[TheClimate.Vote] May 13, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Sun May 13 10:13:55 EDT 2018
/May 13, 2018/
[Arizona wildfires]
*Pinery Fire in southern Arizona swells to 675 acres; 6 hotshot crews
called to assist
<https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-wildfires/2018/05/12/officials-report-200-acre-pinery-fire-douglas-arizona/605325002/>*
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-wildfires/2018/05/12/officials-report-200-acre-pinery-fire-douglas-arizona/605325002/
http://www.azfireinfo.az.gov/
http://www.azfireinfo.az.gov/wildfire-news
[Obscure phenomena]
*The wind is slowing down
<https://cosmosmagazine.com/climate/the-wind-is-slowing-down>*
Near-surface wind speeds over landmasses across the planet have dropped
by as much as 25% since the 1970s, and climate scientists are taking
note. Michael Lucy reports
The wind isn't what it used to be. Scientists say surface wind speeds
across the planet have fallen by as much as 25% since the 1970s. The
eerie phenomenon - dubbed 'stilling' - is believed to be a consequence
of global warming, and may impact everything from agriculture to the
liveability of our cities. It has taken more than a decade for
scientists to get a handle on stilling, a term coined by Australian
National University ecohydrologist Michael Roderick in 2007.
Roderick had spent years studying a 50-year decline across Europe and
North America of a climate metric called pan evaporation. It measures
the rate at which water evaporates from a dish left outside. With his
colleague biophysicist Graham Farquhar, he found the cause: the sunlight
had dimmed due to air pollution. Less light equals slower evaporation.
In 2002, after publishing the explanation in the journal Science,
Roderick received a query from Roger Beale, the head of Australia's
federal department for the environment. Was pan evaporation also
declining in Australia? "To my embarrassment," Roderick recalls, "I had
to say I didn't know, because I'd never looked."
Two years later, he had an answer: the pan evaporation rate was also
falling in Australia. It was puzzling, however, as air pollution levels
on the continent were lower than those of Europe or North America...
- - - - -
In Australia in the 1970s, average wind speed a couple of metres above
the ground was 2.2 metres per second: in 2017 it was 1.6 metres per second.
Over landmasses from as far north as Svalbard, 1,050 km from the North
Pole, to as far south as the coast of Antarctica, "observations show
that wind is stilling", McVicar says.
Conversely, the wind is getting faster around the poles and in certain
coastal areas. In a perplexing twist, ocean winds also appear to be
accelerating.
Several explanations have been proposed for the stilling...
more at: https://cosmosmagazine.com/climate/the-wind-is-slowing-down
[Excellent briefings on the science of modeling our future climate]
*A Short Introduction to Climate Models - CMIP & CMIP6
<https://youtu.be/WdRiYPJLt4o>*
World Climate Research Programme
Published on Jun 21, 2017
As part of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) organized
under the auspices of the World Climate Research Programme's (WCRP)
Working Group on Coupled Modelling (WGCM) many hundreds of climate
researchers, working with modeling centres around the world, will share,
compare and analyze the latest outcomes of global climate models. These
model products will fuel climate research for the next 5 to 10 years,
while its careful analysis will form the basis for future climate
assessments and negotiations.
https://youtu.be/WdRiYPJLt4o
- - - -
*5.1 Introduction to Climate Modeling
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGi2a0tNjOo>*
Climate Literacy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGi2a0tNjOo
- - - - -
*5.2 Choices Climate Modelers Make
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtoZoAkEY2Q>*
Climate Literacy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtoZoAkEY2Q
- - - -
*Climate Literacy YouTube video channel
<https://www.youtube.com/user/climateliteracy/featured>*
These are the lecture videos from the free UBC course Climate Literacy:
Navigating Climate Change Conversations, which tackles the scientific
and socio-political dimensions of climate change. This course introduces
the basics of the climate system, models and predictions, human and
natural impacts, mitigative and adaptive responses, and the evolution of
climate policy. This course formed the basis of the book Understanding
Climate Change: Science, Policy, and Practice, which is available
at:University of Toronto Press:
http://www.utppublishing.com/Understanding-Climate-Change-Science-Policy-and-Practice.html
https://www.youtube.com/user/climateliteracy/featured
[understatement]
*Scott Pruitt Plans to Radically Alter How Clean Air Standards Are Set
<https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10052018/epa-clean-air-act-standards-health-data-smog-science-scott-pruitt-american-lung-association-naaqs>*
Human health alone is supposed to drive air quality standards decisions.
The EPA administrator's new memo emphasizes economic cost and impact on
energy development.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said Thursday he wants to radically
revise how basic, health-based national air quality standards are set,
giving more weight to the economic costs of achieving them and taking
into account their impacts on energy development.
Under the law, the standards, setting uniform goals for breathable air,
are supposed to be reviewed periodically asking only one question:
whether they are protective enough to ensure the health of even the most
vulnerable people, based on the best available science.
