Human-Climate Dynamics in the Anthropocene: The Connection Between Climate Extremes and Social Unrest | CAS Inquire

CAS MarComm Author

11/08/2022 Added

27 Plays

Description

Regina Werum of the Department of Sociology gave this talk on Nov. 1 for CAS Inquire.

Searchable Transcript

Search:

[00:00:03.000]Good evening. I'm Dr.
[00:00:04.680]Taylor Livingston,
[00:00:05.680]the director of the College of Arts and Sciences Inquire Program.
[00:00:09.280]Thank you all for coming tonight.
[00:00:10.720]In-person and via Zoom to this semester's final installment of this year's Inquire
[00:00:16.840]themed series, Searching for Common Ground in an Increasingly Polarized World.
[00:00:22.200]The Inquire program, structured around these lectures
[00:00:25.280]allows students, faculty, staff and the wider public
[00:00:29.320]the opportunity to investigate how we as individuals
[00:00:33.000]and as a society understand social phenomena.
[00:00:37.840]Additionally, it creates opportunity to learn about the fascinating research
[00:00:42.520]conducted by faculty members in the College of Arts and Sciences
[00:00:46.800]and enable students to see the various disciplinary perspectives
[00:00:51.880]on the study of a topic and as well as the necessary multi
[00:00:57.120]trends and interdisciplinarity that is required
[00:01:01.680]to understand human thoughts, beliefs, actions.
[00:01:06.720]Tonight's lecture Human Climate Dynamics in the Anthropocene
[00:01:10.560]The Connection Between Climate Extremes and Social Unrest by Dr.
[00:01:14.320]Regina Werum, professor of sociology, explores the unintended consequences
[00:01:19.480]of social unrest resulting from global climate change .
[00:01:23.320]Dr. Werum scholarly interests
[00:01:25.080]center on the causes and consequences of social inequities.
[00:01:29.680]Her research has been supported by numerous prestigious organizations,
[00:01:34.280]including the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Defense,
[00:01:38.800]the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Kathryn
[00:01:42.160]and John D MacArthur Foundation.
[00:01:45.040]She previously served as an associate vice chancellor for research at UNL
[00:01:49.480]and was a program director for the National Science Foundation.
[00:01:53.480]After her lecture, Dr.
[00:01:55.120]Werum will take questions from the audience.
[00:01:57.240]So Ethan will circulate from the mike.
[00:02:00.040]If you're in person and you have a question, just raise your hand.
[00:02:02.920]If you are via Zoom, just put your questions in the Q&A
[00:02:07.480]and I'll ask them on your behalf.
[00:02:09.640]So please join me in welcoming Dr. Werum.
[00:02:18.200]Good morning. Good evening, everyone.
[00:02:23.960]I'd like to first of all, thank the College of Arts and Sciences
[00:02:27.560]and the university for inviting me to give this public lecture.
[00:02:30.760]Thank you to everyone who has made it possible.
[00:02:33.320]Starting, of course, with the...
[00:02:35.280]Dr. Livingston, and the college's tech admin and marketing staff.
[00:02:43.320]Boundless gratitude, first of all, goes to my colleagues Dr.
[00:02:46.760]Sean Radford, my research assistants, Daniel Shafer,
[00:02:50.320]and of course, my computer and climate science collaborators, Dr.
[00:02:54.080]Pais Joshi, Amal.
[00:02:55.440]And so who've allowed me to bounce
[00:02:57.240]off these ideas long before they congealed into this talk.
[00:03:00.960]This is an unusual context for me.
[00:03:03.440]I'm standing in a sparsely populated.
[00:03:07.240]Cavernous auditorium, and I can't see or read my audience.
[00:03:11.560]You know, students know that my lectures tend to be super interactive.
[00:03:15.800]So as a teacher, this is super awkward, right?
[00:03:19.200]So to make it less so, I'm going to make several assumptions
[00:03:21.720]about my seen and unseen audience.
[00:03:25.120]I assume that curiosity moves you.
[00:03:28.360]Why else would you attend an evening lecture of your own volition?
[00:03:32.480]I assume that you take
[00:03:33.840]science data evidence seriously.
[00:03:37.880]So let's geek out.
[00:03:40.480]I assume that you have a little patience for false dichotomy.
[00:03:43.720]It's like science versus faith or science versus politics.
[00:03:47.920]We can handle complexity.
[00:03:50.640]And you're willing to hear me out and then ask tough questions during the Q&A.
[00:03:55.000]Don't be surprised, though, if my answer is I don't know.
[00:03:57.640]What do you think and how do you know that?
[00:04:01.680]Today's Cars Crier Lecture has a title that contains not just one
[00:04:05.520]but two red button issues climate change and social unrest.
[00:04:11.440]Following my colleague, Dr.
[00:04:12.680]Julie Slick's advice. Let's lean in.
[00:04:16.440]If we have a cross section of Nebraskans here tonight,
[00:04:20.200]chances are some of you are convinced that climate change is not real.
[00:04:25.640]Others are convinced it's real,
[00:04:27.040]but remain skeptical about the role of humans in causing it.
[00:04:31.800]And yet others consider the connection between
[00:04:34.640]human activity and climate change totally obvious.
[00:04:38.520]Either way, you're likely to invoke a mix of personal experiences,
[00:04:42.040]perceptions and common sense.
[00:04:44.040]So what's the point of attending this lecture?
[00:04:47.920]Well, one of the contributions all scientists provide is that we make
[00:04:51.880]the invisible visible
[00:04:55.080]by revealing hidden layers, connections and dynamics.
[00:04:58.360]And in the process, we often end up challenging common sense.
[00:05:01.760]I do hope to do some of that tonight.
[00:05:05.120]Just to be clear, this is not a lecture on the environmental movement,
[00:05:08.640]nor on protests specifically associated with it.
[00:05:12.920]Instead, today's focus will be on how climate change
[00:05:15.600]and the extremes associated with it directly and indirectly affect protests.
[00:05:20.360]It's my goal to show you the benefits of integrating studies and evidence
[00:05:24.920]from multiple scientific fields to answer big questions along the way.
[00:05:29.320]You'll also learn or revisit some foundational scientific concepts. Ready?
[00:05:36.400]All right. So scientists always start
[00:05:38.840]with concepts and definitions before they get into data.
[00:05:41.920]You already saw that with the octopus type sports establishment,
[00:05:45.080]and I am no different.
[00:05:50.160]That was Mr. Sleight already. Look at me.
[00:05:53.280]All right, so let's start with the easy thing.
[00:05:55.000]What's the Anthropocene?
[00:05:56.680]It's commonly defined as the period during which human activity has been
[00:06:00.440]the dominant influence on Earth's climate and the environment.
[00:06:04.160]Some date the start of that era
[00:06:06.200]to the atomic or post-World War Two era, when evidence of human
[00:06:09.920]caused climate change was first hypothesized and tracked by scientists.
[00:06:14.560]Others say at the start of this era, with the industrial revolution
[00:06:18.120]in the mid 17th, early 1800s.
[00:06:21.360]Either way, we're in the middle of it.
[00:06:25.680]So how do we define climate and climate extremes?
[00:06:32.080]For this purpose.
[00:06:32.800]I conceptualize climate in terms of temperatures and moisture
[00:06:37.120]or water, including what I call too much, too little and the wrong kind.
[00:06:42.680]I use the term climate extremes to refer to phenomena that indicate
[00:06:48.080]highly unusual events and trends.
[00:06:52.640]Let me show you some examples of events. First.
[00:06:58.800]Disastrous events like bombs, cyclones, wildfires, floods, droughts.
[00:07:03.400]And yes, it's possible for areas to experience opposite
[00:07:07.200]precipitation or temperature extremes in short order.
[00:07:10.320]Some call it weather whiplash.
[00:07:12.320]The one two punch associated with droughts followed by floods
[00:07:16.160]around the world this past summer is a perfect example of it.
[00:07:19.360]From Kentucky to province in Pakistan.
[00:07:24.720]Climate extremes can also refer to historically, historically
[00:07:29.280]abnormal trends as shown in these graphs.
[00:07:32.760]Rising temperatures in the past century.
[00:07:35.800]On your left, rising rainfall and sea water levels
[00:07:41.200]ever more frequent and more intense storms
[00:07:44.240]or wildfire, longer heatwaves.
