[TheClimate.Vote] August 11, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Sat Aug 11 10:07:15 EDT 2018
/August 11, 2018/
[Vote climate movement]
*Sunrise Movement Announces First Round of Endorsed Candidates
<https://medium.com/sunrisemvmt/sunrise-movement-announces-first-round-of-endorsed-candidates-e3638d1a5e9b>*
The Sunrise Slate 2018 will fight for our health, home, and future.
Around the country, the group's local teams are knocking doors,
organizing text and phone-banks, and recruiting volunteers in support of
their endorsed candidates. They're also asking politicians to reject the
influence of fossil fuel executives by signing the No Fossil Fuel Money
Pledge <http://nofossilfuelmoney.org/> and putting pressure on and
exposing those who won't. Already over 900 candidates have signed on to
the pledge, including all members of the Sunrise Slate.
"Sunrise aims to make 2018 the year that no politician can seriously
claim to care about our generation's future and still take campaign
bribes from the executives, lobbyists, and front-groups who have
done everything in their power to block action to stop climate
change. A new generation of candidates is rising up to challenge the
status quo. If elected, these candidates will be unafraid to stand
up to fossil fuel CEOs and do what it takes to make climate change
an urgent political priority in this country," said Evan Weber,
Sunrise's National Political Director.
https://medium.com/sunrisemvmt/sunrise-movement-announces-first-round-of-endorsed-candidates-e3638d1a5e9b
*Sunrise Movment 2018 ENDORSED CANDIDATES
<https://www.sunrisemovement.org/2018-endorsed-candidates>*
https://www.sunrisemovement.org/2018-endorsed-candidates
- - - -
[Take the Pledge]
*Tell our Leaders: Take the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge
<http://nofossilfuelmoney.org/>*
It's past time for our politicians and political candidates to reject
support from the fossil fuel industry and protect the health of our
families, our climate, and our democracy.
*The Pledge*
*I pledge to not take contributions from the oil, gas, and coal
industry and instead prioritize the health of our families, climate,
and democracy over fossil fuel industry profits.*
Taking the pledge means that a politician or candidate's campaign will
adopt a policy to not knowingly accept any contributions over $200 from
the PACs, executives, or front groups of fossil fuel companies -
companies whose primary business is the extraction, processing,
distribution, or sale of oil, gas, or coal. We will provide a list of
these companies upon request.
http://nofossilfuelmoney.org/
[Consider the question]
*What Wildfires Do to Our Minds
<https://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/mental-health/what-wildfires-do-to-our-minds-20180807>*
A Northern California community offers mental health first-aid to
survivors of devastating fires.
It's late spring, and I'm hiking Sugarloaf Ridge State Park in Sonoma
County with therapist, ecopsychologist, and California naturalist Mary
Good...
- - - -
"It was an absolute trauma for everybody involved. The fire is over, but
the grief may last a long time," Good says. "We live in a time where
these natural disasters are going to be happening more and more. How do
you develop resilience? What do you do to feel like you can be safe in
the world again?"...
- - - -
"What we know is that three months to a year after a disaster is when
the most need happens; that's why we want to keep this going," Pope
says. "I think it's going to be quite a while until this community finds
its way out of this initial stage of shock."...
- - - -
Throughout Sonoma County, other support networks have surfaced,
including free trauma-informed yoga classes, support groups through
hospice organizations, brown-bag lunch discussions, presentations on how
to recognize and support loved ones with post-traumatic stress disorder,
and holistic health care providers offering free services. But as the
land regenerates and homes are rebuilt, the traumatic memories and
uncertainty of being unhoused remain painful realities for many...
- - - -
Back at Sugarloaf Ridge, Good says that community training and planning
before disaster strikes is a must as communities look toward adapting to
the new normal of climate catastrophes. She says that connecting with
nature, even after a disaster of this scale, is critical, recounting
stories of fire survivors regaining hope when the scorched land showed
signs of regrowth. Yet she acknowledges that survivors face long roads
to recovery.
"Putting an entire life back together-it just stops people in their
tracks," Good says. "Where do you even begin? How do you pick a point
and start?"
The light rain is letting up at the park, and Good is excited about
showing me a large bay tree that was badly damaged by The Nuns Fire. A
hole has been burned through its trunk, but there is new growth
sprouting around its blackened base, and leaves are springing out from
its branches.
"It's such an amazing example of how you can be burned through to your
core both literally and metaphorically, and even after being burned
through to the core, [the tree] still leafed out this spring," she says.
