Posts tagged CU study
CU study: Romney to win presidency
Aug 22nd
Analysis of election factors points to
Romney win, University of Colorado study says
A University of Colorado analysis of state-by-state factors leading to the Electoral College selection of every U.S. president since 1980 forecasts that the 2012 winner will be Mitt Romney.
The key is the economy, say political science professors Kenneth Bickers of CU-Boulder and Michael Berry of CU Denver. Their prediction model stresses economic data from the 50 states and the District of Columbia, including both state and national unemployment figures as well as changes in real per capita income, among other factors.
“Based on our forecasting model, it becomes clear that the president is in electoral trouble,” said Bickers, also director of the CU in DC Internship Program.
According to their analysis, President Barack Obama will win 218 votes in the Electoral College, short of the 270 he needs. And though they chiefly focus on the Electoral College, the political scientists predict Romney will win 52.9 percent of the popular vote to Obama’s 47.1 percent, when considering only the two major political parties.
“For the last eight presidential elections, this model has correctly predicted the winner,” said Berry. “The economy has seen some improvement since President Obama took office. What remains to be seen is whether voters will consider the economy in relative or absolute terms. If it’s the former, the president may receive credit for the economy’s trajectory and win a second term. In the latter case, Romney should pick up a number of states Obama won in 2008.”
Their model correctly predicted all elections since 1980, including two years when independent candidates ran strongly, 1980 and 1992. It also correctly predicted the outcome in 2000, when Al Gore received the most popular vote but George W. Bush won the election.
The study will be published this month in PS: Political Science & Politics, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Political Science Association. It will be among about a dozen election prediction models, but one of only two to focus on the Electoral College.
While many forecast models are based on the popular vote, the Electoral College model developed by Bickers and Berry is the only one of its type to include more than one state-level measure of economic conditions.
In addition to state and national unemployment rates, the authors looked at per capita income, which indicates the extent to which people have more or less disposable income. Research shows that these two factors affect the major parties differently: Voters hold Democrats more responsible for unemployment rates while Republicans are held more responsible for per capita income.
Accordingly — and depending largely on which party is in the White House at the time — each factor can either help or hurt the major parties disproportionately.
Their results show that “the apparent advantage of being a Democratic candidate and holding the White House disappears when the national unemployment rate hits 5.6 percent,” Berry said. The results indicate, according to Bickers, “that the incumbency advantage enjoyed by President Obama, though statistically significant, is not great enough to offset high rates of unemployment currently experienced in many of the states.”
In an examination of other factors, the authors found that none of the following had any statistically significant effect on whether a state ultimately went for a particular candidate: The location of a party’s national convention; the home state of the vice president; or the partisanship of state governors.
In 2012, “What is striking about our state-level economic indicator forecast is the expectation that Obama will lose almost all of the states currently considered as swing states, including North Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida,” Bickers said.
In Colorado, which went for Obama in 2008, the model predicts that Romney will receive 51.9 percent of the vote to Obama’s 48.1 percent, again with only the two major parties considered.
The authors also provided caveats. Factors they said may affect their prediction include the timeframe of the economic data used in the study and close tallies in certain states. The current data was taken five months in advance of the Nov. 6 election and they plan to update it with more current economic data in September. A second factor is that states very close to a 50-50 split may fall an unexpected direction.
“As scholars and pundits well know, each election has unique elements that could lead one or more states to behave in ways in a particular election that the model is unable to correctly predict,” Berry said.
Election prediction models “suggest that presidential elections are about big things and the stewardship of the national economy,” Bickers said. “It’s not about gaffes, political commercials or day-to-day campaign tactics. I find that heartening for our democracy.”
–
CU study: Nitrogen damage to RMNP could become irreversible
Jul 10th
The emissions of nitrogen compounds to the atmosphere are being carried to remote areas of the park, altering sensitive ecosystems, said CU-Boulder Professor William Bowman, who directs CU-Boulder’s Mountain Research Station west of Boulder and who led the study. “The changes are subtle, but important,” he said. “They represent a first step in a series of changes which may be relatively irreversible.”
