[TheClimate.Vote] October 14, 2017 - Daily Global Warming News
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Sat Oct 14 10:10:19 EDT 2017
/October 14, 2017/
*(MIT) Did Climate Change Fuel California's Devastating Fires? Probably.
<https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609111/did-climate-change-worsen-californias-devastating-fires-probably/>*
MIT Technology Review
Nearly two dozen wildfires have burned almost 170,000 acres across
California this week, destroying thousands of structures and killing 23
people so far, in what already amounts to one of the worst wildfire
seasons in the state's history
The clearest way in which global warming increases wildfire risk-one
supported by a growing body of peer-reviewed literature-is higher
temperatures. Warmer air draws moisture from plants, trees, and soil,
increasing what's known as fuel aridity. This provides the dry fuel and
conditions that feed wildfires. Other climatic factors can also
contribute, including decreased rainfall and reduced or earlier-melting
mountain snowpack.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609111/did-climate-change-worsen-californias-devastating-fires-probably/
*
****Broward College Students Ask Local Experts: 'What Is There For Me To
Do About Climate Change?'
<http://wlrn.org/post/broward-college-students-ask-local-experts-what-there-me-do-about-climate-change>*
"Is it too late? Like honestly, is there a point, you know?" Trejos
asked during the question and answer period of the talk."It's just, I
always wanted to know, but I guess you can really never know the answer
until you get to the future."
Jurado doesn't think it's too late at all.
"Personal action does have the capacity to create change, and we all
need to feel empowered," Jurado said. "We should not - and cannot - feel
overwhelmed by this issue."
Jurado focused her presentation on what students can do with basic
information about things like carbon dioxide levels and water management
practices to start feeling like they can make a difference in their
neighborhoods.
http://wlrn.org/post/broward-college-students-ask-local-experts-what-there-me-do-about-climate-change
*
Wild weather can devastate apple crops
<https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2017/10/wild-weather-can-devastate-apple-crops/>
*One orchard's experience is a preview of how climate change will harm
agriculture.
Kee: "Last year, 2016, we had the most devastating spring frost that
we've ever had. We lost about 75 percent of our entire crop."
And extreme rain events are growing more common. One day in July …
Kee: "We received twelve inches of rain, and received those 12 inches in
a six to eight hour period."
Flooded fields make orchard maintenance harder. Wet weather also
promotes insects and fungus growth.
Crop insurance can help soften any financial blows.
https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2017/10/wild-weather-can-devastate-apple-crops/*
Hole the Size of Maine Opens in Antarctica Ice
<http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/10/sea-ice-hole-antarctica-southern-ocean-spd/>
*This is the first time scientists have observed a hole of this
magnitude since the 1970s.
A mysterious hole as big as the state of Maine has been spotted in
Antarctica's winter sea ice cover.
The hole was discovered by researchers about a month ago. The team,
comprised of scientists from the University of Toronto and the Southern
Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling (SOCCOM) project, was
monitoring the area with satellite technology after a similar hole
opened last year.
Known as a polynya, this year's hole was about 30,000 square miles at
its largest, making it the biggest polynya observed in Antarctica's
Weddell Sea since the 1970s.
Since the hole continually exposes the water to the atmosphere above, it
is difficult for new ice layers to form. When the warmer water cools, on
contact with the frigid temperatures in the atmosphere, it sinks. Then
it reheats in deeper areas, allowing the cycle to continue.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/10/sea-ice-hole-antarctica-southern-ocean-spd/
*(video text) MASSIVE HOLE APPEARS IN ANTARCTIC ICE AND SCIENTISTS
AREN'T SURE WHY
<http://www.newsweek.com/antarctica-ice-melting-climate-change-682646>*
http://www.newsweek.com/antarctica-ice-melting-climate-change-682646
See also:
https://qz.com/1101155/a-mysterious-hole-larger-than-the-netherlands-has-opened-in-the-middle-of-antarctic-ice/
*4 Climate-Change Stocks to Buy
<http://www.barrons.com/articles/4-climate-change-stocks-to-buy-1507901895>*
Companies with exposure to solar power and building efficiency look most
attractive.
HSBC's Amit Shrivastava and Robert Parkes attempt to rank investment
themes in the climate change space, and they think that investors should
focus on solar and buildings efficiencies companies, and skip investment
firms and diversified renewables.
Moreover, solar installations are slated to grow at a rapid clip:
U.S. stocks in this category include Microsemi (MSCC), and First Solar
(FSLR).
They also like building efficiency stocks: The group offers forecasted
EPS growth of 20% over the next year, while the stocks are trading at a
discount to their historical averages.