"It's a great example of individual and community regeneration."
https://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/mental-health/what-wildfires-do-to-our-minds-20180807
[Top Scientist spells it out]
*Climate change and wildfires-how do we know if there is a link?
<https://phys.org/news/2018-08-climate-wildfireshow-link.html>*
August 10, 2018 by Kevin Trenberth
Yet it seems the role of climate change is seldom mentioned in many or
even most news stories about the multitude of fires and heat waves. In
part this is because the issue of attribution is not usually clear. The
argument is that there have always been wildfires, and how can we
attribute any particular wildfire to climate change?
As a climate scientist, I can say this is the wrong framing of the
problem. Global warming does not cause wildfires. The proximate
cause is often human carelessness (cigarette butts, camp fires not
extinguished properly, etc.), or natural, from "dry lightning"
whereby a thunderstorm produces lightning but little rain. Rather,
global warming exacerbates the conditions and raises the risk of
wildfire.
Even so, there is huge complexity and variability from one fire to the
next, and hence the attribution can become complex. Instead, the way to
think about this is from the standpoint of basic science - in this case,
physics.
*Global warming is happening...*
The composition of the atmosphere is changing from human activities:
There has been over a 40 percent increase in carbon dioxide, mainly from
fossil fuel burning since the 1800s, and over half of the increase is
since 1985. Other heat-trapping gases (methane, nitrous oxide, etc.) are
also increasing in concentration in the atmosphere from human
activities. The rates are accelerating, not declining (as hoped for with
the Paris agreement).
*This leads to an energy imbalance for the planet.*
Heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere act as a blanket and inhibit the
infrared radiation - that is, heat from the Earth - from escaping back
into space to offset the continual radiation coming from the sun. As
these gases build up, more of this energy, mostly in the form of heat,
remains in our atmosphere. The energy raises the temperature of the
land, oceans and atmosphere, melts ice, thaws permafrost, and fuels the
water cycle through evaporation.
Moreover, we can estimate Earth's energy imbalance quite well: It
amounts to about 1 watt per square meter, or about 500 terawatts globally...
- - - --
*Tracking the Earth's energy imbalance*
The heat mostly accumulates ultimately in the ocean - over 90 percent.
This added heat means the ocean expands and sea level rises.
Heat also accumulates in melting ice, causing melting Arctic sea ice and
glacier losses in Greenland and Antarctica. This adds water to the
ocean, and so the sea level rises from this as well, rising at a rate of
over 3 milimeters year, or over a foot per century.
On land, the effects of the energy imbalance are complicated by water.
If water is present, the heat mainly goes into evaporation and drying,
and that feeds moisture into storms, which produce heavier rain. But the
effects do not accumulate provided that it rains on and off.
However, in a dry spell or drought, the heat accumulates. Firstly, it
dries things out, and then secondly it raises temperatures. Of course,
"it never rains in southern California" according to the 1970s pop song,
at least in the summer half year.
So water acts as the air conditioner of the planet. In the absence of
water, the excess heat effects accumulate on land both by drying
everything out and wilting plants, and by raising temperatures. In turn,
this leads to heat waves and increased risk of wildfire. These factors
apply in regions in the western U.S. and in regions with Mediterranean
climates. Indeed many of the recent wildfires have occurred not only in
the West in the United States, but also in Portugal, Spain, Greece, and
other parts of the Mediterranean.
The conditions can also develop in other parts of the world when strong
high pressure weather domes (anticyclones) stagnate, as can happen in
part by chance, or with increased odds in some weather patterns such as
those established by either La Nina or El Nino events (in different
places). It is expected that these dry spots move around from year to
year, but that their abundance increases over time, as is clearly happening.
- -- - - -
How big is the energy imbalance effect over land? Well, 1 Watt per
square meter over a month, if accumulated, is equivalent to 720 Watts
per square meter over one hour. 720 Watts is equivalent to full power in
a small microwave oven. One square meter is about 10 square feet. Hence,
after one month this is equivalent to: one microwave oven at full power
every square foot for six minutes. No wonder things catch on fire!
*Attribution science*
Coming back to the original question of wildfires and global warming,
this explains the argument: there is extra heat available from climate
change and the above indicates just how large it is.
In reality there is moisture in the soil, and plants have root systems
that tap soil moisture and delay the effects before they begin to wilt,
so that it typically takes over two months for the effects to be large
enough to fully set the stage for wildfires. On a day to day basis, the
effect is small enough to be lost in the normal weather variability. But
after a dry spell of over a month, the risk is noticeably higher. And of
course the global mean surface temperature is also going up.
