Showing posts with label culture wars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label culture wars. Show all posts

Saturday, July 31, 2021

U.N. climate panel confronts implausibly hot forecasts of future warming

U.N. climate panel confronts implausibly hot forecasts of future warming. Paul Voosen. Science Magazine, Jul. 27, 2021. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/07/un-climate-panel-confronts-implausibly-hot-forecasts-future-warming

[Excerpts. Full text with original sources at the link above]

The motif, the recurrent and dominant platitudes:

Next month, after a yearlong delay because of the pandemic, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will begin to release its first major assessment of human-caused global warming since 2013. The report, the first part of which will appear on 9 August, will drop on a world that has starkly changed in 8 years, warming by more than 0.3°C to nearly 1.3°C above preindustrial levels. Weather has grown more severe, seas are measurably higher, and mountain glaciers and polar ice have shrunk sharply. And after years of limited action, many countries, pushed by a concerned public and corporations, seem willing to curb their carbon emissions.

But:

But as climate scientists face this alarming reality, the climate models that help them project the future have grown a little too alarmist. Many of the world’s leading models are now projecting warming rates that most scientists, including the modelmakers themselves, believe are implausibly fast. In advance of the U.N. report, scientists have scrambled to understand what went wrong and how to turn the models, which in other respects are more powerful and trustworthy than their predecessors, into useful guidance for policymakers. “It’s become clear over the last year or so that we can’t avoid this,” says Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
Ahead of each major IPCC report, the world’s climate modeling centers run a set of scenarios for the future, calculating how different global emissions paths will alter the climate. These raw results, compiled in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), then feed directly into the IPCC report. The results live on as other scientists use them to assess the impacts of climate change, insurance companies and financial institutions forecast effects on economies and infrastructure, and economists calculate the true cost of carbon emissions, says Jean-François Lamarque, a lead climate modeler at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and CMIP’s new director. “This is not an ivory tower type of exercise.”
In the past, most models projected a “climate sensitivity”—the warming expected when atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is doubled over preindustrial times—of between 2°C and 4.5°C. Last year, a landmark paper that largely eschewed models and instead used documented factors including ongoing warming trends calculated a likely climate sensitivity of between 2.6°C and 3.9°C. But many of the new models from leading centers showed warming of more than 5°C—uncomfortably outside these bounds.
The models were also out of step with records of past climate. For example, scientists used the new model from NCAR to simulate the coldest point of the most recent ice age, 20,000 years ago. Extensive paleoclimate records suggest Earth cooled nearly 6°C compared with preindustrial times, but the model, fed with low ice age CO2 levels, had temperatures plummeting by nearly twice that much, suggesting it was far too sensitive to the ups and downs of CO2. “That is clearly outside the range of what the geological data indicate,” says Jessica Tierney, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Arizona and a co-author of the work, which appeared in Geophysical Research Letters. “It’s totally out there.”
To find out why, modelers probed the guts of the simulations, focusing on their representation of clouds, long the wild card of climate change. The models can’t simulate clouds directly, so they rely on known physics and observations to estimate cloud properties and behavior. In previous models ice crystals made up more of the low clouds in the midlatitudes of the southern Pacific Ocean and elsewhere than satellite observations seemed to justify. Ice crystals reflect less sunlight than water droplets, so as these clouds heated and the ice melted, they became more reflective and caused cooling. The new models start with more realistic clouds containing more supercooled water, which allows other dynamics driven by warming—the penetration of dry air from above and a subduing of turbulence—to thin the clouds.
But that fix has allowed scientists to spy another bias previously countered by the faulty cooling trend. In both the old and new climate models, the patchy cumulus clouds that form in the tropics thin out in response to warming, allowing in more heat than satellite observations suggest, according to a study by Timothy Myers, a cloud scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “Even though one feature of the climate is now more realistic, another that’s persistently biased has been revealed,” Myers says.
Graphic [Overheated
Climate models used by next month’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report project more warming over an 1850–1900 baseline than those in a 2013 report. Scientists are using recent observed warming to rein them in.]
By the time modelers exposed that bias, the supercomputing runs were already done and the IPCC report was nearing completion. And many of the hot models otherwise simulate the climate extremely well overall, doing a better job than their predecessors at capturing atmospheric connections between remote ocean basins and the distribution of rainfall. “You want a way you can use those models for what they have without getting stuck with their climate sensitivity,” Schmidt says.
So the IPCC team will probably use reality—the actual warming of the world over the past few decades—to constrain the CMIP projections. Several papers have shown how doing so can reduce the uncertainty of the model projections by half, and lower their most extreme projections. For 2100, in a worst-case scenario, that would reduce a raw 5°C of projected warming over preindustrial levels to 4.2°C. It’s good news for the modelers—but also a clear, and dismaying, sign that global warming has gone on long enough to help chart its own path, says Aurélien Ribes, a climate scientist at France’s National Centre for Meteorological Research. “Observations now provide a clear view for what climate change will be.”
The IPCC report is also likely to present the spatial impacts of different amounts of warming—2°C, 3°C, 4°C—rather than saying how quickly those impacts will be felt. That heat-based technique worked well in an interim IPCC report in 2018, on the impacts of 1.5°C of warming, and would preserve good information from the hot models, even if they suggest these thresholds will come too soon.
The modelers hope to do better next time around. Lamarque says they may test new simulations against recent paleoclimates, not just historical warming, while building them. He also suggests that the development process could benefit from more time, with updates every decade or so rather than the current report interval of every 7 years. And it could be helpful to divide the modeling process in two, with one track focused on scientific experimentation—when a large range of climate sensitivities is helpful—and the other on providing a best estimate to policymakers. “It’s not easy to reconcile these two approaches under a single entity,” Lamarque says.
A cadre of researchers dedicated to the task of translating the models into useful projections could also help, says Angeline Pendergrass, a climate scientist at Cornell University who helped develop one technique for weighting the model results by their accuracy and independence. “It’s an actual job to go between the basic science and the tools I’m messing around with,” she says.
For now, policymakers and other researchers need to avoid putting too much stock in the unconstrained extreme warming the latest models predict, says Claudia Tebaldi, a climate scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and one of the leaders of CMIP’s climate projections. Getting that message out will be a challenge. “These issues don’t translate very well in practice,” she says. “It’s going to be hard for people looking to make some projection of a water basin in the West to make sense of it.”

Already scientific papers are appearing using CMIP’s unconstrained worst-case scenarios for 2100, adding fire to what are already well-justified fears. But that practice needs to change, Schmidt says. “You end up with numbers for even the near-term that are insanely scary—and wrong.”


Wednesday, May 12, 2021

CRED Louvain climate disaster events “This is creating weather-related disasters that are completely unprecedented”



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Gore Pulls Slide of Disaster Trends
BY ANDREW C. REVKIN FEBRUARY 23, 2009 12:31 PM February 23, 2009 12:31 pm 183
COLELLAPHOTO.COM via AAAS.org Al Gore addresses the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Former Vice President Al Gore is pulling a dramatic slide from his ever-evolving global warming presentation. When Mr. Gore addressed a packed, cheering hall at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago earlier this month, his climate slide show contained a startling graph showing a ceiling-high spike in disasters in recent years. The data came from the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (also called CRED) at the Catholic University of Louvain in Brussels.

