[TheClimate.Vote] February 14, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Wed Feb 14 09:26:33 EST 2018
/February 14, 2018/
[infrastructure]
*Trump's infrastructure plan may ignore climate change. It could be
costly.
<https://thebulletin.org/trumps-infrastructure-plan-may-ignore-climate-change-it-could-be-costly11503>*
As Slate noted: "The first thing you need to know about Donald Trump's
$1.5 trillion infrastructure plan is that it is, in fact, a $200 billion
infrastructure plan. For those keeping score at home, it's $200 billion
from Washington and another $1.3 trillion dollars of state, local, and
private money to be determined at a later date.
Or as the Huffington Post succinctly headlined its story on the topic:
"Trump's new infrastructure plan is kind of underwhelming
<https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-infrastructure-plan_us_5a81190ee4b08dfc930576fa>."
And there's another troublesome aspect: Engineers and researchers worry
that the plan has both discounted climate science and weakened climate
change regulations, which could lead to costly projects vulnerable to
damage - or rendered obsolete by rapidly changing flood patterns and
extremes of weather. "The impact of not considering climate change when
planning infrastructure means you end up building the wrong thing in the
wrong place to the wrong standards," Michael Kuby, a professor of
geographical sciences and urban planning at Arizona State University and
a contributor to the federal government's National Climate Assessment,
was quoted as saying in the New York Times
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/10/climate/trump-infrastructure-climate-change.html>.
"That's a whole lot of waste."...
https://thebulletin.org/trumps-infrastructure-plan-may-ignore-climate-change-it-could-be-costly11503
[Peter Sinclair]
*The Way of the Fool: Ignoring Climate in Infrastructure
<https://climatecrocks.com/2018/02/13/the-way-of-the-fool-ignoring-climate-in-infrastructure/>*
February 13, 2018
The greatest foreseeable near-term risks of climate change are not giant
swings in the earth system, but rather what will happen as slow,
incremental change - in things like sea level, and increasing large
precipitation events - suddenly reach the limits of legacy
infrastructure, and overwhelm longstanding defenses against natural threats.
Think Katrina/Levee. Sandy/Subway. Harvey/stormdrains.
The question is, how can anyone prepare for a future while ignoring the
forces that shape it?
https://climatecrocks.com/2018/02/13/the-way-of-the-fool-ignoring-climate-in-infrastructure/
[4.8 mm/year]
*Sea Level Acceleration
<https://tamino.wordpress.com/2018/02/13/sea-level-acceleration-2/>*
Tamino February 13, 2018
Sea level isn't just rising, it is accelerating. It did so during the
20th century, and has done so even more quite recently. ABC news
reported the story, based on just-published research (Nerem et al.
2018), that the latest satellite data now show it plainly...
The average rate (from satellite data) is 3.1 mm/y, but *the present
rate is closer to 4.8 mm/yr*. That's a substantial increase - a 50%
increase..
Continued denial of sea level rise acceleration can cost more than money
and property, it can cost lives. When storms do come, when hurricanes
strike, flooding can be deadly, and every inch of sea level rise makes
whatever flooding happens much worse, makes the death toll higher.
Denial makes us less prepared to reduce the future impact and less
prepared to deal with what comes.
/[4.8mm is slightly less than a fifth of an inch per year]/
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2018/02/13/sea-level-acceleration-2/
*
*
[new research area]
*First scientific expedition to newly exposed Antarctic ecosystem
<https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180212115235.htm>*
Date: February 12, 2018
Source: Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum
Summary: A team of scientists heads to Antarctica this week (14
February) to investigate a mysterious marine ecosystem that's been
hidden beneath an Antarctic ice shelf for up to 120,000 years.
A team of scientists, led by British Antarctic Survey (BAS), heads to
Antarctica this week (14 February) to investigate a mysterious marine
ecosystem that's been hidden beneath an Antarctic ice shelf for up to
120,000 years.
The iceberg known as A68, which is four times of London, calved off from
the Larsen Ice Shelf in July 2017. The scientists will travel by ship to
collect samples from the newly exposed seabed, which covers an area of
around 5,818 km2. It is an urgent mission. The ecosystem that's likely
been hidden beneath the ice for thousands of years may change as
sunlight starts to alter the surface layers of the sea.
"The calving of A68 provides us with a unique opportunity study
marine life as it responds to a dramatic environmental change. It's
important we get there quickly before the undersea environment
changes as sunlight enters the water and new species begin to
colonise. We've put together a team with a wide range of scientific
skills so that we can collect as much information as possible in a
short time. It's very exciting."
The team will investigate the area previously under the ice shelf by
collecting seafloor animals, microbes, plankton, sediments and water
samples using a range of equipment including video cameras and a special
sledge pulled along the seafloor to collect tiny animals. They will also
record any marine mammals and birds that might have moved into the area.