[00:07:48.440]So we're talking about both events and trends.
[00:07:52.840]Finally, how do we define social unrest?
[00:07:56.360]This matters because our definition affects
[00:07:58.520]whether we think of protests and unrest as a sign of a vibrant democracy
[00:08:03.840]or as a sign of deep dysfunctionality and human misery.
[00:08:08.040]Let's start with protests, because they are generally
[00:08:11.120]the most common form of social unrest.
[00:08:14.560]Scientists define protest as a type of organized collective action
[00:08:20.120]that uses a recognized set of tactics.
[00:08:23.880]In pursuit of a common goal.
[00:08:26.640]And often targets either the government or elites, however defined.
[00:08:31.040]Protests are often, but not always, embedded in social movements,
[00:08:35.640]and as such are sustained.
[00:08:38.200]That means they tend to diffuse geographically and reoccur over
[00:08:41.920]some period. Protests are overwhelmingly nonviolent.
[00:08:48.440]When they do involve violent or destructive acts
[00:08:51.480]perpetrated by protesters, they're called riots.
[00:08:54.760]Those are quite recent.
[00:08:57.640]But decades of research show that all things
[00:08:59.520]equal, riots are far more likely to receive media coverage,
[00:09:03.680]which then contributes to public misunderstandings about protests
[00:09:07.880]and about social unrest at large.
[00:09:11.920]When these events involve violence initiated.
[00:09:17.320]By law enforcement or other government entities
[00:09:20.240]like the pictures on your right here.
[00:09:23.280]There still are protests even, and especially if they occur
[00:09:27.400]in politically repressive or autocratic contexts.
[00:09:30.840]Just think of the recent protests in Iran or Russia.
[00:09:35.800]So are protests a good sign or a bad sign?
[00:09:41.320]Normally we'd have a discussion and at the end of it would say it depends.
[00:09:45.280]Excellent answer. Like to social scientists.
[00:09:48.000]Maybe the more helpful question would be to ask under
[00:09:51.400]which conditions are protests a good sign, positive sign, negative signs?
[00:09:57.600]Social scientists can tell us a lot about that.
[00:10:00.040]Mind you, back when our field was in its infancy,
[00:10:02.760]it was quite common to view protests as a sign of individual
[00:10:06.600]pathology, criminality, irrationality, or to view protests as
[00:10:12.120]spontaneous eruptions of uncontrolled collective
[00:10:15.760]rage due to longstanding, real or perceived grievances.
[00:10:19.840]But for almost a century now, social scientists have tried to explain
[00:10:23.960]to the public that protests are potentially a positive sign.
[00:10:27.960]Protest followed similar
[00:10:29.000]patterns and are more likely to occur under certain conditions.
[00:10:32.120]In fact, it's become a truism to point out that population density urban
[00:10:37.080]the city is a driving factor behind levels of unrest broadly defined.
[00:10:43.080]And since the 1960s, we've also learned a lot
[00:10:46.280]about additional conditions that shape protests.
[00:10:50.440]These include political the political environment.
[00:10:53.320]How free and democratic is your society?
[00:10:57.080]How trusted are your institutions?
[00:10:59.600]Just think at the track Dr.
[00:11:01.040]Chris Moore gave last month.
[00:11:03.440]Economic conditions, unemployment, inflation, quality of life issues.
[00:11:08.200]Access to food. Water.
[00:11:10.520]Housing. Public safety. Health.
[00:11:14.080]Since then the sixties, generations
[00:11:16.920]of social scientists have described the so-called inverted yield curve.
[00:11:21.760]It's been used to explain many forms of unrest and appears
[00:11:25.760]particularly appropriate to explain protests.
[00:11:29.600]So what I'm showing you here is a recent example of
[00:11:32.320]this inverted yield curve, a study done by
[00:11:37.400]Meridian, Texas,
[00:11:38.960]and it shows women's protests around the world
[00:11:42.480]between 1991 and 2009.
[00:11:46.000]And it shows needs to be related
[00:11:48.640]to a set of political dynamics that I would explain.
[00:11:51.480]Essentially, this inverted curve means that protests are most likely
[00:11:57.120]to occur under two conditions.
[00:11:58.880]First one, in societies that are neither
[00:12:02.800]entirely totally democratic and inclusive,
[00:12:06.160]because if they are, there's arguably little reason to protest,
[00:12:10.280]nor are they repressive or autocratic,
[00:12:13.960]in which case the government tends to repress them.
[00:12:18.320]This means that at least in societies with functioning governments
[00:12:21.280]that foster political participation, protests are generally a good sign.
[00:12:26.480]Much of our research has focused on such situations,
[00:12:29.840]and this fits protest waves in many countries.
[00:12:33.440]The second set of conditions is that protests are more likely whenever
[00:12:36.840]societies experience drastic change or volatility in political conditions.
[00:12:42.080]In that case, protest can be a positive or a negative sign.
[00:12:46.200]A lot of research has focused on such situations to think
[00:12:50.600]South Africa anti-apartheid protests in the 1970s.
[00:12:55.800]From autocratic to becoming more democratic
[00:12:58.520]and more recent protest waves around housing shortages
[00:13:01.120]and government corruption, erosion of democratic principles.
[00:13:05.400]Think Arab Spring and its ripple effects in the 20 tens or the protests
[00:13:09.600]in Hong Kong since 2019.
[00:13:13.720]So what do we know about.
[00:13:17.680]Global and regional trends regarding protests in recent decades.
[00:13:22.080]This is just one example.
[00:13:24.880]This is a screenshot basically from a recent report
[00:13:29.440]issued by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in you.
[00:13:32.760]They've been following protest trends since the 1960s themselves.
[00:13:36.600]And this is from their most recent report.
[00:13:38.680]They analyzed media reports of protests using a database called Gedo.
[00:13:43.560]I can explain later what that stands for.
[00:13:45.520]The summary slide here includes all sorts of protests around the world
[00:13:49.760]classified by region or continent.
[00:13:53.120]And these protests include issues seemingly unrelated to climate change,
[00:13:57.680]human rights for minorities, women, the poor,
[00:14:00.920]for housing, for food, for water, for democracy and against corruption.
[00:14:06.280]And as you can see, there is a clear upward trend
[00:14:09.600]in the number of protests in the past two decades.
[00:14:14.000]So what does climate
[00:14:15.640]have to do with any of this?
[00:14:19.360]What you see here are two sets of slides.
[00:14:21.600]On the left, you see precipitation extremes.
[00:14:24.280]Globally, the first century.
[00:14:26.000]Perhaps. Century
[00:14:30.960]and heatwaves on the right for the US specifically.
[00:14:33.840]Again, these are just examples.
[00:14:36.280]This is a slide from the No and EPA website.
[00:14:39.400]It illustrates what we know about precipitation trends and heatwaves
[00:14:42.400]based on satellite and historical data over the past century.
[00:14:47.320]On the left here, the world as a whole has been getting
[00:14:51.440]whether there have been have been fewer dry years.
[00:14:56.040]But if dry, extremely dry and more wet years
[00:15:00.920]and if so, extremely wet in recent decades.
[00:15:05.640]And if you look at the charts on the right, in the US alone,
[00:15:08.320]heatwaves are becoming both more frequent and longer and more intense.
[00:15:15.880]It's no longer controversial to suggest that climate extremes
[00:15:20.040]and the long term trends associated with it
[00:15:22.800]are related to social unrest, especially conflict over water.
[00:15:26.880]Like I said, too much for the wrong kind
[00:15:28.960]have been associated with political instability and protests.
[00:15:32.680]For instance, sustained droughts in Western Asia from Iran over Syria
[00:15:36.480]to Lebanon, in Eastern Africa, from Sudan and Ethiopia to Yemen.
[00:15:42.360]They've all been linked to political instability,
[00:15:44.440]even civil and international wars.
[00:15:47.440]Elsewhere, rising sea water levels have been linked to protests like
[00:15:50.920]consolidation, and catastrophic floods caused by heavy
[00:15:54.760]or unusual precipitation have been linked to unrest in Asia.