The graph, which was added to his talk last year, came just after a sequence of images of people from Iowa to South Australia struggling with drought, wildfire, flooding and other weather-related calamities. Mr. Gore described the pattern as a manifestation of human-driven climate change. “This is creating weather-related disasters that are completely unprecedented,” he said. (The preceding link is to a video clip of that portion of the talk; go to 7th minute.)

Now Mr. Gore is dropping the graph, his office said today. Here’s why.

Two days after the talk, Mr. Gore was sharply criticized for using the data to make a point about global warming by Roger A. Pielke, Jr., a political scientist focused on disaster trends and climate policy at the University of Colorado. Mr. Pielke noted that the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters stressed in reports that a host of factors unrelated to climate caused the enormous rise in reported disasters (details below).

Dr. Pielke quoted the Belgian center: “Indeed, justifying the upward trend in hydro-meteorological disaster occurrence and impacts essentially through climate change would be misleading. Climate change is probably an actor in this increase but not the major one — even if its impact on the figures will likely become more evident in the future.”

Officials at the disaster center, after reviewing what Mr. Gore showed and said, sent a comment to Dr. Pielke’s blog and to me. You can read their full response below. I sent it to Mr. Gore’s office and asked for his interpretation. Kalee Kreider, Mr. Gore’s spokeswoman on environmental matters, wrote back today:


I can confirm that historically, we used Munich Re and Swiss Re data for the slide show. This can be confirmed using a hard copy of An Inconvenient Truth. (It is cited if you cannot recall from the film which is now several years old!). We became aware of the CRED database from its use by Charles Blow in the New York Times (May 31, 2008). So, it’s a very new addition.

We have found that Munich Re and other insurers and their science experts have made the attribution. I’m referring you particularly to their floods section/report [link, link] Both of these were published in a series entitled “Weather catastrophes and climate change-Is there still hope for us.”

We appreciate that you have pointed out the issues with the CRED database and will make the switch back to the data we used previously to ensure that there is no confusion either with regards to the data or attribution.

As to climate change and its impacts on storms and floods, the IPCC and NOAA among many other top scientific groups have indicated that climate change will result in more extreme weather events, including heat waves, wildfires, storms and floods. As the result of briefings from top scientists, Vice President Gore believes that we are beginning to see evidence of that now.
Reproduced with permission, from Guha-Sapir, D., Vos, F.; Quantifying Global Environmental Change Impacts: Methods, Criteria and Definitions for Compiling Data on Hydro-Meteorological Hazards in Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security – Threats, Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Risks. Edited by H. Brauch et al Hexagon Series on Human and Environmental Security and Peace, vol. 5 (Berlin – Heidelberg – New York: Springer-Verlag, 2009). Click on the image for a full-sized version of the graph, which shows storm trends as a green band and flooding and related landslides in blue.

At right is a link to the Belgian center’s graph of disaster trends through 2008 (click to see the whole thing). And here is the center’s statement (highlight added):


CRED is fully aware of the potential for misleading interpretations of EM-DAT figures by various users. This is a risk all public datasets run…. Before interpreting the upward trend in the occurrence of weather-related disasters as “completely unprecedented” and “due to global warming”, one has to take into account the complexities of disaster occurrence, human vulnerabilities and statistical reporting and registering.

Over the last 30 years, the development of telecommunications, media and increased international cooperation has played a critical role in the number of disasters that are reported internationally. In addition, increases in humanitarian funds have encouraged reporting of more disasters, especially smaller events. Finally, disasters are the convergence of hazards with vulnerabilities. As such, an increase of physical, social, economic or environmental vulnerabilities can mean an increase in the occurrence of disasters.

We believe that the increase seen in the graph until about 1995 is explained partly by better reporting of disasters in general, partly due to active data collection efforts by CRED and partly due to real increases in certain types of disasters. We estimate that the data in the most recent decade present the least bias and reflect a real change in numbers. This is especially true for floods and cyclones. Whether this is due to climate change or not, we are unable to say.

Once again, we would like to point out that although climate change could affect the severity, frequency and spatial distribution of hydro-meteorological events, we need to be cautious when interpreting disaster data and take into account the inherent complexity of climate and weather related processes — and remain objective scientific observers.

[UPDATE: 5:10 p.m.: I’ve posted on a more measured effort at climate risk communication.]

Also on the disaster-climate front, there is an interesting story in the Washington Post today describing a variegated assemblage of efforts to flee in the face of climate-related threats. Matthew Nisbet pondered how a global warming story without a hot political element made it onto a front page.

It’s pretty clear it was the climate-disaster link. There were some things missing from the article, however. As the folks in Belgium explained above, the connection between human-driven climate change and recent trends in disasters remains highly uncertain, even as most climate scientists foresee intensification of floods and droughts and, of course, more coastal flooding with rising sea levels.

So while the climate hook might have given this story its “front-page thought,” there’s no examination in the article of simultaneous trends in population growth in poor places, urbanization (people are leaving marginal lands for many reasons) and the like.

In the absence of that hook, it’s basically a story about people moving out of harm’s way, something that’s been happening throughout human history.183

Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Science Skepticism Across 24 Countries: General faith in science was predicted by spirituality, suggesting that it, more than religiosity, may be the ‘enemy’ of science acceptance

Science Skepticism Across 24 Countries. Bastiaan T. Rutjens et al. Social Psychological and Personality Science, April 28, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506211001329

Abstract: Efforts to understand and remedy the rejection of science are impeded by lack of insight into how it varies in degree and in kind around the world. The current work investigates science skepticism in 24 countries (N = 5,973). Results show that while some countries stand out as generally high or low in skepticism, predictors of science skepticism are relatively similar across countries. One notable effect was consistent across countries though stronger in Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) nations: General faith in science was predicted by spirituality, suggesting that it, more than religiosity, may be the ‘enemy’ of science acceptance. Climate change skepticism was mainly associated with political conservatism especially in North America. Other findings were observed across WEIRD and non-WEIRD nations: Vaccine skepticism was associated with spirituality and scientific literacy, genetic modification skepticism with scientific literacy, and evolution skepticism with religious orthodoxy. Levels of science skepticism are heterogeneous across countries, but predictors of science skepticism are heterogeneous across domains.

Keywords: science skepticism, spirituality, ideology, climate change, vaccination, WEIRD, genetic modification, evolution, religion

The extent to which science skepticism varies in degree and in kind around the world is not well understood. Up to now, a systematic cross-national investigation of the relative impact of various potential predictors of science skepticism across domains was lacking. This lacuna has obstructed efforts to understand and remedy the rejection of science—a phenomenon that is causing catastrophic health, economic, and environmental harms (Gallup, 2019World Health Organization, 2019). The current paper reports the results of the first large-scale effort to address this lacuna. In so doing, this work provides clear support for the heterogeneity of science skepticism, both in degree (levels of skepticism vary across domains but also across countries) and in kind (different predictors drive science skepticism in different domains). As formalized in our main hypotheses (Hypotheses 1–6), we expected different predictors to drive skepticism in different domains, within and across nations. All main hypotheses were supported, except for Hypothesis 2 (we did not find evidence that religious orthodoxy uniquely contributes to vaccine skepticism). We had also expected some heterogeneity to manifest between nations such that WEIRD and non-WEIRD nations would show systematic variation in patterns of science skepticism. These predictions were formalized in the country-level hypotheses (Hypotheses 1a, 2a, 2b, 6a, and 6b). It was indeed found that the impact of political conservatism on climate change skepticism was the strongest in the United States (Hypothesis 1a), but note that it was equally strong in Canada (followed by other WEIRD nations; Australia and the Netherlands). Evidence for the hypotheses that vaccine skepticism and low faith in science would be best predicted by spirituality in WEIRD nations (Hypotheses 2a–6a) and by orthodoxy in non-WEIRD nations (Hypotheses 2a and 2b) was found for faith in science but not for vaccine skepticism. Taken together, the results show that, of the various beliefs and ideologies examined as predictors of science skepticism, spirituality is among the most important.

