[TheClimate.Vote] October 21, 2017 - Daily Global Warming News

Sat Oct 21 12:13:09 EDT 2017

/October 21, 2017/
*
**EPA Scrubs Climate Change Website of 'Climate Change' 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/20/climate/epa-climate-change.html>*
Among the now-missing pages are those detailing the risks of climate 
change and the different approaches states are taking to curb emissions. 
Also edited out were examples of statewide plans to adapt to weather 
extremes.
An E.P.A. spokesman said the original pages have been archived and 
remain available by searching through the agency's web archive, a link 
to which is at the top of its energy resources page.
The analysis, from the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, 
which monitors changes to federal environmental agency websites, 
described the amount of removed data as "substantial." The energy 
resources website is the first site to which the E.P.A. has returned a 
large portion of material since pages dealing with climate science were 
removed from public view on April 28.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/20/climate/epa-climate-change.html

*Have a Climate Denier Over for Coffee? 
<https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/have-climate-denier-over-coffee>*
A researcher explains the psychological foundation of climate 
skepticism—and offers a strategy for chipping away at it.
If climate deniers won't respond to the plainly stated facts, what will 
they respond to? How on earth are we supposed to reach them?
I recently posed these questions to Renee Lertzman, a psychologist who 
studies the thought processes behind climate denial and whose research 
suggests the emergence of new and better ways of breaking through to 
skeptical minds.
For many climate skeptics, Lertzman says, "denial is a defense 
mechanism: It's people trying to protect themselves, to keep themselves 
from experiencing the stress that goes along with coming to terms with 
our situation." The first mistake their would-be persuaders make, she 
says, is in thinking that facts can change minds all by themselves. 
Instead, she says, the way to break through is to employ facts as part 
of a larger effort that also involves listening and, as hard as it can 
be sometimes, empathizing.
Skepticism and even outright denial aren't always based on politics or 
ideology, Lertzman stresses. In fact, she says, they're often 
manifestations of cognitive dissonance, the clinical term for the 
psychological tension that results from the holding of two (or more) 
conflicting beliefs simultaneously. People may really care about 
protecting the planet and keeping it habitable for future generations . 
. . but they also can't imagine their lives without the benefits that 
have come with industrialization and fossil fuels. When we point out 
that we simply can't continue down this familiar path, they can feel 
like they are being personally criticized. "Until we acknowledge that 
cognitive dissonance," she says, "we'll continue to get resistance."
https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/have-climate-denier-over-coffee

*4 Questions About Climate Change and the California Fires 
<https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18102017/california-wildfires-global-warming-drought-wind-climate-change-fire>*
Rising temperatures can make the U.S. West dangerously combustible. We 
saw it this year in California wine country.
*What's the link between fires & climate change?**
**Why didn't the wet winter and spring help?**
**Why did the wine country fires spread so fast?**
**Will these extremes get worse with climate change?*
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18102017/california-wildfires-global-warming-drought-wind-climate-change-fire