[00:15:58.800]Am I just picking random anecdotes here from the news
[00:16:02.400]or are there real connections?
[00:16:04.240]Perhaps these climate and unrest events are simply correlated,
[00:16:09.240]which means they occur around the same time,
[00:16:11.800]but maybe not even in the same context.
[00:16:15.080]Worse yet, maybe these links are just spurious.
[00:16:17.920]That's a term we use when two phenomena seem to covariate,
[00:16:22.040]but really a third causal factor explains the link.
[00:16:24.800]A common example
[00:16:25.640]we give is let's say you notice that ice cream sales are up in the summer.
[00:16:29.840]So on murder rate.
[00:16:32.560]They're positively correlated.
[00:16:35.000]To argue that more people are buying more ice cream, causes
[00:16:37.720]more murders is spurious.
[00:16:39.760]There is a likely third factor at play here, which is that people are out
[00:16:43.320]and about interacting with others in the summer,
[00:16:45.400]but that increases the potential for interpersonal conflict.
[00:16:48.640]But I digress. How do we know this link is not spurious?
[00:16:52.360]Well, evidence is the best defense, including
[00:16:55.680]against charges that we're just cherry picking data and news coverage.
[00:16:59.160]As scientists, we rely on systematic data analysis,
[00:17:02.360]including analysis conducted by other experts.
[00:17:05.640]We then try to replicate those, both literally
[00:17:08.960]and using other types of data and methods.
[00:17:11.120]You might have heard folks describe this process as triangulation.
[00:17:16.320]It helps us assess the consistency of our findings
[00:17:20.040]and build confidence in how we interpret them.
[00:17:23.720]So let me talk a bit about research other scientists have done on the connection
[00:17:27.000]between climate conditions and unrest.
[00:17:28.680]And then I'll give you a glimpse into the research
[00:17:30.400]my colleagues and I have been doing.
[00:17:34.880]Not surprisingly.
[00:17:37.160]I think. Scientists are hotly debating whether there are links between
[00:17:42.200]climate and unrest is directly or indirectly links.
[00:17:44.960]But even scientists like Sheppard, who are reluctant to connect the dots
[00:17:48.680]in ways that suggest a direct link between climate and protest or unrest
[00:17:52.960]have no qualms whatsoever seeing the complex
[00:17:55.920]and indirect ways in which climate conditions are related to unrest .
[00:17:59.320]That's why I find the conceptual models so useful.
[00:18:02.120]This model identifies
[00:18:03.400]four distinct systems that interact with one another's climate
[00:18:07.480]natural resources, human security and social stability.
[00:18:11.560]It's a concise visual that captures many studies
[00:18:14.800]that routinely describe parts of this complex process.
[00:18:19.360]Our own team doesn't wade into the direct versus indirect effects debate,
[00:18:23.240]but we do test whether actual temperatures and precipitation levels,
[00:18:28.280]as well as anomalies in terms of long term
[00:18:30.880]trends, have a net impact on protests.
[00:18:34.280]So let me turn to excellent research on the net impact climate conditions
[00:18:38.920]have on unrest, as indicated by the links between the blue and the pink here.
[00:18:43.840]There's some research that has focused on long term historical trends.
[00:18:48.800]Other work has highlighted case studies.
[00:18:51.600]This includes changes in temperature.
[00:18:53.760]Those are the best documented.
[00:18:55.520]They have been linked to major social upheaval
[00:18:58.400]even before the Anthropocene in China more than a thousand years ago
[00:19:03.000]and repeatedly in the eastern Mediterranean over the past 6000 years,
[00:19:07.920]changing temperatures, affected societies even when climate conditions
[00:19:12.160]changed regionally. Slowly.
[00:19:16.360]And affected a relatively small number of people.
[00:19:20.360]Think about what it means when temperatures change globally
[00:19:23.720]quickly and affect 8 billion people.
[00:19:29.480]Changes in water supplies are the other big issue.
[00:19:31.760]They've also been linked to rare events
[00:19:33.400]like the decline of ancient empires and civilizations from Mesopotamia
[00:19:37.800]over the Arabian Peninsula, along the Nile River
[00:19:40.480]in pre-Columbian, South America, and even in the southwestern United States.
[00:19:44.440]In contemporary times, natural disasters, including both droughts and floods,
[00:19:50.320]have been associated with armed conflicts in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
[00:19:54.360]Many studies, including healthy adults, work that was published in Pinas,
[00:19:58.440]have linked the increase in climate volatility,
[00:20:02.080]especially rising temperatures and droughts to the events
[00:20:05.440]we all know as Arab Spring and the subsequent war in Syria.
[00:20:12.400]To give you another and
[00:20:13.880]another example, a meta analysis by Sandberg and McGill published in
[00:20:17.520]Science also confirms a direct, positive causal link between climate conditions
[00:20:23.400]and a broad range of conflict, from interpersonal to political.
[00:20:28.200]Based on 60 primary studies.
[00:20:30.400]From that looked at both precipitation and temperature
[00:20:33.840]effects, Sam and colleagues found that deviation.
[00:20:36.840]So not just actual levels but deviations from average temperatures
[00:20:41.160]and precipitate precipitation levels have long been associated with an increase
[00:20:45.680]in the risk of conflicts and unrest across the world.
[00:20:49.840]That could be clear.
[00:20:50.400]Most empirical studies have focused on the impacts of droughts
[00:20:53.800]or extreme dryness and violent unrest.
[00:20:58.040]So when researchers first started finding that droughts are linked
[00:21:01.560]to common forms of unrest like protests.
[00:21:05.640]It was viewed as highly suspicious.
[00:21:07.800]Can we extrapolate radical assertion, at least outside of the social sciences? But.
[00:21:14.520]Especially since the Arab Spring.
[00:21:16.280]Evidence showing the direct and prompt link between
[00:21:19.000]droughts and protests has become widely accepted
[00:21:22.160]and reported so widely that in both policy and scientific circles,
[00:21:26.120]we've gone from considering it a highly questionable assertion
[00:21:29.920]to the new common sense in just about two decades.
[00:21:34.480]Essentially the argument goes as follows local droughts.
[00:21:38.240]Caused food crops to fail.
[00:21:40.360]Rising commodity prices.
[00:21:42.160]Supply chain issues. Food insecurity.
[00:21:45.320]Economic impact.
[00:21:47.440]Aggravates humanitarian conditions, triggers human displacement,
[00:21:50.720]people protest or the timeline of this domino effect varies.
[00:21:55.080]It's much shorter in countries less able to stockpile food
[00:21:58.880]and those dependent on importing staples that's already arid areas
[00:22:03.760]like the Middle East and Northern Africa are likely to experience droughts
[00:22:07.560]and protests in pretty short order.
[00:22:10.640]Sounds familiar.
[00:22:12.000]Intuitive, right? We've always known this, right?
[00:22:16.280]Except we haven't.
[00:22:19.080]So let me pause here to give this a chance to sink in.
[00:22:22.640]The ultimate irony of doing scientific research
[00:22:25.040]is that at first, both scientists and their insights are often
[00:22:29.120]severely questioned and attacked and dismissed as radical.
[00:22:33.920]But then eventually, when scientific insights become common sense,
[00:22:38.200]science and scientists are questions attacked and dismissed as irrelevant.
[00:22:43.320]Quite the occupational hazard.
[00:22:46.160]But this just motivates us to work even harder
[00:22:48.920]to push scientific insights even further.
[00:22:51.200]And in the process, we frequently reexamine our own long
[00:22:54.640]held assumptions, including those about the role of grievances
[00:22:57.800]in shaping protests everywhere, not just in poor countries.
[00:23:01.720]Remember, we had all but jettisoned that argument in the 6070s.
[00:23:07.120]To summarize, over the last 10 minutes or so, I have told you about research
[00:23:11.200]conducted by others, and I scripted a bit from talking specifically about protests
[00:23:15.720]as the most common form of unrest for a broader variety of events,
