Comments - America's New Green Deal: Will Biden Ban Burgers? - PakAlumni Worldwide: The Global Social Network 2024-03-29T08:31:17Zhttp://www.pakalumni.com/profiles/comment/feed?attachedTo=1119293%3ABlogPost%3A400085&xn_auth=no“Doubt is Our Product”: It’s…tag:www.pakalumni.com,2021-09-19:1119293:Comment:4027082021-09-19T15:16:12.986ZRiaz Haqhttp://www.pakalumni.com/profile/riazul
<p><span>“Doubt is Our Product”: It’s vital that scientists engage with the public and the media to ensure that their research is accurately represented</span><br></br><br></br><span><a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/doubt-is-our-product/" target="_blank">https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/doubt-is-our-product/</a></span><br></br><br></br><span>Recent research by Marcus Munafò and colleagues suggested that standardised cigarette packs increase the prominence of health warnings in…</span></p>
<p><span>“Doubt is Our Product”: It’s vital that scientists engage with the public and the media to ensure that their research is accurately represented</span><br/><br/><span><a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/doubt-is-our-product/" target="_blank">https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/doubt-is-our-product/</a></span><br/><br/><span>Recent research by Marcus Munafò and colleagues suggested that standardised cigarette packs increase the prominence of health warnings in non-smokers and light smokers. Interestingly, they didn’t see this in regular smokers. However, the research was misrepresented by British American Tobacco, who used it to argue that “plain packaging may actually reduce smokers’ attention to warnings”. He argues that scientists have the responsibility to make sure that their research is accurately represented, and that attempts to misrepresent their research are challenged.</span><br/><br/><span>Cigarette smoking is addictive. Cigarette smoking causes lung cancer. Today these statements are uncontroversial, but it’s easy to forget that this was not the case until relatively recently. The first studies reporting a link between smoking and lung cancer appeared in the 1950’s (although scientists in Germany had reported a link earlier), while the addictiveness of tobacco, and the isolation of nicotine as the principal addictive constituent, was not established until some time later. Part of the reason for this is simply that scientific progress is generally slow, and scientists themselves are typically not the kind of people to get ahead of themselves.</span><br/><br/><span>However, another factor is that at every stage the tobacco industry has resisted scientific evidence which indicates harms associated with the use of its products. One way in which it has done this is by suggesting that there is uncertainty around the core evidence base used to support tobacco control policies. A 1969 document from the Brown and Williamson tobacco company (a subsidiary of British American Tobacco) outlines this strategy: “Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ [linking smoking with disease] that exists in the mind of the general public”.</span><br/><br/><span>This approach seeks to “neutralize the influence of academic scientists”, and has since been adopted more widely by other lobby groups. The energy industry has used a similar approach in response to consensus among climate scientists on the role of human activity in climate change. But what’s the problem? There are always a number of ways to interpret data, scientists will hold different theoretical positions despite being in possession of the same basic facts, people are entitled to their opinion. That’s fine, but the tobacco industry goes beyond this and actively misrepresents the facts. Why do I care? Because recently our research was misrepresented in this way.</span><br/><br/><br/><span>There is ongoing debate around whether to introduce standardised packaging for tobacco products. This is a prominent policy issue in the UK and elsewhere at the moment, particularly following recent claims that David Cameron’s electoral strategist, Lynton Crosby, may have influenced the decision to drop the introduction of standardised packaging from the coalition government’s planned legislation. The tobacco company Philip Morris International has a contract with Lynton Crosby’s firm, Crosby Textor Fullbrook, for lobbying work in the UK, including on standardised packaging of tobacco.</span><br/><br/><span>Public health campaigners mostly favour standardised packaging, while the tobacco industry is opposed to it. No particular surprises there, but given that only Australia has so far introduced standardised packaging there’s a need for more research to inform the debate.</span></p> #IEA: Nations Must Drop #Foss…tag:www.pakalumni.com,2021-05-18:1119293:Comment:4002822021-05-18T19:25:53.142ZRiaz Haqhttp://www.pakalumni.com/profile/riazul
<p><span>#IEA: Nations Must Drop #Fossil Fuels, Fast. It would very likely keep the average global temperature from increasing 1.5 C above preindustrial levels — beyond which scientists say the #Earth faces irreversible damage. #renewableenergy #ClimateCrisis <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/18/climate/climate-change-emissions-IEA.html?smid=tw-share" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/18/climate/climate-change-emissions-IEA.html?smid=tw-share…</a></span><br></br><br></br></p>
<p><span>#IEA: Nations Must Drop #Fossil Fuels, Fast. It would very likely keep the average global temperature from increasing 1.5 C above preindustrial levels — beyond which scientists say the #Earth faces irreversible damage. #renewableenergy #ClimateCrisis <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/18/climate/climate-change-emissions-IEA.html?smid=tw-share" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/18/climate/climate-change-emissions-IEA.html?smid=tw-share</a></span><br/><br/><span><a href="https://www.iea.org/reports/net-zero-by-2050" target="_blank">https://www.iea.org/reports/net-zero-by-2050</a></span><br/><br/><span>That’s significant, given the fact that the influential agency is not an environmental group but an international organization that advises world capitals on energy policy. Formed after the oil crises of the 1970s, the agency’s reports and forecasts are frequently cited by energy companies and investors as a basis for long-term planning.</span><br/><br/><span>“It’s a huge shift in messaging if they’re saying there’s no need to invest in new fossil fuel supply,” said Kelly Trout, senior research analyst at Oil Change International, an environmental advocacy group.