One of US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s 100 wackiest ideas is that climate change is a hoax fabricated by China to harm the US.
“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing uncompetitive,” Trump once tweeted.
He later said, unconvincingly, that he had been kidding about China, but he has emphasized that he does not believe in climate change and would end serious efforts to prevent it.
That obstinacy confronts a new wave of research showing that climate change is much more harmful than we had imagined.
Until now, the focus has been on rising seas, more intense hurricanes, acidification of oceans, drought and crop failures. However, new studies are finding that some of the most important effects will be directly on our bodies and minds.
A clever new working paper by Park Ji-sung, a doctoral student in economics at Harvard University, compared the performances of New York City students on 4.6 million exams with the day’s temperature.
EXAM PRESSURE
Park found that students taking a New York State Regents exam on a 32.22oC day have a 12 percent greater chance of failing than when the temperature is 22.22oC.
The Regents exams help determine whether a student graduates and goes to college, and Park finds that when a student has the bad luck to have Regents exams fall on very hot days, he or she is slightly less likely to graduate on time.
Likewise, Park finds that when a school year has an unusual number of hot days, students do worse at the end of the year on their Regents exams, presumably because they have learned less. A school year with five extra days of temperatures greater than 26.67oC leads students to perform significantly worse on Regents exams.
The New York City students in Park’s study do poorly on hot days even though the majority of city schools are air-conditioned (perhaps in part because the air-conditioning often barely works).
Imagine the consequences in hotter climates with less air-conditioning: The average Indian now endures about 33 days a year with temperatures greater than 32.22oC, and that is forecast to increase by as many as 100 days by 2100.
“If students in New York public schools are being affected by heat stress, one can only imagine what it’s like for a student in Delhi,” Park said.
Heat affects our bodies as well as our minds: As temperatures rise, people die. In India, a rise of 1oC in average daily temperatures leads to a 10 percent increase in the annual mortality rate. Even a single extra hot day leads to a noticeable jump in mortality.
Even in the US, heat kills. A single day above 32.22oC increases the monthly mortality rate by more than 1 percent, according to research by Olivier Deschenes and other economists.
We just do not function as well when the mercury goes up. When the temperature rises above 29.44oC, Americans who work outside cut their time in the heat by about an hour. Even in auto factories, most presumably air-conditioned, a week of six days above 32.22oC reduces production by 8 percent.
INCREASING VIOLENCE
Perhaps more startling, rising temperatures seem to cause more violence.
“The relationship is really clear,” said Edward Miguel, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied the issue.
“Extremes in climate lead to more violence, more killing, more war, more land riots in Brazil, more sectarian violence in India,” he said. “It’s pretty stunning how the relationship between climate and violence holds across the globe.”
The starting point is that heat makes people irritable. Researchers have found hot days linked to more angry honking in Arizona, and more road rage and car crashes in Spain. Academics have done the math and found that on hot days a MLB pitcher is more likely to retaliate for a perceived offense and deliberately hit a batter.
“High temperatures are lowering inhibitions against retaliation,” the study found.
On hot days, property crimes are not more common, but murders go up with the temperature. Likewise, researchers find that police officers are more likely to draw and fire their weapons during a training session conducted on a hot day.
In Tanzania in any season, elderly women are sometimes accused of witchcraft and hacked or beaten to death. Miguel has found that unusual weather linked to climate change — either drought or heavy rainfall — is associated with a doubling in the number of these “witch” killings.
It appears that this year will be the hottest year in recorded history, and each of the first six months of this year set a record as the hottest ever — the hottest January, the hottest February, and so on. However, it is not just that the mercury is going up; fundamentally, we are creating a hotter world for which we humans are poorly adapted.
So it is time for Trump — and all Americans — to re-evaluate. Climate change is not a hoax, and it certainly is not a Chinese conspiracy. Unless we act, we are cooked!
Recently, China launched another diplomatic offensive against Taiwan, improperly linking its “one China principle” with UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 to constrain Taiwan’s diplomatic space. After Taiwan’s presidential election on Jan. 13, China persuaded Nauru to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Nauru cited Resolution 2758 in its declaration of the diplomatic break. Subsequently, during the WHO Executive Board meeting that month, Beijing rallied countries including Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Egypt, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Laos, Russia, Syria and Pakistan to reiterate the “one China principle” in their statements, and assert that “Resolution 2758 has settled the status of Taiwan” to hinder Taiwan’s
Can US dialogue and cooperation with the communist dictatorship in Beijing help avert a Taiwan Strait crisis? Or is US President Joe Biden playing into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) hands? With America preoccupied with the wars in Europe and the Middle East, Biden is seeking better relations with Xi’s regime. The goal is to responsibly manage US-China competition and prevent unintended conflict, thereby hoping to create greater space for the two countries to work together in areas where their interests align. The existing wars have already stretched US military resources thin, and the last thing Biden wants is yet another war.
As Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu’s party won by a landslide in Sunday’s parliamentary election, it is a good time to take another look at recent developments in the Maldivian foreign policy. While Muizzu has been promoting his “Maldives First” policy, the agenda seems to have lost sight of a number of factors. Contemporary Maldivian policy serves as a stark illustration of how a blend of missteps in public posturing, populist agendas and inattentive leadership can lead to diplomatic setbacks and damage a country’s long-term foreign policy priorities. Over the past few months, Maldivian foreign policy has entangled itself in playing
A group of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers led by the party’s legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (?) are to visit Beijing for four days this week, but some have questioned the timing and purpose of the visit, which demonstrates the KMT caucus’ increasing arrogance. Fu on Wednesday last week confirmed that following an invitation by Beijing, he would lead a group of lawmakers to China from Thursday to Sunday to discuss tourism and agricultural exports, but he refused to say whether they would meet with Chinese officials. That the visit is taking place during the legislative session and in the aftermath