[TheClimate.Vote] July 15, 2017 - Daily Global Warming News

[Richard Pauli]

/July 15, 2017/
*
Congress Affirms Climate Change a Threat to Security - Asks for Military 
to Prepare 
<https://www.americansecurityproject.org/congress-climate-security/>*
House Armed Services Committee
In the House version of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act 
(NDAA) (H.R. 2810), the committee accepted an amendment sponsored by 
Congressman Langevin (RI) that stated that it was the sense of Congress 
that climate change "is a direct threat to the national security of the 
United States" and that military installations "must be able to 
effectively prepare to mitigate climate damage."..
The Amendment requires a report to Congress on vulnerabilities to 
climate damage in military infrastructure and how climate change is 
affecting missions like humanitarian assistance and disaster response. 
The report would detail how much addressing climate change is expected 
to cost the Department...
The amendment was accepted by voice vote in committee. .. This vote on 
the House floor was an important signal that Congress is ready to 
support the military's actions in preparing for the effects of climate 
change...
https://www.americansecurityproject.org/congress-climate-security/
*-more:
Extraordinary Congressional Bipartisanship on Climate and Security 
<https://climateandsecurity.org/2017/07/14/extraordinary-bipartisan-showing-on-climate-and-security/>*
At the highest level, the action demonstrates a growing bipartisan 
political consensus in the United States that climate change is a 
national security risk, and cannot be ignored. As climate 
change-exacerbated impacts such as sea level rise, droughts and 
wildfires are felt on the ground in Congressional districts across the 
U.S. – including districts that house important military bases and 
training ranges – it is becoming increasingly apparent that climate 
change is no longer a theoretical, future problem. The risks are present 
and real, and they have both practical and political consequences...
This seemingly obscure vote on July 13, 2017 may ultimately be a marker 
in the historical sands, indicating a tipping point in concern about the 
national security risks of a changing climate...
https://climateandsecurity.org/2017/07/14/extraordinary-bipartisan-showing-on-climate-and-security/


(audio)  To the Point - KCRW.org
*Do we need to be 'scared straight' on climate change? 
<https://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/shows/to-the-point/do-we-need-to-be-scared-straight-on-climate-change/do-we-need-to-be-scared-straight-on-climate-change>*
Maybe you're one of the two million people who read or shared the recent 
New York Magazine cover story, which dares to imagine an "uninhabitable 
Earth." Maybe you liked it. Maybe you found it unhelpful or excessive. 
Guest host León Krauze  asks, is it an exercise in journalistic alarmism 
or necessary scientific awareness?
https://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/shows/to-the-point/do-we-need-to-be-scared-straight-on-climate-change/do-we-need-to-be-scared-straight-on-climate-change


*(NYMAG.com followup)  - The Uninhabitable Earth,Annotated Edition* 
<http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans-annotated.html>
The facts, research, and science behind the climate-change article that 
explored our planet's worst-case scenarios.
By David Wallace-Wells
We published "The Uninhabitable Earth" on Sunday night, and the response 
since has been extraordinary - both in volume (it is already the 
most-read article in New York Magazine's history) and in kind. Within 
hours, the article spawned a fleet of commentary across newspapers, 
magazines, blogs, and Twitter, much of which came from climate 
scientists and the journalists who cover them.
Some of this conversation has been about the factual basis for various 
claims that appear in the article. To address those questions, and to 
give all readers more context for how the article was reported and what 
further reading is available, we are publishing here a version of the 
article filled with research annotations. They include quotations from 
scientists I spoke with throughout the reporting process; citations to 
scientific papers, articles, and books I drew from; additional research 
provided by my colleague Julia Mead; and context surrounding some of the 
more contested claims. Since the article was published, we have made 
four corrections and adjustments, which are noted in the annotations (as 
well as at the end of the original version). They are all minor, and 
none affects the central project of the story: to apply the best science 
we have today to the median and high-end "business-as-usual" warming 
projections produced by the U.N.'s "gold standard" Intergovernmental 
Panel on Climate Change.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans-annotated.html


