[TheClimate.Vote] July 10, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/July 10, 2018/

[Courtroom showdown]
*Trump Administration Tries Another Emergency Appeal to Thwart Youth 
Climate Case 
<Trump%20Administration%20Tries%20Another%20Emergency%20Appeal%20to%20Thwart%20Youth%20Climate%20Case>*
*By Karen Savage*
The Trump administration is again trying a last-ditch effort to 
short-circuit the landmark kids climate lawsuit,/Juliana v. United 
States/ 
<https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2017/07/13/kids-suing-u-s-government-over-climate-change-maintain-legal-momentum-await-landmark-trial/>, 
that has beenordered to trial 
<https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2018/04/12/youth-climate-case-juliana-v-us-ann-aiken/>this 
October. Attorneys for the Department of Justicefiled a second writ of 
mandamus 
<http://blogs2.law.columbia.edu/climate-change-litigation/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/case-documents/2018/20180705_docket-na_petition-1.pdf>request 
last week, a long-shot motion to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and 
say they will appeal to the Supreme Court if the request is not granted.
The government also filed an emergency motion to halt discovery pending 
the outcome of this request, demanded a ruling by next Monday or they 
will have "little choice but to seek further relief from the Supreme Court."
Themotions 
<http://blogs2.law.columbia.edu/climate-change-litigation/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/case-documents/2018/20180705_docket-na_petition-1.pdf>are 
the latest in a long string of attempts by the federal government to 
stop the suit.
/Juliana v. United States/ 
<https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2017/07/13/kids-suing-u-s-government-over-climate-change-maintain-legal-momentum-await-landmark-trial/>was 
originally filed in August 2015 by 21 young plaintiffs from across the 
country who allege that by encouraging and promoting fossil fuel 
development, the federal government is contributing to climate change, 
is violatingthe public trust doctrine 
<https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/public_trust_doctrine>and is denying 
their constitutional rights to life, liberty and property.
The case, currentlyscheduled for trial 
<https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2018/04/12/youth-climate-case-juliana-v-us-ann-aiken/>on 
Oct. 29 in Eugene, Or. is the first in which a U.S. court has recognized 
the constitutional right to a safe climate.
An earlier petition for writ of mandamus - generally approved only if no 
other means of relief is available - was denied 
<https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2018/03/07/landmark-kids-climate-case-will-head-toward-trial-judges-rule/>by 
the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in March.
The government contends that the appeals court said it could continue to 
"raise and litigate any legal objections they have," including filing 
for further mandamus relief and motions to challenge discovery. They 
also say the court indicated plaintiffs should narrow the focus of the 
case...
https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2018/07/09/youth-climate-case-juliana-writ-mandamus/ 
<Trump%20Administration%20Tries%20Another%20Emergency%20Appeal%20to%20Thwart%20Youth%20Climate%20Case>


[something chilling]
*Dramatic Video Captures Moment Towering Iceberg Splits from Greenland 
Glacier 
<https://www.livescience.com/63008-greenland-glacier-births-iceberg-video.html>*
By Mindy Weisberger, Senior Writer | July 9, 2018
The event, which began at 11:30 p.m. local time on June 22, unfolded 
over 30 minutes, but the footage is sped up so the calving happens in 
just 90 seconds, according to a statement released by the researchers. 
The video shows a wide, flattened iceberg parting from the glacier, and 
so-called pinnacle bergs - tall, thin icebergs - detach from the larger 
mass of floating ice and invert in the water, the researchers reported.
While it's hard to get a sense of scale from the camera's wide-angle 
view of the separating iceberg, the berg is so big that it could 
partially cover the island of Manhattan, extending from the lower tip of 
New York City into Midtown, according to the statement.
Denise Holland, who shot the footage of the iceberg's birth, said that 
the researchers had set up camp on the fjord and were preparing to turn 
in for the night when they heard "an extended roar" that went on for 
longer than 5 minutes. The sound hinted that something momentous was 
underway  -  something that she had witnessed only twice before in the 
past decade of working on Greenland's glaciers, she told Live Science.
"We could see puffs of ice as it fractured from one side to the other," 
she said. "Sometimes you get lucky - you have to be at the right place 
at the right time."
What was especially fortuitous about this recording was that it showed 
the ocean noticeably rising as the ice disintegrated; it also captured 
important evidence of a glacier's ice breakup patterns "in every 
conceivable way, in one event," David Holland said.
"We saw tabular, flat icebergs like pancakes. We saw vertical pinnacles, 
tall and skinny ones, some falling head forward. We saw them crash into 
tabular bergs and break up. In 20 minutes, we saw grounded ice go into 
the ocean in a variety of calving styles - we were kind of in awe at how 
interesting it was, and also in awe of the scientific complexity," he said.
And therein lies the challenge of building computer models that can 
accurately predict the behavior of massive ice sheets, and the giant 
icebergs they produce. As this video demonstrated, glaciers can fracture 
in complicated ways - and scientists' current understanding of how that 
happens is barely the tip of the iceberg, which hampers attempts to 
model the impact of glacier breakup on rising seas, David Holland told 
Live Science.
"It's not the kind of thing you can do in your lab at home. You need 
real glaciers breaking up, and you need real observations," he said. 
"You need to observe it to understand it."
https://www.livescience.com/63008-greenland-glacier-births-iceberg-video.html


