Conservative
The Al Gore effect: An inconvenient truth and voluntary carbon offsets
Grant Jacobsen
Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines the relationship between climate change awareness and household behavior by testing whether Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth caused an increase in the purchase of voluntary carbon offsets. I find that in the two months following the film's release, zip codes within a 10-mile radius of a zip code where the film was shown experienced a 50 percent relative increase in the purchase of voluntary carbon offsets. During other times, offset purchasing patterns for zip codes inside the 10-mile radius were similar to the patterns of zip codes outside the 10-mile radius. There is, however, little evidence that individuals who purchased an offset due to the film purchased them again a year later.
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Associations Between Climate And IQ In The United States Of America
Joseph Ryan, Jared Bartels & James Townsend
Psychological Reports, August 2010, Pages 251-254
Abstract:
Relations between average temperature of each of the 48 contiguous states and estimates of state IQ were inspected. Additional state variables were controlled in the correlational analyses, namely gross state product, percent Hispanic, Black, and Asian in the state population, and the pupil-to-teacher ratio for each state. A significant correlation between average temperature and state IQ was found (r = -.70, p<.001). Possible explanations are discussed.
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Persistence of climate changes due to a range of greenhouse gases
Susan Solomon et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 26 October 2010, Pages 18354-18359
Abstract:
Emissions of a broad range of greenhouse gases of varying lifetimes contribute to global climate change. Carbon dioxide displays exceptional persistence that renders its warming nearly irreversible for more than 1,000 y. Here we show that the warming due to non-CO2 greenhouse gases, although not irreversible, persists notably longer than the anthropogenic changes in the greenhouse gas concentrations themselves. We explore why the persistence of warming depends not just on the decay of a given greenhouse gas concentration but also on climate system behavior, particularly the timescales of heat transfer linked to the ocean. For carbon dioxide and methane, nonlinear optical absorption effects also play a smaller but significant role in prolonging the warming. In effect, dampening factors that slow temperature increase during periods of increasing concentration also slow the loss of energy from the Earth's climate system if radiative forcing is reduced. Approaches to climate change mitigation options through reduction of greenhouse gas or aerosol emissions therefore should not be expected to decrease climate change impacts as rapidly as the gas or aerosol lifetime, even for short-lived species; such actions can have their greatest effect if undertaken soon enough to avoid transfer of heat to the deep ocean.
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James Sallee
NBER Working Paper, October 2010
Abstract:
Policy-makers have instituted a variety of fuel economy tax policies -- polices that tax or subsidize new vehicle purchases on the basis of fuel economy performance -- in the hopes of improving fleet fuel economy and reducing gasoline consumption. This article reviews existing policies and concludes that while they do work to improve vehicle fuel economy, the same goals could be achieved at a lower cost to society if policy-makers instead directly taxed fuel. Fuel economy taxation, as it is currently practiced, invites several forms of gaming that could be eliminated by policy changes. Thus, even if policy-makers prefer fuel economy taxation over fuel taxes for reasons other than efficiency, there are still potential efficiency gains from reform.
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Lose some, save some: Obesity, automobile demand, and gasoline consumption
Shanjun Li, Yanyan Liu & Junjie Zhang
Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines the unexplored link between the prevalence of overweight and obesity and vehicle demand in the United States. Exploring annual sales data of new passenger vehicles at the model level in 48 U.S. counties from 1999 to 2005, we find that new vehicles demanded by consumers are less fuel-efficient on average as a larger share of people becomes overweight or obese. The OLS results show that a 10 percentage point increase in obesity and overweight reduces the average MPG of new vehicles demanded by 1.4 percent, an effect requiring a 12 cent increase in gasoline prices to counteract. The 2SLS results after controlling for possible endogeneity in overweight and obesity prevalence put those two numbers at 5 percent and 54 cents, respectively. These findings, robust to a variety of specifications, suggest that policies to reduce overweight and obesity can have additional benefits for energy security and the environment.
