[TheClimate.Vote] July 8, 2017 - Daily Global Warming News

[Richard Pauli]

/July 8, 2017/
*
**(audio 51 min) Katharine Hayhoe and shared values 
<http://evidencesquared.com/ep16/>*
THE SCIENCE OF WHY SCIENCE FAILS TO PERSUADE
In our new podcast episode, we talk to climate scientist Katharine 
Hayhoe about cheerfully responding to climate misinformation, finding 
shared values with your audience, finding hope in climate solutions, and 
denial mansplaining.
You can listen to our episode at http://evidencesquared.com/ep16/ or 
download it directly from iTunes or Soundcloud.
http://evidencesquared.com/ep16/
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/07/climate-change-denial-scepticism-cynicism-politics>

*Mysterious Explosions In Siberia Are Signs Of Galloping Climate Change 
<https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidbressan/2017/07/07/mysterious-explosions-in-siberia-are-signs-of-galloping-climate-change/>*
Siberia is no stranger to mysterious explosions.
  More recent explosions, by far less powerful, but still dangerous, 
seem to be caused by climate change.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidbressan/2017/07/07/mysterious-explosions-in-siberia-are-signs-of-galloping-climate-change/


*Water Towers: Security Risks in a Changing Climate 
<https://climateandsecurity.org/2017/07/07/water-towers-security-risks-in-a-changing-climate/>*
By Troy Sternberg
Since the Boutros Boutros Ghali, then Secretary General of the United 
Nations stated that the next war in the Middle East will be over water, 
not politics, the global community has focused on water flashpoints, 
particularly in the Middle East. But examining micro- to meso-scale 
dynamics has confined thinking to rivers, aquifers and watersheds at 
national levels. While important, discussion has often ignored the 
megascale threat of human and climate changes to the world's mountain 
'water towers' and the resultant implications to security and human 
well-being. For example: two billion people depend on water originating 
on the Tibetan Plateau. Hundreds of millions more drink from global 
water towers, including the massive Andes, Rockies, Tien Shan, Caucasus 
and Alps to the more modest Ethiopian and Guinean Highlands. In each, 
climate change affects glaciers, water resources and runoff. If it were 
only a matter of harnessing water from a nation's territorial mountain, 
the issue would be structural; the complication comes when water flows 
through several states. Riparian nations stress natural, human and 
economic rights to water that crosses their realm, yet without physical 
control, states remain vulnerable to upstream users. This gives a 
hegemonic dynamic to control of water towers with significant 
implications for national and regional security…
For the full article, click here. 
<https://climateandsecurity.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/2_water-towers.pdf>
https://climateandsecurity.org/2017/07/07/water-towers-security-risks-in-a-changing-climate/#more-14073
https://climateandsecurity.org/2017/07/07/water-towers-security-risks-in-a-changing-climate/


