[TheClimate.Vote] Sept 20, 2016 - Daily Global Warming News for voters, candidates and officials
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Countries Will Ratify*Climate*Agreement at the U.N.
<http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/countries-will-ratify-climate-agreement-at-the-u-n/>
Scientific American -10 hours ago
If 55 nations come through, the global agreement takes effect...NEW
YORK—Presidents and prime ministers, environmental advocates and
entrepreneurs have descended on the Big Apple to help the landmark
Paris*climate*deal take force and discuss new ways of reducing
greenhouse gases. The annual event, known as*Climate Week**...It is
the first such gathering since nearly 200 countries agreed in the
French capital in December to curb global warming through nationally
determined plans to limit emissions. U.N. Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon has invited countries to deposit their instruments of
ratification of Paris at a Wednesday morning ceremony at U.N.
headquarters....Only a handful of heads of state are expected to
speak Wednesday, a group that will likely include French President
Francois Hollande....Obama will convene a summit tomorrow on
refugees and migration, which is expected to touch on warming as a
contributor to mass displacements in the Middle East and elsewhere.
And U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power told reporters Friday that he and
Kerry would do *"*a lot of buttonholing in corridors*"* in New York
to try to persuade countries to ratify Paris more swiftly.**Kerry,
who helped to broker the Paris deal in December, will attend Ban’s
ceremony Wednesday.
*
*An American tragedy: why are millions of trees dying across the
country?*
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/19/tree-death-california-hawaii-sudden-oak>
A quiet crisis playing out in US forests as huge numbers of trees
succumb to drought, disease, insects and wildfire – much of it
driven by climate change....Forestry officials and scientists are
increasingly alarmed, and say the essential role of trees –
providing clean water, locking up carbon and sheltering whole
ecosystems – is being undermined on a grand scale....California and
mountain states have suffered particularly big die-offs in recent
years, with 66m trees killed in the Sierra Nevada alone since 2010,
according to the Forestry Service....In northern California, an
invasive pathogen called Sudden Oak Death is infecting hundreds of
different plants, from redwoods and ferns to backyard oaks and bay
laurels. The disease is distantly related to the cause of the
19th-century Irish potato famine, and appears to have arrived with
two "Typhoid Marys", rhododendrons and bay laurels, said Dr David
Rizzo, of the University of California, Davis..."We’re talking
millions of trees killed, whole mountain sides dying," Rizzo
said...The outbreak is "something like 10 times bigger than normal,
I would argue a lot more than that," Six said. "Basically a native
insect is acting outside of the norm, because of climate change, and
become an exotic in forests it’s never been before. We haven’t seen
very good outcomes of exotics moving into native forests."...Boosted
by climate change, various beetles and the fungi they carry have
already wiped out millions of acres of trees, and Six and Rizzo both
warned of cascading effects. In the redwoods, Rizzo said, the loss
of tanoaks and their relatives would strip away nut-producing
species, leaving birds and mammals that rely on them without food.
The loss of mountain pines, Six said, threatens grizzly bears and
the critical snowpack that supplies water to life below.
*US predicts climate law within decade*
<http://phys.org/news/2016-09-climate-law-decade.html>
US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz on Monday predicted that the
world's largest economy would have legislation by the end of the
decade to combat climate change....Moniz said that the United States
was confident it would meet its goal submitted under the Paris
accord of reducing emissions of carbon and other greenhouse gases by
26 to 28 percent by 2025, from 2005 levels...."But I think there's
no issue that rather than a sectoral approach, which is inherent in
using administrative authorities, a simplified economy-wide approach
would be preferable and, frankly, would be a lot clearer in terms of
the signals for business," Moniz said....The United Nations is
hoping that this week's meetings will put in force the Paris accord,
which requires formal agreement by 55 countries accounting for 55
percent of global emissions....The accord got a major boost earlier
this month when Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping jointly
committed themselves to the global climate pact...
Threat of*climate change*wildfires growing in Northwest
<http://www.kiro7.com/news/local/threat-of-climate-change-wildfires-growing-in-northwest/447533061>
KIRO Seattle -13 hours ago
"What we know is that the overall long-term trend is clear -*climate
change*is contributing to longer, more intense*wildfire*seasons in
the western US," said Rachel Cleetus, lead economist
and*climate*policy manager for the Union of Concerned Scientists.
*Big Bank 'Greenwashing' Exposed as Major Climate Week Sponsors Fund
Fossil Fuels
<http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/09/19/big-bank-greenwashing-exposed-major-climate-week-sponsors-fund-fossil-fuels>*
'If these banks aspire to be climate leaders, they must accelerate
their exit from coal, and commit to getting out of extreme oil and
fracked-gas terminals as well'..."If they don't prioritize defunding
the climate crisis," she said, "they are continuing a pattern of
prioritizing profit over people, planet, and ethical business
practices. As the second largest bank in the U.S., with nearly $2.2
trillion in assets, the Bank of America has the ability, not to
mention a greater responsibility, to actually move money away from
the fossil fuel economy to prioritize people and planet."