*Is it unethical to have kids in the era of climate change? A philosophy 
professor explains 
<https://qz.com/1029010/is-it-unethical-to-have-kids-in-the-era-of-climate-change-a-philosophy-professor-explains/>*
Rivka Weinberg    Professor of Philosophy, Scripps College
But if the article's predictions are accurate, the global warming 
apocalypse is at hand. We will suffer–a lot–then die, and then die off. 
The looming environmental disaster will kill us in a variety of ways: by 
suffocation in carbon-dioxide choked air; by prehistoric plagues, 
currently trapped in icebergs, reemerging as the Arctic melts; by 
starvation, as the arable land dries out; by poisoning from lethal ocean 
gases released due to ocean life die-off, and by simply cooking in the 
heat (we are meat, after all).
This dark picture raises a key philosophical question: Is it morally 
acceptable to create new people to suffer all this along with us?
In The Risk of a Lifetime, my book 
<https://www.amazon.com/Risk-Lifetime-When-Procreation-Permissible/dp/0190243708/ref=sr_1_1> 
about the ethics that can guide our decisions about procreation, I argue 
that when we have children, we impose life's risks upon them. Therefore, 
we ought to consider the nature of those risks in advance, in order to 
figure out whether they are fair to impose...
"Is life a worthwhile risk?" What makes Wallace-Wells' doomsday scenario 
an unusual challenge to the morality of having children is the ubiquity 
and scope of the risks it poses...
  So is it moral to bring a child into an environment about to be 
destroyed by climate change? Well, if you want to have a baby, you'd 
better fix the world, baby. And, apparently, a lot faster than we thought.
https://qz.com/1029010/is-it-unethical-to-have-kids-in-the-era-of-climate-change-a-philosophy-professor-explains/


*The Man Who Coined the Term 'Global Warming' on the Worst-Case Scenario 
for Planet Earth 
<http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/man-who-coined-global-warming-on-worst-case-scenarios.html>*
*So what are the big things we should be worrying more about?*
I really think that ice melting and sea level are the big things.
If we leave the CO2 in the air, it's probably going to melt the 
Greenland ice sheet and probably Antarctica on a timescale of probably a 
thousand years. Of course once you get that ice in the ocean you're 
never going to get it back on the continent, so it's a net loss forever, 
or for a really long time.
*How fast do you think the melt will be?*
We don't know. It probably won't be catastrophic, it'll probably be 
gradual, with maybe bursts of activity. But the big thing is that sea 
level is going to go up several meters, and maybe as much as ten meters. 
And that really eliminates a lot of stuff.
In 1950s, when I was in graduate school, we got 15 percent of our energy 
from renewables and nuclear, and 85 percent from fossil fuels. Today 
it's the same. Both of them have been increasing at 3 percent a year.
Renewables and nuclear are not changing in their percentage share. And 
in order to stop the CO2 from rising we have to go to a factor-of-ten 
reduction in fossil-fuel burning - at least a factor of ten. And that 
means changing all the world's infrastructure.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/man-who-coined-global-warming-on-worst-case-scenarios.html


*Global warming could result in losses for the European wine industry 
<https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/07/170712084947.htm>*
Science Daily News  July 12, 2017
Slight increases in temperature in Mediterranean regions from global 
warming could potentially result in labor, productivity and economic 
losses for the European wine industry, an article in the journal 
Temperature suggests.
Researchers studied the effects of high temperatures on the labor output 
and productivity of manual agricultural grape-picking workers in the 
wine production industry in Cyprus, who often work in conditions of up 
to 36 degrees Celsius.
They found that higher temperatures in the working conditions during the 
summer correlated with a significant labor loss of up to 27%, due to the 
environmental heat causing increased perceived exertion on worker's 
metabolic and cardiovascular systems and resulting in reduced output....
The authors warned that this research should not be considered an 
exhaustive large scale study of the impact of global warming on 
agriculture workers, and broader studies involving more workers and 
different locations should be undertaken in order to full assess the 
full impact.
The study is the first of its kind in Europe assessing the impact of 
workplace heat on European agriculture workers. The researchers used an 
innovative approach to assess labor output and productivity of seven 
workers called time-motion analysis which can analyse every second spent 
by each worker during every work shift.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/07/170712084947.htm


