[TheClimate.Vote] August 13, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/August 13, 2018/

[confrontational anger - see video]
*Protester Confronts Zinke On Climate Change, He Snaps: 'You Haven't 
Served' 
<https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/protesters-rips-zinke-who-snaps-you-havent-served_us_5b6f819ce4b0bdd06209e0ed>*
"I'd like to see your child have to fight for energy," the Interior 
secretary at the conservative Freedom Conference.
By Mary Papenfuss
A protester at a Colorado right-wing conference challeged Interior 
Secretary Ryan Zinke over his failure to recognize the danger of climate 
change, and he inexplicably blasted her for not "serving."
It wasn't clear if Zinke meant serving in the government or the military.
The confrontation occurred Friday in Steamboat Springs at the Freedom 
Conference, which features "leading conservative thought and policy 
leaders."
Local protester Sallie Holmes stood up during a speech by Zinke, calling 
out: "Why won't you acknowledged that climate change is causing and 
accelerating wildfires, even in Routt County?"
Steamboat Springs is located in Routt County in western Colorado, where 
officials have been battling fires.
Holmes, 27, was immediately escorted out by security as the crowd booed. 
Zinke angrily shouted: "You know what? You haven't served and you don't 
understand what energy is. I'd like to see your child have to fight for 
energy."
Holmes added as she was being led out the door: "Our community is 
suffering because you will not acknowledge climate change."
Zinke appeared to be implying that Holmes had no standing to complain 
about the Trump administration's position on climate change because she 
hadn't "served," and he assumed she knew nothing about energy.
- - - -
She said she was stunned by Zinke's anger as he jabbed the air with his 
finger and angrily yelled at her.
She said it was her first time participating in such a protest. The 
ticket to get into the event cost her $382, she told HuffPost.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/protesters-rips-zinke-who-snaps-you-havent-served_us_5b6f819ce4b0bdd06209e0ed


[10 min video of wildfire news ]
Year of Wildfires 
<https://tamino.wordpress.com/2018/08/13/year-of-wildfires/#comment-102148>
Posted on August 13, 2018
As bad as it has been, it's going to get worse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5cDWh7PH4I


[Climate Grief]
*The Best Medicine for My Climate Grief 
<https://www.yesmagazine.org/mental-health/the-best-medicine-for-my-climate-grief-20180809>*
A climate scientist talks to a psychologist about coping with the 
crushing stress related to climate change. Here's what he learned.
Peter Kalmus [talking with Renee Lertzman] posted Aug 09, 2018
Sometimes a wave of climate grief breaks over me. It happens 
unexpectedly, perhaps during a book talk, or while on the phone with a 
congressional representative. In a millisecond, without warning, I'll 
feel my throat clench, my eyes sting, and my stomach drop as though the 
Earth below me is falling away. During these moments, I feel with 
excruciating clarity everything that we're losing-but also connection 
and love for those things.

Usually I don't mind the grief. It's clarifying. It makes sense to me, 
and inspires me to work harder than ever. Occasionally, however, I feel 
something quite different, a paralyzing sense of anxiety. This climate 
dread can last for days, even weeks...
- - - - -
With so much at stake-our security and normalcy; the futures we'd 
envisioned for our children; our sense of progress and where we fit in 
the universe; beloved places, species, and ecosystems-the psychology is 
going to be complex. So I reached out to Renee Lertzman to gain insight 
into how we're coping with such huge impending losses. Lertzman is a 
psychologist studying the effects of environmental loss on mental health 
and the author of Environmental Melancholia: Psychoanalytic Dimensions 
of Engagement.
"There is overwhelming research that distress and anxiety relating to 
climate is on the rise," she told me. "Many people, I'd argue, are 
experiencing what I'd call a 'latent' form of climate anxiety or dread, 
in that they may not be talking about it much but they are feeling it."

If we're feeling these emotions or if we know others who are, it would 
be helpful to talk about them. "The main thing is that we find ways to 
talk about what we are experiencing in a safe and nonjudgmental context, 
and to be open to listening. All too often, when anxiety or fear comes 
up, we all want to push it away and move into 'solutions.'"
- - - -
Finally, I actively work to be hope-oriented. In the film Melancholia, 
about a mysterious planet on a collision course with Earth, the 
protagonist passively accepts, even embraces, apocalypse. Nothing can 
stop it; ecological annihilation is inevitable.