A new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder indicates air pollution in the form of nitrogen compounds emanating from power plants, automobiles and agriculture is changing the alpine vegetation in Rocky Mountain National Park.
The emissions of nitrogen compounds to the atmosphere are being carried to remote areas of the park, altering sensitive ecosystems, said CU-Boulder Professor William Bowman, who directs CU-Boulder’s Mountain Research Station west of Boulder and who led the study. “The changes are subtle, but important,” he said. “They represent a first step in a series of changes which may be relatively irreversible.”
In other regions of the world, higher amounts of nitrogen pollutants correlate with decreased biodiversity, acidified soils and dead stream organisms like trout, said Bowman. “There is evidence that indicates once these changes occur, they can be difficult if not impossible to reverse. It is best to recognize these early stages before the more harmful later stages happen.”
The study site was an alpine meadow roughly one mile east of Chapin Pass in the Mummy Range of Rocky Mountain National Park. Bowman and his team analyzed the plant communities and soils under ambient levels of nitrogen deposition and compared them to plots with added nitrogen to simulate the increasing atmospheric nitrogen pollution expected in the coming decades. The results indicated changes in plant abundances already were occurring under ambient conditions, but to date no changes in soils were detected.
During the course of the three-year study, rising levels of nitrogen in the soils correlated with large increases in a common species of sedge shown to flourish in other nitrogen addition studies. Bowman said the team anticipates that the diversity of vascular plant species will rise with increasing nitrogen deposition, then decrease with more rare species being excluded by competition from other plant species. “While the changes are relatively modest, they portend that other more environmentally adverse impacts may be on the horizon in Colorado’s alpine areas,” said Bowman.
A paper on the subject was published in the June issue of the Journal of Environmental Management. Co-authors on the study included John Murgel, a former CU-Boulder undergraduate student now completing graduate work at Colorado State University, and Tamara Blett and Ellen Porter of the Air Resources Division of the National Park Service in Lakewood, Colo. The study was funded by the National Park Service.
Previous studies by Bowman and others have shown vegetation changes and soil acidification has been occurring due to increasing nitrogen deposition at other alpine sites in Colorado, including Niwot Ridge. Niwot Ridge is a National Science Foundation-funded Long-Term Ecological Research site administered by CU-Boulder and located adjacent to the university’s Mountain Research Station located some 30 miles west of the city.
Given the projected population growth in Front Range cities in the greater Denver area and increasing agricultural development, nitrogen deposition is expected to increase steadily in Rocky Mountain National Park over the next several decades, said Bowman, a professor in CU-Boulder’s ecology and evolutionary biology department.
The high-elevation ecosystems of the park are a magnet for thousands of visitors each year who have opportunities to see plants and animals well adapted to the severe climate above treeline, said Bowman, but such ecosystems are the most sensitive to adverse impacts from air pollutants. Previous studies by other researchers have documented ongoing changes in the algae found in several of the Rocky Mountain National Park’s high elevation lakes due to nitrogen pollution, he said.
While the park is also a haven for fishermen hoping to catch trout in pristine waters, continued inputs of nitrogen pollutants are a hazard to the health of both trout and their food sources, said Bowman, also a fellow of CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. It starts when the ability of the land plants and soils to take up the nitrogen is exceeded, causing soils to become acidified, he said.
Other parts of the Colorado Front Range have exhibited signs of acidification at the highest elevations, Bowman said. “Once this happens, soluble aluminum leaches from soils and begins to show up in streams and lakes. This aluminum is quite toxic to many aquatic animals,” he said.
“The take-home message is that the amount of nitrogen deposition reaching the tundra in Rocky Mountain National Park has already passed an important threshold and may lead to more serious environmental impacts,” said Bowman. “It’s not inconceivable that continued negative ecological impacts in the park due to nitrogen pollution could eventually impact tourism in Colorado.”
Officials from Environmental Defense and Trout Unlimited petitioned the State of Colorado and the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce emissions of nitrogen pollution in 2004. This effort resulted in a 2007 plan to lower nitrogen emissions on a voluntary basis to reduce impacts to Rocky Mountain National Park.
