[TheClimate.Vote] November 27, 2017 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Mon Nov 27 09:09:27 EST 2017
/November 27, 2017
/
*A Star Psychiatrist Swerves From Nuclear Armageddon To Climate Change
<https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/robert-lifton-climate_us_5a186457e4b0649480742c6b>*
Robert Jay Lifton studied Nazi doctors and the threat of nuclear
annihilation. But global warming changed everything.
At 91 years old, he has arrived at his most daunting subject yet:
climate change. In his latest book, The Climate Swerve
<https://www.amazon.com/Climate-Swerve-Reflections-Mind-Survival/dp/1620973472/ref=sr_1_1>,
Lifton examines humanity's struggle to understand what's happening, how
to deal with it, and why powerful people and institutions sabotage
attempts to avoid destruction of the planet.
"The climate threat is the most all-encompassing threat that we human
beings face," Lifton said in an interview last month...
"I consider the climate swerve a movement toward the recognition of
climate danger and what I call species awareness ― awareness of
ourselves as a single species in deep trouble," Lifton said. "The swerve
is toward that recognition, that consciousness."
Of course there's climate rejection and denial all over the world. The
U.S. seems to be unique in that a major party which now holds power in
most areas is committed to rejecting a fundamental truth that endangers
human civilization. ... In that way, and in many others, one can say
that Republican leaders and Trump in particular may be the most
dangerous men in the world.
There are many villains. Before Trump, the Republican Party had had a
pretty consistent climate rejection position. Trump embraced that
position, carried it to greater extremity in his cabinet appointments,
more than was expected, and then you have the philanthropists like the
Koch brothers and others who finance it....
I would add to that such climate villains are helped by a general
tendency in human thought to resist the idea that nature can turn on us.
There is strongly the idea that nature will protect us, nature
represents growth. That sense, often a vague one, can contribute to
elements of resistance to the idea that the climate can change in ways
that are threatening to us.....
… If we were to carry on now simply as we are, in these mixtures of
capitalist greed and failure to act and the enormous, exaggerated
exploitation of fossil fuels, if we were to carry on and change nothing
over a period of decades, within the century we would do ourselves in.
We don't have to do anything to change, just do what we were doing. I
call this the ultimate absurdity.
With nuclear weapons, you've got to build the weapons. You got to
actually use them in a nuclear war, maybe create nuclear winter which
could result in death of all people on planet, but you have to bring in
these objects and set them off. You don't have to do anything like that
with climate. Just do as we've been doing....
With climate, climate normality was in the everyday practice. We were
born into climate normality. This is the world which we entered and in
which we live now and which continues. If we allow it to continue as it
is now, it will result in the end of human civilization within the
present century. I came to the idea of malignant normality that has to
be exposed for its malignancy. Intellectuals and professionals have a
particular role, what I call witnessing professionals, bear witness to
the malignancy, the danger, of what's being put forward to us as normal
and as the only way to behave. That's happening more but we need a lot
of additional expression of resistance on the part of intellectuals in
protest and activism...
Bearing active witness against malignant normality in climate, nuclear
threat or anything else, requires protest and activism. I believe in the
combination of scholarship and activism and have tried to live by that
in my own work.
I'm hopeful enough to believe that the climate swerve will far outlive
this administration. The climate swerve is something that takes on a
much longer life. It's only taking shape now and beginning. It's a
larger wave of feeling and belief and consciousness and awareness that
will last for generations. Each generation will need to estimate,
examine climate danger and the embrace of a version of the climate
swerve that does the maximum amount to combat that danger...
I see the climate swerve as lasting for a very long time with ebbs and
flows and problems, but not being ended in any sense within the
foreseeable future. In that sense, that's not a form of wild optimism
but that is an expression of some hope in relation to the human future
and our struggle with climate.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/robert-lifton-climate_us_5a186457e4b0649480742c6b
*I shut down an oil pipeline - because climate change is a ticking bomb*
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/24/oil-pipeline-valve-turner-protest-climate-change>
Emily Johnston
Normal methods of political action and protest are simply not working.
If we don't reduce emissions boldly and fast, that's genocide
A little over a year ago, four friends and I shut down all five
pipelines carrying tar sands crude oil into the United States by using
emergency shut-off valves. As recent months have made clear, climate
change is not only an imminent threat; it is an existing catastrophe.
It's going to get worse, and tar sands oil - the dirtiest oil on Earth -
is one of the reasons.
We did this very, very carefully - after talking to pipeline engineers,
and doing our own research. Before we touched a thing, we called the
pipeline companies twice to warn them, and let them turn off the
pipelines themselves if they thought that was better; all of them did so.
I'm heartened by the way the law can be supple - not a thing that, once
set, holds that exact shape forever (or we'd still have slavery, and I
couldn't vote or marry), but a thing that responds - slowly - to our
evolving understanding of what is just and true.