Modern climate change is completely different: It's 100 percent 
human-caused, so it's 100 percent human-solvable. If humans pulled 
together as if our lives depended on it, we could leave fossil fuel in a 
matter of years. This would require radical change across global 
society, and I'm not suggesting it will happen. But it could, and this 
possibility leaves open a middle path, something between sweeping 
climate action and an unavoidable planetary collision-a rapid cultural 
shift, one that we all can contribute to through our conversations and 
our daily actions. And that's a very hopeful thing.

If you're having suicidal thoughts, or know someone who is, call the 
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK).
https://www.yesmagazine.org/mental-health/the-best-medicine-for-my-climate-grief-20180809


PUBLIC HEALTH
*In Parts Of California Blanketed With Wildfire Smoke, Breathing Is 'A 
Chore' 
<https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/08/10/637704465/in-parts-of-california-blanketed-with-wildfire-smoke-breathing-is-a-chore>*
- - - - -
Lisa Suennen, 52, who lives in Marin County, about 100 miles from the 
Mendocino fire, has gone to the doctor three times in recent weeks 
because of lingering respiratory issues. She says her problem started as 
a cold, but as the air got worse, she developed bronchitis and her 
asthma flared up.
"My lungs do not feel healthy right now," she says. "It is just not 
natural to breathe."
Air quality experts and physicians say more fires are bound to occur, 
and people with health issues need to have a plan for the bad air days, 
such as keeping extra medications on hand.
For people who do need to go outside in the smoke, air quality experts 
recommend wearing a specialized mask that protects from fine particulate 
matter. Cheap paper dust masks from the hardware store won't cut it, 
says Kobza, of the local air district
"People have a false sense of security," she says. "If it's small enough 
to get into the bloodstream, it's small enough to get through paper."
An N95 respirator can filter out 95 percent of smoke particles, if it's 
fitted properly and dirty air doesn't leak around the sides, as NPR 
reported last year.
"This isn't the first fire season California has had and it won't be the 
last," says Patrick Chandler, spokesman for the South Coast Air Quality 
Management District. "You can't really tough this out...
- - - -
Some people are wearing masks even in their cars. Dobrosky, of Riverside 
County, says she recently ordered a pack of specialized masks from 
Amazon after running out during last year's blazes. After those fires, 
she also bought a treadmill so that she could exercise inside. Even so, 
Dobrosky says, her lungs are sore.
"Breathing" she says, "has become a chore."
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/08/10/637704465/in-parts-of-california-blanketed-with-wildfire-smoke-breathing-is-a-chore


[Video Paul Beckwith discusses the Hothouse paper]
*Earth Climate System: Terrible Trajectories to Hothouse 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dpEHWY0mRw>*
Paul Beckwith
Published on Aug 11, 2018 -  video 15 minutes
Ten years ago Timothy Lenton spearheaded a scientific paper examining 
expert assessments on the types and likelihoods of Tipping Elements in 
the Climate System. A number of top European climate scientists 
published an update a few days ago, to get a handle on the risk of 
cascading climate feedbacks propelling the Earth into a hothouse state. 
They suggest that we are on that path now, and have a decade or two to 
avoid the worst. I fear that we have already gone over that cliff, and I 
declare a global climate change emergency to claw back up the rock face 
to attempt to regain system stability, or face an untenable calamity of 
biblical proportions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dpEHWY0mRw


[Some reading]
*Read These 3 Books About Global Warming* 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/03/books/global-warming.html>
By Concepción de León - Aug. 3, 2018
This year has seen record-high temperatures around the world, including 
in Japan, where triple-digit temperatures killed at least 86 people 
since May and hospitalized more than 20,000 over one week in July. 
According to scientists, this is an upward trend, and 2018 may be one of 
the hottest years on record. Here are three books that predict how 
global warming may affect humanity and what we can still do...