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International Trade in Used Vehicles: The Environmental Consequences of NAFTA
Lucas Davis & Matthew Kahn
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2010, Pages 58-82
Abstract:
Since trade restrictions were eliminated in 2005, Mexico has imported over 2.5 million used vehicles from the United States. Using a unique, vehicle-level dataset, we find that traded vehicles are dirtier than the stock of vehicles in the United States and cleaner than the stock in Mexico, so when a vehicle is traded from the United States to Mexico average vehicle emissions per mile tend to decrease in both countries. Overall, however, the evidence suggests that trade has increased total lifetime emissions, primarily because of low vehicle retirement rates in Mexico.
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Global demographic trends and future carbon emissions
Brian O'Neill et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 12 October 2010, Pages 17521-17526
Abstract:
Substantial changes in population size, age structure, and urbanization are expected in many parts of the world this century. Although such changes can affect energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, emissions scenario analyses have either left them out or treated them in a fragmentary or overly simplified manner. We carry out a comprehensive assessment of the implications of demographic change for global emissions of carbon dioxide. Using an energy-economic growth model that accounts for a range of demographic dynamics, we show that slowing population growth could provide 16-29% of the emissions reductions suggested to be necessary by 2050 to avoid dangerous climate change. We also find that aging and urbanization can substantially influence emissions in particular world regions.
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John DeLong, Oskar Burger & Marcus Hamilton
PLoS ONE, October 2010, e13206
Abstract:
Influential demographic projections suggest that the global human population will stabilize at about 9-10 billion people by mid-century. These projections rest on two fundamental assumptions. The first is that the energy needed to fuel development and the associated decline in fertility will keep pace with energy demand far into the future. The second is that the demographic transition is irreversible such that once countries start down the path to lower fertility they cannot reverse to higher fertility. Both of these assumptions are problematic and may have an effect on population projections. Here we examine these assumptions explicitly. Specifically, given the theoretical and empirical relation between energy-use and population growth rates, we ask how the availability of energy is likely to affect population growth through 2050. Using a cross-country data set, we show that human population growth rates are negatively related to per-capita energy consumption, with zero growth occurring at ~13 kW, suggesting that the global human population will stop growing only if individuals have access to this amount of power. Further, we find that current projected future energy supply rates are far below the supply needed to fuel a global demographic transition to zero growth, suggesting that the predicted leveling-off of the global population by mid-century is unlikely to occur, in the absence of a transition to an alternative energy source. Direct consideration of the energetic constraints underlying the demographic transition results in a qualitatively different population projection than produced when the energetic constraints are ignored. We suggest that energetic constraints be incorporated into future population projections.
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What Are the Costs of Meeting Distributional Objectives for Climate Policy?
Ian Parry & Roberton Williams
NBER Working Paper, October 2010
Abstract:
This paper develops an analytical model to quantify the costs and distributional effects of various fiscal options for allocating the (large) rents created under prospective cap-and-trade programs to reduce domestic, energy-related CO2 emissions. The trade-off between cost effectiveness and distribution is striking. The welfare costs of different policies, accounting for linkages with the broader fiscal system, range from negative $6 billion/year to $53 billion/year in 2020, or between minus $12 to almost $100 per ton of CO2 reductions! The least costly policy involves auctioning all allowances with revenues used to cut proportional income taxes, while the most costly policies involve recycling revenues in lump-sum dividends or grandfathering emissions allowances. The least costly policy is regressive, however, while the dividend policy is progressive, and grandfathering permits is both costly and regressive. A distribution-neutral policy entails costs of $18 to $42 per ton of CO2 reductions.
