[✔️] Feb 3 2024 Global Warming News | Sci kerfuffle; self deception study., Motivated denial, Trees struggle to breath, Isotopic clumping, Everyone a Climate Economist, 2011 Obama

[Richard Pauli]

/*February*//*3, 2024*/

/[ Amazon discovers climate change ]
/*Amazon warns climate change could disrupt its business in annual filing*
PUBLISHED FRI, FEB 2 2024
Annie Palmer
@IN/ANNIERPALMER/

    -- Amazon added new disclosures around climate change to the risk
    factors section of its annual filing.

    -- The company said climate change could cause its operating results
    to fluctuate as a result of higher costs tied to things such as
    transitioning to “a low-carbon economy.”

    -- It’s a problem that could get worse as the planet continues to
    warm up.

Amazon is warning investors that the climate crisis may have a material 
effect on its business.

In the risk factors section of its 2023 financial filing released 
Friday, Amazon added language that says climate change could cause its 
sales and operating results to fluctuate, making it harder to sustain 
growth or resulting in decreased revenue...
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/02/amazon-warns-climate-change-could-disrupt-its-business-in-sec-filing.html



/[ Kerfuffle on climate sensitivity - YouTube climate scientist corrects 
YouTube physicist ]/
*Climate Scientist responds to Sabine Hossenfelder on Climate Sensitivity*
ClimateAdam
  Feb 2, 2024  #ClimateChange #globalwarming
How hot will our planet actually get? Climate scientists try to answer 
this question by evaluating the "climate sensitivity". And if you've 
watched the recent Sabine Hossenfelder, you may be left with the 
impression that climate change wasn't much to worry about... but now it 
is. So I'm here to explain what the evidence is actually showing us, and 
why the situation is a little more nuanced than Sabine's commentary may 
have suggested. And crucially I break down how climate scientists arrive 
at a number for the crucial "climate sensitivity", to give us a sense 
for how much global warming we're in for.

Support ClimateAdam on patreon: http://patreon.com/climateadam
Thanks so much for the input from:
Piers Forster https://twitter.com/piersforster
Kate Marvel https://twitter.com/drkatemarvel/
Zeke Hausfather https://twitter.com/hausfath
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4EuvpDzlUY



/[ from academic paper "nature climate change" ]/
*Why are people climate change deniers? Study reveals unexpected results*
FEBRUARY 2, 2024
Editors' notes
by University of Bonn
Do climate change deniers bend the facts to avoid having to modify their 
environmentally harmful behavior? Researchers from the University of 
Bonn and the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) ran an online experiment 
involving 4,000 US adults, and found no evidence to support this idea. 
The authors of the study were themselves surprised by the results. 
Whether they are good or bad news for the fight against global heating 
remains to be seen. The study is published in the journal Nature Climate 
Change.
A surprisingly large number of people still downplay the impact of 
climate change or deny that it is primarily a product of human activity. 
But why? One hypothesis is that these misconceptions are rooted in a 
specific form of self-deception, namely that people simply find it 
easier to live with their own climate failings if they do not believe 
that things will actually get all that bad.

"We call this thought process 'motivated reasoning,'" says Professor 
Florian Zimmermann, an economist at the University of Bonn and Research 
Director at IZA.

Motivated reasoning helps us to justify our behavior. For instance, 
someone who flies off on holiday several times a year can give 
themselves the excuse that the plane would still be taking off without 
them, or that just one flight will not make any difference, or—more to 
the point—that nobody has proven the existence of human-made climate 
change anyway. All these patterns of argument are examples of motivated 
reasoning. Bending the facts until it allows us to maintain a positive 
image of ourselves while maintaining our harmful behavior.

