[TheClimate.Vote] August 29, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Wed Aug 29 10:13:02 EDT 2018
/August 29, 2018/
[live radio]
*French environment minister quits live on radio, saying he was 'alone'
on green issues in Macron's government
<https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/28/frances-star-environment-minister-quits-saying-alone-green-issues/>*
President Emmanuel Macron suffered a major political blow Tuesday as his
popular environment minister resigned live on radio - without informing
the French leader beforehand.
Nicolas Hulot, one of the most respected members of the cabinet among
the French public, took even his interviewers by surprise on the France
Inter radio station when announcing his move.
"I am taking the decision to leave the government," Hulot said, adding
that he felt "all alone" on environmental issues within the government.
The 62-year-old TV celebrity, who made his name as an environmental
campaigner, was lured into government last year by Macron, but has
repeatedly clashed with his cabinet colleagues over policy.
"We're taking little steps, and France is doing a lot more than other
countries, but are little steps enough?... the answer is no," he added.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/28/frances-star-environment-minister-quits-saying-alone-green-issues/
[California risk defined]
*California Climate Change Report Adds to Evidence as State Pushes Back
on Trump
<https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27082018/california-climate-change-assessment-evidence-global-warming-science-risks-policy-clean-energy>*
The assessment warns of increasing wildfires, worsening droughts and
more severe coastal flooding. State lawmakers are looking for solutions
in renewable energy.
Phil McKenna
BY PHIL MCKENNA
California published a comprehensive assessment Monday of the risks
global warming is creating for the state, providing a thick tome of
evidence advocates can now use to push climate legislation, pursue
litigation, and attempt to sway public opinion as they take on industry
and try to counter the Trump administration.
The climate change assessment by the world's 5th largest economy relied
on dozens of peer-reviewed reports that detail the effects climate
change is having today and what to expect in the future, including
extreme wildfires, droughts, heat waves and floods that are projected to
occur with increasing frequency and severity.
"In California, facts and science still matter," Gov. Jerry Brown said.
"These findings are profoundly serious and will continue to guide us as
we confront the apocalyptic threat of irreversible climate change."...
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27082018/california-climate-change-assessment-evidence-global-warming-science-risks-policy-clean-energy
- - - --
[announcement]
*CALIFORNIA'S FOURTH CLIMATE CHANGE ASSESSMENT
<http://www.climateassessment.ca.gov/>*
http://www.climateassessment.ca.gov/
- - -
[be sure to see the tools section]
http://www.climateassessment.ca.gov/tools/
- - - - -
[press summaries from Climate Nexus]
*A Hot, Dry, Burning, Eroding, 'Apocalyptic' Sunshine State: *Climate
change will create a devastating new normal in California of intense
heatwaves and destructive fires if nothing is done to curb emissions, a
new state report finds. California's fourth-annual Climate Change
Assessment
<https://climatenexus.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=b3586667aa&e=95b355344d> finds
that*large fires like this summer's record-breaking Mendocino Complex
and Carr fires will increase 50 percent by 2100 and burn 77 percent more
land under a business-as-usual emissions scenario.* The report also
finds 31 to 67 percent of beaches could erode by 2100, deaths from heat
waves in cities could double or triple by 2050, and water supply from
snowpack could decline by two-thirds by 2050. "These findings are
profoundly serious and will continue to guide us as we confront the
apocalyptic threat of irreversible climate change," Gov. Jerry Brown
said in a statement. (LA Times
<https://climatenexus.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=3f5fd6d47f&e=95b355344d>
$, SF Chronicle
<https://climatenexus.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=e7c6729de3&e=95b355344d> $,
The Guardian
<https://climatenexus.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=7c09ad180f&e=95b355344d>,
InsideClimate News
<https://climatenexus.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=7e315e3ac7&e=95b355344d>,
Fortune
<https://climatenexus.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=39249a8be2&e=95b355344d>)
from Shravya Jain at https://climatenexus.org/
[Climate Liability News]
*Hawaii Begins to Tally Costs, Contemplate a Future of Extreme Rainfall
<https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2018/08/28/hawaii-climate-costs-hurricane-lane/>*
As Hawaii begins to clean up and assess the damage from Hurricane Lane,
which dumped more than 40 inches of rain on the islands to become one of
the wettest storms in U.S. history, the state is wrestling with what may
be its new, wetter reality. The deluge was Hawaii’s second devastating
rain event this year as the state absorbed 49 inches from an extreme
downpour in early May.