"We can't attribute a single event to climate change" has been a mantra
of climate scientists for a long time. It has recently changed, however.
As in the wildfires example, there has been a realization that climate
scientists may be able to make useful statements by assuming that the
weather events themselves are relatively unaffected by climate change.
This is a good assumption.
Also, climate scientists cannot say that extreme events are due to
global warming, because that is a poorly posed question. However, we can
say it is highly likely that they would not have had such extreme
impacts without global warming. Indeed, all weather events are affected
by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer
and moister than it used to be.
In particular, by focusing on Earth's Energy Imbalance, new research is
expected to advance the understanding of what is happening, and why, and
what it implies for the future.
https://phys.org/news/2018-08-climate-wildfireshow-link.html
[policy proposal]
*The Need for Carbon Removal
<https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/07/carbon-removal-geoengineering-global-warming>*
BY HOLLY JEAN BUCK
Too much global warming is already locked in. We need a radically
utopian way of removing carbon from the atmosphere.
Massive removal of carbon from the atmosphere - also known as negative
emissions, carbon drawdown, or regeneration - could be a cornerstone of
either dystopian or radically utopian futures...
- - - -
But given what we know about climate change in 2018, it's not enough to
protest against dystopian versions of carbon removal. Too much warming
is already locked in. We need a radically utopian way of removing carbon.
If we buy into thinking of carbon removal technologies as substitutes
for reducing carbon output, then industrial interests have already won:
they have set the narrative and the framing, where carbon capture exists
so that they can continue to emit. But we should demand more from these
technologies.
Industrial carbon capture technologies could instead be used as an
extension of decarbonization - mitigation to get us to zero, and carbon
removal going a step further to take emissions negative and address some
of the climate impacts already being felt.
It won't be easy. But climate science suggests it's a challenge the Left
must take up...
- - - -
What about achieving a slightly less ambitious goal of 2C? Two and 1.5
degrees might not sound all that different, but they are. The difference
is one that threatens entire unique coral ecosystems, the homes of five
million people (including entire countries), and high increases in the
frequencies of extreme events.
Rapid mitigation could still curb warming to 2C without the use of
negative emissions technologies. But that window is closing fast. If
near-term emissions reductions follow the trajectory laid out in the
commitments nations made under the Paris agreement, by 2030, 2C
scenarios will also depend upon negative emissions...
- - - - -
Negative emissions help maintain the narrative that although time is
running short, we can still stop catastrophic global warming if we act
now. Once we understand that this inventive arithmetic has been employed
to "solve" for 1.5, what do we do?
Assuming there will be a complete about-face that puts us on a course
towards 100 percent renewables, massive lifestyle changes, and drastic
land use change for afforesting millions of hectares in the tropics
within the next ten years strikes me as not only magical thinking, but
thinking that puts many at risk of great suffering...
- - - -
*1. Engage in regulatory processes that are happening right now.*
Right now, regulations are being drafted for how CCS will be treated in
climate policy. In California, regulators are currently considering
whether fuels produced with CCS for EOR will become part of California's
Low Carbon Fuel Standard - the strictest in the nation....
- - - -
*2. Carefully target the worst industrial offenders - while discussing
the problems of these stranded assets collectively and publicly.*
Behind discussions of carbon removal lurks a key question: what do we do
with fossil-fuel interests?...
- - - -
*3. Create our own narrative around carbon removal, and formulate demands.*
There are already NGOs, educators, and environmental and social justice
advocates working to change the narrative around climate change to one
of proactive action around drawdown, regeneration, and carbon removal.
They have different approaches, but a shared message is that it's
necessary and possible to reduce climate risk and make a better world by
removing carbon from the air...The demands need to be both very specific
and very broad. We are just at the beginning of public debate, but
demands could include public funding for research and development,
public ownership of carbon removal technologies and data, public sector
jobs in carbon removal, and more....
- - - -
*4. Work in solidarity with rural organizations and producers.*
A society dedicated to carbon removal at climate-significant scales
could be an opportunity for rural reinvigoration - or one for rural
oppression, dispossession, land grabs, and a continued transfer of
wealth out of the countryside, furthering inequality and environmental
injustice, in both the developed and developing world. In either case,
carbon removal should be seen as a rural economic development issue...
- - - -
*5. Redirect subsidies and investments towards carbon removal and
environmental justice.*
Changing the subsidies for fossil fuels are what people point out as the
first and most obvious step to decarbonization - the world currently
subsidizes fossil fuels at $500 billion per year, or $15 per ton of
carbon dioxide emissions. We should be paying for the damages instead of
subsidizing what's driving them. We should also be continuing the
pressure to divest in fossil fuels, while pointing out social investment
opportunities in carbon removal...
