Arquivo mensal: agosto 2012

Scientists struggle with limits – and risks – of advocacy (eenews.net)

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Monday, July 9, 2012

Paul Voosen, E&E reporter

Jon Krosnick has seen the frustration etched into the faces of climate scientists.

For 15 years, Krosnick has charted the rising public belief in global warming. Yet, as the field’s implications became clearer, action has remained elusive. Science seemed to hit the limits of its influence. It is a result that has prompted some researchers to cross their world’s no man’s land — from advice to activism.

As Krosnick has watched climate scientists call for government action, he began pondering a recent small dip in the public’s belief. And he wondered: Could researchers’ move into the political world be undermining their scientific message?

Jon Krosnick
Stanford’s Jon Krosnick has been studying the public’s belief in climate change for 15 years, but only recently did he decide to probe their reaction to scientists’ advocacy. Photo courtesy of Jon Krosnick.

“What if a message involves two different topics, one trustworthy and one not trustworthy?” said Krosnick, a communication and psychology professor at Stanford University. “Can the general public detect crossing that line?”

His results, not yet published, would seem to say they can.

Using a national survey, Krosnick has found that, among low-income and low-education respondents, climate scientists suffered damage to their trustworthiness and credibility when they veered from describing science into calling viewers to ask the government to halt global warming. And not only did trust in the messenger fall — even the viewers’ belief in the reality of human-caused warming dropped steeply.

It is a warning that, even as the frustration of inaction mounts and the politicization of climate science deepens, researchers must be careful in getting off the political sidelines.

“The advice that comes out of this work is that all of us, when we claim to have expertise and offer opinions on matters [in the world], need to be guarded about how far we’re willing to go,” Krosnick said. Speculation, he added, “could compromise everything.”

Krosnick’s survey is just the latest social science revelation that has reordered how natural scientists understand their role in the world. Many of these lessons have stemmed from the public’s and politicians’ reactions to climate change, which has provided a case study of how science communication works and doesn’t work. Complexity, these researchers have found, does not stop at their discipline’s verge.

For decades, most members of the natural sciences held a simple belief that the public stood lost, holding out empty mental buckets for researchers to fill with knowledge, if they could only get through to them. But, it turns out, not only are those buckets already full with a mix of ideology and cultural belief, but it is incredibly fraught, and perhaps ineffective, for scientists to suggest where those contents should be tossed.

It’s been a difficult lesson for researchers.

“Many of us have been saddened that the world has done so little about it,” said Richard Somerville, a meteorologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and former author of the United Nations’ authoritative report on climate change.

“A lot of physical climate scientists, myself included, have in the past not been knowledgeable about what the social sciences have been saying,” he added. “People who know a lot about the science of communication … [are] on board now. But we just don’t see that reflected in the policy process.”

While not as outspoken as NASA’s James Hansen, who has taken a high-profile moral stand alongside groups like 350.org and Greenpeace, Somerville has been a leader in bringing scientists together to call for greenhouse gas reductions. He helped organize the 2007 Bali declaration, a pointed letter from more than 200 scientists urging negotiators to limit global CO2 levels well below 450 parts per million.

Such declarations, in the end, have done little, Somerville said.

“If you look at the effect this has had on the policy process, it is very, very small,” he said.

This failed influence has spurred scientists like Somerville to partner closely with social scientists, seeking to understand why their message has failed. It is an effort that received a seal of approval this spring, when the National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s premier research body, hosted a two-day meeting on the science of science communication. Many of those sessions pivoted on public views of climate change.

It’s a discussion that’s been long overdue. When it comes to how the public learns about expert opinions, assumptions mostly rule in the sciences, said Dan Kahan, a professor of law and psychology at Yale Law School.

“Scientists are filled with conjectures that are plausible about how people make sense about information,” Kahan said, “only some fraction of which [are] correct.”

Shifting dynamic

Krosnick’s work began with a simple, hypothetical scene: NASA’s Hansen, whose scientific work on climate change is widely respected, walks into the Oval Office.

As he has since the 1980s, Hansen rattles off the inconvertible, ever-increasing evidence of human-caused climate change. It’s a stunning litany, authoritative in scope, and one the fictional president — be it a Bush or an Obama — must judge against Hansen’s scientific credentials, backed by publications and institutions of the highest order. If Hansen stops there, one might think, the case is made.

But he doesn’t stop. Hansen continues, arguing, as a citizen, for an immediate carbon tax.

“Whoa, there!” Krosnick’s president might think. “He’s crossed into my domain, and he’s out of touch with how policy works.” And if Hansen is willing to offer opinions where he lacks expertise, the president starts to wonder: “Can I trust any of his work?”

Richard Somerville
Part of Scripps’ legendary climate team — Charles David Keeling was an early mentor — Richard Somerville helped organize the 2007 Bali declaration by climate scientists, calling for government action on CO2 emissions. Photo by Sylvia Bal Somerville.

Researchers have studied the process of persuasion for 50 years, Krosnick said. Over that time, a few vital truths have emerged, including that trust in a source matters. But looking back over past work, Krosnick found no answer to this question. The treatment was simplistic. Messengers were either trustworthy or not. No one had considered the case of two messages, one trusted and one shaky, from the same person.

The advocacy of climate scientists provided an excellent path into this shifting dynamic.

Krosnick’s team hunted down video of climate scientists first discussing the science of climate change and then, in the same interview, calling for viewers to pressure the government to act on global warming. (Out of fears of bruised feelings, Krosnick won’t disclose the specific scientists cited.) They cut the video in two edits: one showing only the science, and one showing the science and then the call to arms.

Krosnick then showed a nationally representative sample of 793 Americans one of three videos: the science-only cut, the science and political cut, and a control video about baking meatloaf (The latter being closer to politics than Krosnick might admit). The viewers were then asked a series of questions both about their opinion of the scientist’s credibility and their overall beliefs on global warming.

For a cohort of 548 respondents who either had a household income under $50,000 or no more than a high school diploma, the results were stunning and statistically significant. Across the board, the move into politics undermined the science.

The viewers’ trust in the scientist dropped 16 percentage points, from 48 to 32 percent. Their belief in the scientist’s accuracy fell from 47 to 36 percent. Their overall trust in all scientists went from 60 to 52 percent. Their belief that government should “do a lot” to stop warming fell from 62 to 49 percent. And their belief that humans have caused climate change fell 14 percentage points, from 81 to 67 percent.