[wildfires]
*Klamathon blaze crosses Oregon border amid fierce start to fire season 
<https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Firefighters-battle-Klamathon-blaze-amid-fierce-13057911.php>*
By Erin Stone
The deadly Klamathon Fire continued to devour acreage Sunday, crossing 
the Oregon-California border as it tore through 30,500 acres and 
threatened hundreds of homes, fire officials said.
The fire was 25 percent contained but continued to spread into the 
Klamath National Forest, Horseshoe Ranch Wildlife Area and private 
timber lands. Erratic winds and dry vegetation are driving the fire's 
growth, officials said. Fire crews completed containment lines on the 
southern portion of the fire. Steep, thickly wooded terrain proved a 
challenge for crews working around the clock on the western and 
southeastern portions of the blaze, officials said.
"The conditions are a little less smoky and the sun is coming in a 
little more, but the downside to that is that the fire behavior is more 
active," said Cheryl Buliavac, a spokeswoman for the California 
Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. "Having the visibility, 
we're able to get aircraft in there."...
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Firefighters-battle-Klamathon-blaze-amid-fierce-13057911.php


[opinion]
*I see my garden as a barometer of climate change 
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/09/i-see-my-garden-as-a-barometer-of-climate-change>*
Catriona Sandilands
I worry about my beautiful, compromised plants, exposed to unseasonable 
ice storms and heatwaves
The garden has suffered this year, especially the lower-growing plants; 
even some of the hardy, well-established lavenders packed it in. The 
problem is not that it was too cold (although there was a top-10 longest 
and coldest polar air event in December/January), or that it was too 
warm in those double-digit February days, or that there was the ice 
storm in April, or that it was 31C in May, or even that there are now 
again record-breaking temperatures. The problem is that all of these 
things happened in a remarkably short time span, and that longer-term 
climate changes have already begun to destabilise plant communities, 
making them more vulnerable to extreme weather events.
* What can I do, concretely, to mitigate change, to adapt to it, and 
even to resist it?*
 From my perspective as caretaker of this little plant community, the 
problem is also that many of the seasonal understandings that have been 
basic to gardening in Toronto can no longer be assumed. Lavender might 
not survive the winter without wrapping. Tomatoes might need to be 
shaded in order to survive what is forecast to be an especially hot 
summer. Plants that require specialist pollinators may find their calls 
unanswered because the short-lived insects on which they rely may now 
have lives out of sync with the blooms...
There is a multitude of opinions about gardening in these climate 
changing times. Many urban gardeners talk about how to protect their 
plants from climate change: shielding them from extreme temperatures, 
conserving and/or diverting water, planting a greater range of resilient 
species in more cohabitative arrangements, and being extra-aware of the 
presence of both predatory and pollinator insects.
- - - -
To me, more than anything, gardening in these times means two things. 
First, looking after my little backyard demands that I pay close 
attention to the present and future: what are the plants telling me 
about the ways the climate is changing? What do they need that I can 
give them? What do these needs tell me about the larger scale of the 
changes in which we are immersed? What can I do, concretely, to mitigate 
change, to adapt to it, and even to resist it?
- - - - -
Second, and more foundationally, this garden invites me to reflect on 
the past and present: on gardening itself, and how the particular plants 
I am tending are part of larger processes of colonial, global 
transformation in which histories of plant movements are bound up with 
those of capitalist, fossil-fueled developments. We can, perhaps, more 
easily think about cotton, wheat, sugar cane, and corn at this level: 
plants that were central to slavery, to the rise of industrial 
agriculture, to what some scholars call "ecological imperialism." But 
gardens are also part of this picture...
- - - -
Gardens are microcosms of the complicated relationships that are the 
difficult world in which we are living, whether we like it or not, even 
as we may consciously refract those relations into new possibilities. In 
the garden, this practice involves taking careful stock: of the plants 
that are here, of the travels that have brought them here, and of the 
possibilities that "here" might yet bring about.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/09/i-see-my-garden-as-a-barometer-of-climate-change