- - - - -
*A Moment of Opportunity*
This is the time for the Left to shape the agenda proactively rather
than reactively. We need decarbonization - and then more. Settling
for more warming when we have the capacity to lower carbon dioxide
concentrations amounts to rich-world complacency.
The longer we wait to engage, the more likely that a big tech
company will have built out the platform for carbon removal on its
own terms, not public ones; the more likely that policymakers will
have instituted a complex accounting scheme for "residual emissions"
that lets industrial corporations keep polluting while small farmers
are driven off their land so it can be forested to compensate.
Or - more likely - these high tech and high eco-modernist visions
will never materialize, and the world will simply warm, and species
and lives and islands and ice will be lost forever.
The establishment's ambiguity about CCS over the past few decades - the
reluctance of elites to actually build the clean-up infrastructure they
themselves suggest is possible, as they wait for the moment when they
are forced to - leaves an opening for citizens in fields, factories, and
labs to shape the development of these technologies. This is a moment
where we might be able to shape the platforms upon which they are
organized, where their benefits flow to, and who pays for it all. We can
start this work as an extension of decarbonization, right now.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/07/carbon-removal-geoengineering-global-warming
[Opinion]
*As panic about climate change sets in, I'm thinking about escape - to
Canada
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/10/climate-change-escape-canada-summer-heatwaves>*
Emma Brockes
The summer of heatwaves and forest fires leaves my friends feeling
helpless and a little hysterical. And who can blame us?
No one had any answers. One friend averred that, shabby as this line of
thinking is, one had to assume that when climate change posed an
imminent threat to national security, the entire US defence budget would
be ploughed into technology to reverse it, and we would be saved in the
nick of time.
This seems to me optimistic, like the disaster movie in which a
meteorite hurtling towards Earth is blown off course by a magic missile.
"Perhaps," I countered, "the answer is to raise our children to be
really likable, so they can talk their way on to the lifeboats?" (I'd
had half a gin and tonic, which is when I get my best ideas.)
Eventually, we came back to the question of Canada. (Or in the UK,
Scotland.) Assessments by climate scientists have suggested cities
around the Great Lakes are viable - and, until everyone else panics,
affordable!
Denver, for reasons I forget; the Pacific north-west, if you're willing
to take your chances with the earthquakes. Meanwhile, the property
investment implications of climate change seem, obscurely, to be part of
how we got here in the first place. Peter Thiel and his fellow
billionaires are, of course, developing survival strategies that include
the creation of manmade archipelagos in international waters. Whenever I
feel lassitude about long-term planning, I picture the future of
humanity in the form of Thiel, smug on his island, and am almost - but
not quite - irritated into action.
Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/10/climate-change-escape-canada-summer-heatwaves
[It's about time]
*YouTube Is Fighting Back Against Climate Misinformation
<https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zahrahirji/youtube-climate-change-denial>*
The company is trying to combat scientific misinformation on its
platform. Wikipedia has been helping the streaming platform describe
topics like global warming, the MMR vaccine, and UFOs.
By Zahra Hirji
YouTube is now adding fact checks to videos that question climate
change, BuzzFeed News has confirmed, as a part of its ongoing effort to
combat the rampant misinformation and conspiratorial fodder on its platform.
On July 9, the company added a blurb of text underneath some videos
about climate change, which provided a scientifically accurate
explainer. The text comes from the Wikipedia entry for global warming
and states that "multiple lines of scientific evidence show that the
climate system is warming."
This new feature follows YouTube's announcement in March that it would
place descriptions from Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica next to
videos on topics that spur conspiracy theories, such as the moon landing
and the Oklahoma City bombing. In doing the same for climate videos, the
company seems to be wading into more fraught and complex intellectual
territory.
"I'd guess that it will have some influence, at least on those people
who don't know much about the subject," Anthony Leiserowitz, director of
the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, told BuzzFeed News by
email. "Might be confusing to some people, but that's probably better
than just accepting the denier video at face value."
- - - - -
Google, which owns YouTube, has struggled to excise misinformation from
its platforms. In November 2017, it tried a feature that fact-checked
descriptions of newspapers and other items that appear in search results
but suspended it in January after some mistakes triggered complaints.
When the new Wikipedia blurb policy took effect in July, YouTube did not
publicly say that climate change was an impacted topic, and the company
did not notify users who had uploaded the affected videos.