Krosnick is quick to note the study’s caveats. First, educated or wealthy viewers had no significant reaction to the political call and seemed able to parse the difference between science and a personal political view. The underlying reasons for the drop are far from clear, as well — it could simply be a function of climate change’s politicization. And far more testing needs to be done to see whether this applies in other contexts.

With further evidence, though, the implications could be widespread, Krosnick said.

“Is it the case that the principle might apply broadly?” he asked. “Absolutely.”

‘Fraught with misadventure’

Krosnick’s study is likely rigorous and useful — he is known for his careful methods — but it still carries with it a simple, possibly misleading frame, several scientists said.

Most of all, it remains hooked to a premise that words float straight from the scientist’s lips to the public’s ears. The idea that people learn from scientists at all or that they are simply misunderstanding scientific conclusions is not how reality works, Yale’s Kahan said.

“The thing that goes into the ear is fraught with misadventure,” he said.

Kahan has been at the forefront of charting how the empty-bucket theory of science communication — called the deficit model — fails. People interpret new information within the context of their own cultural beliefs, peers and politics. They use their reasoning to pick the evidence that supports their views, rather than the other way around. Indeed, recent work by Kahan found that higher-educated respondents were more likely to be polarized than their less-educated peers.

Krosnick’s study will surely spur new investigations, Kahan said, though he resisted definite remarks until he could see the final work. If the study’s conditions aren’t realistic, even a simple model can have “plenty of implications for all kinds of ways of which people become exposed to science,” he said.

The survey sits well with other research in the field and carries an implication about what role scientists should play in scientific debates, added Matthew Nisbet, a communication professor at American University.

“As soon as you start talking about a policy option, you’re presenting information that is potentially threatening to people’s values or identity,” he said. The public, he added, doesn’t “view scientists and scientific information in a vacuum.”

The deficit model has remained an enduring frame for scientists, many of whom are just becoming aware of social science work on the problem. Kahan compares it to the stages of grief. The first stage was that the truth just needs to be broadcast to change minds. The second, and one still influential in the scientific world, is that if the message is just simplified, the right images used, than the deficit will be filled.

“That too, I think, is a stage of misperception about how this works,” Kahan said.

Take the hand-wringing about science education that accompanied a recent poll finding that 46 percent of the United States believed in a creationist origin for humans. It’s a result that speaks to belief, not an understanding of evolution. Many surveyed who believed in evolution would still fail to explain natural selection, mutation or genetic variance, Kahan said, just as they don’t have to understand relativity to use their GPS.

Much of science doesn’t run up against the public’s belief systems and is accepted with little fuss. It’s not as if Louis Pasteur had to sell pasteurization by using slick images of children getting sick; for nearly all of society, it was simply a useful tool. People want to defer to the experts, as long as they don’t have to concede their beliefs on the way.

“People know what’s known without having a comprehension of why that’s the truth,” Kahan said.

There remains a danger in the emerging consensus that all scientific knowledge is filtered by the motivated reasoning of political and cultural ideology, Nisbet added. Not all people can be sorted by two, or even four, variables.

“In the new ideological deficit model, we tend to assume that failures in communication are caused by conservative media and conservative psychology,” he said. “The danger in this model is that we define the public in exclusively binary terms, as liberals versus conservatives, deniers versus believers.”

‘Crossing that line’

So why do climate scientists, more than most fields, cross the line into advocacy?

Most of all, it’s because their scientific work tells them the problem is so pressing, and time dependent, given the centuries-long life span of CO2 emissions, Somerville said.

“You get to the point where the emissions are large enough that you’ve run out of options,” he said. “You can no longer limit [it]. … We may be at that point already.”

There may also be less friction for scientists to suggest communal solutions to warming because, as Nisbet’s work has found, scientists tend to skew more liberal than the general population with more than 50 percent of one U.S. science society self-identifying as “liberal.” Given this outlook, they are more likely to accept efforts like cap and trade, a bill that, in implying a “cap” on activity, rubbed conservatives wrong.

Dan Kahan
A prolific law professor and psychologist at Yale, Dan Kahan has been charting how the public comes to, and understands, science. Photo courtesy of Dan Kahan.

“Not a lot of scientists would question if this is an effective policy,” Nisbet said.

It is not that scientists are unaware that they are moving into policy prescription, either. Most would intuitively know the line between their work and its political implications.

“I think many are aware when they’re crossing that line,” said Roger Pielke Jr., an environmental studies professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, “but they’re not aware of the consequences [of] doing so.”

This willingness to cross into advocacy could also stem from the fact that it is the next logical skirmish. The battle for public opinion on the reality of human-driven climate change is already over, Pielke said, “and it’s been won … by the people calling for action.”

While there are slight fluctuations in public belief, in general a large majority of Americans side with what scientists say about the existence and causes of climate change. It’s not unanimous, he said, but it’s larger than the numbers who supported actions like the Montreal Protocol, the bank bailout or the Iraq War.

What has shifted has been its politicization: As more Republicans have begun to disbelieve global warming, Democrats have rallied to reinforce the science. And none of it is about the actual science, of course. It’s a fact Scripps’ Somerville now understands. It’s a code, speaking for fear of the policies that could happen if the science is accepted.

Doubters of warming don’t just hear the science. A policy is attached to it in their minds.

“Here’s a fact,” Pielke said. “And you have to change your entire lifestyle.”

For all the focus on how scientists talk to the public — whether Hansen has helped or hurt his cause — Yale’s Kahan ultimately thinks the discussion will mean very little. Ask most of the public who Hansen is, and they’ll mention something about the Muppets. It can be hard to accept, for scientists and journalists, but their efforts at communication are often of little consequence, he said.

“They’re not the primary source of information,” Kahan said.

‘A credible voice’

Like many of his peers, Somerville has suffered for his acts of advocacy.

“We all get hate email,” he said. “I’ve given congressional testimony and been denounced as an arrogant elitist hiding behind a discredited organization. Every time I’m on national news, I get a spike in ugly email. … I’ve received death threats.”

