[TheClimate.Vote] December 23, 2017 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/December 23, 2017
/
[Wildfire]
*Thomas Fire Is Now California's Largest Wildfire In History 
<https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/12/23/573125048/thomas-fire-is-now-californias-largest-wildfire-in-history>*
Officials say this year's fire season has been the most destructive 
people in the state have ever seen.
The Associated Press reports the Thomas fire took only 2 1/2 weeks to 
burn its way into history books:
"The Cedar fire had been recognized as the biggest California wildfire 
in terms of acreage since 1932. Some fires before that date undoubtedly 
were larger but records are unreliable, according to state fire officials."
The Thomas fire is about 65 percent contained.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/12/23/573125048/thomas-fire-is-now-californias-largest-wildfire-in-history
-
*California's most destructive fire season has sparked a debate over 
where to rebuild homes 
<http://www.post-gazette.com/life/homes/2017/12/21/California-s-most-destructive-fire-season-has-sparked-a-debate-over-where-to-rebuild-homes/stories/201712210228>*
With the frequency and cost of catastrophic wildfires climbing in 
California, the idea of compensating property owners to not rebuild - or 
using economic pressure to discourage them from building in the first 
place - is gaining supporters among those searching for ways to cut 
wildfire losses. ..
Houses rebuilt there will soon be at risk again from a fire cycle that 
experts say is shortening from decades to only years...
"In determining how or why or when homes should be rebuilt after a fire, 
it helps to have science on where homes should or shouldn't be placed," 
said Alexandra Syphard, senior research scientist at the nonprofit 
Conservation Biology Institute. "The science isn't fully there yet."...
Edmiston said he has tallied 531 proposed new housing units being 
considered by the cities of Los Angeles and Calabasas in very high fire 
hazard zones in the Santa Monica Mountains.
"We're not talking about low income," Edmiston said. "We're talking 
about $1.5-million-plus homes."
He proposes a linkage between the right to build and the inevitable cost 
of firefighting and recovery.
http://www.post-gazette.com/life/homes/2017/12/21/California-s-most-destructive-fire-season-has-sparked-a-debate-over-where-to-rebuild-homes/stories/201712210228


[video]
*'Hamilton' creator using musical's West End arrival to fight climate 
change 
<https://www.cnbc.com/video/2017/12/22/hamilton-creator-using-musicals-west-end-arrival-to-fight-climate-change.html>*
'Hamilton' creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda is using the record-breaking 
musical's arrival in London to raise funds to fight global climate 
change. Ahead of last night's West End premiere, fans were able to make 
donations via online platform Prizeo, in exchange for competition 
entries to win a trip to London to meet Miranda himself and attend the 
gala...
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2017/12/22/hamilton-creator-using-musicals-west-end-arrival-to-fight-climate-change.html


[NYTimes $]
*Climate Change Is Driving People From Home. So Why Don't They Count as 
Refugees? 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/21/climate/climate-refugees.html>*
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/21/climate/climate-refugees.html


[superfund]
*AP finds climate change risk for 327 toxic Superfund sites 
<https://wtop.com/national/2017/12/toxic-trouble-hundreds-of-superfund-sites-face-flood-risks-2/>*
Nearly 2 million people in the U.S. live within a mile of 327 Superfund 
sites in areas prone to flooding or vulnerable to sea-level rise caused 
by climate change. See photos.
This year's historic hurricane season exposed a little-known public 
health threat: Highly polluted sites that can be inundated by 
floodwaters, potentially spreading toxic contamination.
In Houston, more than a dozen Superfund sites were flooded by Hurricane 
Harvey, with breaches reported at two. In the Southeast and Puerto Rico, 
Superfund sites were battered by driving rains and winds from Irma and 
Maria.
The vulnerable sites highlighted by AP's review are scattered across the 
nation, but Florida, New Jersey and California have the most, and the 
most people living near them. They are in largely low-income, heavily 
minority neighborhoods, the data show.
Many of the 327 sites have had at least some work done to help mitigate 
the threat to public health, including fencing them off and covering 
them in plastic sheeting to help keep out rain water...
Covering toxic waste is often a cheaper option than completely removing 
the pollutants, but the installations are not always as long-lasting as 
the chemicals buried beneath them, said Jeff Cunningham, a civil 
engineering professor at the University of South Florida.
"As a long-term strategy, capping only works if the contaminants degrade 
to safe levels before the capping system eventually fails. What if it 
takes centuries for some of these contaminants to degrade to safe 
levels?" ...
"Burying things rarely helps. And if you've got a chemical that is that 
toxic … I think you need to find a way to reuse, recycle and remove 
(it), to a place where it's not going to contaminate groundwater," ...
https://wtop.com/national/2017/12/toxic-trouble-hundreds-of-superfund-sites-face-flood-risks-2/


