[TheClimate.Vote] July 7, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Sat Jul 7 10:44:22 EDT 2018
/July 7, 2018/
[Wildfires out West]
*Wildfire Today <http://wildfiretoday.com/>*
http://wildfiretoday.com/
- - - -
*WILDFIRES 2018 MAP: MORE THAN 60 FIRES, INCLUDING THE SPRING CREEK
FIRE, BURNING IN THE UNITED STATES
<http://www.newsweek.com/wildfires-2018-map-more-60-fires-including-spring-creek-fire-burning-united-1012618>*
More than 60 large wildfires are burning throughout the United States,
particularly in the West. Fire officials in Colorado, Utah and
California are battling to control the fires as increasing heat and
severe droughts have made the blazes spread easily.
http://www.newsweek.com/wildfires-2018-map-more-60-fires-including-spring-creek-fire-burning-united-1012618
- - - - -
*List: Several Fires Burning in Southern California as Temps Soar
<https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Fires-Burning-SoCal-San-Bernardino-Cajon-Pass-Sylmar-Alpine-487538891.html>*
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Fires-Burning-SoCal-San-Bernardino-Cajon-Pass-Sylmar-Alpine-487538891.html
- - - -
All-time record hot temps in California. Dozens of stations reporting
115˚ and higher, several over 120˚. Record breaking heat a classic
signal of climate change on a warming planet. Science here:
https://t.co/PPbf2RwUgD #CAwx #LAwx https://t.co/tgQRunnAbF
Tweet: https://twitter.com/ClimateSignals/status/1015376950158749696
#CountyFire #PawneeFire #KlamathonFire #WestFire #CalFire #ValleyFire
#BoxFire #LionsFire
Rising heat in California is drying the landscape, expanding the fire
season and priming explosive early season fires. California wild fires
and firefighting costs have exploded in parallel. https://t.co/Em203jX96K
Original Tweet:
https://twitter.com/ClimateSignals/status/1015398902768390144
[Associated Press]
*Pope warns climate change turning Earth into desert, garbage
<https://apnews.com/2dc33645a7e140ffa63e9f5f3b8d2504>*
VATICAN CITY (AP) - Pope Francis urged governments on Friday to make
good on their commitments to curb global warming, warning that climate
change, continued unsustainable development and rampant consumption
threatens to turn the Earth into a vast pile of "rubble, deserts and
refuse."
Francis made the appeal at a Vatican conference marking the third
anniversary of his landmark environmental encyclical "Praise Be." The
document, meant to spur action at the 2015 Paris climate conference,
called for a paradigm shift in humanity's relationship with Mother Nature.
In his remarks, Francis urged governments to honor their Paris
commitments and said institutions like the IMF and World Bank had
important roles to play in encouraging reforms promoting sustainable
development.
"There is a real danger that we will leave future generations only
rubble, deserts and refuse," he warned.
The Paris accord, reached by 195 countries, seeks to avoid some of the
worst effects of climate change by curbing global greenhouse gas
emissions via individual, nonbinding national plans. U.S. President
Donald Trump has said the U.S. will pull out of the accord negotiated by
his predecessor unless he can get a better deal.
Friday's conference was the latest in a series of Vatican initiatives
meant to impress a sense of urgency about global warming and the threat
it poses in particular to the world's poorest and most marginalized people.
Recently, Francis invited oil executives and investors to the Vatican
for a closed-door conference where he urged them to find alternatives to
fossil fuels. He warned that climate change was a challenge of "epochal
proportions."
And next year, Francis has called a three-week synod, or meeting of
bishops, specifically to address the church's response to the ecological
crisis in the Amazon, where deforestation threatens what he has called
the "lung" of the planet and the indigenous peoples who live there.
"It grieves us to see the lands of indigenous peoples expropriated and
their cultures trampled on by predatory schemes and by new forms of
colonialism, fueled by the culture of waste and consumerism," Francis
said Friday.
https://apnews.com/2dc33645a7e140ffa63e9f5f3b8d2504
[OK, let's check our math]
*Global warming could be far worse than predicted, new study suggests
<https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/07/06/global-warming-double-what-models-predict-study/760748002/>*
Doyle Rice, USA TODAY July 6, 2018
Collapsing polar ice caps, a green Sahara Desert, a 20-foot sea-level rise.
That's the potential future of Earth, a new study suggests, noting that
global warming could be twice as warm as current climate models predict.
The rate of warming is also remarkable: "The changes we see today are
much faster than anything encountered in Earth's history. In terms of
rate of change, we are in uncharted waters," said study co-author Katrin
Meissner of the University of New South Wales in Australia.