U.S. stocks in this category include Johnson Controls (JCI) and
Ingersoll Rand (IR).
http://www.barrons.com/articles/4-climate-change-stocks-to-buy-1507901895
*A photo report from Usinsk, its people and its oil
<https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/node/3029>*
Text and photo by Petr Shelomovsky
The city of Usinsk in the north of the Republic of Komi is famous for
history's largest oil spill on land in 1994. According to unofficial
data, between 100-120 thousand tons of fuel spilled into the ground.
Although the authorities insisted that it was only half that much. There
has been nothing comparable to this "black record" in the last 20 years,
but emergency situations on pipelines occur almost every day.
"The Kolva River has lost all its fish resources. The concentration of
oil products in the caught fish is exceeded. The ecosystem does not die
because there are few fry, but because the ecosystem is destroyed, it's
toxic. The fish does not return there. No matter how many fry there is
in the poisoned pool, there will not be any sense. Though it looks
beautiful."
https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/node/3029
*'Katrina brain': The invisible long-term toll of megastorms
<http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/10/12/psychological-toll-natural-disasters-000547>*
Long after a big hurricane blows through, its effects hammer the
mental-health system.
NEW ORLEANS - Brandi Wagner thought she had survived Hurricane Katrina.
She hung tough while the storm's 170-mph winds pummeled her home, and
powered through two months of sleeping in a sweltering camper outside
the city with her boyfriend's mother. It was later, after the storm
waters had receded and Wagner went back to New Orleans to rebuild her
home and her life that she fell apart.
"I didn't think it was the storm at first. I didn't really know what was
happening to me," Wagner, now 48, recalls. "We could see the waterline
on houses, and rooftop signs with 'please help us,' and that big X where
dead bodies were found. I started sobbing and couldn't stop. I was
crying all the time, just really losing it."
Twelve years later, Wagner is disabled and unable to work because of the
depression and anxiety she developed in the wake of the 2005 storm.
She's also in treatment for an opioid addiction that developed after she
started popping prescription painkillers and drinking heavily to blunt
the day-to-day reality of recovering from Katrina.
s flood waters recede from Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria and Nate, and
survivors work to rebuild communities in Texas, Florida and the
Caribbean, mental health experts warn that the hidden psychological toll
will mount over time, expressed in heightened rates of depression,
anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, domestic
violence, divorce, murder and suicide.
In New Orleans, doctors are still treating the psychological devastation
of Katrina. More than 7,000 patients receive care for mental and
behavioral health conditions just from the Jefferson Parish Human
Services Authority, a state-run mental health clinic in Marrero, just
across the Mississippi River from New Orleans. At least 90 percent of
the patients lived through Katrina and many still suffer from
storm-related disorders, according to medical director and chief
psychiatrist Thomas Hauth, who adds that he and most of his fellow
clinicians also suffer from some level of long-term anxiety from the storm.
A year after Katrina, psychiatrist James Barbee reported that many of
his patients in New Orleans had deteriorated from post-Katrina anxiety
to more serious cases of depression and anxiety. "People are just
wearing down," Barbee said. "There was an initial spirit about bouncing
back and recovering, but it's diminished over time, as weeks have become
months."
But perhaps the greatest risk of adverse mental health reactions to
storms occurs when an entire community like New Orleans' Lower Ninth
Ward is so completely destroyed that people can't return to normal for
months or years, if ever. For those who left and went to live in
Houston, Atlanta and other far-flung cities, the dislocation and loss of
community was equally harmful, researchers say.
"People are only physically and mentally resilient to a point and then
they are either irretrievably injured or they die," Kessler said. If
storms intensify in the future, the kind of devastation parts of New
Orleans experienced could become more common, he said.
Some public health experts say that we need to start thinking of
longer-term solutions to the longer-term problem of severe weather;
instead of trying to treat post-storm psychological damage, we should
avoid it in the first place by persuading residents to move out of
storm-prone areas.
"Whether people decide to stay or decide to move, which means giving up
a way of life, the long-term psychological costs of climate change
appear to be inevitable," Harvard's Kessler said. "We can expect a
growing number of people to have to face that dilemma. They'll be
affected by extreme weather one way or another, and they will need
psychological help that already is in short supply."
http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/10/12/psychological-toll-natural-disasters-000547
*Oakland hills fire survivors brace for blaze they know is coming
<http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Oakland-hills-fire-survivors-brace-for-blaze-they-12274230.php>*
The Oakland hills neighbors wondered if the smoke was coming from their
backyards, because they know it will happen again.
Both Piper and Burgess lost their homes in the 1991 Oakland hills fire
that killed 25 people and destroyed 3,500 houses. But what they smelled
this week was smoke from the fires roaring through Wine Country, deadly
infernos that had parts of the East Bay wrapped in an opaque haze.