There are also pressures within the scientific community. As an elder statesman, Somerville does not have to worry about his career. But he tells young scientists to keep their heads down, working on technical papers. There is peer pressure to stay out of politics, a tension felt even by Somerville’s friend, the late Stephen Schneider, also at Stanford, who was long one of the country’s premier speakers on climate science.

He was publicly lauded, but many in the climate science community grumbled, Somerville said, that Schneider should “stop being a motormouth and start publishing technical papers.”

But there is a reason tradition has sustained the distinction between advising policymakers and picking solutions, one Krosnick’s work seems to ratify, said Michael Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University and a longtime target of climate contrarians.

“It is thoroughly appropriate, as a scientist, to discuss how our scientific understanding informs matters of policy, but … we should stop short of trying to prescribe policy,” Mann said. “This distinction is, in my view, absolutely critical.”

Somerville still supports the right of scientists to speak out as concerned citizens, as he has done, and as his friend, NASA’s Hansen, has done more stridently, protesting projects like the Keystone XL pipeline. As long as great care is taken to separate the facts from the political opinion, scientists should speak their minds.

“I don’t think being a scientist deprives you of the right to have a viewpoint,” he said.

Somerville often returns to a quote from the late Sherwood Rowland, a Nobel laureate from the University of California, Irvine, who discovered the threat chlorofluorocarbons posed to ozone: “What’s the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if, in the end, all we’re willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true?”

Somerville asked Rowland several times whether the same held for global warming.

“Yes, absolutely,” he replied.

It’s an argument that Krosnick has heard from his own friends in climate science. But often this fine distinction gets lost in translation, as advocacy groups present the scientist’s personal message as the message of “science.” It’s luring to offer advice — Krosnick feels it himself when reporters call — but restraint may need to rule.

“In order to preserve a credible voice in public dialogue,” Krosnick said, “it might be that scientists such as myself need to restrain ourselves as speaking as public citizens.”

Broader efforts of communication, beyond scientists, could still mobilize the public, Nisbet said. Leave aside the third of the population who are in denial or alarmed about climate change, he said, and figure out how to make it relevant to the ambivalent middle.

“We have yet to really do that on climate change,” he said.

Somerville is continuing his efforts to improve communication from scientists. Another Bali declaration is unlikely, though. What he’d really like to do is get trusted messengers from different moral realms beyond science — leaders like the Dalai Lama — to speak repeatedly on climate change.

It’s all Somerville can do. It would be too painful to accept the other option, that climate change is like racism, war or poverty — problems the world has never abolished.

“[It] may well be that it is a problem that is too difficult for humanity to solve,” he said.

Irony Seen Through the Eye of MRI (Science Daily)

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ScienceDaily (Aug. 3, 2012) — In the cognitive sciences, the capacity to interpret the intentions of others is called “Theory of Mind” (ToM). This faculty is involved in the understanding of language, in particular by bridging the gap between the meaning of the words that make up a statement and the meaning of the statement as a whole.

In recent years, researchers have identified the neural network dedicated to ToM, but no one had yet demonstrated that this set of neurons is specifically activated by the process of understanding of an utterance. This has now been accomplished: a team from L2C2 (Laboratoire sur le Langage, le Cerveau et la Cognition, Laboratory on Language, the Brain and Cognition, CNRS / Université Claude Bernard-Lyon 1) has shown that the activation of the ToM neural network increases when an individual is reacting to ironic statements.

Published in Neuroimage, these findings represent an important breakthrough in the study of Theory of Mind and linguistics, shedding light on the mechanisms involved in interpersonal communication.

In our communications with others, we are constantly thinking beyond the basic meaning of words. For example, if asked, “Do you have the time?” one would not simply reply, “Yes.” The gap between what is saidand what it means is the focus of a branch of linguistics called pragmatics. In this science, “Theory of Mind” (ToM) gives listeners the capacity to fill this gap. In order to decipher the meaning and intentions hidden behind what is said, even in the most casual conversation, ToM relies on a variety of verbal and non-verbal elements: the words used, their context, intonation, “body language,” etc.

Within the past 10 years, researchers in cognitive neuroscience have identified a neural network dedicated to ToM that includes specific areas of the brain: the right and left temporal parietal junctions, the medial prefrontal cortex and the precuneus. To identify this network, the researchers relied primarily on non-verbal tasks based on the observation of others’ behavior[1]. Today, researchers at L2C2 (Laboratoire sur le Langage, le Cerveau et la Cognition, Laboratory on Language, the Brain and Cognition, CNRS / Université Claude Bernard-Lyon 1) have established, for the first time, the link between this neural network and the processing of implicit meanings.

To identify this link, the team focused their attention on irony. An ironic statement usually means the opposite of what is said. In order to detect irony in a statement, the mechanisms of ToM must be brought into play. In their experiment, the researchers prepared 20 short narratives in two versions, one literal and one ironic. Each story contained a key sentence that, depending on the version, yielded an ironic or literal meaning. For example, in one of the stories an opera singer exclaims after a premiere, “Tonight we gave a superb performance.” Depending on whether the performance was in fact very bad or very good, the statement is or is not ironic.

The team then carried out functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) analyses on 20 participants who were asked to read 18 of the stories, chosen at random, in either their ironic or literal version. The participants were not aware that the test concerned the perception of irony. The researchers had predicted that the participants’ ToM neural networks would show increased activity in reaction to the ironic sentences, and that was precisely what they observed: as each key sentence was read, the network activity was greater when the statement was ironic. This shows that this network is directly involved in the processes of understanding irony, and, more generally, in the comprehension of language.

Next, the L2C2 researchers hope to expand their research on the ToM network in order to determine, for example, whether test participants would be able to perceive irony if this network were artificially inactivated.

Note:

[1] For example, Grèzes, Frith & Passingham (J. Neuroscience, 2004) showed a series of short (3.5 second) films in which actors came into a room and lifted boxes. Some of the actors were instructed to act as though the boxes were heavier (or lighter) than they actually were. Having thus set up deceptive situations, the experimenters asked the participants to determine if they had or had not been deceived by the actors in the films. The films containing feigned actions elicited increased activity in the rTPJ (right temporal parietal junction) compared with those containing unfeigned actions.