This could mean the landmark Paris Climate Agreement - which seeks to
limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above
pre-industrial levels - may not be enough to ward off catastrophe.
"Even with just 2 degrees of warming - and potentially just 1.5 degrees
- significant impacts on the Earth system are profound," said study
co-author Alan Mix, a scientist from Oregon State University.
"We can expect that sea-level rise could become unstoppable for
millennia, impacting much of the world's population, infrastructure and
economic activity," Mix said.
In looking at Earth's past, scientists can predict what the future will
look like. In the study, the researchers looked back at natural global
warming periods over the past 3.5 million years and compared them to
current man-made warming.
By combining a wide range of measurements from ice cores, sediment
layers, fossil records, dating using atomic isotopes and many other
established paleoclimate methods, the researchers pieced together the
impact of those climatic changes.
Human-inflicted climate change is caused by the burning of fossil fuels
such as coal, oil and gas, which release heat-trapping greenhouse gases
such as carbon dioxide and methane into the the atmosphere.
Study lead author Hubertus Fischer of the University of Bern in
Switzerland and his team found that our current climate predictions may
underestimate long-term warming by as much as a factor of two.
Meissner said that "climate models appear to be trustworthy for small
changes, such as for low-emission scenarios over short periods, say over
the next few decades out to 2100. But as the change gets larger or more
persistent ... it appears they underestimate climate change."
The research also revealed how large areas of the polar ice caps could
collapse and significant changes to ecosystems could see the Sahara
Desert become green and the edges of tropical forests turn into
fire-dominated savanna.
However, Meissner said "we cannot comment on how far in the future these
changes will occur."
Referring to the study findings, lead author Fischer said that without
serious reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, there is "very little
margin for error to meet the Paris targets."
The study, which was conducted by dozens of researchers from 17
countries, was published last week in Nature Geoscience, a peer-reviewed
British journal.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/07/06/global-warming-double-what-models-predict-study/760748002/
[Step one: control language]
*The mysterious disappearance of the phrase 'climate change' from a CDC
website
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/07/02/the-mysterious-disappearance-of-the-phrase-climate-change-from-a-cdc-website>*
Weeks before Trump's inauguration, the phrase "climate change" vanished
from a CDC website.
By Chris Mooney
Shortly after President Trump's election but before his formal
inauguration, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agency
focused on conducting research to improve workers' health watered down a
website on climate change's contributions to occupational hazards, a new
report has revealed.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health's
"Occupational Safety and Health and Climate" page had its name changed,
so as to remove the phrase "climate change," sometime on or after Nov.
14, 2016, according to a report by the Environmental Data and Governance
Initiative. The old name was "Climate Change and Occupational Safety and
Health." Multiple other removals of the phrase "climate change" occurred
at or around the same time...
- - - - -
Shortly before Trump's inauguration, the CDC also canceled a conference
on climate change and public health that had been planned for early
2017. And as recently as last month, the agency showed a hesitancy to
talk plainly about climate change.
In early May, the CDC released a report showing that Americans are
suffering from a major increase in vector-borne diseases carried by
organisms such as ticks, fleas, and mosquitoes. During the news
briefing, journalists asked about the role of human-caused global
warming in helping these diseases to be able to spread to new areas.
"I can't comment on why there is increasing temperatures," said Lyle
Petersen, a scientist who heads the agency's Division of Vector-Borne
Diseases, in response. "That's the job of meteorologists."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/07/02/the-mysterious-disappearance-of-the-phrase-climate-change-from-a-cdc-website/
[Underestimated by half]
*Global warming may be twice what climate models predict
<https://phys.org/news/2018-07-global-climate.html#nRlv>*
July 5, 2018 by Alvin Stone, University of New South Wales
A new study based on evidence from past warm periods suggests global
warming may be double what is forecast.
Future global warming may eventually be twice as warm as projected by
climate models and sea levels may rise six metres or more even if the
world meets the 2C target, according to an international team of
researchers from 17 countries.
The findings published last week in Nature Geoscience are based on
observational evidence from three warm periods over the past 3.5 million
years when the world was 0.5C-2C warmer than the pre-industrial
temperatures of the 19th Century.
The research also revealed how large areas of the polar ice caps could
collapse and significant changes to ecosystems could see the Sahara
Desert become green and the edges of tropical forests turn into fire
dominated savanna.
"Observations of past warming periods suggest that a number of
amplifying mechanisms, which are poorly represented in climate models,
increase long-term warming beyond climate model projections," said lead
author, Prof Hubertus Fischer of the University of Bern.
"This suggests the carbon budget to avoid 2C of global warming may be
far smaller than estimated, leaving very little margin for error to meet
the Paris targets."
