[TheClimate.Vote] December 28, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Fri Dec 28 10:57:11 EST 2018
/December 28, 2018/
[Fresh news, justice delay, while climate change does not]
*Appeals Court OKs Pre-Trial Appeal of Kids Climate Case, Siding With
Government*
By Karen Savage
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has granted a petition by the Trump
administration for a rare pre-trial appeal in the landmark
constitutional climate lawsuit, Juliana v. United States. The appeals
court agreed to the interlocutory appeal, which leaves the future
progress of the case unclear.
Generally, interlocutory appeals consider certain aspects of a case
while allowing other issues to proceed. The young plaintiffs in the
case, 21 young people from around the country, have asked District Court
Judge Ann Aiken to clarify how the case will move forward while the
Ninth Circuit considers its appeal. They argue that they should be
allowed to continue the discovery process and other pre-trial proceedings.
The Ninth Circuit's decision came as somewhat of a surprise because it
had denied repeated attempts by the government to short-circuit the case
before trial. A three-judge panel voted 2-1 to grant this request, while
denying other motions, including the government's fourth writ of
mandamus request. The writ of mandamus is even rarer than an
interlocutory appeal because it requires the higher court to decide the
lower court clearly abused its judicial power.
*But granting the interlocutory appeal still throws the case into
uncertainty.*
Julia Olson, co-counsel for the youth plaintiffs, disagreed with the
decision and said she was disappointed the trial would face further delays.
- -
Philip Gregory, co-counsel for the young plaintiffs, said the Ninth
Circuit majority failed to explain why an interlocutory appeal is warranted.
"As Judge Aiken observed, this case would be better served by further
factual development at trial," Gregory said.
"The overwhelming evidence is that plaintiffs will suffer substantial
harm from any further delay in resolving their claims. The more time
that passes before a remedy is in place will result in irrevocable harm
to plaintiffs and increased future litigation burdens."
https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2018/12/27/ninth-circuit-kids-climate-case-appeal/
[Time for justice]
*As Climate Lawsuits Grow Worldwide, Legal Strategies Evolve Too*
According to a report by the United Nations, 654 cases have been filed
in the United States as of March 2017, with more than 230 cases being
filed in all other countries combined. Outside of the United States, the
majority come from Australia, the United Kingdom and the European Union...
- - -
"Litigation can be really critical in building a movement. Even if it
doesn't succeed it can raise awareness," Margil said. "It is about the
evolution of the law."
https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2018/12/26/legal-strategy-climate-lawsuits/
[headline says it all]
*DAN RATHER ASKS TRUMP WHETHER IT'S MORE 'MARGINAL' TO BELIEVE IN SANTA
OR DENY CLIMATE CHANGE*
https://www.newsweek.com/dan-rather-mocks-donald-trump-christmas-call-climate-denial-1271385
[NYTimes Opinion]
*Trump Imperils the Planet*
Endangered species, climate change — the administration is taking the
country, and the world, backward.
By The Editorial Board
The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its editor and
the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed section.
- -
Two weeks ago, delegates met at a follow-up conference in Katowice,
Poland, to address procedural questions left unsettled in Paris,
including common accounting mechanisms and greater transparency in how
countries report their emissions. In this the delegates largely
succeeded, giving rise to the hope, as Brad Plumer put it in The Times,
that "new rules would help build a virtuous cycle of trust and
cooperation among countries, at a time when global politics seems
increasingly fractured."
But otherwise it was a hugely dispiriting event and a fitting coda to
one of the most discouraging years in recent memory for anyone who cares
about the health of the planet — a year marked by President Trump's
destructive, retrograde policies, by backsliding among big nations, by
fresh data showing that carbon dioxide emissions are still going up, by
ever more ominous signs (devastating wildfires and floods, frightening
scientific reports) of what a future of unchecked greenhouse gas
emissions is likely to bring.
The conference itself showcased the very fossil fuels that scientists
and most sentient people agree the world must rapidly wean itself from.
