Why we need airtravel for an accurate weather forecast
Flying is bad for the climate – this is an uncontested fact. However, air traffic is necessary for weather forecasts, as airplanes send live data to weather stations. COVID-19 has caused a massive decline in air travel, hereby affecting the quality of weather forecasts.
Let’s focus on the short-term benefits of long-term climate protection!
A new study by Samset et al. (2020) in Nature Communcations finds that even under strong and sustained mitigation efforts, it will take the climate system until mid-century to demonstrate a discernible cooling response. Unfortunately, we must accept and live with the frustrating fact that the global climate system is a rather gigantic tanker ship […]
Climate and COVID: The structure of two crises
A common explanation for delayed mitigation action concerning the climate crisis cites the fact that the response of climate policies is only visible on a decadal timespan – thereby affecting neither quarterly profits nor parliamentary terms. COVID19 on the other hand only has a knowledge delay of up to 2 weeks, before infection events reveal […]
A Short Personal Guide to Climate Change Conversations
As natural scientists, we hopefully learn multiple concepts about uncertainty throughout our education and research, and, at some point, the time will come when we need to put them into practice. This post comes from the necessity of a first approach to assemble some of the multiple guidelines and recommendations that we receive regarding climate […]
Ein Bild und tausend Worte: Wie framen deutsche Online-Medien das Thema Ernährung?
Fortsetzung von “Like this, eat that: Warum wir essen, was wir in den Medien sehen” Um besser zu verstehen, wie Online-Medien die alltäglichen Entscheidungen von Konsumenten und Medienrezipienten für eine bestimmte Ernährung beeinflussen, spielt die Art und Weise, wie Online-Medien das Thema Ernährung in ihren Beiträgen multimodal framen, eine entscheidende Rolle. Dabei wirken Bilder und Texte zusammen. […]
Warum das Zwei-Grad-Ziel ein (Kommunikations-) Problem ist
In seinem Kommentar zur Klimapolitik hat sich der Innenpolitik-Chef der FAZ kürzlich schwer vertippt: Er schreibt, es gäbe „die Verpflichtung, bis 2050 die Erwärmung deutlich unter zwei Grad zu senken“. Dabei ist es natürlich so, dass sich die Zwei-Grad-Grenze, so wie sie die Staatengemeinschaft 2015 in Paris beschlossen hat, auf das Jahr 2100 bezieht. Fehler […]
Public opinion at a tipping point – Germany’s path to engaging with climate protection
As a follow-up on our Nature Climate Change study (Brüggemann et al. 2017) called “The appeasement effect of a United Nations climate summit on the German public”, we have now published a working paper tracing changes in public attitudes and behavioral intentions over a longer period of time. The paper compares data from our 2015, […]
Is the Corona Crisis good or bad for the climate?
A few days ago, at the end of March, it snowed! Having never experienced snow this late in Hamburg and with the knowledge that 2019 was the second warmest year on record after 2016, my first thought was: this must be the direct cooling effect due to the COVID-19 induced industrial shutdown. I felt a […]
Like this, eat that: Warum wir essen, was wir in den Medien sehen
Der Klimawandel und seine daraus entstehenden Folgen werden momentan intensiv diskutiert. Und unsere Ernährung spielt für die zukünftige Entwicklung eine nicht unerhebliche Rolle. Schon bald werden etwa 10 Billionen Menschen auf der Erde leben (UN World Population Prospects, 2019), die alle ernährt werden müssen. Besonders der Bedarf – oder eher der Wunsch – nach Fleischprodukten […]
What would you miss the most?
Interactive visual arts project on climate change consequences During my research stay in Stellenbosch, South Africa, I came across an interesting arts project on climate change, which was installed during the cultural festival “Woordfees”. A note on the wall invites onlookers to participate: to illustrate or write about what or who they would miss the […]