Journal Reference:

Nicola Spotorno, Eric Koun, Jérôme Prado, Jean-Baptiste Van Der Henst, Ira A. Noveck. Neural evidence that utterance-processing entails mentalizing: The case of irony. NeuroImage, 2012; 63 (1): 25 DOI:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.06.046

Multiple Husbands Serve as Child Support and Life Insurance in Some Cultures (Science Daily)

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ScienceDaily (Aug. 2, 2012) — Marrying multiple husbands at the same time, or polyandry, creates a safety net for women in some cultures, according to a recent study by a University of Missouri researcher. Extra husbands ensure that women’s children are cared for even if their fathers die or disappear. Although polyandry is taboo and illegal in the United States, certain legal structures, such as child support payments and life insurance, fill the same role for American women that multiple husbands do in other cultures.

Marrying multiple husbands at the same time, or polyandry, creates a safety net for women in some cultures, according to a recent study by Kathrine Starkweather, anthropology doctoral student in MU’s Department of Anthropology. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Missouri-Columbia)

“In America, we don’t meet many of the criteria that tend to define polyandrous cultures,” said Kathrine Starkweather, doctoral student in MU’s Department of Anthropology in the College of Arts and Science. “However, some aspects of American life mirror polyandrous societies. Child support payments provide for offspring when one parent is absent. Life insurance allows Americans to provide for dependents in the event of death, just as secondary husbands support a deceased husband’s children in polyandrous societies.”

Starkweather and her co-author, Raymond Hames, professor of anthropology at the University of Nebraska, examined 52 cultures with traditions of polyandry from all continents except Europe. They found that similar conditions seemed to influence cultures toward polyandry. Males frequently outnumbered females in these cultures, as a result of high mortality prior to adulthood. Although males out-numbered females, they also were more likely to die in warfare or hunting and fishing accidents or to be absent for other economic reasons. Polyandrous cultures also tended to be small scale and egalitarian.

In approximately half of the cultures studied, the other husbands were closely related to the first husband, a practice with economic repercussions. In previously studied polyandrous cultures, especially those of Nepal, Tibet and India, inheritance traditions called for land to be divided evenly among male offspring after a parent’s passing. That practice would have resulted in land being sub-divided into useless parcels too small to provide enough crops to feed a family. However, if several brothers married the same wife, the family farm would stay intact. In the small egalitarian cultures Starkweather studied land and property ownership was unusual. In these societies, younger brothers in the marriage often protected and provided food for the family in the absence of the older brother, who was often the primary husband.

“This research shows that humans are capable of tremendous variability and adaptability in their behaviors,” said Starkweather. “Human marriage structures aren’t written in stone; throughout history, people have adapted their societal norms to ensure the survival and well-being of their children.”

Journal Reference:

Katherine E. Starkweather, Raymond Hames. A Survey of Non-Classical Polyandry. Human Nature, 2012; 23 (2): 149 DOI: 10.1007/s12110-012-9144-x

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Multiple Fathers Prevalent in Amazonian Cultures, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (Nov. 11, 2010) — In modern culture, it is not considered socially acceptable for married people to have extramarital sexual partners. However, in some Amazonian cultures, extramarital sexual affairs were common, and people believed that when a woman became pregnant, each of her sexual partners would be considered part-biological father.

Now, a new University of Missouri study published in the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found that up to 70 percent of Amazonian cultures may have believed in the principle of multiple paternity.

“In these cultures, if the mother had sexual relations with multiple men, people believed that each of the men was, in part, the child’s biological father,” said Robert Walker, assistant professor of Anthropology in the College of Arts and Science. “It was socially acceptable for children to have multiple fathers, and secondary fathers often contributed to their children’s upbringing.”

Walker says sexual promiscuity was normal and acceptable in many traditional South American societies. He says married couples typically lived with the wife’s family, which he says increased their sexual freedom.

“In some Amazonian cultures, it was bad manners for a husband to be jealous of his wife’s extramarital partners,” Walker said. “It was also considered strange if you did nothave multiple sexual partners. Cousins were often preferred partners, so it was especially rude to shun their advances.”

Previous research had uncovered the existence of multiple paternity in some Amazonian cultures. However, anthropologists did not realize how many societies held the belief. Walker’s team analyzed ethnographies (the branch of anthropology that deals descriptively with cultures) of 128 societies across lowland South America, which includes Brazil and many of the surrounding countries. Multiple paternity is reported to appear in 53 societies, and singular paternity is mentioned in 23 societies. Ethnographies for 52 societies do not mention conception beliefs.

Walker’s team has several hypotheses on the benefits of multiple paternity. Women believed that by having multiple sexual partners they gained the benefit of larger gene pools for their children. He says women benefited from the system because secondary fathers gave gifts and helped support the child, which has been shown to increase child survival rates. In addition, brutal warfare was common in ancient Amazonia, and should the mother become a widow, her child would still have a father figure.

Men benefitted from the multiple paternity system because they were able to formalize alliances with other men by sharing wives. Walker hypothesizes that multiple paternity also strengthened family bonds, as brothers often shared wives in some cultures.

Walker collaborated with Mark Flinn, professor in the MU Department of Anthropology, and Kim Hill, professor in Arizona State University’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change.

Journal Reference:

R. S. Walker, M. V. Flinn, K. R. Hill. Evolutionary history of partible paternity in lowland South America.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2010; 107 (45): 19195 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1002598107

Mapping the Future of Climate Change in Africa (Science Daily)

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ScienceDaily (Aug. 2, 2012) — Our planet’s changing climate is devastating communities in Africa through droughts, floods and myriad other disasters.

Children in the foothills of Drakensberg mountains in South Africa who still live in traditional rondavels on family homesteads. (Credit: Todd G. Smith, CCAPS Program)

Using detailed regional climate models and geographic information systems, researchers with the Climate Change and African Political Stability (CCAPS) program developed an online mapping tool that analyzes how climate and other forces interact to threaten the security of African communities.

The program was piloted by the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at The University of Texas at Austin in 2009 after receiving a $7.6 million five-year grant from the Minerva Initiative with the Department of Defense, according to Francis J. Gavin, professor of international affairs and director of the Strauss Center.

“The first goal was to look at whether we could more effectively identify what were the causes and locations of vulnerability in Africa, not just climate, but other kinds of vulnerability,” Gavin said.

CCAPS comprises nine research teams focusing on various aspects of climate change, their relationship to different types of conflict, the government structures that exist to mitigate them, and the effectiveness of international aid in intervening. Although most CCAPS researchers are based at The University of Texas at Austin, the Strauss Center also works closely with Trinity College Dublin, the College of William and Mary, and the University of North Texas.