Climate scientists have predicted that climate change would make
hurricanes wetter-because a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture and
warmer oceans provide more energy for storms-and the events of the past
year have brought significant evidence to support that. Last August,
Hurricane Harvey inundated the Houston area with more than 60 inches of
rain, the most rain ever recorded from a tropical storm system in the
U.S. Studies have already shown that Harvey’s rainfall was more than
triple what it would have been without global warming.
*Penn State scientist Michael Mann calls rising carbon dioxide levels in
the atmosphere "steroids for the storms."*
In what could be worse news for Hawaii, a recent study showed warming
waters in the Pacific could double the tropical storm activity around
that area by 2100 if global warming continues toward 2 degrees C over
pre-industrial times. The state has been directly hit by only three
major hurricanes since 1871, although one of them-Hilo, which dumped 52
inches of rain on the state in 1950-is the second wettest in U.S.
history after Harvey...
https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2018/08/28/hawaii-climate-costs-hurricane-lane/
*
*[technology turns to dust and smoke]
*This NASA image shows how California's wildfires are affecting the
atmosphere
<https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/28/nasa-visualization-shows-california-wildfires.html>*
As wildfires continue to burn in California, NASA has released a
visualization that illustrates one of the ways in which the fires are
affecting the atmosphere.
NASA's Earth Observatory, the arm of the space agency that shares with
the public images of the Earth and its climate, created the map
(embedded above, and below with captions) which shows aerosols in the
atmosphere. Aerosols are the solid particles and liquid droplets in the air.
animated video map https://t.co/wl9Py7DPFY
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/28/nasa-visualization-shows-california-wildfires.html
- - --
[visualizing particles globally]
*NASA data visualization
<https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/92654/just-another-day-on-aerosol-earth>*
Take a deep breath. Even if the air looks clear, it is nearly certain
that you will inhale millions of solid particles and liquid droplets.
These ubiquitous specks of matter are known as aerosols, and they can be
found in the air over oceans, deserts, mountains, forests, ice, and
every ecosystem in between.
If you have ever watched smoke billowing from a wildfire, ash erupting
from a volcano, or dust blowing in the wind, you have seen aerosols.
Satellites like Terra, Aqua, Aura, and Suomi NPP "see" them as well,
though they offer a completely different perspective from hundreds of
kilometers above Earth’s surface. A version of a NASA model called the
Goddard Earth Observing System Forward Processing (GEOS FP) offers a
similarly expansive view of the mishmash of particles that dance and
swirl through the atmosphere...
- - - - big image
https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/92000/92654/asia_geo5_2018235_lrg.png
Some of these inputs come from satellites; others come from data
collected by sensors on the ground. Fire radiative power data from the
Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors on Aqua
and Terra is one type of satellite data that was assimilated directly
into the model. This type of data includes information about the
location and intensity of fires-something that the model uses to help
calculate the behavior of black carbon plumes.
Some of the events that appear in the visualization were causing pretty
serious problems on the ground. On August 23, Hawaiians braced for
torrential rains and potentially serious floods and mudslides as
Hurricane Lane approached. Meanwhile, twin tropical cyclones-Soulik and
Cimaron-were on the verge of lashing South Korea and Japan. The smoke
plume over central Africa is a seasonal occurrence and mainly the
product of farmers lighting numerous small fires to maintain crop and
grazing lands. Most of the smoke over North America came from large
wildfires burning in Canada and the United States.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/92654/just-another-day-on-aerosol-earth
[Calif political wind shear]
*Sweating out a close race, GOP Rep. Mimi Walters ties wildfires to
climate change
<http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-walters-climate-20180824-story.html>*
By MICHAEL HILTZIK - AUG 24, 2018
The adage "All politics is local" often attributed to the late House
Speaker Tip O’Neill appears to be working its magic in the once-solidly
Republican Orange County district of Rep. Mimi Walters.
