[TheClimate.Vote] June 17, 2017 - Daily Global Warming News

Sat Jun 17 12:05:06 EDT 2017

/June 17, 2017/
*
Severe Weather Alert for Needles, California   126 degrees 
<https://www.wunderground.com/us/ca/needles>*
Active Advisory: Excessive Heat Warning  Tuesday June 20th
The heatwave will be worst in Arizona, SE California (Palm Springs and 
Death Valley), and California’s Central Valley (Sacramento/Fresno). 
*Temps in some locations are forecast to go well above 120˚ F. *
https://www.wunderground.com/us/ca/needles
-
*Increased Extreme Heat and Heat Waves 
<http://www.climatesignals.org/climate-signals/increased-extreme-heat-and-heat-waves>*
Climate Signals has just published a fully-annotated run-down of the 
latest science: 
<http://www.climatesignals.org/climate-signals/increased-extreme-heat-and-heat-waves>
Global warming has amplified the intensity, duration and frequency of 
extreme heat events. The National Academy of Sciences reports and 
validates <https://www.nap.edu/read/21852/chapter/6#90> numerous studies 
as well as two major science assessment reviews that definitively 
identify the fingerprint of human influence in driving the changes 
observed to date.
These events occur on multiple time scales - from a single day or week, 
to months or entire seasons—and are defined by temperatures 
significantly above the historic average for that period.
The climate has shifted significantly, leading to more heat records in 
every season.  The number of local record-breaking average monthly 
temperature extremes worldwide is now on average five times larger than 
expected in a climate with no long-term warming.  85 percent of recent 
record-hot days globally have been attributed to climate change. ..
http://www.climatesignals.org/climate-signals/increased-extreme-heat-and-heat-waves
-
Signals has also assembled the attached unbranded infographic pulling 
from NASA’s Design Studio. 
<https://twitter.com/ClimateSignals/status/875864745022152704>
Tweeted here: https://twitter.com/ClimateSignals/status/875864745022152704
#NotYourImagination - extreme heat events
now much more frequent: https://t.co/GIDAzZiIpG #AZwx #CAwx
and much more severe: https://t.co/BwEbAQIByz
-
*Climate Signals <https://twitter.com/ClimateSignals>*
#ClimateSignals is a digital platform that maps the impacts of climate 
change.
A project of Climate Nexus, currently in beta: 
http://www.climatesignals.org
https://twitter.com/ClimateSignals

    Bank of England to probe banks' exposure to*climate change*
    <https://www.ft.com/content/ec4d3446-52a1-11e7-a1f2-db19572361bb>

The Bank of England will probe banks’ exposure to climate change as it 
steps up efforts to tackle what it says are “significant” financial 
threats posed by global warming.
Climate change experts said the BoE’s decision to do an internal review 
of the banking sector, which the central bank revealed on its website on 
Friday, marked a first.
“This is ground-breaking,” said Ben Caldecott, director of the 
sustainable finance programme at Oxford University’s Smith School of 
Enterprise and the Environment. “This is the first time a financial 
regulator has looked at climate risk in such a comprehensive way and at 
the banking sector in particular.”
https://www.ft.com/content/ec4d3446-52a1-11e7-a1f2-db19572361bb

    *Climate Change*Would Be the Perfect Target of Jeff Bezos'
    Philanthropic Plans
    <http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2017/06/unfortunately_amazon_doesn_t_have_a_great_record_when_it_comes_to_sustainability.html>