- - - - -
"Even with just 2C of warming - and potentially just 1.5C - significant
impacts on the Earth system are profound," said co-author Prof Alan Mix
of Oregon State University.
"We can expect that sea-level rise could become unstoppable for
millennia, impacting much of the world's population, infrastructure and
economic activity."
Yet these significant observed changes are generally underestimated in
climate model projections that focus on the near term. Compared to these
past observations, climate models appear to underestimate long term
warming and the amplification of warmth in Polar Regions.
"Climate models appear to be trustworthy for small changes, such as for
low emission scenarios over short periods, say over the next few decades
out to 2100. But as the change gets larger or more persistent, either
because of higher emissions, for example a business-as-usual-scenario,
or because we are interested in the long term response of a low emission
scenario, it appears they underestimate climate change," said co-author
Prof Katrin Meissner, Director of the University of New South Wales
Climate Change Research Centre.
"This research is a powerful call to act. It tells us that if today's
leaders don't urgently address our emissions, global warming will bring
profound changes to our planet and way of life - not just for this
century but well beyond."
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-07-global-climate.html#jCp
[only if we turn on the AC]
*Climate change is making our planet hotter - but we might have to ditch
the AC
<https://mic.com/articles/190131/climate-change-is-making-our-planet-hotter-but-we-might-have-to-ditch-the-ac#.C8uMeCWo2>*
By Kelly Kasulis
Americans love air conditioning - and to a serious fault. At least three
quarters of all homes in the U.S. have an air conditioner, according to
the Department of Energy, and Americans consumes more energy for cooling
alone than what the entire continent of Africa uses for all purposes
combined.
That's not without serious consequence. The burden of a high utilities
bill aside, fossil fuel is ultimately being burned and converted into
the electricity that's chilling our homes this summer. As a result, an
estimated 117 million extra metric tons of carbon dioxide is being
pumped into the air solely because of U.S. air conditioning...
- - - -
In a simulation of a three-month summer period, air pollution directly
related to fossil fuel burning that powers air conditioning accounts for
about 1,000 deaths. Even worse, that figure only covers the Eastern
United States. And as climate change turns increasingly turns up the
heat, the problem could get worse as more Americans compensate by
further refrigerating themselves indoors.
In other words, the U.S. has a vicious cycle on its hands.
"We're trading problems," Jonathan Patz, one of the study's senior
authors and a professor of environmental studies at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, said in a release. "Heat waves are increasing and
increasing in intensity. We will have more cooling demand requiring more
electricity. But if our nation continues to rely on coal-fired power
plants for some of our electricity, each time we turn on the air
conditioning we'll be fouling the air, causing more sickness and even
deaths."
https://mic.com/articles/190131/climate-change-is-making-our-planet-hotter-but-we-might-have-to-ditch-the-ac#.C8uMeCWo2
- - - -
[PLOS Medicine study]
Air-quality-related health impacts from climate change and from
adaptation of cooling demand for buildings in the eastern United States:
An interdisciplinary modeling study
<http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002599>
Conclusions
This study examines the contribution of future air-pollution-related
health damages that are caused by the power sector through
heat-driven air conditioning adaptation in buildings. Results show
that without intervention, approximately 5%-9% of exacerbated
air-pollution-related mortality will be due to increases in power
sector emissions from heat-driven building electricity demand. This
analysis highlights the need for cleaner energy sources, energy
efficiency, and energy conservation to meet our growing dependence
on building cooling systems and simultaneously mitigate climate change.
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002599
[Baltic Sea]
*Oxygen loss in the coastal Baltic Sea is 'unprecedentedly severe'
<https://phys.org/news/2018-07-oxygen-loss-coastal-baltic-sea.html>*
The Baltic Sea is home to some of the world's largest dead zones, areas
of oxygen-starved waters where most marine animals can't survive. But
while parts of this sea have long suffered from low oxygen levels, a new
study by a team in Finland and Germany shows that oxygen loss in coastal
areas over the past century is unprecedented in the last 1500 years. The
research is published today in the European Geosciences Union journal
Biogeosciences.
According to the researchers, human-induced pollution, from fertilisers
and sewage running off the countries surrounding the Baltic into the
sea, is the main driver of recent oxygen loss in the region's coastal
waters. The spread of low-oxygen areas can have dire consequences for
the environment and for local populations as it can reduce fish yields
and even lead to massive mortality of marine animals.
https://phys.org/news/2018-07-oxygen-loss-coastal-baltic-sea.html
*THE NEW VANGUARD OF CLIMATE FICTION
<https://lithub.com/the-new-vanguard-of-climate-fiction/>*
CLI-FI: AN INTRODUCTORY READING LIST
July 5, 2018 By Siobhan Adcock
Climate change is not fiction, but some of today's most compelling
writing about it is.