A foundational feature of the landmark Clean Air Act, the setting of
these standards based on health, and not cost or feasibility, was
defended adamantly on the Senate floor in 1970 by the bill's main
author, Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine, who declared: "That concept and
that philosophy are behind every page of the proposed legislation."
It has withstood legal and political tests for a generation.
Pruitt's proposal would jettison it.,,
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10052018/epa-clean-air-act-standards-health-data-smog-science-scott-pruitt-american-lung-association-naaqs
Ocean Risk Summit Bulletin
Volume 186 Number 12 | Sunday, 13 May 2018
*Summary of the Ocean Risk Summit
<http://enb.iisd.org/oceans/risk/summit-1/html/enbplus186num12e.html>**
<http://enb.iisd.org/oceans/risk/summit-1/html/enbplus186num12e.html>*8-10
May 2018 | Southampton, Bermuda
Visit our IISD/ENB Meeting Coverage from Southampton, Bermuda at:
http://enb.iisd.org/oceans/risk/summit-1/
Organized by insurance and reinsurance group XL Catlin, in partnership
with Ocean Unite, the International Union for Conservation of Nature
(IUCN), the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences, the Bermuda Business
Development Agency, and other scientific and Bermuda-based partners, the
first Ocean Risk Summit convened from 8-10 May 2018 at the Fairmont
Southampton, Bermuda. The Summit brought together more than 200
participants, including scientists, business leaders, and policy makers.
The Summit was organized around the following themes: our changing
ocean; managing and reducing ocean risk; building resilience; and
applied solutions. It served as a platform to showcase the latest
research on the interrelated changes taking place in the ocean, covering
issues from threats to global food security and human health, to the
impacts of hurricanes on communities, ecosystems, and businesses.
During the Summit, participants met in five working groups to discuss:
natural capital and ecosystems services; cities, islands, coastal
infrastructure and tourism; regenerating ocean life; fishing and
aquaculture; and marine pollution, including litter and microplastics.
The Summit also addressed technological advances for ocean data
collection and discussing innovative solutions, including novel
financial instruments, with the aim of creating the necessary synergies
to address ocean-related challenges.
See: http://enb.iisd.org/oceans/risk/summit-1/html/enbplus186num12e.html
[Arctic heats up]
*Norway expands Arctic oil drilling while CO2 levels in atmosphere reach
new pea
<https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/industry-and-energy/2018/05/norway-expands-arctic-oil-drilling-while-co2-levels-atmosphere-reach-new>*k
Strongly criticized by environmental groups, Ministry of Petroleum and
Energy announces 56 new blocks in the Barents Sea.
By Thomas Nilsen
May 09, 2018
"Awarding acreage in mature areas in annual predefined areas is an
important part of the Norwegian Government's commitment to a stable and
long-term petroleum policy," says Minister Terje Soviknes in a
press-statement from Oslo on May 9th.
With the announcement, the predefined area off the coast of Northern
Norway has been expended with 103 new blocks, 47 in the Norwegian Sea
and 56 in the Barents Sea. For the Barents Sea, the new areas include
blocks east of the existing predefined areas, that means closer to
Norway's maritime border with Russia.
Terje Soviknes is Minister of oil and energy. Photo: Thomas Nilsen
Last summer, a major drilling campaign in the Barents Sea failed to
discover commercial oil-fields, but the Petroleum ministry remains
optimistic.
"Access to prospective exploration acreage is crucial in order to make
new petroleum discoveries. New discoveries on the Norwegian continental
shelf ensure value creation, employment and Government revenues,"
minister Soviknes says. He underlines it is an important pillar of the
Government's policy to facilitate oil companies in a continued safe and
effective exploration...
more at:
https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/industry-and-energy/2018/05/norway-expands-arctic-oil-drilling-while-co2-levels-atmosphere-reach-new
[assisted migrations]
*Torreya Guardians in the Media
<http://www.torreyaguardians.org/guardians.html>*
Torreya Guardians is a self-organized group of naturalists, botanists,
ecologists, and others with a deep concern for biodiversity protection,
who have chosen to use the internet as a tool for discussing ideas,
posting plans, and taking a variety of actions in behalf of our most
endangered conifer tree: Torreya taxifolia.
There are no by-laws, officers, board, staff, overhead costs, dues,
formal organizational structure, or physical location to this organization.
Torreya Guardians does not speak or take action as a group, but instead
encourages subsets of those involved to post ideas and initiatives on
this website and to help establish links with synergistic organizations
and websites.
"A common prediction for how plants will respond to climate change is
that it is humans who got them into this mess and so it is humans who
will have to get them out of it. That's why the idea of assisted
migration of species, although often illustrated with the proposal to
shift polar bears to the Antarctic, crops up more frequently in
conversations about how to preserve iconic trees. Indeed, in one of the
only real-world examples of assisted migration so far, campaigners have
planted the seeds of the critically endangered conifer Torreya taxifolia
hundreds of miles north of its Florida home."