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Driving forces of global wildfires over the past millennium and the forthcoming century
O. Pechony & D.T. Shindell
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent bursts in the incidence of large wildfires worldwide have raised concerns about the influence climate change and humans might have on future fire activity. Comparatively little is known, however, about the relative importance of these factors in shaping global fire history. Here we use fire and climate modeling, combined with land cover and population estimates, to gain a better understanding of the forces driving global fire trends. Our model successfully reproduces global fire activity record over the last millennium and reveals distinct regimes in global fire behavior. We find that during the preindustrial period, the global fire regime was strongly driven by precipitation (rather than temperature), shifting to an anthropogenic-driven regime with the Industrial Revolution. Our future projections indicate an impending shift to a temperature-driven global fire regime in the 21st century, creating an unprecedentedly fire-prone environment. These results suggest a possibility that in the future climate will play a considerably stronger role in driving global fire trends, outweighing direct human influence on fire (both ignition and suppression), a reversal from the situation during the last two centuries.
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Will Limited Land, Water, and Energy Control Human Population Numbers in the Future?
David Pimentel et al.
Human Ecology, October 2010, Pages 599-611
Abstract:
Nearly 60% of the world's human population is malnourished and the numbers are growing. Shortages of basic foods related to decreases in per capita cropland, water, and fossil energy resources contribute to spreading malnutrition and other diseases. The suggestion is that in the future only a smaller number of people will have access to adequate nourishment. In about 100 years, when it is reported that the planet will run out of fossil energy, we suggest that a world population of about two billion might be sustainable if it relies on renewable energy technologies and also reduces per capita use of the earth's natural resources.
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James Elliott & Jeremy Pais
Social Science Quarterly, December 2010, Pages 1187-1202
Objectives: This research investigates the spatial redistribution of socially vulnerable subpopulations during long-term recovery from natural disaster. We hypothesize that the local environmental impact of a disaster influences this redistribution process and that how it does so varies by the urban or rural context in which the disaster occurs.
Methods: To test these hypotheses, we use a novel research design that combines the natural experiment offered by Hurricane Andrew with GIS technology and local census data.
Results: Findings indicate that in a more urbanized disaster zone (Miami), long-term recovery displaces socially disadvantaged residents from harder-hit areas; yet, in a more rural disaster zone (southwestern Louisiana), long-term recovery concentrates socially disadvantaged residents within these harder-hit areas.
Conclusion: These findings bridge classic and contemporary research on postdisaster recovery and open new terrain for thinking about how environmental and social forces intersect to transform regions in different settlement contexts.
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The Effects of Temperature and Use of Air Conditioning on Hospitalizations
Bart Ostro, Stephen Rauch, Rochelle Green, Brian Malig & Rupa Basu
American Journal of Epidemiology, 1 November 2010, Pages 1053-1061
Abstract:
Several investigators have documented the effect of temperature on mortality, although fewer have studied its impact on morbidity. In addition, little is known about the effectiveness of mitigation strategies such as use of air conditioners (ACs). The authors investigated the association between temperature and hospital admissions in California from 1999 to 2005. They also determined whether AC ownership and usage, assessed at the zip-code level, mitigated this association. Because of the unique spatial pattern of income and climate in California, confounding of AC effects by other local factors is less likely. The authors included only persons who had a temperature monitor within 25 km of their residential zip code. Using a time-stratified case-crossover approach, the authors observed a significantly increased risk of hospitalization for multiple diseases, including cardiovascular disease, ischemic heart disease, ischemic stroke, respiratory disease, pneumonia, dehydration, heat stroke, diabetes, and acute renal failure, with a 10°F increase in same-day apparent temperature. They also found that ownership and usage of ACs significantly reduced the effects of temperature on these health outcomes, after controlling for potential confounding by family income and other socioeconomic factors. These results demonstrate important effects of temperature on public health and the potential for mitigation.
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Impacts of wind farms on surface air temperatures
Somnath Baidya Roy & Justin Traiteur
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 19 October 2010, Pages 17899-17904
Abstract:
Utility-scale large wind farms are rapidly growing in size and numbers all over the world. Data from a meteorological field campaign show that such wind farms can significantly affect near-surface air temperatures. These effects result from enhanced vertical mixing due to turbulence generated by wind turbine rotors. The impacts of wind farms on local weather can be minimized by changing rotor design or by siting wind farms in regions with high natural turbulence. Using a 25-y-long climate dataset, we identified such regions in the world. Many of these regions, such as the Midwest and Great Plains in the United States, are also rich in wind resources, making them ideal candidates for low-impact wind farms.
