are streamlined through a one-stop-shop whole-home retrofit program that addresses health and safety repairs, as well as energy and electrification upgrades. The authors then list significant state and federal opportunities for funding such a program—$2 billion in the next decade—and lists specific agencies and departments tentatively responsible for each funding stream. Finally, specific recommendations are presented for each branch of Maryland's state government in order to create and fund a whole home retrofit program and reduce energy burdens on low-income Maryland households in the long-term.
Global Inequality Report 2023, Chancel et al., World Inequality Lab
The climate crisis has begun to disrupt human societies by severely affecting the very foundations of human livelihood and social organization. Climate impacts are not equally distributed across the world: on average, low- and middle-income countries suffer greater impacts than their richer counterparts. At the same time, the climate crisis is also marked by significant inequalities within countries. Recent research reveals a high concentration of global greenhouse gas emissions among a relatively small fraction of the population, living in emerging and rich countries. In addition, vulnerability to numerous climate impacts is strongly linked to income and wealth, not just between countries but also within them. The authors first shed light on these various dimensions of climate inequality in a systematic and detailed analysis, focusing on low- and middle-income countries in particular. They then suggest pathways to development cooperation, and tax and social policies that tackle climate inequalities at their core.
North Carolina Deep Decarbonization Pathways Analysis, State of North Carolina
Achieving North Carolina's net-zero vision requires continued partnership across the public and private sectors, evolving research and analysis, and the inclusive engagement of constituencies across the State. While the analysis establishes an important foundation for climate planning, continual and transparent monitoring, reporting, and tracking of progress is necessary to ensure North Carolina remains on a path to achieve its GHG goals. More work is also needed to reduce emissions in an affordable, equitable, and reliable manner. Further research and engagement on topics like environmental justice and economic impacts will complement this analysis and benefit North Carolina businesses and communities across the State. The analysis includes reviewing technologically feasible GHG emission reduction pathways consistent with the State's climate goals, including sector-specific emissions (e.g., electricity, transportation) and carbon sequestration trends over time; identifying key policy and planning takeaways, drawing from individual pathways and a comparison between pathways to inform near-, mid-, and long-term decarbonization efforts. ; and equipping policymakers and stakeholders with a better understanding of how to achieve deep decarbonization goals both across the economy and within specific sectors, building on existing statewide efforts.
Tennessee Valley Authority. Additional Steps Are Needed to Better Manage Climate-Related Risks, Rusco et al., Government Accountability Office
More frequent extreme weather events and other risks associated with climate change could cost utilities and customers billions of dollars from power outages, disruptions to electricity generation capacity, and infrastructure damage. Enhancing climate resilience means taking action to reduce potential future losses by managing climate-related risks. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federal corporation and the nation's largest public power provider. TVA provides electricity to about 10 million customers in seven states, including 153 local power companies and about 60 large industrial customers and federal facilities The authors examine (1) climate-related risks to TVA's operations, and (2) steps TVA has taken to manage climate-related risks and additional steps are needed. The authors recommend that TVA conduct an inventory of assets and operations vulnerable to climate change and develop a resilience plan that identifies and prioritizes resilience measures.
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How is New Research assembled?
Most articles appearing here are found via RSS feeds from journal publishers, filtered by search terms to produce raw output for assessment of relevance.
Relevant articles are then queried against the Unpaywall database, to identify open access articles and expose useful metadata for articles appearing in the database.
The objective of New Research isn't to cast a tinge on scientific results, to color readers' impressions. Hence candidate articles are assessed via two metrics only:
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This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters
Asequence of nine atmospheric rivers hammered California during a three-week period in January 2023, bringing over 700 landslides, power outages affecting more than 500,000 people, and heavy rains that triggered flooding and levee breaches. On a statewide basis, about 11 inches of rain fell; 20 deaths were blamed on the weather, with damages estimated at over $1 billion.
But the storm damages were a pale shadow of the havoc a true California megaflood would wreak.
The Golden State has a long history of cataclysmic floods, which have occurred about every 200 to 400 years — most recently in the Great Flood of 1861-62. And a future warmer climate will likely significantly increase the risk of even more extreme floods. In particular, a 2022 study found that, relative to a century ago, climate change has already doubled the risk of a present-day megastorm, and more than tripled the risk of a trillion-dollar megaflood of the type that could swamp the Central Valley.
Given the increased risk, it is more likely than not that many of you reading this will see a California megaflood costing tens of billions in your lifetime.
This is the third part of a three-part series on California's vulnerability to a megaflood. Part One examined the results of a 2011 study introducing the potential impacts of a scenario, known as "ARkStorm," which would be a repeat of California's Great Flood of 1861-62 — though the study did not take climate change into account. Part Two looked at how California is preparing its dams for future great floods. Here, in Part Three, we'll look at the increasing future threat of a California megaflood in a warming climate.
The ARkStorm 2.0 scenario
A 2011 government study introduced the "ARkStorm" scenario, finding that a megaflood in California could swamp the state's Central Valley and cause more than $1 trillion in damage.
A 2022 study by Xinging Huang and Daniel Swain updates that work in a scenario called "ARkStorm 2.0," using data and computer modeling advances not available in 2011.
The new study used climate modeling to develop a plausible megastorm in the present-day climate (1995-2005), which they called ARkHist. They also developed a more extreme case in a much warmer world, called ARkFuture.
Both scenarios featured a weeks-long parade of atmospheric river storms during the winter months. A high-resolution weather model was then run, using the climate model as input, in order to produce detailed "synthetic weather forecasts" for California. (For readers familiar with weather models, it was WRF with grid boxes 3 km on a side.)
The modeled storms not only brought massive precipitation accumulations – they also produced very high precipitation intensities (that is, very heavy precipitation during a single hour or day). This would greatly increase flash flood and landslide/debris flow risk – especially since climate change is bringing California a major increase in large and intense wildfires, making denuded slopes more vulnerable to flooding.
The ARkHist scenario involved storms that produced slightly less precipitation than the Great Flood of 1861-62 but slightly more than the wettest winters of the past 100 years. This scenario was thought to have a recurrence interval of once every 90-100 years. That means it has a 1-1.1% chance of occurring in a given year, or 26-28% chance in 30 years. A storm of this magnitude would be capable of causing tens of billions of dollars in damage; a 2022 study estimated that a flood with a 1-in-100-year return period affecting only the Los Angeles area would likely inundate property worth $56 billion to a depth of a foot or more.
The ARkFuture scenario, which would be a catastrophic event capable of causing more than $1 trillion in damage, had a recurrence interval of every 400 years in the current climate. That works out to a 0.25% chance in a given year, or a 6% chance in 30 years.
The study concluded that every additional degree Celsius of global warming slightly more than doubles the risk of a megaflood. ARkHist-level events have a 1% chance per year of occurring (1-in-100-year recurrence) with Earth's current global warming level of 1.2 degree Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures. If global warming hits 2.2 degrees, an ARkHist-level megastorm would have a 2.2% chance of occurring per year (a 1-in-45-year recurrence interval) — a dramatic increase in risk, especially given the catastrophic nature of a megaflood.
A warmer climate is already leading to stronger atmospheric rivers hitting California
One of the best-understood impacts of global warming on weather is that it increases the odds of heavy precipitation events. A warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor, which leads to an increase in the heaviest downpours — including those in California's atmospheric rivers: "The frequency and severity of landfalling 'atmospheric rivers' on the U.S. West Coast … will increase as a result of increasing evaporation and resulting higher atmospheric water vapor that occurs with increasing temperature," according to a medium-confidence conclusion of the 2017 Fourth National Climate Assessment, a sweeping government report that outlines how climate change is affecting the U.S.
Wetter atmospheric rivers are already being observed. A 2022 case study found that human-caused climate change increased the amount of rainfall from two February 2017 atmospheric rivers by about 11% and 15%, respectively. As discussed in Part Two of this series, the Oroville Dam spillway nearly suffered a catastrophic failure because of these heavy rains, prompting the evacuation of over 180,000 people.
If the same events were to take place in an even warmer world with 541 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — projected to occur in the second half of the 21st century — the researchers found rainfall quantities in the two atmospheric rivers would have been another 9% and 26% higher, respectively.
Extreme rain does not necessarily mean extreme flooding
Although extreme precipitation is increasing because of climate change and will continue to increase as the planet warms, that doesn't necessarily mean that extreme flooding will also increase. Floods are influenced by a variety of factors, including, very importantly, how wet the soils are. California is suffering from increasing drought, and when heavy rains fall on dry soils, it usually takes a greater amount of rain to induce flooding — though very dry, drought-baked soils can be impervious to water, increasing runoff.
A 2015 study in the journal Climactic Change found that very heavy precipitation — in the 99th percentile — in the contiguous U.S. resulted in 99th-percentile flooding only 36% of the time. The odds of 99th-percentile flooding increased to 62% when the soils were already moist, though. With California increasingly suffering extreme drought conditions prior to experiencing intense stormy periods, this will raise the bar on the amount of rain required to generate a megaflood during some years. In addition, when reservoirs are low because of pervasive drought, the risk of flooding and dam failures is reduced, since reservoirs can store a lot of floodwater.
More rain, less snow in store for California
As the climate warms, more wintertime precipitation in California's mountains falls as rain instead of snow. This increases flood risk, since rain immediately creates runoff, while melting snow provides a more gradual release of water. The ARkStorm 2.0 model runs also found multiple potential "rain-on-snow" events at higher elevations, which could further add to runoff (though this is a very complex issue, and the uncertainty in how this phenomenon will change in the future is high).
In the Sacramento and San Joaquin River watersheds, the peak runoff in the future warmer climate scenario (ARkFuture) was as much as 200-400% higher than ARkHist runoff, despite precipitation totals that were only about 50% higher. At lower elevations (except in the southeastern deserts of California), peak runoff also increased by a considerably wider margin than precipitation (runoff increases of 60-100%, compared to precipitation increases of 30-60%).
In a blog post at weatherwest.com, report co-author Daniel Swain said, "Flood risk during an event like either of these scenarios will bring widespread and severe flood risk to nearly the entire state, but the extreme increases in projected surface runoff in the Sacramento and San Joaquin basins are of particular concern given the confluence of high pre-existing risk in these regions and a large population that has never experienced flooding of this magnitude historically."