When it comes to climate change, there's little enough to feel heartened
by, so I'll take it.
Emily Johnston is a poet and co-founder of 350Seattle.org. She will face
trial starting 11 December on felony charges for shutting the emergency
valve on the Enbridge tar sands pipeline in Leonard, Minnesota, together
with her co-defendant Annette Klapstein. The charges carry maximum
penalties of some 20 years in prison and fines up to $40,000.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/24/oil-pipeline-valve-turner-protest-climate-change
-
*Do Climate Activists Have a Legal Justification for Civil Disobedience?
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/05/do-climate-activists-have-a-legal-justification-for-civil-disobedience/>*
by Ted Hamilton - Bill Quigley
As the Trump administration reverses federal action to combat climate
change in the midst of unprecedented warming, climate activists are
gearing up for a new wave of civil disobedience and direct action.
In recent years, climate protesters have sat in at the White House,
blocked oil trains, and hung off of oil vessels. Such tactics secured
(temporary) victories in the Keystone XL and Standing Rock conflicts,
and have helped jump-start the growth of a new social movement.
But with the U.S. still on track to miss its commitment to the Paris
Agreement's target of 2 degrees Celsius warming, many climate protesters
are attempting to extend their struggle to the courtroom. Arguing that
their acts of civil disobedience were justified by the government's
failure to adequately address global warming, they seek acquittals based
upon the common law defense of necessity.
The so-called "climate necessity defense" has not met with much judicial
success in American courts thus far.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/05/do-climate-activists-have-a-legal-justification-for-civil-disobedience/
*On the Media "Apocalypse, Now" Podcast WNYC
<http://www.wnyc.org/story/on-the-media-2017-11-24/>*
Nov 23, 2017
Science fiction has always been an outlet for our greatest anxieties.
This week, we delve into how the genre is exploring the reality of
climate change. Plus: new words to describe the indescribable.
1. Jeff VanderMeer [@jeffvandermeer], author of the /Southern Reach
Trilogy/ and /Borne/, on writing about the relationships between people
and nature.
When Science Fiction Isn't Fiction
<http://www.wnyc.org/story/otm-when-science-fiction-isnt-fiction> 12 min
2. Claire Vaye Watkins [@clairevaye] talks about /Gold Fame Citrus,/ her
work of speculative fiction in which an enormous sand dune threatens to
engulf the southwest.
The Desert Reasserts Itself
<http://www.wnyc.org/story/otm-desert-reasserts-itself> 11 min
3. Kim Stanley Robinson discusses his latest work, /New York 2140/. The
seas have risen 50 feet and lower Manhattan is submerged. And yet,
there's hope.
Kim Stanley Robinson on Our Future Cities
<http://www.wnyc.org/story/otm-our-future-cities> 12 min
4. British writer Robert Macfarlane [@RobGMacfarlane] on new language
for our changing world.
"Solastalgia," and Other Words for Our Changing World
<http://www.wnyc.org/story/otm-whats-in-name> 12 min
Throughout the show: listeners offer their own new vocabulary for the
Anthropocene era. Many thanks to everyone who left us voice memos!
http://www.wnyc.org/story/on-the-media-2017-11-24/
*Death by Killer Algae
<https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/death-killer-algae/>*
When 343 sei whales died from a harmful algal bloom in Chilean
Patagonia, they opened a window into the effect changing climate is
having on marine mammals, our oceans, and us.
by Claudia Geib
They didn't think much of the first dead whale. Dwarfed by the rugged
cliffs of Patagonia's high green fjords, the team of biologists had
sailed into a gulf off the Pacific Ocean searching for the ocean's
smaller animals, the marine invertebrates they were there to inventory.
That night, while hunting for an anchorage in a narrow bay, the team
spotted a large, dead whale floating on the water's surface...
As the team of five researchers from Chile's Huinay Scientific Field
Station sailed south across the Golfo de Penas, the dead were there,
too: 200 kilometers away, they found four more whales on the beaches of
the exposed, outer coast. At one point, someone's dog rolled in one of
the corpses. The scent of dead whale hung in the boat for weeks.
"Everybody was clear about it - this is not normal," says Vreni
Häussermann, director of Huinay station and the leader of the group that
made the discovery in April 2015. Häussermann and her team found
themselves drawn into a whodunit worthy of a detective show: they'd
become accidental witnesses to a mass killing. But what had caused it,
and just how many had fallen victim? ..
By the end of the second day, after bad weather moved in and forced the
airsick group to the ground, they knew they had something big on their
hands...