[video]
Antarctica Snow and Ice Patterns <https://youtu.be/K4a7WQ55QTs>
In 2017, NASA's Operation IceBridge flew for the ninth year over 
Antarctica to map the ice. This video features photographs of land ice 
and sea ice, shot with a handheld camera and with the Digital Mapping 
System (DMS), during IceBridge flights in November 2017. 
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/icebridge/index.html
Music in this video version is by W.O.W. Sound
http://climatestate.com/2017/12/22/antarctica-snow-and-ice-patterns/
https://youtu.be/K4a7WQ55QTs


[new words]
*From hotumn to meatmares: The words that defined our planet this year 
<https://grist.org/article/from-hotumn-to-meatmares-the-words-that-defined-our-planet-this-year/>*
Every December, dictionary editors declare their picks for "Word of the 
Year," expressions that encapsulate the year's defining spirit, its 
zeitgeist. The choices so far reflect 2017's biggest stories: Donald 
Trump and sexual misconduct, with a complementary ray of hope. 
Dictionary.com selected complicit. Merriam-Webster picked feminism. 
Oxford Dictionaries introduced us to youthquake - "a significant 
cultural, political, or social change arising from the actions or 
influence of young people."    By Kate Yoder on Dec 22, 2017

    *500-year flood (n.)* A flood event that has a 1 in 500 chance of
    occurring in a given year. The phrase comes from flood-risk maps
    used for disaster preparedness.

    *Antevernals (n.)* Spring flowers that bloom uncannily early in the
    year.
    The United States experienced its second warmest February on record
    in 2017. East of the Rockies, temperatures averaged as much as 11
    degrees Fahrenheit above normal.

    *Category 6 (adj.*) An unofficial category given to a hurricane so
    powerful that it breaks the scale.
    The widely used Saffir-Simpson measure of hurricane strength goes
    from Category 1 (very dangerous winds) to Category 5 (widespread
    catastrophic damage). So, there's no such thing as a Category 6
    hurricane. ... Hurricane Irma's intense wind speed would have put it
    at a Category 6. With intense hurricanes happening more frequently.

    *Climate dismissive (n.) *A person who dismissesany evidence of
    climate change.
    ...Katharine Hayhoe called for a new name for climate deniers, one
    that's more accurate and less likely to immediately end a
    conversation. For these folks, "dismissing the reality of climate
    change and the necessity for action is such a core part of their
    identity," she said. .. A climate dismissive took over the White
    House at the start of the year, and, well, we've seen the consequences.

    *Climate tourism (n.) *Hurried travel to landscapes that are
    expected to melt or disappear. An offshoot of "disaster tourism."

    *Ecoanxiety (n.) *Anxiety or worry provoked by the unfolding damage
    from climate change and other ecological threats.
    This spring, the American Psychological Association warned that
    climate change is beginning to trigger a mental health crisis on a
    vast scale. Climate change directly affects the mental and physical
    health of people at the frontlines of disasters, as in the case of
    post-Hurricane Maria Puerto Rico. But ecoanxiety - a cousin of
    climate anxiety and climate grief - can also afflict people at a
    distance, those who feel helpless watching such disasters unfold. A
    Gallup poll this year found that 45 percent of Americans "worry a
    great deal" about global warming.

    *Hotumn (n.) *A swelteringly hot fall that's too unseasonable to
    call "autumn."
    This fall, New England saw record-breaking temperatures. ...Climate
    models project we'll be basking under the hotumn sun more and more
    frequently.

    *Meatmare (n.) *A nightmare in which a vegetarian or vegan dreams
    about accidentally eating meat, then wakes up feeling guilty about it.

    *Medicane (n.) *Short for "Mediterranean hurricane," a rare weather
    system with the characteristics of a subtropical cyclone in the
    Mediterranean Sea.
    A medicane caused deadly flooding in Greece this year. Last year,
    one struck Malta. ...warmer Mediterranean waters could fuel stronger
    medicanes going forward.