Poland's president, Andrzej Duda, set the tone by declaring he had no
intention of abandoning coal, which provides nearly four-fifths of
Poland's electricity. The United States and three other major oil
producers — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Russia — refused to endorse an
alarming report issued in October by the United Nations scientific panel
on climate change calling for swift reductions in fossil fuel use by
2030 to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, which it said
were approaching much faster than anyone had thought...
- -
The bottom line, according to the Global Carbon Project, is that after
three years in which emissions remained largely flat, global levels of
carbon dioxide increased by 1.6 percent in 2017 and are on pace to jump
by 2.7 percent this year. Some scientists have likened the increase in
emissions to a "speeding freight train." That has a lot to do with
economic growth. It also has a lot to do with not moving much faster to
less carbon-intensive ways of powering that growth. Or in Mr. Trump's
case, moving in the opposite direction.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/26/opinion/editorials/climate-change-environment-trump.html
[Important studies]
*The Next Climate Frontier: Predicting a Complex Domino Effect*
Scientific American
- - -
When Hurricane Harvey's record-busting rains drenched Texas in August
2017, they triggered a cascade of chaos. Widespread flooding turned
roads into rivers, impeding evacuations and access to emergency
services. Stormwater swept up pathogens from wastewater treatment plants
and toxins from Superfund sites, posing health threats. Phone and
internet services failed in some areas, and 300,000 people in Texas lost
power. Harvey also temporarily shut down a quarter of U.S. oil
production in the Gulf of Mexico, raising gas prices.
Such scenarios--climatic events causing impacts that can themselves
trigger still more chains of effects, like intersecting rows of toppling
dominoes--are a key focus of the fourth National Climate Assessment
(NCA), released by the U.S. federal government at the end of November.
For the first time, the 300 government, academic and nonprofit experts
who contribute to the report devoted an entire chapter to the
under-studied but critical interaction between climate change and what
are called complex systems.
The report emphasizes that scientists need to look not only at how
global warming is changing natural systems but also how those changes
will set off their own ripple effects through other areas--for example,
how the increasing threat of drought harms agriculture, which in turn
affects the economy and food availability. "Reality is complex. In a
changing climate, nothing is being affected all by itself," says
Katharine Mach, a senior research scientist at Stanford University and
one of the NCA authors. The complexity of these cascading effects means
they can often be hard--or even impossible--to understand or predict in
a meaningful way. But that is exactly what scientists are now trying to
figure out how to do.
SCRATCHING THE SURFACE
Researchers typically study systems in relative isolation, deliberately
overlooking convoluted interactions for the sake of scientific clarity.
For instance, they might study what roads a heavy rain will flood--but
not how a storm's damage to communications or emergency services might
interact with those road blockages, creating more knock-on effects. "You
might ask what's going on with, say, this one forest or this one
agricultural crop. You draw boundaries around your system, and you're
just looking inside the box of your study," Mach says. That turns out to
be a major weakness when scientists are trying to understand the
potential risks and myriad impacts of climate change.
Here is a simple example: If researchers want to see how climate change
will affect energy systems, they might simply model the effects of
rising temperatures and heat waves on electricity demand. This could
lead them to conclude that more power plants need to be built to keep up
with higher energy demands for cooling. But a study with such a singular
focus would overlook a critical pitfall: hotter temperatures also make
drought conditions more likely in some areas, meaning there is less
water to cool down power plants--and what water there is tends to be
warmer, making it less effective for cooling. This complex interaction,
which might typically be ignored, can significantly damage energy
production. That is exactly what happened in Texas and the Southeast
U.S. during recent droughts. Through such cases, "you realize that the
problem you actually need to solve in the real world is more complex
than the problem you thought you had," says NCA co-author Anthony
Janetos, director of the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range
Future at Boston University. "You could spend a lot of money fixing the
wrong thing."
It is easier to see the dynamics between all these environmental and
human systems in hindsight, because scientists can follow the threads of
various interactions that have already occurred. But it is much trickier
to anticipate them, making the task of helping communities prepare for
future climate impacts that much more difficult. Research in this arena
is growing, but "we've just begun to scratch the surface of
understanding these complexities," says Leon Clarke, a senior scientist
at the Joint Global Change Research Institute in Maryland and another
NCA author.