[00:23:20.520]including relatively rare ones like civil wars and international conflicts.
[00:23:24.840]In the process, I've cited the work of climate scientists, economists,
[00:23:28.920]anthropologists, archeologists, political scientists, sociologists.
[00:23:33.920]It's time to showcase the work of our team,
[00:23:36.280]which involves faculty from Grinnell and the Citadel.
[00:23:40.320]We work together to integrate data sources
[00:23:43.200]and methods of analysis for which each of our disciplines is well known.
[00:23:47.400]The goal is to try and answer big questions that none of our fields
[00:23:50.600]individually would be able to answer by itself.
[00:23:54.440]That requires a big data approach.
[00:23:57.200]When I see some examples. Yes. All right.
[00:24:03.560]Okay. So general background,
[00:24:05.840]we've been examining the links between climate extremes and protest
[00:24:09.120]in three contiguous countries Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.
[00:24:14.400]We chose these three countries because they vary on key known causes of protest,
[00:24:20.360]economic, political, demographic, the stuff social scientists do.
[00:24:24.320]And they also vary in terms of the levels of protest
[00:24:27.320]over time and in their exposure to specific parts of climate extremes.
[00:24:31.600]So they vary on all the things that are interesting and curious to us.
[00:24:36.000]In some of our analysis,
[00:24:37.440]we look at long term trends from the 1990s onward.
[00:24:41.320]In other analysis, we compare patterns locally, regionally, cross sectional.
[00:24:45.840]That's this triangulation.
[00:24:47.200]Let's try it a different way and see if the story stands.
[00:24:50.520]Some of our analysis happened at a really high aggregate levels.
[00:24:53.480]We use annual data and country level data
[00:24:56.560]and others are really what we call granular.
[00:24:59.360]So shorter time segments and much smaller geospatial units.
[00:25:04.560]Unlike most unlike most other research teams, we don't just focus on droughts.
[00:25:10.400]So far, relatively few studies have considered
[00:25:12.720]considered how wet conditions or heavy precipitation nevermind
[00:25:17.240]multiple forms of climate extremes might shape unrest.
[00:25:21.440]So to address this issue directly.
[00:25:23.760]Our team focuses on the impact of abnormal temperatures.
[00:25:29.800]Both droughts and wet conditions in this region.
[00:25:34.960]So if you look at these two slides here.
[00:25:40.240]You see two relatively simple figures with three lines each.
[00:25:44.160]These two figures show that progress increased in this time
[00:25:47.320]frame and region of the world, just as they did globally.
[00:25:51.040]The trends we observed for these three countries are based on the UN,
[00:25:55.000]an event database called I cuz I can tell you about that.
[00:25:59.920]It mirrors the protest data reported globally by the Center
[00:26:02.800]for Strategic and International Studies that showed you a minute ago
[00:26:07.480]that used an event database called Gedo. Okay.
[00:26:10.560]So again, different database, same findings.
[00:26:14.360]On the left, you see actual protest levels.
[00:26:18.160]And of course, you see more protests occur in India.
[00:26:21.280]That's the line on the top, orange or reddish.
[00:26:24.160]India has more than eight times the population of Bangladesh and six times
[00:26:27.280]the population of Pakistan. Of course, there's more protests.
[00:26:30.840]Pakistan has one and half times the protests,
[00:26:33.600]the population of Bangladesh, but almost six times the landmass.
[00:26:37.200]So you see that Bangladesh appears to be at the bottom here in
[00:26:40.400]terms of numbers of protests.
[00:26:43.160]This great graph on the left also shows that there was a protest
[00:26:46.240]wave between 2003 and 2009 that affected all three countries
[00:26:50.960]and then a distinct trajectory in protest levels in India starting in 2013,
[00:26:56.040]right before Prime Minister Modi's first election.
[00:27:00.200]However. When you adjust.
[00:27:04.960]The graph by population size.
[00:27:07.360]And you look instead of looking at protest levels, you look at protest rates.
[00:27:11.200]That's the figure on your right.
[00:27:13.640]You'll see that Bangladesh green.
[00:27:16.920]The smallest country in both population
[00:27:19.240]and area has experienced a disproportionate number of protest.
[00:27:26.160]Clearly timing. Location and political conditions matter.
[00:27:31.000]The question arises, are protests have trends here related to climate extremes?
[00:27:37.560]So I'm going to take an excursion into the geeky part here.
[00:27:43.080]Mostly we use what we call unobtrusive data
[00:27:45.480]from many different sources to answer our research question.
[00:27:48.840]Which specific data source we use and integrate
[00:27:52.120]depends on the type and scope and level of analysis we conduct.
[00:27:55.640]But just imagine combining machine
[00:27:58.560]coded protest data from the Integrated Crisis early
[00:28:01.880]warning systems like yours, courtesy of our computer science team
[00:28:06.560]with satellite data on precipitation trends from Nelson Noah
[00:28:11.680]and satellite data on temperature trends from the US Department
[00:28:15.040]of Energy and satellite data
[00:28:17.280]on nighttime light pollution from the US Department of Defense.
[00:28:21.000]All three Courtesy of our climate science team.
[00:28:25.400]Plus a bunch of economic,
[00:28:26.600]political, demographic data from standard social science sources.
[00:28:29.680]Happy to discuss those later.
[00:28:31.360]Think World Bank, United Nations National Governments.
[00:28:35.680]I'm going to focus on one specific paper
[00:28:37.720]where we examined protests from 1995 to 2013.
[00:28:41.920]Again, I can explain later why those 19 years.
[00:28:44.520]We start with a pretty long period
[00:28:46.200]in which we count protests and your number of protests.
[00:28:49.560]But pretty strict parameters on explaining why those protests happened,
[00:28:53.560]where they happened.
[00:28:56.280]The IQ database already geo codes, media reported protests.
[00:29:00.560]We know where they happened.
[00:29:02.760]We aggregated them to a relatively small scale geospatial unit.
[00:29:06.800]We call them pixels.
[00:29:07.920]They're all the same size and shape, sort of like a county, but smaller.
[00:29:12.720]And we matched those that information for IQ type of protest data
[00:29:17.160]with satellite and other data sources for our predictive variables.
[00:29:22.440]Then we ran countless quantitative analysis.
[00:29:24.760]I won't bore you with a formula for negative binomial regressions.
[00:29:28.440]We only do that between eight and five.
[00:29:30.920]These analysis take into account a whole bunch of alternative
[00:29:34.920]potential causes of protest that other researchers have already
[00:29:39.720]identified linked to demographics, politics, economics.
[00:29:44.160]What we wanted to know was two climate abnormalities
[00:29:48.560]and extremes affect protests even after we adjust for other potential factors.
[00:29:54.080]Is there a net effect?
[00:29:55.440]Can we find a link between the blue and the pink boxes in Chevron's model?
[00:30:01.800]Basic first. We found one out of control variables that even at this
[00:30:07.880]very granular geospatial level, urbanized areas experienced more protests.
[00:30:14.160]And we found that pictures in Bangladesh continue to stand out in terms of protest
[00:30:18.920]rates far higher than their neighbors in India and Pakistan,
[00:30:22.760]which we linked to known patterns affecting failing autocratic states.
[00:30:27.160]These two findings, I mean, two earlier I called them a truism.
[00:30:31.000]Everybody knows that.
[00:30:33.200]But the fact that these findings confirm prior research
[00:30:36.560]using very different data, sources and methods gives us confidence
[00:30:40.880]in our other, more innovative and perhaps provocative results.
[00:30:50.280]Our analysis show that net of these other factors,
[00:30:53.840]abnormal climate conditions shape the likelihood.
[00:30:58.560]That protest will occur, and they do so in unexpected ways.
[00:31:02.840]Because other researchers have already focused on describe
[00:31:06.960]the effects of temperatures on protest.
[00:31:09.240]Tonight I will focus on the role of abnormal precipitation