“In the beginning these all began as related, but not intimately connected, topics” Gavin said, “and one of the really impressive things about the project is how all these different streams have come together.”

Africa is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change due to its reliance on rain-fed agriculture and the inability of many of its governments to help communities in times of need.

The region is of increasing importance for U.S. national security, according to Gavin, because of the growth of its population, economic strength and resource importance, and also due to concerns about non-state actors, weakening governments and humanitarian disasters.

Although these issues are too complex to yield a direct causal link between climate change and security concerns, he said, understanding the levels of vulnerability that exist is crucial in comprehending the full effect of this changing paradigm.

The vulnerability mapping program within CCAPS is led by Joshua Busby, assistant professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs.

To determine the vulnerability of a given location based on changing climate conditions, Busby and his team looked at four different sources: 1) the degree of physical exposure to climate hazards, 2) population size, 3) household or community resilience, and 4) the quality of governance or presence of political violence.

The first source records the different types of climate hazards which could occur in the area, including droughts, floods, wildfires, storms and coastal inundation. However, their presence alone is not enough to qualify a region as vulnerable.

The second source — population size — determines the number of people who will be impacted by these climate hazards. More people create more demand for resources, potentially making the entire population more vulnerable.

The third source looks at how resilient a community is to adverse effects, analyzing the quality of their education and health, as well as whether they have easy access to food, water and health care.

“If exposure is really bad, it may exceed the capacity of local communities to protect themselves,” Busby said, “and then it comes down to whether or not the governments are going to be willing or able to help them.”

The final source accounts for the effectiveness of a given government, the amount of accountability present, how integrated it is with the international community, how politically stable it is, and whether there is any political violence present.

Busby and his team combined the four sources of vulnerability and gave them each equal weight, adding them together to form a composite map. Their scores were then divided into a ranking of five equal parts, or quintiles, going from the 20 percent of regions with the lowest vulnerability to the 20 percent with the highest.

The researchers gathered information for the tool from a variety of sources, including historic models of physical exposure from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), population estimates from LandScan, as well as household surveys and governance assessments from the World Bank’s World Development and Worldwide Governance Indicators.

This data reflects past and present vulnerability, but to understand which places in Africa would be most vulnerable to future climate change, Busby and his team relied on the regional climate model simulations designed by Edward Vizy and Kerry Cook, both members of the CCAPS team from the Jackson School of Geosciences.

Vizy and Cook ran three, 20-year nested simulations of the African continent’s climate at the regional scales of 90 and 30 kilometers, using a derivation of the Weather Research and Forecasting Model of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. One was a control simulation representative of the years 1989-2008, and the others represented the climate as it may exist in 2041-2060 and 2081-2100.

“We’re adjusting the control simulation’s CO2 concentration, model boundary conditions, and sea surface temperatures to increased greenhouse gas forcing scenario conditions derived from atmosphere-ocean global climate models. We re-run the simulation to understand how the climate will operate under a different, warmer state at spatial resolutions needed for regional impact analyses,” Vizy said.

Each simulation took two months to complete on the Rangersupercomputer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC).

“We couldn’t run these simulations without the high-performance computing resources at TACC, it would just take too long. If it takes two months running with 200 processors, I can’t fathom doing it with one processor,” Vizy said.

Researchers input data from these vulnerability maps into an online mapping tool developed by the CCAPS program to integrate its various lines of climate, conflict and aid research. CCAPS’s current mapping tool is based on a prototype developed by the team to assess conflict patterns in Africa with the help of researchers at the TACC/ACES Visualization Laboratory (Vislab), according to Ashley Moran, program manager of CCAPS.

“The mapping tool is a key part of our effort to produce new research that could support policy making and the work of practitioners and governments in Africa,” Moran said. “We want to communicate this research in ways that are of maximum use to policymakers and researchers.”

The initial prototype of the mapping tool used the ArcGIS platform to project data onto maps. Working with its partner Development Gateway, CCAPS expanded the system to incorporate conflict, vulnerability, governance and aid research data.

After completing the first version of their model, Busby and his team carried out the process of ground truthing their maps by visiting local officials and experts in several African countries, such as Kenya and South Africa.

“The experience of talking with local experts was tremendously gratifying,” Busby said. “They gave us confidence that the things we’re doing in a computer lab setting in Austin do pick up on some of the ground-level expert opinions.”

Busby and his team complemented their maps with local perspectives on the kind of impact climate was already having, leading to new insights that could help perfect the model. For example, local experts felt the model did not address areas with chronic water scarcity, an issue the researchers then corrected upon returning home.

According to Busby, the vulnerability maps serve as focal points which can give way to further analysis about the issues they illustrate.

Some of the countries most vulnerable to climate change include Somalia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Sudan and parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Knowing this allows local policymakers to develop security strategies for the future, including early warning systems against floods, investments in drought-resistant agriculture, and alternative livelihoods that might facilitate resource sharing and help prevent future conflicts. The next iteration of the online mapping tool to be released later this year will also incorporate the future projections of climate exposure from the models developed by Vizy and Cook.

The CCAPS team publishes their research in journals likeClimate Dynamics and The International Studies Review, carries out regular consultations with the U.S. government and governments in Africa, and participates in conferences sponsored by concerned organizations, such as the United Nations and the United States Africa Command.

“What this project has showed us is that many of the real challenges of the 21st century aren’t always in traditional state-to-state interactions, but are transnational in nature and require new ways of dealing with,” Gavin said.

Teen Survival Expectations Predict Later Risk-Taking Behavior (Science Daily)

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ScienceDaily (Aug. 1, 2012) — Some young people’s expectations that they will not live long, healthy lives may actually foreshadow such outcomes.

New research published August 1 in the open access journal PLOS ONEreports that, for American teens, the expectation of death before the age of 35 predicted increased risk behaviors including substance abuse and suicide attempts later in life and a doubling to tripling of mortality rates in young adulthood.

The researchers, led by Quynh Nguyen of Northeastern University in Boston, found that one in seven participants in grades 7 to 12 reported perceiving a 50-50 chance or less of surviving to age 35. Upon follow-up interviews over a decade later, the researchers found that low expectations of longevity at young ages predicted increased suicide attempts and suicidal thoughts as well as heavy drinking, smoking, and use of illicit substances later in life relative to their peers who were almost certain they would live to age 35.

