[TheClimate.Vote] June 16, 2017 - Daily Global Warming News

[Richard Pauli]

/June 16, 2017
/
*May Global Temperature Update - James Hansen 
<http://www.columbia.edu/%7Emhs119/Temperature/>*
May 2017, at +0.88C relative to the 1951-1980 mean, was the second 
warmest May in the period of instrumental data, only 0.05C cooler than 
May 2016 record high (0.93C).
ENSO (El Nino-Southern Oscillation) in the tropical Pacific are now near 
neutral, while the first half of 2016 was affected by the strong 
2015-2016 El Nino.  Given present and projected ENSO conditions (neutral 
or slightly positive) it can be projected that 2017 as a whole is likely 
to be the second warmest year in the instrumental record, not much 
cooler than 2016.
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/


    Stanford sociologist attempts to explain puzzling lack of
    grassroots*climate change*activism in US
    <http://news.stanford.edu/2017/06/15/sociologist-probes-lack-grassroots-climate-change-activism/>

Sociologist Doug McAdam examined 40 years of research and theory on 
social movements in an attempt to determine why a sustained grassroots 
movement on climate change has not developed in the United States.
There are a host of factors that help to account for the relative lack 
of grassroots activism on climate change, notably,
*1) the relentless denial of the reality of climate change by 
anti-climate change forces;
2) increasing gridlock in Congress, making bipartisan action on any 
issue difficult;
3) the lack of "ownership" of the issue by any significant segment of 
the American public, in contrast to issues such as police violence 
against African Americans or sexual assaults against women, or the 
threat of deportation against Hispanics; and
4) the mistaken extended "time horizon" associated with the issue, which 
reassures many that the impact of climate change is still off in the 
nebulous future.*
... grassroots action on a given issue is much more likely if a specific 
population segment identifies with and is committed to action on the 
issue.  No clear segment of the U.S. population currently "owns" the 
climate change issue.
  There are more than 400 formal climate change organizations in the 
U.S. Have they made a measurable impact and how are they different from 
grassroots organizations?
These organizations are different in that they generally eschew forms of 
non-institutionalized, or otherwise disruptive, action in favor of the 
more conventional tactics of lobbying and public education. *But 
relative to the far more numerous – and much better-funded – climate 
change denier organizations, the top-down climate change organizations 
have had virtually no impact on environmental policy at the federal level.*
As unthinkable as President Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris 
agreement is, it presents a clear opportunity for climate change and 
other environmental groups to mobilize around the threat to the planet 
posed by his actions.  This would also allow those groups to appropriate 
all the generalized opposition and anger at Trump on behalf of the 
climate change issue.
http://news.stanford.edu/2017/06/15/sociologist-probes-lack-grassroots-climate-change-activism/
================================================
Social Movement Theory and the Prospects for Climate Change Activism in 
the United States 
<http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-polisci-052615-025801>
Annual Review of Political Science
Vol. 20:189-208 (Volume publication date May 2017)
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-052615-025801
Abstract
The issue of climate change poses something of a puzzle. For all the 
attention accorded the issue, climate change/global warming has spawned 
surprisingly little grassroots activism in the contemporary United 
States. Drawing on social movement theory, the author seeks to explain 
this puzzle. The prevailing consensus among movement scholars is that 
the prospect for movement emergence is facilitated by the confluence of 
three factors: the expansion of political opportunities, the 
availability of mobilizing structures, and cognitive and affective 
mobilization through framing processes. The author then applies each of 
these factors to the case of climate change, arguing that (a) awareness 
of the issue developed during an especially inopportune period in 
American politics, (b) the organizations that arose to address the issue 
were ill suited to the kind of grassroots mobilization characteristic of 
successful movements, and (c) the amorphous nature of the issue played 
havoc with efforts at strategic framing.
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-polisci-052615-025801?journalCode=polisci


    The Trump Response to the Kids'*Climate* Lawsuit Isn't Denial. It's
    Evasion.
    <http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2017/06/the_doj_admits_climate_change_exists_it_just_refutes_whether_the_federal.html>