"Cli-fi" was coined by former journalist and English teacher Dan Bloom
in the mid-2000s for fiction that explores the consequences of climate
change, and the formerly-niche designation has taken on a new
popularity. To the surprise of exactly no one who has read a newspaper
in the past decade or so, cli-fi has emerged as a robust, exciting
movement in modern fiction.
Amy Brady at the Chicago Review of Books runs a thoughtful and
wide-ranging monthly column, Burning Worlds, highlighting the best in
new climate change fiction. In Brady's recent interview with io9
founding editor and bestselling author Annalee Newitz, Newitz points
out, quite fairly, that within the next few decades all fiction is
poised to become climate change fiction. As Newitz says, "Any story
about the future that's at least a century out has to include a dramatic
picture of climate change." Cli-fi is not speculative fiction any
longer. Small wonder then, that bestselling authors from Barbara
Kingsolver (Flight Behavior) to David Mitchell (The Bone Clocks) have
picked up the thread.
If you're aware of climate change in fiction as an emergent theme, then
you've probably also heard of some of the best-known novels that capture
climate change in bold strokes: Margaret Atwood's Maddaddam trilogy
including The Year of the Flood, Octavia Butler's Parable novels
including Parable of the Talents, the widely-praised work of novelists
Paolo Baciagalupi and Kim Stanley Robinson, and the 1962 J.G. Ballard
novel The Drowned World, quite possibly the grandaddy of modern
cli-fi-or at least its voluble great-uncle.
The books below are part of the new vanguard of fiction taking climate
change seriously, addressing its impact on the stories we tell now, and
the stories we may tell about ourselves in the coming decades.
Claire Vaye Watkins, Gold Fame Citrus
Watkins' mesmerizing vision of a West without water takes dystopian
near-future fiction one step further into evolutionary science, with
an embedded field guide to the fauna and flora that have adapted to
survive in an imaginative world where massive sand dunes have
swallowed the Rocky Mountains. But the heart of the story is a
woman's search for family and safe haven, and the near impossibility
of both in this radically changed climate.
Benjamin Warner, Thirst
A mysterious disaster has somehow burned away all the water, and
while waiting for news of what's next-and what's behind the water's
sudden disappearance-the residents of a suburban community are
driven to formerly unthinkable compromises in order to survive.
Tense and character-driven, this story is how Alfred Hitchcock might
have approached climate change.
Annalee Newitz, Autonomous
Climate change is the just-barely-audible engine driving the
technology, the economy, and the plot of Newitz's novel, a
page-turner that sweeps from a melted Arctic circle to a domed-in
Las Vegas. The novel's action tracks a woman's race against time to
beat the new Big Pharma to market with the antidote to the new drug
of choice, a productivity enhancer that could accelerate humankind's
self-destruction.
James Bradley, Clade
Like Richard Powers's masterful The Overstory, James Bradley's Clade
is a cross-generational novel that examines the impact of time on
our understanding of climate change. The natural world is changing
all around us, both rapidly and yet also at the ungraspably slow
pace of evolution itself. Bradley's family drama is designed to show
us that all of our human-scale problems are playing out on a
planet-sized stage . . . and the stage is collapsing under our feet.
C. Morgan Babst, The Floating World
If Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones was the first great novel about
Hurricane Katrina, with its tense, heartbreaking depiction of a
pregnant teenager in the days before the storm, The Floating World
is the next, in its powerful rendering of the city in the days after
its devastation. In tracing the immediate aftereffects of Katrina on
one multiracial family, the Boisdores, Babst proves anew that New
Orleans is a city of indelible human stories-and, since Hurricane
Katrina, also a potent, city-sized symbol of how climate change puts
urban life at risk.
Louise Erdrich, Future Home of the Living God
American master Louise Erdrich is certainly the best-known author on
this list, which is mostly otherwise full of first- or second-time
novelists, but her most recent novel is an under-appreciated cli-fi
page-turner. In a world in which seasons have all but disappeared
and natural evolution has begun to run in reverse, a pregnant young
woman finds herself on the run, finding uncertain sanctuary on the
reservation where her birth family lives. It can't be a coincidence
that so much fiction about "Mother Earth" is also equally about
motherhood, but in Erdrich's hands the expected becomes wonderfully
unexpected.