“The association between early survival expectations and detrimental outcomes suggests that monitoring survival expectations may be useful for identifying at-risk youth,” the authors state.

The study compared data collected from 19,000 adolescents in 1994-1995 to follow-up data collected from the same respondents 13-14 years later. The cohort was part of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), conducted by the Carolina Population Center and funded by the National Institutes of Health and 23 other federal agencies and foundations.

Journal Reference:

Quynh C. Nguyen, Andres Villaveces, Stephen W. Marshall, Jon M. Hussey, Carolyn T. Halpern, Charles Poole. Adolescent Expectations of Early Death Predict Adult Risk Behaviors. PLoS ONE, 2012; 7 (8): e41905 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0041905

Brain Imaging Can Predict How Intelligent You Are: ‘Global Brain Connectivity’ Explains 10 Percent of Variance in Individual Intelligence (Science Daily)

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ScienceDaily (Aug. 1, 2012) — When it comes to intelligence, what factors distinguish the brains of exceptionally smart humans from those of average humans?

New research suggests as much as 10 percent of individual variances in human intelligence can be predicted based on the strength of neural connections between the lateral prefrontal cortex and other regions of the brain. (Credit: WUSTL Image / Michael Cole)

As science has long suspected, overall brain size matters somewhat, accounting for about 6.7 percent of individual variation in intelligence. More recent research has pinpointed the brain’s lateral prefrontal cortex, a region just behind the temple, as a critical hub for high-level mental processing, with activity levels there predicting another 5 percent of variation in individual intelligence.

Now, new research from Washington University in St. Louis suggests that another 10 percent of individual differences in intelligence can be explained by the strength of neural pathways connecting the left lateral prefrontal cortex to the rest of the brain.

Published in the Journal of Neuroscience, the findings establish “global brain connectivity” as a new approach for understanding human intelligence.

“Our research shows that connectivity with a particular part of the prefrontal cortex can predict how intelligent someone is,” suggests lead author Michael W. Cole, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow in cognitive neuroscience at Washington University.

The study is the first to provide compelling evidence that neural connections between the lateral prefrontal cortex and the rest of the brain make a unique and powerful contribution to the cognitive processing underlying human intelligence, says Cole, whose research focuses on discovering the cognitive and neural mechanisms that make human behavior uniquely flexible and intelligent.

“This study suggests that part of what it means to be intelligent is having a lateral prefrontal cortex that does its job well; and part of what that means is that it can effectively communicate with the rest of the brain,” says study co-author Todd Braver, PhD, professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences and of neuroscience and radiology in the School of Medicine. Braver is a co-director of the Cognitive Control and Psychopathology Lab at Washington University, in which the research was conducted.

One possible explanation of the findings, the research team suggests, is that the lateral prefrontal region is a “flexible hub” that uses its extensive brain-wide connectivity to monitor and influence other brain regions in a goal-directed manner.

“There is evidence that the lateral prefrontal cortex is the brain region that ‘remembers’ (maintains) the goals and instructions that help you keep doing what is needed when you’re working on a task,” Cole says. “So it makes sense that having this region communicating effectively with other regions (the ‘perceivers’ and ‘doers’ of the brain) would help you to accomplish tasks intelligently.”

While other regions of the brain make their own special contribution to cognitive processing, it is the lateral prefrontal cortex that helps coordinate these processes and maintain focus on the task at hand, in much the same way that the conductor of a symphony monitors and tweaks the real-time performance of an orchestra.

“We’re suggesting that the lateral prefrontal cortex functions like a feedback control system that is used often in engineering, that it helps implement cognitive control (which supports fluid intelligence), and that it doesn’t do this alone,” Cole says.

The findings are based on an analysis of functional magnetic resonance brain images captured as study participants rested passively and also when they were engaged in a series of mentally challenging tasks associated with fluid intelligence, such as indicating whether a currently displayed image was the same as one displayed three images ago.

Previous findings relating lateral prefrontal cortex activity to challenging task performance were supported. Connectivity was then assessed while participants rested, and their performance on additional tests of fluid intelligence and cognitive control collected outside the brain scanner was associated with the estimated connectivity.

Results indicate that levels of global brain connectivity with a part of the left lateral prefrontal cortex serve as a strong predictor of both fluid intelligence and cognitive control abilities.

Although much remains to be learned about how these neural connections contribute to fluid intelligence, new models of brain function suggested by this research could have important implications for the future understanding — and perhaps augmentation — of human intelligence.

The findings also may offer new avenues for understanding how breakdowns in global brain connectivity contribute to the profound cognitive control deficits seen in schizophrenia and other mental illnesses, Cole suggests.

Other co-authors include Tal Yarkoni, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado at Boulder; Grega Repovs, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia; and Alan Anticevic, an associate research scientist in psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine.

Funding from the National Institute of Mental Health supported the study (National Institutes of Health grants MH66088, NR012081, MH66078, MH66078-06A1W1, and 1K99MH096801).

A burocracia e as violências invisíveis (Canal Ibase)

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Renzo Taddei – Colunista do Canal Ibase

2 de agosto de 2012

A matéria de capa da revista Time da semana passada chama a atenção para dados impressionantes sobre o suicídio entre militares norte-americanos. Desde 2004, o número de militares americanos que se suicidaram é maior do que os que foram mortos em combate no Afeganistão. Em média, um soldado americano na ativa se suicida por dia. Dentre os veteranos, um suicídio ocorre a cada 80 minutos. Entre 2004 e 2008, a taxa de suicídio entre militares cresceu 80%; só em 2012, esse crescimento já é de 18%. O suicídio ultrapassou os acidentes automobilísticos como primeira causa de morte de militares fora de situação de combate.

Foto: Matthew C. Moeller (Flickr)

O exército americano naturalmente busca, preocupado, identificar as causas do problema – até o momento sem sucesso. O problema está longe de ser óbvio, no entanto. Um terço dos suicidas nunca foi ao Afeganistão ou ao Iraque. 43% só foram convocados uma vez. Apenas 8,5% dos suicidas foram convocados três vezes ou mais. E, em sua maioria, são casados. Ou seja, nem todos os suicídios estão relacionados com traumas de campos de batalha.

