[TheClimate.Vote] May 29, 2017 - Daily Global Warming News

[Richard Pauli]

/May 29, 2017/


    100 Practical Ways to Reverse*Climate Change (National Geographic)
    *
    <http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/05/climate-change-global-warming-drawdown-hawken/>

Some cheering news occurred last month: A book about climate change 
became a New York Times bestseller in its first week of publication.
Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global 
Warming, edited by environmentalist Paul Hawken, is the first 
environmental book to make such a splashy debut since Elizabeth 
Kolbert's Field Notes from a Catastrophe in 2006.
Kolbert's book warned of cataclysm; Hawken's tries to prevent it. 
Bringing together geologists, engineers, agronomists, climatologists, 
biologists, botanists, economists, financial analysts, architects, NGOs, 
activists, and other experts, Drawdown offers 100 solutions to reverse 
global warming.
When National Geographic caught up with Hawken at his home in San 
Francisco, he explained why climate change is a gift, not a curse; why 
empowering girls and women is the number one solution; and what role 
musk ox, reindeer, and wolves have to play.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/05/climate-change-global-warming-drawdown-hawken/


    Wildfires on the rise due to drought and*climate change - (CBS 60
    Minutes)
    *
    <http://www.cbsnews.com/news/wildfires-on-the-rise-due-to-drought-and-climate-change/>

More than 100M Americans live in or near forests and grasslands that can 
erupt in flames. Steve Inskeep reports on fighting wildfires, which cost 
federal agencies almost $2B last year
"Fires in a lot of those forests are burning differently than they did 
before. There are really two reasons for that. One is climate change. 
We're seeing weather patterns and extreme weather events, drought and 
other things that are causing those fires to burn differently."
Fighting wildfires in America cost federal agencies almost $2 billion 
last year including more than half the budget of the U.S. Forest 
Service. Wildland fires are growing worse in a time of drought and 
climate change, and the biggest and most destructive fires can't be 
stopped. They are a force of nature: imagine trying to stop a hurricane. 
Yet the government has to try, because more than a 100 million Americans 
now live in -- or near -- forests and grasslands that can erupt in 
flames....
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/wildfires-on-the-rise-due-to-drought-and-climate-change/


    Graham Says Calling *Climate Change*'Hoax' Bad for GOP, Thinks Trump
    Should Sign Paris Deal
    <http://www.newsweek.com/republican-senator-says-trump-must-sign-paris-deal-climate-change-616951>

(Newsweek)  Republican senator Lindsey Graham has questioned Donald 
Trump's views on climate change being a hoax, and suggested the 
president should commit to the Paris climate deal.
The senator said during an interview with CNN's State of the Union on 
Sunday that it would be an issue for the U.S. if Trump did not reaffirm 
the country's previous commitment to the accord, made under former 
president Barack Obama in 2015.
"If he does withdraw, that would be a definitive statement from the 
president that he believes climate change is a hoax," Graham said in the 
interview, referring to a comment made by Trump in 2012.
Graham added a refusal by Trump to commit to the Paris climate deal 
would suggest he had not moved past his previous assertion that climate 
change was a hoax.
http://www.newsweek.com/republican-senator-says-trump-must-sign-paris-deal-climate-change-616951


    Calculating when your climate will start to seem weird
    <https://arstechnica.co.uk/science/2017/05/how-familiar-will-your-climate-be-in-a-few-decades/>