Indeed, confirming previous results obtained in the Netherlands (Rutjens & van der Lee, 2020)—and providing strong support for Hypothesis 6—the current data speak to the crucial role of spirituality in fostering low faith in science, more generally, beyond its domain-specific effects on vaccine skepticism. This indicates that the negative impact of spirituality on faith in science represents a cross-national phenomenon that is more generalizable than might be expected based on the large variety (Muthukrishna et al., 2020) of countries included here. A possible explanation for the robustness of this effect may lie in the inherent irreconcilability of the intuitive epistemology of a spiritual belief system with science (Rutjens & van der Lee, 2020). (If so, then we might look at a potentially much larger problem that extends beyond spirituality and applies more generally to “post-truth” society, in which truth and perceptions of reality may be based on feelings rather than facts; Martel et al., 2020Rutjens & Brandt, 2018.) However, these results do not mean that traditional religiosity as a predictor of science skepticism (McPhetres & Zuckermann, 2018Rutjens, Heine, et al., 2018Rutjens, Sutton, & van der Lee, 2018) has now become irrelevant: Not only did religious orthodoxy significantly contribute to low faith in science, it was also found to be a very consistent cross-national predictor of evolution skepticism (but not of other forms of science skepticism included in the study).

Research has started to challenge the widespread notion that science skepticism primarily results from a lack of knowledge.10 In the current work, scientific literacy was the main driver of science skepticism only in the domain of GM. This corroborates previous research and observations that suggest that merely addressing information deficits to combat science skepticism is in most cases not sufficient (McPhetres et al., 2019Rutjens, Heine, et al., 2018Rutjens & van der Lee, 2020).

The cross-national approach of the current work is important because it provides support for the emerging theoretical understanding of what causes skepticism across different domains of science (Hornsey et al., 2018a2018bMcPhetres et al., 2019McPhetres & Zuckermann, 2018Rutjens, Heine, et al., 2018Rutjens & van der Lee, 2020) and does so by including various countries that have been virtually absent from the psychological science database (Apicella et al., 2020Hruschka et al., 2018Muthukrishna et al., 2020). The present results demonstrate that while predictors of science skepticism to some extent vary in predictable ways between countries, many of the hypothesized effects were observed across many of the included countries. Levels of skepticism showed more regional variation. This heterogeneity of science skepticism in degree is illustrated in Table 2 and Figure 1, with some countries standing out as being especially high or low on skepticism. For example, in Egypt, Romania, and Venezuela, science skepticism is much stronger than in Australia or Canada. Additionally, remarkable differences in science skepticism were observed within countries, depending on the domain (e.g., GM skepticism vs. skepticism in other domains in France, general faith in science vs. domain-specific skepticism in Turkey).

One obvious and important limitation to the current work concerns the limited nature of the measures used. Many of the key measures employed were self-report single-item (i.e., most outcome variables) or two-item indices (i.e., most of the predictor variables). The brevity of the materials was necessary in order to keep study length constrained. Thus, the construct validity and (cross-cultural) reliability of these measures are necessarily limited, and we hope that future research will replicate and extend (some of) these results with better measures and extensive equivalence testing. That being said, the current measures have been used frequently in previous work; the single-item outcome measures have been shown to produce similar results as multi-item variants (Rutjens, Sutton, & van der Lee, 2018Rutjens & van der Lee, 2020), and the spirituality and religious orthodoxy indices consist of the items with the highest factor loadings (Rutjens, Sutton, & van der Lee, 2018Rutjens & van der Lee, 2020).

In conclusion, the present results can support the further development of our understanding of the various causes of science skepticism in different domains and in different cultures and countries, which in turn may help support interventions and communication strategies. Indeed, these results may be particularly informative when the aim is to understand how trust in science and compliance with its recommendations vary across individuals and countries, for example, during a global pandemic like COVID-19. To illustrate, let us return to the more general problem of vaccine hesitancy as an example of how skepticism can pose serious risks to public health. The current results suggest that increasing scientific literacy might prove to be a more fruitful approach in some cultural contexts than in others (see Figure 3C). In contrast, a better understanding of the relation between spiritual beliefs and general science skepticism is likely to be extremely informative regardless of cultural context. Regardless, it is evident that any strategy aimed at combating science skepticism needs to be underpinned by a nuanced theoretical and empirical understanding of its causes across domains as well as cultural contexts.

Monday, March 1, 2021

Communicating extreme forecasts... Scientists mention uncertainty far more frequently than non-scientists; thus, the bias in media toward coverage of non-scientific voices may be 'anti-uncertainty', not 'anti-science'

Apocalypse now? Communicating extreme forecasts. David C. Rode; Paul S. Fischbeck. International Journal of Global Warming, 2021 Vol.23 No.2, pp.191 - 211. DOI: 10.1504/IJGW.2021.112896

Abstract: Apocalyptic forecasts are unique. They have, by definition, no prior history and are observed only in their failure. As a result, they fit poorly with our mental models for evaluating and using them. However, they are made with some frequency in the context of climate change. We review a set of forecasts involving catastrophic climate change-related scenarios and make several observations about the characteristics of those forecasts. We find that mentioning uncertainty results in a smaller online presence for apocalyptic forecasts. However, scientists mention uncertainty far more frequently than non-scientists. Thus, the bias in media toward coverage of non-scientific voices may be 'anti-uncertainty', not 'anti-science'. Also, the desire among many climate change scientists to portray unanimity may enhance the perceived seriousness of the potential consequences of climate catastrophes, but paradoxically undermine their credibility in doing so. We explore strategies for communicating extreme forecasts that are mindful of these results.

Keywords: apocalypse; climate change; communication; extreme event; forecast; forecasting; global warming; media; policy; prediction; risk; risk communication; uncertainty.


5 Implications for policy and risk communication

Uncertainty is a core challenge for climate change science. It can undermine public engagement (Budescu et al., 2012) and form a barrier to public mobilisation (Pidgeon and Fischhoff, 2011). Our findings in this paper support these results and suggest that the exclusion of uncertainty from communication of apocalyptic climate-related forecasts can increase the visibility of the forecasts. However, the increased visibility comes at the cost of emphasising the voices of speakers without a scientific background. But focusing only on the quantity of communications, and not the ‘weight’ attached to them, neglects the important role that their credibility plays in establishing trust.

Trust (in subject-matter authorities and in climate research) influences perceived risk (Visschers, 2018; Siegrist and Cvetkovich, 2000). The impact of that trust is significant. Although belief in the existence of climate change remains strong, belief that its risks have been exaggerated has grown (Wang and Kim, 2018; Poortinga et al., 2011; Whitmarsh, 2011). Gaps have also emerged between belief in climate change and estimates of the seriousness of its impact (Markowitz and Guckian, 2018). To the extent that failed predictions damage that trust, the public’s perception of climate-related risk is altered. If the underlying purpose of making apocalyptic predictions is to recommend action, and if the predictions fail to materialise, the wisdom of the recommendations based on those predictions may be called into question. Climate science’s perceived value is thereby diminished. If the perceived value (or the certainty of that value) is diminished, policy action is harder to achieve.

