[TheClimate.Vote] May 20, 2017 - Daily Global Warming News
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Sat May 20 10:05:32 EDT 2017
/May 20, 2017
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/may/19/study-inspiring-action-on-climate-change-is-more-complex-than-you-might-think>/<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/may/19/study-inspiring-action-on-climate-change-is-more-complex-than-you-might-think>https://www.*theguardian.com*/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/may/19/study-inspiring-action-on-climate-change-is-more-complex-than-you-might-think
Study: inspiring action on*climate change*is more complex than you
might think
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/may/19/study-inspiring-action-on-climate-change-is-more-complex-than-you-might-think>
Change is hard. Human beings are reticent to change their behavior
even under the most compelling of circumstances, and environmental
dangers do not tend to arouse the kind of urgency that motivates
individuals to act. Mass transformation of unsustainable systems
will be even more difficult than shifting individual behaviors, for
unlike ants and bees, humans are not well equipped to coordinate
behavior for common benefit.
Psychological research suggests that humans can move toward a
sustainable society by creating conditions that motivate
environmentally responsible collective action – conditions that help
people surmount cognitive limits, create new situational drivers,
foster need fulfillment, and support communities of social change.
Individuals whose actions are informed by a deeper understanding of
how the planet really works can galvanize collectives to change the
larger systems that drive so much of human behavior. To radically
alter the way humans think and live; educate the next generation;
and design physical, governmental, and cultural systems, humans must
experience and better understand their profound interdependence with
the planet.
https://youtu.be/XTmFLrN0z14
*(video lecture) The Once and Future Arctic: Prof Stephanie Pfirman
<https://youtu.be/XTmFLrN0z14>*
Understanding Climate Change
The Once and Future Arctic: Prof Stephanie Pfirman (February 2017)
/We need an international sea ice management plan. Future
predictions. Any plan must account for future changes to the speed
of ice melt. /
Stephanie Pfirman is Professor and Chair of Environmental Science at
Barnard College. She has a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in
Oceanography and Oceanographic Engineering, Department of Marine
Geology and Geophysics, and a B.A. from Colgate University's
Department of Geology.
http://www.earth.columbia.edu/ac/bios/pfirman.html
http://www.*accuweather.com*/en/weather-blogs/climatechange/global-warming-impact-on-the-number-of-extreme-rainfall-events/70001700
*Global warming*impact on the number of extreme rainfall events
<http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/climatechange/global-warming-impact-on-the-number-of-extreme-rainfall-events/70001700>
Since the 1990s, scientists have predicted based on climate models that
the intensity of extreme rain events around the world should increase
with rising global temperatures. Current observations have so far
verified this trend on a broad, global scale.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/19/arctic-stronghold-of-worlds-seeds-flooded-after-permafrost-melts
*Arctic stronghold of world's seeds flooded after permafrost melts
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/19/arctic-stronghold-of-worlds-seeds-flooded-after-permafrost-melts>*
No seeds were lost but the ability of the rock vault to provide
failsafe protection against all disasters is now threatened by
climate change
It was designed as an impregnable deep-freeze to protect the world's
most precious seeds from any global disaster and ensure humanity's
food supply forever. But the Global Seed Vault, buried in a mountain
deep inside the Arctic circle, has been breached after global
warming produced extraordinary temperatures over the winter, sending
meltwater gushing into the entrance tunnel.
The vault is on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen and contains
almost a million packets of seeds, each a variety of an important
food crop. When it was opened in 2008, the deep permafrost through
which the vault was sunk was expected to provide "failsafe"
protection against "the challenge of natural or man-made disasters".
But soaring temperatures in the Arctic at the end of the world's
hottest ever recorded year led to melting and heavy rain, when light
snow should have been falling. "It was not in our plans to think
that the permafrost would not be there and that it would experience
extreme weather like that," said Hege Njaa Aschim, from the
Norwegian government, which owns the vault.
"This is supposed to last for eternity," said Åsmund Asdal at the
Nordic Genetic Resource Centre, which operates the seed vault.
also:
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16022017/arctic-sea-ice-extent-nasa-global-warming-climate-change
*Researcher's 1979 Arctic Model Predicted Current Sea Ice Demise,
Holds Lessons for Future
<https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16022017/arctic-sea-ice-extent-nasa-global-warming-climate-change>*
Claire Parkinson, now a senior climate change scientist at NASA,
first began studying global warming's impact on Arctic sea ice in
1978, when she was a promising new researcher at the National Center
for Atmospheric Research. Back then, what she and a colleague found
was not only groundbreaking, it pretty accurately predicted what is
happening now in the Arctic, as sea ice levels break record low
after record low.
The latest Arctic Report Card issued by NOAA found that temperatures
over land in the Arctic have risen 3.5 degrees Celsius since the
beginning of the 20th century. But when Parkinson's results came
out, they landed with a thud.
"Sadly, it was received by no one paying much attention," Parkinson
said.
"But then what you found was when we started to really advance in
our climate models and how we build them, her work withstood the
test of time."