One way to think about climate change, as explored in a new study led by 
Victoria University of Wellington's Dave Frame, is that temperature 
patterns eventually move out of the range you're accustomed to. Weather 
and climate are naturally variable, but if the climate shifts, unusual 
conditions can become the new normal. The "unusual" end of the spectrum 
gets replaced with more extreme conditions than before.
Notably, slicing up the analysis into different groups of countries - 
small island nations, southeast Asian nations, and the least and most 
economically developed countries - highlights the fact that the effects 
of climate change are not equally distributed. Many poorer and more 
vulnerable nations would see the greatest shifts in climate familiarity. 
Emissions cuts that slow climate change would have the most noticeable 
(by this measure) stabilizing effect in these areas.
The researchers write, "Our analysis shows that near-term mitigation 
initiatives can prevent many climates from becoming radically different 
from those experienced in the recent past, that such effects happen well 
within a human lifetime, and that this is especially true for those 
whose communities would otherwise change fastest. In other words, many 
of the long-term benefits of mitigation can be internalized by many 
people alive today."
https://arstechnica.co.uk/science/2017/05/how-familiar-will-your-climate-be-in-a-few-decades/
*Population-based emergence of unfamiliar climates 
<https://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3297.html>*
Time of emergence, which characterizes when significant signals of 
climate change will emerge from existing variability, is a useful and 
increasingly common metric1, 2, 3. However, a more useful metric for 
understanding future climate change in the context of past experience 
may be the ratio of climate signal to noise (S/N) - a measure of the 
amplitude of change expressed in terms of units of existing 
variability3. Here, we present S/N projections in the context of 
emergent climates (termed 'unusual', 'unfamiliar' and 'unknown' by 
reference to an individual's lifetime), highlighting sensitivity to 
future emissions scenarios and geographical and human groupings. We show 
how for large sections of the world's population, and for several 
geopolitical international groupings, mitigation can delay the onset of 
'unknown' or 'unfamiliar' climates by decades, and perhaps even beyond 
2100. Our results demonstrate that the benefits of mitigation accumulate 
over several decades, a key metric of which is reducing S/N, or keeping 
climate as familiar as possible. A relationship is also identified 
between cumulative emissions and patterns of emergent climate signals. 
Timely mitigation will therefore provide the greatest benefits to those 
facing the earliest impacts, many of whom are alive now.
https://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3297.html
Nature Climate Change, 2017. DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE3297


*(video lectures) CARTA: Human-Climate Interactions and Evolution: Past 
and Future <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLmCbBVq0xM>*
(Visit: http://www.uctv.tv) This symposium presents varied perspectives 
from earth scientists, ecologists, and paleoanthropologists on how 
climate may have shaped human evolution, as well as the prospects for 
the future of world climate, ecosystems, and our species with Peter 
deMenocal on African Climate Change and Human Evolution, followed by 
Jean-Jacques Hublin on The Climatic Framework of Neandertal Evolution, 
and Rick Potts on Climate Instability and the Evolution of Human 
Adaptability. Recorded on 05/15/2015. Series: "CARTA - Center for 
Academic Research and Training
in Anthropogeny" [7/2015] [Science] [Show ID: 29683]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLmCbBVq0xM
*