It is not simply the presence of uncertainty that is an impediment, it is that communications characterised by ‘hype and alarmism’ also undermine trust (Howe et al., 2019; O’Neill and Nicholson-Cole, 2009). The continual failure of the predictions to materialise may be seen to validate the public’s belief that such claims are in fact exaggerated. Although such beliefs may be the result of outcome bias (Baron and Hershey, 1988), recent evidence has also suggested that certain commonly accepted scientific predictions may indeed be exaggerated (Lewis and Curry, 2018). The model of belief we presented in Subsection 2.4 demonstrates that observing only failures will inevitably result in a reduction in subjective beliefs about apocalyptic risks. To build trust, any forecasts made must be ‘scientific’ – that is, able to be observed both incorrect and correct (Green and Armstrong, 2007). Under such circumstances, they should also incorporate clear statements acknowledging uncertainty, as doing so may work to increase trust (Joslyn and LeClerc, 2016). It is important to provide settings where the audience can ‘calibrate’ its beliefs. “A climate forecast can only be evaluated and potentially falsified if it provides a quantitative range of uncertainty” [Allen et al., (2013), p.243]. The acknowledgement of the uncertainty should include both worst-case and best-case outcomes (Howe et al., 2019).

One key to increasing credibility is to build up a series of shorter, simpler (non-apocalyptic) predictions (Nemet, 2009). Instead of predicting solely an apocalyptic event 50 years out, offer a series of contingent forecasts of shorter characteristic time (Byerly, 2000) that lead toward the ultimate event. Communications about climate change – and especially climate change-related predictions – should emphasise areas of the science that are less extreme in outcome, but more tangibly certain in likelihood (Howe et al., 2019). This implies, inter alia, that compound forecasts of events and the consequences of events should be separated. The goal may even be to exploit an outcome bias in decision making by moving from small- to large-scale predictions. By establishing a successful track record of smaller-scale predictions, validated with ex post evaluations of forecast accuracy, the public may be more inclined to increase its trust of the larger-scale predictions – even when such predictions are inherently less certain. This approach has been advocated directly by Pielke (2008) and Fildes and Kourentzes (2011) and supports the climate prediction efforts of Meehl et al. (2014), Smith et al. (2019), and others. To that end, we propose four concrete steps that can be taken to improve the usefulness of extreme climate forecasts. First, the authors of the forthcoming Sixth Assessment Report of the IPCC should be encouraged to tone down ‘deadline-ism’ (Asayama et al., 2019). Forecasters should make an effort to influence the interpretation of their forecasts; for example, by correcting media reporting of them. The sequential releases of the IPCC’s Assessment Reports, for example, should consider calling out particularly erroneous or incomplete interpretations of statements from previous Assessment Reports.

Second, given the extensive evidence about the limited forecasting abilities of

individual experts (Tetlock, 2005), forecasters should give more weight to the unique

ability of markets to serve as efficient aggregators of belief in lieu of negotiated

univocality. So-called prediction markets have a strong track record (Wolfers and

Zitzewitz, 2004). Although they have been suggested multiple times for climate

change-related subjects (Lucas and Mormann, 2019; Vandenbergh et al., 2014), they

have almost never been used. An exception is the finding that pricing in weather financial

derivatives is consistent with the output of climate models of temperature (Schlenker and

Taylor, 2019).

Third, efforts to provide reliable mid-term predictions should be encouraged. The

multi-year and decadal prediction work of Smith et al. (2019) and Meehl et al. (2014) is

in this direction. But what should (also) be developed are repeated and sequential

forecasts in order to facilitate learning about the forecasting process itself. That is, not

just how current climate forecasting models perform in hindcasts, but how previous

climate forecasts have performed (and hopefully improved) over time. Efforts to

determine the limits of predictability are also important (Meehl et al., 2014) and should

be studied in conjunction with the evaluation of forecast performance over time.

Fourth, extreme caution should be used in extrapolating from forecasts of climate events (e.g., temperature or CO2 levels) to their social and physical consequences (famine, flooding, etc.) without the careful modelling of mitigation and adaptation efforts and other feedback mechanisms. While there have been notable successes in predicting certain climate characteristics, such as surface temperature (Smith et al., 2019), the ability to tie such predictions to quantitative forecasts of consequences is more limited. The efforts to model damages as part of determining the social cost of carbon (such as with the DICE, PAGE, and FUND integrated assessment models) are a start but are subject to extreme levels of parameter sensitivity (Wang et al., 2019); uncertainty should be reflected in any forecasts of apocalyptic forecasts of climate change consequences. Scientists are often encouraged to ‘think big’, especially in policy applications. What we are suggesting here is that climate policy analysis could benefit from thinking ‘small’. That is, from focusing on the lower-level building blocks that go into making larger-scale predictions. One means by which to build public support for a complex idea like climate change is to demonstrate to the public that our understanding of the building blocks of that science are solid, that we are calibrated as to the accuracy of the building block forecasts, and that we understand how lower-level uncertainty propagates through to probabilistic uncertainty in the higher-level forecasts of events and consequences.

Monday, January 4, 2021

Distorting the view of our climate future: The misuse and abuse of climate pathways and scenarios

Distorting the view of our climate future: The misuse and abuse of climate pathways and scenarios. Roger Pielke Jr., Justin Ritchie. Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 72, February 2021, 101890. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2020.101890

Abstract: Climate science research and assessments under the umbrella of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have misused scenarios for more than a decade. Symptoms of misuse have included the treatment of an unrealistic, extreme scenario as the world’s most likely future in the absence of climate policy and the illogical comparison of climate projections across inconsistent global development trajectories. Reasons why such misuse arose include (a) competing demands for scenarios from users in diverse academic disciplines that ultimately conflated exploratory and policy relevant pathways, (b) the evolving role of the IPCC – which extended its mandate in a way that creates an inter-relationship between literature assessment and literature coordination, (c) unforeseen consequences of employing a temporary approach to scenario development, (d) maintaining research practices that normalize careless use of scenarios, and (e) the inherent complexity and technicality of scenarios in model-based research and in support of policy. Consequently, much of the climate research community is presently off-track from scientific coherence and policy-relevance. Attempts to address scenario misuse within the community have thus far not worked. The result has been the widespread production of myopic or misleading perspectives on future climate change and climate policy. Until reform is implemented, we can expect the production of such perspectives to continue, threatening the overall credibility of the IPCC and associated climate research. However, because many aspects of climate change discourse are contingent on scenarios, there is considerable momentum that will make such a course correction difficult and contested - even as efforts to improve scenarios have informed research that will be included in the IPCC 6th Assessment.

Keywords: Climate changeClimate scenariosEnergy scenariosIPCCRCPsSSPs


Paris Agreement cost of $819–$1,890 billion per year in 2030 would reduce emissions in 1% of what is needed to limit average temperature rise to 1.5C; global costs from extreme weather have declined 26% over the last 28 years

Welfare in the 21st century: Increasing development, reducing inequality, the impact of climate change, and the cost of climate policies. Bjorn Lomborg. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Volume 156, July 2020, 119981. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2020.119981

Abstract

Climate change is real and its impacts are mostly negative, but common portrayals of devastation are unfounded. Scenarios set out under the UN Climate Panel (IPCC) show human welfare will likely increase to 450% of today's welfare over the 21st century. Climate damages will reduce this welfare increase to 434%.

