[TheClimate.Vote] August 16, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Thu Aug 16 09:44:36 EDT 2018
/August 16, 2018/
[USA Today]
*Smoke, carbon monoxide from California wildfires drifting all the way
to the East Coast
<https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/08/15/california-wildfires-smoke-carbon-monoxide-drifting-across-u-s/997014002/>*
What happens in California doesn't stay in California.
Smoke from the massive wildfires scorching the Golden State is drifting
across the USA and has been reported as far east as New England, NASA said.
In addition to ash and smoke, the fires release carbon monoxide into the
atmosphere, a dangerous pollutant that can persist in the air for about
a month and be transported great distances.
NASA said that in recent weeks, carbon monoxide has been reported high
in the atmosphere across the country; one branch is moving south toward
Texas and the other is forking to the Northeast.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/08/15/california-wildfires-smoke-carbon-monoxide-drifting-across-u-s/997014002/
- - -
[cough, cough]
*Air Pollution Progress Still Undermined by Western Wildfires
<http://www.climatecentral.org/news/report-air-pollution-progress-still-undermined-by-western-wildfires-21911>*
Research Report by Climate Central - August 2018
This report is part of "Breathing Fire," a series of research reports
and journalism features by Climate Central.
Download report PDF
<http://assets.climatecentral.org/pdfs/August2018_Report_BreathingFire.pdf>
*Summary*
In more than half of the states in the American West, the largest
wildfire on record for each state has occurred since 2000. Large
wildfires damage landscapes, property, infrastructure, and local
economies. They can claim lives directly, and cause or exacerbate
serious health problems by releasing significant quantities of air
pollutants, including the fine particles known as PM2.5 (particulate
matter smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter). These harmful effects
extend well beyond where the fire itself burns. Though climate
change is not the sole factor increasing the size and frequency of
western wildfires, it is an important contributor.
Climate Central previously analyzed trends in PM2.5 concentrations
for California's Central Valley between 2000 and 2016. This report
updates that analysis and extends it to three additional states -
Idaho, Oregon, and Washington - all of which are also plagued by
worsening wildfires in a warming world...
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/report-air-pollution-progress-still-undermined-by-western-wildfires-21911
*Will Washington State Voters Make History on Climate Change?
<https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/washington-state-carbon-tax/567523/>*
The state could be the first in the union to adopt a carbon price by ballot.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/washington-state-carbon-tax/567523/
[Liability News]
*Federal Judge: Employees Can Pursue Climate Fraud Suit Against Exxon
<https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2018/08/15/climate-fraud-suit-exxon-employees-ramirez/>*
By Karen Savage
A federal judge in Texas has ruled that a case brought against Exxon for
allegedly deceiving its employees about the risks of climate change will
continue.
U.S. District Court Judge Ed Kinkeade on Tuesday denied the oil giant's
attempt to stop the suit, Ramirez v. Exxon, that was filed last year. He
said the plaintiffs, led by the Pennsylvania Carpenters Pension Fund,
had established sufficient claims of securities fraud against the
company and several executives, including former chief executive Rex
Tillerson.
Alleging the value of their retirement accounts has been endangered,
employees filed the suit under the Employee Retirement Security Act
(ERISA), alleging that the company has fraudulently inflated its stock
and misrepresented what it knows about the risks of climate change.
Exxon did not immediately respond to a request for comment...
https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2018/08/15/climate-fraud-suit-exxon-employees-ramirez/
- - - -
[EU]
*Climate Case Gets Green Light from European Union Court
<https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2018/08/14/european-union-climate-case/>*
*By Dana Drugmand*
A lawsuit dubbed thePeople's Climate Case
<https://peoplesclimatecase.caneurope.org/>, which challenges the
European Union's 2030 emissions reduction target and other climate
policies, was given the green light by a court on Monday and is moving
forward.
The European General Courtaccepted the case
<https://peoplesclimatecase.caneurope.org/2018/08/peoples-climate-case-heads-to-proceed/>brought
by 10 families from Portugal, Germany, France, Italy, Romania, Kenya and
Fiji and a youth association in Sweden.The case was first filed in May
<https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2018/06/07/eu-climate-change-lawsuit/>,
but the court's acceptance means that the defendants, the European
Parliament and the Council of the European Union, have two months to
file their response.
