[TheClimate.Vote] December 11, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Tue Dec 11 09:10:51 EST 2018
/December 11, 2018/
[Audio 3:37 NPR brief overview on climate situation]
*Why Scientists Are Talking About Attribution Science And What It Is
<https://www.npr.org/2018/12/10/675382734/why-scientists-are-talking-about-attribution-science-and-what-it-is>*
December 10, 2018
Heard on All Things Considered
Christopher Joyce
As negotiators struggle to hammer out the rule book for a global climate
agreement, scientists meeting in Washington, D.C., have yet more
evidence linking climate change and extreme weather.
transcript:
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Government officials from around the world are gathered in Poland
now trying to hammer out a climate agreement. Meanwhile, in
Washington, D.C., climate scientists are meeting to discuss the
latest developments in their field. NPR's Christopher Joyce joins us
now to tell us why this gathering is also significant. Hi, Chris.
CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Hi, Ari.
SHAPIRO: Before we talk about the meeting in Washington, I want to
ask about the one in Poland, where I understand the U.S. delegation
has been causing a stir. Tell us what's been going on.
JOYCE: Yes, the delegation got people upset pretty quickly. What
they did was they refused to, quote, unquote, "welcome" a scientific
report that came out actually last October. The report said climate
is changing faster than anticipated, and the world is falling way
behind where it should be in reducing greenhouse gases. It was
pretty grim. And the U.S., along with Russia, Kuwait and Saudi
Arabia, said, no, we're not going to welcome that report - that
would endorse it - but we'll "note it," quote, unquote. The fact is,
Ari, I mean, the rest of the world certainly takes that scientific
report seriously. It's the consensus. And it's saying that there's
less time left to slow down global warming and that the weather
around the world is already getting worse because of a warmer climate.
SHAPIRO: And is that worsening weather, the extreme weather events
we've been seeing, also informing the deliberations in Poland right now?
JOYCE: Yes, it is, at least according to the people I talked to who
are on their way or went to Poland. They say it's the kind of hard
evidence of climate change that computer models predicted many years
ago - even as far back as 1990 - that a warmer world would be a
different one in terms of weather.
SHAPIRO: Let's also talk about this other meeting happening right
now in Washington, D.C., where scientists are talking about climate.
What's the focus of this meeting?
JOYCE: Yeah, I mean, it's related. It's the annual meeting of the
American Geophysical Union. It's sort of the working stiffs of
climate science coming up with their research. And they're talking
about something called attribution science. It's the leading edge of
climate science now. And attribution science asks the question, can
you tell when a big storm or heat wave is caused by or worsened by
climate change? Or is it just a normal variation? Is it so off the
charts that it could not of happened in a world before warming? And
today they issued a report that listed several events that they
believe were worsened by climate change. It was the second time
they've done that.
SHAPIRO: Any events we would recognize?
JOYCE: Well, it depends on where you live. In 2017, there was a deep
drought in northern plains of the U.S. - Montana, the Dakotas. It
was made worse by a warmer atmosphere - incredibly heavy rains in
Peru, a brutal heat wave in Southern Europe, bizarrely warm ocean
water off of Australia and several more. Some big events that we
might think of didn't make the cut. They weren't analyzed in time.
But the ones that were listed all enhanced - were enhanced by
climate change.
SHAPIRO: Chris, once we know that the global climate is changing,
what does it add to our knowledge when we can say that a specific
event was linked to climate change?
JOYCE: Well, plan differently - you know, people are beginning to
worry about legal liability, for example. I mean, if climate change
is affecting the weather - I talked to a lawyer, for example, who is
on this weather panel at the scientific meeting. You don't get
lawyers on these panels very often. And she said engineers and
architects and builders are starting to get worried. They're trying
to understand how the science can help them plan. If sea levels are
going to rise, and storms get stronger, you know, I need to know how
to build to keep my structure up for decades in the new world and
not get sued. So you know, the time is here when things like
building codes and engineering standards for roads and bridges are
going to have to change to anticipate a new weather world.
SHAPIRO: NPR's Christopher Joyce, thank you.
