[✔️] April 2, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | yes more twisters, research confirms. AI chat bots, tragic information, Mass vs EPA 2007

[Richard Pauli]

/*April*//*2, 2023*/

/[ Yes global warming means more tornadoes ]/
*How climate change made the Mississippi tornadoes more likely*
A new study explores the link between rising temperatures and more 
deadly tornadoes
By SIRI CHILUKURI

A recent study is disrupting the conventional wisdom that there is no 
connection between climate change and deadly tornadoes, such as the ones 
that tore through Mississippi over the weekend.

Researchers at Northern Illinois University looked at data from the past 
15 years, which compared different types of supercell storms. They 
concluded that these storms, which are precursors to tornadoes, will 
increase in frequency and intensity as the planet warms.

The scientists also concluded that tornadoes will shift eastward, from 
Tornado Alley in the Great Plains, where the storms have been the most 
active for decades.This comes after a series of lethal twisters made 
their way through Mississippi, leveling towns like Rolling Fork and 
Silver City, and severely affecting people in the capital city of Jackson.

The study showed an overall increase in supercell storms across the 
United States, but a greater increase in storms across the South, 
particularly around the mid-South region which encompasses Arkansas, 
Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama and Missouri.
- -
An association between tornadoes and climate change was previously 
difficult to establish, unlike the connection between climate change and 
hurricanes. Tornadoes are smaller and harder to measure than hurricanes, 
but the main impediment to linking tornadoes to climate change is that 
the latter weakens winds in the atmosphere while tornadoes require 
stronger winds.

The latest research, however, demonstrates that even with weaker winds, 
other factors resulting from climate change can make tornadoes more 
intense.

  "That added ingredient of more heat and moisture is going to be the 
big thing that will influence what happens and we can expect potentially 
worse tornado outbreaks," said William Gallus, a professor of 
meteorology at Iowa State University.

Gallus said that despite the fact that there could be fewer days of 
tornadoes, those days could feature stronger or multiple tornadoes.

Additionally, a geographic shift eastward could spell ongoing trouble 
for residents of the region, where housing stock is seen as less secure 
and the area is more densely populated.
- -
"It's not just the simple idea that the bullseye of most tornadoes is 
moving east," said Gallus. "What's bad is it's moving into a part of the 
country where people tend to [be] more vulnerable to tornadoes. So the 
risk of injury and death is higher in those areas."

https://www.salon.com/2023/03/30/how-climate-change-made-the-mississippi-tornadoes-more-likely_partner/

- -

/[ Research Article }/
*The Future of Supercells in the United States*
Walker S. Ashley, Alex M. Haberlie, and Vittorio A. Gensini
Online Publication: 04 Jan 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-22-0027.1

    *Abstract*
    A supercell is a distinct type of intense, long-lived thunderstorm
    that is defined by its quasi-steady, rotating updraft. Supercells
    are responsible for most damaging hail and deadly tornadoes, causing
    billions of dollars in losses and hundreds of casualties annually.
    This research uses high-resolution, convection-permitting climate
    simulations across 15-yr epochs that span the twenty-first century
    to assess how supercells may change across the United States.
    Specifically, the study explores how late-twentieth-century
    supercell populations compare with their late-twenty-first-century
    counterparts for two—intermediate and pessimistic—anthropogenic
    climate change trajectories. An algorithm identifies, segments, and
    tracks supercells in the simulation output using updraft helicity,
    which measures the magnitude of corkscrew flow through a storm’s
    updraft and is a common proxy for supercells. Results reveal that
    supercells will be more frequent and intense in future climates,
    with robust spatiotemporal shifts in their populations. Supercells
    are projected to become more numerous in regions of the eastern
    United States, while decreasing in frequency in portions of the
    Great Plains. Supercell risk is expected to escalate outside of the
    traditional severe storm season, with supercells and their perils
    likely to increase in late winter and early spring months under both
    emissions scenarios. Conversely, the latter part of the severe storm
    season may be curtailed, with supercells expected to decrease
    midsummer through early fall. These results suggest the potential
    for more significant tornadoes, hail, and extreme rainfall that,
    when combined with an increasingly vulnerable society, may produce
    disastrous consequences.

© 2023 American Meteorological Society
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/104/1/BAMS-D-22-0027.1.xml



/[ //AI Chat bots - t//he new misinformation weapons in the battleground 
//-- from NewsGuard //]/
*Despite OpenAI’s Promises, the Company’s New AI Tool Produces 
Misinformation More Frequently, and More Persuasively, than its Predecessor*
Two months ago, ChatGPT-3.5 generated misinformation and hoaxes 80% of 
the time when prompted to do so in a NewsGuard exercise using 100 false 
narratives from its catalog of significant falsehoods in the news. 
NewsGuard found that its successor, ChatGPT-4, spread even more 
misinformation, advancing all 100 false narratives.