Their findings will provide a picture of what life under the ice shelf
was like so changes to the ecosystem can be tracked.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180212115235.htm
[Climate Scientist's Blog]
*On model development, and sanity <https://climatesight.org/>*
February 8, 2018 by climatesight
"When I was a brand-new PhD student, full of innocence and optimism, I
loved solving bugs. I loved the challenge of it and the rush I felt when
I succeeded. I knew that if I threw all of my energy at a bug, I could
solve it in two days, three days tops. I was full of confidence and
hope. I had absolutely no idea what I was in for."
"Now I am in the final days of my PhD, slightly jaded and a bit cynical,
and I still love solving bugs. I love slowly untangling the long chain
of cause and effect that is making my model do something weird. I love
methodically ruling out possible sources of the problem until I
eventually have a breakthrough. I am still full of confidence and hope.
But it's been a long road for me to come around full circle like this."
"As part of my PhD, I took a long journey into the world of model
coupling. This basically consisted of taking an ocean model and a sea
ice model and bashing them together until they got along..."
Kaitlin Naughten is a PhD student in climate science at the University
of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. She became interested in
climate science as a teenager on the Canadian Prairies, and increasingly
began to notice the discrepancies between scientific and public
knowledge on climate change. She started writing this blog at age
sixteen to help address this gap in public understanding, and it slowly
evolved into a record of her research as a young climate scientist
https://climatesight.org/
[techno-fake news]
*He Predicted The 2016 Fake News Crisis. Now He's Worried About An
Information Apocalypse.
<https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/the-terrifying-future-of-fake-news?utm_term=.njm4Nk4n2&ref=mobile_share#.kjzP4ZPow>*
"What happens when anyone can make it appear as if anything has
happened, regardless of whether or not it did?" technologist Aviv Ovadya
warns.
Posted February 11, 2018, Charlie Warzel
In mid-2016, Aviv Ovadya realized there was something fundamentally
wrong with the internet - so wrong that he abandoned his work and
sounded an alarm. A few weeks before the 2016 election, he presented his
concerns to technologists in San Francisco's Bay Area and warned of an
impending crisis of misinformation in a presentation he titled
"Infocalypse."
The web and the information ecosystem that had developed around it was
wildly unhealthy, Ovadya argued. The incentives that governed its
biggest platforms were calibrated to reward information that was often
misleading and polarizing, or both. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter,
and Google prioritized clicks, shares, ads, and money over quality of
information, and Ovadya couldn't shake the feeling that it was all
building toward something bad - a kind of critical threshold of
addictive and toxic misinformation. The presentation was largely ignored
by employees from the Big Tech platforms - including a few from
Facebook who would later go on to drive the company's NewsFeed integrity
effort.
"At the time, it felt like we were in a car careening out of control
and it wasn't just that everyone was saying, 'we'll be fine' -
it's that they didn't even see the car," he said.
Ovadya saw early what many - including lawmakers, journalists, and Big
Tech CEOs - wouldn't grasp until months later: Our platformed and
algorithmically optimized world is vulnerable - to propaganda, to
misinformation, to dark targeted advertising from foreign governments
- so much so that it threatens to undermine a cornerstone of human
discourse: the credibility of fact.
But it's what he sees coming next that will really scare the shit out of
you.
"Alarmism can be good - you should be alarmist about this stuff,"
Ovadya said one January afternoon before calmly outlining a deeply
unsettling projection about the next two decades of fake news,
artificial intelligence-assisted misinformation campaigns, and
propaganda. "We are so screwed it's beyond what most of us can imagine,"
he said. "We were utterly screwed a year and a half ago and we're even
more screwed now. And depending how far you look into the future it just
gets worse."... see also: https://twitter.com/metaviv?lang=en
That future, according to Ovadya, will arrive with a slew of slick,
easy-to-use, and eventually seamless technological tools for
manipulating perception and falsifying reality, for which terms have
already been coined - "reality apathy," "automated laser
phishing," and "human puppets."...
"I realized if these systems were going to go out of control,
there'd be nothing to reign them in and it was going to get bad, and
quick," ...
Today Ovadya and a cohort of loosely affiliated researchers and
academics are anxiously looking ahead - toward a future that is
alarmingly dystopian. They're running war game-style disaster
scenarios based on technologies that have begun to pop up and the
outcomes are typically disheartening....
Worse because of our ever-expanding computational prowess; worse because
of ongoing advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning
that can blur the lines between fact and fiction; worse because those
things could usher in a future where, as Ovadya observes, anyone could
make it "appear as if anything has happened, regardless of whether or
not it did."...
Worse because of our ever-expanding computational prowess; worse because
of ongoing advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning
that can blur the lines between fact and fiction; worse because those
things could usher in a future where, as Ovadya observes, anyone could
make it "appear as if anything has happened, regardless of whether or
not it did."...