Unfortunately, the CEO notorious for thinking long term is focusing his 
giving on “right now” problems.
By Nick Thieme
Better that Bezos spends his money on “right now” philanthropy than no 
philanthropy at all. But it’s disappointing that Bezos, the king of 
long-term thinking, isn’t more interested in one of the biggest 
long-term problems there is: climate change. You would think that given 
his slow and methodical approach to his other endeavors (as creepy and 
monopolistically intended as they may be), this would be the perfect 
issue for him to take on—particularly if he’s interested in 
“contributing to society and civilization.” After all, as the oft-cited 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report 
makes clear, the food shortages and increasingly dangerous weather 
events expected to occur during the next century will disproportionately 
affect people who can least afford it.
Climate change seems tailor-made for Bezos, but given his company’s 
record on the topic, perhaps it’s not surprising that he’s not that 
interested. Amazon’s corporate page intimates an interest in addressing 
climate change, as is basically standard for corporations these days. 
But the company is not doing so hot in this area. Greenpeace’s 2017 
Click Clean report, a yearly report card that grades major IT companies 
on their sustainability efforts, gives Amazon a C grade. It received 
this grade, partly, because 24 percent of its energy comes from natural 
gas and 30 percent of it comes from coal. (Compare that with Google’s 14 
percent and 15 percent in those same energy categories.) The company 
also receives an F in energy transparency.
The 2017 Click Clean report reminds us that if the IT sector (made of 
companies including Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Akamai) was a country, 
the amount of energy it consumes would be third in the world, behind 
only the U.S and China. Bezos has personally invested in some renewable 
energy endeavors, but mostly in “moonshot” technologies like nuclear 
fusion and oil grown from algae (a project that has since failed)....
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2017/06/unfortunately_amazon_doesn_t_have_a_great_record_when_it_comes_to_sustainability.html

    Houston fears*climate change*will cause catastrophic flooding: 'It's
    not if, it's when'
    <https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/16/texas-flooding-houston-climate-change-disaster>

Human activity is worsening the problem in an already rainy area, and 
there could be damage worthy of a disaster movie if a storm hits the 
industrial section
Houston is situated in a low-lying coastal area with poorly draining 
soils and is subject to heavy rainfall events and storm surge events, 
which makes it very prone to flooding. And the climate is changing. In 
Galveston Bay the sea level is rising. We know the area is experiencing 
more heavy downpours,” Brody said...
“It pales in comparison with the other driving force, which is the built 
environment. If you’re going to put 4 million people in this 
flood-vulnerable area in a way which involves ubiquitous application of 
impervious surfaces, you’re going to get flooding.”...
In other words: there is a lot of concrete in Houston. In 2000, 4.7 
million people lived in the Houston metropolitan area. Now the 
population is about 6.5 million. While efforts are under way to densify 
and improve public transport in the urban core, much of the growth has 
been suburban, where houses are big and cheap and commuters drive long 
distances on some of the world’s widest freeways. The city keeps 
loosening its belt: a third ring-road cuts through exurbs some 30 miles 
from downtown, spurring more expansion....
The danger is lessened, too, by the natural defence of the western 
plains – but here, water-retaining grasses are being replaced by 
non-absorbent surfaces, which encourage water to travel downstream. 
Brody calculates that each new square metre of pavement in Houston on 
average adds $4,000 worth of flood damage...
“The truth is that most of the flooding in Houston is manmade,” said Ed 
Browne, another member, pointing out that many people who get flooded, 
Bixler included, are not in the 100-year floodplain – an area calculated 
to have a 1% annual chance of flooding....
“The truth is that most of the flooding in Houston is manmade,” said Ed 
Browne, another member, pointing out that many people who get flooded, 
Bixler included, are not in the 100-year floodplain – an area calculated 
to have a 1% annual chance of flooding...
It is not lost on environmental activists that those refineries, as part 
of the fossil fuels industry, may be imperiled by extreme weather linked 
to climate change....
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/16/texas-flooding-houston-climate-change-disaster

    If cities really want to fight*climate change*, they have to fight
    cars
    <http://grist.org/article/if-cities-really-want-to-fight-climate-change-they-have-to-fight-cars/>

If there's an American polity with more evident devotion to fighting 
climate change, I don't know where. The town is home to the University 
of California and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
http://grist.org/article/if-cities-really-want-to-fight-climate-change-they-have-to-fight-cars/

    Lake Tanganyika hit by*climate change*and over-fishing
    <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/business-40303920/lake-tanganyika-hit-by-climate-change-and-over-fishing>