[people in motion are harder to count]
*Climate Change Could Threaten Up To 2 Billion Refugees By 2100 
<https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/climate-change-refugees_us_59506463e4b0da2c731c5e73>*
<https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/climate-change-refugees_us_59506463e4b0da2c731c5e73>"It's 
coming at us faster than we thought."
By Alexander C. Kaufman
Charles Geisler, a sociologist at Cornell University, spent much of his 
career researching where poor people go when rich corporations swoop in 
and buy the land out from under their feet.
But his focus began to shift in 2005, after observing how storm surges 
tainted farmland in Bangladesh with salt water. Later that year, 
Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, submerging communities once 
believed to be safe behind levees and dikes. As floodwaters inundated 
Vietnam's Mekong Delta last year, Geisler's new worldview came into 
sharp relief.
The rising sea, he surmised, is the one displacement force more powerful 
than greed.
Geisler began collating climate and demographic research, and came to a 
dire conclusion: By the year 2100, rising sea levels could force up to 2 
billion people inland, creating a refugee crisis among one-fifth of the 
world's population.
Worse yet, there won't be many places for those migrants to go.
His findings appear in the July issue of the journal Land Use Policy.
"We have a pending crisis," Geisler, a professor emeritus of development 
sociology at Cornell, told HuffPost. "This relocation and huge mass 
migration from the coastal zone, it's going to take place in this 
century and the next century."
To get the 2 billion figure, Geisler extrapolated from a 2015 study 
published in the journal PLOS One. That research predicted that by 2060, 
there would be some 1.4 billion people living in low-lying coastal 
regions at risk from sea level rise. Drawing from nearly a dozen other 
studies, Geisler and his co-author, the University of Kentucky climate 
researcher Ben Currens, modeled what he called a "rather extreme scenario."

    *"The paper is the worst-case scenario," Geisler said. "We looked
    for estimates in these various barriers to entry that were coming
    from the most draconian changes that could hit us from climate
    change and sea level rise." *

Geisler outlined three obstacles, or "barriers to entry," to relocating 
people driven inland from their homes by rising seas. The first problem 
is that climate change isn't just affecting coastal communities. 
Droughts and desertification could make areas safe from sea level rise 
uninhabitable at worst, and incapable of sustaining a large influx of 
migrants at best, Geisler said. The second issue is closely linked: If 
climate refugees flock to cities, increasing the urban sprawl into land 
once used to farm food, those metropoles could lose the ability to feed 
their inflated populations.

The third issue involves physical and legal barriers, meaning regions 
and municipalities might erect walls and post guards to prevent climate 
migrants from entering and settling down. Geisler dubbed this phenomenon 
the "no-trespass zone."