The small fires that burn in the East Bay hills every summer are a
habitual way of life, not unlike waiting in an hour-long line for a
table at a popular brunch spot on the weekend. But Piper and Burgess
know that wildfires like the 1991 firestorm happen once every two to
three decades in the hills.
"We cannot be in denial," Burgess said. "We're trying to also help
educate people. We want them to know what they should be preparing for."
The point Piper and Burgess made: It's not just on the city to monitor
fire hazards in the hills.
"Homeowners have to own the fire," Piper said. "We're responsible for
making sure our house has defensible space."
That means keeping a healthy clearing - no brush, large trees or dead
vegetation - around a property.
http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Oakland-hills-fire-survivors-brace-for-blaze-they-12274230.php
*(rant classic) Big Investors Tell Big Banks to Freak the Fuck out about
Climate Change
<http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/09/15/25416873/big-investors-tell-big-banks-to-freak-the-fuck-out-about-climate-change>*
by Charles Mudede
The Financial Times reports
<https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2017/09/14/big-investors-take-aim-at-banks-over-climate.html>that
a "coalition of institutional investors managing more than $1tn in
assets" wants the world's biggest banks to basically reassess and
strongly respond to the exposure of investments to climate
change-related "catastrophic damage."
The damage from Irma is now estimated at $90 billion (but if the storm
had moved 20 miles to the east, it would have been a world-historical
$200 billion). The damage from Harvey is growing to $100 billion. And as
big as these losses are, they don't account for the lost productivity
during the long recovery period, exceptional and unexpected legal
expenses, and long-term mental and physical health costs. The US economy
is already feeling the drag of these disasters. Grist reports that
"financial firms Moody's and Goldman Sachs have already lowered their
estimates of overall U.S. economic growth. Goldman Sachs added that as
many as 100,000 jobs could be lost as businesses downsize in the wake of
the storms."
It's also estimated that 10 percent of the population has been "directly
impacted by the storms." Expect these storms to break as many minds as
they have broken homes.
Though the US government is currently run by climate deniers, eventually
the price tag on ignoring climate change will become intolerable for
almost all areas of the economy save those whose profits are entirely
tied to the burning of fossils. But when this happens, when global
warming it is too expensive for a large number of major capitalists,
will the US shift from a high carbon economy to low carbon one? No. It
most likely will not. Never underestimate the power of social
engineering (humans are ruled by ideas) and the grip the petroleum
industry has on advertising and political institutions. A low carbon
economy actually means a completely different kind of society and
ideology. We can expect the fossil fuel sector to remain in control
until the intolerable costs of climate change are coupled with
intolerable death tolls. By that time, it will be too late do much of
anything.
http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/09/15/25416873/big-investors-tell-big-banks-to-freak-the-fuck-out-about-climate-change
*-
(musical respite) I Didn't F*ck It Up - Katie Goodman of Broad Comedy
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sdn3O6aaMNc>*
"They, whoever they are, they f*cked it up." Written by Katie Goodman
and Soren Kisiel. Filmed by Ryan Stumpe and AVERingenuity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sdn3O6aaMNc
*This Day in Climate History October 14, 2013
<http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2013-10-14/news/bs-ed-climate-20131014_1_ipcc-report-climate-change-intergovernmental-panel>
- from D.R. Tucker*
October 14, 2013: In an editorial, the Baltimore Sun declares:
"The latest analysis produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC), compiled by hundreds of scientists and dozens
of authors from around the globe, shows that climate change is real,
it's largely caused by man, and it's the greatest environmental threat
we face.
"That's not alarmism, it's reality. Of course, know-nothing deniers
will be as dismissive of the IPCC findings as they've been of similar
reports in the past. That the IPCC is under the auspices of the United
Nations will be used to stir up nationalistic suspicions. That climate
change policy is highly inconvenient for the fossil fuel industries
will cause the big coal and oil companies to continue their
disinformation campaigns.
"None of which changes the reality that climate change poses a serious
threat, and as the evidence mounts, it's actually become easier to
distinguish these basic changes in the ecosystem from the normal ups
and downs of weather. No one super storm or drought or tornado is
traceable to global warming, of course, but the data are simply too
overwhelming to ignore. Each of the last three decades has proven
successively warmer than the previous. Any recent slowing of that
trend or plateau, as the report notes, has more to do with variables
such as volcanic activity and the solar cycle over the last five years
than it does the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere."
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2013-10-14/news/bs-ed-climate-20131014_1_ipcc-report-climate-change-intergovernmental-panel
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