Search Results
Towards representing human behavior and decision making in Earth system models - An overview of techniques and approaches
Today, humans have a critical impact on the Earth system and vice versa, which can generate complex feedback processes between social and ecological dynamics. Integrating human behavior into formal Earth system models (ESMs), however, requires crucial modeling assumptions about actors and their goals, behavioral options, and decision rules, as well as modeling decisions regarding human social interactions and the aggregation of individuals' behavior. Here, we review existing modeling approaches and techniques from various disciplines and schools of thought dealing with human behavior at different levels of decision making. We demonstrate modelers' often vast degrees of freedom but also seek to make modelers aware of the often crucial consequences of seemingly innocent modeling assumptions. After discussing which socioeconomic units are potentially important for ESMs, we compare models of individual decision making that correspond to alternative behavioral theories and that make diverse modeling assumptions about individuals' preferences, beliefs, decision rules, and foresight. We review approaches to model social interaction, covering game theoretic frameworks, models of social influence, and network models. Finally, we discuss approaches to studying how the behavior of individuals, groups, and organizations can aggregate to complex collective phenomena, discussing agent-based, statistical, and representative-agent modeling and economic macro-dynamics. We illustrate the main ingredients of modeling techniques with examples from land-use dynamics as one of the main drivers of environmental change bridging local to global scales.
Earth system modeling with endogenous and dynamic human societies: the copan:CORE open World–Earth modeling framework
Analysis of Earth system dynamics in the Anthropocene requires explicitly taking into account the increasing magnitude of processes operating in human societies, their cultures, economies and technosphere and their growing feedback entanglement with those in the physical, chemical and biological systems of the planet. However, current state-of-the-art Earth system models do not represent dynamic human societies and their feedback interactions with the biogeophysical Earth system and macroeconomic integrated assessment models typically do so only with limited scope. This paper (i) proposes design principles for constructing world-Earth models (WEMs) for Earth system analysis of the Anthropocene, i.e., models of social (world)-ecological (Earth) coevolution on up to planetary scales, and (ii) presents the copan:CORE open simulation modeling framework for developing, composing and analyzing such WEMs based on the proposed principles. The framework provides a modular structure to flexibly construct and study WEMs. These can contain biophysical (e.g., carbon cycle dynamics), socio-metabolic or economic (e.g., economic growth or energy system changes), and sociocultural processes (e.g., voting on climate policies or changing social norms) and their feedback interactions, and they are based on elementary entity types, e.g., grid cells and social systems. Thereby, copan:CORE enables the epistemic flexibility needed for contributions towards Earth system analysis of the Anthropocene given the large diversity of competing theories and methodologies used for describing socio-metabolic or economic and sociocultural processes in the Earth system by various fields and schools of thought. To illustrate the capabilities of the framework, we present an exemplary and highly stylized WEM implemented in copan:CORE that illustrates how endogenizing sociocultural processes and feedbacks such as voting on climate policies based on socially learned environmental awareness could fundamentally change macroscopic model outcomes. © Author(s) 2020.
What are the social outcomes of climate policies? A systematic map and review of the ex-post literature
It is critical to ensure climate and energy policies are just, equitable and beneficial for communities, both to sustain public support for decarbonisation and address multifaceted societal challenges. Our objective in this article is to examine the diverse social outcomes that have resulted from climate policies, in varying contexts worldwide, over the past few decades. We review 203 ex-post climate policy assessments that analyse social outcomes in the literature. We systematically and comprehensively map out this work, identifying articles on carbon, energy and transport taxes, feed-in-tariffs, subsidies, direct procurement policies, large renewable deployment projects, and other regulatory and market-based interventions. We code each article in terms of their studied social outcomes and effects, with a focus on electricity access, energy affordability, community cohesion, employment, distributional and equity issues, livelihoods and poverty, procedural justice, subjective well-being and drudgery. Our analysis finds that climate and energy policies often fall short of delivering positive social outcomes. Nonetheless, across country contexts and policy types there are manifold examples of climate policymaking that does deliver on both social and climate goals. This requires attending to distributive and procedural justice in policy design, and making use of appropriate mechanisms to ensure that policy costs and benefits are fairly shared. We emphasize the need to further advance ex-post policy assessments and learn about what policies work for a just transition.
Statistical stopping criteria for automated screening in systematic reviews
Active learning for systematic review screening promises to reduce the human effort required to identify relevant documents for a systematic review. Machines and humans work together, with humans providing training data, and the machine optimising the documents that the humans screen. This enables the identification of all relevant documents after viewing only a fraction of the total documents. However, current approaches lack robust stopping criteria, so that reviewers do not know when they have seen all or a certain proportion of relevant documents. This means that such systems are hard to implement in live reviews. This paper introduces a workflow with flexible statistical stopping criteria, which offer real work reductions on the basis of rejecting a hypothesis of having missed a given recall target with a given level of confidence. The stopping criteria are shown on test datasets to achieve a reliable level of recall, while still providing work reductions of on average 17%. Other methods proposed previously are shown to provide inconsistent recall and work reductions across datasets.
Discourses of climate delay
Non-technical summary: Discourses of climate delay' pervade current debates on climate action. These discourses accept the existence of climate change, but justify inaction or inadequate efforts. In contemporary discussions on what actions should be taken, by whom and how fast, proponents of climate delay would argue for minimal action or action taken by others. They focus attention on the negative social effects of climate policies and raise doubt that mitigation is possible. Here, we outline the common features of climate delay discourses and provide a guide to identifying them. Technical summary: Through our collective observations as social scientists studying climate change, we describe 12 climate delay discourses and develop a typology based on their underlying logic. Delay discourses can be grouped into those that: (1) redirect responsibility; (2) push non-transformative solutions; (3) emphasize the downsides of climate policies; or (4) surrender to climate change. These discourses are distinct from climate denialism, climate-impact scepticism and ad hominem attacks, but are often used in combination to erode public and political support for climate policies. A deeper investigation of climate delay discourses is necessary in order to understand their prevalence and to develop inoculation strategies that protect the public from their intended effects. Our typology enables scientists, climate advocates and policymakers to recognize and counter these arguments when they are used. We urge all proponents of climate action to address these common misrepresentations of the climate crisis and to better communicate the dramatic pace of global warming, the gravity of its impacts and the possibility of effective and just mitigation policies. Social media summary: Discourses of climate delay: redirect responsibility, push non-transformative solutions, emphasize downsides, surrender. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Cambridge University Press.