Self-deception to preserve a positive self-image
But what role does this form of self-deception play in how people think 
about climate change? Previously, there had been little scientific 
evidence produced to answer the question. The latest study has now 
closed this knowledge gap—and has thrown up some unexpected results. 
Zimmermann and his colleague Lasse Stötzer ran a series of online 
experiments, using a representative sample of 4,000 US adults.
At the center of the experiments was a donation worth $20. Participants 
were allocated at random to one of two groups. The members of the first 
group were able to split the $20 between two organizations, both of 
which were committed to combating climate change. By contrast, those in 
the second group could decide to keep the $20 for themselves instead of 
giving it away and would then actually receive the money at the end.

"Anyone keeping hold of the donation needs to justify it to themselves," 
says Zimmermann, who is also a member of the ECONtribute Cluster of 
Excellence, the Collaborative Research Center Transregio 224 and the 
Transdisciplinary Research Area Individuals & Societies at the 
University of Bonn. "One way to do that is to deny the existence of 
climate change."

As it happened, nearly half of those in the second group decided to hold 
on to the money. The researchers now wanted to know whether these 
individuals would justify their decision retrospectively by repudiating 
climate change. The two groups had been put together at random. Without 
"motivated reasoning," therefore, they should essentially share a 
similar attitude to human-made global heating. If those who kept the 
money for themselves justified their actions through self-deception, 
however, then their group should exhibit greater doubt over climate change.

"Yet we didn't see any sign of that effect," Zimmermann reveals.

Climate change denial: A hallmark of one's identity?
This finding was also borne out in two further experiments.

"In other words, our study didn't give us any indications that the 
widespread misconceptions regarding climate change are due to this kind 
of self-deception," says Zimmermann, summing up his work. On the face of 
it, this is good news for policymakers, because the results could mean 
that it is indeed possible to correct climate change misconceptions, 
simply by providing comprehensive information. If people are bending 
reality, by contrast, then this approach is very much a non-starter.

Zimmermann advises caution, however, stating, "Our data does reveal some 
indications of a variant of motivated reasoning, specifically that 
denying the existence of human-made global heating forms part of the 
political identity of certain groups of people."

Put another way, some people may to an extent define themselves by the 
very fact that they do not believe in climate change. As far as they are 
concerned, this way of thinking is an important trait that sets them 
apart from other political groups, and thus they are likely to simply 
not care what researchers have to say on the topic.

More information: A Representative Survey Experiment of Motivated 
Climate Change Denial, Nature Climate Change (2024). DOI: 
10.1038/s41558-023-01910-2

Journal information: Nature Climate Change
- -
[ widespread  ]
*Motivated Climate Change Denial [Registered Report Stage 1 Protocol]*
Published: 02 February 2024
A representative survey experiment of motivated climate change denial
Lasse S. Stoetzer & Florian Zimmermann
Nature Climate Change (2024)Cite this article

Metricsdetails

Abstract
Climate change is arguably one of the greatest challenges today. 
Although the scientific consensus is that human activities caused 
climate change, a substantial part of the population downplays or denies 
human responsibility. In this registered report, we present causal 
evidence on a potential explanation for this discrepancy: motivated 
reasoning. We conducted a tailored survey experiment on a broadly 
representative sample of 4,000 US adults to provide causal evidence on 
how motivated cognition shapes beliefs about climate change and 
influences the demand for slanted information. We further explore the 
role of motives on environmentally harmful behaviour. Contrary to our 
hypotheses, we find no evidence that motivated cognition can help to 
explain widespread climate change denial and environmentally harmful 
behaviour.

PROTOCOL REGISTRATION The Stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report 
was accepted in principle on 10 May 2023. The protocol, as accepted by 
the journal, can be found at 
https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.24523357.v1.
https://springernature.figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/Motivated_Climate_Change_Denial_Registered_Report_Stage_1_Protocol_/24523357/1



