[TheClimate.Vote] November 11, 2017 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Sat Nov 11 09:54:27 EST 2017
/November 11, 2017
/ *
**African campaigners call for US to be kicked out of climate talks
<http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/11/07/african-campaigners-call-us-kicked-climate-talks/>
*Published on 07/11/2017
The Pan African Climate Justice Alliance will petition negotiators to
eject Donald Trump's delegation, in light of the president's hostility
to the Paris agreement...
In light of president Donald Trump's avowed intention to withdraw from
the Paris climate agreement, the activists argued the country had no
right to be involved in negotiations on how to implement the deal...
"You're either with the people or with Trump."..
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/11/07/african-campaigners-call-us-kicked-climate-talks/
*COP23 UNFCCC - On-Demand Events **(video archive) *
<https://unfccc.cloud.streamworld.de/ondemand>*
*Listed by dat, Plenary, Press Conference and other events
https://unfccc.cloud.streamworld.de/ondemand*
***(video panel) James Hansen - Scientific Reticence: A Threat to
Humanity and Nature]
<https://unfccc.cloud.streamworld.de/webcast/james-hansen-scientific-reticence-a-threat-to-huma>*
*28min*
*https://unfccc.cloud.streamworld.de/webcast/james-hansen-scientific-reticence-a-threat-to-huma*
(video interview) "There's been no Progress." James Hansen at COP 23
<https://climatecrocks.com/2017/11/10/theres-been-no-progress-james-hansen-at-cop-23/>*
by greenman3610
Jim Hansen not a fan of the Paris Agreement. Price on carbon needed.
video https://youtu.be/a0MsAs-qCSY
Transcript Dr James Hansen COP 23 interview:
*I would say there's very little progress because there's no
reductions in global emissions of carbon dioxide.*
If you look at the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and methane in
the atmosphere it's actually growing more rapidly than it was two
years ago...
...all the politicians clapping each other on the back as if
something had been accomplished, but there's not going to be any
reduction in fossil fuel use as long as fossil fuels are the
cheapest energy.
And that's the situation. We have to make fossil fuels include the
the cost to society. That means the air pollution costs, the water
pollution costs, the climate change cost.
So we have to add a carbon fee or a carbon tax which has to be
across the board oil gas and coal. Not some cap and trade gimmick
which does almost nothing...there's no realization of the
politicians that they have not taken the needed actions
so in that sense there there's been no progress.
I have gone to different countries and tried to make this case and
you know they do not really change their approach. I try to
persuade them or cap and trade with offsets is really not doing
anything and you know they have to admit that. I met with the
science advisor to the European Commissioner. She agreed a cap and
trade is not working and what you need is an across the board rising
carbon tax or carbon fee. But she says you have to persuade them,
the bureaucrats in Brussels.
Well that's hard to do because...these politicians are working more
for the the fossil fuel industry than they are for the public in my
opinion. That's that's just a hoax in my opinion. They say that
they're going to try to do something. It won't work as long as
fossil fuels are allowed to be the cheapest energy somebody will
burn them.
So some countries will try real hard and they'll reduce their
emissions 20% or 30% but look at the global emissions... they're
still staying at least the same if not increasing ...and that's
going to be true as long as fossil fuels are allowed to be the
cheapest energy. The course of action should be to collect a fee
from the fossil fuel companies at the domestic mines and the ports
of entry. And give the money to the public an equal amount to all
legal residents. That way the person who does better than average in
limiting their carbon footprint will make money in fact if you look
at the distribution of energy use by the public about 70% of the
people actually could make money with the present distribution
wealthy people would lose money but they could afford that - they
have a bigger carbon footprint because they travel more and have
bigger houses but this would be a big incentive for people to pay
attention to what they're buying as the carbon fee rises.
Products that are made with more fossil fuels will become more
expensive - so people will tend to buy other products and this will
move us off of fossil fuels. Economists all agree this is the way
to do it let the market help. You solve the problem you can't do it
by regulations, by subsidizing solar panels. It does very little
good, we're getting less than 1% of global energy from solar panels.
I think we will go in that direction because China will eventually
go in that direction.