*These Volunteer Nurses In Puerto Rico Fear FEMA Is Failing 
<https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/puerto-rico-hurricane-maria-fema-trump_us_59df75d5e4b00abf3646c751>*
"These people are going to die. The help is not really there for them."
WASHINGTON - Water is rationed. Scabies is spreading. Grocery stores are 
lined with empty shelves, if they're open at all. People are fainting as 
they wait in lines for hours in sweltering heat, because they have to 
check into a FEMA hub to get small amounts of food and supplies being 
guarded by armed officers. That's if they can even make it to FEMA.
...she's met people who haven't had much access to drinking water for 
weeks, so they keep filling up containers from rivers or mountain 
streams. But that water isn't clean and can cause bacterial diseases, 
including leptospirosis, which is spread by animal urine. Puerto Rico 
Gov. Ricardo Rossello said Wednesday that at least 10 people have 
suspected cases of leptospirosis, and four deaths may be tied to it.
"Who tells them that they cannot drink this water?" asked Schwartz. "We 
had to stop people on the side of the road to Utuado, one of the places 
where water rushes by, and stop people from getting water there and 
teach them how to disinfect water."
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/puerto-rico-hurricane-maria-fema-trump_us_59df75d5e4b00abf3646c751
-
*PUERTO RICO: HURRICANE MARIA LAID BARE EXISTING 'INEQUALITIES AND 
INJUSTICES'... 
<http://www.joboneforhumanity.org/puerto_rico_hurricane_maria_laid_bare_existing_inequalities_and_injustices>*
More than three weeks after Hurricane Maria...about 85 percent are 
without electricity, and President Trump is raising anxieties further as 
he tweets threats to end federal assistance that aid workers on the 
ground say has been slow to reach hard-hit areas if it has reached them 
at all.
With no electricity, some people are using car batteries 
<https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/puerto-rico-hurricane-maria-fema-trump_us_59df75d5e4b00abf3646c751>for 
power. Others are relying on propane from rapidly depleting tanks to 
boil what water they are able to find. It becomes a survival 
calculation, said Roberto José Thomas Ramírez, general coordinator of 
the Eco-Development Initiative of Jobos Bay in southern Puerto Rico.
"Every day, I visited at least three or four stores looking for bottled 
water, and I didn't get any, so every night I try to do the math to be 
able to boil water and not use enough gas to be able to also cook," 
Ramírez said.
One of the most sought-after commodities in big box stores are 
generators strong enough to power an air conditioner. They sell for 
around $6,000—nearly one-third the median annual household income.
Twenty-three days after Maria made landfall, outbreaks of leptospirosis, 
a deadly bacterial disease, scabies and conjunctivitis have been 
reported, as well signs of an uptick in Zika and chikungunya, mosquito 
borne diseases that were present on the island before the hurricane. In 
Yabucoa, where the median household income is just $15,600, the mayor 
said food distributions aren't going far enough and people are going hungry.
http://www.joboneforhumanity.org/puerto_rico_hurricane_maria_laid_bare_existing_inequalities_and_injustices

*World hunger is increasing thanks to wars and climate change 
<https://theconversation.com/world-hunger-is-increasing-thanks-to-wars-and-climate-change-84506>*
Around the world, social and politicalinstability 
<http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022343316663032>are on the rise. Since 2010, 
state-based conflict has increased by 60 percent andarmed conflict 
within countries <http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022343311431598>has 
increased by 125 percent. More than half of the food-insecure people 
identified in the U.N. report (489 million out of 815 million) live in 
countries with ongoing violence. More than three-quarters of the world's 
chronically malnourished children (122 million of 155 million) live in 
conflict-affected regions...
At the same time, these regions are experiencingincreasingly powerful 
storms, more frequent and persistent drought and more variable rainfall 
<https://www.ametsoc.org/ams/index.cfm/publications/bulletin-of-the-american-meteorological-society-bams/explaining-extreme-events-from-a-climate-perspective/> 
associated with global climate change. These trends are not unrelated. 
Conflict-torn communities are more vulnerable to climate-related 
disasters, and crop or livestock failure due to climate can contribute 
to social unrest.
In the past two decades the world has come together to fight hunger. 
This effort has produced innovations in agriculture, technology and 
knowledge transfer. Now, however, the compounding crises of violent 
conflict and a changing climate show that this approach is not enough. 
In the planet's most vulnerable places, food security depends not just 
on making agriculture more productive, but also on making rural 
livelihoods diverse, interconnected and adaptable.
https://theconversation.com/world-hunger-is-increasing-thanks-to-wars-and-climate-change-84506

*Herald-Tribune to host first 'Hurricane Recovery Expo' 
<http://www.heraldtribune.com/news/20171019/herald-tribune-to-host-first-hurricane-recovery-expo>*
As storm season winds down, panel discussions to focus on recovery, 
mitigation and preparation
http://www.heraldtribune.com/news/20171019/herald-tribune-to-host-first-hurricane-recovery-expo

