In response to claims by Bernie Sanders and Prince Charles (and resulting inquiries from journalists), Marshall Burke and Solomon Hsiang published an Op-Ed in the LA Times explaining what we do and do not know about linkages between climate and social conflict.
Letter in Wall Street Journal /
Marshall Burke and Solomon Hsiang published a letter in the Wall Street Journal responding to Bjorn Lomborg's claims about cost-benefit analysis of climate change policies.
Read about the research behind the letter here.
Op-Ed in the Guardian /
Kyle Meng and Solomon Hsiang published an Op-Ed in the Guardian explaining how the coming El Nino is likely to affect the 3 trillion people living in the tropics and what we can do about it.
Publication: Drug Trafficking Organizations and Local Economic Activity in Mexico /
Felipe González's paper Drug Trafficking Organizations and Local Economic Activity in Mexico was published in PLOS ONE.
(It's the first term paper from our course Spatial Data and Analysis to be published.)
Drug trafficking organizations across space and time. Municipalities colored in black have at least one DTO operating.
Proctor awarded machine learning grant /
Jonathan Proctor was awarded a grant to use machine learning to study the social consequences of drought by the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center. Proctor will lead a team of interdisciplinary graduate student collaborators from around the country.
Successful team visit to NZ Maori Trust /
Tamma Carleton and Solomon Hsiang visited New Zealand to work with a Maori Land Trust in an effort to develop new frameworks and techniques for measuring sustainable development.
First Summer Workshop in Climate Economics /
Tamma Carleton and Solomon Hsiang led the first Summer Workshop in Climate Economics, where fifteen doctoral students from around the country learned econometric methods and worked with faculty and postdoc mentors to complete new research projects studying the impacts of climate change around the world.
Book published on economic risk of climate change /
Amir Jina, James Rising, and Solomon Hsiang were coauthors on the book "Economic Risks of Climate Change: An American Prospectus" published by Columbia University Press. The analysis in the book was the research behind the Risky Business initiative lead by Michael Bloomberg, Hank Paulson and Tom Steyer. Commentary by Karen Fisher-Vanden, Michael Greenstone, Geoffrey Heal, Michael Oppenheimer, and Nicholas Stern and Bob Ward enrich the original analysis.
González et al. awarded development grant /
Felipe González, along with Sol and Jeremey Magruder, was awarded a grant by the Weiss Family Program Fund to study social networks in rural Africa.
Obama cites climate-conflict research /
I was driving into the office today when I heard on the radio that in a speech at the Coast Guard Academy graduation, President Obama said,
"Around the world, climate change increases the risk of instability and conflict. "
Not only that, but he gets it:
"Understand, climate change did not cause the conflicts we see around the world. Yet what we also know is that severe drought helped to create the instability in Nigeria that was exploited by the terrorist group Boko Haram. It’s now believed that drought and crop failures and high food prices helped fuel the early unrest in Syria, which descended into civil war in the heart of the Middle East."
Not bad.
NSF awards Berkeley Data Science Research Traineeship /
The NSF awarded $2.9M to Berkeley for “Environment and Society: Data Science for the 21st Century (DS421),” a new National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT). DS421 is an interdisciplinary graduate training program at UC Berkeley at the interface of data, social and natural sciences.
Op-Ed in Reuters /
Amir Jina and Solomon Hsiang published an Op-Ed "Facing the storm after the storm in Vanuatu" in Reuters explaining the potential impact of Tropical Cyclone Pam on the economic trajectory of Vanuatu.
Keynote at Strata + Hadoop /
Solomon Hsiang delivered a Keynote address "The Emerging Age of Data-Driven Policy Design" at Strata + Hadoop 2015.
GPL Research shapes 2016 US Federal budget /
The American Climate Prospectus was cited in President Obama's proposed budget for 2016. One key feature of the budget highlighted by the White House was its strong focus on evaluating and managing climate change as a fiscal issue. There is an entire section of the budget on "Federal Budget Exposure to Climate Risk" which states:
The global climate is changing and is projected to continue to change over this century and beyond.1 Climate change impacts—such as rising sea level and more frequent and intense extreme weather events—will increasingly strain the Federal budget. The ability of policymakers to make smart investment decisions and to steward the Federal budget over the long term is increasingly dependent on understanding the Federal Government’s exposure to climate risks.