climate change final

Which strategy is likely the cheapest and fastest way to cool the whole planet?

Injecting aerosols into the stratosphere to block sunlight

Which does the PBS video "Why people don't believe in climate science" suggest is a reason for why people aren't doing much to address climate change?

- their rational side intellectually understands climate change may be a problem in the future but their emotional side is not motivated enough to do much - they have become desensitized to media reports on the perils of climate change - they think it is distant and unlikely to seriously harm them personally

Why did the mayor of a town in New Jersey that had been hit by Hurricane Sandy tell George Marshall that she didn't want to use it as an opportunity to highlight the risks associated with future climate change?

She wanted to focus on positive messages about moving forward and rebuilding

According to the Economist video "How to cool a warming world," air conditioning is a large emitter of greenhouse gases and expected to grow substantially in the coming decades.

True

According to the Economist video "How to cool a warming world," simple adaptations like painting rooves white can make the internal temperature inside a building several degrees Celsius cooler.

True

According to the National Geographic article "One derided, ways of adapting to climate change are gaining steam," adaptation resonates with people across the political spectrum.

True

According to the National Geographic article "One derided, ways of adapting to climate change are gaining steam," there has been more extreme weather over the past several thousand years than we have experienced in the past century, so increasing resilience is important regardless of whether or not the climate is changing.

True

Approximately one-quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions come from food, agriculture, and how we use land.

True

Geoengineering approaches that use 'solar radiation management' techniques to block sunlight cannot reduce all of the major impacts of rising CO2 concentrations.

True

Gernot Wagner (in the Economist article you read for Wednesday) argues that individual actions matter for climate change when they gather momentum across society.

True

Project Drawdown argues that we would want to implement most climate mitigation solution regardless of global warming because they have lots of other benefits to human and planetary well-being.

True

Solar geoengineering cannot be targeted at one region - aerosols would cool an entire hemisphere or the whole planet once released into the stratosphere.

True

The Economist article "What if geoengineering goes rogue?" suggests that countries opposed to solar geoengineering might enact counter-measures such as shooting down geoengineering planes or releasing their own chemicals into the atmosphere to neutralize aerosols.

True

The New Scientist article "Seven steps to save the planet" argues that changing ourselves, our lifestyles, and demanding political action will be the final and most challenging step in addressing the energy problem.

True

The New Scientist article "Seven steps to save the planet" suggests that solving climate change will involve almost completely decarbonizing electricity generation, but that this is fortunately already underway with the recent rise in solar and wind energy.

True

The New Scientist article "Seven steps to save the planet" suggests that we will need to rapidly and simultaneously attack the greenhouse gas problem from numerous angles - e.g., renewables, land use, buildings, transportation, carbon capture - over the next few decades to have a fair chance of limiting global warming to 1.5°C.

True

The majority of Americans report rarely discussing climate change.

True

Which group in the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication's surveys has grown the most over the past 5 years?

alarmed

Who popularized the concept of a personal "carbon footprint" in the 2000s?

BP

Which does the Economist video "How can business survive climate change?" suggest poses a threat to companies over the next decade?

- Devastation to infrastructure and operations from physical climate impacts - Regulation from governments aiming to reduce emissions - Litigation (lawsuits) for failing to adapt to climate change and disclose climate risks

Surveys find that people are more likely to believe in human-caused climate change if they are

Communitarians (think people should operate as part of a collective)

What does "Merchants of Doubt" suggest was the major motivation for the small band of scientists (e.g., Fred Singer, Fred Seitz) who sowed doubt on climate change?

Concerns about government regulation of the economy

How does the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication characterize Americans' views on climate?

Falling along a spectrum of six categories from alarmed to dismissive

A meat-rich diet has a smaller carbon footprint than a plant-rich diet because raising livestock does not require as much land or fertilizer as growing fruits and vegetables.

False

According to the Economist video "How to cool a warming world," most of the 3 billion people in the tropics have air conditioning, which is helping them adapt to extreme heat.

False

According to the National Geographic article "One derided, ways of adapting to climate change are gaining steam," a major barrier to increasing resilience to extreme weather is that it is usually a financial loss in the both the short and long term.

False

According to the National Geographic article "One derided, ways of adapting to climate change are gaining steam," adaptation has long been a major focus of climate activists concerned about vulnerable communities.

False

Geoengineering schemes are all prohibitively expensive at this point, and therefore unrealistic without a massive investment in research and development to improve them.

False

Project Drawdown's (in the TED talk you watched for Monday) top 20 solutions to global warming all focus on renewable energy.

False

The "33 Dragons" article suggests that uncertainty leads people to act more cautiously and thus want to reduce climate change.

False

Why did the editor of the small newspaper from Bastrop, Texas - a town that had recently been devastated by the worst wildfires in Texas history - say that their paper doesn't cover climate change to George Marshall (the person who gave the talk we watched in class Tuesday)?

Global climate change isn't relevant to them because they just cover local news

Where and when does George Marshall say climate change is happening?