...You see, either the United States or China or the European Union
needs to decide we're going to have a carbon fee or carbon tax. None
of them have done that yet. But if just one of them would do it
they could practically impose it by means of border duties on
products from countries that do not have an equivalent carbon fee
and that's then a big incentive for other countries to have their
own carbon fee so they can collect the money themselves.
The World Trade Organization agrees that such a border duty would be
justified and that's what we need but we haven't got either any of
those three major economic powers to agree to do it yet.
The reason that we're not doing what every economist says we should
do - have a carbon tax - is that the fossil fuel industry is too
damn powerful in capitals all around the world in Washington DC and
in other capitals. I thought the US was worse than the rest of the
world and in some ways at the moment it is, but I went to about a
dozen countries and I found that the fossil fuel industry is very
powerful in every capital. I think we will turn it around.
But we had better do it pretty soon because the fundamental
difficulty is the delayed response of the climate system.
We've only witnessed about half of the change for the gases that
are already in the atmosphere - just because the ocean has so much
inertia. It doesn't warm up quickly there's more energy coming in to
the planet than going out and therefore the ocean is going to
continue to warm up even if we stabilized atmospheric CO2 today...
...If we would reduce emissions a few percent a year - which
economists say you could easily do if you had a rising price on
carbon - then the maximum temperature rise would be about 1.5 degrees.
It's already a little more than one degree and it would still go up
for a few decades but it would peak at about 1.5 and then could can
begin to go down.
We would - in addition to reducing emissions a few percent a year -
need to store more carbon in the soil and biosphere. But that's
possible and and it has other advantages with improved agricultural
and forestry practices the soil can contain more carbon and become
more fertile in the process and there's value in forests also in
reforestation so we can do that, it's plausible.
Economic studies show that if you had a reasonable rising carbon fee
that emissions would go down by a few percent a year. So it's
feasible but not without the carbon price.
Produced by Nick Breeze Published on Nov 9, 2017
https://youtu.be/a0MsAs-qCSY
*Nominee for Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works on Climate
Change
<https://climateandsecurity.org/2017/11/10/nominee-for-assistant-secretary-of-the-army-for-civil-works-on-climate-change/>*
On Thursday, November 9 the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC)
considered the nomination of R.D. James to be Assistant Secretary Of The
Army for Civil Works. During the testimony, in an exchange with Senator
Tim Kaine, Mr. James affirmed the practical approach to climate change
taken by Secretary of Defense James Mattis in his own statements to the
SASC (namely, that we have to prepared for it)....
see:
https://climateandsecurity.org/2017/11/10/nominee-for-assistant-secretary-of-the-army-for-civil-works-on-climate-change/
*The One Government Institution That Isn't Run By Climate Change Deniers
<http://billmoyers.com/story/beyond-harvey-irma/>*
As the Trump administration shuts down anything faintly connected to
global warming, only one institution isn't now run by deniers and that's
the US military...
Despite their reluctance to speak publicly about such environmental
matters right now, top officials in the Pentagon are painfully aware of
the problem at hand. They know that global warming, as it progresses,
will generate new challenges at home and abroad, potentially stretching
their capabilities to the breaking point and leaving this country ever
more exposed to the ravages of climate change without offering any
solutions to the problem...
http://billmoyers.com/story/beyond-harvey-irma/
*Time Is Running Out for the Planet
<https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/11/08/time-running-out-planet>*
By Bill Moyers, Bill McKibben, originally published by Common Dreams
*...Moyers: Let's pause right here and talk about this present moment as
reality, not fable. Here's what your story prompts me to ask: When
people realize the current order of things no longer works and the
institutions of government and society are failing to fix them - failing
to solve the problems democracy creates for itself - what options do
they have?*
*McKibben:* Well, I don't think we're in a place where rebellion in the
sense of the American Revolution works anymore. One of the reasons that
I'm a big advocate of nonviolence is that it's the only thing that makes
sense. Taking up arms against a government that has the world's biggest
supply of them is just a bad idea right from the start. But that doesn't
mean there aren't other ways to resist, and we're seeing more and more
of it coming from all directions. There are lots of lawyers testing what
we can still do with the courts. There are demonstrators in the streets
reminding us that when people rise up in large numbers, it makes it more
difficult for the government to do bad things. There are people on
social media and people jamming the switchboards on Capitol Hill, and
there are people by thousands getting ready to run for office in this
country, and people trying all kinds of different routes. To me, the
thing that activists work for more than anything is not a new law. It's
a change in the zeitgeist.
