[TheClimate.Vote] October 12, 2017 - Daily Global Warming News
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Thu Oct 12 10:08:31 EDT 2017
/October 12, 2017/
*
Whole towns evacuated as Northern California firestorm grows; at least
23 people are dead, 285 missing
<http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-fires-northern-california-20171011-story.html>*
"We are facing some pretty significant monsters," Cal Fire incident
commander Bret Gouvea told a room of about 200 firefighters and law
enforcement officials at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds staging area
Wednesday morning.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-fires-northern-california-20171011-story.html
*(video Democracy Now) As Deadly Wildfires Rage in California, a Look at
How Global Warming Fuels Decades of Forest Fires
<https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/11/as_deadly_wildfires_rage_in_california>*
the U.S. Forest Service warned last year that an unprecedented 5-year
drought led to the deaths of more than 100 million trees in California,
setting the stage for massive fires. Climate scientists believe
human-caused global warming played a major role in the drought. ...a
2016 report showing that global warming is responsible for nearly half
of the forest area burned in the western United States over the past
three decades.
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/11/as_deadly_wildfires_rage_in_california
*This Isn't 'the New Normal' for Climate Change - That Will Be Worse
<http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/10/why-this-isnt-the-new-normal-for-climate-change.html>*
By David Wallace-Wells
It is tempting to look at this string of disasters and think, Climate
change is here. Both hurricanes and wildfires are made worse by warming,
with as much as 30 percent of the strength of hurricanes like Harvey and
Maria attributable to climate change, and wildfire season both extended
and exacerbated by it. As the journalist Malcolm Harris put it blithely
on Twitter, "There didn't used to be a major natural disaster every
single day."
But the truth is actually far scarier than "welcome to the new normal."
The climate system we have been observing since August, the one that has
pummeled the planet again and again and exposed even the world's
wealthiest country as unable (or at least unwilling) to properly respond
to its destruction, is not our bleak future. It is, by definition, a
beyond-best-case scenario for warming and all the climate disasters that
will bring. Even if, miraculously, the planet immediately ceased
emitting carbon into the atmosphere, we'd still be due for some
additional warming, and therefore some climate-disaster shakeout, from
just the stuff we've put into the air already. But of course we're very
far from zeroing out on carbon, and therefore very far from stalling
climate change. A recent debate has centered around the question of
whether it is even conceivably possible for the planet to pull up short
of one-point-five degrees Celsius of warming, which means, at the
absolute very least, we have 50 percent more warming to go (since we're
at about one degree already). But even most optimistic experts expect
we'll at least hit two degrees, and possibly two-point-five or even
three. That means as much as 200 percent more warming ahead of us. And
what that means for extreme weather and climate disasters is horrifying.
...But, over time, the trend lines are inarguable: Climate change will
give us more devastating hurricanes than we have now, and more horrible
wildfires, as well as more tornadoes and droughts and heat waves and floods.
What that means is that we have not, at all, arrived at a new normal. It
is more like we've taken one step out on the plank off a pirate ship.
Perhaps because of the exhausting false debate about whether climate
change is "real," too many of us have developed a misleading impression
that its effects are binary. But global warming is not "yes" or "no," it
is a function that gets worse over time as long as we continue to
produce greenhouse gas. And so the experience of life in a climate
transformed by human activity is not just a matter of stepping from one
stable environment into another, somewhat worse one, no matter how
degraded or destructive the transformed climate is. The effects will
grow and build as the planet continues to warm: from one degree to
one-point-five to almost certainly two degrees and beyond. The last few
months of climate disasters may look like about as much as the planet
can take. But things are only going to get worse.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/10/why-this-isnt-the-new-normal-for-climate-change.html
-
*OP-ED: Global Warming's Impact on Mental Health
<https://theknightnews.com/2017/10/11/op-ed-global-warmings-impact-on-mental-health/>*
...News on climate change can change perception for your own well being,
especially when one hears conflicting reports on the subject. For
example, a week and a half ago there was a report where scientists
discovered the population has more time for lowering our carbon
emissions to acceptable levels previously agreed upon. However, some
news publications took the headline and altered it, to make it seem as
though scientists had been wrong about climate change. When these
reports come out, which are fake news paraded around as real news, it
becomes a detriment not only to the cause of stopping climate change,
but also to a person's mental health....
Climate change affects people both physically and mentally. It's worse
when proper relief is not provided in a timely manner to victims.
Millions of people are displaced because of the recent hurricanes that
hit Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. We must make our politicians
fulfil their civic duties and help fight towards aid for these people.
https://theknightnews.com/2017/10/11/op-ed-global-warmings-impact-on-mental-health/
-
*Why Are More American Teenagers Than Ever Suffering From Severe
Anxiety?