The families contend that the EU's current target to reduce emissions -
40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 - is insufficient and fails to
protect their fundamental rights. They also demand that three regulatory
acts designed to implement that target be nullified as a more stringent
target is set.
"The EU's existing 2030 climate target is too low to protect people and
their fundamental rights,"said
<https://peoplesclimatecase.caneurope.org/2018/08/peoples-climate-case-heads-to-proceed/>Wendel
Trio, director of Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe, which is
supporting the plaintiffs. "We firmly believe that this court case will
prove that the climate target needs to be significantly raised to ensure
a safe future for all of us."
The case is modeled after the first successful lawsuit challenging a
government's climate target, theUrgenda case
<http://www.urgenda.nl/en/themas/climate-case/>in the Netherlands.
https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2018/08/14/european-union-climate-case/
- - - -
[List of major legal challenges in US]
*Fossil Fuels on Trial: Where the Major Climate Change Lawsuits Stand
Today
<https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04042018/climate-change-fossil-fuel-company-lawsuits-timeline-exxon-children-california-cities-attorney-general>*
Some of the biggest oil and gas companies are embroiled in legal
disputes with cities, states and children over the industry's role in
global warming.
David Hasemyer
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04042018/climate-change-fossil-fuel-company-lawsuits-timeline-exxon-children-california-cities-attorney-general
[New Zealand door closed. Where to next?]
*'Tenants on our own land': New Zealand bans sale of homes to foreign
buyers
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/15/tenants-on-our-own-land-new-zealand-bans-sale-of-homes-to-foreign-buyers>*
Law aims to boost housing affordability after prices in some areas rise
by over 75%
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/15/tenants-on-our-own-land-new-zealand-bans-sale-of-homes-to-foreign-buyers
[world politics]
*Brazil: Bolsonaro threatens to quit Paris climate deal
<http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/08/14/brazils-bolsonaro-threatens-quit-paris-climate-deal/>*
14/08/2018
De facto presidential frontrunner says he would follow Donald Trump out
of the international pact, drawing criticism from the UN's environment chief
In an unpredictable race, the right-wing Bolsonaro is polling second
behind Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the socialist former president. But
"Lula" is in jail for corruption and likely to be disqualified by the
courts, leaving a scattered field...
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/08/14/brazils-bolsonaro-threatens-quit-paris-climate-deal/
[Thom Hartmann Program - video: Joe Romm interview ]
*Just How Catastrophic Will Unchecked Climate Change Be? (w/Guest Dr.
Joe Romm) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQBBC3JB5WA>*
Thom Hartmann Program - Published on Aug 15, 2018 - video 11:45
We've all heard that Climate Change will produce catastrophic events,
but just how much damage are we talking? Dr. Joe Romm. Physicist and
Climate Expert, joins the program to discuss the rising ocean levels,
the unnaturally long draughts, and whether or not there is still time to
turn things around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQBBC3JB5WA
[Hothouse discussions]
*Groundhog day in the hothouse
<http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/makingsciencepublic/2018/08/11/groundhog-day-in-the-hothouse/>*
On 6 August Will Steffen and others published a paper entitled
"Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene". The paper
explores "the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth
System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent
stabilization of the climate at intermediate temperature rises and cause
continued warming on a 'Hothouse Earth' pathway even as human emissions
are reduced". This caused some stir, summarised to some extent by Ken
Rice here
<https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2018/08/08/hothouse-earth/>...
- - - - -
Maintaining a Goldilocks house
I won't analyse the mass of articles that have been published in 2018
following the recent use of the hothouse earth metaphor. I just want to
say: The earth is our 'house'. It can be an 'icehouse'; it can be a
'greenhouse'; it can be a 'hothouse'. At the moment we live in a still
relatively nice greenhouse of which Goldilocks would be proud, but a
greenhouse that's gradually overheating if we don't do something about
our own foolish actions that led to the greenhouse overheating in the
first place.
That's basically what the Will Steffen et al. paper tried to say, I
think. It should be stressed though that the authors wanted to point out
a "risk that needs studying, not something that is certain to happen"
(New Scientist). But we better make certain that we do both, study
what's going on and deal with the enhanced greenhouse effect that has
been our own doing, i.e. reduce emissions.
http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/makingsciencepublic/2018/08/11/groundhog-day-in-the-hothouse/
- - - -
[Physics discussions]
*"Hothouse" Earth?