/[ cough, cough - see also ]/
*Trees struggle to 'breathe' as climate warms, researchers find*
by Adrienne Berard, Pennsylvania State University
JANUARY 31, 2024
Trees are struggling to sequester heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2) in 
warmer, drier climates, meaning that they may no longer serve as a 
solution for offsetting humanity's carbon footprint as the planet 
continues to warm, according to a new study led by Penn State researchers.
"We found that trees in warmer, drier climates are essentially coughing 
instead of breathing," said Max Lloyd, assistant research professor of 
geosciences at Penn State and lead author on the study recently 
published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "They are 
sending CO2 right back into the atmosphere far more than trees in 
cooler, wetter conditions."
Through the process of photosynthesis, trees remove CO2 from the 
atmosphere to produce new growth. Yet, under stressful conditions, trees 
release CO2 back to the atmosphere, a process called photorespiration. 
With an analysis of a global dataset of tree tissue, the research team 
demonstrated that the rate of photorespiration is up to two times higher 
in warmer climates, especially when water is limited.

They found the threshold for this response in subtropical climates 
begins to be crossed when average daytime temperatures exceed roughly 68 
degrees Fahrenheit and worsens as temperatures rise further.

The results complicate a widespread belief about the role of plants in 
helping to draw down—or use—carbon from the atmosphere, providing new 
insight into how plants could adapt to climate change. Importantly, the 
researchers noted that as the climate warms, their findings demonstrate 
that plants could be less able to draw CO2 out of the atmosphere and 
assimilate the carbon necessary to help the planet cool down.
"We have knocked this essential cycle off balance," Lloyd said. "Plants 
and climate are inextricably linked. The biggest draw-down of CO2 from 
our atmosphere is photosynthesizing organisms. It's a big knob on the 
composition of the atmosphere, so that means small changes have a large 
impact."

Plants currently absorb an estimated 25% of the CO2 emitted by human 
activities each year, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, but 
this percentage is likely to decrease in the future as the climate 
warms, Lloyd explained, especially if water is scarcer.

"When we think about climate futures, we predict that CO2 will go up, 
which in theory is good for plants because those are the molecules they 
breathe in," Lloyd said. "But we've shown there will be a tradeoff that 
some prevailing models don't account for. The world will be getting 
warmer, which means plants will be less able to draw down that CO2."

In the study, the researchers discovered that variation in the abundance 
of certain isotopes of a part of wood called methoxyl groups serves as a 
tracer of photorespiration in trees. You can think of isotopes as 
varieties of atoms, Lloyd explained. Just as you might have vanilla and 
chocolate versions of ice cream, atoms can have different isotopes with 
their own unique "flavors" due to variations in their mass.

The team studied levels of the methoxyl "flavor" of isotope in wood 
samples from about thirty specimens of trees from a variety of climates 
and conditions throughout the world to observe trends in 
photorespiration. The specimens came from an archive at the University 
of California, Berkeley, that contains hundreds of wood samples 
collected in the 1930s and '40s.

"The database was originally used to train foresters how to identify 
trees from different places around the world, so we repurposed it to 
essentially reconstruct these forests to see how well they were taking 
in CO2," Lloyd said.

Until now, photorespiration rates could only be measured in real time 
using living plants or well-preserved dead specimens that retained 
structural carbohydrates, which meant that it was nearly impossible to 
study the rate at which plants draw down carbon at scale or in the past, 
Lloyd explained.

Now that the team has validated a way to observe photorespiration rate 
using wood, he said the method could offer researchers a tool for 
predicting how well trees might "breathe" in the future and how they 
fared in past climates.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is rapidly rising; it is 
already greater than at any time in the last 3.6 million years, 
according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But 
that period is relatively recent in geologic time, Lloyd explained.

The team will now work to unearth photorespiration rates in the ancient 
past, up to tens of millions of years ago, using fossilized wood. The 
methods will allow researchers to explicitly test existing hypotheses 
regarding the changing influence of plant photorespiration on climate 
over geologic time.

"I'm a geologist, I work in the past," Lloyd said. "So, if we're 
interested in these big questions about how this cycle worked when the 
climate was very different than today, we can't use living plants. We 
may have to go back millions of years to better understand what our 
future might look like."