Arguments for devastation typically claim that extreme weather (like droughts, floods, wildfires, and hurricanes) is already worsening because of climate change. This is mostly misleading and inconsistent with the IPCC literature. For instance, the IPCC finds no trend for global hurricane frequency and has low confidence in attribution of changes to human activity, while the US has not seen an increase in landfalling hurricanes since 1900. Global death risk from extreme weather has declined 99% over 100 years and global costs have declined 26% over the last 28 years.

Arguments for devastation typically ignore adaptation, which will reduce vulnerability dramatically. While climate research suggests that fewer but stronger future hurricanes will increase damages, this effect will be countered by richer and more resilient societies. Global cost of hurricanes will likely decline from 0.04% of GDP today to 0.02% in 2100.

Climate-economic research shows that the total cost from untreated climate change is negative but moderate, likely equivalent to a 3.6% reduction in total GDP.

Climate policies also have costs that often vastly outweigh their climate benefits. The Paris Agreement, if fully implemented, will cost $819–$1,890 billion per year in 2030, yet will reduce emissions by just 1% of what is needed to limit average global temperature rise to 1.5°C. Each dollar spent on Paris will likely produce climate benefits worth 11¢.

Long-term impacts of climate policy can cost even more. The IPCC's two best future scenarios are the “sustainable” SSP1 and the “fossil-fuel driven” SSP5. Current climate-focused attitudes suggest we aim for the “sustainable” world, but the higher economic growth in SSP5 actually leads to much greater welfare for humanity. After adjusting for climate damages, SSP5 will on average leave grandchildren of today's poor $48,000 better off every year. It will reduce poverty by 26 million each year until 2050, inequality will be lower, and more than 80 million premature deaths will be avoided.

Using carbon taxes, an optimal realistic climate policy can aggressively reduce emissions and reduce the global temperature increase from 4.1°C in 2100 to 3.75°C. This will cost $18 trillion, but deliver climate benefits worth twice that. The popular 2°C target, in contrast, is unrealistic and would leave the world more than $250 trillion worse off.

The most effective climate policy is increasing investment in green R&D to make future decarbonization much cheaper. This can deliver $11 of climate benefits for each dollar spent.

More effective climate policies can help the world do better. The current climate discourse leads to wasteful climate policies, diverting attention and funds from more effective ways to improve the world.


7. Conclusion

As municipalities, counties, and even countries declare a “climate emergency,” it is apparent that global warming is often being presented as an existential challenge requiring urgent and strong climate policies to avoid devastation.

This article has shown that these claims are misleading and often incorrectly describe the issue and its future. While climate change is real, human caused, and will have a mostly negative impact, it is important to remember that climate policies will likewise have a mostly negative impact. Thus, we must account for the effects of both to find the policies that will achieve the highest welfare gains.

7.1. Baseline welfare keeps increasing

This article first established how the baseline development for the world has improved dramatically and is likely to continue. Welfare has increased and will increase dramatically. While GDP per person is often criticized, it effectively captures some of the most important impacts for humans and the environment: longer life, less child deaths, better education, higher development, lower malnutrition, less poverty, more access to water, sanitation, and electricity, and better environmental performance. Most importantly, it strongly captures the most important welfare indicator, subjective well-being.

Welfare per capita has increased 16-fold from 1800 to today (Fig. 1), and it is likely to increase another 5–10 times by the end of the century. Likewise, the global income gap is closing (Fig. 2) and the world could by 2100 be less unequal than it has been in the last two hundred years (Fig. 3).

One of the main reasons we have become much better off is that we have access to much more energy. From 1800 until today, each person in the world has access to four times as much energy (Fig. 4). Because of efficiency gains, human benefits from energy have increased even more: Each person in Great Britain has obtained 18 times more domestic heating, 170 times more transport, and 21,000 times more light. This trend will continue towards 2100.

While many believe that renewables are slated to take over the world, this is unlikely to happen soon (Fig. 5). Indeed, by mid-century we will likely get less energy from renewables than we did in the last mid-century in 1950. By 2100, in the middle-of-the-road scenario, the world will still get 77% of its energy from fossil fuels.

That is why much of our progress in the 21st century will remain bound to fossil fuels (unless we innovate cheap green energy). Cutting back fossil fuels helps alleviate global warming but at the same time has real costs to human development. Thus, it is crucial to identify the size of the problem of global warming and the effectiveness of its solutions.

7.2. Climate impacts real but often vastly exaggerated

There are two major reasons why most people believe global warming is making things worse, whereas the data shows this mostly to be untrue. First, it is because of the so-called Expanding Bull's-Eye effect (Fig. 7). In just 20 years, the number of exposed houses on floodplains in Atlanta increased by 58% (while becoming more valuable). Not surprisingly, when a flood hits more houses that are each more valuable, damages will go up. But adjusted for wealth, US flooding costs have declined almost tenfold from 0.48% of GDP in 1903 to 0.057% in 2017 (Fig. 10)

Second, adaptation is often ignored and that leads to vastly exaggerated impacts. One good example is coastal flooding, where increasing sea levels might confer costs of up to $100 trillion+ per year, if we do not adapt (Fig. 8). However, if we do adapt, the cost of both flooding and adaptation in percent of GDP will decline.

Globally, climate-related deaths have declined 95% over the past century, while the global population has quadrupled (Fig. 17). When we look at all weather-related catastrophes across the globe, their share of global GDP has not increased, but rather decreased since 1990 (Fig. 18).

7.3. Costs and benefits: Paris agreement

The Paris Agreement will cost between $819 billion–$1,890 billion per year in 2030 (Table 2), most likely towards the upper end. The beneficial impact of the 2016–30 Paris Agreement will be rather small, at 1% of the cuts needed to achieve 1.5°C or an immeasurable 0.03–0.04°C temperature reduction by 2100.

The costs of the Paris Agreement are much larger than its benefits. For every dollar spent on Paris, we will likely avoid 11¢ cents of climate damage (Table 3).

7.4. Costs and benefits: optimal climate policy

Shedding unsubstantiated fears of global warming makes it easier to achieve a rational climate policy, securing the highest possible welfare. Climate decisions need to consider two costs: climate costs and climate policy costs. This paper uses Nordhaus’ DICE model to find the climate policy that realistically will deliver the lowest combined welfare loss. This optimal policy will reach 3.75°C by 2100, still aggressively halving global emissions by 2100 compared to the no-policy scenario, saving about $18 trillion or 0.4% of GDP across the next five centuries (Fig. 26).

Aiming for much stronger climate policies will end up costing humanity much more than the benefits they provide. Trying to reach 2°C, which has become the least-ambitious target discussed internationally, could end up saddling humanity with more than $250 trillion in extra costs. The current level of climate ambition voiced by almost all policymakers and campaigners, while undoubtedly well-intentioned, will in total be hugely detrimental to the world, akin to cutting off one's arm to cure a wrist ache.