Millions of people rely on Lake Tanganyika for their livelihoods. But 
the second largest lake in Africa is in crisis. It is suffering from the 
effects of climate change, over-fishing and deforestation and has been 
nominated by the Global Nature Fund as ...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/business-40303920/lake-tanganyika-hit-by-climate-change-and-over-fishing

*
**CO2 Removal: Innovation of the week <Innovation%20of%20the%20week>*
A Swiss startup wants to fight climate change with machines that suck 
carbon dioxide out of the air, said Adele Peters in FastCompany.com. 
Zurich-based Climeworks’ CO2 collectors are housed in shipping 
containers. “Small fans pull air into the collectors, where a 
sponge-like filter soaks up carbon dioxide,” which is later released “in 
a pure form that can be sold, made into other products, or buried 
underground.” Eventually, governments and corporations may pay the 
company to remove CO2 from the atmosphere to meet ambitious climate 
goals, though the collecting machines would need “to be built at massive 
scale” to make an impact. Climeworks estimates that it would need 
750,000 shipping container–size units to capture 1 percent of global 
emissions. That number is not as outlandish as it seems, however. “The 
same number of shipping containers pass through the Port of Shanghai 
every two weeks.”
https://magazine.theweek.com/editions/com.dennis.theweek.issue.issue827/data/52762/index.html

    Nuisance Coastal Flooding,*Global Warming*, Sea-Level Rise
    <http://www.capenews.net/falmouth/columns/nuisance-coastal-flooding-global-warming-sea-level-rise/article_989e52aa-4975-5aaf-abd7-f9820e21c93a.html>

One of the most well-known and most severe impacts is rise in sea level, 
caused by a combination of melting of land-based ice sheets and thermal 
expansion of the oceans. For Falmouth, as a coastal community already 
facing serious coastal issues such as erosion, storm-surge flooding, and 
salt-water intrusion into freshwater aquifers, the risk of sea -level 
rise and other global warming impacts deserves immediate attention from 
town leaders and the public alike....
Scientific projections of sea-level rise are imprecise due to a 
combination of lack of reliable data on likely future carbon emissions 
and especially the complexity of Earth’s systems that affect weather and 
ultimately global climate.
Clearly awareness and planning for coastal resilience is needed to deal 
with long term sea-level rise, but a more immediate risk to Falmouth and 
other Cape communities is “nuisance coastal flooding.” This is extreme 
flooding of low elevation areas that occurs mostly during high spring 
tides in conjunction with winds from the southwest. Sea-level rise is 
causing high tides to reach higher ground and flood larger areas and the 
frequency and duration of flooding are increasing. Impacts from 
recurrent coastal flooding include overwhelmed stormwater drainage 
capacity, frequent road closures, and general deterioration and 
corrosion of infrastructure (e.g. bridges, sewer/septic systems, roads) 
not designed to withstand frequent inundation or salt-water exposure.
http://www.capenews.net/falmouth/columns/nuisance-coastal-flooding-global-warming-sea-level-rise/article_989e52aa-4975-5aaf-abd7-f9820e21c93a.html

*What do you need to know about climate? 
<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=20441>*
Filed under: Climate impacts Climate modelling Climate Science 
Communicating Climate downscaling Scientific practice Solutions — rasmus 
@ 14 June 2017
What do you need to know about climate in order to be in the best 
position to adapt to future change? This question was discussed in a 
European workshop on Copernicus climate services during a heatwave in 
Barcelona, Spain (June 12-14).
The answer is not clear-cut, even after having some information about 
user requirements from a survey to identify a direction for data 
evaluation for climate models (DECM). The survey is still being carried out.
Some of the key issues concerning user requirements include essential 
climate variables (ECVs), climate data storage (CDS), evaluation and 
quality control (EQC), and fitness for purpose (F4P). I include their 
acronyms here since they often appear in reports and discussions and 
their meaning is not always obvious.
The ghost that keeps coming back is “uncertainty”. The data give an 
incomplete description of the world, and include some inaccuracies. How 
significant are these, and how closely do they represent the aspects 
which they are meant to describe?
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=20441