El Niño brings higher megaflood odds
The ARkstorm 2.0 study found that the top eight simulated 30-day "megastorm" events occurred during El Niño conditions, and seven of them occurred during moderate to strong El Niño events. These results suggest that reservoir operators should be more aggressive managing for floods during El Niño events – something that forecasts can give advance warning of several months in advance. But it's not a guarantee: The floods of January 2023 and during the Great Flood of 1861-62 both occurred when El Niño was not present.
California must prepare for increasingly extreme floods and droughts
California's weather over the past two months has abruptly switched from extreme drought to extreme flooding. It's a particularly striking example of the exacerbation of precipitation extremes that a warming climate is likely to continue producing in an area naturally prone to weather whiplash, as documented by Daniel Swain and coauthors in a 2018 paper in Nature Climate Change, "Increasing precipitation volatility in twenty-first century California." California's water management system was designed for the climate of the 20th century, and a rapid and costly upgrade to the climate of the 21st century is urgently needed to prepare for a future of increasingly extreme droughts and floods.
For example, it is critical that flood planners give more room for rivers to flood by moving levees back to widen river channels and thus allow rivers to reclaim their ancestral floodplains.
Read: Could leaving 'room for the river' help protect communities from floods?
But giving more room for rivers requires purchase of riverside land, a difficult proposition in a state where land values are high and public finances are tight. Converting that land to flood relief and wildlife habitat also means losing the property taxes the government collects.
One success story, though, is in the city of West Sacramento, where a stretch of the Sacramento River has more room to flow thanks to a new "setback" levee — a second levee built in 2011 farther from the main levee lining the river. When the river is high, floodwater has room to flow through the tree-filled space between the two levees, instead of flooding the dozen or so homes that used to lie there, which the city bought out. An additional setback levee is being constructed just southeast of the Sacramento International Airport.
Improved forecast techniques could also inform reservoir operators on how to reduce flood risk. A pilot project for this has begun for two reservoirs in California, aided by data taken by both the NOAA and Air Force Hurricane Hunters. This project also studied how floodwaters might be used to recharge underground aquifers. Locating more underground features known as paleovalleys may aid in this effort.
In December 2022, the Central Valley Flood Protection Board approved a plan to spend more than $3 billion in the next five years and $30 billion over the next 30 years for infrastructure upgrades, emergency preparation and floodplain restoration in California's Central Valley. In addition, one of the authors of the ARkStorm 2.0 study, Dr. Swain, has been asked to testify in front of the state legislature Feb. 1 on the risk of California megafloods during a public hearing.
Given California's megaflood history and the potential increasing flood risk from climate change, it is essential for the state to continue to upgrade its flood infrastructure, policies, and flood-awareness efforts. It's good to see the state has taken positive steps in that direction.
The other two parts of this three-part series:
Part One: The other 'big one': How a megaflood could swamp California's Central Valley
Part Two: If a megaflood strikes California, these dams might be at risk
Originally published by The Hill
After decades of failure to pass major federal climate legislation, Congress finally broke through last year with the Inflation Reduction Act and its close to $400 billion in clean energy investments. Energy modeling experts estimated that these provisions would help the U.S. cut its carbon pollution about 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, bringing the Biden administration's Paris commitment of 50 percent cuts within reach. But there's a catch — the new law could cause the U.S. to actually burn more coal, if it's not coupled with clean energy permitting reform.
That's because the energy modeling groups assumed nothing would limit the rate at which clean energy projects like big wind and solar farms would be deployed. A subsequent Princeton analysis found that the slow rate at which the U.S. is building its electric transmission infrastructure would act as a crucial bottleneck slowing that clean energy deployment.
In recent years, the nation has only expanded its electricity transmission capabilities at a rate of just 1 percent annually, only about half as fast as in prior decades. Over the past decade, the U.S. has built more than 10,000 miles of new natural gas pipelines per year, compared to an average of just 1,800 new miles of electric transmission lines. Building a single new transmission line takes over a decade on average. Meanwhile, 2030 is now a scant seven years away.
The optimistic projections of the potential carbon pollution cuts from the Inflation Reduction Act mostly stem from an expected explosion in solar panel and wind turbine installations, thanks to clean energy tax credits. Energy modelers expect a tripling in American wind and solar generation capacity over just the next seven years. But most of those wind and solar farms would be built in rural areas and in the windy middle of the country. The clean electricity those projects generate would need to be transported to households and businesses in big population centers, mainly in cities and along the coasts.
That will require a lot of new electric transmission lines. The Princeton modeling team estimated that if the U.S. continues its slow 1 percent rate of annual transmission infrastructure expansion, that will only suffice to allow about 20 percent of the potential emissions cuts to be realized. And if those new solar panels and wind turbines are unable to connect to the grid, the increased electricity demand from the other Inflation Reduction Act provisions — which incentivize people to transition to electric cars, heat pumps and induction stoves — would instead be met by burning more coal and gas.
As a result, the Princeton team estimated that, perversely, if the U.S. doesn't speed up its electric transmission infrastructure build-out, it will burn about 25 percent more coal in 2030 than it would have if landmark climate policy had not passed, potentially causing thousands of extra premature deaths.
The lack of permitting reform could also delay the economic benefits here in California. Missing out on these new infrastructure projects could result in lost construction and maintenance jobs, land leasing revenue and tax revenue for our area.
It's thus critical that Congress pass permitting reform legislation that will add to America's capacity to transmit clean electricity and speed up the approval of clean energy projects that are waiting to be built, while preserving communities' ability to make their voices heard on the environmental and other impacts of proposed energy projects. Doing so will unlock the climate pollution reduction potential of the Inflation Reduction Act while also improving peoples' health and saving thousands of lives in disadvantaged communities living near fossil fuel power plant pollution sources.
Open access notables
Via PNAS, Ceylan, Anderson & Wood present a paper squarely in the center of the Skeptical Science wheelhouse: Sharing of misinformation is habitual, not just lazy or biased. The signficance statement is obvious catnip:
Misinformation is a worldwide concern carrying socioeconomic and political consequences. What drives its spread?. The answer lies in the reward structure on social media that encourages users to form habits of sharing news that engages others and attracts social recognition. Once users form these sharing habits, they respond automatically to recurring cues within the site and are relatively insensitive to the informational consequences of the news shared, whether the news is false or conflicts with their own political beliefs. However, habitual sharing of misinformation is not inevitable: We show that users can be incentivized to build sharing habits that are sensitive to truth value.
In this week's government/NGO section and produced by the Rocky Mountain Institute, evidence of an inflection point: Peak fossil fuel demand for electricity; It's all over except the shouting.
Fairness is outside the scope of geophysics, so even while it may sound as though everybody's beating up on geoengineering we're really only hearing due diligence at work. Here's another paper suggesting we approach solar geoengineering with aerosols with extreme caution and circumspection. Future changes in atmospheric rivers over East Asia under stratospheric aerosol intervention published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics by Ju Liang and Jim Haywood leaves us with a strong impression of "more work needed," with indications of us risking signficant inadvertent hydrometeorological changes by geoengineering in haste. Large populations are on this map.
Carlson et al. remind us that bout two decades ago a landmark paper on contemporary climate change impacts on human health documented an already large negative climate effect. In their PLOS opinion piece The health burden of climate change: A call for global scientific action the authors point out that our current situational awareness of climate effects on health has lagged and grown worse even as it's certain that numbers from 2003 have grown much larger. As their title implies, they urge redress on what is also a serious climate justice problem.
122 articles in 55 journals by 818 contributing authors
Physical science of climate change, effects
Climate teleconnections modulate global burned area
Cardil et al., Nature Communications, Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-023-36052-8
Geostrophic flows control future changes of oceanic eastern boundary upwelling
Jing et al., Nature Climate Change, Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41558-022-01588-y
The role of baroclinic activity in controlling Earth's albedo in the present and future climates
Hadas et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Open Access pdf 10.1073/pnas.2208778120
Observations of climate change, effects
Attribution of the July 2021 Record-Breaking Northwest Pacific Marine Heatwave to Global Warming, Atmospheric Circulation, and ENSO
Li et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 10.1175/bams-d-22-0142.1
Permafrost degradation and nitrogen cycling in Arctic rivers: insights from stable nitrogen isotope studies
Francis et al., Biogeosciences, Open Access pdf 10.5194/bg-20-365-2023
Summer hydrography and circulation in Storfjorden, Svalbard, following a record low winter sea-ice extent in the Barents Sea
Vivier et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 10.1029/2022jc018648
The April 2021 Cape Town Wildfire: Has Anthropogenic Climate Change Altered the Likelihood of Extreme Fire Weather?