The Heartland Institute, for example, a conservative think tank that
posts videos of its staff and others questioning climate change, told
BuzzFeed News that it noticed the change a few weeks ago and had not
been notified by YouTube. Spokesperson Jim Lakely declined to comment on
the policy or its impact. PragerU, a nonprofit online "university" that
made some of the other affected videos, says YouTube's policy shows its
political bias.
"Despite claiming to be a public forum and a platform open to all,
YouTube is clearly a left-wing organization," Craig Strazzeri, PragerU's
chief marketing officer, said by email. "This is just another mistake in
a long line of giant missteps that erodes America's trust in Big Tech,
much like what has already happened with the mainstream news media."
YouTuber Tony Heller, who also makes climate denial videos, described
the policy on Twitter as YouTube "putting propaganda at the bottom of
all climate videos." (He did not respond to a request for comment.)
It's not just misleading climate videos. The same climate blurb was
appended to dozens of videos explaining the evidence and impacts of
climate change...
- - - -
According to a BuzzFeed News review of dozens of videos, the label shows
up more consistently on videos with "global warming" and "climate
change" in the title than ones without.
On a series of misleading climate videos posted by the news site RT,
there is no note about climate change, but there is a Wikipedia
description about the publisher, saying: "RT is funded in whole or in
part by the Russian government."
Jason Reifler, a political science professor at the University of
Exeter, praised YouTube for starting to tackle the challenge of
misinformation but said he's skeptical of how effective the climate
change description will be.
"They could have chosen wording that's stronger and gets more to what
the real terms of debate are between the extremely well-supported
consensus scientific video versus the much, much smaller proportion of
skeptics," Reifler told BuzzFeed News.
"I'm doubtful this first step is going to do much," he added. "But I
hope it does!"
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zahrahirji/youtube-climate-change-denial
[NPR]
*Wildfire Reports Ignite Debate Over Climate Change Coverage
<https://www.npr.org/sections/ombudsman/2018/08/09/637058731/wildfire-reports-ignite-debate-over-climate-change-coverage>*
August 9, 2018
NPR has reported in-depth repeatedly in its current fire coverage,
including in this story talking to scientists and this one, in an
interview with California Gov. Jerry Brown, and in a piece examining why
today's fires are hotter and more destructive. On Point (which is
distributed by NPR, although not produced by it) devoted an hour to the
topic. In short, there is no hint that NPR is avoiding the story of
climate change.
And there is more coverage to come. NPR next week will start rolling out
newsmagazine, newscast and digital stories on the theme of "living with
fire," looking at everything from the effects of long-term smoke
exposure to what a "good fire" looks like from the point of view of fire
ecologists.
Western Bureau Chief and Senior Editor Jason DeRose, who is coordinating
the stories, said some, but probably not all, will discuss the role of
climate change. But, he said, when NPR's fire coverage is looked at in
its totality, "It's very clear that we are reporting on this in the
context of climate change."
Finally, I'll give Brumfiel the opportunity for a plug. He and Jennifer
Ludden - who leads NPR's energy and environment team that works in
collaboration with member stations - have developed a strategic approach
for climate change coverage, tackling stories that are not as
attention-grabbing as a fire or hurricane, but just as important.
The series, called "Heat
<https://www.npr.org/series/629393286/heat-coping-with-a-warming-world>,"
has been running through the summer; all of the reporting can be found
here. It includes reports on how heat is affecting Michigan apple
growers and throwing Colorado ecosystems out of whack, and how Maryland
farmers are losing land to rising sea levels.
Brumfiel said: "We're trying to really tell the stories on the ground
that are happening to Americans right now. And often those stories
aren't natural disasters. It is stuff that is happening on a smaller
scale every day; local disasters, I guess you could call them, that are
really changing America. Climate is changing all sorts of different
aspects of our lives."
Meanwhile, we'll update this column if the newsroom comes to a decision
on language about climate change that would work for more news stories.
https://www.npr.org/sections/ombudsman/2018/08/09/637058731/wildfire-reports-ignite-debate-over-climate-change-coverage
- - - - -
[audio]
*heat: coping with a warming world
<https://www.npr.org/series/629393286/heat-coping-with-a-warming-world>
*https://www.npr.org/series/629393286/heat-coping-with-a-warming-world
*This Day in Climate History - August 11, 2017
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/us/politics/scott-pruitt-epa.html?mwrsm=Email>
- from D.R. Tucker*
August 11, 2017: The New York Times reports on the machinations and
secrecy of EPA head Scott Pruitt.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/us/politics/scott-pruitt-epa.html?mwrsm=Email
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