Suchergebnisse

For over 30 years the science on climate change has been clear: it is happening, we humans caused it, and it puts all our futures at risk. Global warming can still be reversed, or at least the worst prevented, if we act in time. However, despite valiant efforts by scientists, activists and science reporters, little meaningful change has occurred. This is largely the result of well-funded professional strategic communication efforts by vested interests. They have been highly successful in achieving their central goal: protecting the profitable status quo by creating gridlock to slow down meaningful action on climate change.Strategic Climate Science Communications: Effective Approaches to Fighting Climate Denial analyzes some of the communication strategies employed by deniers and the psychological mechanisms behind how they work. Several experts offer specific counter-strategies to change the conversation and foster meaningful societal change on global warming. The book helps environmental journalists to build up resistance against being manipulated by highly effective public relations techniques often successfully used against them. It can also help scientists and activists to become more effective communicators. An effective strategy is best countered by even better strategy.--

"The Power of Narrative" provides fresh insight into the rhetorical and semantic properties on both sides of the climate change debate that preclude dialogue around climate science, and proposes a means for moving beyond ideological entrenchment through language mediation, further ethnographic study, and research-informed teaching.

Introduction -- Climate scepticism in the UK -- Climate scepticism in Germany -- Climate scepticism and Christian conservatism in the United States -- Climato-scepticisme in France -- Science and technology studies, ecocriticism and climate change -- What we've learned from climate sceptics

'The Power of Narrative' provides fresh insight into the rhetorical and semantic properties on both sides of the climate change debate that preclude dialogue around climate science, and proposes a means for moving beyond ideological entrenchment through language mediation, further ethnographic study, and research-informed teaching.

Solutions to Asia and the Pacific's socioeconomic, political, and environmental and climate change challenges lie not in 5-year plans or ad hoc schemes. They lie in people's visions of futures they can actively shape, first imagining them and working backward to make them happen. This publication shows how ADB piloted futures thinking and foresight to understand entry points to support transformation change in the region. Some of the region's policy makers envisioned their countries a decade or more hence and the steps to reach those desired futures. This is our message: We must use not just knowledge and evidence but also emotions and creativity. We cannot change the past, but everything we do now changes the future.

Cover; Half Title; Series Page; Title Page; Copyright Page; Table of Contents; Acknowledgments; Introduction: The intersection of Christianity and the environment; Typology of separators, bargainers, and harmonizers; Dramatism, argumentation, and rhetorical listening; American Christianity and environmentalism; Chapter outline; Conclusion; Notes; References; 1 Defining the separators: War, melodrama, and authority; The Cornwall Alliance; Guiding terms; Controlling definitions; Shifting blame; Appealing to authority; Conclusion; Notes; References

Rural communities in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) are vulnerable to climate-related disasters. In 2008, tropical cyclone Nargis killed 84,500 people and impacted the livelihood of 2.4 million people. In 2011, large-scale floods in Thailand affected 14 million people and caused $45.7 billion in damages. This report presents findings of a climate risk financing study conducted by the GMS Core Environment Program in 28 rural communities in Cambodia, the Lao People's Democratic Republic, and Viet Nam. Learn more about how communities cope with climate-related disasters, how this study contributes to the knowledge base on rural climate risk financing in the GMS, and how it can become the basis for more comprehensive feasibility studies.

Acknowledgements -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- Chapter 1: The Historical Climatology of Late Medieval England -- Chapter 2: The Keeping of Agricultural Records in Late Medieval England -- 2.1 Late Medieval Agriculture and Manorial Accounts -- 2.2 Norwich Cathedral Priory -- 2.2.1 Norwich Cathedral Priory and Its Temporalities Until c.1300 -- 2.2.2 The Making of Manorial Accounts and Their Economic Context -- 2.2.3 Archival History of Norwich Cathedral Priory -- 2.3 Supplementary Series -- Chapter 3: The Medieval Grain Harvest -- 3.1 Climatological Significance -- 3.2 Management and Accounting Practices -- 3.3 Data Density and Security -- 3.4 Potential Non-climatic Influences on the Harvest Date -- 3.5 Dating the Harvest: Calendar, Work Management and Communication -- 3.5.1 The Ecclesiastical Calendar -- 3.5.2 The Working Week -- 3.5.3 The Harvest Date on Selected Manors of Norwich Cathedral Priory -- 3.5.4 Harvest Date and Calendar -- Chapter 4: Farming in Norfolk Around 1800 -- 4.1 Langham Farm -- 4.1.1 The Working Week -- 4.1.2 The Break in the Langham Series -- 4.2 Fritton Estate -- 4.3 Snettisham -- 4.4 Wymondham -- 4.5 Medieval Versus Early Modern Grain Harvests -- Chapter 5: A Reconstruction of Medieval April-July Temperatures for East Anglia -- 5.1 Reconstruction Methodology -- 5.2 Reconstructed Medieval April-July Mean Temperatures -- 5.3 Comparison with Other Documentary Reconstructions -- 5.4 Comparison with William Merle's Weather Diary 1337-1344 -- Chapter 6: Temperature Extremes 1256-1431: Independent Evidence and Context -- 6.1 Temperature Extremes and Agricultural Production -- 6.2 Warm Growing Seasons 1256-1431 -- 6.2.1 Weather Conditions in 1267 -- 6.2.2 Weather Conditions in 1297 and 1298 -- 6.2.3 Weather Conditions in 1304-1307 -- 6.2.4 Weather Conditions in 1318 -- 6.2.5 Weather Conditions in the Mid-1320s