Other authors on the paper are Rebekah A. Stein, Daniel A. Stolper, 
Daniel E. Ibarra and Todd E. Dawson of the University of California, 
Berkeley; Richard S. Barclay and Scott L. Wing of the Smithsonian 
National Museum of Natural History and David W. Stahle of the University 
of Arkansas.

More information: Max K. Lloyd et al, Isotopic clumping in wood as a 
proxy for photorespiration in trees, Proceedings of the National Academy 
of Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2306736120
https://phys.org/news/2024-01-trees-struggle-climate.html

- -

/[ academic paper ]/
*Isotopic clumping in wood as a proxy for photorespiration in trees*
Max K. Lloyd https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9367-2698 mlloyd at psu.edu, 
Rebekah A. Stein, Daniel E. Ibarra 
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9980-4599, +4, and Daniel A. Stolper 
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3299-3177Authors
November 6, 2023
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2306736120
*Significance*

    Photorespiration occurs when, during photosynthesis, plants consume
    O2 and release CO2 instead of the reverse. How photorespiration
    varies in the environment today is uncertain but important for
    validating how climate will change in the future and has changed in
    the distant past. We develop and apply a proxy for photorespiration
    rate based on the isotopic composition of a specific functional
    group (methoxyl) in wood. This proxy varies systematically with
    growing temperature and water availability of trees globally, which
    suggests that plants in different ecosystems photorespire different
    amounts and have different physiologic and metabolic responses to
    climate. Whether plants photorespire more or less in the future and
    geologic past depends on how local temperature and water
    availability scale with atmospheric CO2.

*Abstract*

    Photorespiration can limit gross primary productivity in terrestrial
    plants. The rate of photorespiration relative to carbon fixation
    increases with temperature and decreases with atmospheric [CO2].
    However, the extent to which this rate varies in the environment is
    unclear. Here, we introduce a proxy for relative photorespiration
    rate based on the clumped isotopic composition of methoxyl groups
    (R–O–CH3) in wood. Most methoxyl C–H bonds are formed either during
    photorespiration or the Calvin cycle and thus their isotopic
    composition may be sensitive to the mixing ratio of these pathways.
    In water-replete growing conditions, we find that the abundance of
    the clumped isotopologue 13CH2D correlates with temperature (18–28
    °C) and atmospheric [CO2] (280–1000 ppm), consistent with a common
    dependence on relative photorespiration rate. When applied to a
    global dataset of wood, we observe global trends of isotopic
    clumping with climate and water availability. Clumped isotopic
    compositions are similar across environments with temperatures below
    ~18 °C. Above ~18 °C, clumped isotopic compositions in water-limited
    and water-replete trees increasingly diverge. We propose that trees
    from hotter climates photorespire substantially more than trees from
    cooler climates. How increased photorespiration is managed depends
    on water availability: water-replete trees export more
    photorespiratory metabolites to lignin whereas water-limited trees
    either export fewer overall or direct more to other sinks that
    mitigate water stress. These disparate trends indicate contrasting
    responses of photorespiration rate (and thus gross primary
    productivity) to a future high-[CO2] world. This work enables
    reconstructing photorespiration rates in the geologic past using
    fossil wood.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2306736120



/[ many began to feel this decades ago.]/
*‘We’re All Climate Economists Now’*
With climate change affecting everything from household finances to 
electric grids, the profession is increasingly focused on how society 
can mitigate carbon emissions and cope with their impact.
By Lydia DePillis
Jan. 23, 2024
In early January in San Antonio, dozens of Ph.D. economists packed into 
a small windowless room in the recesses of a Grand Hyatt to hear 
brand-new research on the hottest topic of their annual conference: how 
climate change is affecting everything.

The papers in this session focused on the impact of natural disasters on 
mortgage risk, railway safety and even payday loans. Some attendees had 
to stand in the back, as the seats had already been filled. It wasn’t an 
anomaly.

