James Rising has a new working paper Weather-driven adaptation in perennial crop systems:An integrated study of Brazilian coffee yields, demonstrating how farmers in Brazil cope with changing environmental conditions by altering the portfolio of coffee crops they maintain. The analysis develops a novel structural Bayesian modeling approach that embeds reduced form modeling estimates, allowing James to solve (for the first time) the well-known "problem with perennials", i.e. the fact that analysts and policy-makes cannot generally observe the number of long-live plants (perennials) that farmers maintain on a farm. The analysis is important because it demonstrates how farmers cope with a changing climate by changing their investment decisions, sometimes amplifying the economic impact of changes in climate.
climate change
Kavli Fellows meet at National Academy of Sciences /
Solomon Hsiang surveyed new approaches to valuing planetary scale assets, using climate as an example, to other Kavli Fellows at the annual symposium run at the National Academy of Sciences.
Discussing the future of energy at MIT /
Sol spoke at MIT's EmTech conference alongside MIT's Donald Sadoway about the future of energy.
- Sol discussed Planetary Management and the use of data to revolutionize how we understand the potential impact of climate change.
- Don discussed his quest to build a cheap and long-lasting battery capable of supplying grid-level storage, so that renewables can eventually power the planet.
- The two then sat down to discuss these issues with Jason Pontin and the audience.
Publication: Social and economic impacts of climate /
Tamma Carleton and Solomon Hsiang published an article in Science discussing and synthesizing the methods and results used to understand the impact of climate from the last decade. We demonstrate how findings across the literature and sectors are linked, identify commonalities across numerous studies, and compute how much (i) various aspects of the current climate contribute to to historical social outcomes, (ii) how much climate change to date has affected outcomes, and (iii) quantitative projections of the future. We identify that understanding "adaptation gaps" is the most important area for future research.
Documentary movie on climate as a cause of conflict /
Want to be on the silver screen? Get a PhD. Sol was interviewed for a new documentary (which he hasn't seen yet).
What the filmmakers say about it
‘The Hurt Locker’ meets ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, THE AGE OF CONSEQUENCES investigates the impacts of climate change on increased resource scarcity, migration, and conflict through the lens of US national security and global stability.
Through unflinching case-study analysis, distinguished admirals, generals and military veterans take us beyond the headlines of the conflict in Syria, the social unrest of the Arab Spring, the rise of radicalized groups like ISIS, and the European refugee crisis – and lay bare how climate change stressors interact with societal tensions, sparking conflict.
Whether a long-term vulnerability or sudden shock, the film unpacks how water and food shortages, drought, extreme weather, and sea-level rise function as ‘accelerants of instability’ and ‘catalysts for conflict’ in volatile regions of the world.
Berkeley Opportunity Lab web launch /
We launched the Opportunity Lab website. The Opportunity Lab is a new group of economists on campus that leverage data to uncover solutions to poverty and inequality issues. The Lab focuses on six core research areas: Climate and Environment, Crime and Criminal Justice, Education and Child Development, Health, Social Safety Nets and Employment, Taxation and Inequality. Sol and collaborator Reed Walker are co-directing the Climate and Environment program of the Lab. Stay tuned!
Publication: Potentially extreme migration and population concentration in the tropics /
Adam Sobel and Sol Hsiang have a new paper Potentially Extreme Population Displacement and Concentration in the Tropics Under Non-Extreme Warming in Scientific Reports.
Sol describes the paper on the G-FEED blog here.
Publication: Conflict in a changing climate /
Tamma and Sol, along with co-author Marshall Burke at Stanford, published a review of the climate and violence literature in a Special Topics issue of the European Physical Journal.
The review focuses on how to use empirical evidence from historical climate-conflict relationships to make projections about the future. We present new evidence suggesting that income mitigates the impact of temperature on crime and conflict, implying that future projections may be improved by incorporating income-based adaptation. Check out a more detailed blog post about the publication on the blog G-FEED here.
CBO cites two GPL publications in national hurricane report /
The Congressional Budget Office used calculations in Hsiang & Jina (2014) and The American Climate Prospectus to inform their recent report on Potential Increases in Hurricane Damage in the United States: Implications for the Federal Budget. See a summary of the report by Politico here.
Hurricane Katrina
Video: Empirical climate damages at the National Academy of Science /
Michael Greenstone recently presented new results from the Climate Impact Lab at the National Academy of Sciences. This work (and the talk) follow logically from Sol's talk to the same NAS group back in November. The work Michael presented represented a major team effort that included [amazing] contributions by Tamma Carleton, James Rising, and Megan Landin here at GPL.
Climate Impact Lab web launch /
We launched the Climate Impact Lab website. The Impact Lab is a collaboration with team members at University of Chicago, Rutgers, and Rhodium Group to construct an empirically founded basis for the global social cost of carbon.
This collaboration produced the American Climate Prospectus in 2014.
see more here
Publication: Climate Econometrics /
Sol has a new review article out on Climate Econometrics, the new collection of techniques used to measure the effects of climate on societies and economies. The paper is forthcoming in the Annual Reviews of Resource Economics.
Sol summarized the paper in a blog post at G-FEED.
Op-Ed in the LA Times: What do we actually know about conflict and climate /
In response to claims by Bernie Sanders and Prince Charles (and resulting inquiries from journalists), Marshall Burke and Solomon Hsiang published an Op-Ed in the LA Times explaining what we do and do not know about linkages between climate and social conflict.
Book published on economic risk of climate change /
Amir Jina, James Rising, and Solomon Hsiang were coauthors on the book "Economic Risks of Climate Change: An American Prospectus" published by Columbia University Press. The analysis in the book was the research behind the Risky Business initiative lead by Michael Bloomberg, Hank Paulson and Tom Steyer. Commentary by Karen Fisher-Vanden, Michael Greenstone, Geoffrey Heal, Michael Oppenheimer, and Nicholas Stern and Bob Ward enrich the original analysis.
Obama cites climate-conflict research /
I was driving into the office today when I heard on the radio that in a speech at the Coast Guard Academy graduation, President Obama said,
"Around the world, climate change increases the risk of instability and conflict. "
Not only that, but he gets it:
"Understand, climate change did not cause the conflicts we see around the world. Yet what we also know is that severe drought helped to create the instability in Nigeria that was exploited by the terrorist group Boko Haram. It’s now believed that drought and crop failures and high food prices helped fuel the early unrest in Syria, which descended into civil war in the heart of the Middle East."
Not bad.