...At a hearing on Wednesday, government lawyers in the case unveiled a 
second strategy that echoed the congressional testimony of Attorney 
General Jeff Sessions just one day earlier: evasion. They refused to 
answer basic questions of fact and asserted executive privilege over the 
science the government is using to determine climate change policy....
Julia Olson, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, filed 10 requests for 
admission months ago, in February, to try to get the government to take 
a firm position on what it thought safe levels of CO2 would be to limit 
the catastrophic consequences of global warming. The government's 
initial answer, the one submitted under Obama, admitted the climate 
problems we are facing but didn't explain what it considered to be safe 
levels of carbon dioxide emissions...
Olson wanted to know how the government's own climate scientists had 
assessed these questions in briefings to the president. She filed her 
requests with both the White House and with the Environmental Protection 
Agency. The Department of Justice has refused to answer any of them, 
claiming executive privilege allows them to keep secret the facts it 
uses to determine policy...
"We're starting to see them exert executive privilege over climate 
change facts," Olson said over the phone. "They said they don't have to 
disclose whether the statements were true or false because it was 
protected information. That the president gets to know his position and 
he doesn't have to answer questions about it. It's more of this idea 
that the president is above the law."..
"The main questions are these," Coffin said. "Is there human-induced 
climate change happening, and if so, what's going to be the reasonable 
probability of habitability of the planet in a number of years and what 
changes need to be made to keep that from happening?
"I've asked several times," he added. "Does the government admit this is 
happening? Or does the government deny it? And if so, what evidence does 
the government plan on presenting at trial? We need some indication from 
the government as to what it plans to argue."
Olson asked Judge Coffin to issue an order requiring the government to 
produce the documents. He has not yet indicated whether he would issue 
such a ruling.
Perhaps it is heartening that the Trump administration has not shifted 
tactics in this case to deny climate change altogether. Of course, if it 
did that, it would have to prove it, and there are already a number of 
legal precedents that uphold the idea that carbon emissions are harmful 
to the planet and pose a risk to human health. It's far easier, it 
seems, to just evade the question altogether.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2017/06/the_doj_admits_climate_change_exists_it_just_refutes_whether_the_federal.html


    The Dutch Have Solutions to Rising Seas. The World Is Watching.
    <https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/15/world/europe/climate-change-rotterdam.html>

In the waterlogged Netherlands, climate change is considered neither a 
hypothetical nor a drag on the economy. Instead, it's an opportunity.
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
JUNE 15, 2017
ROTTERDAM, the Netherlands - The wind over the canal stirred up 
whitecaps and rattled cafe umbrellas. Rowers strained toward a finish 
line and spectators hugged the shore. Henk Ovink, hawkish, wiry, head 
shaved, watched from a V.I.P. deck, one eye on the boats, the other, as 
usual, on his phone.
Mr. Ovink is the country's globe-trotting salesman in chief for Dutch 
expertise on rising water and climate change. Like cheese in France or 
cars in Germany, climate change is a business in the Netherlands. Month 
in, month out, delegations from as far away as Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh 
City, New York and New Orleans make the rounds in the port city of 
Rotterdam. They often end up hiring Dutch firms, which dominate the 
global market in high-tech engineering and water management.
That's because from the first moment settlers in this small nation 
started pumping water to clear land for farms and houses, water has been 
the central, existential fact of life in the Netherlands, a daily matter 
of survival and national identity. No place in Europe is under greater 
threat than this waterlogged country on the edge of the Continent. The 
nation sits largely below sea level and is gradually sinking. Now 
climate change brings the prospect of rising tides and fiercer storms...
"That's what we're trying to do," he said. "You can say we are marketing 
our expertise, but thousands of people die every year because of rising 
water, and the world is failing collectively to deal with the crisis, 
losing money and lives." He ticks off the latest findings: 2016 was the 
warmest year on record; global sea levels rose to new highs...
"If there is a shooting in a bar, I am asked a million questions," Mr. 
Aboutaleb said of his city. "But if I say everyone should own a boat 
because we predict a tremendous increase in the intensity of rain, 
nobody questions the politics. Rotterdam lies in the most vulnerable 
part of the Netherlands, both economically and geographically. If the 
water comes in, from the rivers or the sea, we can evacuate maybe 15 out 
of 100 people. So evacuation isn't an option. We can escape only into 
high buildings. We have no choice. We must learn to live with water."
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/15/world/europe/climate-change-rotterdam.html