    *SIX DEGREES Our Future on a Hotter Planet*
    By Mark Lynas
    336 pp. National Geographic. (2008)
    In this book, Lynas draws on scientific research on climate change
    to predict how the planet will be affected by each degree of
    temperature rise. The Earth's average global surface temperature has
    increased about 1 percent since 1880, and Lynas wrote that a 2
    degree rise would constitute a point of no return. After 3 degrees,
    Greenland's ice sheet would disappear, as would the Amazon, and
    deserts would begin to form across southern Africa and the American
    Midwest. Once we've reached 6 degrees, which is projected to happen
    by the end of the 21st century, most life on Earth would be
    eliminated, too.
    Image
    - - -
    *DRAWDOWN The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse
    Global Warming*
    Edited by Paul Hawken
    256 pp. Penguin Books. (2017)
    This New York Times best seller gathers leading scientists and
    policymakers to present the 100 most effective solutions to global
    warming, which they argue would roll back global greenhouse gas
    emissions within thirty years. The solutions are modeled in the
    book, showing their cost and potential carbon impact through 2050.
    Items on the list are ranked based on the potential amount of
    greenhouse gases they can avoid or remove, and though some are
    directly tied to emissions - moderating use of air-conditioners and
    refrigerators, for instance, is number one - sociocultural shifts
    like adopting a plant-rich diet or family planning are also ranked
    highly.
    Image
    - - -
    *THE CARBON DIARIES 2015*
    By Saci Lloyd
    384 pp. Holiday House. (2009)
    This young adult novel is told in short diary entries, narrated by a
    16-year-old girl named Laura who lives in Britain, which has become
    the first country to implement a carbon rationing plan. Residents
    receive carbon debit cards, and Laura manages this new
    responsibility and London's rapidly changing environment (think:
    drought, riots and disease), all while juggling school, trying to
    get the attention of her crush, Ravi, and playing in a band. It
    offers a teenager's perspective on a collapsing world.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/03/books/global-warming.html


[fiction reaches too deep]
*Trump's Immigrant Crackdown Is Worse Than What Climate Dystopian 
Novelists Imagined 
<https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-immigrant-climate-dystopian-novels_us_5b69f83de4b0fd5c73de6f82>*
The "cli-fi" genre is whiter than reality, and the Trump 
administration's policies are more punitive.
By Alexander C. Kaufman
Three years ago, Claire Vaye Watkins published Gold Fame Citrus, a novel 
that envisions a dystopian Southern California parched by extreme 
drought and smothered by paranormally fast-moving sand dunes that 
rapidly transform the region into a new Dust Bowl.
Watkins' novel vividly depicts the tribulations of millions of displaced 
people, but it already feels quaint to her.
It was only in one brief chapter, exactly three-quarters of the way into 
the 354-page book, that she dwelled on the fate of Latino immigrants in 
this dark, resource-strapped future. One of the main characters finds 
himself locked up in a secret prison located in an old desert mine, 
where he meets "los detenidos fantasmas" - ghost detainees, some of whom 
have spent their entire lives behind bars.

It's only then that the narrator recalls that counts of evacuees from 
the desertified zone found a 31 percent drop in the number of Latinos in 
California before and after the evacuation. State officials said migrant 
farm workers had "self-deported" to their countries of origin when the 
drought hit - but at that moment, it becomes clear they were disappeared 
and incarcerated.

Now, seeing images of caged children, reading reports of authorities 
abusing imprisoned asylum-seekers and separating families at the border 
over the past few months, reality seems even crueler than the dystopia 
of her fiction, Watkins says.

"This seems like another level to me right now," she told HuffPost by 
phone. "I didn't seriously consider the possibility of these 
nightmarish, Holocaust-like events."
Around the world, there are 68.5 million people who have fled their 
homes; 40 million of those people have been displaced within their own 
country, according to the United Nations.
It's hard to know how many migrants are driven by environmental crises, 
as there is nearly no legal framework for designating climate change as 
the reason someone has been uprooted. But in many parts of the world, 
the links are clear.

Thousands of Puerto Ricans fled to Florida, New York and other mainland 
states after Hurricane Maria, the kind of Category 5 storm expected to 
become more frequent as the oceans warm. The seven-year civil war that 
scattered 5.6 million Syrian refugees from their home began with a 
historic drought, leading many to call it the "first climate war," 
despite some research claiming otherwise.
Surging sea levels, extreme storms and drought-diminished food and water 
resources are projected to displace more than 1 billion people globally 
by 2050, and 2 billion by 2100. The displacement will be particularly 
severe in tropical regions, where many of the roughly 20,000 to 40,000 
migrants who crossed the U.S. southern border each month in the past 
year came from, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection's 
statistics.

That's just a fraction of the 1 million to 1.6 million foreigners who 
illegally entered the country annually from the 1980s to the mid-2000s. 
But already, the Trump administration is pursuing the kind of ruthless 
border policies writers like Watkins thought would only come in response 
to massive waves of climate migrants. Reality has outstripped some of 
the gnarliest dystopias of a genre premised on the idea of casting the 
reader forward into a recognizable but still remote future.

