[TheClimate.Vote] July 27, 2017 - Daily Global Warming News

[Richard Pauli]

/July 27, 2017/

(*audio) Analysis: Non-White Mass. Voters More Troubled By Climate 
Change Than White Voters* 
<http://www.wbur.org/news/2017/07/26/climate-change-non-white-voters>
Massachusetts voters are more concerned than ever about climate change. 
That's according to a WBUR poll released earlier this summer, which 
found more of the state's voters than ever believe climate change is 
real, already underway and likely to bring serious consequences.
The poll also found non-white voters are even more concerned about the 
impacts of global warming than are white voters.
Non-white voters are more likely to believe that Massachusetts will 
suffer consequences like sea level rise, coastal flooding, strong storms 
and extreme heat. They are more likely to oppose President Trump's 
decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord. And, they think that 
climate change poses a bigger long-term threat to the United States than 
terrorism, while white voters see terrorism as the more serious concern.
http://www.wbur.org/news/2017/07/26/climate-change-non-white-voters


*Thousands evacuated after wildfire on France's Mediterranean coast 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/26/france-wildfires-corsica-cote-d-azur-holiday>*
Summer wildfires are once again blazing across southern Europe, forcing 
the evacuation of 12,000 people on France's Mediterranean cost and 
devouring swaths of forests as far afield as Corsica, Portugal, Italy 
and Albania.
Authorities in the Côte d'Azur region decided to move people out of 
tents, campsites and holiday homes around the hilltop town of 
Bormes-les-Mimosas after a fire broke out in the surrounding forests on 
Tuesday.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/26/france-wildfires-corsica-cote-d-azur-holiday


*We're Teaching Kids the Wrong Ways to Fight Climate Change 
<http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/we-re-teaching-kids-wrong-ways-fight-climate-change>*
*Is our love for technology to blame?*
BY HEATHER SMITH | JUL 12 2017
When Seth Wynes was teaching high school science in Canada, there was 
one question his students asked him that he had trouble answering: What 
can I do to stop climate change?
Then Wynes began comparing ... resesarch to climate-related documents 
aimed at teenagers and adults in the three most high-emitting countries 
on the list: Canada, Australia, and the United States. He wanted to 
know—were the actions on his list the same as the actions these 
documents recommended?...
The single most important thing that an individual could do—have one 
fewer child than intended—was not mentioned at all. On one level, this 
is easier to understand—several countries have a tradition of relying on 
an expanding birth rate as a way to subsidize the retirement of its 
older citizens. Systematic attempts to reduce birth rates in many 
countries have a history of being applied selectively, in ways that can 
only be described as racist and classist. But still, a concerned 
teenager might want to know that a U.S. family choosing to have one 
fewer child than they originally intended would, as Wynes and Nicholas 
put it, "provide the same level of emissions reductions as 684 teenagers 
who choose to adopt comprehensive recycling for the rest of their lives."
When I asked Wynes about why he thought publications aimed at teenagers 
had such a strong emphasis on climate actions with only moderate impact, 
he hesitated, then hypothesized that the problem might be hope. 
Specifically, the hope that new technology would be the solution to this 
new, energy-related problem, the way that the Green Revolution was a 
solution to the limitations of agriculture, or the way that the 
catalytic converter cut urban air pollution. Only one of the four 
most-effective options—buying energy from renewable sources—requires the 
kind of technological innovation that has gotten us out of environmental 
pinches in the past. We already have the technology to have fewer 
children and to get around using fewer cars. Many short-distance air 
routes could be replaced with high-speed rail, and the knowledge to make 
that work well has been around since the 1970s.
Whether or not the kids are learning it in school, we may already be 
living in a world where expectations are adjusting. In the United 
States, the percentage of 20-somethings with driver's licenses has 
fallen by 13 percent over the past three decades, and they prefer to 
live in cities, even if they can't afford to live there. Even if young 
people do eventually buy cars and move out to the suburbs as they get 
older, by driving less now they've reduced the pollution they've 
contributed to in their lifetime.
In my years writing about climate and the environment, I've seen a lot 
of what Wynes's and Nicholas's paper describes. I have been told by 
scientific papers to buy a more-fuel-efficient car, as though the 
existence of people like myself who have never owned a car in the first 
place does not exist. I have seen teenagers being told they can fight 
climate change by shopping at thrift stores and taking shorter showers. 
As a communication strategy, it felt a bit off—teenagers as I know them 
are idealistic and intense, more comfortable at making dramatic 
statements and life changes than most adults are.
What would they do if they knew the whole truth about this troposphere 
we're handing off to them? I eagerly await that study.
http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/we-re-teaching-kids-wrong-ways-fight-climate-change


