Podcast appearances and mentions of solomon hsiang

If the world does not curb its greenhouse gas emissions, by the end of this century, the number of people dying annually because of extreme heat will be greater than the current global death toll from infectious diseases - that’s all infectiousness diseases, from malaria to diarrhoeal diseases to HIV. This is the grim assessment of climate researchers and economists of the Climate Impact Lab in the largest global study to date of health and financial impacts of temperature-related deaths. Roland Pease talks to Solomon Hsiang of the University of California, Berkeley. UK ecologists have new insights about how diseases jump the species barrier from wildlife to humans. With a global survey of land use and biodiversity, they’ve discovered that when natural habitats are converted to farmland or urbanised, the animal species that survive the change in greatest number are those species which carry viruses and bacteria with the potential to spread to us. This is particularly the case, says Rory Gibb of the University College London, with disease-carrying rodent species, bats and birds. Do past infections by mild cold coronaviruses prepare the immune systems of some people for infection by SARS-CoV-2? Could immune memory T cells made in response to these cold viruses lessen the severity of Covid-19? Alessandro Sette and Daniela Weiskopf of the La Jolla Institute for Immunology lead the team which published the latest contributions to these questions. Anglerfish are perhaps the weirdest inhabitants of the deep sea. Their sex lives are particularly strange because finding partners in the dark expanse of the ocean abyss is hard. Females are much bigger than males. When a male finds a female, he latches on her body with his teeth and over a couple of weeks, their flesh fuses so he is permanently attached. Her blood supplies him with all the food and oxygen he needs and he becomes an ever present supply of sperm whenever she produces eggs. But this fusion should be impossible. The female’s immune system should be rejecting her partner like a mismatched organ transplant. German scientists have now discovered that these fish do this by giving up the production of antibodies and immune T cells – essential for fighting infections in all other animals including us. It was a shocking discovery for Prof Thomas Boehm at the Max Planck Institute in Freiburg. Anyone else had their flight cancelled? The COVID 19 pandemic has had a huge impact on air travel – air traffic in 2020 is expected to be down 50 per cent on last year. But beyond the obvious disruption to business and people’s lives, how might the quieter skies affect our weather and climate? One curious listener, Jeroen Wijnands, who lives next to Schiphol airport in the Netherlands, noticed how there were fewer clouds and barely any rainfall since the flights dropped off. Could airplanes affect our local weather? Also, did we learn anything from another occasion when airplanes were grounded, during the post-9/11 shutdown? How will the current period impact our future climate? Marnie Chesterton investigates this question and discovers some of the surprising effects that grounded aircraft are having: on cloud formation, forecasting and climate change. (Image: Relatives of heatstroke victims, their heads covered with wet towels, wait outside a hospital during a heatwave in Karachi. .Credit: Rizwan Tabassum/AFP via Getty Images)

If the world does not curb its greenhouse gas emissions, by the end of this century, the number of people dying annually because of extreme heat will be greater than the current global death toll from infectious diseases - that’s all infectiousness diseases, from malaria to diarrhoeal diseases to HIV. This is the grim assessment of climate researchers and economists of the Climate Impact Lab in the largest global study to date of health and financial impacts of temperature-related deaths. Roland Pease talks to Solomon Hsiang of the University of California, Berkeley. UK ecologists have new insights about how diseases jump the species barrier from wildlife to humans. With a global survey of land use and biodiversity, they’ve discovered that when natural habitats are converted to farmland or urbanised, the animal species that survive the change in greatest number are those species which carry viruses and bacteria with the potential to spread to us. This is particularly the case, says Rory Gibb of the University College London, with disease-carrying rodent species, bats and birds. Do past infections by mild cold coronaviruses prepare the immune systems of some people for infection by SARS-CoV-2? Could immune memory T cells made in response to these cold viruses lessen the severity of Covid-19? Alessandro Sette and Daniela Weiskopf of the La Jolla Institute for Immunology lead the team which published the latest contributions to these questions. Anglerfish are perhaps the weirdest inhabitants of the deep sea. Their sex lives are particularly strange because finding partners in the dark expanse of the ocean abyss is hard. Females are much bigger than males. When a male finds a female, he latches on her body with his teeth and over a couple of weeks, their flesh fuses so he is permanently attached. Her blood supplies him with all the food and oxygen he needs and he becomes an ever present supply of sperm whenever she produces eggs. But this fusion should be impossible. The female’s immune system should be rejecting her partner like a mismatched organ transplant. German scientists have now discovered that these fish do this by giving up the production of antibodies and immune T cells – essential for fighting infections in all other animals including us. It was a shocking discovery for Prof Thomas Boehm at the Max Planck Institute in Freiburg. (Image: Relatives of heatstroke victims, their heads covered with wet towels, wait outside a hospital during a heatwave in Karachi. .Credit: Rizwan Tabassum/AFP via Getty Images) Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker

Do you live somewhere that might actually benefit from climate change? Rising temperatures and seas will produce losers and winners. Some parts of the world will see more moderate weather and economic gains, while others are already seeing sagging property prices and economic losses. “Many people think oh it’s just the temperature, but actually temperature affects everything,” says Solomon Hsiang of UC Berkeley. Hsiang co-authored a 2017 paper in the journal Science that outlines the impacts of a warmer world on human health and migration, violent crime, food production and wealth distribution. The study shows that hot days are associated with increased violence as well as with reduced incomes. Hsiang and his colleagues have followed actual U.S. counties over time and found that if the diurnal average is above 85 Fahrenheit, people earn roughly $20 less per year. So who does come out ahead? “We do spend a lot of resources trying to cope with the cold,” Hsiang notes. “There are many parts of the world where if you get a little bit warmer…you actually can take those resources that you were spending on shoveling your driveway or paying someone to plow it, and you can invest those in something much more productive.” But would any of these benefits inevitably offset by the social costs? “Risk in a changing climate is not just about the climate – that human side of the picture is unbelievably important,” says Katherine Mach, formerly with Stanford University and now at university of Miami. “The huge inequities among countries of the world and the way that impacts that are happening in terms of impacts for food security or water insecurity…will mean different things when you're in a low income country” without state support to keep the economy moving. Guests: Solomon Hsiang, Chancellor's Associate Professor of Public Policy, UC Berkeley Katherine Mach, Senior Research Scientist, Stanford University

It’s time to shift our approach to climate change. The truth is, it may very well be too late to avoid the worst consequences of our warming planet — lost ecosystems, millions of plants and animals going extinct, scarce water and more extreme weather. It may be time to focus more on technology that will help us adapt. That’s the focus of “How We Survive,” the new series from Molly’s other show, “Marketplace Tech.” Here to talk with us about climate adaptation and how it’ll impact the economy and society is Solomon Hsiang, University of California, Berkeley, public policy professor and Stanford visiting scholar. Subscribe to “Marketplace Tech” to hear more from “How We Survive” and check out Vox to get even smarter about Ramadan.

The field of environmental economics in general — and climate economics in particular — is exploding. And my guest on episode 44 of Forecast, Solomon Hsiang from UC Berkeley, is helping to crack open some of the recalcitrant oyster shells of the field. How does climate influence conflict, migration and economic productivity? We talk through […]

Professor Solomon Hsiang discusses findings of a study on the economic impacts on the US resulting from climate change. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 32681]

Professor Solomon Hsiang discusses findings of a study on the economic impacts on the US resulting from climate change. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 32681]

Professor Solomon Hsiang discusses findings of a study on the economic impacts on the US resulting from climate change. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 32681]

Professor Solomon Hsiang discusses findings of a study on the economic impacts on the US resulting from climate change. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 32681]

Professor Solomon Hsiang discusses findings of a study on the economic impacts on the US resulting from climate change. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 32681]

Professor Solomon Hsiang discusses findings of a study on the economic impacts on the US resulting from climate change. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 32681]

Professor Solomon Hsiang discusses findings of a study on the economic impacts on the US resulting from climate change. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 32681]

Professor Solomon Hsiang discusses findings of a study on the economic impacts on the US resulting from climate change. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 32681]

As the planet heats up, economies around the world may be cooling down. A new study at the University of California, Berkeley has found that, if left unmitigated, climate change could reduce average income by as much as 23 percent by the end of the century. The results are based on the finding that economies perform optimally at a temperature of 13 degrees Celsius, or 55 degrees Fahrenheit. Lead author Solomon Hsiang explains that rising temperatures could even widen global inequality. "Most of the countries that are harmed the most are the countries that are already hot. And the countries that are already hot in the present world are the countries that tend to be poorer, on average, than cooler countries. And you have a lot of countries in the north, particularly in northern Europe, places like Germany and Norway, which are already quite cold and they in fact benefit a small amount from warming. And so what you have is an image of the world going forward where the global economy has been completely reshaped by climate change in a way that makes it relatively poorer and more unequal."

While this year’s predicted El Niño event may bring much-needed rain to California and other parts of the country, it could potentially lead to devastating costs for those in the tropics. Solomon Hsiang, a public policy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, says that previous El Niño’s triggered droughts, wildfires, floods, and outbreaks of diseases that severely impacted societies and economies in the tropical regions. "El Niño causes the tropical regions to become hotter and drier for the better part of the El Niño year. And what we found is consistent with these other findings that leads to both a decline in economic productivity throughout the tropics as well as an almost doubling in the rate of many patterns of violence throughout the tropics." Hsiang is hoping to raise awareness to those in less affected areas that El Niño’s are serious events. "In the United States and in California we’re very aware of what’s going on. It changes our rainfall patterns, but the things we experience here are nowhere near as extreme as the things that the 3 billion people in the tropics will be experiencing over the coming months."