"It's happening a lot sooner," Watkins said. "I never say when Gold Fame 
Citrus is, but I thought it would be ... not now."
I didn't seriously consider the possibility of these nightmarish, 
Holocaust-like events.
Claire Vaye Watkins
Even for writers of the bleakest climate fiction, it's difficult to 
extrapolate what a White House already willing to enact such draconian 
policies would do to millions of climate refugees. Omar El-Akkad, the 
Egyptian-Canadian author of American War, said he finished writing his 
debut novel just three weeks before Trump declared his candidacy for 
president.

The 352-page book chronicles a gory sequel to the Civil War in 2074, 
when a band of Southern states rebels against the federal government - 
which, with Washington, D.C., underwater, is based now in Cleveland - 
after the passage of a fossil fuel ban. The death tolls from suicide 
bombings, marauding militias and armed drones that slaughter civilians 
pale in comparison to the lethal plagues unleashed in biological attacks 
in the final chapters.

But the milieu of American War is a world ravaged by risen, acidified 
seas and sweltering heat waves - and a nation whose brutality is born of 
environmental strife.

"What's happening on the southern border in the United States right now, 
besides being an act of outright inhumanity and fascism, is a made-up 
response to a made-up problem," he said.
"The United States does not have an immigration crisis," El-Akkad added. 
"Jordan has an immigration crisis. Lebanon has an immigration crisis. 
The countries that have a million or so refugees from war-torn Syria 
have an immigration crisis."
Writing American War today would be impossible, the Portland, 
Oregon-based author said.

"Every day, I wake up in this country and I'm bombarded with a new and 
borderline-surreal scandal or moment of strangeness or cruelty that 
makes it incredibly difficult to write about this particular moment," 
said El-Akkad. "Right now, everything is just very, very loud, and very 
fast-moving."

He's not alone. Few books in the nascent "cli-fi" genre - the term first 
appeared in Google searches in 2009 and started becoming popular around 
2014 - deal directly with climate refugees and migrants, according to 
Amy Brady, who writes a column on climate fiction for the Chicago Review 
of Books. Part of the problem is that books about immigration tend to 
focus on the struggles of leaving one's home rather than the 
environmental catalyst for doing so.

"Immigration is such a large and multifaceted issue that once a novel 
starts addressing it, it becomes a novel about immigration," she said.

The genre is also dominated by white writers from rich, northern 
countries, who focus on how environmental catastrophe might affect 
things they care about. The fixations, Brady said, include: "What's it 
going to do to our capitalism? What's it going to do to our 
telecommunications systems?"

"That's a real blind spot when it comes to the genre as a whole," she said.
Watkins self-diagnosed that as a problem with Gold Fame Citrus: "The 
characters are privileged people."

El-Akkad agreed that the genre is dominated by white writers who don't 
often conceptualize the experience of the black and brown people who are 
most vulnerable to climate change.

"One of the things with climate change, in particular, is that the 
universality of the problem might give some authors the thought that it 
could be represented outside issues of race, gender or ethnicity," he 
said. "But we don't supersede these issues - every issue in the United 
States is tangled up with issues of race and gender and those forms of 
discrimination. Climate change isn't going to be any different."

Every issue in the United States is tangled up with issues of race and 
gender and those forms of discrimination. Climate change isn't going to 
be any different.
Omar El-Akkad
Kim Stanley Robinson, the godfather of the cli-fi genre, takes a more 
optimistic view. His acclaimed 2017 novel New York 2140 depicts life in 
a flooded, Venice-like metropolis where New Yorkers traverse Lower 
Manhattan by nautical hovercraft and skybridges, Central Park is a 
refugee camp and the Upper East Side is home to Dubai-like megatowers. 
But even as American capitalism prevails, with Wall Street honchos 
trading on tide-based derivatives, the peons of that system ultimately 
revolt, propelling a revolutionary plot Robinson describes as utopian.

Smaller countries with strong ethnocultural identities may turn away 
climate refugees with violence, he said. "Think about Hungary," he said. 
"There's only 5 million Hungarians that speak that language and have 
that culture. If they took on more than a couple million refugees, then 
they've got a situation where they can feel their entire culture and 
language are going to go away."
But the United States is an ethnic patchwork, constantly absorbing and 
adapting once-foreign cultures and customs, he said. The growing 
progressive movement in favor of open borders could make the country "so 
multicultural that it stays the place people can move when they're 
desperate."