[00:31:12.560]trends as one example.
[00:31:15.640]What you're looking at here is a seemingly simple graph with two curves.
[00:31:22.200]They tell you about the relationship
[00:31:23.920]between X and Y on the x axis,
[00:31:28.560]but flat here you see the so-called standardized precipitation index.
[00:31:34.520]I can explain that if you'd like, but essentially it means that it measures
[00:31:38.960]how apparently dry from zero in the middle to minus three
[00:31:44.840]or abnormally wet from zero to plus three.
[00:31:50.520]Any given year was for any given pixel.
[00:31:55.120]The index is based on how abnormal the precipitation
[00:31:58.360]that year is compared to the past 40 years.
[00:32:02.520]Now, mind you, anything outside of the minus two plus two range is
[00:32:06.080]highly, extremely rare.
[00:32:07.720]Like once or twice in central.
[00:32:10.280]The Y axis shows you the likelihood that at least one protest
[00:32:14.760]will occur in a given year in period a given green pixel.
[00:32:19.200]The blue line at the bottom, it curves downwards.
[00:32:22.480]By now, it should remind you of an inverted yield curve, though pretty flat.
[00:32:26.600]This blue curve tells you about the contemporaneous
[00:32:30.800]same year link between abnormal precipitation and protests.
[00:32:34.040]At first glance, it looks like at either end of the extreme, protests are less
[00:32:37.960]likely, both when it's much drier than normal and much wetter than normal.
[00:32:43.920]The likelihood of protests is lower.
[00:32:46.560]Hmm. Well, I guess that could make intuitive sense.
[00:32:51.320]People aren't used to that.
[00:32:52.240]Whether they don't like it, they don't attend protests.
[00:32:54.760]In the story, it's funny
[00:32:56.520]how everything seems like common sense once you know it, right?
[00:33:00.000]Because we could have just as easily hypothesize that people are more likely
[00:33:03.160]to protest when it's too dry or too wet.
[00:33:06.640]Protests might be higher because people recognize historically
[00:33:09.240]abnormal precipitation patterns or because the abnormal weather
[00:33:12.520]has affected the prices or the quality of life, as I said.
[00:33:15.880]But if you think about it, it can take a while for those downstream
[00:33:19.720]dynamics to unfold and to see that you need to look at the orange line.
[00:33:27.160]The Orange Line curves upward.
[00:33:28.760]It's what we call a classic J or U curve.
[00:33:31.840]It tells you about the link between abnormal precipitation too dry
[00:33:36.400]to wet with a three year lag.
[00:33:40.200]So the link between abnormal precipitation
[00:33:42.560]in one year and protests three years later.
[00:33:49.040]In the same place.
[00:33:52.120]Again controlling for other known factors.
[00:33:56.160]You. What you see is that even to the extreme,
[00:33:58.400]protests are actually more likely both when and where.
[00:34:01.520]It's much drier than normal,
[00:34:02.720]and especially when and where it's much wetter than normal.
[00:34:07.120]The likelihood of protest rises three years down the road.
[00:34:11.960]How do you explain that?
[00:34:14.520]This domino effect involving extreme wetness is more pronounced
[00:34:19.120]and seems to work at a different temporal time scale
[00:34:22.320]than the instant contemporaneous seasonal connection
[00:34:26.160]between temperatures or droughts and unrest.
[00:34:29.520]I'll put it this way Usually we think of
[00:34:32.440]heatwaves and droughts as relatively short term shocks
[00:34:36.040]to the economic system correctable with a cooler or rainy season or two
[00:34:40.200]when another crop, it'll eventually rain.
[00:34:43.320]You've all heard that.
[00:34:45.000]But we have to reconceptualize extreme dryness,
[00:34:48.600]not as a temporary aberration, but as the new normal with long term
[00:34:52.040]political implications, including for protests around the world.
[00:34:55.680]We also might be well advised to think of extreme wetness, whatever the cause.
[00:35:00.600]Monsoon rains, hurricanes, bom cyclones, sea water inundation
[00:35:04.600]as long term shocks that destabilize economic and political systems.
[00:35:09.600]And that droughts, flooding doesn't just destroy a crop.
[00:35:12.960]It destroys arable land and infrastructure.
[00:35:17.560]The consequences
[00:35:19.000]of and recovery from extreme wetness are felt much longer
[00:35:22.880]and potentially later than those of temporary dry, dry spells.
[00:35:28.360]Note also that the orange line gauging the lagged effects
[00:35:32.560]of extreme precipitation.
[00:35:36.200]An address consistently runs above the blue line
[00:35:39.680]for a contemporaneous effect because we control for other underlying factors.
[00:35:44.360]This means that the contemporaneous measure leads us to underestimate
[00:35:47.960]the connection between abnormal precipitation and protests.
[00:35:52.880]The lagged variable orange is a much more appropriate way to gauge the relationship
[00:35:58.000]between precipitation extremes, both extreme dry and wet and protests .
[00:36:03.000]So to summarize, our own research shows that the link between climate extremes
[00:36:07.000]and protests isn't just about heat and droughts
[00:36:10.440]creating short term shocks to the system.
[00:36:13.800]Remember that I framed the director as too much, too little,
[00:36:16.040]and the wrong kind of water.
[00:36:17.800]While prior research had tied ongoing armed conflicts
[00:36:21.000]in Africa and the Middle East to heavy rains and floods.
[00:36:24.080]Our team's research confirms this finding for regular run of the mill
[00:36:28.000]protests in a completely different geospatial and geopolitical context.
[00:36:32.840]The more studies we do that try to replicate
[00:36:36.040]and extend our insights into these connections,
[00:36:39.840]the more confidently scientists can extrapolate from case studies
[00:36:44.280]and state that this is a phenomenon that manifests locally
[00:36:47.880]but has ramifications for communities around the world.
[00:36:51.640]By definition, when there is a time lag between of years,
[00:36:56.200]between climate calamities and rising protests, it becomes much more difficult
[00:37:01.080]to connect the dots and lay out a report to help the public visualize
[00:37:04.840]that there are links between too much water.
[00:37:08.040]I protest. But we'll do our best.
[00:37:10.720]The feedback we get provides us plenty of inspiration
[00:37:13.760]to keep inching closer to an accurate understanding
[00:37:16.920]of how specific climate extremes are linked to social unrest.
[00:37:20.640]And for me as a social scientist,
[00:37:22.600]the exciting part is that our unexpected finding this lag effect.
[00:37:27.520]Let us to revisit theories and explanations of social unrest
[00:37:31.000]that pretty much fell out of favor decades ago, at least in the US,
[00:37:35.280]but are acquiring new prominence and resonance in the Anthropocene.
[00:37:40.160]Now this almost concludes my official the official portion of my public lecture.
[00:37:44.800]While I have a captive audience, I will assert the privilege
[00:37:48.160]to actually speak beyond the data.
[00:37:51.240]You might be tempted to compartmentalize
[00:37:53.600]the research I've discussed as something that affects other people elsewhere.
[00:37:59.000]But the fallout from
[00:37:59.960]extreme dryness and wetness will and does have implications
[00:38:04.920]for both the Eastern and western United States, too.
[00:38:08.680]This is another set of slides that I have borrowed from Noah. It shows you.
[00:38:15.560]Four graphs on the bottom which use that same standardized precipitation index
[00:38:21.360]that gets that extreme wetness and dryness that I've discussed with our research.
[00:38:25.480]And it shows you that
[00:38:27.960]the Western United States is getting drier
[00:38:30.400]and the Eastern United States is getting wetter.
[00:38:33.400]They have a similar, even more sophisticated measure
[00:38:35.560]that takes evaporation into account.
[00:38:37.640]That's the four pictures on the top.
[00:38:40.880]And if you compare the pictures on the bottom with the ones at the top,
[00:38:44.200]you'll see that that more sophisticated measure shows it even more
[00:38:48.560]clearly how much the eastern and western United States are diverging.
[00:38:54.000]This slide as it comes from Noah,
[00:38:55.800]which relies on viewing notes from a monitor tool to create these maps.