*Moyers: The spirit of the times.*
*McKibben:* Yes. That's the end result of most really big campaigning,
and once you get that change in the zeitgeist, then the change in laws
and legislation comes relatively easily. But it's winning that battle in
the culture, in the atmosphere around us, as it were.
*Moyers: For example?*
*McKibben:* The great example in recent times is how effectively people
organized around gay marriage. Now, you and I are both old enough to
remember when that seemed like an utterly impossible ideal. In fact,
five years ago Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were still dead set
against it because it didn't poll well. But people changed that.
Activists managed to change the zeitgeist around those questions to the
point where others began to realize, "Hey, we like people falling in
love. Falling in love and getting married is a good thing. We should
have more of it and not less." And the minute thati that line was
crossed, then the battle was for all intents and purposes over.
*Moyers: Climate change hasn't been so easy.*
*McKibben:* It's harder with many other things. The fight around climate
change, which I've spent my life on, is somewhat more difficult because
no one makes trillions of dollars a year being a bigot, and that's how
much the fossil-fuel industry pulls in pumping carbon into the air. But
the principle is the same, I think.
*Moyers: For me the question now is how much time do we have? When it
comes to global warming, all signs suggest we are running out of time.*
*McKibben:* The question of time is the question that haunts me. I
remain optimistic enough to think that in general human beings will
figure out the right thing to do eventually, and Americans will somehow
get back on course. Of course, there'll be a lot of damage done in the
meantime. But with climate change in particular - the gravest of the
problems we face - time is the one thing we don't have. It's the only
problem we've ever had that came with a time limit. And if we don't
solve it soon, we don't solve it. Our governments so far have not proven
capable of dealing with this question. They simply haven't been able to
shake off the self-interest and massive power of the fossil-fuel
industry. It's going to take a lot of work and a lot of effort to get us
onto renewable energy quickly and everywhere. It's doable technically;
the question is whether it's doable politically or not. There I don't know.
*Moyers: You've said that winning slowly in this fight-*
*McKibben:* Winning slowly is another way of losing. ...
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/11/08/time-running-out-planet
*
**Trump to World: Fossil Fuels Are Good for You
<https://newrepublic.com/article/145667/trump-world-fossil-fuels-good>*
No longer content to just deny climate change, the administration is now
making the moral case for burning oil and coal.
By Emily Atkin November 9, 2017
Rick Perry's tortured relationship with the English language reached new
heights (or lows) last week when he somehow connected two very distinct
subjects: fossil fuels and sexual assault. "Let me tell you where people
are dying, is in Africa, because of the lack of energy they have there,"
the energy secretary said during a speech in Washington, D.C. He asked
his audience to consider it "from the standpoint of sexual assault. When
the lights are on, when you have light that shines the righteousness, if
you will, on those types of acts. So from the standpoint of how you
really affect people's lives, fossil fuels is going to play a role in that."
https://newrepublic.com/article/145667/trump-world-fossil-fuels-good
*(opinion) It's Time to Rethink the Relationship Between Borders and
Climate Change
<https://undark.org/article/borders-climate-change-displacement/>*
Climate-induced migration is now a reality.
Opening borders and removing sovereignty from environmental decisions
needs to be considered.
AFTER 300 YEARS of continuous human settlement, Hurricane Irma destroyed
everything on the island of Barbuda and forced the relocation of its
more than 1,600 residents, demonstrating that climate-induced migration
is no longer a future possibility, but a present-day reality. A week
and a half later, Hurricane Maria knocked out power for Puerto Rico's
3.4 million residents and left much of the island without potable
water. Fifteen percent of Puerto Rico's population is expected to leave
the island in the coming year.
Estimates vary, but the consensus is that there will be at least 200
million people displaced by climate change by 2050. In order to address
this already unfolding reality, we need to reconsider the relationship
between borders and climate change now...
..There is already agreement that a few very narrow issues including
genocide and state-sponsored terrorism are exempted from the protection
of state sovereignty.
