THE SET-UP: Today’s RUNDOWN features a long thread of flood-related stories. I limited the scope of the thread (see PANDORA’S BOXCUTTER) to the immediate havoc Storm Boris is wreaking on Europe and to the deluge two typhoons are unleashing on Asia. I also covered rescue efforts in West Africa. I didn’t include a dozen other flood-related stories that popped up over the weekend—like a Thomson-Reuters report on the wild swings between drought and flooding crippling Greek farmers. Reporter Beatrice Tridimas put it bluntly: “Trapped between weather extremes, farmers on Europe's front line of climate change are struggling to see a future.”
The future’s so bright (and hot), we gotta wear shades and life preservers. - jp
TITLE: How is climate change impacting global flooding?2
https://www.dw.com/en/in-the-aftermath-of-flooding-in-germany-and-elsewhere-5-charts-to-help-explain-climate-science/a-69289787
EXCERPT: Climate change is impacting the frequency of heavy downpours during storms and sudden outbursts through its influence on complex atmospheric and weather patterns.
Globally, at a 1.5C temperature rise, which the world is increasingly close to hitting, heavy precipitation that would have been a once in a 10-year rainfall event will occur 1.5 times every decade and be over 10% wetter,according to the UN's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Last year, Europe was around 7% rainier than normal, with most of the continent experiencing wetter-than-average conditions. Heavy or record-breaking precipitation triggered floods in Italy, Norway, Sweden and Slovenia.
Advances in attribution science are allowing experts to pinpoint the causal relationship between climate change and extreme weather events more accurately. According to one estimate, on average, 1 in 4 record rainfall extremes in the last decade can be attributed to climate change.
While no attribution studies are yet available for the recent German floods, heavy rainfall is becoming more frequent. Last year the average rainfall was 20% higher than the average for 1991-2020.
And the floods that devastated western parts of Germany, as well as Belgium and the Netherlands, in 2021 have been directly linked to climate change.
According to scientists from World Weather Attribution, a UK-based academic institution, it made rainfall between 3% and 19% stronger and 1.2 to nine times more likely.
More recently, Brazil's floods in April and May are believed to have been made twice as likely to occur and up to 9% heavier due to the burning of fossil fuels.
Flooding, among the most widespread natural disasters, is often devastating. Rushing currents can sweep away loved ones, critical infrastructure, wildlife and fertile soil, leaving behind grief and crippling economic damage as the water recedes.
Since 2000 the proportion of people exposed to floods is estimated to have increased by 24%.
Today, 1.8 billion people — just under a quarter of the global population — are directly exposed to one-in-100-year floods, a term used to describe a flood that is so severe it will likely only be equaled or exceeded on average once a century.
TITLE: Surviving a Climate Disaster Isn’t Likely to Change How You Vote
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/investing/2024/09/16/surviving-a-climate-disaster-isnt-likely-to-change-how-you-vote/
EXCERPTS: A growing body of research focuses on whether experiencing abnormal heat and other climate change-linked weather events shapes the way people vote, but a clear consensus hasn’t emerged. If people are in fact casting ballots based on their experiences of disasters, it appears to be a small number of them.
In one recent study, voters in areas of Germany that experienced flooding in 2021 were not measurably more likely than those elsewhere in the country to cast their ballots for the environmentalist Green Party in that year’s federal elections. While there was evidence of a small effect in some of the hardest-hit areas, direct exposure to the floods generally “had little to no effect,” the researchers wrote.
Some political parties did appear to get a boost: those currently in power, which in the affected areas had committed to substantial relief efforts just before the election.
“People really seem to prefer immediate aid over some promise of, ‘Okay, we’re going to stop climate change for the next century,’” said Hanno Hilbig, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor of political science at the University of California at Davis.
Other research has found a clearer, though still moderate effect. Across 22 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, people in areas with higher-than-normal average temperatures in the past year were more likely to say they supported left-leaning parties, and in particular ones with green policy agendas, according to a recent working paper. It was largely older people who shifted left.
People in areas of California affected by wildfires are more likely to vote for pro-environment ballot measures, another study observed. Republicans were more likely than Democrats to vote differently on environmental measures after wildfires.
Studies on the link between climate shocks and public opinion vary in the way they define weather events, how they measure opinion and more, a 2019 review of evidence on the subject noted. At the time, there was “modest support” for an association, but it was hard to interpret the available research, according to the authors.
The evidence that disasters have an effect has mounted since that review was published, in the view of Michael Coury, an applied microeconomist at the University at Buffalo and the author of the study on California. Researchers have used better statistical techniques and studied outcomes like vote counts, he said.
Still, the studies of wildfires and heat find shifts of just a few percentage points.
The fact that many people already have views on climate change may help explain why it’s hard for a single disaster to move the needle, Hilbig said. What’s more, the influence of any one disaster may have decreased as they’ve become more common in recent years, he said.
TITLE: Belief in divine (versus human) control of earth affects perceived threat of climate change
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44168-024-00163-9
EXCERPT: Our study contributes to the growing literature on citizens’ climate attitudes several important ways. First, we identify a way in which a specific religious belief—i.e., belief in divine (vis-à-vis human) control of the Earth’s environmental future—is consequential for citizens’ beliefs about climate change. We theorize that this belief, which is not restricted to one single religion or religious denomination, should logically shape the degree to which climate change is perceived as a threat: if God is not in control of Earth’s future, it would mean that humanity is relatively unprotected and, therefore, in greater potential danger. Second, we show with nationally representative survey data that this belief is consistently predictive of citizens’ beliefs and attitudes about climate change, even after adjusting for potentially confounding factors. Third, using a novel experiment, we go beyond existing correlational analyses to show that belief in divine, versus human, control over Earth’s environmental future is capable of causally affecting citizens’ beliefs about climate change’s importance, perceived need for addressing it, and desire for scientific information.
Our study therefore speaks to both the (1) degree, and (2) manner, that a specific religious belief can shape citizens’ attitudes toward climate change. Further, our theoretical approach potentially helps explain previous work documenting how “End Times” beliefs involving Earth’s ultimate destruction predict lower environmental concern17,46: At the heart of such beliefs might exist a more fundamental sense that God, not humanity, controls Earth’s future, thereby rendering it futile for humanity to change its behavior toward the natural environment.
Our findings come with important implications. Religious and political identities are strongly interrelated, which can render it empirically difficult to determine whether religious factors exert unique, causal effects on climate attitudes apart from partisan factors. Yet our study indicates fundamental religious beliefs are capable of cutting across partisan lines and shaping perceptions about climate change’s causes and severity, even if partisan factors exert greater influence overall. More broadly, to the extent that religious leaders can influence citizens’ beliefs, our experimental results imply that religious leaders may be able to increase citizens’ concern about climate change via stressing humanity’s critical role in shaping Earth’s environmental future, though perhaps somewhat less so for Born Again/Evangelical Christians specifically.
It is important to stress that our results speak to the importance of one particular religious belief, not religion writ large. Future studies would do well to examine how belief in divine control is communicated by religious leaders, both between and within particular religious denominations. Additionally, we believe these effects would likely generalize to other contexts (e.g., developing countries) given evidence linking beliefs about God’s will and perceived causes of anthropogenic climate change47.
Lastly, given the relatively weak effects on specific policy attitudes, future work could delve deeper into why manipulations that affect perceptions of climate change’s severity do not necessarily translate into changes in support for mitigation policies. For example, might citizens be unclear (and/or unconvinced) about how these policies can successfully combat climate change? Given our findings, and the rising threat of climate change, we believe this is remains a crucial next question to investigate.