*Why We Don’t Know If It Will Be Sunny Next Month But We Know It’ll Be
Hot All Year
<http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-we-dont-know-if-it-will-be-sunny-next-month-but-we-know-itll-be-hot-all-year/>*
...some key climate statistics are easily predictable far beyond the
scales at which weather forecasts are skillful. Those predictions
clearly suggest an annual global temperature record in 2016 and a
(relative) cooling in 2017, all while the long-term upward trends
continue.....Weather forecasts more than a week ahead are
notoriously unreliable. Yet climate scientists have been predicting
since December that 2016 will be the warmest year since at least the
19th century. What gives?... some aspects of the climate system can
be usefully forecast over months, years and even decades. The key to
understanding why is realizing that there are many potential sources
of predictability: the motions of the atmosphere in the short term
(days); the motions of the ocean (months to years); and external
factors such as the sun’s activity, the orbit or greenhouse gases
(years to millennia)....So weather forecasts rely on the
predictability of atmospheric systems that persist a couple of
weeks. But some ocean patterns in the climate system can persist
much longer, and understanding them can help make useful predictions
for regional and global averages that don’t depend so much on
specific weather patterns....These fluctuations in temperature can
be so large that their influence can be felt globally. Warm El Niño
phases cause excess rain in Peru and Ecuador; drought in Brazil’s
Nordeste region, Indonesia and Northern Australia, and weather
responses in North America and Antarctica. There is a clear impact
on global temperature, too, though the mechanisms are complex: heat
released from the oceans; increases in water vapor, which enhance
the greenhouse effect, and redistributions of clouds. Statistically,
the impact on global temperature peaks two or three months after
changes in the tropical Pacific. Because these events are large,
take months to play out and can be predicted months ahead of time,
we can use ENSO to predict the next year’s global temperatures....We
now have over half a year of data from 2016. The fact that the
observations have a "memory" from month to month (because the ocean
is slow to change temperature) allows us to predict the annual mean
from the year-to-date average (which implicitly includes the ENSO
effect). Starting in March (and every month since), this suggested
that the 2016 net warming will be about 1.3 degrees Celsius above
late-19th century temperatures.
*Soberanes Fire becomes costliest to fight in US history
<http://www.montereyherald.com/article/NF/20160915/NEWS/160919808>*
The Soberanes Fire is now the costliest blaze to suppress in U.S.
history, according to National Interagency Fire Center data....The
center estimates the cost of fighting the blaze at $197.8 million.
...Ten of the state's 20 largest wildfires on record have burned in
the last 10 years.
Scientists published*climate*research under fake names. Then they
were caught.
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/09/19/scientists-published-climate-research-under-fake-names-then-they-were-caught/>
Washington Post -4 hours ago
For years, he said, he aligned with the mainstream scientific
consensus:*Global warming*is real and humans are to blame. At least
97 percent of working*climate* scientists - as well as the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, the*... *"*The authors’
insistence that they are ‘contradicting mainstream theory’ is just
delusional self-aggrandizement.*"*...The scientists came clean to
Willis in September 2015. *"*We have been forced by unfortunate
circumstances to use pseudonyms,*"* Volokin wrote to the editor, in
an email dated Sept. 27 that the scientist provided to The
Post...*"*Den Volokin and Lark ReLlez are nothing more than our
actual names spelled backwards.*"...*Behind the pseudonyms were Ned
Nikolov, a physical scientist, and Karl Zeller, a retired
meteorologist..Nikolov argued that the pseudonyms are a way to
disarm bias trapped in the publishing process. That the peer-review
process is flawed is a critique that has existed as long as the
system itself. It is still around. In 2015, for instance, a group of
female biologists had their paper rejected because they lacked a
male co-author....To that end, journals such as Nature now allow
researchers to submit manuscripts through an optional double-blind
peer review......*
New study undercuts favorite*climate*myth 'more CO2 is good for
plants'
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2016/sep/19/new-study-undercuts-favorite-climate-myth-more-co2-is-good-for-plants>
The Guardian -4 hours ago
A 16-year study found that we’re at a point where more CO2 won’t
keep increasing plant production, but higher temperatures will
decrease it....However, reality is far more complicated than the
oversimplification of 'CO2 is plant food.' Unlike in the controlled
environment of a greenhouse, the increasing greenhouse effect on
Earth causes temperatures to rise and the*climate*to change
in*...found that carbon dioxide at higher levels than today (400
ppm) did not significantly change plant growth, while higher
temperatures had a negative effect.....Another study published in
Nature Climate Change last week concluded that higher temperatures
will cause wheat production to decline. Just a 1°C rise in global
temperature will decrease wheat yields by about 5% (approximately 35
million tons). Climate change is bad news for several of our staple
crops..... but all evidence suggests the negatives will far outweigh
the positives. Cherry picking one possible positive outcome and
ignoring all the negatives as an excuse to maintain the status quo
is simply a failure of basic risk management. And with a threat as
dangerous as global climate change, engaging in proper risk
management is incredibly important. Failure is simply not an option.*
Is the media scaring the public too much about*climate change*and
extreme weather?
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/09/19/is-the-media-scaring-the-pubic-too-much-about-climate-change-and-extreme-weather/>
Washington Post -8 hours ago
They argue that journalists are oversimplifying connections between
weather and*global warming*and are resorting to scare tactics that
are distracting the society from being prepared for extreme
weather....heir contention of a media-induced "atmosfear" goes too
far. It’s possible to both plainly and carefully communicate how
climate change is affecting extreme weather while also stressing the
importance of extreme weather preparedness, irrespective of climate
change....However, ... our atmosphere is fundamentally changed
because of increasing greenhouse gases, and the effects on certain
types of extreme weather are real. We can’t ignore this. It would be
irresponsible for journalists to omit this very important aspect of
the climate change story.
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