7.5. Climate policy in a world of many challenges

Yet, it is often argued that we need to proceed with strong climate policies to help the world and especially its poor. This is mostly bad advice. There are much more deadly environmental problems in the world (Fig. 27): indoor and outdoor air pollution kills almost 5 million people, while global warming kills perhaps 150,000. It is clear that global warming by any comparison is a small issue in a world still beset by problems of air pollution, lack of education, gender inequality, poor health, malnutrition, trade barriers, and international conflicts (Fig. 28). In the biggest UN-led global priority survey, global warming came in last, 16th of 16 priorities, with education, health, jobs, an end to corruption, and nutrition leading the field (Fig. 29).

There are many better ways to help than through traditional climate policies (Fig. 30). For climate, we should invest in green R&D and phase out fossil fuel subsidies. For the world's many other problems, we can do more good by halving coral reef loss, reducing child malnutrition, halving malaria infections, cutting tuberculosis deaths by 95%, expanding immunization, achieving universal access to contraception, and achieving freer trade. For a dollar spent, each of these policies would achieve hundreds or thousands of times more good than Paris.

7.6. The most important future choices

If we look at the future world outlook, we are likely to see a much richer humanity with much less poverty, more nutrition, better education, lower child mortality, longer lives, access to water, sanitation, and electricity, and better environmental performance. It will also be a world that will be less unequal and have much more access to energy.

We can see our choice of futures by looking at the five scenarios from IPCC. If we focus too much on global warming, we are likely to miss the by far most important investments in education and technological R&D to ensure we avoid the relatively poor scenarios of regional rivalry SSP3 or inequal SSP4. But even looking at the two richest scenarios from IPCC––the sustainable SSP1 and the fossil fuel-driven SSP5––an outsized focus on climate will make us choose less well. Aiming for the SSP1 is not bad. But the SSP5 world would be much better on almost all accounts. It would provide more energy, less poverty, less inequality, avoid more than 80 million premature deaths, and leave the average person in the developing world––after correcting for global warming––$48,000 better off each year by 2100. In total, choosing SSP1 in favor of SSP5 would leave the world half as rich, forgoing almost $500 trillion in extra annual welfare.

Global warming is real and long-term has a significant, negative impact on society. Thus, we should weigh policies to make sure we tackle the negative impacts without ending up incurring more costs by engaging in excessively expensive climate policies. We cannot and must not do nothing. But the evidence also manifestly alerts us to the danger that we end up with too ambitious and overly costly climate policies, and a general outlook that puts the world on a growth path that will deliver dramatically less welfare, especially for the world's poorest.

Thursday, June 22, 2017

Not taking responsibility: Equity trumps efficiency in allocation decisions

Not taking responsibility: Equity trumps efficiency in allocation decisions. By  Gordon-Hecker, Tom; Rosensaft-Eshel, Daniela; Pittarello, Andrea; Shalvi, Shaul; Bereby-Meyer, Yoella
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol 146(6), Jun 2017, 771-775. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000273

Abstract: When allocating resources, equity and efficiency may conflict. When resources are scarce and cannot be distributed equally, one may choose to destroy resources and reduce societal welfare to maintain equity among its members. We examined whether people are averse to inequitable outcomes per se or to being responsible for deciding how inequity should be implemented. Three scenario-based experiments and one incentivized experiment revealed that participants are inequity responsibility averse: when asked to decide which of the 2 equally deserving individuals should receive a reward, they rather discarded the reward than choosing who will get it. This tendency diminished significantly when participants had the possibility to use a random device to allocate the reward. The finding suggests that it is more difficult to be responsible for the way inequity is implemented than to create inequity per se.

Evaluation of a proposal for reliable low-cost grid power with 100% wind, water, and solar

Evaluation of a proposal for reliable low-cost grid power with 100% wind, water, and solar. By Christopher T. M Clack, Staffan A. Qvist, Jay Apt,, Morgan Bazilian, Adam R. Brandt, Ken Caldeira, Steven J. Davis, Victor Diakov, Mark A. Handschy, Paul D. H. Hines, Paulina Jaramillo, Daniel M. Kammen, Jane C. S. Long, M. Granger Morgan, Adam Reed, Varun Sivaram, James Sweeney, George R. Tynan, David G. Victor, John P. Weyant, and Jay F. Whitacre. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/06/16/1610381114.full

Significance: Previous analyses have found that the most feasible route to a low-carbon energy future is one that adopts a diverse portfolio of technologies. In contrast, Jacobson et al. (2015) consider whether the future primary energy sources for the United States could be narrowed to almost exclusively wind, solar, and hydroelectric power and suggest that this can be done at “low-cost” in a way that supplies all power with a probability of loss of load “that exceeds electric-utility-industry standards for reliability”. We find that their analysis involves errors, inappropriate methods, and implausible assumptions. Their study does not provide credible evidence for rejecting the conclusions of previous analyses that point to the benefits of considering a broad portfolio of energy system options. A policy prescription that overpromises on the benefits of relying on a narrower portfolio of technologies options could be counterproductive, seriously impeding the move to a cost effective decarbonized energy system.

Abstract: A number of analyses, meta-analyses, and assessments, including those performed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and the International Energy Agency, have concluded that deployment of a diverse portfolio of clean energy technologies makes a transition to a low-carbon-emission energy system both more feasible and less costly than other pathways. In contrast, Jacobson et al. [Jacobson MZ, Delucchi MA, Cameron MA, Frew BA (2015) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 112(49):15060–15065] argue that it is feasible to provide “low-cost solutions to the grid reliability problem with 100% penetration of WWS [wind, water and solar power] across all energy sectors in the continental United States between 2050 and 2055”, with only electricity and hydrogen as energy carriers. In this paper, we evaluate that study and find significant shortcomings in the analysis. In particular, we point out that this work used invalid modeling tools, contained modeling errors, and made implausible and inadequately supported assumptions. Policy makers should treat with caution any visions of a rapid, reliable, and low-cost transition to entire energy systems that relies almost exclusively on wind, solar, and hydroelectric power.

Friday, June 9, 2017

Physical Safety Promotes Socially (but Not Economically) Progressive Attitudes among Conservatives

Napier, J. L., Huang, J., Vonasch, A. J., and Bargh, J. A. (2017) Superheroes for Change: Physical Safety Promotes Socially (but Not Economically) Progressive Attitudes among Conservatives. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol., doi: 10.1002/ejsp.2315
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.2315/abstract

Abstract: Across two studies, we find evidence for our prediction that experimentally increasing feelings of physical safety increases conservatives' socially progressive attitudes. Specifically, Republican and conservative participants who imagined being endowed with a superpower that made them invulnerable to physical harm (vs. the ability to fly) were more socially (but not economically) liberal (Study 1) and less resistant to social change (Study 2). Results suggest that socially (but not economically) conservative attitudes are driven, at least in part, by needs for safety and security.