Nearly every block of time at the Allied Social Science Associations 
conference — a gathering of dozens of economics-adjacent academic 
organizations recognized by the American Economic Association — had 
multiple climate-related presentations to choose from, and most appeared 
similarly popular.

For those who have long focused on environmental issues, the 
proliferation of climate-related papers was a welcome development. “It’s 
so nice to not be the crazy people in the room with the last session,” 
said Avis Devine, an associate professor of real estate finance and 
sustainability at York University in Toronto, emerging after a lively 
discussion...
- -
There were papers on the local economic impact of wind turbine 
manufacturing, the stability of electricity grids as they absorb more 
renewable energy, the effect of electric vehicles on housing choices, 
how wildfire smoke strains household finances. Others analyzed the 
benefits of a sea wall for flood risk in Venice, the economic drag of 
uncertainty about climate policy, the flow of migrants displaced by 
extreme weather, how banks are exposed to emissions regulations and the 
impact of higher temperatures on factory productivity — just to name a 
few...
- -
It’s not as though economics had ignored climate change. Research going 
back decades has forecast the toll that warming will take on gross 
domestic product — an “externality,” in economics parlance — and 
extrapolated from that a calculation for how much a ton of carbon 
emissions should be taxed.

“There was a period of time in which at least some people would think: 
‘Carbon is an uninternalized externality. We know how to address that,’” 
said Allan Hsiao, an assistant professor at Princeton University. They 
were thinking, “Maybe the issue is important,” he added, “but the 
underlying economics and tensions, the not-so-obvious, subtle 
mechanisms, were not there.”

That perception has changed. A solution preferred by economists, setting 
a cap on carbon emissions and creating a market for trading permits, 
failed in 2009 under the weight of a weak economy, administrative 
complexity and determined opposition. In recent years, a different 
approach has emerged: granting incentives for clean energy production, 
which pays more attention to political realities and the equitable 
distribution of costs and benefits, two themes that have also garnered 
more attention in economics circles lately.

It has also created a collision of new questions, providing fodder for a 
bonanza of dissertation topics. “Now people are realizing that there’s 
just a lot of richness,” Dr. Hsiao explained...
- -
To pull young researchers into the field, it helps that demand for 
climate economists is booming — at colleges and universities, but also 
government agencies, private companies and nonprofit think tanks. A 
website that tracks job postings for academic economists worldwide, 
EconJobMarket.org, shows that 5.5 percent of ads mentioned the phrase 
“climate change” in 2023. That was up from 1.1 percent a decade earlier, 
said Joel Watson, a professor at the University of California, San 
Diego, who runs the site.

Those opportunities include many in the U.S. government, which has been 
embedding climate priorities in a range of agencies since President 
Biden took office in 2021. Climate impacts are now part of the 
cost-benefit analysis of new regulations, factored into economic growth 
projections and reflected in budget forecasts.

The Inflation Reduction Act didn’t set a price on carbon, which 
economists had advocated for decades. But Noah Kaufman, a research 
scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, thinks 
its tools could be guided by economic analysis to transform the energy 
system — while cushioning the impact for communities that depend on 
fossil fuel production and making sure the benefits of renewable energy 
investment are broadly shared.

“Economists need to catch up to the policymakers,” said Dr. Kaufman, who 
did a stint working on climate policy at Mr. Biden’s Council of Economic 
Advisers. “It’s unfortunate that we didn’t produce this literature 
decades ago. But given that we didn’t, it’s pretty exciting and a unique 
opportunity to try to be helpful now.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/23/business/economy/climate-change-economics.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/23/business/economy/climate-change-economics.html?unlocked_article_code=1.QE0.RmOW.TRu3teeR1_ZV&bgrp=g&smid=url-share



/[The news archive - Obama  ]/
/*February 3, 2011 */
February 3, 2011: President Obama discusses his administration's clean 
energy efforts at Penn State University.
http://youtu.be/yUE0hjtiiSM


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