It depends on what story a person is telling themself on climate change

What is the biggest solution to addressing global warming that Project Drawdown found?

Refrigeration management

The promise of a quick and cheap geoengineering fix to climate change could make governments more complacent about dealing with the root problem and transitioning the world over to clean energy. This is an example of

a moral hazard

Which science denial technique is the following an example of? "It was a chilly April in Boston - whatever happened to global warming?"

cherry picking

Who tends to more strongly endorse values of respect for authority and in-group loyalty?

conservatives

Which science denial technique is the following an example of? "The idea of climate change was invented in order to expand government control over our lives."

conspiracy theories

What does the article "Why we are poles apart on climate change" suggest is the major source of division on this issue in America?

cultural polarization

Which science denial technique is the following an example of? ""A Nobel Prize winner in economics argues against the climate consensus, claiming the current weather change is just a natural occurrence."

fake experts

According to "Climate of Doubt", the financial crisis and economic downturn in 2008 increased support for action to slow climate change by showing how damaging it can be when a complicated system reaches a tipping point.

false

According to the Al Jazeera video "Media and climate change: why we need a total overhaul," climate change is one of the most frequently reported topics in media coverage.

false

According to the Al Jazeera video "Media and climate change: why we need a total overhaul," media mostly focuses on climate solutions but does not convey how apocalyptic the future will be if humans do not act.

false

According to the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, just over half of Americans are Doubtful or Dismissive of climate change.

false

According to the article "A few simple tricks make fake news stories stick in the brain", misinformation spreads more quickly when it uses calm, unemotional language

false

Climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe suggests in her TED talk "The most important thing you can do to fight climate change: talk about it" that not everyone has the right values to care about the climate problem - but she thinks that liberal values on climate will eventually win out if we keep talking about it.

false

Marc Morano (who produced "Climate Hustle", which we watched at the beginning of the semester) says in "Merchants of Doubt" that this is fundamentally a scientific debate that should be fought purely on the basis of evidence.

false

The "33 Dragons" article suggests that support for free-enterprise capitalism tends to make people more inclined to act on climate change since they believe that market mechanisms can fix the problem.

false

The article "How to talk to someone who doesn't believe in climate change" suggests using the same arguments that convinced you climate change is real.

false

The article "Why we are poles apart on climate change" argues that people who believe in climate change are 'rational' while those who do not are 'irrational' (to use the author's words).

false

The more scientifically literate people are, the more likely they are to agree that humans are causing climate change.

false

Which science denial technique is the following an example of? "Scientists can't even predict the weather next week, so how can they predict the climate years from now?"

impossible expectations

Which is NOT true about carbon capture to remove historical emissions from the atmosphere?

it is cheap

Which is NOT true about injecting aerosols into the stratosphere to block sunlight (i.e., solar radiation management)?

it would take decades to affect the climate

Who tends to more strongly endorse values of equality and fairness?

liberals

Which science denial technique is the following an example of? "Climate has changed naturally in the past, therefore modern climate change must also be natural."

logical fallacy

Where does "Merchants of Doubt", the documentary we watched in class this week, suggest that the strategy for sowing public doubt on climate change originally came from?

the tobacco industry

Which is not a reason that the PBS video "Why people don't believe in climate science" gives for why people don't believe in climate change?

they are less educated

"Climate of Doubt" suggests that leaders of climate change skepticism were happy that former vice president Al Gore became the major popularizer of global warming because he is a politically divisive and controversial person.

true

According to the Al Jazeera video "Media and climate change: why we need a total overhaul," extreme local weather events are rarely linked to global climate change by the media.

true

According to the Al Jazeera video "Media and climate change: why we need a total overhaul," media mostly focuses on individual actions to mitigate climate change rather than corporate responsibility for it.

true

According to the article "A few simple tricks make fake news stories stick in the brain", people are more likely to believe misinformation when it supports what they want to believe.

true

Bob Inglis, the six-term Republican congressman from South Carolina who appears in both "Climate of Doubt" and "Merchants of Doubt", lost badly in his 2010 congressional race after declaring his interest in acting on climate change.

true

Studies find that a person's view on the solution to a problem can affect how much confidence they have that the problem exists in the first place.

true

The "33 Dragons" article suggests that feeling a strong sense of attachment to a place can sometimes lead to climate-negative behavior.

true

The "33 Dragons" article suggests that optimism can be a barrier to climate action.

true

The "33 Dragons" article suggests that people tend to discount environmental problems the further away in space or time they occur.

true

The Al Jazeera video "Media and climate change: why we need a total overhaul" recommends that media stop covering climate change as a separate issue from many others they report on, such as the economy.

true

The Frontline documentary "Climate of Doubt" says that there was growing interest from both Democrats and Republicans to act on climate change in the late 2000s, but that this rapidly fell apart and former president Obama rarely mentioned the topic by 2012.

true

The article "How to talk to someone who doesn't believe in climate change" suggests appealing to the values of the person you are speaking to rather than your own.

true

The oil company Exxon was actively studying the science of climate change in the 1970s.

true