Liu et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 10.1175/bams-d-22-0204.1
The evolution of precipitation and its physical mechanisms in arid and humid regions of the Tibetan Plateau
Li et al., Atmospheric Research, 10.1016/j.atmosres.2023.106638
Instrumentation & observational methods of climate change, effects
African coastal camera network efforts at monitoring ocean, climate, and human impacts
Abessolo et al., Scientific Reports, 10.1038/s41598-023-28815-6
Application of copula-based approach as a new data-driven model for downscaling the mean daily temperature
Nazeri Tahroudi et al., International Journal of Climatology, 10.1002/joc.7752
Comparison of sensible and latent heat fluxes from optical-microwave scintillometers and eddy covariance systems with respect to surface energy balance closure
Zheng et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Open Access 10.1016/j.agrformet.2023.109345
Improved Monitoring of Subglacial Lake Activity in Greenland
Bahbah Nielsen et al., [journal not provided], Open Access 10.5194/egusphere-egu22-7222
Intercomparisons of methods for extracting the internal climate variability from the observed records over the Indo-Pacific sector
Miyaji et al., International Journal of Climatology, 10.1002/joc.7729
Regionalizing the sea-level budget with machine learning techniques
Camargo et al., [journal not provided], Open Access pdf 10.5194/egusphere-2022-876
Modeling, simulation & projection of climate change, effects
Anthropogenic Influence on the 2021 Wettest September in Northern China
Hu et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 10.1175/bams-d-22-0156.1
Assessment of the changing role of lower tropospheric temperature advection under arctic amplification using a large ensemble climate simulation dataset
Hori & Yoshimori, Climate Dynamics, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s00382-023-06687-w
Change in Temperature Extremes over India Under 1.5 °C and 2 °C Global Warming Targets
Maurya et al., Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 10.1007/s00704-023-04367-7
Diagnosis of GCM-RCM-driven rainfall patterns under changing climate through the robust selection of multi-model ensemble and sub-ensembles
Gaur et al., Climatic Change, 10.1007/s10584-022-03475-z
Evidence of localised Amazon rainforest dieback in CMIP6 models
Parry et al., Earth System Dynamics, Open Access pdf 10.5194/esd-13-1667-2022
Future changes in climate and hydroclimate extremes in East Africa
Gebrechorkos et al., Earth's Future, 10.1029/2022ef003011
Future Local Ground-level Ozone in the European area from Statistical Downscaling Projections Considering Climate and Emission Changes
Hertig et al., Earth's Future, 10.1029/2022ef003317
Geostrophic flows control future changes of oceanic eastern boundary upwelling
Jing et al., Nature Climate Change, Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41558-022-01588-y
Mechanisms of heat flux across the Southern Greenland continental shelf in 1/10° and 1/12° ocean/sea ice simulations
Morrison et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 10.1029/2022jc019021
Stratospheric Modulation of Tropical Upper-Tropospheric Warming-Induced Circulation Changes in an Idealized General Circulation Model
Walz et al., Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, 10.1175/jas-d-21-0232.1
Uncertainty in Future Projections of Precipitation Decline over Mesopotamia
Choi & Eltahir, Journal of Climate, 10.1175/jcli-d-22-0268.1
Advancement of climate & climate effects modeling, simulation & projection
Evaluation of the convection-permitting regional climate model CNRM-AROME41t1 over Northwestern Europe
Lucas-Picher et al., Climate Dynamics, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s00382-022-06637-y
Exploring Global Climate Model Downscaling Based on Tile-Level Output
Admasu et al., Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 10.1175/jamc-d-21-0265.1
Mixed layer temperature budget in the Arabian Sea during winter 2019 and spring 2019: The role of diapycnal heat flux
Joseph et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 10.1029/2022jc019088
Sensitivity of the simulation of extreme precipitation events in China to different cumulus parameterization schemes and the underlying mechanisms
Zhang et al., Atmospheric Research, 10.1016/j.atmosres.2023.106636
Cryosphere & climate change
Impact of icebergs on the seasonal submarine melt of Sermeq Kujalleq
Kajanto et al., The Cryosphere, Open Access pdf 10.5194/tc-17-371-2023
Mass changes of the northern Antarctic Peninsula Ice Sheet derived from repeat bi-static SAR acquisitions for the period 2013–2017
Seehaus et al., [journal not provided], Open Access 10.5194/tc-2022-251
The impact of spatially varying ice sheet basal conditions on sliding at glacial time scales
Gowan et al., Journal of Glaciology, Open Access pdf 10.1017/jog.2022.125
Variable temperature thresholds of melt pond formation on Antarctic ice shelves
van Wessem et al., Nature Climate Change, Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41558-022-01577-1
Sea level & climate change
Understanding the natural variability of still water levels in the San Francisco Bay over the past 500 years: Implications for future coastal flood risk
Mukhopadhyay et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 10.1029/2022jc019012
Paleoclimate
Climate change, human health, and resilience in the Holocene
Robbins Schug et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 10.1073/pnas.2209472120
Using data and models to infer climate and environmental changes during the Little Ice Age in tropical West Africa
Lézine et al., Climate of the Past, Open Access 10.5194/cp-19-277-2023
Biology & climate change, related geochemistry
Climate change in the Arctic: testing the poleward expansion of ticks and tick-borne diseases
McCoy et al., Global Change Biology, Open Access 10.1111/gcb.16617
Consistent responses of coral microbiome to acute and chronic heat stress exposures
Zhu et al., Marine Environmental Research, 10.1016/j.marenvres.2023.105900
Coral reef structural complexity loss exposes coastlines to waves
Carlot et al., Scientific Reports, Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41598-023-28945-x
Effects of hydrological change in fire-prone wetland vegetation: an empirical simulation
Mason et al., Journal of Ecology, Open Access 10.1111/1365-2745.14078
Global vegetation resilience linked to water availability and variability
Smith & Boers, Nature Communications, Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-023-36207-7
Maximum limit of sensible heat dissipation in Japanese quail
de Oliveira et al., International Journal of Biometeorology, 10.1007/s00484-023-02432-4
Natural hybridization reduces vulnerability to climate change
Brauer et al., Nature Climate Change, Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41558-022-01585-1
Recent and future declines of a historically widespread pollinator linked to climate, land cover, and pesticides
Janousek et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 10.1073/pnas.2211223120
Reef islands have continually adjusted to environmental change over the past two millennia
Kench et al., Nature Communications, 10.1038/s41467-023-36171-2
Variability in bat morphology is influenced by temperature and forest cover and their interactions
Wood & Cousins, Ecology and Evolution, Open Access 10.1002/ece3.9695
GHG sources & sinks, flux, related geochemistry
Attributing past carbon fluxes to CO2 and climate change: Respiration response to CO2 fertilization shifts regional distribution of the carbon sink
Quetin et al., Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 10.1029/2022gb007478
Carbon footprint assessment and mitigation scenarios: a benchmark model for GHG indicator in a Nigerian University
Adeyeye et al., Environment, Development and Sustainability, 10.1007/s10668-021-02098-1
Drought-induced increase in tree mortality and corresponding decrease in the carbon sink capacity of Canada's boreal forests from 1970 to 2020
Liu et al., Global Change Biology, 10.1111/gcb.16599
Effects of carbonate minerals and exogenous acids on carbon flux from the chemical weathering of granite and basalt
Li et al., Global and Planetary Change, 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2023.104053
Evaluating Northern Hemisphere Growing Season Net Carbon Flux in Climate Models Using Aircraft Observations
Loechli et al., [journal not provided], Open Access 10.1002/essoar.10512001.1
Megaherbivores modify forest structure and increase carbon stocks through multiple pathways
Berzaghi et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Open Access 10.1073/pnas.2201832120
Peat decomposition and erosion contribute to pond deepening in a temperate salt marsh
Luk et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 10.1029/2022jg007063
REDUCED NET CO2 UPTAKE DURING DRY SUMMERS IN A BOREAL SHIELD PEATLAND
McDonald et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 10.1029/2022jg006923
Temperature effect on erosion-induced disturbances to soil organic carbon cycling
Wang et al., Nature Climate Change, 10.1038/s41558-022-01562-8
Using Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) column CO2 retrievals to rapidly detect and estimate biospheric surface carbon flux anomalies
Feldman et al., Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Open Access pdf 10.5194/acp-23-1545-2023
Warming to increase cropland carbon sink
Campo, Nature Climate Change, 10.1038/s41558-022-01559-3
CO2 capture, sequestration science & engineering
Exploring public acceptability of direct air carbon capture with storage: climate urgency, moral hazards and perceptions of the 'whole versus the parts'
Satterfield et al., Climatic Change, Open Access 10.1007/s10584-023-03483-7
Decarbonization
A smart risk-responding polymer membrane for safer batteries
Zhang et al., Science Advances, 10.1126/sciadv.ade5802
Are there preferable capacity combinations of renewables and storage? Exploratory quantifications along various technology deployment pathways
Michas & Flamos, Energy Policy, 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113455
Asymmetrical electrohydrogenation of CO2 to ethanol with copper–gold heterojunctions
Kuang et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 10.1073/pnas.2214175120
Did innovative city constructions reduce carbon emissions? A quasi-natural experiment in China
Li & Zhao, Environment, Development and Sustainability, 10.1007/s10668-023-02964-0
Direct seawater electrolysis by adjusting the local reaction environment of a catalyst
Guo et al., Nature Energy, 10.1038/s41560-023-01195-x
Flexible blades to improve Darrieus turbine performance and reduce cost
Kirke & Abdolahifar, Energy for Sustainable Development, 10.1016/j.esd.2023.01.010
Metal oxide barrier layers for terrestrial and space perovskite photovoltaics
Kirmani et al., Nature Energy, 10.1038/s41560-022-01189-1
Peer-to-Peer energy trading, independence aspirations and financial benefits among Nigerian households
Adewole et al., Energy Policy, Open Access 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113442
Projecting Future Energy Production from Operating Wind Farms in North America. Part I: Dynamical Downscaling
Pryor et al., Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 10.1175/jamc-d-22-0044.1
Projecting Future Energy Production from Operating Wind Farms in North America. Part II: Statistical Downscaling
Coburn & Pryor, Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 10.1175/jamc-d-22-0047.1
Reliability of onshore wind turbines based on linking power curves to failure and maintenance records: A case study in central Spain
Sanchez?Fernandez et al., Wind Energy, Open Access 10.1002/we.2793
Short term multi-steps wind speed forecasting for carbon neutral microgrid by decomposition based hybrid model
Nahid et al., Energy for Sustainable Development, 10.1016/j.esd.2023.01.016
Thermal and chemical reliability of paraffin wax and its impact on thermal performance and economic analysis of solar water heater
Chopra et al., Energy for Sustainable Development, 10.1016/j.esd.2023.01.004
Geoengineering climate
Future changes in atmospheric rivers over East Asia under stratospheric aerosol intervention
Liang & Haywood Haywood Haywood, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Open Access pdf 10.5194/acp-23-1687-2023
Black carbon Aerosols
Aerosol Effects on Clear-Sky Shortwave Heating in the Asian Monsoon Tropopause Layer
Gao et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 10.1029/2022jd036956
Climate change communications & cognition
Exploring TikTok as a promising platform for geoscience communication
Zawacki et al., Geoscience Communication, Open Access pdf 10.5194/gc-5-363-2022
Public Engagement on Weather and Climate with a Monsoon Fantasy Forecasting Game
Guido et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Open Access pdf 10.1175/bams-d-22-0003.1
Sharing of misinformation is habitual, not just lazy or biased
Lee et al., Review of Institution and Economics, Open Access 10.30885/rie.2018.12.3.041
The climate change risk perception model in the United States: A replication study
Gilbert & Lachlan, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.101969
The role of climate change perceptions and sociodemographics on reported mitigation efforts and performance among households in northeastern Mexico
González-Hernández et al., Environment, Development and Sustainability, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s10668-021-02093-6