Sam J. Miller, Blackfish City
The last great human city on Earth is in the ice-free Arctic Circle
in Miller's novel, but like the great cities of today's world,
entrenched inequality guarantees privileges for only a few. Enter a
woman who may have the power to disrupt this stratified society, and
the drowned world seems bound for an even greater change.
Nnedi Okorafor, Who Fears Death
A vivid reminder that the people most impacted by climate change are
often the most vulnerable, with the least access to political power,
Okorafor's novel set in post-apocalypse Africa is a gorgeous mix of
politics and poetry, cli-fi and fantasy. The title character,
Onyesonwu, whose name means "Who Fears Death," comes into her own
powers in an annihilated world, while seeking to solve the mystery
of who, or what, is trying to destroy her. George R.R. Martin, no
slouch at detailed world-building himself, optioned this novel for
an HBO series.
South Pole Station, Ashley Shelby
Deeply funny and wonderfully nerdy, this debut novel by an
environmental journalist about climate scientists in the Antarctic
reinforces that there's no hope without science-and no more stark
reminder of our own humanity than a landscape so hostile to human
life, one that's nevertheless being irreversibly damaged by our
influence.
https://lithub.com/the-new-vanguard-of-climate-fiction/
[First step]
*I'm just one person, what can I do?
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q48BvprCFr0>*
Global Weirding with Katharine Hayhoe
Published on Feb 1, 2017
Global Weirding is produced by KTTZ Texas Tech Public Media and
distributed by PBS Digital Studios. New episodes every other Wednesday
at 10 am central. Brought to you in part by: Bob and Linda Herscher,
Freese and Nichols, Inc, and the Texas Tech Climate Science Center.
Be sure to subscribe!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q48BvprCFr0
[Good Question]
*Call for Abstracts: How Can Global Change Research Inform National
Security Decision-Making?
<https://climateandsecurity.org/2018/07/06/call-for-abstracts-how-can-global-change-research-inform-national-security-decision-making/>*
by Caitlin Werrell and Francesco Femia
The Fall 2018 American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting currently has a
call for abstracts for a session on climate and security. The session
will examine how global change research can support national security
decision-making. The AGU meeting will take place December 10-14th, 2018
in Washington, DC.
How Can Global Change Research Inform National Security Decision-Making?
Description:
Increasing attention is being paid to the potential risks that
global change poses to national security. These risks may be direct-
through impacts on national security assets, for example- or
indirect- through geopolitical impacts resulting from changes in
food, water, and energy availability; changes in economic growth and
development; increased risks to human health; and changes in
strategic environments. Global change research can inform national
security decision-making by advancing understanding and prediction
of global change. Progress is constrained, however, by the under
sampling of the environment, gaps in our understanding of key
processes, and limitations in modeling of natural and human systems.
This session welcomes abstracts showcasing substantive contributions
research makes to national security issues as well as current
outstanding science needs. Potential topics include development of
observations, process studies, and Earth system prediction
capabilities, as well as research in important thematic areas, such
as human health or the food-energy-water nexus.
https://climateandsecurity.org/2018/07/06/call-for-abstracts-how-can-global-change-research-inform-national-security-decision-making/
*This Day in Climate History - July 7, 2014
<http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/watch/koch-backed-ag-helps-hide-chemical-dangers-298973251858>**-
from D.R. Tucker*
MSNBC's Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow examine the dynamics of denial in
the US and overseas.
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/the-latest-far-right-trend-298914883669#
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/the-bbc-changes-their-line-on-climate-change-298925123932#
http://mediamatters.org/mobile/video/2014/07/07/on-msnbcs-all-in-eric-boehlert-says-the-media-s/200007
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/what-no-other-president-has-said-on-climate-298940483617
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/watch/koch-backed-ag-helps-hide-chemical-dangers-298973251858
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
//Archive of Daily Global Warming News
<https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/2017-October/date.html>
//
/https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote//
///
///To receive daily mailings - click to Subscribe
<mailto:subscribe at theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request>
/to news digest. /
*** Privacy and Security: * This is a text-only mailing that
carries no images which may originate from remote servers.
Text-only messages provide greater privacy to the receiver and
sender.
By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain must be used for
democratic and election purposes and cannot be used for
commercial purposes.
To subscribe, email: contact at theclimate.vote with subject:
subscribe, To Unsubscribe, subject: unsubscribe
Also youmay subscribe/unsubscribe at
https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote
Links and headlines assembled and curated by Richard Paulifor
http://TheClimate.Vote delivering succinct information for
citizens and responsible governments of all levels. List
membership is confidential and records are scrupulously
restricted to this mailing list.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/attachments/20180707/fef67a1a/attachment.html>
More information about the TheClimate.Vote
mailing list