William Nordhaus was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences because of his decades' effort to integrate climate sciences into economic models. His Dynamic Integrated Climate and Economy (DICE) is used to explain how Greenhouse Gases emissions if not tamed could lead to catastrophes down the road. This pioneering effort is not immune to criticism. Using climate-economy integrated models to design and implement specific climate policies is subject to misuses, as Robert Pindyck contended. According to Pindyck, modeler's limited knowledge about climate sensitivity and arbitrary selection of functional forms and parameter values do not make results from complicated models more valid than modeler's own "expert" opinion.
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9/26/2018 0 Comments Air pollution and dementia It is widely known that severe air pollution can cause public health crises. A working paper specifically links air pollution with dementia among the aging population. It finds that long-term exposure to air pollution can increase the prevalence of dementia, suggesting the air pollutants' impairment of cognition.
Scholars have long speculated the function of religion as a psychological coping mechanism to mitigate life's unpredictable tragedies and adversities. This paper uses earthquakes, one manifestation of unpredictable tragedy, as a determinant in models explaining variations of individual religiosity. It finds that people all over the world become more religious when struck by earthquakes.
I am featured in this article on hurricane risk perceptions published on Medium today.
When many people thought 2018 would be a relatively quiet hurricane season, monstrous Hurricane Florence is barreling towards the east coast. More than one millions coastal residents are facing mandatory evacuation order. It is now classified as Category 4 hurricane. The Saffir-Simpson scale only considers wind speed. In addition to destructive wind, hurricanes bring heavy rainfall as we witnessed during Hurricane Harvey last year and dangerous storm surge. There will be imminent flooding risks.
A year after Hurricane Harvey, the decisions to rebuild can affect the future. I just published an analysis article on the Conversation. Here is the last paragraph:
"My recent research shows that even with their flaws, FEMA flood maps influence decisions to purchase flood insurance and overall support for flood mitigation. Policy makers need to seriously consider how to accurately communicate increasing flood risks to the public. Reverting to old flood maps and granting variances to promote development is a recipe for more disasters down the road." Hat tip to Emily Powell at the National Wildlife Federation, who brought this situation to my attention. 7/25/2018 0 Comments Climate change in everything: temperature rise leads to increasing suicide rates A new study published on Nature Climate Change used comprehensive data from multiple decades and social media data to test whether temperature increase would deteriorate mental well-being and further lead to rising suicide rates. They found evidence in both the U.S. and Mexico.
6/21/2018 0 Comments Visit at Princeton I enjoyed the visit at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton University. I have had great discussions with Professor Lin and her Hurricane Hazards and Risk Analysis Research Group.
I am honored to be invited to give a seminar talk, entitled "Understanding Human Judgement on Environmental Risks and Hazards in a Geographic Context," at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton University on June 21.
The abstract of the talk is as follows: "The coupling effects of changing climate and rising concentration of population and assets in the coastal regions have increased the threat of potential damages. There is an urgent need for coastal communities to prepare well for future hazards through mitigation and adaptation measures. A growing number of empirical studies have found that peoples’ motivation of voluntary risk mitigation and adaptation is low unless actual risk can be perceived. Risk perception is thus the precondition for adaptive behavior. It is of both intellectual and practical interests to study what affects individuals’/communities’ risk perceptions. In this talk, I will present four of my previous studies. The first three studies are focused on the individual level and the fourth on the aggregate level. I will start with understanding how local weather and climate affect American public risk perceptions of climate change. I will then discuss how the spatial context represented by past flooding events and estimated flooding risks influence costal residents’ voluntary flood insurance purchase decisions and their support for flood adaptation policies. As many policies are designed and implemented at an aggregate level (i.e., state, county, city), it is necessary to examine aggregate-level risk perceptions. In the fourth study, I will focus on how the contextual hurricane risks in conjunction with community resilience shape county-level perceptions of hurricane-related risks. I will end with a research agenda linking communities’ perception with contextual risks and community resilience. I contend that the cognitive dimension including both risk perceptions and perceived adaptive capacity is not represented in any of the existing community resilience indexes, and therefore needs to be measured, quantified, and incorporated into a more comprehensive index." Hurricane Harvey dumped record-breaking rain in Houston in 2017. Now, a new study shows that this extreme amounts of rainfalls actually resulted from unprecedented ocean heat content. This study presents some evidence to support the link between global temperature rise with increasing hurricane intensity.
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