Some new studies are looking at issues such as how climate-induced
shocks to agriculture affect global markets, food prices and land use;
the relationship between flood risk and what flood protection measures
societies decide to take; how expanding reservoirs can actually worsen
water shortages during drought; and the link between rising temperatures
and violence.
One such study, still under review, looks at how Hurricane Harvey
affected Houston's road networks and, consequently, people's access to
emergency services during the storm. For this study researchers used
flood data and modeling to analyze whether people living in two
different neighborhoods had road access to fire stations and hospitals
at various times during the storm. They also looked at how much longer
it would take people to travel to those emergency services if their
normal routes were blocked, and whether one neighborhood--with a lower
average income--saw greater disruption to its road access. "That's the
chain of events that we wanted to highlight," says Avantika Gori, a
researcher of flood risk management at Princeton University. She hopes
such studies will give first responders better information about where
to devote their limited resources and will help city planners be
proactive about events like Hurricane Harvey. They could, for example,
improve evacuation plans for specific neighborhoods and give better
route information to emergency vehicles when a big storm hits.
MAKING CHOICES AMID COMPLEXITY
But experts note this type of research is incredibly challenging. It is
hard enough to model one system on its own, let alone connect it with a
series of others. Models needed to simulate various aspects of a problem
(such as rainfall or how roads flood) may work at completely different
time and spatial scales. Also, disparate data may need to be stitched
together from different sources. And in general, the more complex a
problem is, the more computer power and time it takes to run
simulations. To complicate things further, a single research team may
include social scientists, natural scientists, engineers and experts
from other fields, all of whom use their own technical languages and
methods for their work.
Constantly improving models, increasing computer power, and advances in
techniques such as machine learning will help propel some progress, as
will lessons learned from early studies now underway. Scientists may
also need to combine simulations of future scenarios with expert
interviews to help fill in forecasts with local, on-the-ground experience.
Beyond the research, scientists will also need to help decision-makers
understand and make choices in light of all this complexity. For
instance, since sea level rise predictions are uncertain, experts could
assist a community in building an adjustable flood protection barrier.
The good news is that some places, including New York City and Boston,
have already begun considering complex systems as they prepare for
climate change. "They're doing a sophisticated job of modeling the
interactions between sea level rise, storm surge, the particular
geographies of their harbors and coastlines, and the infrastructure that
is at risk," Janetos says. "They're considering lots of different
dimensions as they think about how they're going to respond in terms of
adaptation."
Still, experts acknowledge that ultimately they will never be able to
put odds on every single possible set of interactions, Mach says. Rather
it will be a matter of improving the available information to make
better calls on what actions to take wherever possible. "We still need
to make decisions," she says. "We can't let the complexity paralyze us."
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-next-climate-frontier-predicting-a-complex-domino-effect/
[recorded during COP-24 -- social collapse]
*Scientists' Warning to Humanity & Business as Unusual*
UPFSI
Published on Dec 27, 2018
Subscribe to http://ScientistsWarning.TV - On the first day of COP-24,
the annual UN climate negotiations, Stuart Scott and Victoria Hurth
teamed up to discuss the World Scientists' Warning to Humanity
(http://ScientistsWarning.org/) and then the part that business can and
must play to reverse disastrous current ecological and climate trends
that threaten life on Earth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8PWkZ7FB5s
[waking up to risk]
*Banks pushed to cleanse their balance sheets of climate risk*
Regulators' call for lenders to consider weather perils is having an impact
https://www.ft.com/content/e697d3bc-ff98-11e8-ac00-57a2a826423e
[Retrieving a crucial page after government sites are shutdown by the
shutdown]
*Profound Consequences of Arctic Warming: Part 1*
Paul Beckwith
Published on Dec 27, 2018
Recently released by NOAA, the Arctic Report Card 2018 details profound
changes underway in the Arctic from rapid temperature increases.
"What happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic." Quote:
Beckwith, 2009
The report gets many things right about vitally important changes
underway, but is way too conservative in a number of topics, and fails
to make predictions/projections about what will happen next, and how
soon. As I chat with you, I endeavour to fill in these gaping oversights.