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/magazine/why-are-more-american-teenagers-than-ever-suffering-from-severe-anxiety.html>*
Parents, therapists and schools are struggling to figure out whether
helping anxious teenagers means protecting them or pushing them to face
their fears.
Among many teachers and administrators I spoke to, one word -
"resiliency" /[good thing the article didn't warn about wrangling the
runaway elephant named Climate Change]/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/magazine/why-are-more-american-teenagers-than-ever-suffering-from-severe-anxiety.html
*(Interactive) Mapped: How the US generates electricity
<https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-how-the-us-generates-electricity>*
The US electricity system is often described as the world's largest
machine. It is also incredibly diverse, reflecting the policy
preferences, needs and available natural resources of each state.
Carbon Brief has plotted the nation's power stations in an interactive
map (above) to show how and where the US generates electricity.
A few key messages can be gleaned from the map and associated data
interactives...:
The US electricity system has been changing rapidly over the past
decade.
This reflects not only federal policy, but also technologies,
geographies, markets and state mandates.
The average US coal plant is 40 years old and runs half the time.
Some 15% are at least 50 years old, against an average retirement age of 52.
Planned new power plants are almost exclusively gas, wind or solar.
It's important to note that the map and related charts,...are based on
electrical generating capacity.
As the chart above shows, the expected wave of coal retirements did
arrive, partly in response to old age, partly because of new regulations
- notably the Mercury and Air Toxics Standard (MATS), which entered
force in 2015.
Contrary to expectations, however, rising demand failed to materialise.
One reason for this is that 30 states have implemented their own energy
efficiency targets, policies or standards. (These are a mixture of
mandatory and voluntary goals).
https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-how-the-us-generates-electricity
*
Record Amazon fires stun scientists; sign of sick, degraded forests
<https://news.mongabay.com/2017/10/record-amazon-fires-stun-scientists-sign-of-sick-degraded-forests/>
*With the fire season still on-going, Brazil has seen 208,278 fires this
year, putting 2017 on track to beat 2004's record 270,295 fires. While
drought (likely exacerbated by climate change) worsens the fires,
experts say that nearly every blaze this year is human-caused.
The highest concentration of fires in the Amazon biome in September was
in the São Félix do Xingu and Altamira regions. Fires in Pará state in
September numbered 24,949, an astonishing six-fold increase compared
with 3,944 recorded in the same month last year.
The Amazon areas seeing the most wildfires have also seen rapid change
and development in recent years, with high levels of deforestation, and
especially forest degradation, as loggers, cattle ranchers, agribusiness
and dam builders move in.
Scientists warn of a dangerous synergy: forest degradation has turned
the Amazon from carbon sink to carbon source; while globally, humanity's
carbon emissions are worsening drought and fires. Brazil's rapid Amazon
development deepens the problem. Researchers warn that mega-fires could
be coming, unless trends are reversed.*..
*...Figures from the Brazilian government's INPE (National Institute of
Space Research) show that 2017 is shaping up to be the worst year on
record for forest fires: 208,278 were detected by 5 October.
<http://www.inpe.br/queimadas/situacao-atual>Alberto Setzer, who runs
INPE's fire monitoring department, told Mongabay that 2017 was now on
course to overtake 2004, until now the year with the most fires, when
270,295 were detected. More fires were seen in September of this year
(110,736) than in any previous month in the 20 years that INPE has been
recording fires.
INPE, which has a sophisticated system for monitoring fires, has built
up an impressive archive of satellite images
<http://www.inpe.br/queimadas/situacao-atual>of the damage done by the
fires. This archive shows that the wildfires have increasingly been
spreading into protected forests. Over fifty conserved areas have been
impacted this year, almost twice the number damaged last year. And the
list includes some of Brazil's iconic nature parks.
https://news.mongabay.com/2017/10/record-amazon-fires-stun-scientists-sign-of-sick-degraded-forests/*
*See also*Amazon fire Queimadas maps
<http://www.inpe.br/queimadas/situacao-atual>
http://www.inpe.br/queimadas/situacao-atual
Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 23: Amazon 'tipping point' is a
sliding process, from +1C
<http://www.bitsofscience.org/climate-change-amazon-tipping-point-7540/>*
There is however no clear-cut threshold temperature to this tipping
point ("above this temperature the rainforest dies, below we're fine").
Instead it slides along the temperature scale, following an S-shaped
curve: 'some warming' kills part of the Amazon, 'a lot of warming' will
almost wipe the rainforest completely off the map - and 'somewhere in
between' the climatic deforestation progresses the fastest.