The environment and the displacement of people from environmental
changes are cross border issues that extend beyond the authority of a
single country.*In order to realistically address the climate crisis,
two more exceptions to absolute state sovereignty are required: the
right of people to move from one territory to another and the right of
the global community, not individual countries, to regulate the
emissions of climate changing pollutants. This does not mean getting rid
of sovereignty entirely, but it does mean countries must give up
sovereignty over decisions that involve issues that have significant
cross-border impacts.*
Opening borders and removing sovereignty from environmental decisions
will be seen as radical proposals by some. However, the more radical
choice is to build walls and ignore climate change, pushing us headlong
into a rapidly arriving dystopian future of walled states, violent
borders, and hundreds of millions of displaced environmental migrants
struggling to survive rising seas, heat waves, and devastating
environmental change.
Reece Jones is a professor of geography at the University of Hawai'i and
the author of "Violent Borders."
This piece emerged from a public discussion at Miami University of Ohio
with Adrian Parr, a professor of environmental politics at the
University of Cincinnati.
https://undark.org/article/borders-climate-change-displacement/
*Why Hollywood started making disaster flicks about climate change
<http://mashable.com/2017/11/07/global-warming-disaster-movies-geostorm/#r4AdBe2WTiqs>*
A system of satellites and lasers that controls the weather, as depicted
in the new climate change-inspired disaster film Geostorm: Yeah, sounds
pretty laughable.
But the premise of the 2004 blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow seemed
ridiculous when it came out, too. (In the movie, global warming affects
the Gulf Stream ocean current, shutting it down in mere days, sparking a
global weather catastrophe.)
In 2015, however, scientists found the ocean current that triggered
global storms and a New York City deep freeze in The Day After Tomorrow
actually was slowing down. Essentially, Hollywood had produced an
extreme funhouse mirror version of the climate reality of the decade to
come.
...With the release of Geostorm and the affects of global warming
becoming clearer and clearer, we investigated whether Hollywood is
making more movies about global warming. Today, when the real life
climate and energy fights seem impossible to win, filmmakers and
audiences are looking for fictional, winnable battles on the big screen.
We spoke to experts and surveyed disaster and apocalyptic action movies
from the '90s till now to find out what they tell us about actual
attitudes about climate change. As both budgets and world-ending
destruction in cheesy disaster movies like Geostorm have ballooned,
natural disasters have started to become the reality for billions across
the globe.
We completed a survey of natural disaster and disaster-related films
from the 1990s to the present, using lists from IMDB, to track the
presence of climate change on screen. We then determined whether each of
these films either alludes to climate change, or invokes the idea that
human actions related to resource consumption (i.e., the cause of global
warming) are responsible...
*List of Climate Change and disaster films
<https://i.amz.mshcdn.com/J1WO7alni1_4FnE7rJUH5EulwC4=/fit-in/1200x9600/https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fcard%2Fimage%2F627447%2F4edcd4d5-73d3-4c05-b960-d94f70a31e0d.jpg>*
https://i.amz.mshcdn.com/J1WO7alni1_4FnE7rJUH5EulwC4=/fit-in/1200x9600/https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fcard%2Fimage%2F627447%2F4edcd4d5-73d3-4c05-b960-d94f70a31e0d.jpg
In the last four years, the ratio of non-climate change films to climate
change films has nearly evened out...
...Overall there aren't many climate change-inspired films, but there
are more in the last four years than in all the previous time frames.
And the increase of climate change-invoking films overlaps with the fact
that 2015 and 2016 were already the world's two hottest years on record,
and 2017 is shaping up to be number three....
Does telling stories about global warming actually do the planet any good?
The jury is out on whether movies - let alone sensationalist
blockbusters like Geostorm - actually motivate viewers to take action on
climate change. Bartosch cites The Day After Tomorrow as "the standard
example" of how films that directly invoke climate change "openly
discuss questions of science or, more generally, the role of humans in a
changing climate."
"There exist a number of studies engaging with behavioral change of
audiences after having watched the film" Professor Bartosch said. Yale
Climate Connections found that The Day After Tomorrow increased viewers'
"willingness to act on the issue."
"The problem is," Bartosch said, "that such changes in behavior hardly
last."