*Fear Factor: A Defense of NEW YORK's Climate Doom Cover Story 
<http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/fear-factor-defense-new-yorks-climate-doom-cover-story>*
*It's OK to talk about the terrifying worst-case climate change scenarios*
BY JASON MARK | JUL 14 2017
In the not-so-distant future (the lifetime of a person born today), 
large portions of Earth may become inhospitable to human life, if not 
totally uninhabitable. Rising temperatures might scorch the world's 
great grain baskets, leading to famine and contributing to war. 
Extinctions will continue to mount. Diseases locked in ancient ice could 
sweep the planet, producing plagues like we've never experienced. If 
humanity fails to radically reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, 
"much more dying is coming."
That nightmarish doomsday scenario arrives courtesy of the current cover 
story in New York magazine, titled "The Uninhabitable Earth 
<http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html>." 
Since it was published, on June 10, the blockbuster piece (now the 
most-read in the magazine's history) has ignited a firestorm of 
controversy, with many scientists complaining that it exaggerates the 
science of climate change, and a host of environmental journalists 
offering their hot-takes on the article. At this point, the Twitter 
debates on the essay probably measure in the gigabytes.
  Maybe such an over-the-top depiction of climate change's worst-case 
scenarios is useful, essential even. "The Uninhabitable Earth" can be 
like a splash of cold water to the face, waking up society from its 
sleepwalk toward life-threatening climate dislocations. All too often, 
climate change reporting is boring, or at least hard to track if (like 
most people) you're only following the story out of the corner of your 
eye. A planetary disaster unfolding in slow motion lacks the immediacy 
of, say, Donald Trump Jr.'s real-time self-incrimination. In contrast, 
Wallace-Wells's story is vivid and visceral. It is, in a word, terrifying.
And that's a good thing. At this point in time, with carbon dioxide and 
methane continuing to accumulate in the atmosphere and the oceans 
becoming warmer and more acidic, a measure of terror isn't unreasonable. 
A good dose of fear might in fact be just the propellant civilization 
needs to take immediate, dramatic action.
Make no mistake: Hope—the renewable energy of any successful political 
movement—is essential for addressing the climate crisis. But hope alone 
is insufficient. If society is going to avoid the worst climate change 
impacts, some rational panic is also in order. There is such a thing as 
doom without gloom. Fear, just as much as hope, can fuel a righteous 
global movement to decarbonize civilization.
Given the article's huge success, the concerns about the article seem 
misdirected. This is the last thing we need right now: scientists and 
journalists worrying that people are too worried about climate change, 
or worried for the "wrong" reasons. As Vox's David Roberts puts it, in 
one of the best defenses of the essay I've seen, "By any sane 
accounting, the ranks [of] the under-alarmed outnumber the over-alarmed 
by many multiples."
Exactly right. I have to wonder what's worse: a relatively unknown 
writer exploring the worst-case scenarios of climate chaos, or one of 
the world's preeminent climate scientists (Michael Mann) writing in the 
Washington Post that the concerns are overblown. In today's media 
environment—in which social media acts as a light-speed-quick game of 
telephone—I'm afraid the latter is more likely to give solace to those 
who continue to push for reckless fossil fuel extraction.
It's an open secret among climatologists, policy experts, and 
environmental campaigners that staying within a global 2-degree 
temperature rise is all but impossible, barring some technological or 
political revolution. Wallace-Wells has simply laid that secret bare.
And yet, as one scientist involved in the Climate Feedback dialogue, 
UCLA post-doc Daniel Swain, points out, "It is quantitatively true—and 
often underappreciated—that the likelihood of a 'worse than expected' 
climate future is actually higher than a 'better than expected' one." 
Or, more plainly: It is more probable that climate change will be a 
disaster than that we'll manage to avoid the worst impacts of treating 
the atmosphere like an open sewer.
Here's Mann in the Post: "Fear does not motivate, and appealing to it is 
often counterproductive as it tends to distance people from the problem, 
leading them to disengage, doubt, and even dismiss it." And here's 
meteorologist-journalist Eric Holthaus writing for Grist: "If you're 
trying to motivate people, scaring the shit out of them is a really bad 
strategy."
Really? I'm not so sure. There's two problems with this line of 
reasoning: It's not half as well grounded in science as the writers 
claim; and, more worrisome to me, it represents a kind of 
sentiment-censoring, an emotion-shaming that doesn't allow space for the 
full range of feelings people might have regarding climate change.
Arousing fear is OK—as long as people have a sense of personal agency 
that there is something they can do to address that fear. And, I would 
say, there's nothing wrong with arousing fear when the facts are, in 
fact, worrisome.
My bigger concern with the fear-shaming is that it represents a 
one-dimensional view of human nature. Hope and fear have a Janus-like 
relationship; or, perhaps more accurately, hope and fear are like 
conjoined twins—two minds, sharing a single heartbeat. It's hard to have 
one without the other.
But if you're not fearful about climate change, either you're not paying 
attention or you're fooling yourself.
http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/fear-factor-defense-new-yorks-climate-doom-cover-story