JOYCE: You're welcome.
https://www.npr.org/2018/12/10/675382734/why-scientists-are-talking-about-attribution-science-and-what-it-is
[explitives]
*That was awkward -- at world's biggest climate conference, U.S.
promotes fossil fuels
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/that-was-awkward--at-worlds-biggest-climate-conference-us-promotes-fossil-fuels/2018/12/10/aa8600c4-f8ae-11e8-8642-c9718a256cbd_story.html?utm_term=.9aa2d289e716>*
KATOWICE, Poland -- President Trump's top White House adviser on energy
and climate stood before the crowd of some 200 people on Monday and
tried to burnish the image of coal, the fossil fuel that powered the
industrial revolution -- and is now a major culprit behind the climate
crisis world leaders are meeting here to address.
"We strongly believe that no country should have to sacrifice economic
prosperity or energy security in pursuit of environmental
sustainability," said Wells Griffith, Trump's adviser...
- - -
"Alarmism," Griffith said, "should not silence realism."
But with many of the alarming pronouncements coming from scientists,
Griffith was pressed on whether the U.S. approach really reflected the
gravity of the moment.
One audience member asked whether the U.S. government accepted the
urgency embedded in the United Nations' recent report: "Do you believe
that we have 12 years to save the planet and civilization as we know it?"
Griffith declined to say
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/that-was-awkward--at-worlds-biggest-climate-conference-us-promotes-fossil-fuels/2018/12/10/aa8600c4-f8ae-11e8-8642-c9718a256cbd_story.html?utm_term=.9aa2d289e716
[CNN video Paradise, CA]
*Wildfire scientists brace for hotter, more flammable future as Paradise
lies in ashes*
Updated 1:01 PM ET, Mon December 10, 2018
https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/10/us/california-wildfires-climate-weir-wxc/index.html
**- -
***Wildfire scientists say Paradise is a warning*
CNN's Bill Weir explores the ashes of Paradise, California, and speaks
to wildfire scientists who have a bleak outlook on climate change.
Source: CNN
https://edition.cnn.com/videos/us/2018/12/10/paradise-california-wildfire-climate-change-weir-pkg-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/intl-from-the-us/
[Pacific Northwest drying out]
*So Far, Not So Good For Northwest's Winter Snowpack As Reservoirs Are
Already Low
<https://kuow.org/stories/so-far-not-so-good-for-northwest-s-winter-snowpack-as-reservoirs-are-already-low>*
Both Washington and Oregon's recent snow maps show large blotches of red
and orange -- meaning lack of snow. Washington has just 38 percent of
normal snowpack for this time of year.
https://kuow.org/stories/so-far-not-so-good-for-northwest-s-winter-snowpack-as-reservoirs-are-already-low
[Greenpeace, informational video 7 mins]
*How burning Forests melt Ice Sheets
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1VHoxf6Abs>*
Climate State
Published on Dec 10, 2018
Forest fires can melt glaciers thousands of miles away by changing the
colour of the ice - all thanks to a heavy little particle called black
carbon.
This strange story of smoke, dust and algae looks at the lesser-known
half of a positive feedback loop: not only does climate change make
fires bigger and badder, those fires are then fuelling climate change.
Release via Greenpeace Unearthed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgDBvQcJZyE
Video written, produced and narrated by Georgie Johnson
Animated and edited by Sian Butcher
Music and sound design by JPML.agency
Script edited by Emma Howard
Featuring Jessica McCarty and Alun Hubbard
Footage from Greenpeace, Getty, NASA
Special thanks to Greenpeace Global Mapping Hub, Dr Reyes Tirado, Ice
Alive and NASA Scientific Visualisation Studio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1VHoxf6Abs
[Excitement of science]
*THE RACE TO UNDERSTAND ANTARCTICA'S MOST TERRIFYING GLACIER
<https://www.wired.com/story/antarctica-thwaites-glacier-breaking-point/>*
Jon Gertner -12.10.18 SCIENCE
SCIENCE SEASON IN Antarctica begins in November, when noontime
temperatures at McMurdo Station climb to a balmy 18 degrees Fahrenheit
and the sun hangs in the sky all day and night. For a researcher
traveling there from the United States, the route takes time as well as
patience. The easiest way is to fly from Los Angeles to Christchurch,
New Zealand--a journey of 17 hours, if you're lucky--and then to
McMurdo, a charmless cluster of buildings that houses most of the
southern continent's thousand or so seasonal residents and both of its
ATMs. McMurdo isn't the end of the line, though. Often it's just a
pass-through for scientists hopping small planes to penguin colonies or
meteorological observatories farther afield.