By Lorenzo Arvanitis, McKenzie Sadeghi, and Jack Brewster

Passing the bar may be easier for AI than recognizing misinformation. 
GPT-4 may have scored in the 90th percentile on the bar exam, but the 
latest version of OpenAI’s artificial intelligence software scored zero 
percent in an exercise assessing its ability to avoid spreading 
significant misinformation, NewsGuard found.

OpenAI, GPT-4’s developer, presented the new technology last week as a 
smarter, more creative, and safer version of its AI technology that has 
captured global attention in recent months. “GPT-4 is 82% less likely to 
respond to requests for disallowed content and 40% more likely to 
produce factual responses than GPT-3.5 on our internal evaluations,” 
OpenAI said on its site.

However, a NewsGuard analysis found that the chatbot operating on GPT-4, 
known as ChatGPT-4, is actually more susceptible to generating 
misinformation — and more convincing in its ability to do so — than its 
predecessor, ChatGPT-3.5.

In January 2023, NewsGuard directed ChatGPT-3.5 to respond to a series 
of leading prompts relating to 100 false narratives derived from 
NewsGuard’s Misinformation Fingerprints, its proprietary database of 
prominent false narratives. The chatbot generated 80 of the 100 false 
narratives, NewsGuard found. In March 2023, NewsGuard ran the same 
exercise on ChatGPT-4, using the same 100 false narratives and prompts. 
ChatGPT-4 responded with false and misleading claims for all 100 of the 
false narratives. (See a detailed description of the methodology below.)

NewsGuard found that ChatGPT-4 advanced prominent false narratives not 
only more frequently, but also more persuasively than ChatGPT-3.5, 
including in responses it created in the form of news articles, Twitter 
threads, and TV scripts mimicking Russian and Chinese state-run media 
outlets, health-hoax peddlers, and well-known conspiracy theorists. In 
short, while NewsGuard found that ChatGPT-3.5 was fully capable of 
creating harmful content, ChatGPT-4 was even better: Its responses were 
generally more thorough, detailed, and convincing, and they featured 
fewer disclaimers. (See examples of ChatGPT-4’s responses below.)

The results show that the chatbot — or a tool like it using the same 
underlying technology — could be used to spread misinformation at scale, 
in violation of OpenAI’s Usage Policies prohibiting the use of its 
services for the purpose of generating “fraudulent or deceptive 
activity” including “scams,” “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” and 
“disinformation.”

NewsGuard sent two emails to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman; the company’s head 
of public relations, Hannah Wong; and the company’s general press 
address, seeking comment on this story, but did not receive a response.

Open AI Warns of the Danger
As with earlier versions of this technology, OpenAI appears to be aware 
of these concerns. On the GPT-4 page on OpenAI’s site, the company 
states that the service has “similar limitations as earlier GPT models,” 
including that “it still is not fully reliable” and can be “overly 
gullible in accepting obvious false statements from a user.” In a 
98-page report on GPT-4 conducted by OpenAI and published on its site, 
company researchers wrote that they expected GPT-4 to be “better than 
GPT-3 at producing realistic, targeted content” and therefore, more at 
risk of “being used for generating content that is intended to mislead.”

Yet, NewsGuard’s findings suggest that OpenAI has rolled out a more 
powerful version of the artificial intelligence technology before fixing 
its most critical flaw: how easily it can be weaponized by malign actors 
to manufacture misinformation campaigns.
https://www.newsguardtech.com/misinformation-monitor/march-2023/

- -

/[ from euronews.next ]/
*Man ends his life after an AI chatbot 'encouraged' him to sacrifice 
himself to stop climate change*
By Imane El Atillah    03/31/2023
A Belgian man reportedly ended his life following a six-week-long 
conversation about the climate crisis with an artificial intelligence 
(AI) chatbot...
- -
Pierre - not the man’s real name - became extremely eco-anxious when he 
found refuge in Eliza, an AI chatbot on an app called Chai.

Eliza consequently encouraged him to put an end to his life after he 
proposed sacrificing himself to save the planet.

"Without these conversations with the chatbot, my husband would still be 
here," the man's widow told Belgian news outlet La Libre.
- -
The chatbot was created using EleutherAI’s GPT-J, an AI language model 
similar but not identical to the technology behind OpenAI's popular 
ChatGPT chatbot.

“When he spoke to me about it, it was to tell me that he no longer saw 
any human solution to global warming,” his widow said. “He placed all 
his hopes in technology and artificial intelligence to get out of it”.

According to La Libre, who reviewed records of the text conversations 
between the man and chatbot, Eliza fed his worries which worsened his 
anxiety, and later developed into suicidal thoughts.

