Search

Following the 2007-2009 financial crisis, governments around the world passed laws that marked the beginning of new period of enhanced regulation of the financial industry. These laws called for a myriad of new regulations, which in the U.S. are created through the so-called notice-and-comment process. Through examining the text documents generated through this process, we study the formation of regulations to gain insight into how new regulatory regimes are implemented following major laws like the landmark Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Due to the variety of constituent preferences and political pressures, we find evidence that the government implements rules strategically to extend the regulatory boundary by first pursuing procedural rules that establish how economic activities will be regulated, followed by specifying who is subject to the procedural requirements. Our findings together with the unique nature of the Dodd-Frank Act translate to a number of stylized facts that should guide development of formal models of the rule-making process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The combined effects of climate and land-use change have changed both the hydrology and management of endorheic watersheds globally. Devils Lake (DL), North Dakota, USA, has risen nearly 10 m since 1991, resulting in a costly, lengthy and litigious water management issue in the region. With more than 1 billion US dollars already spent in mitigation, DL is less than 2 m from its uncontrolled overspill to the nearby Sheyenne River, which could lead to mounting economic, environmental and social costs. While previous studies have generally attributed the changes in the hydrology of DL to the current wet spell, the impacts of land-use changes have not been investigated. Using a hydrological model, here we develop four land-use alternatives driven by market and policy conditions in the DL watershed and investigate their effects on DL hydrology and overspill probability under historic and changed climates. Land-use scenarios under an ensemble of statistically downscaled general circulation model projections indicate a higher overspill risk (7.4-17.0 vs. 0-2 %) under historical climate. Incentivized grass and alfalfa scenarios were able to moderate the hydrological implications to DL under a changed climate, indicating their potential companion roles in DL flood mitigation strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined whether people living in the US connect their sensory experiences with local temperature to climate change and whether mass media influences the process. We used the volume of Twitter messages containing words “climate change” and “global warming” as the indicator of attention that public pays to the issue. Specifically, the goals were: (1) to investigate whether people immediately notice substantial local weather anomalies such as deviations from long-term mean temperatures and connect them to climate change by contributing to climate change discourse on Twitter and (2) to examine the role of mass media in this process. Over 2 million tweets were collected for a two-year period (2012–2013) and were assigned to 157 urban areas in the continental US. The rate of tweeting on climate change was regressed on the time variables, number of climate change publications in the mass media, and a number of temperature variables. The analysis was conducted at the two levels of aggregation – national and local. The high significance of the mass media and temperature variables in the majority of regression models suggests that both the weather and mass media coverage control public interest to the topic. However, no convincing evidence was found that the media acts as a mediator in the relationship between local weather and climate change discourse. Overall, the findings confirmed that the public recognize extreme temperature anomalies and connect these anomalies to climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The climate of the United States Northern Great Plains region is highly variable. Modelling of agriculture in this region and similar locations depends on the availability and quality of satellite and ground data for agro-climate variables. We evaluated tropical rainfall measuring mission (TRMM) multi-satellite preparation analysis (TMPA) precipitation, atmospheric infrared sounder (AIRS) surface air temperature, and AIRS relative air humidity (RH). A significant bias was found within the temperature and RH products and no bias but an insufficient rain event detection skill in the precipitation product (probability of detection ∼0.3). A linear correction of the temperature product removed the bias as well as lowered the root mean square deviation (RMSD). The bias-corrections for RH led to increased RMSD or worse correlation. For precipitation, the correlation between the satellite product and ground data improved if cumulative precipitation or only precipitation during the growing season was used. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Content analysis of newspaper publications has become a major scientific method of the analysis of public discourse. Within the framework of content analysis, we suggest a computer-assisted method to extract the most important topics of this discourse in an objective, quantifiable manner. The method combines frequency and proximity analysis of the text population, selection of the key words, text modification based on a key word dictionary, factor analysis of the modified text population, and factor interpretation. We illustrate the concept by applying the method to study the major topics discussed in the US and UK prestige press that relate to the precautionary principle. Precautionary principle is a concept of preventing environmental damage under scientific uncertainty. The analysis demonstrates the difference between the major topics of the precautionary principle discussion in the US and UK press. In the US, it revolves around an emphasis on the action on global warming, international trade on genetically modified food, environment pollution, the risks of new technologies, and cost-benefit analysis (CBA). In the UK, the major discussion topics include threats to agriculture and farmers, climate change economics, national and EU regulations, and commercial fishing. Other discussion topics, such as health and pollution, water safety regulations, meat safety and trade, and GMO regulations are shared between the countries. The US sample demonstrates more negative views towards the precautionary principle, which is presented as a threat to the US economic interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the right of states to use military force preemptively and how they can claim that their use of force was fully justified. It indicates that it is the state that decides for itself whether an action by its opponent has exceeded the content of threshold values that entitles it to exercise its inalienable right to self-defense. It indicates that all acts of preemptive use of force fall under three groups namely preemption of actions, prevention and preemption of intentions.