Geisler warned that too much of the conversation around climate 
adaptation is focused on building sea walls, learning to live with 
regular flooding, and relocating communities inland, as has happened in 
Alaska. These limited ideas of "adaptation" could leave humanity 
woefully unprepared for a mass migration that Geisler said could dwarf 
the current refugee crisis in Europe, driven by war, poverty and 
drought-linked famine in regions south and east of the continent. At 
least 65.6 million people have fled their homes, and the United Nations 
estimates that 20 people are forcibly displaced every minute by war and 
persecution alone. Adding unfettered climate change to that mix 
threatens to yield human catastrophe on a scale that is difficult to 
describe without sounding bombastic.
The U.S. is particularly at risk. Millions of mainland Americans could 
be forced to flee inland, sending the populations of at least nine 
coastal states downward, according a University of Georgia study 
released in April. Texas alone could have to take in as many as 2.5 
million internal migrants.
"My hope is that this paper will reorient planners and policymakers who 
use the term 'adaptation' in a very narrow way," Geisler said. "It's 
used either to mean fortifying coastal structures to keep the sea off 
the land, or it's used to refer to moving a population from a coastal 
zone in some organized way."
There are better ways to prepare, he said. He pointed to four counties 
in South Florida that began sharing hydrological data and research on 
the rate of sea level rise, then drafted a joint evacuation plan. 
Dealing with the possible results of runaway climate change requires 
"transboundary" planning, he said.
"Climate change is going to be with us for a long time, and the coastal 
zone population is going to be overwhelming as it moves inland," Geisler 
said. "How are we going to employ these people? Where are we going to 
house them? What energy sources are they going to need?"
"Bottom line: Far more people are going to be living on far less land, 
and land that is not as fertile and habitable and sustainable as the 
low-elevation coastal zone," he added. "And it's coming at us faster 
than we thought."
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/climate-change-refugees_us_59506463e4b0da2c731c5e73


[Australia sqawks]
*The straight-forward climate question Josh Frydenberg will not answer 
<http://www.climatecodered.org/2018/07/the-straight-forward-climate-question.html>*
by David Spratt
Is climate change an existential risk to Australian society and the 
world community? It's not a difficult question, but one that climate 
minister Frydenberg has failed to answer.
The response should not be too challenging. An Australian Senate report 
released on 17 May this year, after an inquiry into the implications of 
climate change for Australia's national security, found that climate 
change is "a current and existential national security risk". It says an 
existential risk is "one that threatens the premature extinction of 
Earth-originating intelligent life or the permanent and drastic 
destruction of its potential for desirable future development".
The report was not opposed by the government Senators on the inquiry 
committee. Mark Crosweller, the Director General of Emergency Management 
Australia, Sherri Goodman, an expert witness from the USA, and the 
former senior Shell executive and emissions trading advisor to the 
Howard government, Ian Dunlop, put the issue of existential climate 
security risks on the inquiry's agenda.
On current trends, following the Paris Agreement, the world's peoples 
may face catastrophic warming within a generation or two, with large 
parts of the planet uninhabitable and major food growing regions ruined 
by drought or rising seas. The Paris commitments set Earth on a path of 
more than 3C of warming, and up to 5C when climate-cycle feedbacks are 
included. Yet, a decade ago, leading security analysts in the United 
States warned that 3C of warming and just a half-metre sea-level rise 
could lead to "outright chaos" as relations between nations broke down. 
Even the World Bank says "there is no certainty that adaptation to a 4C 
world is possible".
Following up on the Senate report, Adam Bandt MP asked the Minister for 
the Environment and Energy, Josh Frydenberg, the following question in 
writing on 21 May:
Has (a) he, (b) his ministerial office, or (c) his department, read the 
report: What Lies Beneath: the Scientific Understatement of Climate Risk 
(David Spratt and Ian Dunlop, Breakthrough, September 2017).
Has (a) he, (b) his ministerial office, or (c) his department, made any 
assessment of the propositions made in the report, particularly in 
respect of existential risk.
Has his department sought advice or assessment from external 
organisations such as the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, or 
university climate specialists, on the report; if so, what was the 
nature of this advice, and can he provide it.
Has his department considered the implications for policy-making of 
climate change being an existential risk to human civilisation.
Can he indicate whether the Cabinet has considered the Government's duty 
of care and fiduciary responsibility towards Australian citizens in 
light of the more severe risks raised in the report.
Most questions in writing to ministers receive responses within a few 
days, and there is a protocol that they should be answered within 60 
days. So with 48 days having elapsed, the clock is ticking.
It is a matter of fact that both the minister and his department 
received the report What Lies Beneath, and it is very likely that his 
department sought advice on it.
The first duty of a government is to protect the people. A government 
derives its legitimacy and hence its authority from the people, and so 
has a fiduciary duty to act in accordance with the interests of all the 
people with integrity, fairness and accountability.  In the climate 
arena, this duty has been recognised in several quarters, including by 
Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority Executive Director Geoff 
Summerhayes.
So what's the problem?  Perhaps the minister does not want say "no", 
climate change is not an existential risk, because the evidence is to 
the contrary, and he does not want to say "yes", because that would 
imply a duty of care that his government has chosen not to exercise?
http://www.climatecodered.org/2018/07/the-straight-forward-climate-question.html
- - - -
[This is the report]
*What Lies Beneath? The Scientific Understatement of Climate Risks 
<https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-09-07/what-lies-beneath/>*
By David Spratt, Ian Dunlop, originally published by Climate Code Red
September 7, 2017
https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/148cb0_56b252a7d78b485badde2fadcba88d00.pdf
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-09-07/what-lies-beneath/