Based on available literature we can try to quantify this scale. Serious
ecological damage is probably already committed between a warming of 1
to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial climate. Just above 2 degrees
warming more than half the Amazon basin can no longer support
rainforest, while at 3 degrees already 75 percent of the rainforest
could dry out and die...
According to these researchers remaining uncertainties are more in the
realm of biology: "we find that the largest uncertainties are associated
with plant physiological responses, and then with future emissions
scenarios. Uncertainties from differences in the climate projections are
significantly smaller."...
We'll be awaiting new Amazon climate impact studies. Meanwhile we are
safe to conclude it's a very threatened region - and one of the most
notable hotspots of 21st century climate change.
http://www.bitsofscience.org/climate-change-amazon-tipping-point-7540/
*Climate Scientists Attack Tony Abbott's 'Misleading' Speech to Global
Warming Policy Foundation
<https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/10/09/climate-scientists-attack-tony-abbott-misleading-speech-global-warming-policy-foundation>*
Australian climate scientists have hit back at their former Prime
Minister Tony Abbott, describing his speech to a London think tank as
being laced with distortions, falsehoods, misrepresentations, and
misdirection.
Abbott told the contrarian Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) that
rising carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning could be
"beneficial" and compared acceptance of human-caused climate change to
religion.
The GWPF, founded by former Thatcher government treasurer Lord Nigel
Lawson, consistently pushes positions on climate change that fall well
outside the established science.
The foundation, which claims to be bi-partisan but has accepted funding
from many conservative figures, had declined requests from several
specialist climate change media outlets to hear the Abbott lecture,
claiming the speech "was not a media event."
https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/10/09/climate-scientists-attack-tony-abbott-misleading-speech-global-warming-policy-foundation
*Climate change threatens Midwest infrastructure, report says
<http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-midwest-climate-infrastructure-20171010-story.html>*
"Rising temperatures and the likelihood of more storms and flooding
reduce the lifespan of roads and bridges, could cause railways to
buckle, and threaten above-ground energy facilities and transmission
lines," said study author Mary Craighead, transportation policy analyst
with the Illinois Economic Policy Institute, in a statement. "Without
critical maintenance and modernization of these systems, everything from
freight and commuter routes to our region's overall economic value as a
net distributor of electricity could be jeopardized."
The institute study notes that increased heat can reduce the life of
asphalt and add stress to expansion joints for bridges and highways.
Flooding also can weaken structural supports for bridges, promote
deterioration of soil that supports roads, tunnels and bridges and
increase a buildup of sediment in waterway channels. More frequent
freeze-thaw cycles add stress to pavement, which can cause potholes.
Droughts, such as the one that hit the Midwest in 2012, can hurt water
traffic.
The study concludes that infrastructure is "grossly underfunded" to meet
the maintenance and growth needs of the nation.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-midwest-climate-infrastructure-20171010-story.html
*
**Hyperthermals: What can they tell us about modern global warming?
<https://www.carbonbrief.org/hyperthermals-what-can-they-tell-us-about-modern-global-warming>*
Around 50m years ago, Earth was struck by a series of short-term phases
of rapid global warming, known collectively as "hyperthermals
<https://www2.usgs.gov/climate_landuse/clu_rd/projects/ehyper.asp>".
Lasting for a few thousand years at a time, each hyperthermal saw the
world's temperatures rise by as much as 5C
<http://www.pnas.org/content/110/40/15908.abstract#corresp-1>. This rise
in global temperature is believed to have caused widespread changes to
the world's habitats and waves of species extinctions
<http://www.pnas.org/content/110/23/9273.short>.
These hyperthermals were entirely natural climatic events, driven by
large releases of gases, such as CO2 and methane, into the atmosphere.
The likely causes of these events are still disputed by scientists, with
some suggesting waves of volcanic eruptions, releases from natural
methane stores and changes to the world's soils could have been responsible.
The rate of CO2 release during the hyperthermals was much slower than
the rate recorded by scientists today.
A number of scientists believe that the hyperthermal that is most
comparable to current climate change is the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal
Maximum (PETM), which was the first and largest of all the hyperthermals.
"What we know for sure is that large masses of carbon came from below
the ground. A recent heavily debated paper suggested that it was caused
by volcanism in the North Atlantic, which at the time was very active in
terms of volcanic activity. Most colleagues think that carbon input came
from sources such as methane hydrates below the seafloor or buried
terrestrial organic matter, which is buried peat essentially."
https://www.carbonbrief.org/hyperthermals-what-can-they-tell-us-about-modern-global-warming
*USGS Eocene Hyperthermals
<https://www2.usgs.gov/climate_landuse/clu_rd/projects/ehyper.asp>*
The Late Paleocene and Early Eocene were punctuated by a series of
sudden and extreme global warming events (~55.5, 53.5 and 52.5 Ma) that
were triggered by massive releases of carbon into the atmosphere. While
the mid-Pliocene warm period provides an analog for modern CO2
concentrations, Eocene hyperthermals provide analogs for the extremely
rapid rates of atmospheric carbon increase that we are currently
witnessing....
