21 December 2016, The Conversation, Why we can get over the ‘yuck factor’ when it comes to recycled water. In light of climate change and a growing population, water authorities around the world are looking at the treatment of recycled water to achieve water security and sustainability. Recent authors on The Conversation have raised the possibility of expanding the use of water recycling in Australia, noting the potential benefits for domestic, agricultural and industrial water supply. Some contributors have noted that the major roadblocks to water recycling, in places where it could be beneficial, are not technical issues, but public reluctance to use recycled water. Emotional Responses In the past, our aversion to recycled water has been explained by the “yuck factor”. Some people have an emotional response of disgust to using recycled water, even when they know it has been highly treated and is safe. There are large individual differences in the strength and type of different people’s disgust responses. Psychologists have tried to understand why our thought processes can lead some people to think of recycled water as unclean. One explanation is contagion thinking, the idea that once water has been defiled it will always remain unclean, regardless of treatment, at least according to the mental models that underlie our emotional responses. What such approaches often neglect is that cognition does not occur in a cultural vacuum, but is affected by the associations and stigmas of society. It is important to note that these emotional responses are often in conflict with our rational thinking. Some theorists, such as Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, have argued that we make judgements using two contrasting systems. One of these systems is slow and operates according to a formal risk calculus. The other is fast, based on positive or negative emotional responses. Because of this, how we feel about someone or something (positively or negatively) is often as important as what they are being judged on. In other words, the fact that a person understands that a highly treated sample of recycled water is safe to drink may not be enough to stop the emotional response, as we often tend to think intuitively, drawing on our social and cultural values. The most important question, however, is whether the emotional responses some people have to recycled water can be changed. And what role do stigmas associated with cultural norms play in shaping these? Read More here
Monthly Archives: December 2016
21 December 2016, Climate News Network, Antarctic rifts launch giant icebergs. Satellite images reveal clue to the hidden cause of fractures in Antarctic shelf ice that are calving huge icebergs into the south polar seas. Scientists in the US have identified an ominous trend in the Southern Ocean − the creation of enormous icebergs as rifts develop in the shelf ice many miles inland. And although three vast icebergs have broken from the Pine Island glacier in West Antarctica and drifted north in this century alone, researchers have only just worked out what has been going on. Their first clue came from a telltale shadow in the south polar ice, caught by a NASA satellite and visible only while the sun was low in the sky, casting a long shadow. It was the first sign of a fracture 20 miles inland, in 2013. Two years later, the rift became complete and the 580 sq km iceberg drifted free of the shelf. Significant collapse “It’s generally accepted that it’s no longer a question of whether the West Antarctic Ice Sheet will melt − it’s a question of when,” says study leader Ian Howat, a glaciologist in the School of Earth Sciences at Ohio State University in the US. “This kind of rifting behaviour provides another mechanism for rapid retreat of these glaciers, adding to the probability that we may see significant collapse of West Antarctica in our lifetimes.” The scientists report in Geophysical Research Letters journal that they had discovered that although shelf ice could be expected to wear at the ocean edge, something else was happening in West Antarctica. The Pine Island glacier is grounded on continental bedrock below sea level, which means that warming ocean water could penetrate far inland beneath the shelf, without anyone being conscious of any change. Read More here
19 December 2016, Climate News Network, Growing tornado impact puzzles scientists. The US seems to be experiencing more and worse tornado outbreaks – groups of twisters in quick succession. But climate change may not be the culprit. Tornado outbreaks – those sudden, multiple whirlwinds that can randomly destroy whole townships or pass by and do little more than ruffle the prairie grass – may be getting more frequent and more powerful in the United States. And nobody can be sure why. Climate change driven by global warming which is in turn the consequence of greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion could be a candidate cause. But meteorologists cannot rule out some other potential explanation, such as some natural cycle in climate behaviour involving oceans and atmosphere. But they do know that tornado outbreaks are becoming potentially more destructive. Two years ago, researchers checked the data and found that the tornado “season” in the US was now two weeks earlier than it had been in the early 20th century. In the spring of 2016 a team from Columbia University checked the records since 1954 and found that the number of individual tornadoes during any single episode of tornado outbreaks has been rising for the past six decades. Worse winds And now Michael Tippett, a physicist at Columbia Engineering, has returned to the challenge. He and two colleagues report in the journal Science that not only are the numbers of twisters in each outbreak growing, but the overall severity of the whirlwinds is on the increase. And the fastest increase is in the most extreme range of the phenomenon. Read More here
16 December 2016, The Conversation, Full response from Craig Kelly. In relation to this FactCheck on electricity prices, Liberal MP Craig Kelly sent the following comments and sources to support his statement: Firstly, RenewEconomy – a pro renewable energy website. They quote prices (in US cents per kilowatt hour) in the USA at 12 cents per kilowatt hour and Australia at 29 cents – so on their numbers it’s actually closer to 2.4 times higher rather than double. These costs are described as “average national electricity prices” which I’d take as both businesses and households. However, I’d note that these figures can bounce around a bit subject to exchange rate fluctuations. Secondly, a report titled Electricity Prices in Australia: An International Comparison by CME (an energy economics consultancy focused on Australian electricity, gas and renewables markets) concludes: “In 2011/12 average household electricity prices in Australia (just under 25 cents/kWh) were 12% higher than average prices in Japan, 33% higher than the EU, 122% higher than the US.” Read More here