[00:38:59.520]If you want to know more about the drought monitor,
[00:39:01.640]all you need to do is visit your notes website.
[00:39:05.960]These trends have policy, fiscal and practical implications.
[00:39:10.120]The increased variability and unpredictability associated
[00:39:13.240]with climate extremes will push our infrastructure
[00:39:17.040]and our current funding systems beyond the levels of stress
[00:39:20.840]they are reasonably able to withstand and recover from .
[00:39:24.880]And if we don't make changes in equities and grievances will increase.
[00:39:29.600]As well. Protests.
[00:39:31.680]This may undermine domestic political stability even further.
[00:39:35.120]Arguably, worries about polarized ideologies
[00:39:38.200]will pale in comparison to polarized realities.
[00:39:43.400]So much about polarization.
[00:39:44.760]Where's the common ground?
[00:39:46.800]In fact, recent research surveys conducted by Yale University and by Pew indicate
[00:39:51.640]that Partizan grandstanding on the political stage notwithstanding,
[00:39:55.120]the general public thinks of this as outside of Partizan polarization.
[00:39:59.960]There's considerable consensus among regular folks on multiple issues.
[00:40:05.240]Renewable energy, international efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change
[00:40:09.920]and the central role of the United States in it.
[00:40:13.000]Plus, there is a clear indication that people's personal experiences
[00:40:17.080]with climate calamities shape those views.
[00:40:20.400]So regardless of what we think causes climate and climate extremes,
[00:40:24.800]there is significant common ground in public opinion
[00:40:28.520]on the consequences of climate extremes.
[00:40:31.720]So ask yourself.
[00:40:33.600]What can you do concretely
[00:40:35.760]to minimize the unintended consequences of climate extremes?
[00:40:39.800]What will you do to optimize the chances that future protests
[00:40:43.680]are a sign of political, including rather than widening disparities?
[00:40:48.480]What will you do not just as an individual,
[00:40:50.960]but as a member of whatever profession and organizations
[00:40:55.040]that can help propel systemic improvements?
[00:40:59.640]If you work in finance or you are not producer,
[00:41:03.000]a trust technician, social worker, public official.
[00:41:06.400]Supermarket manager.
[00:41:07.720]What are you doing to facilitate meaningful innovations in how we do things
[00:41:13.600]to help humanity thrive well into the future?
[00:41:17.080]Just imagine playing a part in efforts to make protests a positive sign
[00:41:22.040]indicating a vibrant, functioning, ambitious society.
[00:41:28.240]Thank you for hearing me out and for participating tonight.
[00:41:31.000]Now it's your turn.
[00:41:32.080]How about some questions?
[00:42:12.000]Thank you, Ricky.
[00:42:12.720]That was just super interesting and I loved your whole framing.
[00:42:18.880]The one question I have is if
[00:42:21.280]if the people protesting are actually protesting about climate
[00:42:25.280]or are they protesting about other things, but they're just heightened.
[00:42:28.040]Okay, I see your answer,
[00:42:29.320]but maybe you should say for the people that can only hear you. Thank you.
[00:42:33.320]These are protests about all sorts of things,
[00:42:36.360]seemingly unrelated protests.
[00:42:40.080]We could, if we wanted to,
[00:42:44.360]in some of the databases that that code events
[00:42:47.360]that apply, for example, is another possibility.
[00:42:51.040]In addition to iTunes and digital,
[00:42:53.160]we can get content from what are these protests about?
[00:42:57.600]But then you're talking
[00:42:59.520]geeking out here, you're talking about a rare events analysis
[00:43:02.000]where we'd have to go
[00:43:02.720]to a level of analysis that would make us lose the local variability.
[00:43:06.720]And we can't really look at that and look at climate effects
[00:43:10.320]because climate effects seem to be they have an immediate local impact.
[00:43:14.160]So there's some things that are better,
[00:43:15.920]and this is why we conduct these analysis at multiple levels.
[00:43:19.400]Some things, some sectors are easier to see the roles
[00:43:22.760]they play in shaping protests at, let's say,
[00:43:25.200]district, state, national levels and others are easier to see
[00:43:28.880]at the local level, and especially for climate issues.
[00:43:32.840]Those can be felt locally but have global
[00:43:36.040]ramifications, universal, locally and universally.
[00:43:39.040]And maybe that's good way to put it.
[00:43:42.680]Great question. More.
[00:44:07.760]Hi, Professor. I just had a quick question
[00:44:10.040]about effects of other factors on unrest.
[00:44:13.600]Have you seen any trends as to whether different levels of political
[00:44:19.280]and governmental support have changed the outcome
[00:44:23.480]in that post year time step?
[00:44:27.360]The better country responded to the crisis
[00:44:30.920]itself, the less increase there was or
[00:44:35.160]is it generally just overrun from having the crisis?
[00:44:40.280]So what we're looking at here is not so much the ability of governments
[00:44:45.080]to respond to climate change, and then
[00:44:49.760]arguably governments would have to respond to climate change first. Okay.
[00:44:54.200]So if you think of the Paris accord that was passed a few years ago,
[00:44:57.440]the effects of that will not be seen for quite a while.
[00:45:01.280]What we're seeing in the last 20 years is a clear indication
[00:45:03.840]that protests are rising around the world in all regions.
[00:45:08.800]The different regions are struck by different types of climate calamities
[00:45:13.600]where warming as opposed to
[00:45:16.520]too much water, too little water to heat waves.
[00:45:20.760]All of that is very locally conditioned.
[00:45:23.000]So we haven't really been able, though that's a good idea to have to think about
[00:45:26.760]when we'd be able to get those data to see whether governmental responses
[00:45:30.280]like policies passed, for example, or tax credits for certain renewable
[00:45:34.120]energies, whether that reduces protest levels in certain ways.
[00:45:37.320]What we do know is that political conditions in general.
[00:45:41.400]Affect protest levels.
[00:45:42.840]And that is where that inverted yield curve comes in really handy.
[00:45:45.800]So governments that are responsive.
[00:45:49.720]Maybe not perfect, but responsive.
[00:45:53.760]And in which political and political rule
[00:45:56.960]is contested tend to be much
[00:46:01.680]more likely to see protests as a good sign. Okay.
[00:46:06.480]As opposed to places in which there's one party rule
[00:46:11.320]in which there is no contestation, political contestation, either
[00:46:14.840]because everybody is happy or everybody is repressed .
[00:46:18.680]That's where you see fewer protests.
[00:46:20.920]So you might want to ask yourself,
[00:46:22.560]is there a country that you're interested in
[00:46:24.320]and what's the political situation in that country?
[00:46:26.800]And does it vary locally within that country? Does that help?
[00:46:31.680]Thank you. Good question.
[00:46:33.000]Question from Zoom.
[00:46:36.360]So how does temperature compare to participate?
[00:46:40.200]Precipitation? Sorry, it's been a long day
[00:46:42.960]when it comes to the long term effects on unrest. Yes.
[00:46:46.200]So this is a great question.
[00:46:47.440]And I skipped over that kind of nonchalantly
[00:46:50.480]because there's so much coverage of this in the media already.
[00:46:54.840]So we know that even taking other things into account,
[00:46:58.320]whether it's political conditions or
[00:47:01.880]the population density or
[00:47:03.600]even the aberrations in climate that we look at here, we know
[00:47:06.880]that there is an almost linear, limitless connection
[00:47:10.880]between increases in temperatures and protests.
[00:47:14.600]It only starts to flatten when
[00:47:19.320]temperature levels reach the point where they're inhospitable to human life.
[00:47:24.840]Like 27 degrees, I think is what we calculated.
[00:47:27.520]People can't protest anymore.
[00:47:30.120]Okay. But unlike the U curve that we're seeing with precipitation,
[00:47:34.240]linear tends to be temperatures tend to be linearly associated
[00:47:39.600]with rises and protests.