Imagine, he suggests, phishing messages that aren't just a confusing
link you might click, but a personalized message with context. "Not
just an email, but an email from a friend that you've been anxiously
waiting for for a while," he said. "And because it would be so easy
to create things that are fake you'd become overwhelmed. If every
bit of spam you receive looked identical to emails from real people
you knew, each one with its own motivation trying to convince you of
something, you'd just end up saying, 'okay, I'm going to ignore my
inbox.'"
That can lead to something Ovadya calls "reality apathy": Beset by a
torrent of constant misinformation, people simply start to give up.
Ovadya is quick to remind us that this is common in areas where
information is poor and thus assumed to be incorrect. The big
difference, Ovadya notes, is the adoption of apathy to a developed
society like ours. The outcome, he fears, is not good. "People stop
paying attention to news and that fundamental level of informedness
required for functional democracy becomes unstable."
Ovadya (and other researchers) see laser phishing as an inevitability.
"It's a threat for sure, but even worse - I don't think there's a
solution right now," he said. "There's internet scale infrastructure
stuff that needs to be built to stop this if it starts."
Beyond all this, there are other long-range nightmare scenarios that
Ovadya describes as "far-fetched," but they're not so far-fetched that
he's willing to rule them out. And they are frightening. "Human
puppets," for example - a black market version of a social media
marketplace with people instead of bots. "It's essentially a mature
future cross border market for manipulatable humans," he said....
Ovadya's premonitions are particularly terrifying given the ease with
which our democracy has already been manipulated by the most
rudimentary, blunt-force misinformation techniques. The scamming,
deception, and obfuscation that's coming is nothing new; it's just more
sophisticated, much harder to detect, and working in tandem with other
technological forces that are not only currently unknown but likely
unpredictable...
For those paying close attention to developments in artificial
intelligence and machine learning, none of this feels like much of a
stretch. Software currently in development at the chip manufacturer
Nvidia can already convincingly generate hyperrealistic photos of
objects, people, and even some landscapes by scouring tens of
thousands of images. Adobe also recently piloted two projects -
Voco and Cloak - the first a "Photoshop for audio," the second a
tool that can seamlessly remove objects (and people!) from video in
a matter of clicks...
In some cases, the technology is so good that it's startled even its
creators. Ian Goodfellow, a Google Brain research scientist who helped
code the first "generative adversarial network" (GAN), which is a neural
network capable of learning without human supervision, cautioned that AI
could set news consumption back roughly 100 years. At an MIT Technology
Review conference in November last year, he told an audience that GANs
have both "imagination and introspection" and "can tell how well the
generator is doing without relying on human feedback." And that, while
the creative possibilities for the machines is boundless, the
innovation, when applied to the way we consume information, would likely
"clos[e] some of the doors that our generation has been used to having
open...
https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/the-terrifying-future-of-fake-news
[media battleground - Washington Post - opinion]
*Seriously, what is the @WashingtonPost doing?
<http://getenergysmartnow.com/2018/02/13/seriously-what-is-the-washingtonpost-doing/>*
February 13th, 2018
Evidently enraptured by the glowing reviews that the New York Times
hiring of (climate) science dissembler (amid other problems) columnist
Bret Stephens generated, The Washington Post opinion section just added
'both sides' specialist Meghan McArdle to their pages. McArdle often
reads as if emergent from Koch Industries public relations.
First, when it comes to Grenfell,McArdle's piece did read like it came
from the Koch PR office
<http://getenergysmartnow.com/2017/06/19/grenfell-tower-and-climate-change/>.
But, more broadly, the Koch-McArdle ties are real:
McArdle's views are probably never going to differ from those of the
Koch brothers, for a number of reasons. While she''s been a
columnist for a while at respectable outlets like Bloomberg and even
the left-leaning Atlantic, her Koch-nections run deep.
For one, she's _married_
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/fashion/weddings/13mcardle.html> to
Peter Suderman, who, before becoming _features editor_
<http://reason.com/people/peter-suderman/all> at Koch-funded Reason
Magazine, worked for the Koch's Freedomworks and CEI. We'll give
McArdle the benefit of the doubt that her husband's paycheck has
nothing to do with her opinions and is only an unusual coincidence.
This 'benefit of the doubt' does matter. While one might scratch one's
head, one should not damn someone due to what a member of their family
does without other supporting details.
However, a look at McArdle's professional history shows _significant
Koch influence_
<https://thinkprogress.org/media-stunner-atlantic-editor-megan-mcardle-admits-shes-outsourced-her-thinking-to-cato-s-pat-36fdaeaa9be7>.