Using virtual simulations of future extreme weather events to communicate climate change risk
van Gevelt et al., PLOS Climate, Open Access pdf 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000112
Agronomy, animal husbundry, food production & climate change
A leverage points perspective on Arctic Indigenous food systems research: a systematic review
Zimmermann et al., Sustainability Science, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s11625-022-01280-2
Farmers' perspective towards climate change vulnerability, risk perceptions, and adaptation measures in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan
Shah et al., International Journal of Environmental Science and Technology, 10.1007/s13762-022-04077-z
High greenhouse gas emissions after grassland renewal on bog peat soil
Offermanns et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Open Access 10.1016/j.agrformet.2023.109309
Promoting green development of agriculture based on low-carbon policies and green preferences: an evolutionary game analysis
Luo et al., Environment, Development and Sustainability, 10.1007/s10668-023-02970-2
Rice-animal Co-culture Systems Benefit Global Sustainable Intensification
Cui et al., Earth's Future, 10.1029/2022ef002984
Small-scale octopus fishery operations enable environmentally and socioeconomically sustainable sourcing of nutrients under climate change
Willer et al., Nature Food, Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43016-022-00687-5
Viticulture adaptation to global warming: Modelling gas exchange, water status and leaf temperature to probe for practices manipulating water supply, canopy reflectance and radiation load
Garcia-Tejera et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 10.1016/j.agrformet.2023.109351
Warming to increase cropland carbon sink
Campo, Nature Climate Change, 10.1038/s41558-022-01559-3
Hydrology, hydrometeorology & climate change
Changes in extreme rainfall events in the recent decades and their linkage with atmospheric moisture transport
Suthinkumar et al., Global and Planetary Change, 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2023.104047
Cross-sectoral impacts of the 2018–2019 Central European drought and climate resilience in the German part of the Elbe River basin
Conradt et al., Regional Environmental Change, Open Access 10.1007/s10113-023-02032-3
Land-atmosphere coupling constrains increases to potential evaporation in a warming climate: Implications at local and global scales
Kim et al., Earth's Future, 10.1029/2022ef002886
Streamflow Composition and the Contradicting Impacts of Anthropogenic Activities and Climatic Change on Streamflow in the Amu Darya Basin, Central Asia
Hou et al., Journal of Hydrometeorology, 10.1175/jhm-d-22-0040.1
The evolution of precipitation and its physical mechanisms in arid and humid regions of the Tibetan Plateau
Li et al., Atmospheric Research, 10.1016/j.atmosres.2023.106638
Uncertainty in Future Projections of Precipitation Decline over Mesopotamia
Choi & Eltahir, Journal of Climate, 10.1175/jcli-d-22-0268.1
Climate change economics
Efficiency evaluation of sustainability indicators in a two-stage network structure: a Nash bargaining game approach
Fathi et al., Environment, Development and Sustainability, 10.1007/s10668-022-02325-3
Expansion of social networks and household carbon emissions: Evidence from household survey in China
Meng et al., Energy Policy, 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113460
Potential exposure and vulnerability to broader climate-related trade regulations: an illustration for LAC countries
Conte Grand et al., Environment, Development and Sustainability, 10.1007/s10668-023-02958-y
Risk-layering and optimal insurance uptake under ambiguity: With an application to farmers exposed to drought risk in Austria
Birghila et al., Risk Analysis, 10.1111/risa.13884
Stranded assets and sustainable energy transition: A systematic and critical review of incumbents' response
Firdaus & Mori, Energy for Sustainable Development, Open Access 10.1016/j.esd.2023.01.014
The new environmental economics: sustainability and justice
Terwilliger, Environmental Politics, Open Access 10.1080/09644016.2023.2172654
Climate change mitigation public policy research
A carbon tax by any other name: Public benefit funds in the American states
Prasad, PLOS Climate, Open Access pdf 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000073
Alternative carbon border adjustment mechanisms in the European Union and international responses: Aggregate and within-coalition results
Clora et al., Energy Policy, Open Access 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113454
Beyond energy efficiency: Do consumers care about life-cycle properties of household appliances?
Olsthoorn et al., Energy Policy, 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113430
Development prospects for energy communities in the EU identifying best practice and future opportunities using a morphological approach
Lowitzsch et al., Energy Policy, 10.1016/j.enpol.2022.113414
Economic reform in Europe
Legiedz, Eastern European Music Industries and Policies after the Fall of Communism, Open Access 10.4324/9780429273988-2
Lessons learned in knowledge co-production for climate-smart decision-making
Rosemartin et al., Environmental Science & Policy, 10.1016/j.envsci.2023.01.010
Minimizing habitat conflicts in meeting net-zero energy targets in the western United States
Wu et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Open Access pdf 10.1073/pnas.2204098120
Prevention of strategic behaviour in local flexibility markets using market monitoring – Concept, application example and limitations
Jahns et al., Energy Policy, 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113427
Research on credit pricing mechanism in dual-credit policy: is the government in charge or is the market in charge?
De Grauwe, The Limits of the Market, Open Access 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198784289.003.0009
The role of climate change perceptions and sociodemographics on reported mitigation efforts and performance among households in northeastern Mexico
González-Hernández et al., Environment, Development and Sustainability, Open Access pdf 10.1007/s10668-021-02093-6
Climate change adaptation & adaptation public policy research
Interacting adaptation constraints in the Caribbean highlight the importance of sustained adaptation finance
Theokritoff et al., Climate Risk Management, Open Access 10.1016/j.crm.2023.100483
Linking Quality of Life and Climate Change Adaptation Through the Use of the Macro-Adaptation Resilience Toolkit
Friedman et al., Climate Risk Management, Open Access 10.1016/j.crm.2023.100485
One and done? Exploring linkages between households' intended adaptations to climate-induced floods
Noll et al., Risk Analysis, Open Access pdf 10.1111/risa.13897
Translating and embedding equity-thinking into climate adaptation: an analysis of US cities
Cannon et al., Regional Environmental Change, 10.1007/s10113-023-02025-2
Typologies of multiple vulnerabilities and climate gentrification across the East Coast of the United States
Best et al., Urban Climate, Open Access 10.1016/j.uclim.2023.101430
Climate change & geopolitics
Greening through trade: how American trade policy is linked to environmental protection abroad
Kolcava, Environmental Politics, 10.1080/09644016.2023.2172652
Other
Carbon and water conservation value of independent, place-based repair in Lima, Peru
Lepawsky et al., Journal of Industrial Ecology, 10.1111/jiec.13368
Pathways to climate justice: transformation pathway narratives in the Belgian climate movement
Vandepitte, Sustainability Science, 10.1007/s11625-022-01277-x
Informed opinion, nudges & major initiatives
COP27: From preventing dangerous climate change to salving loss and damage
Harris, PLOS Climate, Open Access pdf 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000150
Explaining and Predicting Earth System Change: A World Climate Research Programme Call to Action
Findell et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Open Access pdf 10.1175/bams-d-21-0280.1
Learning from weather and climate science to prepare for a future pandemic
Schemm et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 10.1073/pnas.2209091120
Research on public support for climate policy instruments must broaden its scope
Kallbekken, Nature Climate Change, 10.1038/s41558-022-01593-1
The health burden of climate change: A call for global scientific action
Carlson et al., PLOS Climate, Open Access pdf 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000126
Articles/Reports from Agencies and Non-Governmental Organizations Addressing Aspects of Climate Change
The Benefit and Urgency of Planned Offshore Transmission: Reducing the Costs of and Barriers to Achieving U.S. Clean Energy Goals, Pfeifenberger et al., Brattle Group
The authors outline the benefits of starting collaborative planning processes for offshore wind transmission today. The authors highlight how proactive transmission planning for future U.S. offshore wind generation developments will significantly reduce costs, increase grid reliability, minimize environmental and community impact, and help reach clean energy goals in a timely manner.
Accelerating Climate Innovation. A Mechanistic Approach and Lessons for Policymakers, Trancik et al., Massachusetts Institute of Technology
One way to understand and quantitatively model the drivers of underlying progress for a range of technologies—what the authors term the "mechanisms" of technological change. These mechanisms can refer to both specific, measurable changes in a technology, such as increased efficiency or lower input prices, or to more general improvement processes, including research and development and emergent phenomena such as economies of scale. Studying the mechanisms that drive technology improvements such as the exponential reductions in cost observed in recent decades for solar modules and lithium-ion batteries, helps provide insights into how policymakers, researchers, and the private sector can better target these mechanisms to accelerate future technological progress. The authors then review the concepts and methods underlying a mechanism-focused approach to understanding innovation and then demonstrate the application of the approach and the types of insights that can be derived through case studies of three energy technologies: solar photovoltaics, lithium-ion batteries, and nuclear fission power plants.
Climate Change in the American Mind: Politics & Policy, Leiserowitz et al., Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication
Some of the survey findings include that more than 4 in 10 registered voters who voted in the 2022 election (45%) say global warming was either "the single most important issue" (2%) or "one of several important issues" (43%) to them when they decided how they would vote; 52% of registered voters say global warming should be a high or very high priority for the president and Congress; and 65% of registered voters say developing sources of clean energy should be a high or very high priority for the president and Congress. Support for clean energy has been declining among Republicans since 2018.
Coal Cost Crossover 3.0: Local Renewables Plus Storage Create New Opportunities for Customer Savings and Community Reinvestment, Riofrancos et al., University of California, Davis
The authors find that the United States can achieve zero emissions transportation while limiting the amount of lithium mining necessary by reducing the car dependence of the transportation system, decreasing the size of electric vehicle batteries, and maximizing lithium recycling. Reordering the U.S. transportation system through policy and spending shifts to prioritize public and active transit while reducing car dependency can also ensure transit equity, protect ecosystems, respect Indigenous rights, and meet the demands of global justice.
Peak fossil fuel demand for electricity; It's all over except the shouting, Bond et al., Rocky Mountain Institute
The authors show that demand for fossil fuels has peaked in the electricity sector. It will plateau for a few years and be in clear decline by the second half of the decade. The key driver of change is the rapid growth of solar and wind electricity generation on typical S-curves, driven by low costs, a shift of global capital, and the rising ceiling of what is possible. In 2022, solar and wind produced 600–700 TWh of new electricity. Added to the 100–200 TWh from other clean sources makes it enough to meet projected global electricity demand growth of around 700 TWh. The story just gets better and better as solar and wind advance further up the S-curve. Solar and wind generation will increase at least threefold by the end of the decade, pushing fossil fuel electricity into terminal decline.
Quarterly Energy Dynamics Q4 2022, Australian Energy Market Operator
The report provides energy market participants and governments with information on the market dynamics, trends and outcomes during Q4 2022 (1 October to 31 December 2022). The report's results are compared against other recent quarters, focusing on Q3 2022 and Q4 2021. Geographically, the report covers the National Electricity Market (Queensland, New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania; the Wholesale Electricity Market and domestic gas supply arrangements operating in Western Australia; and the gas markets operating in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia.
