[TheClimate.Vote] September 29, 2017 - Daily Global Warming News

[Richard Pauli]

/September 29, 2017/

*Late-September heat wave leaves climate experts stunned 
<https://thinkprogress.org/september-heat-wave-noaa-ca21143e97e1/>*
"Never been a heat wave of this duration and magnitude this late in the 
season," reports NOAA
SEP 27, 2017
Century-old records across the Midwest and East Coast are being 
shattered by a monster late-September heat wave - the kind of extreme 
weather we can expect to get much worse thanks to President Donald 
Trump's policies to undermine domestic and global climate action.
"There has never been a heat wave of this duration and magnitude this 
late in the season in Chicago," the National Weather Service reported 
Tuesday evening.
 From Wednesday through Tuesday, for example, Chicago sweltered through 
"the only occurrence on record of 7+ consecutive 90 degrees F days 
entirely within September." Every day of the heatwave was 92 degrees F 
or above, and every one set a new record high for that date.
"It's perhaps obvious that global warming means more frequent and 
intense heat waves," climatologist Michael Mann noted in an email to 
ThinkProgress. "But what is less obvious is how climate change may be 
impacting the behavior of the jet stream in way that causes more 
persistent weather extremes, giving us even more extreme and 
longer-duration heat waves than we would otherwise expect."
The National Weather Servicetweeted out 
<https://twitter.com/NWSChicago/status/912878739402510336?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fabcnews.go.com%2FUS%2Fhistoric-heat-wave-brings-record-high-temperatures-midwest%2Fstory%3Fid%3D50119794>a 
chart showing this very effect.
https://thinkprogress.org/september-heat-wave-noaa-ca21143e97e1/

*
**The True Cost of Food 
<https://slowmoney.org/blog/a-conversation-with-daphne-miller/>*
Daphne Miller: These days I'm focused on the true cost of food. We have 
the cheapest food in the world. Food purchases make up something like 8% 
of our GDP. But when you start to factor in all the chronic diseases and 
environmental impacts-the health footprint of food-then all of a sudden 
we have the most expensive food in the world. Not 8% but 25% or higher. 
How is it we have something that is so cheap but so expensive?..
People are getting so sick because they aren't connected to a healthy 
food system. Medicine is putting out fires, it gets to people way too 
late. We need to work upstream, outside the medical model.
https://slowmoney.org/blog/a-conversation-with-daphne-miller/


*(Opinion) Does officials' global warming denial harm storm prep? 
<http://www.news-journalonline.com/news/20170926/lane-does-officials-global-warming-denial-harm-storm-prep>*
By Mark Lane
Can Florida be resilient when "sea-level rise" and "global warming" are 
phrases that shouldn't be spoken?
The first step in dealing with sea-level rise is for state and local 
governments to acknowledge it exists.
The second step is for elected officials to acknowledge it exists.
The problem is sea-level rise can most easily be explained as an effect 
of global warming. And it is an article of faith among conservative 
politicians that global warming is a hoax manufactured by environmental 
extremists or the Chinese or People Who Hate America.
In 2015, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection started 
censoring the terms "climate change" and "global warming" from official 
communications and reports, according to a Florida Center for 
Investigative Reporting news story. The governor's office has denied 
that it has such gag rule. But clearly, he'd rather people stop using 
the phrase in his presence, especially at press conferences.
"I'm not going down that path," House Speaker Richard Corcoran said when 
asked about global warming at the start of hurricane season. And he 
hasn't since then.
If so much of officialdom is denying the cause, can they deal with the 
effect? Possibly.
Instead of fighting global warming and sea-level rise denialists, many 
Florida cities are studying "resiliency." Miami has an "Office of 
Resilience." It's politically awkward to talk about sea-level rise but 
resilience? Who can be against that?
And what does resiliency entail? Not allowing building in flood-prone 
areas. Better stormwater systems with upgraded pumps. Moving and 
elevating roads, upgrading infrastructure, hardening power systems, 
keeping hurricane-strength building codes and doing something about 
sewer systems that dump into waterways during storms.
Coastal Florida always has been a bet against nature. Now that more 
Floridians are coast dwellers, it's a higher stakes bet than it used to be.
And it appears the odds in that bet have shifted. Which makes it only 
prudent to hedge that bet more than in the past. Even if state and local 
planners know better than to say the words "global warming" until 
there's some political climate change. That shows resiliency, too.
http://www.news-journalonline.com/news/20170926/lane-does-officials-global-warming-denial-harm-storm-prep