Based on size, shape, and species known to frequent the region, the team
posited that at least 343 of the dead were sei whales, the third-largest
species of baleen whale and an endangered species. It was the largest
baleen whale mortality ever recorded
That unusually warm water in the Golfo de Penas was a major clue in
solving the mystery of the whales' deaths, and it reflected an event of
global magnitude...warm water and a boost of nutrients - algae can grow
so explosively that those toxins become a problem, creating what's
called a harmful algal bloom, or HAB. The toxins end up in filter
feeders, such as shellfish, which draw algae out of the water, and in
the stomachs of zooplankton and other small animals that feed on algae.
As larger animals eat these organisms, algal toxins get passed up the
food chain...
From January 2015 through June 2016, the planet experienced an El Nino:
a period in which easterly winds across the Pacific Ocean weaken,
allowing warm water to flow into the space between Oceania and South
America...
The weather associated with El Nino and its effects are well documented:
unusual rainfall in the Peruvian desert, droughts in Indonesia and
Australia, and disastrous drops in South American fish populations, to
name just a few. Only in the past few decades has another trend emerged:
HABs, which seem to coincide with the changes in water temperature and
nutrient availability brought on by El Nino.
Two whales, as well as mussels sampled just after the initial 2015
Patagonia stranding, tested positive for both domoic acid and paralytic
shellfish toxin (PST), which can cause muscle paralysis in mammals.
Phytoplankton also tested positive for PST at the mouth of Seno Newman,
a long fjord near the Golfo de Penas where 149 of the dead whales were
found.
The El Ninos most often linked with these HABs are cyclic, infrequent
events. Yet years' worth of dogged work around the world suggests that
HABs aren't just an occasional occurrence; they are increasingly
becoming regular events, and are even called the "new normal" for
certain areas.
On a warming planet, this killer has an accomplice.
This article is also available in audio format. Listen now, download, or
subscribe to "Hakai Magazine Audio Edition" through your favorite
podcast app.
https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/death-killer-algae/
*Diplomats flee Delhi amid worsening smog crisis
<https://thinkprogress.org/delhi-smog-diplomats-89e0f18beadc/>*
The solution to the problem, however, isn't that simple.
Delhi's staggering pollution levels have begun to push out diplomats and
spark international upheaval. But experts say diplomatic exodus won't
solve the larger issue facing the developing and heavily industrialized
city.
"Air moves - from outside the city into it and vice versa. Some of the
policy instruments that are most effective for reducing emissions -
cleaner fuel standards, for example - are well beyond city policy
jurisdictions."
"Leaving has become more public and socially acceptable - not just
among expatriates, but among those with the means and flexibility to do
so," Seddon said. "There are widespread calls to shut schools during the
extreme episodes, so that parents can take their kids out, and those who
can often do leave for part of the [smog] 'season.'"
https://thinkprogress.org/delhi-smog-diplomats-89e0f18beadc/
*Why Meeting the Paris Climate Goals Is an Existential Threat to Fossil
Fuel Industries
<https://theconversation.com/why-meeting-the-paris-climate-goals-is-an-existential-threat-to-fossil-fuel-industries-85225>*
*Attacks on climate policies are not really about the science. They're
about the future of fossil fuels. *
Any program with a reasonable chance of meeting the goals embraced by
the 2016 Paris accords
<https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/international/negotiations/paris_en>
(holding global temperature increases below 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius
compared to preindustrial levels) is likely to mean drastic changes in
fossil energy markets.
And the task is only getting harder. After three years of leveling off,
global greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels are projected to grow
2 percent in 2017 to a new record high
<https://theconversation.com/fossil-fuel-emissions-hit-record-high-after-unexpected-growth-global-carbon-budget-2017-87248>.
I have spent much of my career heading federal programs designed to
foster alternatives to fossil fuels
<https://www.epw.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/9/5/951311a2-4b4b-4006-8411-27c76b5796f5/01AFD79733D77F24A71FEF9DAFCCB056.finaltestimony.pdf>.
When I look at what it would take to avoid the temperature rise agreed
to in the Paris Agreement
<https://theconversation.com/why-is-climate-changes-2-degrees-celsius-of-warming-limit-so-important-82058>,
it's clear that meeting these goals is an existential threat to fossil
fuel industries.
Carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for decades, so its climate
impact depends on the total volume of emissions over the years. We've
already added about three-quarters of the cumulative amounts
<http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/NGEO3031> that would lead to a 1.5 degree
increase.
It is still technically possible
<https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo3031.epdf> to keep total volumes of
greenhouse gases below the 2 degree level if we start an aggressive
climate program immediately. But the only credible strategies for
meeting the goals that do not include dramatic near-term reductions in
fossil fuel emissions involve enormous projects to remove carbon dioxide
from the atmosphere....
The most benign of these involve capturing carbon in plants and soils.
While improved agricultural and forestry practices will be an important
part of any climate strategy, systems capable of offsetting current
fossil emissions through soil and plants would need to use massive
amounts of productive land, water and nutrients
<http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2870>.