*New Denier Study So Bad Even Deniers Are Somewhat Skeptical 
<https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/06/16/denier-study-skeptical-epa-science-air-pollution-bastasch>*
guest post by ClimateDenierRoundup
It goes without saying that peer review is an important safeguard 
against shoddy pseudoscience. Peer reviewers are so vital to the 
scientific endeavour that they recently got their own monument!
But peer review is not a perfect process. It’s necessary to ensure 
quality science, of course. But sometimes peer review goes wrong. For 
example, a journal whose editor is a climate denier with ties to 
Heartland recently published a paper claiming to refute the greenhouse 
theory. The paper is so bad that one scientist told DeSmog it is 
“laughable,” in part because the paper takes issue with the fact that 
greenhouses have glass roofs, and the atmosphere does not.
Seriously.
So although deniers try to downplay the importance of the consensus to 
claim that a vast global conspiracy keeps their work out of 
peer-reviewed journals, it’s not impossible for their shoddy science to 
get published.
Most recently, Daily Caller’s Michael Bastasch, our favorite Koch 
operative masquerading as a reporter, covered a new study by “veteran 
statistician Stan Young” claiming to “expose huge flaws in EPA science.” 
Surprisingly, Bastasch included a number of reasons to question the 
accuracy of the study.
The post starts with an indication that Young’s study had been shopped 
around for three years before being peer-review published. Bastasch also 
includes a quote from reviewers who rejected the study from other 
journals, and a surprisingly lengthy section about the EPA’s decades-old 
establishment of the lethality of PM 2.5 pollution.
Bastasch mentions that the backstory on the struggle for this paper to 
pass peer review comes from a book, Scare Pollution. For some reason, he 
fails to mention that this book is written by Steve Milloy, the guy who 
wrote columns for Fox News until it was revealed that he was a tobacco 
industry lobbyist before becoming a fossil fuel booster. While Milloy 
does not appear to be an author of the study, he refers to it on his 
site JunkScience as “My California study” (the research is based on 
California health info).
The Milloy connection hints at the backstory behind the study, which is 
an attempt to debunk the seminal Six Cities study from Harvard that 
established the link between pollution and mortality. Because of its use 
by the EPA as a justification for regulations, the Six Cities study has 
long been a target for anti-EPA and pro-industry forces, particularly 
Lamar Smith.
While we haven’t yet dug into the details of the study, we hope some of 
you smart people do soon. It will likely make an appearance in Congress 
the next time someone wants to argue against EPA regulations.
And when even their denier peers include multiple red flags about how it 
struggled to pass peer-review, it shouldn’t be too hard to debunk this 
study purporting to debunk decades of studies.
https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/06/16/denier-study-skeptical-epa-science-air-pollution-bastasch

*This Day in Climate History June 17, 2011 
<http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/latest-columns/20110617-steve-chapman-republicans-must-return-to-pro-environmental-roots-.ece> 
-  from D.R. Tucker*
Syndicated columnist Steve Chapman notes that at some point, Republicans 
will have to knock it off with climate-change denial and propose 
solutions to the problem:
"Conservatives fear liberals will use climate change to justify 
heavy-handed intrusive regulation and wasteful subsidies, and they are 
right to worry. But that’s no excuse for pretending global warming is a 
myth or refusing to do anything about it. It's an argument for devising 
cost-effective, market-based remedies that minimize bureaucratic control.
"If today's Republican attitude had prevailed four decades ago, 
Americans would not have such vital measures as the Clean Air Act and 
the Clean Water Act. Then, many people worried that environmentalism 
would strangle economic growth and personal freedom. But both have 
survived and even flourished.
"Conservatives once understood that corporations are not entitled to 
foul the environment, any more than individuals have the right to dump 
garbage in the street. Barry Goldwater, the 1964 GOP presidential 
nominee, wrote, 'When pollution is found, it should be halted at the 
source, even if this requires stringent government action.'"
http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/latest-columns/20110617-steve-chapman-republicans-must-return-to-pro-environmental-roots-.ece 

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