Aston had a similar response.
"I would say Hollywood/commercial cinema and the apocalypse film has no
real answer for the issue of climate change," he said. "Perhaps the
spectacular arrangement of these films and the strict codes and
conventions mean that it is difficult to adequately represent such a theme?
It might also be that to do so would make the film too close to the
'real', too immediate and thus too traumatic and threatening."
Audience members' responses to Geostorm aligned with the above theory of
how films affect viewers' perception of global warming solutions - or
don't. Filmgoers we talked to in New York exited the film ambivalent.
Shelly Miller objected to the sensationalist sci-fi premise as a whole,
on the grounds that it did not depict climate change as it is. "They
said it instead of showed it," said Shelly Miller, who is in her 50s.
"It would have been much more effective if they'd shown more of the
climate change things."
"I feel like this movie wasn't really helpful," added Ms. Miller's
friend Eunice Martinez. Reflecting on the weather-controlling satellite
system, Ms. Martinez added, "We think that we can just build a machine
and that will fix everything. When it's really our behavior we need to
change."..
...Perhaps the increase in disaster and apocalyptic films dealing with
climate change is not an answer to the increase in extreme weather
events, but a response to our lack of effective solutions for a problem
so large that it renders audiences (and global response) numb and
paralyzed. Our attempt to manipulate the narrative of climate change on
screen - through a story in which the hero and the planet survive - may
reflect our inability to control the colossal problem of global warming
as it becomes more unwieldy in real life.
There is consensus among climate scientists that one of the clearest
manifestations of man-made climate change is an increase in the
frequency and magnitude of some types of extreme weather, particularly
heat waves and heavy precipitation events.
The past six months alone have witnessed a barrage of deadly extreme
weather events, including California's deadliest and most damaging
wildfires on record, which followed the state's hottest summer. The U.S.
has been hit by three major hurricanes, one of which set a global record
for maintaining at least 180 mile-per-hour winds for more than a day.
The scenes from Santa Rosa, California, to the island of St. John have
been nothing short of apocalyptic.
However, "many of the gloom-and-doom visions - appropriate and likely as
they are - are not without their problems," said Professor Bartosch.
Unlike our climate change movie heroes, in the face of catastrophic
climate scenarios like those depicted in Geostorm, "we can't do much
else," he added, "than sit back and enjoy the spectacle of apocalypse
while we can."
Films are concentrating more on climate change but....they don't seem to
be doing much for the planet. So far, they've been little more than
escapism. So call your members of congress, demand re-entry into the
Paris Climate Agreement, reduce your carbon footprint, and vote in every
single election. For our planet, and for our future.
But in the meantime, might as well pass the popcorn.
http://mashable.com/2017/11/07/global-warming-disaster-movies-geostorm/#r4AdBe2WTiqs
*THE CLIMATE HAS CHANGED BEFORE. BUT THIS IS DIFFERENT – LOOK AT THE
ARCHEOLOGICAL RECORD...
<http://www.joboneforhumanity.org/the_climate_has_changed_before_but_this_is_different_look_at_the_archeological_record>*
POSTED BY DAVID PIKE
A major new report states unequivocally that humans are changing the
planet. Archaeology puts those changes into context – and explains why
action is crucial...
The United States government recently published the Climate Science
Special Report authored by 13 federal agencies, which states
unequivocally that climate change is occurring and it is caused by human
actions. The report follows several months of uncommonly strong
hurricanes caused by warmer-than-typical ocean temperatures. The Trump
Administration responded to the report by stating: "The climate has
changed and is always changing."
Climate change is part of life on planet Earth; however, context is
needed to understand past change and the current situation. Archaeology
can explain how temperature change of just a few degrees cause extreme
weather events, affect crops, and impact human lives. It also shows how
the current changes are different from those in the past.
http://www.joboneforhumanity.org/the_climate_has_changed_before_but_this_is_different_look_at_the_archeological_record
*This Day in Climate History November 11, 2012
<http://youtu.be/rOQjpn6Lnwg> - from D.R. Tucker*
"CBS This Morning" runs a strange segment on climate change
featuring sock puppets (!) and Koch Brothers ally Richard Muller.
http://youtu.be/rOQjpn6Lnwg
/
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