In 2009 the U.S. and other "group of eight" countries agreed that
meeting long-term climate goals meant that they should reduce their
greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80 percent by 2050
<https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/docs/mid_century_strategy_report-final.pdf>.
Even with optimistic assumptions about innovative agricultural policies,
meeting the 80 percent reduction goal would mean reducing U.S. carbon
dioxide emissions - most of which is released by burning fossil fuels -
by 70 to 85 percent
<https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/docs/mid_century_strategy_report-final.pdf>....
Many of these jobs will be in jeopardy if we meet climate goals.
However, I believe any losses in employment will be more than offset by
rapid growth in low-carbon industries, including energy efficiency,
nuclear, renewables, and natural gas plants that capture and sequester
CO2. Employment in these areas is already about 2.75 million
<https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/01/f34/2017%20US%20Energy%20and%20Jobs%20Report_0.pdf>,
and the numbers are increasing rapidly.
It is also likely that the new "energy infrastructure" investments will
create large numbers of new jobs in areas such as new electric vehicle
charging systems; "smart grid" electric systems that integrate renewable
energy sources, microgrids, efficiency technologies
<https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia861/dsm/> and grid-level
storage. Also, new infrastructure will be needed to retrofit and build
new industrial and building systems that use electricity or other clean
energy sources instead of fossil fuels. The jobs created to meet U.S.
and international markets for these technologies are often attractive
and well-paying.
This of course is a poor solace to people now employed in fossil fuel
businesses. Any sensible policy driving the shift from fossil fuels must
include a strategy for facilitating their transition to the new economy
and the funding needed to make it work. The transition may not be as
graceful for the fossil industry itself. And they know it.
Henry Kelly, Senior Scientist, Michigan Institute for Data Science,
University of Michigan
https://theconversation.com/why-meeting-the-paris-climate-goals-is-an-existential-threat-to-fossil-fuel-industries-85225
(history 1990)*
**The Weekend Wonk: Stephen Schneider from 1990
<https://climatecrocks.com/2017/11/25/the-weekend-wonk-stephen-schneider-from-1990/>*
November 25, 2017
Treasure from Climate State. Stephen Schneider in 1990, presentation in
Aspen - the climate debate and greenhouse science is well developed, and
much like what we still discuss today.
First 5 minutes or so is intro. https://youtu.be/IiP9VFmep4c
*(video) Climate scientist Stephen Schneider talks climate change.
<https://youtu.be/IiP9VFmep4c>*
Dr. Stephen Schneider is one of the most notable and outspoken
scientists on the topic of climate change. His moderate and
scientific approach to explaining climate change has helped
congressmen, journalists, and citizens understand the complex, and
often contradictory, issues related to global warming. In this ever
timely talk, Dr. Schneider goes over the many different portrayals
of climate change in the media and explains how to distinguish hype
from science.
He argues that in order to have a functional democracy, voters must
understand the basics of these important issues so that they can
make informed decisions. This talk is part of the Walter Orr Roberts
Public Lecture Series presented by the Aspen Global Change
Institute. Recorded in Aspen, CO on July 30, 1990.
Release via
https://archive.org/details/Agci-TheGlobalWarmingDebateScienceOrPolitics477
Extremely interesting discussion of pre-economic explosion China, false
balance in media, forest fires, methane and agriculture, science
consensus, drought and hydrological change, greenhouse amplification,
"loading the dice", economic and social projections, and climate model
projections for the future. (which means now)
Yeah, Schneider pretty much nailed it, 27 years ago.
He may have overestimated the ability of deniers to change in response
to data.
Climate State has been doing an absolutely amazing job
<https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXy9Efp5QoTGGxmpKBujLLQ> of providing
a useful historical archive of important experts warning on climate
issues through past decades.
https://climatecrocks.com/2017/11/25/the-weekend-wonk-stephen-schneider-from-1990/
*This Day in Climate History November 27, 2014
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/27/us/without-passing-a-single-law-obama-crafts-bold-enviornmental-policy.html>-
from D.R. Tucker*
November 27, 2014:
The New York Times reports:
"President Obama could leave office with the most aggressive,
far-reaching environmental legacy of any occupant of the White House.
Yet it is very possible that not a single major environmental law will
have passed during his two terms in Washington.
"Instead, Mr. Obama has turned to the vast reach of the Clean Air Act
of 1970, which some legal experts call the most powerful environmental
law in the world. Faced with a Congress that has shut down his
attempts to push through an environmental agenda, Mr. Obama is using
the authority of the act passed at the birth of the environmental
movement to issue a series of landmark regulations on air pollution,
from soot to smog, to mercury and planet-warming carbon dioxide."
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/27/us/without-passing-a-single-law-obama-crafts-bold-enviornmental-policy.html
/
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