**LEAKED DOCUMENTS REVEAL COUNTER-TERRORISM TACTICS USED AT STANDING 
ROCK TO "DEFEAT PIPELINE INSURGENCIES" 
<https://theintercept.com/2017/05/27/leaked-documents-reveal-security-firms-counterterrorism-tactics-at-standing-rock-to-defeat-pipeline-insurgencies/>*
A SHADOWY INTERNATIONAL mercenary and security firm known as TigerSwan 
targeted the movement opposed to the Dakota Access Pipeline with 
military-style counterterrorism measures, collaborating closely with 
police in at least five states, according to internal documents obtained 
by The Intercept. The documents provide the first detailed picture of 
how TigerSwan, which originated as a U.S. military and State Department 
contractor helping to execute the global war on terror, worked at the 
behest of its client Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the 
Dakota Access Pipeline, to respond to the indigenous-led movement that 
sought to stop the project.
"More than 100 internal documents leaked to The Intercept by a TigerSwan 
contractor, as well as a set of over 1,000 documents obtained via public 
records requests, reveal that TigerSwan spearheaded a multifaceted 
private security operation characterized by sweeping and invasive 
surveillance of protesters"
As policing continues to be militarized and state legislatures around 
the country pass laws criminalizing protest, the fact that a private 
security firm retained by a Fortune 500 oil and gas company coordinated 
its efforts with local, state, and federal law enforcement to undermine 
the protest movement has profoundly anti-democratic implications. The 
leaked materials not only highlight TigerSwan's militaristic approach to 
protecting its client's interests but also the company's profit-driven 
imperative to portray the nonviolent water protector movement as 
unpredictable and menacing enough to justify the continued need for 
extraordinary security measures. Energy Transfer Partners has continued 
to retain TigerSwan long after most of the anti-pipeline campers left 
North Dakota, and the most recent TigerSwan reports emphasize the threat 
of growing activism around other pipeline projects across the country....
  In one report, TigerSwan discusses meeting with investigators from 
North Dakota's Attorney General's Office....
Perhaps one of the most striking revelations of the documents is the 
level of hostility displayed by TigerSwan toward the water protectors. 
TigerSwan consistently describes the peaceful demonstrators using 
military and tactical language more appropriate for counterterrorism 
operations in an armed conflict zone. At times, the military language 
verges on parody, as when agents write of protesters "stockpiling signs" 
or when they discuss the "caliber" of paintball pellets. More often, 
however, the way TigerSwan discusses protesters as "terrorists," their 
direct actions as "attacks," and the camps as a "battlefield," reveals 
how the protesters' dissent was not only criminalized but treated as a 
national security threat.  A March 1 report states that protesters' 
"operational weakness allows TS elements to further develop and dictate 
the battlespace."..
In one internal report dated May 4, a TigerSwan operative describes an 
effort to amass digital and ground intelligence that would allow the 
company to "find, fix, and eliminate" threats to the pipeline - an eerie 
echo of "find, fix, finish," a military term used by special forces in 
the U.S. government's assassination campaign against terrorist targets...
TigerSwan agents also regularly tracked individuals' movements across 
state lines...
On numerous occasions, TigerSwan agents stressed the need to change the 
public narrative established by protestors and to swing public support 
in favor of the pipeline. As accounts of protest repression garnered 
nationwide support for the NoDAPL movement, the firm's agents 
painstakingly collected and analyzed media coverage, warning their 
client about how certain incidents might be received by the public...
In recent weeks, the company's role has expanded to include the 
surveillance of activist networks marginally related to the pipeline, 
with TigerSwan agents monitoring "anti-Trump" protests from Chicago to 
Washington, D.C., as well as warning its client of growing dissent 
around other pipelines across the country.
In a March 24 report discussing the likely revival of protests as summer 
approaches, TigerSwan writes, "Much like Afghanistan and Iraq, the 
'Fighting Season' will soon be here with the coming warming temperatures."
North Dakota's Attorney General's Office declined to comment.
https://theintercept.com/2017/05/27/leaked-documents-reveal-security-firms-counterterrorism-tactics-at-standing-rock-to-defeat-pipeline-insurgencies/


     From Body-Language to*Climate Change*, Europe Left Uneasy by Trump
    <https://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/from-body-language-to-climate-change-europe-left-uneasy-by-trump/>

European officials say the transatlantic allies are no more united now 
than they were before Trump came and that they now are convinced Europe 
will have to go it alone more  -  something they expected would be the 
case after Trump was elected.
For them, Washington is no longer the dependable ally. And that broadly 
has been the view of Europe's press. Headlines all week have been 
providing a counterpoint to the White House version of meetings. 
Belgium's Le Soir headlined one front-page story: "Trump shoves his allies."
European newspapers have now taken to dubbing the G-7 as "G-6 plus one"  
-  a characterization prompted partly by German Chancellor Angela 
Merkel's remarks on the summit deadlock over climate change.
"The whole discussion on the topic of climate was very difficult, not to 
say very unsatisfactory," Merkel said as the summit of the leaders of 
the world's most economically advanced nations was drawing to a close. 
"Here we have a situation of six against one, meaning there is still no 
sign of whether the U.S. will remain in the Paris accord or not," she added.
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/from-body-language-to-climate-change-europe-left-uneasy-by-trump/ 



*This Day in Climate History May 29, 2007 
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb-uKbJ9gDE> -  from D.R. Tucker*
On MSNBC's "Countdown," Al Gore observes:
"...[F]or all of its excesses and bad features, the Internet does invite 
a robust multi-way conversation that I think is already beginning to 
serve as a corrective for some of the abuses of the mass media 
persuasion campaigns that brought us the invasion of Iraq and the 
ignoring of the climate crisis and the other serious mistakes that we‘ve 
been making over the last few years."
(4:44-5:15)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb-uKbJ9gDE (Part 1)
http://youtu.be/5doTtYGviPw (Part 2)
/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
////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/20170529/4898ec94/attachment.html>