Watkins, in the meantime, has turned her attention to writing a new 
novel about a utopia where borders don't exist.

"For some people, the idea of a border is so obvious," she said. "They 
can't think of what it would be like to not have ICE or not have a 
border at all."
Science fiction, she said, could help propel that conversation into 
reality.
"It sounds corny as fuck," she said. "But one thing novelists are good 
at is imagining."
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-immigrant-climate-dystopian-novels_us_5b69f83de4b0fd5c73de6f82


[possible isostatic rebound]
*Strongest-ever earthquake strikes Alaska's North Slope region 
<https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alaska-north-slope-strong-earthquake-today-2018-08-12/>*
KAVIK RIVER CAMP, Alaska -- Alaska's North Slope was hit Sunday by the 
most powerful earthquake ever recorded in the region, the state's 
seismologist said. At 6:58 a.m. Sunday, the magnitude 6.4 earthquake 
struck an area 42 miles east of Kavik River Camp and 343 miles northeast 
of Fairbanks, the state's second-biggest city. The agency says the 
earthquake had a depth of about 6 miles.
State seismologist Mike West told the Anchorage Daily News that the 
quake was the biggest recorded in the North Slope by a substantial 
amount. "This is a very significant event that will take us some time to 
understand," he told the Daily News.
The previous most powerful quake in the North Slope was in 1995 at 
magnitude 5.2, West told the newspaper.
The jump from a 5.2 to Sunday's 6.4 is significant because earthquakes 
rapidly grow in strength as magnitude rises, he said.
"That's why at 6.4 this changes how we think about the region," West 
said. "It's a little early to say how, but it's safe to say this 
earthquake will cause a re-evaluation of the seismic potential of that 
area."
The magnitude 6.5 earthquake was felt by workers at the oil-production 
facilities in and around Prudhoe Bay, the News reported.
The newspaper says that Alyeska Pipeline said the earthquake did not 
damage the trans-Alaska pipeline.*The company says in a tweet that 
"there are no operational concerns" related to the earthquake, but the 
pipeline will be inspected.*
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alaska-north-slope-strong-earthquake-today-2018-08-12/
- - - -
[UAF Alaska Earthquake Center]
*Magnitude 6.4 - 52 miles SW of Kaktovik 
<https://earthquake.alaska.edu/event/20076877>*
https://earthquake.alaska.edu/event/20076877/release
- - - -
USGS most recent data
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/#%7B%22autoUpdate%22%3A%5B%22autoUpdate%22%5D%2C%22basemap%22%3A%22grayscale%22%2C%22feed%22%3A%221day_m25%22%2C%22listFormat%22%3A%22default%22%2C%22mapposition%22%3A%5B%5B68.54833327770818%2C-147.90344238281247%5D%2C%5B70.49557354093136%2C-141.3885498046875%5D%5D%2C%22overlays%22%3A%5B%22plates%22%5D%2C%22restrictListToMap%22%3A%5B%22restrictListToMap%22%5D%2C%22search%22%3Anull%2C%22sort%22%3A%22newest%22%2C%22timezone%22%3A%22utc%22%2C%22viewModes%22%3A%5B%22list%22%2C%22map%22%5D%2C%22event%22%3Anull%7D


[angry humor short 1:50 video]
Jimmy Kimmel Dumbs Down Climate Change So Even Donald Trump Can 
Understand It 
<https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jimmy-kimmel-donald-trump-climate-change_us_5b6a7f3fe4b0de86f4a67e03>
Sinking golf courses and "fried chicken shortages Kentucky-wide."
video 
blob:https://www.huffingtonpost.com/98def31d-68df-464d-887e-73ba6c40bdd7
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jimmy-kimmel-donald-trump-climate-change_us_5b6a7f3fe4b0de86f4a67e03


*This Day in Climate History - August 13, 2014 
<http://www.msnbc.com/the-ed-show/watch/damaging-impact-of-severe-weather-317880899851#> 
- from D.R. Tucker*
August 13, 2014: On MSNBC's "The Ed Show," Jane Kleeb of Bold Nebraska 
discusses the recent onslaught of poisoned weather in the US.
http://www.msnbc.com/the-ed-show/watch/damaging-impact-of-severe-weather-317880899851# 



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