Why Elites Love Authentic Lowbrow Culture: Overcoming High-Status Denigration with Outsider Art

Why Elites Love Authentic Lowbrow Culture: Overcoming High-Status Denigration with Outsider Art. By Oliver Hahl, Ezra W. Zuckerman, Minjae Kim
American Sociological Review
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0003122417710642

Abstract: We develop and test the idea that public appreciation for authentic lowbrow culture affords an effective way for certain elites to address feelings of authenticity-insecurity arising from “high status denigration” (Hahl and Zuckerman 2014). This argument, which builds on recent sociological research on the “search for authenticity” (e.g., Grazian 2005) and on Bourdieu’s (1993) notion of artistic “disinterestedness,” is validated through experiments with U.S. subjects in the context of “outsider” art (Fine 2004). The first study demonstrates that preference for lowbrow culture perceived to be authentic is higher when individuals feel insecure in their authenticity because they attained status in a context where extrinsic incentives are salient. The second study demonstrates that audiences perceive the members of erstwhile denigrated high-status categories to be more authentic if they consume lowbrow culture, but only if the cultural producer is perceived as authentic. We conclude by noting how this “authenticity-by-appreciation” effect might be complementary to distinction-seeking as a motivation for elite cultural omnivorousness, and we draw broader implications for when and why particular forms of culture are in demand.

Mi resumen de lo que los autores defienden: el aprecio por el arte lowbrow* proporciona a ciertas élites un modo eficaz de abordar la inseguridad sobre su autenticidad, dudas que emanan del la denigración del status alto (“high status denigration,” Hahl and Zuckerman 2014). La búsqueda de la autenticidad y el carácter desinteresado, no enfocado en lo lucrativo, de ciertas muestras artísticas, se someten a experimentos con sujetos estadounidenses. El primer estudio muestra que la preferencia por cultura lowbrow percibida como auténtica es alta cuando los sujetos se sienten inseguros sobre su autenticidad. El segundo estudio muestra que los otros perciben a miembros de las categorias denigradas (alto standing) como más auténticos si consumen cultura lowbrow, pero solo si el productor cultural se percibe como auténtico. Este efecto de autenticidad es complementario a la búsqueda de carácter único en la motivación del carácter omnívoro cultural de la élite.

* lowbrow art: An underground visual art movement that arose in the Los Angeles area in the late 1970s. Lowbrow is a widespread populist art movement with origins in the underground comix world, punk music, hot-rod street culture, and other California subcultures. It is also often known by the name pop surrealism. Most lowbrow artworks are paintings, but there are also toys, and sculptures. Many of the creators of lowbrow art are influenced by Acid house flyers, Advertising, Animated cartoons, Circus and Sideshow culture, Commercial art, Comic books, Erotica, Graffiti and Street art, Kitsch, Kustom Kulture, Mail art, Pop culture, Psychedelic art, Punk rock culture, Retro Illustration, Religious art, Pulp magazine art, Surf culture, Tattoo art, Tiki culture, Toys for adults, notably vinyl figurines, anti-political views, among many other things.

Are the ethnically tolerant free of discrimination, prejudice and political intolerance? They aren't.

Bizumic, B., Kenny, A., Iyer, R., Tanuwira, J., and Huxley, E. (2017) Are the ethnically tolerant free of discrimination, prejudice and political intolerance? Eur. J. Soc. Psychol., doi: 10.1002/ejsp.2263
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.2263/abstract

Abstract: We hypothesized that the ethnically tolerant (i.e., people who are anti-ethnocentric and score very low on a measure of ethnocentrism) would perceive people with extremely incompatible values and beliefs as out-groups and would engage in discrimination, prejudice and political intolerance against them. Experiments among Australian citizens in Studies 1 (N = 224) and 2 (N = 283) showed that the ethnically tolerant perceived supporters of a message in favour of mandatory detention of asylum seekers as out-groups and consequently exhibited discrimination, prejudice and political intolerance against them. Study 3 with 265 U.S. citizens showed that, controlling for liberalism, ethnic tolerance led to prejudice against out-groups. This was replicated with 522 UK citizens in Study 4, which also showed that social identity, and not moral conviction, mediated the link between ethnic tolerance and prejudice. The findings suggest that the ethnically tolerant can be discriminatory, prejudiced and politically intolerant against fellow humans.

Thursday, June 8, 2017

Need for uniqueness motivates conspiracy beliefs

Imhoff, R., and Lamberty, P. K. (2017) Too special to be duped: Need for uniqueness motivates conspiracy beliefs. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol., doi: 10.1002/ejsp.2265
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.2265/full

Abstract: Adding to the growing literature on the antecedents of conspiracy beliefs, this paper argues that a small part in motivating the endorsement of such seemingly irrational beliefs is the desire to stick out from the crowd, the need for uniqueness. Across three studies, we establish a modest but robust association between the self-attributed need for uniqueness and a general conspirational mindset (conspiracy mentality) as well as the endorsement of specific conspiracy beliefs. Following up on previous findings that people high in need for uniqueness resist majority and yield to minority influence, Study 3 experimentally shows that a fictitious conspiracy theory received more support by people high in conspiracy mentality when this theory was said to be supported by only a minority (vs. majority) of survey respondents. Together, these findings support the notion that conspiracy beliefs can be adopted as a means to attain a sense of uniqueness.

Monday, June 5, 2017

Increase in deployment & combat injuries for white and Hispanic soldiers relative to black ones & for soldiers from high-income neighborhoods relative to those from low-income ones

Who Will Fight? The All-Volunteer Army after 9/11. By Susan Payne Carter, Alexander Smith & Carl Wojtaszek
American Economic Review, May 2017, Pages 415-419
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.p20171082

Abstract: Who fought the War on Terror? We find that as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan progressed, there was an increase in the fraction of active-duty Army enlistees who were white or from high-income neighborhoods and that these two groups selected combat occupations more often. Among men, we find an increase in deployment and combat injuries for white and Hispanic soldiers relative to black soldiers and for soldiers from high-income neighborhoods relative to those from low-income neighborhoods. This finding suggests that an all-volunteer force does not compel a disproportionate number of non-white and low socio-economic men to fight America's wars.

IV.  Discussion
Today's all-volunteer force represents a diverse group of individuals serving for both patriotic and economic reasons. For those with fewer economic opportunities, a steady job may be the deciding factor in their enlistment decision; while for those with more outside options, wartime service may shape their deci- sion. Concerns over equity could arise under the  all-volunteer system if these enlistment motivations are differentially distributed across demographic groups. While we cannot uncover the distribution of these motivations, we can observe which groups bear the burden of war. Were the first sustained conflicts of the AVF.Iraq and Afghanistan..poor man.s fights.? To the contrary, during this time period it does not appear that there was an undue burden placed on blacks or individuals from low-income neighborhoods. The percentages of black and low-income enlistees decreased as fighting intensified, with these trends stopping when outside labor market opportunities diminished during the Great Recession and combat risk decreased. These trends were the same for men and women, although black women continued to be over-represented in the Army relative to the general population. Furthermore, black and low-income enlisted men were less likely than their white and high-income peers to be deployed or injured in combat. These differences are driven primarily by the military occupation an individual enters: black and low-income men were less likely to choose combat-intensive occupations than their white and high-income peers with the same eligibility.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Yale's Little Robespierres - Students berate faculty who try to defend free speech

Yale's Little Robespierres. WSJ Editorial
http://www.wsj.com/articles/yales-little-robespierres-1447115476
Students berate faculty who try to defend free speech.WSJ, Nov. 9, 2015 7:31 p.m. ET

Someone at Yale University should have dressed up as Robespierre for Halloween, as its students seem to have lost their minds over what constitutes a culturally appropriate costume. Identity and grievance politics keeps hitting new lows on campus, and now even liberal professors are being consumed by the revolution.

