Mathematics Colloquia and Seminars

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Description

The vast majority of climate models designed to project future global temperature trajectories ignore feedbacks between human behavioral and social system responses and the climate system. A working group of diverse researchers with backgrounds in mathematical modeling, climate science, psychology, sociology, economics, geography and ecology has linked climate models to human behavior, providing evidence that these linkages can significantly modify future trajectories compared to climate models based only on natural system processes. Climate models make assumptions about reductions in future greenhouse gas emissions and project the implications, but they do this with no rational basis for human responses. I will discuss our research including (i) a model from the theory of planned behavior in social psychology, linked to extreme events obtained from a climate model, and feedback to global emissions; (ii) models for personal experience and memory processing as a balance between sensing and forgetting extreme climate events that allows for habituation, salience, biased assimilation and recency; and (iii) models for opinion dynamics arising from interactions among cultural, socio-political, psychological, and institutional factors to shape public support or opposition for climate mitigation policy. These approaches are now being modified to incorporate aspects of risk perception and behavior in infectious disease dynamics.