...This project examines Eocene hyperthermals in terms of the response
of critical ecosystems in shallow marine environments using sediment
cores collected along the US mid-Atlantic coast. While more recent warm
intervals better represent modern or near future climate, Eocene
hyperthermals most closely resemble the modern in terms of the rate of
change of atmospheric CO2 and temperature. It is here that we will find
similarities in the response of marine ecosystems to abrupt changes in
climate such as are projected due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas release...
Our research will inform the scientific community, policy-makers and the
general public by providing products that reconstruct the shallow marine
environments across the US mid-Atlantic coastline within single
hyperthermal events as well as among several different intervals of
abrupt climate change. These studies will provide insights on how
biological systems adapted to these changes temporally and spatially.
Our paleodata can assist in evaluations of the potential consequences of
future global change and provide assessments of the abilities of climate
models to simulate past changes.
https://www2.usgs.gov/climate_landuse/clu_rd/projects/ehyper.asp
*Understanding Sea Level Rise, p2: A short chronology of SLR forecasts
for the year 2100 (showing they increase with time
<http://www.bitsofscience.org/sea-level-rise-forecasts-for-2100-increase-7266/>*
It's safe to say that the greenhouse gases that we emit on a decennium
scale (for instance a doubling of fossil-fuel CO2 emissions over the
40-year time frame between 1970 and 2010) create a sea level rise that
will continue for millennia - and one that is largely irreversible once
that it's set in motion....
'Somewhere' after the year 2100 this sea level rise is set to gravely
escalate - as paleoclimate comparisons indicate that even if we manage
to limit the warming to for instance 2 degrees Celsius (bare in mind
that nations' current Paris 2025/2030 emission targets bring us en route
to 3+ degrees - and natural climate-carbon feedbacks (biosphere CO2,
Arctic & ocean methane) may make things far worse!) the new equilibrium
state will be a world with a sea level 10+, 20+, possibly 30+ metres
higher than the one of today - indeed wiping entire nations from the
map, and many coastal megacities across the globe....
Meanwhile - if you're a politician - you should (by now) realise there
is clearly a growing pile of evidence that shows it's becoming fully
irresponsible to base policies (both mitigation and adaption policies,
coastal management to name one) on the conservative sea level rise
estimates of a decade ago...
http://www.bitsofscience.org/sea-level-rise-forecasts-for-2100-increase-7266/
*Fish farm has 60 days to fix net pens outside Seattle as 1 million
Atlantic salmon move in
<https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/fish-farm-has-60-days-to-fix-net-pens-outside-seattle-as-1-million-atlantic-salmon-move-in/>*
Washington's Department of Natural Resources says Cooke Aquaculture has
60 days to fix problems with its net-pen operation off Bainbridge
Island, or it risks losing its lease.
Just a week after the state Department of Fish and Wildlife approved
shipment of 1 million more farmed Atlantic salmon to Cooke Aquaculture's
fish farm near Bainbridge Island, another state agency says it has found
a hole in the nets and corrosion in the structure of the facility.
The Department of Natural Resources on Monday notified Cooke that it is
in default of the terms of its lease at its Rich Passage operation. It
ordered the facility repaired within 60 days, or the department may
cancel the company's lease for the facility, which operates over public
bed lands.
Cooke will proceed with the stocking the fish, company spokeswoman Nell
Halse said in an emailed statement. "We are meeting all permit
requirements."
A portion of the same company's Cypress Island fish farm collapsed on
Aug. 19, releasing tens of thousands of farmed Atlantic salmon into the
Salish Sea between Anacortes and the San Juan islands. The company had
scheduled those net pens for total replacement because of corrosion and
other problems, and had already made emergency repairs to the facility
one month before they came apart. The company had intended to make
repairs after taking its harvest of 305,000 adult fish.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/fish-farm-has-60-days-to-fix-net-pens-outside-seattle-as-1-million-atlantic-salmon-move-in/
*This Day in Climate History October 12, 2007
<http://youtu.be/NJo_w3lLyvo> - from D.R. Tucker*
October 12, 2007: Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change win the Nobel Peace Prize.
http://youtu.be/gkrXNbn3y6o
http://youtu.be/NJo_w3lLyvo
/
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