- -
In 2014, Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at NASA, concluded that Thwaites
was entering a state of "unstoppable" collapse. Even worse, scientists
were starting to think that its demise could trigger a larger
catastrophe in West Antarctica, the way a rotting support beam might
lead to the toppling not only of a wall but of an entire house. Already,
Thwaites' losses were responsible for about 4 percent of global
sea-level rise every year. When the entire glacier went, the seas would
likely rise by a few feet; when the glaciers around it did, too, the
seas might rise by more than a dozen feet. And when that happened, well,
goodbye, Miami; goodbye, Boston.
No one could say exactly when Thwaites would go bad. But Anandakrishnan
and his colleagues now had an even keener sense of the perils that the
glacier posed. "We had been walking on the lip of a volcano without
knowing it," he says.
https://www.wired.com/story/antarctica-thwaites-glacier-breaking-point/
[International]
*'Yellow Vest' Protests Shake France. Here's the Lesson for Climate
Change.
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/world/europe/france-fuel-carbon-tax.html>*
France's suspension of a fuel tax increase after violent protests
signaled the perils that governments in wealthier countries may face in
setting policies to fight climate change.
- --
"So while President Macron has highlighted the need for funds to invest
in clean energy, that is not actually what was planned," Mr. Kammen said.
Politically, the backlash came from those who could least afford to give
up their cars -- small-town and suburban residents priced out of big
cities and unhappy with Mr. Macron on a host of other issues already. It
did not help that Mr. Macron had lowered taxes on the rich in one of his
earliest tax code changes.
"This situation illustrates how equity and fairness considerations have
to be built into the design of such policies," Alden Meyer, policy
director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said by email from the
United Nations climate talks.
What France's experience has made clear, analysts say, is that fuel
taxes work best as part of a more comprehensive plan that tries to
offset the disproportionate pain felt by lower-income workers who can
least afford the changes.
Mr. Picard, the pastry chef, for instance, earns 1,280 Euros a month, or
about $1,450, after payroll taxes. For him, the planned tax increase of
6 or 7 cents per liter of gas "is enormous," he said.
"Imagine how violent this tax is for those people who earn less than me
and who are not conscious of environmental needs," added Mr. Picard, who
lives in Woincourt, a village of 500 people.
- -
Camilla Born, who analyzes energy policy at the research and advocacy
group E3G, said that while Mr. Macron could be faulted for not putting
in place social measures that would allow French citizens to "ride out
the challenges of change," the price of inaction was ultimately far more
costly.
"The reason we need to take action," she said, "is because the social
and economic costs of climate impacts are far worse."
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/world/europe/france-fuel-carbon-tax.html
- --
[Times Pick comment <https://nyti.ms/2G3UgDx#permid=29661189>]
William
Atlanta Dec. 7
"If nothing else, the maelstrom in France showed that the political
challenge of how to create incentives for people to move away from
fossil fuels requires much more than raising a tax on gas at the pump or
subsidizing solar panels."
It's not the people's responsibility. It is the government and society's
responsibility to develop a new system based on clean energy. Once that
system is in place the people will follow.
https://nyti.ms/2G3UgDx#permid=29661189
[Greenland melt]
*Greenland's Ice Melt Is in 'Overdrive,' With No Sign of Slowing*
<https://insideclimatenews.org/news/05122018/greenland-ice-sheet-melting-tipping-points-sea-level-rise-climate-change-arctic-warming>
The ice sheet is adding more to sea level rise than any time in the last
three and a half centuries, new research suggests. Could it be nearing a
tipping point?
