Category «Climate Change»

As climate change amplifies urban flooding, here’s how communities can become ‘sponge cities’

Dr. Franco Montalto is a water resources engineer who studies and designs strategies for sustainably managing urban stormwater. In response to recent flooding episodes, some U.S. cities are beginning to take steps toward incorporation of sponge city concepts into their stormwater management plans, but most of these projects are still pilots. If this concept is to evolve into the new standard for urban design, city officials and developers will need to find ways to scale up and accelerate this work.

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Subjects: Climate Change

AI in Finance and Banking, April 30, 2024

This semi-monthly column by Sabrina I. Pacifici highlights news, government documents, NGO/IGO papers, industry white papers, academic papers and speeches on the subject of AI’s fast paced impact on the banking and finance sectors. The chronological links provided are to the primary sources, and as available, indicate links to alternate free versions. Four highlights from this post: Banks told to anticipate risks from using AI, machine learning; Banks don’t talk about the energy AI guzzles. Here’s why they should; Chatbot answers are all made up. This new tool helps you figure out which ones to trust; and AI is becoming a big deal for big banks.

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Subjects: AI in Banking and Finance, Climate Change, Economy, Energy, Financial System, Legal Research

Climate change is shifting the zones where plants grow

With the arrival of spring in North America, many people are gravitating to the gardening and landscaping section of home improvement stores, where displays are overstocked with eye-catching seed packs and benches are filled with potted annuals and perennials. But some plants that once thrived in your yard may not flourish there now. To understand why, Dr. Matt Kasson looks to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recent update of its plant hardiness zone map, which has long helped gardeners and growers figure out which plants are most likely to thrive in a given location.

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Subjects: Climate Change, Environmental Law

AI in Banking and Finance, January 31, 2024

This semi-monthly column by Sabrina I. Pacifici highlights news, government documents, NGO/IGO papers, industry white papers, academic papers and speeches on the subject of AI’s fast paced impact on the banking and finance sectors. The chronological links provided are to the primary sources, and as available, indicate links to alternate free versions. Five highlights from this post: The Bloomberg Terminal Now Has AI-Generated Summaries of Earnings Calls; Call for papers on Artificial Intelligence in Finance: Next level of artificial intelligence is difficult for banks; Sustainable Banking: Charting The Future With AI And Data Analytics; More impactful than the internet’: How AI will reshape banking jobs; and The fight against greenwashing starts with AI. Here’s why.

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Subjects: AI, AI in Banking and Finance, Climate Change, Economy, Environmental Law, Financial System

The Case for AI Guardrails

Kevin Novak sets the table with his opening statement: Whatever you think about the U.S. government or our elected officials, it does have guardrails in place to protect its citizens. For pharma and food products, it’s the FDA. For workplace safety there’s OSHA. For mobility safety, it’s the Department of Transportation. For safe investments, there’s the SEC. For consumer protection, there’s the Federal Trade Commission. For AI and emerging tech, there’s nothing.

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Subjects: AI, Climate Change, Congress, Legal Research, Legislative, Social Media

Conspiracy theories aren’t on the rise – we need to stop panicking

Several polls in the past couple of years (including from Ipsos, YouGov and most recently Savanta on behalf of Kings College Policy Institute and the BBC) have been examining the kinds of conspiratorial beliefs people have. The findings have led to a lot of concern and discussion. There are several revealing aspects of these polls. Magda Osman, Principal Research Associate in Basic and Applied Decision Making, Cambridge Judge Business School, is interested in what claims are considered conspiratorial and how these are phrased. But she is also interested in the widespread belief that conspiracy theories are apparently on the rise, thanks to the internet and social media. Is this true and how concerned should we really be about conspiracy theories?

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Subjects: Climate Change, Education, Internet Trends, KM, Social Media

Bees can learn, remember, think and make decisions – here’s a look at how they navigate the world

Stephen Buchmann is a pollination ecologist specializing in bees, and an adjunct professor with the departments of Entomology and of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. He draws on his experience studying bees for almost 50 years to explore how these creatures perceive the world and their amazing abilities to navigate, learn, communicate and remember. Here’s some of what I’ve learned.

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Subjects: Climate Change, Environmental Law

El Niño is coming, and ocean temps are already at record highs – that can spell disaster for fish and corals

During El Niño, a swath of ocean stretching 6,000 miles (about 10,000 kilometers) westward off the coast of Ecuador warms for months on end, typically by 2 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1 to 2 degrees Celsius). A few degrees may not seem like much, but in that part of the world, it’s more than enough to completely reorganize wind, rainfall and temperature patterns all over the planet. White corals indicate bleaching from heat stress. Marine heat waves can trigger coral bleaching. Dillon Amaya is a climate scientist who studies the oceans. After three years of La Niña, he advises that it’s time to start preparing for what El Niño may have in store.

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Subjects: Climate Change, Environmental Law

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, March 4, 2023

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Four highlights from this week: Global internet connectivity at risk from climate disasters; The Insecurity of Photo Cropping; These 26 words ‘created the internet.’ Now the Supreme Court may be coming for them; and NSA Releases Best Practices For Securing Your Home Network.

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Subjects: AI, Climate Change, Computer Security, Cryptocurrency, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Legal Research, Privacy, RSS Newsfeeds

The new climate denial? Using wealth to insulate yourself from discomfort and change

Hannah Della Bosca, PhD Candidate and Research Assistant at Sydney Environment Institute, University of Sydney addresses a distinct form of emerging climate denial. You may have experienced it and not even realised. It’s called implicatory denial, and it happens when you consciously recognise climate change as a serious threat without making significant changes to your everyday behaviour in response.

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Subjects: Climate Change, Education, Financial System, Healthcare
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