</span><br/><br/><br/><span>Several major economies, including the United States and the European Union, have recently pledged to zero out their emissions responsible for global warming by midcentury. But many world leaders have not yet come to grips with the extraordinary transformation of the global energy system that is required to do so, the agency warned.</span><br/><br/><span>“The sheer magnitude of changes needed to get to net zero emissions by 2050 is still not fully understood by many governments and investors,” Fatih Birol, the agency’s executive director, said in an interview.</span><br/><br/><span>Net zero emissions doesn’t mean countries would stop emitting carbon dioxide altogether. Instead, they would need to sharply reduce most of the carbon dioxide generated by power plants, factories and vehicles. Any emissions that could not be fully erased would be offset, such as by forests or artificial technologies that can pull carbon dioxide directly out of the atmosphere.</span><br/><br/><span>To reach that goal of net zero worldwide by 2050, every nation would need to move much faster and more aggressively away from fossil fuels than they are currently doing, the report found.</span><br/><br/><span>For instance, the annual pace of installations for solar panels and wind turbines worldwide would have to quadruple by 2030, the agency said. For the solar industry, that would mean building the equivalent of what is currently the world’s largest solar farm every day for the next decade.</span><br/><br/><span>For now, the world remains off course. Last month, the agency warned that global carbon dioxide emissions were expected to rise at their second-fastest pace ever in 2021 as countries recovered from the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic and global coal burning neared a high, led by a surge of industrial activity in Asia.</span><br/><br/><span>“We’re seeing more governments around the world make net-zero pledges, which is very good news,” Mr. Birol said. “But there’s still a huge gap between the rhetoric and the reality.”</span></p> The idea of artificially cool…tag:www.pakalumni.com,2021-05-09:1119293:Comment:4002632021-05-09T04:06:53.772ZRiaz Haqhttp://www.pakalumni.com/profile/riazul
<p><span>The idea of artificially cooling the planet to blunt climate change — in effect, blocking sunlight before it can warm the atmosphere — got a boost on Thursday when an influential scientific body urged the United States government to spend at least $100 million to research the technology.…</span><br></br><br></br></p>
<p><span>The idea of artificially cooling the planet to blunt climate change — in effect, blocking sunlight before it can warm the atmosphere — got a boost on Thursday when an influential scientific body urged the United States government to spend at least $100 million to research the technology.</span><br/><br/><span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/climate/geoengineering-sunlight.html" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/climate/geoengineering-sunlight.html</a></span><br/><br/><span>That technology, often called solar geoengineering, entails reflecting more of the sun’s energy back into space through techniques that include injecting aerosols into the atmosphere. In a new report, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine said that governments urgently need to know whether solar geoengineering could work and what the side effects might be.</span><br/><br/><span>“Solar geoengineering is not a substitute for decarbonizing,” said Chris Field, director of the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University and head of the committee that produced the report, referring to the need to emit less carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Still, he said, technology to reflect sunlight “deserves substantial funding, and it should be researched as rapidly and effectively as possible.”</span><br/><br/><span>The report acknowledged the risks that have made geoengineering one of the most contentious issues in climate policy. Those risks include upsetting regional weather patterns in potentially devastating ways, for example by changing the behavior of the monsoon in South Asia; relaxing public pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; and even creating an “unacceptable risk of catastrophically rapid warming” if governments started reflecting sunlight for a period of time, and then later stopped.</span><br/><br/><span>But the authors argue that greenhouse gas emissions are not falling quickly enough to avoid dangerous levels of global warming, which means the world must begin to examine other options. Evidence for or against solar geoengineering, they found, “could have profound value” in guiding decisions about whether to deploy it.</span><br/><br/><span>That includes evidence about what the authors called the social risks: For example, if research showed that the side effects would be concentrated in poorer nations, Dr. Field said, it could be grounds not to pursue the technology, even if it benefited the world as a whole.</span><br/><br/><span>-------------------</span><br/><br/><span>Tylar Greene, a spokeswoman for NASA, which helped fund the report, said in a statement that “we look forward to reviewing the report, examining recommendations, and exploring how NASA and its research community can support this effort.”</span><br/><br/><span>Ko Barrett, deputy assistant administrator at NOAA, which also helped fund the report, said in a statement that the agency looked forward to “carefully reviewing” it. The Department of Energy, another funder, didn’t respond to a request for comment.</span><br/><br/><span>The endorsement by the National Academies might make some lawmakers feel more comfortable supporting the technology, according to Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at the Columbia Law School and editor of a book on solar geoengineering.</span><br/><br/><span>And rather than causing people to care less about curbing greenhouse gas emissions, he said, a large new federal research program into geoengineering might have the opposite effect: Jolting the public into taking climate change seriously by demonstrating that more extreme and dangerous options may soon be necessary.</span><br/><br/><span>“It could be so scary that people will be even more motivated to reduce emissions,” Mr. Gerrard said.</span></p>