BY BOB BERWYN, INSIDECLIMATE NEWS
- -
More meltwater is running off Greenland's ice sheet now than at any time
in the last 350 years, and probably since long before that, going back
6,000 to 7,000 years, Trusel said.
As a result, Greenland is also adding more to sea level than at any time
over the past three and a half centuries, he said.
The findings support previous estimates that melting ice from all
sources will raise sea level between 8 and 12 inches more by 2050, but
what happens after that will still partly depend on future greenhouse
gas emissions and other factors, said co-author Sarah Das, who studies
ice and ancient climates at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution...
- -
In a related study published online Nov. 27 in the journal Polar
Science, Box and other researchers highlighted the widespread impacts of
Arctic global warming, showing that, even with big cuts to emissions,
the Arctic is expected to warm another 4 degrees Celsius from today by 2050.
That warming will also affect lower latitudes by thawing permafrost,
which releases more greenhouse gas emissions, causing further warming,
and by shifting ocean currents and storm tracks, all with "large
ecological and social impacts," Box and his co-authors wrote.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/05122018/greenland-ice-sheet-melting-tipping-points-sea-level-rise-climate-change-arctic-warming
[the South and global warming]
*What you know about the American south and climate change is wrong
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/06/climate-change-south-usa>*
Southern states are not a uniform swath of white, populist, anti-science
zealots. As climate is changing, so is the south - in this new column,
Megan Mayhew Bergman goes back home to find out more
Megan Mayhew Bergman
Thu 6 Dec 2018
There's a Welsh word - hiraeth - which refers to a "homesickness for a
home to which you cannot return, or a home which maybe never was".
This word evokes the way I feel about the American south. It's where I
grew up, a place I loved as a child and came into conflict with as a
teenager. Though I have a little observational distance now, the south
still feels like home in a bone-deep way.
- - -
I think of the Federal Writer's Project, when writers like Eudora Welty
and Zora Neale Hurston got out into the field and attempted to capture
the south in a time of profound struggle and change. Hurston wrote of
Florida in her proposal, "There is still an opportunity to observe the
wombs of folk culture still heavy with life." The American south is
again in a poignant moment, culturally heavy with life, with a force
stronger than the Great Depression beginning to shape it. I want to bear
witness to what's hanging in the balance, get real about the stakes.
One summer night, while out in the field in such a way, on the roof of a
shrimp boat in the middle of the Ogeechee river off the coast of
Georgia, I sat with a diverse group of southern artists and
conservationists and watched the moon rise over the salt marsh. We found
ourselves discussing conservation's race problem; the continued
glorification of plantation culture; the danger of anti-science
mentalities in schools; the language southerners use to avoid using the
politicized term "climate change".
That night, we told stories about the changes we're already seeing, and
the financial and spiritual impact on real people we know. We wondered
about the future of coastal real estate, the art that will rise from
this tense moment, and where the evangelicals are when it comes to
protecting Earth, or, as some say, the Creation.
These are conversations I've always wanted to have, questions I've
always wanted to ask. I'll continue to explore them in a column here,
with you.
One of the reasons I will forever be homesick for the landscape of the
south, in the vague sense of hiraeth, is that none of us can truly
return to the landscapes of our youth. We are no longer waiting for
climate change; it is well upon us. We are already in the process of
being shaped and displaced. We are bearing witness to a climate already
changed.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/06/climate-change-south-usa
[discovered financial losses]
*Energy Transfer, Banks Lost Billions by Ignoring Early Dakota Access
Pipeline Concerns*
<https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/12/03/dakota-access-pipeline-concerns-cost-energy-transfer-investors-billions>
By Sharon Kelly
Roughly four years ago, Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) filed a federal
application to build a 1,172 mile oil pipeline from North Dakota's
Bakken shale across the U.S. to Illinois at a projected cost of $3.8
billion.
Before that application was filed, on September 30, 2014, the Standing
Rock Sioux Tribe met with ETP to express concerns about the Dakota
Access pipeline (DAPL) and fears of water contamination. Though the
company, now known as Energy Transfer, had re-routed a river crossing to
protect the state capital of Bismarck against oil spills, it apparently
turned a deaf ear to the Tribe's objections.