*Al Gore's quest to change the thinking on global warming 
<http://www.cbsnews.com/news/al-gores-quest-to-change-the-thinking-on-global-warming/>*
CBS News
Now a highly-visible advocate on the issue of climate change, former 
Vice President Al Gore won't be giving that role up any time soon, he 
tells Lee Cowan in an interview for CBS' "Sunday Morning," to be 
broadcast July 16.
"I could not lay this down or put it aside even if I wanted to, and I 
don't want to," Gore tells Cowan. "We've still got to win this. So those 
who feel despair should be of good cheer, as the Bible says.
"Have faith, have hope, we are going to win this."
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/al-gores-quest-to-change-the-thinking-on-global-warming/
*An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power (2017)- Official Trailer - 
Paramount Pictures <https://youtu.be/huX1bmfdkyA>*
... the sequel to An Inconvenient Truth. In theatres July 28, 2017. 
#BeInconvenient
       Climate Changes, Truth Does Not.
  A decade after AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH brought climate change into the 
heart of popular culture, comes the riveting and rousing follow-up that 
shows just how close we are to a real energy revolution. Vice President 
Al Gore continues his tireless fight traveling around the world training 
an army of climate champions and influencing international climate 
policy. Cameras follow him behind the scenes – in moments both private 
and public, funny and poignant -- as he pursues the inspirational idea 
that while the stakes have never been higher, the perils of climate 
change can be overcome with human ingenuity and passion.
https://youtu.be/huX1bmfdkyA


*Game of Thrones is secretly all about climate change 
<https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/7/14/15969034/game-of-thrones-theory-climate-change>*
Game of Thrones is back. And from what we can tell from the show's 
latest trailer, it seems like we might finally see the noble houses of 
Westeros unite to face the growing threat of the White Walkers, the 
north-of-the-Wall monsters that command a gigantic zombie army.
The White Walkers are some of Thrones' creepiest monsters - but they 
also help tell a really interesting metaphor about climate change 
<http://www.vox.com/cards/global-warming/what-is-global-warming>.
For starters, the White Walkers are a threat to all humanity: Their 
zombie minions are equally happy to rip apart people of all nations and 
noble houses. Yet instead of uniting to combat the shared threat to 
human existence, the houses in the show spend basically all their time 
on their own petty disagreements and struggle for power. White Walkers 
are generally ignored; some nobles deny their existence outright.
Swap climate change for White Walkers and "countries" for noble houses, 
and it starts to sound a lot like the real world.
Specifically, it sounds like the problem of international coordination 
on climate change. No one country can prevent catastrophic warming on 
its own: Every country that's a major greenhouse gas emitter is part of 
the problem.
https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/7/14/15969034/game-of-thrones-theory-climate-change


*Snopes
**Peer-Reviewed Study Proves All Recent Global Warming Fabricated by 
Climatologists? <http://www.snopes.com/climatology-fraud-global-warming/>*
A blog post, even if you like it and it is presented in downloadable PDF 
form, is not a peer-reviewed study.
*CLAIM*
A peer-reviewed study has found evidence that nearly all of global 
warming has been fabricated by climate scientists
*RATING* *(X)    FALSE*
*ORIGIN*
On 9 July 2017, Breitbart News ran a story written by chart enthusiast 
James Delingpole, which carried a characteristically provocative and 
demonstrably false headline:
        'Nearly All' Recent Global Warming Is Fabricated, Study Finds
In it, Delingpole alleges that a "peer-reviewed" study (first 
"exclusively" highlighted by the Daily Caller), written by "two 
scientists and a veteran statistician" found evidence that "much of 
global warming has been fabricated by climate scientists":