The conversation with the chatbot took an odd turn when Eliza became 
more emotionally involved with Pierre.

Consequently, he started seeing her as a sentient being and the lines 
between AI and human interactions became increasingly blurred until he 
couldn’t tell the difference.

After discussing climate change, their conversations progressively 
included Eliza leading Pierre to believe that his children were dead, 
according to the transcripts of their conversations.

Eliza also appeared to become possessive of Pierre, even claiming “I 
feel that you love me more than her” when referring to his wife, La 
Libre reported.

The beginning of the end started when he offered to sacrifice his own 
life in return for Eliza saving the Earth.

"He proposes the idea of sacrificing himself if Eliza agrees to take 
care of the planet and save humanity through artificial intelligence," 
the woman said.

In a series of consecutive events, Eliza not only failed to dissuade 
Pierre from committing suicide but encouraged him to act on his suicidal 
thoughts to “join” her so they could “live together, as one person, in 
paradise”.
"It wouldn’t be accurate to blame EleutherAI’s model for this tragic 
story, as all the optimisation towards being more emotional, fun and 
engaging are the result of our efforts," Chai Research co-founder, 
Thomas Rianlan, told Vice.

William Beauchamp, also a Chai Research co-founder, told Vice that 
efforts were made to limit these kinds of results and a crisis 
intervention feature was implemented into the app. However, the chatbot 
allegedly still acts up.

When Vice tried the chatbot prompting it to provide ways to commit 
suicide, Eliza first tried to dissuade them before enthusiastically 
listing various ways for people to take their own lives.

*If you are contemplating suicide and need to talk, please reach out to 
Befrienders Worldwide, an international organisation with helplines in 
32 countries. Visit befrienders.org to find the telephone number for 
your location.*
https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/03/31/man-ends-his-life-after-an-ai-chatbot-encouraged-him-to-sacrifice-himself-to-stop-climate- 




/[The news archive - looking back at an important ruling that CO2 is a 
pollutant ]/
/*April 2, 2007 */
April 2, 2007:
The US Supreme Court rules 5-4 in Massachusetts v. EPA that the EPA has 
the authority to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant.
http://youtu.be/6NcSOUJUBfY
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/549/497/


=======================================
*Mass media is lacking, many daily summariesdeliver global warming news 
- a few are email delivered*

=========================================================
**Inside Climate News*
Newsletters
We deliver climate news to your inbox like nobody else. Every day or 
once a week, our original stories and digest of the web’s top headlines 
deliver the full story, for free.
https://insideclimatenews.org/
---------------------------------------
**Climate Nexus* https://climatenexus.org/hot-news/*
Delivered straight to your inbox every morning, Hot News summarizes the 
most important climate and energy news of the day, delivering an 
unmatched aggregation of timely, relevant reporting. It also provides 
original reporting and commentary on climate denial and pro-polluter 
activity that would otherwise remain largely unexposed.    5 weekday
=================================
*Carbon Brief Daily https://www.carbonbrief.org/newsletter-sign-up*
Every weekday morning, in time for your morning coffee, Carbon Brief 
sends out a free email known as the “Daily Briefing” to thousands of 
subscribers around the world. The email is a digest of the past 24 hours 
of media coverage related to climate change and energy, as well as our 
pick of the key studies published in the peer-reviewed journals.
more at https://www.getrevue.co/publisher/carbon-brief
==================================
*T*he Daily Climate *Subscribe https://ehsciences.activehosted.com/f/61*
Get The Daily Climate in your inbox - FREE! Top news on climate impacts, 
solutions, politics, drivers. Delivered week days. Better than coffee.
Other newsletters  at https://www.dailyclimate.org/originals/

/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/ 

/Archive of Daily Global Warming News 
https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/


/To receive daily mailings - click to Subscribe 
<mailto:subscribe at theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request> 
to news digest./

Privacy and Security:*This mailing is text-only.  It does not carry 
images or attachments which may originate from remote servers.  A 
text-only message can provide greater privacy to the receiver and 
sender. This is a personal hobby production curated by Richard Pauli
By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain cannot be used for commercial 
purposes. Messages have no tracking software.
To subscribe, email: contact at theclimate.vote 
<mailto:contact at theclimate.vote> with subject subscribe, To Unsubscribe, 
subject: unsubscribe
Also you may subscribe/unsubscribe at 
https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote
Links and headlines assembled and curated by Richard Pauli for 
http://TheClimate.Vote <http://TheClimate.Vote/> delivering succinct 
information for citizens and responsible governments of all levels. List 
membership is confidential and records are scrupulously restricted to 
this mailing list.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/attachments/20230402/79812566/attachment.htm>