<https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2018/08/08/hothouse-earth/>*
Posted on August 8, 2018...and Then There's Physics
This is actually the 1000th post on this blog. I haven't written them
all, but have written many more than I had ever expected to write. I
thought I might use this as an opportunity to write something about the
recent paper on [t]rajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene
that has been getting a lot of media coverage.
The basic point of the paper is that, as we warm, there are various
possible processes that could be triggered and that some of these might
start at around 2 degrees C...
- - - -
There may be some processes that, once triggered, will carry on
regardless of our emissions. However, I still think that our emissions
are likely to dominate the perturbation to the system and will,
therefore, mostly determine how much we warm. If we emit more, we'll
warm more. If we emit less, we'll warm less. So, yes, I think it is
quite likely that some of these processes could indeed amplify our
warming, but we can still influence how much we warm overall, by
limiting how much we emit. I realise that the paper isn't really
suggesting otherwise, but the framing does seem to imply that there
might be thresholds beyond which there would be little that we could do.
I think we can essentially always do something...
- - - -
Science always has uncertainties. We can estimate the relationship
between our emissions and how much we will warm, but we can't be
absolutely certain of this relationship. We might warm a little less
than we expect, and the consequences would be slightly less severe. We
might warm a little more than we expect, and the consequences would be
slightly more severe. However, as this "hothouse" paper highlights,
there are various processes, about which we're quite uncertain, that
could amplify our warming and make it much worse than we expect.*As far
as I'm aware, we don't know of any that could largely cancel our warming
and make things much better than we expect. The uncertainty is mostly on
the bad side*...
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2018/08/08/hothouse-earth/
- - - -
[Cascade or stabilize 15:00 video talk]
*Earth Climate System: Tipping Points to Hothouse?
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsm6hB2tyz8>*
Paul Beckwith
Published on Aug 15, 2018
I follow up on my previous video and discuss climate system tipping
points that are examined in the recent European paper that is on
possible Earth Trajectories to a Hothouse. These tipping points, if (or
when) crossed, will certainly mean that the Paris agreement threshold of
2 degrees Celsius will not likely be enough to stabilize climate. We
have to do so much more, starting off by immediately declaring a global
climate change emergency.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsm6hB2tyz8
[Now for some Comic Relief - from the Onion]
*Climate Researchers Warn Only Hope For Humanity Now Lies In Possibility
They Making All Of This Up
<https://www.theonion.com/climate-researchers-warn-only-hope-for-humanity-now-lie-1828171232>*
8/07/18
GENEVA-Saying the time to act has come and gone, a group of researchers
from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned Tuesday
that any hope for the future of humanity now hinges on the possibility
that scientists like themselves are simply making all of this up. "After
reviewing our climate models and projections of worldwide CO2 emissions,
we have come to the conclusion that the only scenario in which the human
race survives is if our thousands upon thousands of meticulous empirical
studies on climate change turn out to be something we've been lying
about all along," said climate scientist Philip Vanderwall, who stated
that unless the entire scientific community has spent the past 50 years
falsifying reams of data as part of a coordinated disinformation
campaign to sabotage the global economy, the world's low-lying coastal
regions are as good as done for. "The evidence indicates our planet
still might stand a chance of averting a complete climate catastrophe as
long as my colleagues and I belong to a cabal of charlatans who are
secretly paid huge sums of money to trick everyone into believing excess
greenhouse gases will precipitate record-breaking natural disasters and
worldwide famine. Otherwise, we're all doomed." On a personal note,
Vanderwall added that he hopes that one day, his grandchildren will
discover that he was involved in a massive, nefarious conspiracy
spanning every country on the face of the earth, because it is the only
thing that can possibly save them.
https://www.theonion.com/climate-researchers-warn-only-hope-for-humanity-now-lie-1828171232
*This Day in Climate History - August 16, 2013
<http://www.bradblog.com/?p=10284> - from D.R. Tucker*
August 16, 2013: The climate documentary "The Politics of Power" airs
for the first, last and only time on MSNBC.
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=10284
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