[00:47:43.320]Does that help? I hope
[00:47:44.760]if not more questions. I'm going.
[00:47:51.160]Just to follow up on
[00:47:52.280]that is the association with temperature and that linear trend eh.
[00:47:57.960]Like same your effect through your effect.
[00:48:00.160]Is it both. It's it's same year.
[00:48:04.200]I have. And that's a really good question.
[00:48:05.760]I haven't tried I haven't tried the lab.
[00:48:08.240]We're puzzling some things out clearly. Try the lab.
[00:48:11.200]If you give me your name, we'll try the lab
[00:48:13.120]and we'll let you know how it turns out.
[00:48:19.600]Dr. Sizemore has several questions.
[00:48:22.840]So she says this is a great talk.
[00:48:25.080]Thank you. A few questions first.
[00:48:27.040]Why do extremely high precipitation events lead to more protests
[00:48:31.880]than extremely low precipitation events and the three year lag model?
[00:48:36.520]Okay. Let me go back to that.
[00:48:38.000]Maybe I didn't think well enough. Okay.
[00:48:43.920]So what you see is when precipitation is at its at its average,
[00:48:49.520]we have lower protests
[00:48:51.920]then when it's extremely dry.
[00:48:56.080]And when it's average, we have lower protests than when it's extremely wet.
[00:49:00.280]So in both cases, the lack of precipitation
[00:49:03.280]as well as overwhelming precipitation cause higher.
[00:49:08.240]It's just that the curve for the extreme wetness
[00:49:10.840]is more pronounced than the curve for the extreme dryness,
[00:49:14.800]and we think that manifests in lags as opposed to droughts.
[00:49:18.400]So this is another one of the things we're puzzling out.
[00:49:21.120]It appears to us that that insofar as there may be lagged responses,
[00:49:26.640]the temporal lag between droughts and protests is likely shorter.
[00:49:31.840]Since then, the temporal lag between flooding or extremely heavy precipitation
[00:49:37.600]and protests, which is which means that when we use a three year plan,
[00:49:42.520]we're better able to capture this if we use contemporaneous
[00:49:47.960]indicators for better able to capture the impact of drought.
[00:49:52.480]That's why this looks flatter compared to the extreme.
[00:49:55.640]I hope that answers the question.
[00:49:59.360]Second question, Dr.
[00:50:01.720]Moore says, why is it that the Premier
[00:50:05.480]League is higher than the contemporaneous?
[00:50:09.960]Why is it that it's higher at all? Overall.
[00:50:15.200]So again, this is not a bivariate.
[00:50:17.720]This is based on multivariate analysis.
[00:50:20.840]So we're controlling for a whole bunch of things.
[00:50:23.640]What that means is that
[00:50:26.240]our ability to explain variation in the outcome,
[00:50:29.360]the odds that a protest will happen, it's much better captured
[00:50:35.480]by the lag measure than by the contemporaneous one.
[00:50:39.080]This is not really a very good indicator of the relationship between
[00:50:44.120]extreme precipitation, dry orbit and protest.
[00:50:48.320]It's something sailing at night right past each other.
[00:50:51.800]We need to really capture it.
[00:50:53.640]That's why this looks like it's higher.
[00:50:55.920]It's more critically tied to protest than the instance measure
[00:51:01.720]or this one behind you.
[00:51:09.280]I guess. And if I missed this, I apologize.
[00:51:11.880]But is there a reason you picked a three year lag opposed to two or four years?
[00:51:16.600]Great question. Yes.
[00:51:17.840]So with the three year lag, this was the most interesting finding to us.
[00:51:22.920]And I didn't want to bore you.
[00:51:26.400]When we use a three year lag, we see this you curve the most clearly, as you can
[00:51:30.200]tell. The shorter the lag,
[00:51:31.880]the flatter it's going to be to the point where it's inverse.
[00:51:36.000]And the longer the lag, the more ephemeral it becomes tool.
[00:51:40.560]So this seems to be if you're trying to figure out
[00:51:43.880]what's our window of opportunity to prevent
[00:51:46.560]an extremely wet year from causing protests, you have three years to fix it.
[00:51:53.440]Okay. Does that help?
[00:51:59.320]What other questions?
[00:52:03.360]Regina Banks. That was that was great.
[00:52:05.640]Very interesting.
[00:52:07.960]Quick question. Maybe I missed this.
[00:52:09.840]Just what constitutes a protest in this data?
[00:52:16.360]And relatedly, as I listened to you,
[00:52:19.640]I thought, well, I'm not sure which data,
[00:52:22.960]environmental or climate data or the protest data is like.
[00:52:28.600]How how reliable is it?
[00:52:31.360]You know, I would have thought the environmental climate data
[00:52:34.800]would be difficult to obtain, but, you know, it's no data.
[00:52:39.760]And and so where
[00:52:44.200]how is which is more difficult for you to deal with the climate data
[00:52:48.760]or the protest data, I guess, is what I'm asking.
[00:52:53.240]That's a great question.
[00:52:54.760]The answer the short answer is I couldn't be giving this talk
[00:52:59.160]if I didn't have such an awesome team
[00:53:00.840]of climate scientists who know how to turn cheap files into
[00:53:04.600]whatever they do to help us make sure we can aggregate data to those pixels.
[00:53:09.240]And I couldn't be giving this talk without the computer scientists
[00:53:13.520]who helped us link machine coded data to geotag
[00:53:17.720]so that we can then aggregate to various levels of analysis.
[00:53:20.600]So to me, the data management part is the nightmare
[00:53:25.000]before and after every holiday you want to imagine,
[00:53:27.600]which is why we have a fantastic team
[00:53:29.520]doing it rather than one person trying to pull it off.
[00:53:32.640]On how reliable these data are. Well.
[00:53:37.600]All of the climate data that we use
[00:53:39.240]for the analysis I presented today is satellite derived.
[00:53:43.000]So unless you have a reason to suspect that the satellites used
[00:53:48.240]by Noah and Nasser are systematically malfunctioning,
[00:53:53.760]these are reliable data and these are then geo coded
[00:53:57.240]and we aggregate the data using means and levels.
[00:54:01.920]As for the protest definition,
[00:54:05.360]the definition I gave you in the beginning is the definition
[00:54:08.120]we use generally in the social sciences.
[00:54:12.560]How IQ decides which events meet
[00:54:17.080]that bar may be a little bit different.
[00:54:20.240]An IQ is the protest event database that I discussed today,
[00:54:23.360]maybe a little bit different from the data, which was. Used here.
[00:54:33.000]So what is the acronym stands for?
[00:54:35.720]Again, it stands for Global.
[00:54:39.080]I get my alumni accents.
[00:54:40.400]Global database of events, language and phone details.
[00:54:44.120]It's probably the most massive database that we can think of.
[00:54:47.240]We have chosen not to use it here because we are always having to do extra work.
[00:54:51.440]So much on the reliability of the data.
[00:54:54.240]Extra work in convincing the audience that our data has now overcome
[00:54:58.320]its well-known flaw, which is that because it's machine coded
[00:55:03.120]that there are over counting events, that if something is present,
[00:55:07.000]is covered in various news sources
[00:55:09.040]multiple times, that it might be counted multiple times rather than this one event.
[00:55:12.760]Data has been getting much better with its algorithms to duplicate events recorded.
[00:55:17.560]But the advantage of using data, for example, would be that they scrape
[00:55:22.880]local, regional and international news, including print and visual media,
[00:55:27.440]using sources in over 100 languages.
[00:55:31.960]But it's a massive dataset and sometimes tends to
[00:55:35.680]the levels of protest when you compare detailed data are always
[00:55:38.600]higher than the levels of protest when you use IQ.
[00:55:41.600]But it's levels and they still flow in tandem.
[00:55:44.320]So from a statistical analysis,
[00:55:47.120]we actually have looked at whether we get comparable
[00:55:49.640]results regardless of whether we use readout or IQ or another
[00:55:53.800]database called actions, which captures an even smaller set of events.
[00:55:59.320]And we get very robust findings.
[00:56:01.640]So comparable results, no matter whose data we use
[00:56:05.240]and we don't collect the data ourselves clearly.
[00:56:08.760]It is a massive undertaking