*Right-wing media could not be more wrong about the 1.5 degrees C carbon 
budget paper 
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/sep/27/right-wing-media-could-not-be-more-wrong-about-the-15c-carbon-budget-paper>*
As usual, conservative media outlets distorted a climate science paper 
to advance the denialist agenda
Last week, Nature Geoscience published a study suggesting that we have a 
bigger remaining carbon budget than previously thought to keep global 
warming below the 1.5 degrees C aggressive Paris climate target. Many 
scientists quickly commented that the paper's conclusion was based on 
some questionable assumptions, and this single study shouldn't be 
blindly accepted as gospel truth.
Conservative media outlets did even worse than that. They took one part 
of the paper's analysis out of context and grossly distorted its 
conclusions to advance their anti-climate agenda.
1.5 degrees C might indeed be a geophysical impossibility
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/sep/27/right-wing-media-could-not-be-more-wrong-about-the-15c-carbon-budget-paper


*Study Says Climate Change Could Lead to Rougher Roads 
<http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2017/09/28/465946.htm>*
Insurance Journal
...Transportation infrastructure is built to last decades, but 
engineering protocols in the United States assume climate stationarity, 
which may result in accelerated degradation and, consequently, increased 
costs," a study out from academics at ASU states.
According to the study, if the standard practice for material selection 
is not changed to adapt to rising average temperatures, it could add up 
to $21.8 billion to pavement costs by 2070 under the same moderate 
global warming scenarios that predict average global temperature 
increases of 1.8 C.
The standard practice for selecting materials to build roads is based on 
average temperatures from 1966 to 1995, which differs from averaged 
based on data studied from 1985 to 2014, according to Shane Underwood, 
an assistant professor of civil engineering at ASU and one of the 
authors of the study....
http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2017/09/28/465946.htm


*Exxon Aims to Cut Methane Leaks, a Culprit in Global Warming 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/business/energy-environment/exxon-methane-leaks.html>*
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/business/energy-environment/exxon-methane-leaks.html


*The Window Is Closing to Avoid Dangerous Global Warming 
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-window-is-closing-to-avoid-dangerous-global-warming/>*
There's a 50 percent chance that temperatures will rise 4 degrees 
Celsius under a business-as-usual scenario
Deadly climate change could threaten most of the world's human 
population by the end of this century without efforts well beyond those 
captured in the Paris Agreement.
"These studies are a wake-up call ahead of U.N. Climate Week - we must 
not only zero out CO2 emissions by 2050, but also rapidly limit 
superpollutants like HFCs and methane, and even undertake atmospheric 
carbon removal," said Bledsoe, a former Clinton White House climate adviser.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-window-is-closing-to-avoid-dangerous-global-warming/