*Perspective: People love to live in places that are at risk for 
disasters, 'and this is what happens' 
<http://www.tbo.com/news/perspective/perspective-people-love-to-live-in-places-that-are-at-risk-for-disasters/2341714>*
*What's unfolding nationally is a race between vulnerability and 
preparedness.*
California was burning and emergency management officials in Sacramento, 
Calif., were listing the latest statistics about the fires, the 
firefighters, the acres burned, the fatalities, the missing people, the 
number of tanker planes and helicopters deployed, and so on. To one 
side, in a suit and tie, stood the governor, Jerry Brown.
When he took the microphone, he offered the long view of this 
extraordinary year of natural disasters in the United States.
"It's just part of the facts of a highly developed society, is that you 
have a lot of people and a lot of assets in the face of floods and 
hurricane and fires," Brown said at that briefing. "And this is what 
happens."
That might have sounded detached and cerebral while in the middle of a 
crisis, but it's what everyone in the emergency management business 
knows to be true. As a people, we are consistently stepping into the 
path of destruction. "Natural" disasters have a heavily engineered 
element...
http://www.tbo.com/news/perspective/perspective-people-love-to-live-in-places-that-are-at-risk-for-disasters/2341714

*There's a Dangerous Bubble in the Fossil-Fuel Economy, and the Trump 
Administration Is Making It Worse 
<https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/theres-a-dangerous-bubble-in-the-fossil-fuel-economy-and-the-trump-administration-is-making-it-worse>*
By Carolyn Kormann
In the past several years, investors have increasingly recognized the 
long-term instability of high-carbon industries 
<https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-new-economics-of-climate-change>. 
Many of their concerns were first summed up in a 2011 report by the 
Carbon Tracker Initiative, a project started by the financier and 
environmentalist Mark Campanale. The report identified a significant 
problem with the way in which fossil-fuel stocks were priced. It began 
with the idea that humanity has a finite "carbon budget"—that if we are 
to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change, we must limit 
our emissions such that the world's average temperature rises no more 
than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels 
<http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7242/full/nature08017.html>. 
(This was the same target agreed upon in Paris.) Campanale looked at the 
planet's known fossil-fuel reserves—its savings account, basically—and 
calculated how much carbon would be released if they were burned. The 
resulting figure, 2.8 trillion tons, was five times greater than Earth's 
carbon budget for the next forty years. If civilization as we knew it 
were to survive, as much as eighty per cent of all remaining oil, gas, 
and coal needed to stay in the ground. Campanale called it "unburnable 
carbon."
...The Carbon Tracker Initiative's analysis depends, of course, on the 
premise that climate change is real, and that it will inexorably shape 
the future of the world financial system. For policymakers to safely 
deflate the carbon bubble, they must face these facts—something that 
Trump, Pruitt, and their industry allies appear categorically unwilling 
to do. Trump himself has said that climate change is "bullshit." Pruitt 
has claimed, falsely, that there is "tremendous disagreement" among 
scientists about its causes. Kathleen Hartnett White, whom Trump 
nominated last Friday to lead the White House Council on Environmental 
Quality, has called fossil fuels "the wellsprings of mankind's greatest 
advance" and carbon dioxide "the gas of life." In a recent interview 
with "PBS NewsHour," Robert Murray expressed a degree of climate 
denialism that was nearly Dadaesque. "I listen to four thousand 
scientists, who tell me that mankind is not affecting climate change," 
he said. "The Antarctic ice field is larger than it has ever been right 
now. The Earth has cooled for the last nineteen years. It's a natural 
cycle."
...."that we have reached a tipping point within the investment 
community in the recognition of climate risks." The following month, 
Norway's nearly trillion-dollar sovereign-wealth fund declared that it 
would require some of its partners to disclose what influence their 
lending practices have on carbon emissions.
Elsewhere around the world, countries are insulating themselves from the 
carbon bubble. Britain, China, France, and India all recently set 
deadlines for the elimination of gas and diesel cars from their roads. 
In August, South Korea announced that it will no longer give licenses to 
build or run coal plants. And just last week, the Dutch government 
pledged to close all coal-fired power stations by 2030.
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/theres-a-dangerous-bubble-in-the-fossil-fuel-economy-and-the-trump-administration-is-making-it-worse

*Global pollution kills 9m a year and threatens 'survival of human 
societies' 
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/19/global-pollution-kills-millions-threatens-survival-human-societies>*
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/19/global-pollution-kills-millions-threatens-survival-human-societies

*This Day in Climate History October 21, 2008 
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/heat/>   -  from D.R. Tucker*
October 21, 2008: PBS airs the "Frontline" special "Heat," chronicling
the 20-year effort to reduce worldwide carbon emissions, an effort
stymied by the fossil fuel industry.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/heat/

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