Como é de se esperar, a burocracia militar busca um diagnóstico burocrático, para que a solução seja burocrática – de modo que não seja necessário cavar muito fundo na questão. O exército americano não tem psiquiatras e profissionais de serviço social suficientes. Muitos soldados se suicidam na longa espera por uma consulta psiquiátrica; outros, após terem sido receitados soníferos e oficialmente diagnosticados como “não sendo um perigo para si ou para os demais”. A cultura militar estigmatiza demonstrações de fraqueza, de modo que muitos evitam procurar ajuda a tempo. Viúvas acusam o exército de negligência; oficiais militares dizem que os soldados se suicidam devido a problemas conjugais.

Enquanto eu refletia sobre o assunto, chegou até mim a indicação de um livro chamadoDays of Destruction, Days of Revolt, do jornalista americano Chris Edges. O livro descreve a situação de algumas das cidades mais pobres dos Estados Unidos e chega à conclusão de que a pobreza de tais cidades não tem ligação com a ideia de subdesenvolvimento, mas sim ao que se poderia chamar de contra-desenvolvimento: são cidades que foram destruídas pela exploração capitalista.

Uma dessas cidades, Camden, no estado de Nova Jersey, é velha conhecida: durante meu doutorado nos Estados Unidos, trabalhei como fotógrafo para complementar minha renda, e estive em Camden várias vezes. Sempre me impressionaram os sinais explícitos de decadência do lugar: gente vivendo em prédios em ruínas; equipamentos públicos em decomposição; tráfico de droga à luz do dia. Agora descubro que se trata nada menos da cidade com menor renda per capita do país.

Chris Edges chama tais cidades de zonas de sacrifício do capitalismo. Ou seja, para que a exploração capitalista possa ocorrer sem impedimentos, o capital se move de um lugar para outro assim que os recursos ou as oportunidades se esgotam, deixando para trás cidades fantasmas, desemprego e depressão. A lógica desse padrão de exploração é bem conhecida desde Marx, pelo menos. O que Chris Edges faz é, com a ajuda do artista gráfico e também jornalista Joe Sacco, dar nova visibilidade a um problema que a burocracia oficial e a mídia fazem questão de não enxergar.

Que relação há entre os suicídios militares e a pobreza urbana dos Estados Unidos? Na verdade, me dei conta que há uma analogia fundamental entre os dois casos: em ambos há a conjugação do fato de que para que o sistema funcione – e estamos falando de sistemas diferentes para cada caso – alguém tem que ser sacrificado; e esse sacrifício e suas vítimas sacrificiais devem permanecer invisíveis para a maioria da população. O esforço dos Estados Unidos para manter sua hegemonia militar produz de forma sistemática a morte de uma imensa quantidade de gente, dentre americanos e seus supostos inimigos. E, para que a lucratividade se mantenha alta, florestas, cidades e empregos são destruídos, também de forma sistemática. Uma das expressões usadas nas ciências sociais para descrever esse estado de coisas é violência estrutural.

A invisibilidade dessas coisas é imprescindível – só assim pessoas bem intencionadas e de boa fé podem participar do sistema perverso, sem enxergar sua perversidade. Por isso, por exemplo, o governo Bush (pai) articulou com a imprensa americana um pacto para que não fossem publicadas fotos de caixões de soldados mortos em combate na primeira Guerra do Golfo. O pacto esteve em vigor por quase vinte anos, até que foidesfeito por Obama em 2009.

Mas a forma mais comum, e eficaz, de produzir as formas de violência estrutural que reproduzem desigualdades de forma invisível é a burocracia. E isso se dá, como nos lembra David Graeber, em razão do fato de que é função da burocracia ignorar as minúcias da vida cotidiana e reduzir tudo a fórmulas mecânicas e estatísticas. Isso nos permite focar nossas energias em um número menor de variáveis, e assim realizar coisas grandiosas e incríveis – para o bem e para o mal. O papel que a burocracia tem na produção da invisibilidade que mantém violências estruturais em funcionamento pode ser exemplificado através do uso de estatísticas em políticas públicas, por exemplo. Um dos programas oficiais de apoio à população rural do Nordeste mais importantes da atualidade, o Garantia Safra – em que pequenos agricultores adquirem um seguro e são indenizados em caso de perda de safra -, sistematicamente exclui agricultores em função de miopia burocrática. Para que os agricultores de um município recebam a indenização, as regras do programa exigem que haja 50% de perda da safra de todo o município. No entanto, basta ver a dimensão e os contornos dos municípios brasileiros para rapidamente concluir que não há relação necessária entre os limites municipais e os fenômenos meteorológicos. Há municípios que, de tão extensos, apresentam variações climáticas dramáticas dentro de suas fronteiras. Nesses casos, é comum que muitos agricultores com grandes perdas não recebam qualquer indenização, se outras regiões do município tiverem perdas menores. Por que é que o município tem que ser tomado como unidade de referência nesse caso? Porque há um aparato burocrático municipal para gerir o programa, e não há níveis burocráticos oficiais em escala menor. Ou seja, o sistema é burro mesmo que ninguém o seja, e quem sofre as consequências são os agricultores.

De forma correlata, índices nacionais ou estaduais de desemprego, crescimento do PIB e do PIB per capita, são unidades de referência centrais das políticas públicas atuais, ainda que sejam médias que não levem em consideração as situações extremas onde efetivamente existe vulnerabilidade socioeconômica. É como se o ditado que diz que “a corda sempre se parte no lado mais fraco” fosse sistematicamente ignorado. A vulnerabilidade de qualquer sistema – uma máquina, por exemplo – é definida pelo seu componente mais frágil. Qualquer engenheiro sabe disso; na verdade, a ideia é tão óbvia que qualquer um sabe disso. É ai que entra a burocracia: . Nesse contexto, não importa muito o que as pessoas sabem ou não: elas não serão capazes de identificar como a burocracia produz inconsistências e violência estrutural, a menos que sejam diretamente afetadas. Dessa forma, cidades como Camden ficam sistematicamente fora do radar, camufladas por estatísticas de âmbito estadual ou nacional.