*Why climate change discussions need apocalyptic thinking. 
<http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2017/07/why_climate_change_discussions_need_apocalyptic_thinking.html>*
Hope Is Dangerous When It Comes to Climate Change
Hope that science will provide a solution is its own kind of surrender.
These demands that we hope against all evidence are examples of what 
Lauren Berlant calls "cruel optimism." Berlant describes the way people 
hope for something that is impossible or fantastical. What makes this 
cruel, rather than just tragic, is that the hope is itself part of the 
problem. Think of the way that dreams of success and wealth function in 
American society. Low-paid employees in precarious positions are told 
that determination and hard work will result in greater opportunities 
and economic security. In actuality, class mobility is very limited. The 
optimism at the heart of the American dream is cruel: Workers invest in 
a dream that actually leaves them more open to exploitation rather than 
challenging the wider economic system.
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2017/07/why_climate_change_discussions_need_apocalyptic_thinking.html


*Kevin Anderson: Paris, climate & surrealism: how numbers reveal another 
reality <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIODRrnHQxg>*
Visit: http://climateseries.com
Speaker: Prof. Kevin Anderson, Professor of energy and climate change
Title: Paris, climate and surrealism: how numbers reveal an alternate 
reality
The Paris Agreement's inclusion of "well below 2°C" and "pursue … 1.5°C" 
has catalysed fervent activity amongst many within the scientific 
community keen to understand what this more ambitious objective implies 
for mitigation. However, this activity has demonstrated little in the 
way of plurality of responses. Instead there remains an almost exclusive 
focus on how future 'negative emissions technologies' (NETs) may offer a 
beguiling and almost free "get out of jail card".
This presentation argues that such a dominant focus reveals an endemic 
bias across much of the academic climate change community determined to 
voice a politically palatable framing of the mitigation landscape – 
almost regardless of scientific credibility.
The inclusion of carbon budgets within the IPCC's latest report reveals 
just how few years remain within which to meet even the "well below 2°C" 
objective.
Making optimistic assumptions on the rapid cessation of deforestation 
and uptake of carbon capture technologies on cement/steel production, 
sees a urgent need to accelerate the transformation of the energy system 
away from fossil fuels by the mid 2030s in the wealthier nations and 
2050 globally. To put this in context, the national mitigation pledges 
submitted to Paris see an ongoing rise in emissions till 2030 and are 
not scheduled to undergo  major review until 2023 – eight years, or 300 
billion tonnes of CO2, after the Paris Agreement.
Despite the enormity and urgency of 1.5°C and "well below 2°C" 
mitigation challenge, the academic community has barely considered 
delivering deep and early reductions in emissions through the rapid 
penetration of existing end-use technologies and profound social change. 
At best it dismisses such options as too expensive compared to the 
discounted future costs of a technology that does not yet exist. At 
worst, it has simply been unprepared to countenance approaches that risk 
destabilising the political hegemony.
Ignoring such sensibilities, the presentation concludes with a draft 
vision of what an alternative mitigation agenda may comprise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIODRrnHQxg


*This Day in Climate History July 27, 2006 
<http://www.c-span.org/video/?193612-1/Methodo>  -  from D.R. Tucker*
July 27, 2006: Climate scientist Michael Mann testifies before the House 
Committee on Energy and Commerce regarding his scientific research--and 
the transparently partisan efforts by climate-change deniers to 
undermine it.
http://youtu.be/8e2GlooAPkM
http://www.c-span.org/video/?193612-1/Methodo
/
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