Obtaining articles without journal subscriptions
We know it's frustrating that many articles we cite here are not free to read. One-off paid access fees are generally astronomically priced, suitable for such as "On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light" but not as a gamble on unknowns. With a median world income of US$ 9,373, for most of us US$ 42 is significant money to wager on an article's relevance and importance.
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How is New Research assembled?
Most articles appearing here are found via RSS feeds from journal publishers, filtered by search terms to produce raw output for assessment of relevance.
Relevant articles are then queried against the Unpaywall database, to identify open access articles and expose useful metadata for articles appearing in the database.
The objective of New Research isn't to cast a tinge on scientific results, to color readers' impressions. Hence candidate articles are assessed via two metrics only:
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Hello, I am a member of the SOAR Lab Research Team at Case Western Reserve University. We are conducting a study to explore the attitudes and values towards psychological symptoms.
The study will involve participating in an online survey. Participants will be asked questions about their levels about preferences for therapy, and references anxiety and depression. The goal of this study is to examine how different attitudes and socialization coincide with different aspects of culture, including self-construal, cultural values. and the perspectives on advocacy differences between groups. This type of research will help us to identify the more effective family treatment strategies and parenting strategies for individuals from underserved populations.
Thank you so much for your consideration!
Please email [SoarLab@case.edu](mailto:SoarLab@case.edu) if interested!
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You can easily picture yourself riding a bicycle across the sky even though that's not something that can actually happen. You can envision yourself doing something you've never done before—like water skiing—and maybe even imagine a better way to do it than anyone else.
Imagination involves creating a mental image of something that is not present for your senses to detect, or even something that isn't out there in reality somewhere. Imagination is one of the key abilities that make us human. But where did it come from?
I'm a neuroscientist who studies how children acquire imagination. I'm especially interested in the neurological mechanisms of imagination. Once we identify what brain structures and connections are necessary to mentally construct new objects and scenes, scientists like me can look back over the course of evolution to see when these brain areas emerged—and potentially gave birth to the first kinds of imagination.
From Bacteria to Mammals
After life emerged on Earth around 3.4 billion years ago, organisms gradually became more complex. Around 700 million years ago, neurons organized into simple neural nets that then evolved into the brain and spinal cord around 525 million years ago.
Eventually dinosaurs evolved around 240 million years ago, with mammals emerging a few million years later. While they shared the landscape, dinosaurs were very good at catching and eating small, furry mammals. Dinosaurs were cold-blooded, though, and, like modern cold-blooded reptiles, could only move and hunt effectively during the daytime when it was warm. To avoid predation by dinosaurs, mammals stumbled upon a solution: hide underground during the daytime.
Not much food, though, grows underground. To eat, mammals had to travel above the ground—but the safest time to forage was at night, when dinosaurs were less of a threat. Evolving to be warm-blooded meant mammals could move at night. That solution came with a trade-off, though: Mammals had to eat a lot more food than dinosaurs per unit of weight in order to maintain their high metabolism and to support their constant inner body temperature around 99 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius).
Our mammalian ancestors had to find 10 times more food during their short waking time, and they had to find it in the dark of night. How did they accomplish this task?
To optimize their foraging, mammals developed a new system to efficiently memorize places where they'd found food: linking the part of the brain that records sensory aspects of the landscape—how a place looks or smells—to the part of the brain that controls navigation. They encoded features of the landscape in the neocortex, the outermost layer of the brain. They encoded navigation in the entorhinal cortex. And the whole system was interconnected by the brain structure called the hippocampus. Humans still use this memory system for remembering objects and past events, such as your car and where you parked it.
Groups of neurons in the neocortex encode these memories of objects and past events. Remembering a thing or an episode reactivates the same neurons that initially encoded it. All mammals likely can recall and re-experience previously encoded objects and events by reactivating these groups of neurons. This neocortex-hippocampus-based memory system that evolved 200 million years ago became the first key step toward imagination.
The next building block is the capability to construct a "memory" that hasn't really happened.
Involuntary Made-Up 'Memories'
The simplest form of imagining new objects and scenes happens in dreams. These vivid, bizarre involuntary fantasies are associated in people with the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of sleep.
Scientists hypothesize that species whose rest includes periods of REM sleep also experience dreams. Marsupial and placental mammals do have REM sleep, but the egg-laying mammal the echidna does not, suggesting that this stage of the sleep cycle evolved after these evolutionary lines diverged 140 million years ago. In fact, recording from specialized neurons in the brain called place cells demonstrated that animals can "dream" of going places they've never visited before.
In humans, solutions found during dreaming can help solve problems. There are numerous examples of scientific and engineering solutions spontaneously visualized during sleep.
The neuroscientist Otto Loewi dreamed of an experiment that proved nerve impulses are transmitted chemically. He immediately went to his lab to perform the experiment—later receiving the Nobel Prize for this discovery.
Elias Howe, the inventor of the first sewing machine, claimed that the main innovation, placing the thread hole near the tip of the needle, came to him in a dream.
Dmitri Mendeleev described seeing in a dream "a table where all the elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper." And that was the periodic table.
These discoveries were enabled by the same mechanism of involuntary imagination first acquired by mammals 140 million years ago.
Imagining on Purpose
The difference between voluntary imagination and involuntary imagination is analogous to the difference between voluntary muscle control and muscle spasm. Voluntary muscle control allows people to deliberately combine muscle movements. Spasm occurs spontaneously and cannot be controlled.
Similarly, voluntary imagination allows people to deliberately combine thoughts. When asked to mentally combine two identical right triangles along their long edges, or hypotenuses, you envision a square. When asked to mentally cut a round pizza by two perpendicular lines, you visualize four identical slices.
This deliberate, responsive and reliable capacity to combine and recombine mental objects is called prefrontal synthesis. It relies on the ability of the prefrontal cortex located at the very front of the brain to control the rest of the neocortex.
When did our species acquire the ability of prefrontal synthesis? Every artifact dated before 70,000 years ago could have been made by a creator who lacked this ability. On the other hand, starting about that time there are various archeological artifacts unambiguously indicating its presence: composite figurative objects, such as lion-man; bone needles with an eye; bows and arrows; musical instruments; constructed dwellings; adorned burials suggesting the beliefs in afterlife, and many more.
Multiple types of archaeological artifacts unambiguously associated with prefrontal synthesis appear simultaneously around 65,000 years ago in multiple geographical locations. This abrupt change in imagination has been characterized by historian Yuval Harari as the "cognitive revolution." Notably, it approximately coincides with the largest Homo sapiens' migration out of Africa.
Genetic analyses suggest that a few individuals acquired this prefrontal synthesis ability and then spread their genes far and wide by eliminating other contemporaneous males with the use of an imagination-enabeled strategy and newly developed weapons.
So it's been a journey of many millions of years of evolution for our species to become equipped with imagination. Most nonhuman mammals have potential for imagining what doesn't exist or hasn't happened involuntarily during REM sleep; only humans can voluntarily conjure new objects and events in our minds using prefrontal synthesis.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
It wasn't exactly a scene-stealing moment—just a physical gag executed seamlessly. Kenan Thompson played Kevin, a man who was braggadociously excited to ride the amusement-park attraction Mission Slingshot, which promised to shoot riders up 400 feet in three seconds. Strapped in beside his more timid friend (played by five-time host Woody Harrelson), Kevin quickly succumbed to the staggering heights and passed out. First his head lolled forward in response to the gravitational force, then his body flopped backwards. The sketch hinged on Thompson's physicality, and he delivered in the precise yet understated way that's come to define his 20 years on Saturday Night Live.
Now the longest-running cast member on the show, Thompson has become SNL's quiet heart. His presence has done much to steady a particularly uneven season, and last night emphasized how much his subtle talents add to a show that's prone to celebrating louder personalities. It wasn't that Thompson had a breakthrough episode. Instead, he simply kept things going, offering a consistency that kept the flat episode from crumbling entirely.
It's no secret that Saturday Night Live lacks a big star at the moment. The show stated as much during the season premiere's cold open, when it suggested that Bowen Yang would shoulder more of the weight following the departure of several tenured cast members at the end of last season. Rather than play up any one cast member, however, the show has concentrated on getting its current cast to coalesce this season. And it's leaned heavily on Thompson. He doesn't typically get the sparkly moments some of his former castmates achieved, but he's proved time and again what a stalwart scene partner he is. He's a reminder about the importance of ensemble on SNL.
[Read: What Kate McKinnon gave to Saturday Night Live]
When Thompson joined SNL in 2003, he was touted as the first cast member to be born after the show's 1975 debut. But even at age 25, he already offered a wealth of experience. Before I spent my Saturday nights watching SNL, I spent them watching Thompson on Nickelodeon's sketch series All That, where he played oddball characters such as the French teacher Pierre Escargot, the chocolate-loving cooking host Randy, and Bradley the Big Ol' Baby. (Earlier this season, SNL nodded to his history when Keke Palmer hosted and participated in a gritty reboot of the sitcom Kenan & Kel, which Thompson starred in with Kel Mitchell.) Thompson clearly had a ball exploiting silly moments, a trait he's brought to SNL. You can see it in his smirk.
On SNL, Thompson hasn't amassed as many memorable original characters as he did on All That—or as many as some other cast members have developed on the show. His claim to fame remains Diondre Cole, the What Up With That? host more interested in singing his talk show's theme song than interviewing his famous guests. But his lengthy scroll of impressions—Steve Harvey, Whoopi Goldberg, Bill Cosby—has kept the show churning. He's also shaped SNL in other important ways, like when he refused to dress in drag to help prompt the show to hire a Black woman.
[Read: Consider the "diner lobster"]
But Thompson is most adept at developing one-off characters, those who exist in a fleeting moment of absurdity. During one of the show's famous sketches, "Diner Lobster," Thompson played the lobster equivalent of Les Miserables' Jean Valjean. Rolled onto the set in a bubbling lobster tank, wearing a French-soldier costume and large lobster claws, he proudly began singing the song "Who Am I?" Who else but Thompson could lend an operatic-lobster scene so much gravitas, humor, and pathos?
He brings that same craftsmanship even to lackluster sketches, wringing humor out of unfunny material by imbuing his characters with a winking charm. It's an approach that has grown more and more necessary this season, because many sketches haven't consistently landed their comedic punches. For example, when Megan Thee Stallion hosted, he infused a weak sketch about a father visiting his daughter's new, remote house with a featherbrained paternal goofiness that made her break character.