*How climate scepticism turned into something more dangerous* 
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/07/climate-change-denial-scepticism-cynicism-politics>
Doubts about the science are being replaced by doubts about the motives 
of scientists and their political supporters.
Once this kind of cynicism takes hold, is there any hope for the truth?
Long Read       By David Runciman
Last month Donald Trump announced his intention to withdraw the United 
States from the Paris climate accord. For his supporters, it provided 
evidence, at last, that the president is a man of his word. He may not 
have kept many campaign promises, but he kept this one. For his numerous 
critics it is just another sign of how little Trump cares about evidence 
of any kind. His decision to junk the Paris accord confirms Trump as the 
poster politician for the "post-truth" age...
But this is not just about Trump. The motley array of candidates who ran 
for the Republican presidential nomination was divided on many things, 
but not on climate change. None of them was willing to take the issue 
seriously. In a bitterly contentious election, it was a rare instance of 
unanimity. The consensus that climate is a non-subject was shared by all 
the candidates who appeared in the first major Republican debate in 
August 2015 – Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, 
Rand Paul, Chris Christie, John Kasich, Mike Huckabee and Trump. 
Republican voters were offered 10 shades of denialism...
As Huckabee quipped in January 2015, any talk of global warming was a 
distraction from the real dangers the country faced: "A beheading is a 
far greater threat to an American than a sunburn."...
This is how climate scepticism becomes climate cynicism: doubts about 
the evidence are replaced by doubts about the motives of the people 
using it. In 2012, Senator Jim Inhofe, a Republican who once brought a 
snowball on to the floor of the senate to show that climate change 
wasn't real, published The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming 
Conspiracy Threatens Your Future. The book contains two lengthy 
appendices. The first is the full transcript of the UEA emails, 
presented as prima facie evidence that the science is a fix. The second 
is a history of the United Nations global development programme. The 
argument goes like this: there is no need for world government unless 
there are issues that can't be solved by national governments. Climate 
change is such an issue. So it follows that it has been invented by 
people who can't justify world government any other way. It is a 
globalist plot...
Once cynicism becomes the default mode of attack, then both sides are 
trapped. Moreover, it is not a level playing field. It favours the 
cynics. Scientists have to decide whether to let the facts speak for 
themselves, or whether to try to take on the cynics at their own game. 
If they pull back from politics, they risk letting the cynics set the 
agenda. If they don't, they risk proving the cynics right.
The currency in which these campaigns trade is doubt. Their goal is to 
sow uncertainty in the public mind about what the science shows. In the 
words of an American Petroleum Institute action plan from 1998: "Victory 
will be achieved when average citizens 'understand' uncertainties in 
climate science." To that end, money has been funnelled towards 
scientific researchers who dissent from mainstream opinion, even if 
those researchers are in a very small minority. Sowing doubt turns out 
to be relatively cost-efficient, because dissent only needs a few 
exceptions to the orthodoxy, whereas consensus requires everyone else to 
hold fast to it.
In the febrile, divisive state of our politics, it's not what you say, 
it's what you say about yourself by saying it that really counts. The 
social media revolution amplifies and exaggerates these kinds of 
accusations. It has become easier than ever to find evidence of how 
individuals' public attitudes are given the lie by their private 
actions. There are now so many public attitudes to choose from, and 
private actions are now so much harder to hide. Twitter is a vast 
hypocrisy-generating machine that is corroding democratic politics. 
Scepticism, which is a democratic virtue, is giving way to cynicism, 
which is a democratic vice, across the board.
Faced with a concerted assault on their integrity, what should climate 
scientists do? They face a choice. One option is to try to reclaim 
climate scepticism from the people who have corrupted it. The other is 
to insist more strongly than ever on the consensus. When the space for 
doubt has been taken away, you can respond by becoming more certain of 
your own position. Or you can try to take doubt back.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/07/climate-change-denial-scepticism-cynicism-politics


*Global Warming May Cause Bees to Mistime Spring Emergence, Missing 
Their Food Supply 
<http://e360.yale.edu/digest/bees-may-mistime-hatching-with-global-warming-missing-their-food-supply>*
German researchers from the University of Würzburg, reporting in the 
Journal of Animal Biology, investigated three different species of bees 
that hatch in the spring. They set up 36 flight cages, which allowed 
them to time the emergence of the bees so it was simultaneous with the 
flowering of plants in the cage or occurred three or six days prior to 
flowering. The study showed that bees that hatched prior to flowering 
suffered from lower rates of reproduction, were less active, and faced 
greater risk from predators and parasites.
http://e360.yale.edu/digest/bees-may-mistime-hatching-with-global-warming-missing-their-food-supply


*(audio + text) Titterton: Ticks And Climate Change 
<http://digital.vpr.net/post/titterton-ticks-and-climate-change>*
I have friends who won't go outside here without DEET and long sleeves, 
and every few weeks I hear of someone else going to the doctor to have a 
bite checked, or to seek help for the pain and fatigue of chronic Lyme.
I won't let fear of ticks keep me from hiking, gardening, and showing my 
son the wonder of our natural world. But I take their threat seriously – 
as I do the greater threat of climate change they represent.
http://digital.vpr.net/post/titterton-ticks-and-climate-change


*New 'Geostorm' Trailer: Gerard Butler Attempts to Save the World From 
Climate Change Disaster 
<http://variety.com/2017/film/news/geostorm-trailer-gerard-butler-watch-video-1202488835/>*
/(Disaster movie spectacular has no relation to reality whatsoever. )/
http://variety.com/2017/film/news/geostorm-trailer-gerard-butler-watch-video-1202488835/


*This Day in Climate History July 8, 1991 
<http://www.johnmajor.co.uk/page2093.html>  -  from D.R. Tucker*
July 8, 1991: Speaking at the Sunday Times Environmental Conference in 
London, British Prime Minister John Major states:
"Personally, I have always thought it wrong to call it the greenhouse 
effect. I dislike the term, I dislike it because the image is too cosy, 
too domestic and far too complacent. Begonias and petunias it most 
certainly is not. The threat of global warming is real: the spread of 
deserts, changed weather patterns with potentially more storms and 
hurricanes, perhaps more flooding of low lying areas and possibly even 
the disappearance of some island states."
http://www.johnmajor.co.uk/page2093.html
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