On Oct. 28 Yale Dean Burgwell Howard and Yale’s Intercultural Affairs Committee blasted out an email advising students against “culturally unaware” Halloween costumes, with self-help questions such as: “If this costume is meant to be historical, does it further misinformation or historical and cultural inaccuracies?” Watch out for insensitivity toward “religious beliefs, Native American/Indigenous people, Socio-economic strata, Asians, Hispanic/Latino, Women, Muslims, etc.” In short, everyone.

Who knew Yale still employed anyone willing to doubt the costume wardens? But in response to the dean’s email, lecturer in early childhood education Erika Christakis mused to the student residential community she oversees with her husband, Nicholas, a Yale sociologist and physician: “I don’t wish to trivialize genuine concerns,” but she wondered if colleges had morphed into “places of censure and prohibition.”

And: “Nicholas says, if you don’t like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended. Talk to each other. Free speech and the ability to tolerate offence are the hallmarks of a free and open society.”

Some 750 Yale students, faculty, alumni and others signed a letter saying Ms. Christakis’s “jarring” email served to “further degrade marginalized people,” as though someone with a Yale degree could be marginalized in America. Students culturally appropriated a Puritan shaming trial and encircled Mr. Christakis on a lawn, cursing and heckling him to quit. “I stand behind free speech,” he told the mob.

Hundreds of protesters also turned on Jonathan Holloway, Yale’s black dean, demanding to know why the school hadn’t addressed allegations that a black woman had been kept out of a fraternity party. Fragile scholars also melted down over a visiting speaker who made a joke about Yale’s fracas while talking at a conference sponsored by the school’s William F. Buckley, Jr. program focused on . . . the future of free speech.

The episode reminds us of when Yale alumnus Lee Bass in 1995 asked the university to return his $20 million donation. Mr. Bass had hoped to seed a curriculum in Western civilization, but Yale’s faculty ripped the idea as white imperialism, and he requested a refund. Two decades later the alternative to Western civilization is on display, and it seems to be censorship.

According to a student reporting for the Washington Post, Yale president Peter Salovey told minority students in response to the episode that “we failed you.” That’s true, though not how he means it. The failure is that elite colleges are turning out ostensible leaders who seem to have no idea why America’s Founders risked extreme discomfort—that is, death—for the right to speak freely.

Friday, October 9, 2015

Daniel Schuchman's review of Harry G. Frankfurt's On Inequality

Beggar Thy Neighbor. By Daniel Schuchman
Daniel Schuchman's review of Harry G. Frankfurt's On Inequality (Princeton, 102 pages, $14.95)
http://www.wsj.com/articles/beggar-thy-neighbor-1444345359
Wall Street Journal, Oct 09, 2015

In a 2005 best seller, Harry Frankfurt, a Princeton philosophy professor, explored the often complex nature of popular false ideas. “On Bulls—” examined outright lies, ambiguous forms of obfuscation and the not-always-transparent intentions of those who promote them. Now, in “On Inequality,” Mr. Frankfurt eviscerates one of the shibboleths of our time: that economic inequality—in his definition, “the possession by some of more money than others”—is the most urgent issue confronting society. This idea, he believes, suffers from logical and moral errors of the highest order.

The fixation on equality, as a moral ideal in and of itself, is critically flawed, according to the professor. It holds that justice is determined by one person’s position relative to another, not his absolute well-being. Therefore the logic of egalitarianism can lead to perverse outcomes, he argues. Most egregiously, income inequality could be eliminated very effectively “by making everyone equally poor.” And while the lowest economic stratum of society is always associated with abject poverty, this need not be the case. Mr. Frankfurt imagines instances where those “who are doing considerably worse than others may nonetheless be doing rather well.” This possibility—as with contemporary America’s wide inequalities among relatively prosperous people—undermines the coherence of a philosophy mandating equality.

Mr. Frankfurt acknowledges that “among morally conscientious individuals, appeals in behalf of equality often have very considerable emotional or rhetorical power.” The motivations for pursuing equality may be well-meaning but they are profoundly misguided and contribute to “the moral disorientation and shallowness of our time.”

The idea that equality in itself is a paramount goal, Mr. Frankfurt argues, alienates people from their own characters and life aspirations. The amount of wealth possessed by others does not bear on “what is needed for the kind of life a person would most sensibly and appropriately seek for himself.” The incessant egalitarian comparison of one against another subordinates each individual’s goals to “those that are imposed on them by the conditions in which others happen to live.” Thus, individuals are led to apply an arbitrary relative standard that does not “respect” their authentic selves.

If his literalist critique of egalitarianism is often compelling, Mr. Frankfurt’s own philosophy has more in common with such thinking than is first apparent. For Mr. Frankfurt, the imperative of justice is to alleviate poverty and improve lives, not to make people equal. He does not, however, think that it is morally adequate merely to provide people with a safety net. Instead, he argues for an ideal of “sufficiency.”

By sufficiency Mr. Frankfurt means enough economic resources for every individual to be reasonably satisfied with his circumstances, assuming that the individual’s satisfaction need not be disturbed by others having more. While more money might be welcome, it would not “alter his attitude toward his life, or the degree of his contentment with it.” The achievement of economic and personal contentment by everyone is Mr. Frankfurt’s priority. In fact, his principle of sufficiency is so ambitious it demands that lack of money should never be the cause of anything “distressing or unsatisfying” in anyone’s life.

What’s the harm of such a desirable, if unrealistic goal? The author declares that inequality is “morally disturbing” only when his standard of sufficiency is not achieved. His just society would, in effect, mandate a universal entitlement to a lifestyle that has been attained only by a minuscule fraction of humans in all history. Mr. Frankfurt recognizes such reasoning may bring us full circle: “The most feasible approach” to universal sufficiency may well be policies that, in practice, differ little from those advocated in the “pursuit of equality.”

In passing, the author notes another argument against egalitarianism, the “dangerous conflict between equality and liberty.” He is referring to the notion that leaving people free to choose their work and what goods and services they consume will always lead to an unequal distribution of income. To impose any preconceived economic distribution will, as the philosopher Robert Nozick argued, involves “continuous interference in people’s lives.” Like egalitarianism, Mr. Frankfurt’s ideal of “sufficiency” would hold property rights and economic liberty hostage to his utopian vision.

Such schemes, Nozick argued, see economic assets as having arrived on earth fully formed, like “manna from heaven,” with no consideration of their human origin. Mr. Frankfurt also presumes that one person’s wealth must be the reason others don’t have a “sufficient” amount to be blissfully carefree; he condemns the “excessively affluent” who have “extracted” too much from the nation. This leaves a would-be philosopher-king the task of divvying up loot as he chooses.

On the surface, “On Inequality” is a provocative challenge to a prevailing orthodoxy. But as the author’s earlier book showed, appearances can deceive. When Thomas Piketty, in “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” says that most wealth is rooted in theft or is arbitrary, or when Mr. Frankfurt’s former Princeton colleague Paul Krugman says the “rich” are “undeserving,” they are not (just) making the case for equality. By arguing that wealth accumulation is inherently unjust, they lay a moral groundwork for confiscation of property. Similarly, Mr. Frankfurt accuses the affluent of “gluttony”—a sentiment about which there appears to be unanimity in that temple of tenured sufficiency, the Princeton faculty club. The author claims to be motivated by respect for personal autonomy and fulfillment. By ignoring economic liberty, he reveals he is not.

Mr. Shuchman is a fund manager in New York.