[00:56:11.960]funded initially designed by academics
[00:56:17.160]like Hughes. In and of itself is little bit different
[00:56:21.680]from detailed in that it's called integrated crisis and it doesn't.
[00:56:27.160]It tends to, if anything, undercount protests,
[00:56:30.160]which for a social scientist is not necessarily a bad thing.
[00:56:33.400]It means you're providing your audience with a conservative estimate.
[00:56:38.960]If anything, we're at risk of underestimating the relationship between
[00:56:43.080]climate extremes and protests when we lose conservative measures like that. Okay.
[00:56:47.800]And actually, I can tell you more about that.
[00:56:49.600]We can kick out a few months later.
[00:56:52.880]So we try our best to run it every which way, including with our socks
[00:56:58.360]turned inside out to see if the results remain robust.
[00:57:02.360]And so far they do.
[00:57:04.360]That said help. Okay.
[00:57:08.280]Another question from the Zoom.
[00:57:10.200]Thank you for a wonderful talk.
[00:57:11.320]I was wondering if you think that social unrest and climate change trends
[00:57:15.160]you observed fit within this auteurist theory?
[00:57:18.600]Alex Smith, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, etc.
[00:57:22.720]Models of social unrest in particular, and thinking of discussions
[00:57:26.320]of protest viability which followed the inverted graph you showed,
[00:57:31.280]as well as how extreme climate events often displaced people,
[00:57:35.880]which makes organizing protest in some ways much easier.
[00:57:40.480]It makes it both easier and harder.
[00:57:42.440]So chaos is usually not not.
[00:57:46.520]And displaced people are usually so.
[00:57:51.360]Preoccupied with survival
[00:57:52.840]in and of itself that it doesn't usually it's not a12 punch.
[00:57:56.800]People get displaced and they start protesting
[00:57:58.720]or they're displaced and they're trying to survive.
[00:58:01.480]But what happens is that the places
[00:58:03.120]to which they are displaced start becoming destabilized as well.
[00:58:07.760]This is actually, unfortunately, something that has been documented
[00:58:10.920]around the world already, which is that
[00:58:14.280]political extremists have tried to instrumentalize
[00:58:19.320]migration, climate change related migration.
[00:58:23.160]Especially on the political right.
[00:58:24.480]We saw that with Marine Le Pen in France just a few months ago,
[00:58:27.520]and we've seen that elsewhere as well.
[00:58:31.040]Depending on whether you think of the war in Syria
[00:58:33.040]as ultimately a result of climate extremes that caused the Arab Spring,
[00:58:37.360]that caused an already failing autocratic state to implode.
[00:58:41.440]If you think of the Syrian refugee crisis as a this connected to that border,
[00:58:45.840]that phone effect, then the indirect effects such different
[00:58:48.520]talks about, then you might think of that as affecting Europe as well.
[00:58:52.600]So the rise of right wing populists in Israel, in Italy,
[00:58:58.040]in Hungary and Poland, in France, Brexit, right wing populism in Great Britain,
[00:59:02.920]all of those can, if you wish, be seen as indirectly connected.
[00:59:08.400]Climate extremes.
[00:59:09.520]I hope that answers the caller's question.
[00:59:15.400]Uh. Hi, Professor. I'm from Sudan.
[00:59:18.440]And you mention Sudan is one of the countries that had recent protests.
[00:59:24.320]Uh, so as far as I know, like, it's a well-known fact
[00:59:28.280]among the Sudanese people that the, uh.
[00:59:32.800]That rising the increase of prices of bread
[00:59:35.600]was was the was the cause of the protests.
[00:59:39.480]So how would you say that climate change had something to do with that?
[00:59:43.920]So if we could produce.
[00:59:51.640]If we could produce maps of Sudan, they'd look at regions in Sudan
[00:59:56.880]disproportionately affected by getting drier and drier.
[01:00:00.120]Then, compared to compared to the historical average,
[01:00:03.480]we would probably see something very similar to what we're seeing
[01:00:06.920]in the United States, maybe not by the east west, but for Sudan.
[01:00:10.600]And the question is, if the regions that are disproportionately affected
[01:00:14.080]by apparently dry conflict conditions are the agricultural regions
[01:00:19.800]where staple crops like sorghum are produced.
[01:00:24.320]Yes. You're going to have a virtually instantaneous effect.
[01:00:27.240]And that's why what I wanted to focus on
[01:00:29.160]today is most people intuitively understand that if crops fail
[01:00:33.760]within short order, food prices will rise and that that's a grievance.
[01:00:37.800]And that may very well be related to.
[01:00:42.040]Unrest in short order.
[01:00:44.520]Witness people don't typically think about as causing protests.
[01:00:49.120]So I'm hoping that one of the
[01:00:51.640]one of the takeaways for you also is if there are regions in Sudan
[01:00:55.640]that get disproportionately wet, they will see protests, too,
[01:00:59.800]according to our modeling, just with a delayed effect.
[01:01:03.120]And if you get that whiplash between extreme drought,
[01:01:06.280]followed by a massive flood like they just had in Pakistan
[01:01:08.800]a couple of months ago, you will see massive displacement
[01:01:12.560]and destruction of infrastructure followed by a cholera epidemic.
[01:01:16.760]That's predictable. Yes.
[01:01:20.160]Does that answer your question?
[01:01:25.760]I've been called a serious question
[01:01:27.160]because thank you for the wonderful presentation.
[01:01:30.360]If I am curious if we were to hypothesize that income inequity
[01:01:36.200]were to be a determinant of social unrest, how might this be differentiated
[01:01:40.960]from the effects of climate extremes if both are occurring simultaneously?
[01:01:46.000]Do local contexts help to distinguish between the two hypothesized
[01:01:50.400]causal variables?
[01:01:54.280]So what you're saying is that
[01:01:56.640]income inequality has an effect on levels of protests
[01:01:59.800]and climate conditions or extremes have an effect.
[01:02:03.040]The answer is yes and yes.
[01:02:04.400]So in the models that we've run, not the local models that are presented today,
[01:02:08.000]but when we've done it at the district and state level in India, we have found
[01:02:12.240]that social inequalities and we've used all kinds of economic measures
[01:02:15.520]from income inequality or GDP, various economic measures, unemployment.
[01:02:20.000]We have looked at the effects
[01:02:21.000]of those types of economic indicators, economic disparities,
[01:02:24.840]and yes, they do independently affect protest levels as well.
[01:02:29.640]What's interesting here
[01:02:30.880]is that you also get what we call an interaction effect, which means that
[01:02:34.720]the populations most affected by climate extremes
[01:02:38.720]are the most marginalized populations in any given context.
[01:02:44.280]So people who live and live in Heat Island
[01:02:47.400]can't afford or don't have access to electricity, to power
[01:02:52.560]cooling systems, for example.
[01:02:54.600]People who live in low lying areas are more likely to get flooded
[01:02:57.840]repeatedly now, can't obtain homeowner's insurance, etc..
[01:03:02.520]So some of those pictures that I've shown earlier.
[01:03:06.760]With a regional picture here.
[01:03:09.800]All of these are now this is an Illinois
[01:03:13.800]2019 and this is Nebraska 2019.
[01:03:17.680]So homeowners here will no longer be able to get insurance.
[01:03:26.560]I hope that answers the question.
[01:03:29.160]It's not easy to find online.
[01:03:35.880]Thank you so much for all coming tonight.
[01:03:38.880]Once more, a round of applause for Dr.
[01:03:43.840]Werum and I hope that you all will join us in the spring
[01:03:52.800]when the second part of the series picks back up in January,
[01:03:56.680]where we return to politics with the newly inaugurated class
[01:04:02.040]of representatives from your votes next week.
[01:04:06.200]So I'll see you then. Take care.

The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!

You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.

Comments

0 Comments

Human-Climate Dynamics in the Anthropocene: The Connection Between Climate Extremes and Social Unrest | CAS Inquire

Description

Searchable Transcript

Comments icon comment

Related Channels

Comments