[disavowal not wise]
*My baby can't sleep from the heat, why aren't we talking about climate 
change? 
<http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/07/09/baby-cant-sleep-heat-arent-talking-climate-change/>*
Published on 09/07/2018
By Jamie Clarke
Baby it's getting hot in here.
Irritated and covered in sweat, yet again my two year old daughter is 
struggling to sleep in her cot. I've now lost count of the number of 
nights that the baby thermometer has scowled at me for putting her to 
bed in officially dangerous temperatures.
The ongoing heatwave is the main topic of everyday conversation these 
days, with record-breaking temperatures and wildfires covering 
newspapers' front pages and the NHS issuing health warnings for 
vulnerable groups.
Yet there has been a deafening silence about the likely key driver - 
climate change.
I am staggered at how difficult it is for us as a society to talk about 
the links between climate change and extreme weather events like 
heatwaves. Most people have no problem talking about the links between 
lung cancer and smoking, even if they aren't lung cancer specialists. 
But whenever I've brought up the subject of climate change in 
conversations about the heatwave with people around me, they've quickly 
changed the subject...
It simply will not be possible to achieve broad and sustained bottom-up 
demands for action on climate change without taking every possible 
opportunity to help people connect the dots. Only when people understand 
the risks posed can they be expected to respond and be part of the 
changes needed to limit those risks.
Guardian columnist Zoe Williams recently wrote about the heatwave this 
indicative comment: "Some build-up of brain bacteria over time compels 
you to mention climate change whenever there is any weather anywhere, 
but you remember from the 90s that everybody hates that person, so it's 
better to just head off weather chat mildly, absentmindedly - 'hot? I 
suppose it is'".
A quick analysis of search term trends in the UK over the past few weeks 
demonstrates that while there is a significant spike in searches for 
'heatwaves,' there has been no accompanying increase in searches for 
'climate change'...
It simply will not be possible to achieve broad and sustained bottom-up 
demands for action on climate change without taking every possible 
opportunity to help people connect the dots. Only when people understand 
the risks posed can they be expected to respond and be part of the 
changes needed to limit those risks.
Guardian columnist Zoe Williams recently wrote about the heatwave this 
indicative comment: "Some build-up of brain bacteria over time compels 
you to mention climate change whenever there is any weather anywhere, 
but you remember from the 90s that everybody hates that person, so it's 
better to just head off weather chat mildly, absentmindedly - 'hot? I 
suppose it is'".
A quick analysis of search term trends in the UK over the past few weeks 
demonstrates that while there is a significant spike in searches for 
'heatwaves,' there has been no accompanying increase in searches for 
'climate change'...
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/07/09/baby-cant-sleep-heat-arent-talking-climate-change/


*This Day in Climate History - July 10, 2007 
<http://youtu.be/vcMFwuu_UlA> - from D.R. Tucker*
July 10, 2007: On MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," Air America 
host Rachel Maddow points out the mainstream media's fetish for false 
balance, specifically citing climate coverage.
http://youtu.be/vcMFwuu_UlA


/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
//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/20180710/f4fe0caa/attachment.html>