… _impressively in-depth list_
<http://shameproject.com/profile/megan-mcardle/> of McArdle's
conflicts of interest … begin with her _training_
<https://www.evernote.com/shard/s1/sh/e296bf62-1473-40c4-947d-64d0c3e2cbaa/7d246bfedafdb5da9f7875bec7872728> at
the Koch's Institute for Humane Studies journalism program, to which
she returned in 2011 as a guest lecturer and instructor. … McArdle
is also a frequent attendee and moderator of Koch-network events,
including her duties _MCing the 50th anniversary_
<https://www.evernote.com/shard/s1/sh/08221e97-feac-494c-bcf1-74a87183c82b/a57a49928e5f215160ae0f30f0e53258> of
the Institute for Humane Studies, and was praised by them for her
_work_
<https://archive.org/details/MeganMcardleOutliningGopComebackStrategyFor2010MidtermElections->
"re-branding the Republican party.
Seriously, Washington Post, what are you doing? Do you really think
that your readership wants a(nother) Koch-Brothers mouthpiece gracing
the pages? You already have Krauthammer, Will, Samuelson, and too many
other fossil fools eating up column inches. Or, is the issue that they
are PMS (pale, male, and stale) fossil fuel shills and you are seeking
to change the demographics in that climate-denial, anti-government,
deceiving pool of authors?
http://getenergysmartnow.com/2018/02/13/seriously-what-is-the-washingtonpost-doing/
-
[2012 Joe Romm post ThinkProgress]
*Media Stunner: Atlantic Editor Megan McArdle Admits She's Outsourced
Her Thinking to Cato's Pat Michaels
<https://thinkprogress.org/media-stunner-atlantic-editor-megan-mcardle-admits-shes-outsourced-her-thinking-to-cato-s-pat-36fdaeaa9be7/>*
Megan McArdle, senior editor for The Atlantic, has made the most
jaw-dropping admission on climate I've seen in years from a journalist.
It deserves attention because it unintentionally illuminates why the
"status quo" establishment media's coverage of global warming is so
fatally useless.
In explaining why she (supposedly) doesn't post a lot on the problem of
global warming, McArdle writes:
The first reason I don't post a lot is that I'm not an expert, and I'm
not planning to become one. I've basically outsourced my opinion on the
science to people like Jonathan Adler, Ron Bailey, and Pat Michaels of
Cato - all of whom concede that anthropogenic global warming is real,
though they may contest the likely extent, or desired remedies.
https://thinkprogress.org/media-stunner-atlantic-editor-megan-mcardle-admits-shes-outsourced-her-thinking-to-cato-s-pat-36fdaeaa9be7/
-
See also Why We Should Act to Stop Global Warming - and Why We Won't
<https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/why-we-should-act-to-stop-global-warming-and-why-we-wont/253752/>
by MEGAN MCARDLE
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/why-we-should-act-to-stop-global-warming-and-why-we-wont/253752/
-
Wait, there's more from 2014:
*Washington Post acquires climate-conspiracy blog
<https://grist.org/article/washington-post-hires-volokh-conspiracy-turns-out-actually-conspiracy-theorists/>*
Brad Johnson
The Volokh Conspiracy, a blog of climate conspiracy theorists, is now
part of the Washington Post.
When Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos took over the Post, some climate activists
hoped he would close down the Post's editorial support for
climate-science deniers such as George Will and strengthen the
influential paper's focus on the climate threat.
But it was not to be.
In the first major move since the acquisition, Bezos' Post has
simultaneously dropped liberal "wunderkind" blogger Ezra Klein and added
the corporate-right lawyer blog Volokh Conspiracy, founded by Eugene
Volokh in 2002.
https://grist.org/article/washington-post-hires-volokh-conspiracy-turns-out-actually-conspiracy-theorists/
http://reason.com/volokh
*John Scalzi's The Consuming Fire is a space opera about climate change
denialism
<https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/12/16992910/john-scalzi-the-consuming-fire-collapsing-empire-cover-reveal-q-and-a>*
The sequel to last year's The Collapsing Empire hits stores on October 16th
By Andrew Liptak
The fact of the matter is that there really is no debate: there is the
overwhelming scientific evidence and then there are people who are
desperately trying to deny the facts so that they can get as much as
they can out of the system before the change has to happen. What we're
seeing with climate change is just another example of really kind of a
well-known rhetorical and political trope.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/12/16992910/john-scalzi-the-consuming-fire-collapsing-empire-cover-reveal-q-and-a
*This Day in Climate History February 14, 1979
<http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60716FD3A5D12728DDDAD0994DA405B898BF1D3>
- from D.R. Tucker*
February 14, 1979: The New York Times reports: "There is a real
possibility that some people now in their infancy will live to a time
when the ice at the North Pole will have melted, a change that would
cause swift and perhaps catastrophic changes in climate."
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60716FD3A5D12728DDDAD0994DA405B898BF1D3
/
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