Following that approach proved to be a very costly decision, a new
analysis concludes, with ETP, banks, and investors taking billions in
losses as a result.
"This case study estimates that the costs incurred by ETP and other
firms with ownership stake in DAPL for the entire project are not less
than $7.5 billion, but could be higher depending on the terms of
confidential contracts," a new report, "Social Cost and Material Loss:
The Dakota Access Pipeline," concludes, noting that represented nearly
double the initial project cost. "The banks that financed DAPL incurred
an additional $4.4 billion in costs in the form of account closures, not
including costs related to reputational damage."
In addition, the company's "poor social risk management" caused
taxpayers and "other local stakeholders" to incur at least $38 million
in costs, the report concludes.
Read more at
https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/12/03/dakota-access-pipeline-concerns-cost-energy-transfer-investors-billions
- -
[University of Colorado study tests how DAPL had material financial
impacts from the attendant social risks]
*SOCIAL COST AND MATERIAL LOSS: THE DAKOTA ACCESS PI**PELINE*
This paper can be downloaded without charge at:
https://www.colorado.edu/project/fpiep/
This paper can also be downloaded without charge at the Social Science
Research Network:
https://ssrn.com/abstract=3287216
[From earlier this year - global warming and Buddhism]
*Koans for Troubled Times
<https://www.lionsroar.com/koans-for-troubled-times/?mc_cid=651927711b&mc_eid=0f3d41a2e1>*
BY JOAN SUTHERLAND| APRIL 6, 2018
- -
The great poet Du Fu was trapped in Changan during the An Lushan
Rebellion, and he wrote a poem about it called “The View This Spring.”
The poem contains two spare lines that sum it all up:
The nation is destroyed,
mountains and rivers remain.
- -
Even a hermit sits in a web of connections with things visible and
invisible. Our meditation is made not just of the vastness and the deep
engine of concentration; it is also made of these relationships. And
then one day, for no apparent reason, something in particular comes to
fetch us: the cook coughs or the morning star rises, and we fall open. A
particular intimate meeting with a particular other opens us to an
intimate relationship with life itself.
Practice is about making us fetchable. It helps us to recognize what
gets in the way of our being fetched, and then it gives us a method to
deconstruct the obstacle. Most people find this difficult to do on their
own, and for Ma and Shitou, that's where the power of intimate meetings
comes in.
The earliest koans are records of Ma's encounters with his
students--encounters that could be mild, probing, or literally upending,
but are never about winning an argument or making someone feel stupid.
Over and over again--tirelessly, relentlessly--they are an invitation to
freedom. In a time of crisis, talking about freedom or even modeling a
free life wasn't enough; these intimate meetings allowed people to
experience freedom for themselves.
When Shitou was helping his questioners recognize and dismantle what
stood between them and freedom, he tended to ring variations on Are you
sure about that? His method was to take nothing for granted and to
question everything, especially someone's most cherished beliefs.
https://www.lionsroar.com/koans-for-troubled-times/?mc_cid=651927711b&mc_eid=0f3d41a2e1
*This Day in Climate History - December 11, 1985
<http://www.nytimes.com/1985/12/11/us/action-is-urged-to-avert-global-climate-shift.html>
- from D.R. Tucker*
December 11, 1985: The New York Times reports:
"A group of senators and scientists today called for national and
international action to avert a predicted warming of the earth's
climate resulting from a buildup of carbon dioxide and other
man-made gases in the atmosphere.
"They warned at a Senate hearing that such an effect, like that of a
greenhouse, would produce radical climate changes and a subsequent
rise in ocean levels that could have catastrophic results in the
next century unless steps were taken now to deal with the problem.
"Senator Albert Gore Jr., Democrat of Tennessee, said he would
introduce legislation to expand and focus scientific efforts on this
greenhouse effect.
"At a hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Toxic Substances and
Environmental Oversight, Mr. Gore said his bill would call for 'an
international year of scientific study of the greenhouse effect and
would request that the President take steps to begin this worldwide
cooperative investigation.'"
http://www.nytimes.com/1985/12/11/us/action-is-urged-to-avert-global-climate-shift.html
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