Excel Energy’s recent switch to natural gas in some of its power plants is one of many steps toward limiting nitrogen emissions, said Bowman. Ongoing efforts by air quality managers and representatives from the Colorado agricultural industry are also working on management practices that would lower nitrogen emissions.
In other regions of the world, higher amounts of nitrogen pollutants correlate with decreased biodiversity, acidified soils and dead stream organisms like trout, said Bowman. “There is evidence that indicates once these changes occur, they can be difficult if not impossible to reverse. It is best to recognize these early stages before the more harmful later stages happen.”
The study site was an alpine meadow roughly one mile east of Chapin Pass in the Mummy Range of Rocky Mountain National Park. Bowman and his team analyzed the plant communities and soils under ambient levels of nitrogen deposition and compared them to plots with added nitrogen to simulate the increasing atmospheric nitrogen pollution expected in the coming decades. The results indicated changes in plant abundances already were occurring under ambient conditions, but to date no changes in soils were detected.
During the course of the three-year study, rising levels of nitrogen in the soils correlated with large increases in a common species of sedge shown to flourish in other nitrogen addition studies. Bowman said the team anticipates that the diversity of vascular plant species will rise with increasing nitrogen deposition, then decrease with more rare species being excluded by competition from other plant species. “While the changes are relatively modest, they portend that other more environmentally adverse impacts may be on the horizon in Colorado’s alpine areas,” said Bowman.
A paper on the subject was published in the June issue of the Journal of Environmental Management. Co-authors on the study included John Murgel, a former CU-Boulder undergraduate student now completing graduate work at Colorado State University, and Tamara Blett and Ellen Porter of the Air Resources Division of the National Park Service in Lakewood, Colo. The study was funded by the National Park Service.
Previous studies by Bowman and others have shown vegetation changes and soil acidification has been occurring due to increasing nitrogen deposition at other alpine sites in Colorado, including Niwot Ridge. Niwot Ridge is a National Science Foundation-funded Long-Term Ecological Research site administered by CU-Boulder and located adjacent to the university’s Mountain Research Station located some 30 miles west of the city.
Given the projected population growth in Front Range cities in the greater Denver area and increasing agricultural development, nitrogen deposition is expected to increase steadily in Rocky Mountain National Park over the next several decades, said Bowman, a professor in CU-Boulder’s ecology and evolutionary biology department.
The high-elevation ecosystems of the park are a magnet for thousands of visitors each year who have opportunities to see plants and animals well adapted to the severe climate above treeline, said Bowman, but such ecosystems are the most sensitive to adverse impacts from air pollutants. Previous studies by other researchers have documented ongoing changes in the algae found in several of the Rocky Mountain National Park’s high elevation lakes due to nitrogen pollution, he said.
While the park is also a haven for fishermen hoping to catch trout in pristine waters, continued inputs of nitrogen pollutants are a hazard to the health of both trout and their food sources, said Bowman, also a fellow of CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. It starts when the ability of the land plants and soils to take up the nitrogen is exceeded, causing soils to become acidified, he said.
Other parts of the Colorado Front Range have exhibited signs of acidification at the highest elevations, Bowman said. “Once this happens, soluble aluminum leaches from soils and begins to show up in streams and lakes. This aluminum is quite toxic to many aquatic animals,” he said.
“The take-home message is that the amount of nitrogen deposition reaching the tundra in Rocky Mountain National Park has already passed an important threshold and may lead to more serious environmental impacts,” said Bowman. “It’s not inconceivable that continued negative ecological impacts in the park due to nitrogen pollution could eventually impact tourism in Colorado.”
Officials from Environmental Defense and Trout Unlimited petitioned the State of Colorado and the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce emissions of nitrogen pollution in 2004. This effort resulted in a 2007 plan to lower nitrogen emissions on a voluntary basis to reduce impacts to Rocky Mountain National Park.
Excel Energy’s recent switch to natural gas in some of its power plants is one of many steps toward limiting nitrogen emissions, said Bowman. Ongoing efforts by air quality managers and representatives from the Colorado agricultural industry are also working on management practices that would lower nitrogen emissions.