Walters is facing a stiff challenge in November from Democrat Katie
Porter, a UC Irvine law professor. So it may be no surprise that she’s
trimming her political sails to catch the prevailing winds. Most
recently, Walters signed on to an Aug. 22 letter from the congressional
climate solutions caucus observing that the western wildfires are being
"fueled by climate change" and inviting Gov. Jerry Brown to a meeting to
discuss policy options.
The assertion places Walters at odds with President Trump, who has
called climate change a "hoax" and blamed the fires on "bad
environmental laws," and with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who has
pointed the finger at "environmental terrorist groups" who interfere
with government forest management programs.
It also places Walters at odds with her own record on environmental
issues, which is one of the worst in Congress. As my colleague Evan
Halper observed this week, the League of Conservation Voters gives her a
lifetime score of 4% on legislative votes, and a 3% score for 2017.
That record probably won’t help Walters in November. Election
forecasters have moved her district from Republican-leaning to a
toss-up. Although GOP voters outnumber Democrats by nearly 8 percentage
points, the district went for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential
election. We’ve asked Walters’ Washington office to comment but haven’t
heard back.
District voters tend to be well-educated, which suggests that they don’t
hold much truck with climate change denialism. They also have close to
firsthand experience with wildfires. The Holy fire has been burning for
more than two weeks in remote parts of Orange and Riverside counties;
although authorities say the fire was triggered by arson, climate change
may play a role in its severity, as it has with other blazes during this
ferocious fire season in California...
- - - -
Last year, she was a co-sponsor of the "Stopping EPA Overreach Act,"
which stated that nothing in five major federal environmental laws,
including the Clean Air Act, the National Environmental Policy Act of
1969 and the Endangered Species Act, "authorizes or requires the
regulation of climate change or global warming."
Among her fellow co-sponsors were four other environmentally benighted
California GOP members of Congress. All had lifetime ratings from the
league as bad or worse than hers - Tom McClintock of Elk Grove (4%),
David Valadao of Hanford (4%), Devin Nunes of Tulare (3%), and Doug
LaMalfa of Richvale (1%). If Walters is really trying to distinguish
herself from the Republican Party’s appalling record on climate change,
she has a steep hill to climb.
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-walters-climate-20180824-story.html
[check the food supply]
*Scientists Warn the UN of Capitalism's Imminent Demise
<https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/43pek3/scientists-warn-the-un-of-capitalisms-imminent-demise>*
A climate change-fueled switch away from fossil fuels means the
worldwide economy will fundamentally need to change.
Capitalism as we know it is over. So suggests a new report commissioned
by a group of scientists appointed by the UN Secretary-General. The main
reason? We’re transitioning rapidly to a radically different global
economy, due to our increasingly unsustainable exploitation of the
planet’s environmental resources.
Climate change and species extinctions are accelerating even as
societies are experiencing rising inequality, unemployment, slow
economic growth, rising debt levels, and impotent governments. Contrary
to the way policymakers usually think about these problems, the new
report says that these are not really separate crises at all.
Rather, these crises are part of the same fundamental transition to a
new era characterized by inefficient fossil fuel production and the
escalating costs of climate change. Conventional capitalist economic
thinking can no longer explain, predict, or solve the workings of the
global economy in this new age, the paper says...
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/43pek3/scientists-warn-the-un-of-capitalisms-imminent-demise
- - - -
[The UN paper is]
*Global Sustainable Development Report 2019 drafted by the Group of
independent scientists
<https://bios.fi/bios-governance_of_economic_transition.pdf>*
GOVERNANCE OF ECONOMIC TRANSITION
We live in an era of turmoil and profound change in the energetic and
material underpinnings of
economies. The era of cheap energy is coming to an end (Murphy 2014,
Lambert et al. 2014, Hall et al.