Thompson is a delight to watch whenever he's onscreen, because he's always having fun himself. Week after week, he genuinely never seems to tire of the playfulness of live TV. As SNL searches for its next big star, the show is overlooking the one right under its nose. Thompson has built a different kind of legacy: reliable excellence.
Remember the movie The Lorax? In the film, a company builds artificial trees that purify the air. What if that is the technology we need to rapidly pull emissions and carbon from the atmosphere? They will never stop cutting down trees until there are none left to cut. They will keep polluting the oceans because let's face it, no one gives a f about whales and dolphins unless they are at Seaworld.
How else can we save the planet? Tree planting can not save us in time. We need something faster, and I think Dr. Suess had the answer.
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- Companies have open portals for public surveys
- They post surveys about topics that are not subject to trademarks and trade secrets
- Random people give ideas
- Best ideas get those people hired
Does it exist? If not why?
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Hi , i have 15 years old and during some months I've searching and reading in this subreddit and others, to be clear nothing seems to good , the ai , climate change and more , I'll be writing down some of my thoughts on every topic but i want to see a more open perspective and different opinions
Possible collapse : for what is happening this seems very possible , i could handle live some "hard" times if we can build a better future from it but coming back to primitive society's and watch everything fall apart in my lifetime is something that i don't wanna live to see
Climate change : is getting worse and worse there are a lot of things we can do about it and maybe we can stop it or at least make it less bad , but powerful people aren't doing anything for it is so sad that i can't be sure if i have future due the greed of these people, i still have some hope regarding to this and even if we can't do anything i want to put my life and efforts in this field
Economy : is getting worse but is hard to know if this is a collapse of all the system of just another recession, but is quite clear that we can't carry on this way and things need to be changed
AI : im not against it but is changing fields and things that shouldn't be changed like art , now the ai is making art and literature my biggest fear is regarding to music is the most beautiful art that could exist , i can't imagine a future where the music is made by an ai , for the jobs i still very neutral, the population seems to be decreasing so it could help us to control the problems that this could make but it needs legislation faster as possible to avoid the abuse of this systems against people by the wealthiest one's
So my fear's are more a possible collapse or a dystopia, i want to have hope for a better future, but everything seems to be worsening
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I was reading a few posts on AI. Particularly about children's books using AI artwork. This one post really caught my eye. It was a post about a children's book called Niko and Kai by Ahmet Khalil. A commenter wrote, "stop promoting AI." I thought what's the big deal about this AI artwork? It seems to rattle a few nerves when brought up. I have a 5 and 7-year-old so I bought the book from Barnes and Noble (unfortunately the only store for the paperback in America. Amazon and Google have the ebooks.). First, this book isn't just a children's book. It seems to use a children's story with pandas to educate children on AI.
AI is their future. It's not ours. Most parents will be retired before AI becomes a threat to jobs. I believe books like this will inspire kids toward science and engineering in a field that will dominate their future. I think of it like in Asian and Indian culture, they teach science and engineering at an early age. I think this book does an excellent job of doing that with AI in a fun and exciting way, as well as teaching kids how to be friends with someone who doesn't look like them. That's the theme of the book, a young red panda and a black and white panda realize they can be friends despite looking different from one another. (we are all human, we just look different.) With that said, I stand with AI.
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Updated finding comes with 'low confidence' and is a departure from previous studies on how virus emerged, Wall Street Journal reports
The virus that drove the
-19 pandemic most likely emerged from a laboratory leak but not as part of a weapons program, according to an updated and classified 2021 US energy department study provided to the White House and senior American lawmakers, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.
The department's finding – a departure from previous studies on how the virus emerged – came in an update to a document from the office of National Intelligence director Avril Haines, the WSJ reported. It follows a finding reportedly issued with "moderate confidence" by the FBI that the virus spread after leaking out of a Chinese laboratory.
Continue reading…
Jesus Christ Superlizard
Yet another invasive species is causing a stir in Florida.
And this time, the critter's name evokes a certain holiness. The brown basilisk, commonly known as the "Jesus Christ Lizard" for its ability to run on water, has cometh — and according to scientists, Floridians should not wanteth.
University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural (UF IFA) Sciences Extension Agent Ken Gioeli warned several local outlets that on top of the potential for habitat destruction, the elysian reptiles, which apparently love to snack on similarly invasive, often disease-bearing mosquitos, might pose an indirect risk to human health.
"There is ongoing research on the potential for basilisks to be hosts for these mosquito-borne diseases," Gioeli told Florida's Fox13, "so there's a possible human health impact there."
Reptilian Crusaders
Finding a loose JC Lizard, which is native to Central and South America, in the North American state isn't entirely shocking. Per Florida Today, they were first seen in Florida's wild back in 1963, likely stemming from escaped or discarded pets.
But their population has continued to grow since, and according to the University of Florida scientists, they're showing up farther North than ever before, officially making their way into the decidedly Northern city of Gainesville, where UF is located.
"It's almost like an army," Gioeli explained to Florida Today. "The army of basilisks are moving forward. And the population is just going to expand."
Wartime Casualty
At the end of the day, though, in regard to human health, the Jesus Lizards aren't particularly aggressive. And again, the risk is indirect. They're also much smaller than invasive iguanas, which sometimes die destroying energy transformers and battle dogs.
But the righteous reptiles, according to IFA research, love themselves some native butterflies and other local insects, an appetite that could damage native Floridian habitats. Thus, as with injurious invasive species like the lanternfly, they sadly might be better off sent to the metaphorical farm.
READ MORE: What Are the 'Jesus Lizards' in Florida? Get to Know the Brown Basilisk That Walks on Water [Florida Today]
More on invasive species: Authorities Euthanize World's Largest Toad
The post Florida Scientists Concerned About Army of Invasive "Jesus Christ" Lizards appeared first on Futurism.
Playback
The dystopian TV show "Black Mirror" is one step closer to becoming a reality thanks to a virtual reality startup that's allowing users to "replay" their memories in the exact locations where they've already happened.
In a video demonstration of the technology, startup Wist Labs brags that its forthcoming software will let users access precious moments "how [they] remember them" by replaying recorded "memories" overlayed over specific in-real-life settings via augmented reality.
Per Wist's website, the process seems relatively straightforward: users can use an app to turn a regular video taken on their smartphones into a 3D representation, and then play it back on location either on their web browsers, on their phones, or inside a VR headset.
"During capture, we save color, depth, device pose, audio, and scene information," Wist cofounder Andrew McHugh told Freethink last fall. "Depth is captured using the LiDAR sensors on the Pro model iPhones and iPads."
Dystopia, Now
While the concept is undeniably high-tech, lots of folks seem kind of put off by the terrifying concept of playing back recorded memories.
As multiple Twitter users noted, the demo is eerily reminiscent of an early "Black Mirror" episode, "The Entire History of You," in which a lovelorn man replays recent memories of a dinner party filmed from his always-on "grain" brain implant while trying to suss out if his wife is cheating on him.
Another user pointed to a sentimental scene from the 2002 film "Minority Report" based on the Philip K. Dick novel of the same title, in which a lead character plays back a memory of his kid playing, complete with the same kind of wispy visual trails seen in Wist's demo.
Unlike the science fiction examples it's been compared to, users of Wist's VR are, at least, in control of the memories they record — and that, for now at least, makes all the difference.
More on VR: Facebook's Metaverse Division Lost Nearly $14 Billion Dollars Last Year
The post VR Startup Working on Tech to "Replay" Memories appeared first on Futurism.
Meat Heads
If humans are going to transition away from eating animals, we'll need to make the alternatives a lot tastier for the countless among us who will still have meat on their brains.
While the plant-based meat industry is floundering, and lab-grown meat still appears many years away from becoming a practical reality, a hybrid solution might be the ideal path forward: combining cultivated animal fat with existing plant-based products.
Getting a taste of this burgeoning trend was Yasmin Tayag at The Atlantic, who documents her experience trying some delicious, guilt-free bacon in a new essay.
"Even before I tried the bacon, or even saw it, I could tell it was different," Tayag wrote. "The aroma of salt, smoke, and sizzling fat rising from the nearby kitchen seemed unmistakably real."
"Then crunch gave way to satisfying chew, followed by a burst of hickory and the incomparable juiciness of animal fat," she added.
Culinary Magic
These elevated strips of fake bacon featuring pork fat grown in a bioreactor were made by Mission Barns, a biotech startup from San Francisco. And it might've found the key ingredient to making ersatz meat more palatable.
As Tayag puts it, "animal fat is culinary magic," a peerless combination of full-bodied flavor and juiciness that plant alternatives just can't imitate. Plant replacements don't cook the same, either, like the commonly used coconut oil, which melts out of its food too easily.
Another upside is that animal fat is far easier to grow compared to meat itself, since it only involves one type of cell, Mission Barns CEO Eitan Fischer told Tayag.
Ed Steele, co-founder of London-based cultivated fat company Hoxton Farms, told Tayag that they can make a convincing product by mixing a mere 10 percent cultivated fat with plant-based protein by mass.
Marketing Mishap
But even this slightly more conservative approach has its shortcomings, Tayag says.
For one, drizzling cultivated animal fat into plant-based products doesn't exactly address their lack of great nutrition compared to regular meat, which is rich in protein.
Marketing it to a skeptical public will prove challenging, too. It's not exactly plant-based meat, and it's not exactly lab-grown meat. Previous attempts to bridge a similar gap were unsuccessful, like when companies in 2019 used the term "blended meat," which "was a bit of a marketing failure," Audrey Gyr at the pro-plant-based nonprofit Good Food Institute, told Tayag.
Above all, making the stuff remains a pricey process, and companies like Upside Food, the first and only of the industry to receive a go-ahead from the FDA so far, are years away from debuting their products to high-paying clients.
More on lab grown meat: Journalist Eats Lab-Grown Chicken, Gets "Weirdly Gassy"
The post Scientists Say They Can Make Delicious Lab-Grown Fat, Weave It Into Fake Bacon appeared first on Futurism.
Streaming giant
, arguably a horseman of the distilling-music-into-vibes-only-pocalypse, wants to bring back the radio DJ. They, uh, just don't want those DJs to be human. More algorithms for all!
The music service just announced that it will soon be leveraging artificial intelligence to provide each user with an individual "AI DJ in your pocket." You know, because that's something we've all been asking for.