*Scientists stunned by Antarctic rainfall and a melt area bigger than 
Texas* 
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/06/15/scientists-just-documented-a-massive-melt-event-on-the-surface-of-antarctica/>
By Chris Mooney       June 15
Scientists have documented a recent, massive melt event on the surface 
of highly vulnerable West Antarctica that, they fear, could be a 
harbinger of future events as the planet continues to warm...
In the Antarctic summer of 2016, the surface of the Ross Ice Shelf, the 
largest floating ice platform on Earth, developed a sheet of meltwater 
that lasted for as long as 15 days in some places. The total area 
affected by melt was 300,000 square miles, or larger than the state of 
Texas, the scientists report....
That's bad news because surface melting could work hand in hand with an 
already documented trend of ocean-driven melting to compromise West 
Antarctica, which contains over 10 feet of potential sea level rise.
The resulting observations, from the satellites, suggest not that the 
Ross Ice Shelf was covered with lakes or pools, but rather, that liquid 
water mixed into the snow atop it...
"In some parts it could be slush for example, a mixture of ice and 
liquid water," said Bromwich....
If Antarctic ice shelves fracture - something that has already been 
observed to occur on the Greenland ice sheet and in some parts of 
Antarctica where warmer temperatures already occur - then that would 
allow the ice lodged behind them to flow into the ocean much more rapidly...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/06/15/scientists-just-documented-a-massive-melt-event-on-the-surface-of-antarctica/*

*
*"Data cables are the new trading routes" 
<https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/industry-and-energy/2017/06/data-cables-are-new-trading-routes>*
Finland wants digital highway to Asia via Arctic waters.
By**Maija Myllyla
June 15, 2017
"I never thought I could get so excited about cables", said former 
Minister of Transport and Communications Suvi Linden at the Arctic 
Broadband Summit in Oulu on Wednesday.  The conference discusses 
broadband development and its implications for the Arctic societies and 
businesses.
A submarine broadband connection linking Europe and Asia via the 
Northeast Passage is a hot topic in Finland these days.
"In digital economy data cables are the new trading routes", says 
Jukka-Pekka Joensuu. His company, Cinia, launched a fiber-optic link 
under the Baltic Sea connecting Finland and Germany. Joensuu's new 
passion is the Arctic Connect project, a plan for to build a secure 
subsea cable connection from Kirkenes and Teriberka all the way to 
Hokkaido, Vladivostok and Beijing. ..Unfortunately, digital highways are 
expensive to build in Arctic conditions. Khaled Sedrak of NxtVn said 
that the traditional logic of telecommunications business does not apply 
to connections built in the Arctic regions and seas. ...
Academy professor Matti Latva-aho insisted that the decision to build 
the cable connection is political. International cooperation is essential...
   "There is a gap that needs to be patched. We need leadership in 
building the digital infrastructure; we need people who understand the 
need of fast and reliable connections in the Arctic regions the same way 
as they understand the need for water supply networks or sewer systems."
The Arctic Economic Council organizes the Top of the World Arctic 
Broadband Summit. In addition to broadband development, the panels 
discuss themes titled Interconnected Arctic, Competent Arctic and Safe 
Arctic.
https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/industry-and-energy/2017/06/data-cables-are-new-trading-routes


*How Oil Will Die <https://climatecrocks.com/2017/06/15/how-oil-will-die/>*
... when I bought my Prius, it was common for friends to ask how long 
the battery would last - a battery replacement at 100,000 miles would 
easily negate the value of improved fuel efficiency. But today there are 
anecdotal stories of Prius's logging over 600,000 miles on a single battery.
The story for Teslas is unfolding similarly. Tesloop, a Tesla-centric 
ride-hailing company has already driven its first Model S...
https://climatecrocks.com/2017/06/15/how-oil-will-die/


*Ilulissat is Glacier Ground Zero -  by greenman3610 
<https://climatecrocks.com/2017/06/15/ilulissat-is-glacier-ground-zero/>*
"I'll be heading to Greenland next month, first stop, Ilulissat. 
Ilulissat is at the mouth of the fiord where Jacobshaven glacier, the 
world's fastest moving ice stream, is pouring icebergs in to the sea.  
Most of the cool visuals you see from Greenland are shot in and around 
the town, because it is a) accessible, …
https://climatecrocks.com/2017/06/15/ilulissat-is-glacier-ground-zero/


*This Day in Climate History June 16, 2015 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/16/science/naomi-oreskes-a-lightning-rod-in-a-changing-climate.html?mwrsm=Email>  
- from D.R. Tucker*
The New York Times profiles "Merchants of Doubt" author Naomi Oreskes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/16/science/naomi-oreskes-a-lightning-rod-in-a-changing-climate.html?mwrsm=Email 


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