    *New Arctic (n.) *The new name for the Arctic, which has become so
    altered by human-caused climate change that it's well on its way to
    becoming ice-free.
    The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration coined the term
    in a recent report on the Arctic's health. Basically, the Arctic as
    we knew it is already gone, so scientists decided the melting region
    needed a new name. The loss of sea ice is disrupting cycles that
    have occurred for millennia and altering global weather patterns.

    *Weather extremes (n.)* A euphemism for climate change.
    In August, the Guardian reported that Trump administration officials
    had instructed staff at the U.S. Department of Agriculture to avoid
    using the term "climate change" in their work. Instead, they were to
    say "weather extremes."  An NPR report found that scientists have
    begun ... using alternative phrases like extreme weather instead.

https://grist.org/article/from-hotumn-to-meatmares-the-words-that-defined-our-planet-this-year/


[Fargo weather]
*Weather Talk: Where's your global warming now? Please don't ask 
<http://www.westfargopioneer.com/news/weather/4376733-weather-talk-wheres-your-global-warming-now-please-dont-ask>*
By John Wheeler on Dec 20, 2017

    "So where's your global warming now?"

    If you find yourself thinking this in light of the sudden change to
    colder weather, please just stop. Whichever side of the pro or con
    politics of climate change you are on, this particular line of
    reasoning can only demonstrate a complete misunderstanding of
    climate and weather.

     From a climate perspective, the warming of the Earth's atmosphere
    does not mean it never gets cold anymore. The fact that this cold
    seems unusual is a better argument for warming because only six of
    the past 36 months have delivered a colder than average mean
    temperature to Fargo-Moorhead. Cold weather seems unusual because it
    has not been happening as much the past few years.

     From a weather perspective, it has been extremely warm over Alaska
    the past few weeks. The cold weather moving in has had to avoid the
    Alaska region and get here from central Siberia by coming directly
    over the North Pole, a far less traveled route.

http://www.westfargopioneer.com/news/weather/4376733-weather-talk-wheres-your-global-warming-now-please-dont-ask

*
*[Naomi Klein]*
Hope Trumps Nope: A Blueprint for Resistance 
<https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2018-1-january-february/feature/hope-trumps-nope-blueprint-for-resistance>
*To build the world we want, we must dare to dream big and out loud
When the politics of climate change go wrong-and they are very, very 
wrong right now-we don't get to try again in four years. Because in four 
years, Earth will have been radically changed by all the gases emitted 
in the interim, and our chances of averting an irreversible catastrophe 
will have shrunk.

    This may sound alarmist, but I have interviewed the leading
    scientists in the world on this question, and their research shows
    that it's simply a neutral description of reality. The window during
    which there is time to lower emissions sufficiently to avoid truly
    catastrophic warming is closing rapidly. Lots of social movements
    have adopted Samuel Beckett's famous line "Try again. Fail again.
    Fail better" as a lighthearted motto. I've always liked the
    attitude; we can't be perfect, we won't always win, but we should
    strive to improve. The trouble is, Beckett's dictum doesn't work for
    climate-not at this stage in the game. If we keep failing to lower
    emissions, if we keep failing to kick-start the transition in
    earnest away from fossil fuels and to an economy based on
    renewables, if we keep dodging the question of wasteful consumption
    and the quest for more and more and bigger and bigger, there won't
    be more opportunities to fail better. Nearly everything is moving
    faster than the climate change modeling projected, including Arctic
    sea-ice loss, ice sheet collapse, ocean warming, sea level rise, and
    coral bleaching. The next time voters in countries around the world
    go to the polls, more sea ice will have melted, more coastal land
    will have been lost, more species will have disappeared for good.
    The chance for us to keep temperatures below what it would take for
    island nations such as, say, Tuvalu or the Maldives to be saved from
    drowning becomes that much slimmer. These are irreversible
    changes-we don't get a do-over on a drowned country.

https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2018-1-january-february/feature/hope-trumps-nope-blueprint-for-resistance*
*

*This Day in Climate History December 23, 2004 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20998-2004Dec22.html> -  
from D.R. Tucker*
December 23, 2004: Proving that climate-change deniers always stick
together, syndicated columnist George Will praises Michael Crichton's
novel "State of Fear."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20998-2004Dec22.html


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