[here it is supposed to be available
ftp://ftp.oar.noaa.gov/arctic/documents/ArcticReportCard_full_report2018.pdf]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIbVpgejDo4
-- - -
message at https://governmentshutdown.noaa.gov/
> *The website you are trying to access is not available at this time
> due to a lapse in appropriation.*
> *NOAA.gov and specific NOAA websites necessary to protect lives and
> property are operational and will be maintained during this partial
> closure of the U.S. Government.*
> *Seeweather.gov <https://www.weather.gov/> for forecasts and critical
> weather information.*
- - -
[video presentation of report by the AGU (a non-governmental organization)]
*Fall Meeting Press Conference: Arctic Report Card 2018*
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Published on Dec 12, 2018
The 2018 Arctic Report Card brings together the work of more than 80
scientists from 12 nations to provide the latest information on Arctic
environmental change, including air and sea surface temperature, sea
ice, snow cover, the Greenland ice sheet, vegetation and the abundance
of plankton at the base of the marine food chain. This year's
peer-reviewed report led by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration will also include special reports on the health of
caribou and reindeer populations, harmful algal blooms, microplastic
pollution, and connections between Arctic weather patterns and severe
weather in the more populous mid-latitudes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wIMDei1Q3c
- - -
[report posted by EarthSky - not the US Government]
*NOAA releases 2018 Arctic Report Card*
By Eleanor Imster in EARTH | December 17, 2018
This year's report shows that the Arctic region experienced the
2nd-warmest air temperatures ever recorded, the 2nd-lowest overall
sea-ice coverage, and lowest recorded winter ice in the Bering Sea.
Here are some highlights from the report:
– Surface air temperatures in the Arctic continued to warm at twice
the rate relative to the rest of the globe. Arctic air temperatures
for the past five years (2014-18) have exceeded all previous records
since 1900.
– Atmospheric warming continued to drive broad, long-term trends in
declining terrestrial snow cover on land, melting of the Greenland
Ice Sheet and lake ice, increasing summertime Arctic river
discharge, and the expansion and greening of Arctic tundra vegetation.
– Despite increase of vegetation available for grazing, herd
populations of caribou and wild reindeer across the Arctic tundra
have declined by nearly 50 percent over the last two decades.
– In 2018, Arctic sea ice remained younger and thinner, and covered
less area than in the past. The 12 lowest extents in the satellite
record have occurred in the last 12 years.
– Warming Arctic Ocean conditions are also coinciding with an
expansion of harmful toxic algal blooms in the Arctic Ocean,
threatening food sources.
– Microplastic contamination is on the rise in the Arctic, posing a
threat to seabirds and marine life that can ingest debris.
The Report Card is intended for a wide audience, including scientists,
teachers, students, decision-makers and the general public interested in
the Arctic environment and science. You can read the 2018 Arctic Report
Card here.
In addition to annual updates on ocean temperature, snow cover, tundra
greenness and melting on the Greenland Ice Sheet, the report card also
includes reports on multi-year environmental changes, including a
long-term population decline of the region's iconic wildlife species,
the caribou. Other multi-year essays focused on the expansion northward
of toxic harmful algae and significant concentrations of microplastic
pollution that are transported by ocean currents into the Arctic Ocean
from other parts of the global ocean.
https://earthsky.org/earth/noaa-releases-2018-arctic-report-card
*This Day in Climate History - December 28, 2007 - from D.R. Tucker*
December 28, 2007: In a Washington Post op-ed, Bill McKibben, citing a
recent speech by NASA scientist James Hansen, states that the worldwide
CO2 level must remain below 350 parts per million to avoid catastrophic
global warming. Further, McKibben writes: "Hansen [has] called for an
immediate ban on new coal-fired power plants that don't capture carbon,
the phaseout of old coal-fired generators, and a tax on carbon high
enough to make sure that we leave tar sands and oil shale in the ground.
To use the medical analogy, we're not talking statins to drop your
cholesterol; we're talking huge changes in every aspect of your daily life."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/27/AR2007122701942.html
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