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Benchmarking the War Against Global Warming
Douglas Sherman, Bailiang Li, Steven Quiring & Eugene Farrell
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, October 2010, Pages 1013-1024
Abstract:
We analyzed the HadCRUT3 reconstruction of the instrumental global temperature record for 1850 through 2008 to decompose thirty-year temperature trends into signal and noise components. The signal represents multidecadal trends and the noise represents annual variability about those trends. Historical estimates of temperature variability (e.g., noise) are used with seven temperature projections to simulate global warming time series. These trends include the 1979 through 2008 trend, four trends taken from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) simulations (A1B, A2, B2, and the constant composition commitment [CCC] scenarios) and trends representing approaches to 1.5°C and 2°C warming by 2100. Each series is simulated 1,000 times. The results are compared, statistically, to the current warming rate of 0.016°C year-1. We calculate the time until those trends become statistically different from the trend observed over the most recent thirty-year period (1979-2008). The results indicate that it will probably be decades before distinct changes from the current warming rate become apparent. For the A1B scenario, only 25 percent of the simulations indicate difference by 2040. For the CCC, A2, 1.5°C, and 2°C scenarios, the 25 percent level is reached in about 2030, 2040, 2065, and 2075, respectively. Only about 10 percent of the B1 simulations indicate a difference before 2100. These results indicate that we should expect decades to pass before impacts of the war against global warming become apparent.
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Arctic shipping emissions inventories and future scenarios
J.J. Corbett, D.A. Lack, J.J. Winebrake, S. Harder, J.A. Silberman & M. Gold
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, October 2010, Pages 9689-9704
Abstract:
This paper presents 5 km×5 km Arctic emissions inventories of important greenhouse gases, black carbon and other pollutants under existing and future (2050) scenarios that account for growth of shipping in the region, potential diversion traffic through emerging routes, and possible emissions control measures. These high-resolution, geospatial emissions inventories for shipping can be used to evaluate Arctic climate sensitivity to black carbon (a short-lived climate forcing pollutant especially effective in accelerating the melting of ice and snow), aerosols, and gaseous emissions including carbon dioxide. We quantify ship emissions scenarios which are expected to increase as declining sea ice coverage due to climate change allows for increased shipping activity in the Arctic. A first-order calculation of global warming potential due to 2030 emissions in the high-growth scenario suggests that short-lived forcing of ~4.5 gigagrams of black carbon from Arctic shipping may increase global warming potential due to Arctic ships' CO2 emissions (~42 000 gigagrams) by some 17% to 78%. The paper also presents maximum feasible reduction scenarios for black carbon in particular. These emissions reduction scenarios will enable scientists and policymakers to evaluate the efficacy and benefits of technological controls for black carbon, and other pollutants from ships.
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Front-line Regulators and their Approach to Environmental Regulation in Southwest Ohio
Michelle Pautz
Review of Policy Research, November 2010, Pages 761-780
Abstract:
Regulatory approaches and strategies are frequently the subject of study in various literatures, but that examination focuses on practices rather than looking more deeply at the nature of regulatory interactions. Also missing is a more thorough look at what it is front-line regulators-in this case, environmental inspectors and site coordinators-desire in their interactions and how they perceive their regulatory counterparts. Interviews with regulators in Southwest Ohio reveal that 82 percent of them think the regulated community intends to comply with regulations. Additionally, 71 percent of regulators say that their interactions are positive with the regulated community with three-quarters indicating that trust plays a role in these interactions. Only 36 percent of interviewees prefer a clear cut and consistent approach while the rest favor a collaborative approach or some combination thereof. These findings should impact discussions concerning regulatory approaches in environmental policy, particularly conversations concerning next-generation policies.