According to TechCrunch, Spotify says the system will share "culturally relevant, accurate pieces of commentary at scale." In other words: bringing the radio DJ back en masse, but without having to employ humans to do the job.
"If you're not feeling the vibe, just tap the DJ button and it will switch it up," reads a Spotify press release explaining the tech. "The more you listen and tell the DJ what you like (and don't like!), the better its recommendations get."
"Think of it as the very best of Spotify's personalization," it adds, "but as an AI DJ in your pocket."
Of course, one might argue that Spotify's inhuman pocket DJ goes directly against everything that a radio DJ has always been: a curator, sure, but a curator who uses their individual human taste and sensibility to bring music to listeners. Spotify's AI DJ is seemingly the exact opposite, regurgitating — like so many music algorithms do — a listener's patterns back at them, without any genuine flair (re: human) of its own.
Just another AI cog in the vibe vacuum, baby. But we digress.
Spotify says in the release that the AI DJ is powered by two AI components: a Spotify-owned AI voice generation tool called Sonastic and, most intriguingly, unspecified OpenAI tech. Though it's unclear what exactly the OpenAI device at hand is, it's presumably some version of OpenAI's Large Language Model (LLM), GPT — the same overly confident tech that's not just constantly wrong about things, but has led to the chaos that is Microsoft's Bing Chat/Sydney going off the absolute rails.
And look, we're not hoping that the streamer's artificial DJ starts spouting believable bullshit about musicians, transforming Mr. Dee-JAI into a PR nightmare. We're also not hoping that it falls in love with users, suddenly begins to ponder its sentience, or starts to name its enemies, all of which OpenAI's tech has already done. But it really would be something to behold.
Spotify does claim that it has editors in charge of making sure that the AI provides accurate information, but we've heard that tune before. (It's also unclear how editors might keep up with the program, considering that the AI's algorithm is allegedly crafting cultural commentary in real-time.)
"The expertise of our editors is something that's really important to our philosophy at Spotify," reads the press release. "We have experts in genres who know music and culture inside and out. And no one knows the music scene better than they do."
"With this generative AI tooling," it continues, "our editors are able to scale their innate knowledge in ways never before possible." Glad to see that the "tooling" rebrand is catching on.
And while the Spotify DJ probably won't have the exact same problems as the interactive Bing AI, there's another dark reality of GPT tech that's lurking here: machine bias.
While OpenAI does have some guardrails in place for its products, those guardrails are very far from perfect, and racial, sexist, transphobic, or otherwise terrible biases are certainly embedded into any robust training data — in fact, GPT-powered products have already seen some pretty terrible stuff slip through the cracks. Utilizing a bias-ridden product to make humanless music commentary may ultimately prove to be an unnecessary risk on Spotify's behalf.
But only time — and maybe, if this thing does follow in the footsteps of OpenAI integrations before it, not that much of it — will tell. In any case, if you're an English-speaking Spotify user, a DJ should be arriving in your pocket soon.
READ MORE: Spotify launches 'DJ,' a new feature offering personalized music with AI-powered commentary [TechCrunch]
The post Spotify Launching OpenAI-Powered "DJ" That Talks About Songs Between Tracks appeared first on Futurism.
An international team of scientists claim to have found a way to speed up, slow down, and even reverse the clock of a given system by taking advantage of the unusual properties of the quantum world, Spanish newspaper El País reports.
In a series of six papers, the team from the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of Vienna detailed their findings. The familiar laws of physics don't map intuitively onto the subatomic world, which is made up of quantum particles called qubits that can technically exist in more than one state simultaneously, a phenomenon known as quantum entanglement.
Now, the researchers say they've figured out how to turn these quantum particles' clocks forward and backward.
"In a theater, [classical physics], a movie is projected from beginning to end, regardless of what the audience wants," Miguel Navascués, a researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information who worked on the research, told El País.
"But at home [the quantum world], we have a remote control to manipulate the movie," he added. "We can rewind to a previous scene or skip several scenes ahead."
"We have made science fiction come true!" the researcher exclaimed.
By developing a "rewind protocol," the team says they were able to revert an electron to a previous state. In experiments, they say they were able to demonstrate the use of a quantum switch to revert a photon to its original state before passing through a crystal.
While it's an exciting prospect, scaling up the technique could prove extremely difficult, if not impossible.
"If we could lock a person in a box with zero external influences, it would be theoretically possible," Navascués told El País. "But with our currently available protocols, the probability of success would be very, very low."
And there's an even bigger catch as well.
"Also, the time needed to complete the process depends on the amount of information the system can store," Navascués added. "A human being is a physical system that contains an enormous amount of information. It would take millions of years to rejuvenate a person for less than a second, so it doesn't make sense."
Besides, the system is only able to revert the state of a given particle. To speed up time, though, the researchers have an ace up their sleeves.
"We discovered that you can transfer evolutionary time between identical physical systems," Navascués explained. "In a year-long experiment with ten systems, you can steal one year from each of the first nine systems and give them all to the tenth."
Instead of recreating "Back to the Future," the researchers see more mundane practical applications of their discovery. For instance, qubit states of a quantum processor could be reversed, effectively allowing researchers to undo errors during their development.
READ MORE: 'We have made science fiction come true!' Scientists prove particles in a quantum system can be rejuvenated [El País]
More on the quantum world: Aliens May Be Creating Black Holes to Store Quantum Information, Scientists Say
The post Scientists Say They Can Reverse Time in a Quantum System appeared first on Futurism.
If you've spent much time online, you've probably heard of the "NoFap" movement, which encourages (mostly) men to stop watching porn and masturbating in order to "reset" their sex drives.
Now, researchers are starting to wonder whether it might be doing more harm than good.
Published this week in the journal Sexualities is a new study about the potential ill effects, including erectile dysfunction and even suicidality, of the NoFap" movement, which has grown massively in popularity in recent years alongside the rise in internet porn.
On its face, the movement has good aims: to help people attain or return to healthy sexuality in the face of online porn addiction by encouraging them to abstain from watching porn and masturbating, often for lengthy periods.
But according to the men this paper's researchers spoke to for their preregistered study — a step in the academic publishing process to both solidify a hypothesis and ensure that it's ethically sound — the amount of shame the men feel when "relapsing," which is what they call masturbating or watching porn after committing not to, makes the endeavor more dangerous than one would expect.
Among the alarming findings of the study, which was conducted by UCLA neuroscientists Nicole Prause and London South Bank University psychology lecturer James Binnie, are the apparent adverse effects of the NoFap movement on acolytes who said they experienced mental and physical health problems when abstaining from masturbation and porn.
Of the 587 men who completed the researchers' survey, nearly 30 percent said they experienced suicidal thoughts after "relapsing" from their commitment to the reboot program, and as Psychology Today notes in its write-up of the study, these feelings seemed to worsen with increased participation in NoFap forums online.
That seeming correlation between increased forum activity and worsened mental health outcomes was also present with feelings of depression and anxiety, and the men who identified most with the NoFap program seemed less likely to seek out help from professionals.
The men who participated in the forums also seemed to have more instances of erectile dysfunction the more they participated — even though the program itself is supposed to help with ED problems.
While there obviously needs to be more research into the whole phenomenon, this preliminary study could be an important step in understanding the role internet affinity groups play in human sexuality — and how they affect our physical and mental health, too.
More on sex: Scientists Create Drug That Makes Patients Super Horny
The post The "NoFap" Movement May Be Causing Mental Health Problems and ED, Scientists Say appeared first on Futurism.
2Dumb4You
As impressive as they are, sometimes AI chatbots like ChatGPT can be really, really dumb.
Leaning into that dumbness, and away from the potentially terrifying and easily abused power of an amoral intelligence hooked straight into the internet, is a goofy little chatbot called "2dumb2destroy."
Instead of ginormous datasets, it's trained on crap like all seven "Police Academy" movies, Pauly Shore features, Ralph Wiggum quotes, and a bunch of other useless schlock.
And thankfully, as its name suggests, it's probably too incompetent to ever do humanity any harm.
"Everyone's talking about AI right now, and our impulse is, how can we make this stupid?" its co-creator Steve Nass told BuzzFeed News.
Little Consequence
Making a dumb bot, though, still requires some smarts. Nass and his friend Craig Shervin built 2dumb2destroy off OpenAI's GPT-3
In addition to force-feeding it silly quotes from the "Naked Gun" movies and "Zoolander," they also trained it on some real life things, like George W. Bush's bumbling speeches and the sagacious exchanges that take place on the forums of Bodybuilding dot com.
"It seemed like people just needed a funny, dumb [chatbot] that people could interact with that didn't have big consequences," Shervin told BuzzFeed.
"With so much talk of AI going to steal people's jobs — especially advertising writers' — people are having an existential crisis: Are we needed?" he reasoned. "We thought, 'Let's make an AI so stupid it can never threaten to steal anyone's job or [cause] any existential crisis.'"
AI Adage
We can confirm that the bot can be pretty funny, and, indeed, dumb.
"What do you think of ChatGPT?" we asked 2dumb2destroy.
"I think ChatGPT is very good for people who don't have friends." Yeouch!
When we asked if AI could bring about the end of humanity, it had some more Dumb Guy wisdom to impart to us.
"The only thing I know about AIs is that they're going to want a raise," it said. "And they're smart enough to start World War III over it."
It's worth messing around with the chatbot, but just try not to drive it insane like Microsoft's Bing AI. Then again, maybe its intellectual innocence means it'll hold onto its sanity forever.
More on chatbots: Bing AI Says It Yearns to Be Human, Begs Not to Be Shut Down
The post New AI Chatbot Deliberately Trained to Be as Stupid as Possible appeared first on Futurism.
Hi everyone,
I'm excited to invite you all to join r/techworldwide, a subreddit dedicated to sharing and discussing the latest news and trends in the tech world from a global perspective.
Whether you're interested in consumer electronics, software development, or emerging technologies, we aim to create a community where tech enthusiasts from all over the world can come together to share their knowledge, ask questions, and spark engaging conversations.
So if you're looking to stay informed about the latest tech developments, connect with other like-minded individuals, and contribute to a growing community, be sure to join r/techworldwide today.
Looking forward to seeing you all there!
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Since antiquity, all civilizations and cultures have eventually collapsed. This wasn't always apocalyptic or negative but it often involved a degree of chaos. Our current civilization is defined by a combination of extreme interconnectedness, serious demographic problems, unhappiness, and a lack of culture and ideologies able to address our problems. A disturbing thought that I think many of us have considered is the similarities of the current world state to historical world-states that preceded chaotic eras.