I argue that our discipline is caught in a rut of irrelevancy on the grander scale. Much of our research is focussed on refining the basics of what we essentially already know well. While there will always be processes to understand, species to describe, and relationships to measure, our discipline can no longer afford to avoid the biggest sustainability issues, including inter alia increasing agricultural production without further destruction of ecosystem integrity, low-impact energy provision for electricity and fuels, human overpopulation and how to reduce it ethically and fairly, and massive ecosystem restoration at meaningful scales. While we argue about the best ways to conserve species, we are still losing our forests, coral reefs, climate regulation, and food-production efficiency with increasing speed. Most of us become comfortable with what we know, and therefore spend most of our time refining our area of expertise. Instead, more of us should jump out of our comfort zones and learn some physics, engineering, climatology, economics, and political science to expand our limited world view. This means that we must do more than just 'engage with stakeholders' post-publication; instead, we need to generate and test hypotheses that explicitly attempt to solve complex problems that transcend mere biological processes. Multidisciplinary teams can assist, but more relevant progress will require biologists themselves to adopt data, approaches, and communication strategies from other fields (many of them not residing within the sciences). Including policy implementers from the outset will potentially increase the probability of uptake in government and industry provided we examine the questions they deem most pertinent. This approach will probably require compromises, but tangible changes in policy arising from dedicated research will be more easily measured and demonstrated following this approach. With a little more effort, I think conservation biologists would be far more relevant and successful in turning some of the threatening unsustainability tide back towards more acceptable outcomes. ; peerReviewed

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is a major global crisis requiring national, regional, and global intervention. The scale of the crisis and the associated size of the response mean that decisions governments make now will influence systems, create assets, and define development directions well into the future. The Asian Development Bank has developed this technical note to help its developing member countries accelerate climate and disaster resilience and low-carbon development through the design of COVID-19 recovery interventions. It proposes an assessment framework that decision-makers can use to select and prioritize a package of recovery interventions that will collectively achieve recovery, climate, and resilience objectives.

Article 6 of the Paris Agreement enables countries to utilize market and nonmarket approaches to achieve their nationally determined contributions. Yet, international negotiations on Article 6 are complex and ongoing. The Parties of the Paris Agreement have made progress on many issues, but contentious matters on political and technical aspects remain unresolved. This publication presents the latest developments in negotiations, discusses the key outcomes, and highlights the remaining unresolved issues leading up to the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties in Glasgow.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is an unprecedented and tragic global health crisis. To contain COVID-19, governments have implemented strict lockdowns and curbed mobility, stalling economies and leading to a potential global economic and financial crisis. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that the global economy could suffer between $5.8 trillion and $8.8 trillion in losses—equivalent to 6.4% to 9.7% of global gross domestic product. Policy makers are grappling with the often-competing interests of managing the public health risk and limiting the scale of the economic damage. Implementing the emergency response to COVID-19 has rightly taken priority. However, as developing member countries (DMCs) begin to emerge from the lockdowns and plan their recovery, attention must return to addressing the climate crisis and building resilience. We do not have the time or the financing to deal with each crisis separately. The impact of climate change is already being felt, and is becoming more severe every year. Pre-COVID-19 analysis showed that climate change could push an additional 100 million people into poverty by 2030. By 2050, it could depress growth in global agriculture yields by up to 30%, and result in additional costs to coastal urban areas of more than $1 trillion each year. Current global emission reduction commitments under the Paris Agreement are also insufficient, and would lead to a temperature rise of 3.2°C this century—well over the 1.5°C target.3 Compounding this predicament, COVID-19 has exposed gaps in social protection systems and wider policies for delivering public goods, and has highlighted the underlying drivers of vulnerability—poverty, inequality, limited social safety nets, weak health systems, and structural gender inequality, among others. It has also heightened awareness of all types of risks, and made a strong case for adopting risk-informed decision making. There is an urgent need to address vulnerabilities and mainstream resilience to manage future shocks, including increasing climate- and disaster-related shocks.

This document aims to succinctly summarize the climate risks faced by Sri Lanka. This includes rapid onset and long-term changes in key climate parameters, as well as impacts of these changes on communities, livelihoods, and economies, many of which are already underway. This is a high-level synthesis of existing research and analyses, focusing on the geographic domain of Sri Lanka, therefore, potentially excluding some international influences and localized impacts. The core data is sourced from the database sitting behind the World Bank Group's Climate Change Knowledge Portal (CCKP), incorporating climate projections from the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). This document is primarily meant for WBG and ADB staff to inform their climate actions and to direct them to many useful sources of secondary data and research. Due to a combination of political, geographic, and social factors, Sri Lanka is recognized as vulnerable to climate change impacts, ranked 100th out of 181 countries in the 2017 ND-GAIN Index.11 The ND-GAIN Index ranks 181 countries using a score which calculates a country's vulnerability to climate change and other global challenges as well as their readiness to improve resilience. The more vulnerable a country is, the lower their score, while the more ready a country is to improve its resilience, the higher it will be. Norway has the highest score and is ranked 1st.