Isso tudo está relacionado a outra notícia veiculada nos jornais na semana passada: a posição do Brasil nos debates na ONU sobre a regulação do comércio mundial de armas. Apesar das evidências de que as armas fabricadas no Brasil foram e continuam sendo vendidas a governos com histórico de violação dos direitos humanos, o Brasil se colocou frontalmente contra a regulação e criação de mecanismos que deem transparência a esse mercado. A justificativa, como não poderia deixar de ser, é burocrática: a disseminação de informações sobre capacidade bélica “poderia expor os recursos e a capacidade dos países […] de sustentar um conflito prolongado”. Colocar isso como argumento que tem precedência sobre a necessidade de proteger os direitos humanos é um escândalo. Por trás dessa desculpa esfarrapada, está a intenção de proteger a lucrativa indústria bélica brasileira. O que faz a história toda mais indigesta é o fato da Dilma ter sido vítima de tortura, durante o período em que o Brasil era dirigido pela burocracia militar. Como pode a mesma presidente que criou aComissão da Verdade ser conivente com uma indústria e um mercado manchados de sangue?

Esse episódio mostra que, em termos éticos, há menos diferença entre Estados Unidos e Brasil do que os brasileiros gostam de acreditar. Para proteger o capitalismo – já não mais num campo de luta ideológica, como à época da guerra fria, mas na forma de interesses privados reais e específicos de empresas norte-americanas -, os Estados Unidos passam a ser um perigo não apenas para nações vulneráveis não-alinhadas, mas a si mesmo, como revela a epidemia de suicídios entre militares. Da mesma forma, e pelas mesmas razões – ou seja, na caminhada rumo à sua consolidação como poder imperialista – o Brasil se preocupa com seus mortos políticos, e estrategicamente finge não ver que, para a engorda do seu PIB e para a prosperidade de sua indústria bélica, uma imensa quantidade de vidas – na África, no Oriente Média, no sul do Pará e nos morros cariocas –  é sacrificada.

Renzo Taddei é professor da Escola de Comunicação da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. É doutor em antropologia pela Universidade de Columbia, em Nova York. Dedica-se aos estudos sociais da ciência e tecnologia.

O mau exemplo da Apple (Mundo Sustentável)

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Tecnologia
01/8/2012 – 09h36

por André Trigueiro*

apple O mau exemplo da AppleLixo eletrônico: Apple perde a certificação ambiental de 39 modelos de computador.

O gênero de resíduos que mais cresce no mundo é o de lixo eletrônico, ou seja, pilhas, baterias e tudo o que precise de eletricidade para funcionar (computadores, televisores, aparelhos de som, etc.). Os obsessivos lançamentos de novos produtos e o encurtamento da obsolescência programada (equipamentos projetados para durar pouco) são responsáveis por uma “tsunami” de lixo eletrônico que já ultrapassou 50 milhões de toneladas/ano em todo o mundo.

Para reduzir o volume de lixo – e facilitar o reúso ou a reciclagem dos componentes –, os Estados Unidos criaram uma certificação ambiental para produtos eletrônicos (Epeat) que valoriza, entre outras iniciativas, eficiência energética, maior facilidade para desmontar o equipamento após o descarte e segurança na segregação dos componentes tóxicos.

Segundo reportagem do Wall Street Journal, o governo dos Estados Unidos exige que 95% dos produtos eletrônicos adquiridos com recursos públicos sejam certificados pelos padrões da Epeat. Também seguem a certificação grandes empresas como a Ford e o HSBC. Duzentas e vinte e duas das mais importantes universidades norte-americanas também dão preferência a computadores certificados pelo Epeat.

Pois a mesma reportagem informa que um funcionário da Apple avisou, no final de junho, ao diretor executivo da Epeat, Robert Frisbee, que a orientação de design da empresa não era mais compatível com as exigências da Epeat, e que, por isso, pediu para tirar da lista de produtos sujeitos à certificação ambiental 39 computadores desktop, monitores e laptops (incluindo alguns modelos MacBook Pro e MacBook Air).

Foi a segunda vez em menos de três meses que a Apple desapontou seus seguidores mais antenados com os assuntos na sustentabilidade. No mês de abril a empresa apareceu como vilã em um relatório do Greenpeace que avaliou as fontes de energia mais utilizadas pelas gigantes de TI. O relatório How clean is your cloud? (O quão limpa é a sua nuvem?) informou que mais da metade da energia que mantém a estrutura da Apple funcionando tem origem em combustíveis fósseis, principalmente o carvão mineral.

Completando a onda de notícias ruins que alcançam a maçã de Steve Jobs, um relatório recente produzido pelo Centro de Descarte e Reúso de Resíduos de Informática da Universidade de São Paulo (USP) avaliou os esforços realizados pelas empresas que atuam no Brasil para recuperar os equipamentos que são descartados como lixo. Pela atual Lei Nacional de Resíduos Sólidos, essas empresas são obrigadas a promover a logística reversa, ou seja, a recuperação desses produtos quando eles são descartados como lixo. A Apple (juntamente com Samsung, Sony, IBM, Proviews e Brother) aparece na lista negra do relatório, justamente entre as empresas que não se prontificam a buscar o resíduo (quando o usuário está pronto para descartá-lo como lixo), nem aceitá-lo quando entregue em uma de suas lojas.

É pena saber de tudo isso depois de já ter um Iphone.

Se a Apple não desmonstrar de forma bastante convincente seu comprometimento com os valores socioambientais, será meu último tablet sabor maçã.

PS: Este espaço está completamente disponível para que a Apple faça as considerações que desejar.

* André Trigueiro é jornalista com pós-graduação em Gestão Ambiental pela Coppe-UFRJ onde hoje leciona a disciplina Geopolítica Ambiental, professor e criador do curso de Jornalismo Ambiental da PUC-RJ, autor do livroMundo Sustentável – Abrindo Espaço na Mídia para um Planeta em Transformação, coordenador editorial e um dos autores dos livros Meio Ambiente no Século XXI, e Espiritismo e Ecologia, lançado na Bienal Internacional do Livro, no Rio de Janeiro, pela Editora FEB, em 2009. É apresentador do Jornal das Dez e editor-chefe do programa Cidades e Soluções, da Globo News. É também comentarista da Rádio CBN e colaborador voluntário da Rádio Rio de Janeiro.

** Publicado originalmente no site Mundo Sustentável.