Forecasting coal power plant retirement ages and lock-in with random forest regression.

Averting dangerous climate change requires expediting the retirement of coal-fired power plants (CFPPs). Given multiple barriers hampering this, here we forecast the future retirement ages of the world's CFPPs. We use supervised machine learning to first learn from the past, determining the factors that influenced historical retirements.

DOSE - Global data set of reported sub-national economic output.

Many phenomena of high relevance for economic development such as human capital, geography and climate vary considerably within countries as well as between them. Yet, global data sets of economic output are typically available at the national level only, thereby limiting the accuracy and precision of insights gained through empirical analyses. Recent work has used interpolation and downscaling to yield estimates of sub-national economic output at a global scale, but respective data sets based on official, reported values only are lacking.

Built structures influence patterns of energy demand and CO emissions across countries.

Built structures, i.e. the patterns of settlements and transport infrastructures, are known to influence per-capita energy demand and CO emissions at the urban level.

Conspiracy spillovers and geoengineering.

Geoengineering techniques such as solar radiation management (SRM) could be part of a future technology portfolio to limit global temperature change. However, there is public opposition to research and deployment of SRM technologies. We use 814,924 English-language tweets containing #geoengineering globally over 13 years (2009-2021) to explore public emotions, perceptions, and attitudes toward SRM using natural language processing, deep learning, and network analysis.

Opportunities and risks of internet of things (IoT) technologies for circular business models: A literature review.

In recent years, circular business models (CBM) have become an inevitable requirement to foster improvements in environmental performance. However, the current literature rarely discusses the link between Internet of Things (IoT) and CBM. This paper first identifies four IoT capabilities including monitoring, tracking, optimization and design evolution for improving CBM performance based on the ReSOLVE framework.

How relevant is climate change research for climate change policy? An empirical analysis based on Overton data.

Climate change is an ongoing topic in nearly all areas of society since many years. A discussion of climate change without referring to scientific results is not imaginable. This is especially the case for policies since action on the macro scale is required to avoid costly consequences for society.

Temperature impacts on hate speech online: evidence from 4 billion geolocated tweets from the USA.

Background: A link between weather and aggression in the offline world has been established across a variety of societal settings. Simultaneously, the rapid digitalisation of nearly every aspect of everyday life has led to a high frequency of interpersonal conflicts online. Hate speech online has become a prevalent problem that has been shown to aggravate mental health conditions, especially among young people and marginalised groups.

Methods and guidance on conducting, reporting, publishing and appraising living systematic reviews: a scoping review protocol.

The living systematic review (LSR) approach is based on an ongoing surveillance of the literature and continual updating. A few guidance documents address the conduct, reporting, publishing and appraisal of systematic reviews (SRs), but the methodology described is either not up-to date or not suitable for LSRs and misses additional LSR-specific considerations. The objective of this scoping review is to systematically collate methodological literature and guidance on how to conduct, report, publish and appraise the quality of LSRs.

Systematic reviews: A glossary for public health.

Literature reviews are conducted for a range of purposes, from providing an overview or primer of a novel topic, to providing a comprehensive, precise, and accurate estimate of an effect estimate. There is much confusion over nomenclature related to literature reviews, with the term 'systematic review' often used to mean any review based on some form of explicit methodology. However, guidance and minimum standards exist for these kinds of robust reviews that are intended to support evidence-informed decision-making, and reviewers must carefully ensure their syntheses are conducted and reported to a high standard if this is their objective.

The effect of rainfall changes on economic production.

Macro-economic assessments of climate impacts lack an analysis of the distribution of daily rainfall, which can resolve both complex societal impact channels and anthropogenically forced changes. Here, using a global panel of subnational economic output for 1,554 regions worldwide over the past 40 years, we show that economic growth rates are reduced by increases in the number of wet days and in extreme daily rainfall, in addition to responding nonlinearly to the total annual and to the standardized monthly deviations of rainfall. Furthermore, high-income nations and the services and manufacturing sectors are most strongly hindered by both measures of daily rainfall, complementing previous work that emphasized the beneficial effects of additional total annual rainfall in low-income, agriculturally dependent economies.

Mitigating losses: how scientific organisations can help address the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on early-career researchers.

Scientific collaborations among nations to address common problems and to build international partnerships as part of science diplomacy is a well-established notion. The international flow of people and ideas has played an important role in the advancement of the 'Sciences' and the current pandemic scenario has drawn attention towards the genuine need for a stronger role of science diplomacy, science advice and science communication. In dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, visible interactions across science, policy, science communication to the public and diplomacy worldwide have promptly emerged.

Correction: Mitigating losses: how scientific organisations can help address the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on early-career researchers.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1057/s41599-021-00944-1.].

Climate action with revenue recycling has benefits for poverty, inequality and well-being.

Existing estimates of optimal climate policy ignore the possibility that carbon tax revenues could be used in a progressive way; model results therefore typically imply that near-term climate action comes at some cost to the poor. Using the Nested Inequalities Climate Economy (NICE) model, we show that an equal per capita refund of carbon tax revenues implies that achieving a 2°C target can pay large and immediate dividends for improving well-being, reducing inequality and alleviating poverty. In an optimal policy calculation that weighs the benefits against the costs of mitigation, the recommended policy is characterized by aggressive near-term climate action followed by a slower climb towards full decarbonization; this pattern-which is driven by a carbon revenue Laffer curve-prevents runaway warming while also preserving tax revenues for redistribution.

Face mask use and physical distancing before and after mandatory masking: No evidence on risk compensation in public waiting lines.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the introduction of mandatory face mask usage triggered a heated debate. A major point of controversy is whether community use of masks creates a false sense of security that would diminish physical distancing, counteracting any potential direct benefit from masking. We conducted a randomized field experiment in Berlin, Germany, to investigate how masks affect distancing and whether the mask effect interacts with the introduction of an indoor mask mandate.

Air-conditioning and the adaptation cooling deficit in emerging economies.

Increasing temperatures will make space cooling a necessity for maintain comfort and protecting human health, and rising income levels will allow more people to purchase and run air conditioners. Here we show that, in Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Mexico income and humidity-adjusted temperature are common determinants for adopting air-conditioning, but their relative contribution varies in relation to household characteristics. Adoption rates are higher among households living in higher quality dwellings in urban areas, and among those with higher levels of education.

No aggregate deforestation reductions from rollout of community land titles in Indonesia yet.

In Indonesia, 60 million people live within 1 km of state forest. The government of Indonesia plans to grant community titles for 12.7 million hectares of land to communities living in and around forests.

Atmospheric methane removal: a research agenda.

Atmospheric methane removal (e.g. methane oxidation to carbon dioxide) may be needed to offset continued methane release and limit the global warming contribution of this potent greenhouse gas.

Footprint of greenhouse forcing in daily temperature variability.

Changes in mean climatic conditions will affect natural and societal systems profoundly under continued anthropogenic global warming. Changes in the high-frequency variability of temperature exert additional pressures, yet the effect of greenhouse forcing thereon has not been fully assessed or identified in observational data. Here, we show that the intramonthly variability of daily surface temperature changes with distinct global patterns as greenhouse gas concentrations rise.