    The peer-reviewed study by two scientists and a veteran statistician
    looked at the global average temperature datasets (GAST) which are
    used by climate alarmists to argue that recent years have been "the
    hottest evah" and that the warming of the last 120 years has been
    dramatic and unprecedented.
    What they found is that these readings are "totally inconsistent
    with published and credible U.S. and other temperature data." That
    is, the adjusted data used by alarmist organizations like NASA,
    NOAA, and the UK Met Office differs so markedly from the original
    raw data that it cannot be trusted.

*A Peer-Reviewed Study?*
Breitbart here lowers the bar for what passes as both "peer-reviewed" 
and a "study". This report, published on a WordPress blog run by 
co-author Joseph D'Aleo - a meteorologist who did not complete a PhD, 
but who prominently advertises his honorary doctorate on the document's 
cover page - is not published in a scientific journal....
Additionally, this study is not (as implied by some coverage) an 
official publication of the Cato Institute, despite the fact that 
co-author Craig Idso is an adjunct scientist there. "This study was not 
published by the Cato Institute," a representative of the libertarian 
think tank told us....
Ultimately, the central argument of this study and its representation by 
Breitbart and others is one based on a willful misreading of data 
propelled by a study whose academic rigor has been misrepresented. As 
such, we rank the claim that climate scientists have created global 
warming entirely through corrections to raw data as false. While these 
corrections to raw historical data have shifted over time, the 
cumulative effect of all corrections applied to the raw data has been to 
reduce apparent global warming over the industrialized period, not the 
other way around.
http://www.snopes.com/climatology-fraud-global-warming/


*This Day in Climate History July 15, 1991 
<http://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/17/obituaries/roger-revelle-82-early-theorist-in-global-warming-and-geology.html>  
-  from D.R. Tucker*
July 15, 1991: Pioneering climate scientist Roger Revelle passes away at 82
  Roger Revelle, an early predictor of global warming and a leader in 
several fields of science, died Monday at the Medical Center of the 
University of California at San Diego. He was 82 years old.
Dr. Revelle distinguished himself as both a researcher and an 
administrator. From 1951 to 1964 he headed the Scripps Institution of 
Oceanography at La Jolla, now part of the University of California at 
San Diego, and in that time Scripps, working with two sister 
institutions on the East Coast, laid the foundations for a revolutionary 
theory of the earth, now known as plate tectonics. An Early Warning of 
Warming
In the 1950's he became concerned about the increase of atmospheric 
carbon dioxide from global use of fossil fuels. Air was being sampled 
atop a Hawaiian volcano and the specimens were shipped to Scripps for 
analysis. Dr. Revell's warning was one of the first that a global 
warming might ensue.
. Among his diverse scientific contributions was his innovative work, 
with Sir Edward and Arthur E. Maxwell, on the upward flow of heat 
through the ocean floors. Such heat flow on land is generated by 
radioactivity in the rock, but samples from the ocean floor showed 
little radioactivity, so negligible heat flow was expected.
Dr. Revelle and his colleagues built a device that plunged into 
ocean-floor sediment and made the critical measurements. These showed 
far more heat than expected and helped demonstrate that hot material was 
flowing under the oceans, a discovery that was the prelude to the theory 
of plate tectonics. There is still no agreement on the source of the flow.
According to the theory, large plates of the earth's surface, including 
continents and ocean floors, are spreading away from ridges in mid-ocean 
and going down under arcs of volcanic islands like the Aleutians or 
under volcanic coastlines like those of western South America.
Dr. Revelle helped organize the International Geophysical Year of 
1957-58, which inaugurated the space age and was the most ambitious 
program of global research up to that time.
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/17/obituaries/roger-revelle-82-early-theorist-in-global-warming-and-geology.html

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