Climate policy support under political consensus: exploring the varying effect of partisanship and party cues

By creating attitudinal rifts among partisan voters, political polarization is expected to negatively affect chances of effectively mitigating climate change. While such expectations generally have found support, less attention has been paid to the opposite claim that political consensus should eliminate the partisan dimension in climate change politics. This study tests this claim by studying how party identification, and party cues specifically, affects public policy attitudes in a context defined by political consensus. Using data from a large online access panel in Sweden, party identification and party cues are shown to matter for policy attitudes even in a consensus context. This effect is not limited to certain issues but is found across a wide range of policies, and the effect of party cues, for a given issue, varies across parties. The implications of this study and areas for future work are discussed.     

Climate change and economic consequences for inland waterway transport in Europe

Future climate conditions are likely to affect inland waterway transport in Europe. According to some climate scenarios, in summer, in the river Rhine, periods with low water levels are likely to occur more often and become more serious. Then inland waterway transport carriers will experience more severe restrictions on the load factor of their inland ships, which implies a stronger reduction in transport capacity in the market. Transport prices will rise under such conditions. Some studies reviewed in this paper find that at extremely low water levels, the price per tonne for inland waterway transport in the river Rhine area will almost double. These increased transport prices result in welfare losses. For the dry summer in 2003, the losses for North West Europe are estimated to sum up to around €480 million. Increased transport prices trigger adaptation. Inland waterway carriers may use smaller vessels, and shippers have the opportunity to shift from inland waterway transport to alternative transport modes in periods with low water levels. This effect is probably rather modest, however, with a modal shift to road and rail smaller than 10 %. Also, changes in transport costs may lead to relocation of certain economic activities in the long run.     

Co-infection patterns and geographic distribution of a complex pathosystem targeted by pathogen-resistant plants

Increasingly, pathogen-resistant (PR) plants are being developed to reduce the agricultural impacts of disease. However PR plants also have the potential to result in increased invasiveness of nontarget host populations and so pose a potential threat to nontarget ecosystems. In this paper we use a new framework to investigate geographical variation in the potential risk associated with unintended release of genetically modified alfalfa mosaic virus (AMV)-resistant Trifolium repens (white clover) into nontarget host populations containing AMV, clover yellow vein virus (ClYVV), and white clover mosaic virus (WCIMV) in southeastern Australia. Surveys of 213 sites in 37 habitat types over a 300 000-km2 study region showed that T. repens is a significant weed of many high-conservation-value habitats in southeastern Australia and that AMV, ClYVV, and WClMV occur in 15-97% of nontarget host populations. However, T. repens abundance varied with site disturbance, habitat conservation value, and proximity to cropping, and all viral pathogens had distinct geographic distributions and infection patterns. Virus species frequently co-infected host plants and displayed nonindependent distributions within host populations, although co-infection patterns varied across the study region. Our results clearly illustrate the complexity of conducting environmental risk assessments that involve geographically widespread, invasive pasture species and demonstrate the general need for targeted, habitat- and pathosystem-specific studies prior to the process of tiered risk assessment.     

Solubility and Potential Mobility of Heavy Metals in Two Contaminated Urban Soils from Stockholm,Sweden

The solubility and potential mobility of heavy metals (Cd, Cu,Hg, Pb and Zn) in two urban soils were studied by sequential andleaching extractions (rainwater). Compared to rural (arable) soils on similar parent material, the urban soils were highlycontaminated with Hg and Pb and to a lesser extent also with Cd,Cu and Zn. Metal concentrations in rainwater leachates were related to sequential extractions and metal levels reported fromStockholm groundwater. Cadmium and Zn in the soils were mainly recovered in easily extractable fractions, whereas Cu and Pb were complex bound. Concentrations of Pb in the residual fractionwere between two- and eightfold those in arable soils, indicatingthat the sequential extraction scheme did not reflect the solidphases affected by anthropogenic inputs. Cadmium and Zn conc. inthe rainwater leachates were within the range detected in Stockholm groundwater, while Cu and Pb conc. were higher, whichsuggests that Cu and Pb released from the surface soil were immobilised in deeper soil layers. In a soil highly contaminatedwith Hg, the Hg conc. in the leachate was above the median concentration, but still 50 times lower than the max concentration found in groundwater, indicating the possibilityof other sources. In conclusion, it proved difficult to quantitatively predict the mobility of metals in soils by sequential extractions.     

Multicriteria Decision Aid in Supporting Decisions Related to Groundwater Protection

In the recent decades, there have been frequent conflicts between groundwater resources and environmentally hazardous activities. An example is the construction of the new highway through the important glaciofluvial esker aquifer Nybroåsen, which passes the protection zone of the water supply for the Kalmar municipality, in the southeastern part of Sweden. The decision to build the new road through this important aquifer has been strongly questioned by the municipality and the public because the value of the water resources in Nybroåsen was not taken into consideration during the first phase of the decision-making process. Multicriteria decision aid (MCDA) is applied as a tool to structure and analyze the four road alternatives proposed in the environmental impact assessment for the above conflict. The alternatives, including the existing road, are in conflict with water resources, agriculture, natural, and cultural values. The impacts on the water resources have been predicted by a two-dimensional physically based time-variant flow and solute groundwater model, which has been calibrated and evaluated. The MCDA illustrates how it can be used to identify (1) actors and their concerns, (2) ranking of alternative road scenarios according to actors preferences, and (3) coalition groups of actors, i.e., groups that have similar views with regard to the road alternatives. The analysis shows that the two best compromise solutions obtained in the MCDA were unacceptable by the strongest coalition group, showing that either the family of criteria was not well chosen or new alternatives should have been developed.     

Determination of hydrogen peroxide in workplace air: interferences and method validation

A dynamic system for the generation of stable hydrogen peroxide test atmospheres was applied to the evaluation of samplers used for the determination of hydrogen peroxide in workplace air. The system is able to generate gas mixtures of between 0.1 and 10 ppm at different combinations of relative humidity (20-80%) and temperature (10-30 degrees C). Gaseous hydrogen peroxide is sampled on glass filters impregnated with Ti(IV) chloride and sulfuric acid and analyzed by UV spectroscopy. An interference was observed due to the acid catalyzed decomposition of peroxyacetic acid to hydrogen peroxide. This was significantly reduced by applying high sample flow rates and by lowering the concentration of sulfuric acid. The performance of the sampler and sources of uncertainties were tested according to the European Standard EN 1076.