2014, Hall et al. 2009, Hirsch et al. 2005). Because economies are for
the first time in human history
shifting to energy sources that are less energy efficient, production of
usable energy (exergy) will require
more, not less, effort on the part of societies to power both basic and
non-basic human activities. Sink
costs are also rising; economies have used up the capacity of planetary
ecosystems to handle the waste
generated by energy and material use. Climate change is the most
pronounced sink cost.
What will happen during the oncoming years and decades when we enter the
era of energy transition,
combined with emission cuts, and start to witness more severe effects of
climate change? That is the big
question. What kind of economic understanding and governance models do
we need, now that
economies are undergoing dramatic rather than incremental change?...
- - - -
In view of the challenges encountered today in implementing meaningful
international agreements, the
most likely option for initiating transitions to sustainability would be
for a group of progressive states to
take the lead. This would require economic thinking that enables large
public investment programs on the
one hand and strong regulation and environmental caps on the other. In
the modern global economy,
states are the only actors that have the legitimacy and capacity to fund
and organize large-scale
transitions.
https://bios.fi/bios-governance_of_economic_transition.pdf
[Wow! Actual sponsored content about global warming!]
*What Could Happen in a World That's 4 Degrees Warmer | WIRED Brand Lab
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__Kt_oU9iss>*
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__Kt_oU9iss>WIRED
Published on Aug 27, 2018
Produced by WIRED Brand Lab for Western Digital at
https://www.datamakespossible.com/
Comedian Aparna Nancherla explores how global warming and climate change
will directly affect our lives 100 years from now when the average
global temperature is projected to increase by 4 degrees Celsius, or 7.2
degrees Fahrenheit. Nancherla met with Professor of Atmospheric Science
at UC Berkeley, Inez Fung, and Chief Data Officer at Western Digital,
Janet George to to make predictions about how we’ll live in a 4C World.
https://www.datamakespossible.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__Kt_oU9iss
[NPR says]
*Air Pollution Exposure Harms Cognitive Performance, Study Finds
<https://www.npr.org/2018/08/27/642321572/scientists-link-air-pollution-exposure-to-cognitive-decline>*
"We can say that the bigger impact is toward the older adults," Chen added.
China Shuts Down Tens Of Thousands Of Factories In Unprecedented
Pollution Crackdown
The scientists found both short-term and cumulative effects of air
pollution on cognitive performance. Pollution's impact on verbal test
performance became worse as people aged, particularly among men and
people with less education.
People with lower education levels are likely to experience more harm,
Chen says, because they work outside more often and are exposed to
higher levels of pollution.
He says exposure to pollution could make elderly people less effective
in making major financial and medical decisions.
Could the link between cognitive decline and pollution be caused by a
another factor? Chen says the study tries to overcome that issue by
testing the same people over time.
https://www.npr.org/2018/08/27/642321572/scientists-link-air-pollution-exposure-to-cognitive-decline
- - - -
[huh, what's that?]
*Air pollution causes ‘huge’ reduction in intelligence, study reveals
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/27/air-pollution-causes-huge-reduction-in-intelligence-study-reveals>*
Impact of high levels of toxic air ‘is equivalent to having lost a year
of education’
Damian Carrington and Lily Kuo in Beijing
Mon 27 Aug 2018
Air pollution causes a "huge" reduction in intelligence, according to
new research, indicating that the damage to society of toxic air is far
deeper than the well-known impacts on physical health.
The research was conducted in China but is relevant across the world,
with 95% of the global population breathing unsafe air. It found that
high pollution levels led to significant drops in test scores in
language and arithmetic, with the average impact equivalent to having
lost a year of the person’s education.
"Polluted air can cause everyone to reduce their level of education by
one year, which is huge," said Xi Chen at Yale School of Public Health
in the US, a member of the research team. "But we know the effect is
worse for the elderly, especially those over 64, and for men, and for
those with low education. If we calculate [the loss] for those, it may
be a few years of education."