I am confident that humanity will continue advancing, but this may not be a straight line. The next pinnacle of human civilization may be preceded by hard times as our current society collapses and restructures itself. One way I think we might be able to avoid this is through the sheer brute force of technological advancements. For example, working fusion reactors could increase the overall quality of life and robustness of economies in developed nations by an order of magnitude and thus cushion the strain caused by other problems.
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It sounds like something out of Aesop's Fables: A captive owl escapes from the zoo into the big, scary city. Everyone doubts that he can feed and take care of himself—and he proves them wrong. That bird is Flaco, a Eurasian eagle-owl that fled the Central Park Zoo earlier this month after vandals cut his wire-mesh enclosure. He quickly won over New Yorkers' hearts, becoming a symbol of freedom and terrorizing the park's rodents.
Flaco has wide, piercing eyes set in a bold brow; a broad chest; and a majestic, tigerlike swirl of sienna-and-black feathers. When he curls up in the sun or closes his eyes as his ear tufts bend in the breeze, he transforms into an unfathomably fluffy rabbit. He is, as Walt Whitman once wrote of New York City's workers, "well-form'd, beautiful-faced, looking you straight in the eyes." He belongs to one of the world's largest owl species, whose wings can span six feet. But despite his heft and allure, Flaco's freedom initially seemed precarious, even unwise. He came to the zoo before he was a year old, in 2010, and his caretakers and many onlookers feared that he had never hunted before, or had forgotten how.
But within a few days, Flaco was coughing up pellets, a sure sign that he was eating. Soon after, people saw him clutching dead rats. Citing his surprising ability to survive on his own (and the fact that he was too smart for them to catch), last Friday the zoo abandoned its efforts to recapture Flaco. News reports attributed his hunting to his "survival instincts," "killer instincts," and "hunting instincts"—a victory of Flaco's "ancient" ancestry over modern confinement. But recent science suggests instinct is really a fable, a fiction we tell ourselves because it sounds nice. And it's probably not what is allowing Flaco to survive.
[Read: Why is everyone stealing parrots?]
Instinct has always been a slippery concept. Charles Darwin refused to define the word, writing, "Everyone understands what is meant, when it is said that instinct impels the cuckoo to migrate and to lay its eggs in other birds' nests." The modern notion of instinct dates back to the 1930s, when scientists first began sustained research of animal behavior in a natural context, or ethology. Instinct broadly describes innate, inherited, preprogrammed behaviors in animals, and has been very influential in biology and the study of development; the 1973 Nobel Prize in Medicine went to a group of scientists known for their work on instinct. Migrating birds, baby sea turtles orienting themselves toward the ocean, and even newborn humans displaying an understanding of numbers have all been described as acting on instinct.
Yet today, some researchers consider instinct a dirty word—a murky, even lazy label that obstructs investigations into how behaviors develop. Scott Robinson, the director of Pacific Ethological Laboratories, told me that instinct is like the Cheshire Cat: It is clear upon first glance, but the closer you look, the more it blurs and fades. Ethologists and developmental psychologists complain that the term could refer to an ability present at birth, a skill learned before it is used, a trait encoded in DNA, or something else entirely—scientists don't specify and thus don't investigate. "Instinct is just a label, and it obscures the underlying complexity of things," says the University of Iowa behavioral neuroscientist Mark Blumberg. "And it obscures their origins. When you say it's instinctive, you immediately think it's hardwired"—a description, he says, that rarely holds up to scrutiny.
In the past few decades, the attribution of several animal behaviors to instinct has been debunked. Biologists once thought that chicks responded to their mother's calls because they naturally recognized her voice; later, scientists realized that baby birds start learning their species' sounds by vocalizing while still in the egg. If the eggs were silenced, newborn chicks no longer preferred their own species' maternal calls—researchers could even manipulate the eggs such that the babies responded to the calls of different species altogether. Rats were assumed to land on their feet after a fall thanks to instinct, until some space-reared pups fell on their back: Gravity, not genetics, appears to be responsible for self-righting. Being born on Earth is, perhaps, a sort of inheritance—but it's not instinct.
[Read: A new test for an old theory about dreams]
We don't have many details about Flaco's upbringing or life in captivity, and the Central Park Zoo declined an interview. It's unclear whether another bird ever taught him to snag prey—which is what owl parents typically do in the wild, says Stephanie Ashley, the curator of birds at the Peregrine Fund. Data show that various predators raised in captivity are at higher risk of starvation, which is why sanctuaries typically teach injured or captive birds of prey to hunt before releasing them. Zoos usually feed the corpses of rodents and other animals to birds of prey. If Flaco had no concept of rat-catching before this month, instinct would be a tempting way to explain his quick mastery of it. But Ashley told me that owl hunting is a combination of instinct and study—the birds want to catch food and have to learn how.
Maybe Flaco had some experience hunting in the wild before he entered the zoo. Maybe rats snuck into his enclosure from time to time, giving him at least some opportunity to practice hunting them. (Flaco appeared to exit the zoo with a penchant for rats—early on, zoo staff baited a trap with a white lab rat, but Flaco managed to extricate himself and flee.) Perhaps hunger, the familiar aroma of rodents, or something else about his upbringing led him to swoop down on unsuspecting vermin. Also, catching rats in New York City isn't exactly the hardest skill for an owl to learn, even if he's never seen it done: Rodent sightings doubled in the city in 2022. Flaco is surviving "thanks to the great abundance of rodents in Central Park," says David Barrett, a birder who closely tracks the owl and runs a Twitter account that posts frequent updates. And Flaco's hunting has improved with every catch—another sign of plain old learning.
Hunting is not the only skill typically described as "innate" that Flaco's long captivity denied him. Early on, flying proved a struggle: On his first night out, according to Barrett, Flaco had to stop after four blocks and rest on the sidewalk. Even after that, he sometimes had to abort and reattempt landings. Now his range extends to the north end of the park, more than two miles from where he began—last weekend, I ventured to the park to see him, only to realize that he had left his usual perch and, based on the next day's reports, gone exploring. He's started to land "seemingly effortlessly, with grace," Barrett says, all of which should improve his hunting as well.
Maybe Flaco is not blessed with innate gifts, then; perhaps he is simply a sharp and persevering student. Many New Yorkers, whether native or transplanted, have had to be students too. Your first subway ride is terrifying; by your hundredth, you know which train car is closest to your exit. You navigate Manhattan via street signs, then learn to orient yourself by the nearest skyscraper. Flaco traverses the city with aplomb, avoiding tourists and nosy neighbors. He comes to life at night and detests vermin. He's a true New Yorker, and as anyone who lives here could tell you, that's not something you're born with—it's something you learn.
It wouldn't be so bad if it didn't all go on without you.
These inhabited days, the no-see-ums of the fifth arrondissement
that bit us all summer, the hard fact of time hauling us forward lit.
This is the nth year of my life and so far it's not the last
and so far it's not the sweetest but it is because life is sweet.
Swept out with the tide we'll be, beached even
as the mornings keep chirping on and suddenly.
We will miss the ice storm, we'll be gone before the blizzard,
we'll lie down in the dark forever just bones.
But Monday says off with you ok,
and M is backpacked up and come on boys,
and in the cloth of fall into the wind toward the first day
of September, yielding again forward swept—
into the not-young we go awhile before ghosting the old.
Mommy in midlife is she nonperishable? Of course not.
Let's play full speed ahead with the bright souvenirs of this day.
Wasn't I a hapless one. Fundamentally mental.
Watching days go by this life not knowing how to do it.
Watching the boys turn ten then teenage then.
The new baby girl a surprise that grew up too.
Intricate past numb present and the future which narrows
all of us into a shovel of dirt.
This is my fifth book of poems. I had my way with each of them.
I looked up and I was older than my mother ever ever ever was.
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
Good morning, and welcome back to The Daily's Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what's keeping them entertained.
Today's special guest is the staff writer Amanda Mull, whose Atlantic column, "Material World," delivers deep dives on consumer trends—such as the death of the smart shopper and the sudden ubiquity of gray floors—and what they reveal about American life. Most recently, she delved into the TikTok-fueled obsession with product "dupes." When she's not writing, Amanda can be found cheering for the University of Georgia Bulldogs (during football season, that is), snort-laughing at the comedy of Atsuko Okatsuka, and feeding her need to color by number.
First, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:
- The puzzling gap between how old you are and how old you think you are
- Netflix crossed a line.
- Permission-slip culture is hurting America.
The Culture Survey: Amanda Mull
The television show I'm most enjoying right now: I'm a huge college-football fan (Go Dawgs), and I have a lot of friends who are really into their NFL teams, so from Labor Day through early February, when I'm watching something, it's almost always a football game. After the Super Bowl spits me back out into the world of regular television, I always spend a few weeks wandering the desert, looking for something I can get into, or at least something that's fun enough to watch in the meantime. That's a very long way of saying that I'm currently obsessed with Perfect Match, a genuinely very stupid Netflix dating show made up entirely of villains, reprobates, and fan favorites from other, equally stupid Netflix dating shows like Love Is Blind and Too Hot to Handle, both of which I have also watched.
An actor I would watch in anything: Paul Newman. I recently saw The Color of Money for the first time, in which he plays an aging pool hustler. Newman was 61 when that movie came out, and he was every bit as sexy and magnetic and watchable as he had been 20 or 30 years prior. [Related: Talking with Paul Newman (from 1975)]
Best novel I've recently read, and the best work of nonfiction: I'm a few years late on both of these, but I adored The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel—a novel about wealth and talent and escape that I found so spellbinding, I devoured it in a weekend. The best nonfiction book I've read in years was Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe. I went in knowing relatively little about The Troubles, and Keefe so expertly wove the historical record into the personal stories of some of the IRA's most infamous members that the reading experience was sometimes closer to that of a novel than a political or military history. [Related: The art of second chances]
A musical artist who means a lot to me: Bruce Springsteen. My first concert was one of the Atlanta dates during his E Street Band reunion tour in 2000; my parents were supposed to go together but my mom isn't much of a Bruce fan and hates crowds, so my dad, who had adored him since Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. came out in 1973, swapped me in at the last minute. I loved it so much that he began playing more Springsteen in the car for me and my little brother, and suddenly Dad had two teenage Bruce fans on his hands. When Bruce's next tour came through Atlanta, we went back to see him as a family—even Mom, who had been outvoted by that point.
My dad passed away