*THE CLIMATE SWERVE: REFLECTIONS ON MIND, HOPE AND SURVIVAL WITH ROBERT 
JAY LIFTON AND BILL MOYERS... 
<http://www.joboneforhumanity.org/the_climate_swerve_reflections_on_mind_hope_and_survival_with_robert_jay_lifton_and_bill_moyers>*
The renowned psychiatrist and historian makes a case for hope for 
humanity's grasp of the dangers of climate change...
Robert Jay Lifton was born 91 years ago. Living through the catastrophes 
of the 20th century - world war, tyrannical regimes, genocide, the 
nuclear bomb, terrorism - he grappled with their terrible impact on 
human beings. His work as a psychiatrist, historian and public 
intellectual forged his reputation as one of the world's foremost 
thinkers. Among his 20 books are such seminal award winners as Death in 
Life: Survivors of Hiroshima (1967); The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing 
and the Psychology of Genocide (1986); and Witness to an Extreme 
Century: A Memoir (2014).
Now he has turned to climate change, which, he says, "presents us with 
what may be the most demanding and unique psychological task ever 
required of humankind." In The New York Times three years ago, he wrote 
that "Americans appear to be undergoing a significant psychological 
shift in our relation to global warming." Borrowing a term from Harvard 
humanities professor Stephen Greenblatt to describe a major historical 
change in consciousness, he called this shift a climate "swerve." Lifton 
plunged into studying the phenomenon further and has just published a 
new book, The Climate Swerve: Reflections of Mind, Hope, and Survival.
Here is my interview with him....(/snippets)/**
***Moyers: To the two forces we've already 
discussed,/experience/and/economics/, you add third one that's 
converging to create the climate swerve:*
** *You write: "The swerve toward awareness of global warming was 
leading people to feel it was deeply wrong, perhaps evil, to destroy our 
habitat and create a legacy of suffering for future generations. Their 
consciences were being stirred. They were being energized." This was 
three years ago. Do you still think that force is as powerful today as 
it was then?*
*Lifton:*I think it still is, even though now with President Trump and 
his administration you have ethnonationalism, which combats exactly what 
we're talking about. What we're describing is a recognition that there's 
something wrong with endangering ourselves as a species and perhaps even 
eliminating ourselves and our civilization. There's something wrong with 
what we are bequeathing to the next generation.
*Lifton:*There's more and more recognition that a carbon economy is 
dangerous to us economically. And there is increasing recognition that 
renewable fuels have economic value as well as obvious value for our 
health and our well-being and our survival. In fact, as you know, the 
economic revolution in renewable fuels has been impressive. It really 
had not been anticipated. In any case, you have the symbolism and active 
significance of members of the Rockefeller family and two of the 
Rockefeller foundations recognizing this - withdrawing from fossil fuels 
in terms of their investments, divesting themselves - and recognizing a 
new kind of economic possibility. So the economic side is making itself 
felt. Unfortunately, it's still in a sense an impasse because there are 
lots of people who continue to defend those stranded assets with what I 
call stranded imagination or stranded ethics. They insist they have a 
fiduciary duty in terms of their corporation to serve investors by 
making use of those stranded assets. But there's more and more pressure 
against them and more and more of what I call "species awareness" that 
condemns this pattern of stranded ethics.
*Moyers: I want to believe you, but it still seems to me that powerful 
capitalist organizations such as ExxonMobil, libertarian oligarchs like 
the Koch brothers, and superrich right-wingers like the Mercer family 
are not going to want to leave all that buried treasure in the ground.*
*Lifton:*Most of them will do their damnedest to bring it out of the 
ground and see themselves as even doing good in the process by creating 
jobs and by enhancing the economies of the developing world and other 
such rationalizations, yes. But there's more and more of a recognition 
against it, again as embodied by the Paris accord. It's of some 
significance Donald Trump tried to withdraw from Paris, never quite 
succeeded, and now seems to be looking for a way to stay in the treaty. 
Of course, he's declaring all kinds of victories because he says we're 
renegotiating the treaty, which means renegotiating with yourself, since 
you set the standards that one agrees to for reducing carbon emissions. 
But the fact that he couldn't finally take us completely out of the 
Paris accord and that when he tried to there was a rallying by 
individual states, led by California and by others in the world, 
reasserting the principles of Paris we're all in this together - well, 
you can't deny the power of climate swerve - this new global awareness 
about climate danger....
http://www.joboneforhumanity.org/the_climate_swerve_reflections_on_mind_hope_and_survival_with_robert_jay_lifton_and_bill_moyers


*The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: Robert Jay Lifton and Bill Moyers 
on 'A Duty to Warn' 
<http://billmoyers.com/story/dangerous-case-donald-trump-robert-jay-lifton-bill-moyers-duty-warn/>*
There will not be a book published this fall more urgent, important, or 
controversial than The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, the work of 27 
psychiatrists, psychologists and mental health experts to assess 
President Trump's mental health. They had come together last March at a 
conference at Yale University to wrestle with two questions. One was on 
countless minds across the country: "What's wrong with him?" The second 
was directed to their own code of ethics: "Does Professional 
Responsibility Include a Duty to Warn" if they conclude the president to 
be dangerously unfit?
As mental health professionals, these men and women respect the 
long-standing "Goldwater rule" which inhibits them from diagnosing 
public figures whom they have not personally examined. At the same time, 
as explained by Dr. Bandy X Lee, who teaches law and psychiatry at Yale 
School of Medicine, the rule does not have a countervailing rule that 
directs what to do when the risk of harm from remaining silent outweighs 
the damage that could result from speaking about a public figure - 
"which in this case, could even be the greatest possible harm." It is an 
old and difficult moral issue that requires a great exertion of 
conscience. Their decision: "We respect the rule, we deem it subordinate 
to the single most important principle that guides our professional 
conduct: that we hold our responsibility to human life and well-being as 
paramount."
Hence, this profound, illuminating and discomforting book undertaken as 
"a duty to warn."
http://billmoyers.com/story/dangerous-case-donald-trump-robert-jay-lifton-bill-moyers-duty-warn/


*This Day in Climate History September 29, 2000 
<http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/EnergyIssues3> -  from D.R. Tucker*
September 29, 2000: In an apparent effort to convince moderate voters
not to support Democratic opponent Al Gore, GOP presidential candidate
George W. Bush delivers an energy speech implying that he will pursue
efforts to reduce carbon pollution as president. Bush would go on to
abandon this implied promise during his tenure in the White House.
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/EnergyIssues3

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