Previous research has found that air pollution harms cognitive
performance in students, but this is the first to examine people of all
ages and the difference between men and women.
The damage in intelligence was worst for those over 64 years old, with
serious consequences, said Chen: "We usually make the most critical
financial decisions in old age." Rebecca Daniels, from the UK public
health charity Medact, said: "This report’s findings are extremely
worrying."...
- - - -
Aarash Saleh, a registrar in respiratory medicine in the UK and part of
the Doctors Against Diesel campaign, said: "This study adds to the
concerning bank of evidence showing that exposure to air pollution can
worsen our cognitive function. Road traffic is the biggest contributor
to air pollution in residential areas and the government needs to act
urgently to remove heavily-polluting vehicles from our roads."
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/27/air-pollution-causes-huge-reduction-in-intelligence-study-reveals
[Opinion 3 years ago "World War III is well and truly underway. And we
are losing."]
*A World at War-We’re under attack from climate change-and our only hope
is to mobilize like we did in WWII.
<https://newrepublic.com/article/135684/declare-war-climate-change-mobilize-wwii>*
By BILL MCKIBBEN
In the North this summer, a devastating offensive is underway. Enemy
forces have seized huge swaths of territory; with each passing week,
another 22,000 square miles of Arctic ice disappears. Experts dispatched
to the battlefield in July saw little cause for hope, especially since
this siege is one of the oldest fronts in the war. "In 30 years, the
area has shrunk approximately by half," said a scientist who examined
the onslaught. "There doesn’t seem anything able to stop this."
In the Pacific this spring, the enemy staged a daring breakout across
thousands of miles of ocean, waging a full-scale assault on the region’s
coral reefs. In a matter of months, long stretches of formations like
the Great Barrier Reef-dating back past the start of human civilization
and visible from space-were reduced to white bone-yards.
Day after day, week after week, saboteurs behind our lines are
unleashing a series of brilliant and overwhelming attacks. In the past
few months alone, our foes have used a firestorm to force the total
evacuation of a city of 90,000 in Canada, drought to ravage crops to the
point where southern Africans are literally eating their seed corn, and
floods to threaten the priceless repository of art in the Louvre. The
enemy is even deploying biological weapons to spread psychological
terror: The Zika virus, loaded like a bomb into a growing army of
mosquitoes, has shrunk the heads of newborn babies across an entire
continent; panicked health ministers in seven countries are now urging
women not to get pregnant. And as in all conflicts, millions of refugees
are fleeing the horrors of war, their numbers swelling daily as they’re
forced to abandon their homes to escape famine and desolation and disease.
- - - -
In this war we’re in-the war that physics is fighting hard, and that we
aren’t-winning slowly is the same as losing....
Normally in wartime, defeatism is a great sin. Luckily, though, you
can’t give aid and comfort to carbon; it has no morale to boost. So we
can be totally honest. We’ve waited so long to fight back in this war
that total victory is impossible, and total defeat can’t be ruled out.
- - - -
In California, thousands of homes were threatened in a wildfire
described by the local fire chief as "one of the most devastating I’ve
ever seen." Suburban tracts looked like Dresden after the bombing.
Planes and helicopters buzzed overhead, dropping bright plumes of
chemical retardants; if the "Flight of the Valkyries" had been playing,
it could have been a scene from Apocalypse Now.
And in West Virginia, a "one in a thousand year" storm dropped historic
rain across the mountains, triggering record floods that killed dozens.
"You can see people in the second-story windows waiting to be
evacuated," one local official reported. A particularly dramatic video-a
kind of YouTube Guernica for our moment-showed a large house being
consumed by flames as it was swept down a rampaging river until it
crashed into a bridge. "Everybody lost everything," one dazed resident
said. "We never thought it would be this bad." A state trooper was even
more succinct. "It looks like a war zone," he said.
Because it is.
https://newrepublic.com/article/135684/declare-war-climate-change-mobilize-wwii
*This Day in Climate History - August 29, - from D.R. Tucker*
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