/Visit the Internet to find plenty of studies and warnings, even
2003 was a bad year:./
Permafrost thaw and destabilization of Alpine rock walls in the hot
summer of 2003
<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2004GL020051/full>
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2004GL020051/full
A computational method for prediction and regionalization of
permafrost <http://www.jstor.org/stable/1551363>
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1551363
Permafrost temperature records: indicators of climate change
<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2002EO000402/full>
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2002EO000402/full
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/one-fourth-of-armed-conflicts-in-ethnically-divided-countries-coincide-with-climatic-problems-study/articleshow/58757224.cms
One fourth of armed conflicts in ethnically divided countries
coincide with climatic problems
<http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/one-fourth-of-armed-conflicts-in-ethnically-divided-countries-coincide-with-climatic-problems-study/articleshow/58757224.cms>
Increasing carbon emissions, depleting coal reserves, declining air
quality, diseases, risk of natural disasters - do make a formidable
case to urgently tackle climate change. But a new study takes it to
a different level and finds that climate change ...
Globally, the study found a coincidence rate of 9 percent regarding
armed conflict outbreak and disaster occurrence such as heat waves
or droughts. The study, however, found 23 per cent of conflict
outbreaks in ethnically highly fractionalised countries robustly
coincide with climatic calamities.
"There is little evidence that climaterelated disasters act as
direct triggers of armed conflicts, but the disruptive nature of
these events seems to play out in ethnically fractionalized
societies in a particularly tragic way," Dr Carl Schleussner, who
led the research, told ET.
This has important implications for future security policies as
several of the world's most conflict-prone regions, including North
and Central Africa as well as Central Asia, are both exceptionally
vulnerable to anthropogenic climate change and characterized by deep
ethnic divides. The study cites examples from Iraq, Syria and
Somalia to underline such climatological events may have already
contributed to armed-conflict outbreaks or sustained conflicts in
these countries.
https://www.thenation.com/article/factory-or-forest-modernity-and-climate-change/
Factory or Forest, Modernity and*Climate Change*
<https://www.thenation.com/article/factory-or-forest-modernity-and-climate-change/>
Ghosh's central thesis, in his recent polemic The Great Derangement:
Climate Change and the Unthinkable, is that the project of modernity
has expelled the idea of "the collective" from our imagination over
the last 150 years.
Where the Air Stands Still: In India, the pathology of denial about
climate change reveals the real crisis at our door-one of imagination.
.. in Delhi ... Residents wake up in the morning and find that the
roads disappear after 50 meters or so, with the tops of trees and
office buildings concealed. The smog is often mistaken for seasonal
mist. So it wasn't the pollution itself that was surprising at the
start of November last year, when visibility was poor for days, eyes
reddened in the haze, people experienced chest pains, and ash
entered their mouths when they tried to speak. Instead, it was the
concentration of the pollutants, which on this occasion had
escalated almost overnight. During the weekend of Diwali, an annual
festival celebrated with lamps and fireworks across the country,
India's air quality was among the worst in the world. For days
after, the absence of winds in Delhi meant that toxic particulates
remained close to the ground. The smoke didn't disappear.
Derangement can, of course, manifest in different ways. In India, it
is recognizable in the pathology of denial. A month after the smog
in New Delhi, India's environment minister told the Parliament that
there is no "credible" study to quantify the number of deaths caused
directly by air pollution. Later, he conceded that air pollution
"could be one of the triggering factors" for lung ailments.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-19/schneiderman-presses-search-for-tillerson-s-lost-exxon-emails
Schneiderman Presses Search for Tillerson Lost Exxon Emails
<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-19/schneiderman-presses-search-for-tillerson-s-lost-exxon-emails>
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is pressing on with a
search for U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's lost emails that
he wrote under the pseudonym of "Wayne Tracker" while he was the
Chief Executive of Exxon Mobile Corp.
Schneiderman said on Friday that his office issued new subpoenas and
questioned witnesses about the disappearance of the emails, in which
Tillerson allegedly discussed climate change risks and other
sensitive issues. Exxon has admitted that as much as a year's worth
of emails Tillerson wrote under the Wayne Tracker handle may have
been lost. It blamed a technical glitch.
Tillerson used the pseudonym account to communicate with company
board members, according to Schneiderman, who is investigating
whether the Irving, Texas-based company broke state law by
misleading investors for years about the possible impact of the
Earth's warming on its business. Schneiderman's Massachusetts
counterpart Maura Healey is running a parallel investigation.
http://environblog.jenner.com/corporate_environmental_l/2013/05/high-court-refuses-to-take-up-kivalina-climate-suit.html
*This Day in Climate History May 20, 2013
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20998-2004Dec22.html> -
from D.R. Tucker*
May 20, 2013: The US Supreme Court refuses to hear an appeal of the 9th
US Circuit Court of Appeals' decision in the Kivalina v. ExxonMobil
case, effectively ending one effort to hold fossil fuel companies
legally accountable for carbon pollution. See also: listed claims:
http://novote4energy.org/
/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
////You may safely forward this email./
. *** Privacy and Security: * This is a text-only mailing. It
carries no graphics nor images which may originate from remote
servers. Text-only messages provide greater privacy to the
receiver and sender.
By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain must be used for
democratic and election purposes and cannot be used for
commercial purposes.
To subscribe, email: contact at theclimate.vote with subject:
subscribe, To Unsubscribe, subject: unsubscribe
Also youmay subscribe/unsubscribe at
https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote
Links and headlines assembled and curated by Richard Paulifor
http://TheClimate.Vote delivering succinct information for
citizens and responsible governments of all levels. List
membership is confidential and records are scrupulously
restricted to this mailing list.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/attachments/20170520/8895ec97/attachment.html>
More information about the TheClimate.Vote
mailing list