- editorial, 4 December 2017
"Grows well in sun and warmth - and shade and cold" - Nature
http://www.torreyaguardians.org/guardians.html
*DARK MOUNTAIN: ISSUE 13 - BEARING WITNESS TO A DISAPPEARING WORLD
<http://dark-mountain.net/blog/dark-mountain-issue-13-bearing-witness-to-a-disappearing-world/>*
by Michael Malay - May, 2018
Today we bring you the last in our series of extracts from our
thirteenth book, an anthology of new writing and art exploring what
'being human' means in an age of rapid ecological and social change.
Dark Mountain: Issue 13 is now available through our online shop for
£15.99 - or for less if you support our work by subscribing to future
issues.
We finish the series with Michael Malay's essay on poetry and
extinction, accompanied by an image by Bruce Hooke
<http://bghooke.com/galleryone.php?photoID=188>.
http://bghooke.com/galleryone.php?photoID=188
It is easy to become despondent, indeed sorrowful, about these
losses: each day we are confronted with appalling statistics about
the loosening footholds (and wing-holds) of mammals and birds in the
UK, not to mention thousands of insect species whose habitats are
being fundamentally changed by human intervention. As Ursula Heise
reminds us, however, narratives of ecological decline, which often
borrow from genre conventions such as tragedy and elegy, can easily
turn into narratives of human decline. Environmental 'crisis
typically becomes a proxy for cultural concerns,' she writes in
Imagining Extinction, a way of telling stories about the fallen
experience of modernity. We therefore need to understand when sorrow
is misplaced - when it is a projection of cultural anxieties onto
nature - and when it stems from a genuine reckoning of what is being
lost. The risk of not doing so is to tell a story that begins to
tell us - a hopeless story about inevitable decline.
The other risk of declensionist narratives is that they ignore the
capacity of certain creatures to adapt during times of change. As
Chris Thomas argues in Inheritors of the Earth, some animals seem to
be thriving in the present era. We have damaged the planet beyond
any reasonable measure, he admits, altering its 'great chemical
cycles' and acidifying its oceans, but 'we are still surrounded by
large numbers of species, many of which appear to be benefiting from
our presence' and adapting to 'this human-altered world'. He also
argues that we should situate today's changes in their 'appropriate
historical context, which involves time spans much longer than we
are used to thinking about in our everyday lives.' This is
'necessary because the story of life on Earth is one of never-ending
change: be that the arrival and disappearance of species from a
particular location (ecological change) or the longer-term formation
of new species and extinction of others (evolutionary change).'
This is not to discount the losses of anthropogenic extinction,
which are immense, nor the profligacy with which capitalism exploits
human and non-human life. The long view that Thomas takes may also
come with a subtle danger. Deep time consoles us by reminding us of
earth's endurance and continuity, but such a view may also
desensitise us to the present, to the precious and fragile life
being lost now. We are thus relieved of the duties we have as
citizens of the earth: the duty to articulate an alternative to the
economic systems that are ravaging the planet, the duty to preserve
our green and blue commons for future generations, and the duty to
foster a notion of citizenship that places the human in humble
relations to other creatures, as one ecological fellow among others.
Nevertheless, the persistence Thomas celebrates in the natural world
is real. And this persistence may offer its own form of hope - that
we too may find ways of flourishing in uncertain times, or, more
selflessly, that animal life will continue evolving and
proliferating with or without their human fellows, inheritors of a
future that will continue despite us.
All of which is to say that, although much has changed since his
era, Czeslaw Milosz may still offer a guide for our times. The
conditions for bearing witness have altered dramatically (extinction
threatens the very reality of the 'Particular') and it may be harder
to isolate the scene of the crime, such is the scale of the current
unravelling. And yet the poet's insistence on celebrating the beauty
of the world, even as one who kept a record of 'those who wronged',
is as vital as ever. To bear witness today means to grieve over what
is going and gone, to resist a culture in which such losses go
ungrieved, and to identify the forces - political and economic -
that drive environmental destruction and extinction. But it also
means to be captured and moved by the natural world, which every day
presents us with little gates leading to heaven: the song of a
blackbird on a summer evening, sea trout returning to rivers to
spawn, a hare flashing across a wintry road.
More at:
http://dark-mountain.net/blog/dark-mountain-issue-13-bearing-witness-to-a-disappearing-world/
[Climate aware candidates]
*314 Action is proud to endorse these scientists and other STEM leaders
who will fight to protect science and stand up to climate deniers.
<http://www.314action.org/endorsed-candidates-1/>*
http://www.314action.org/endorsed-candidates-1/
*This Day in Climate History - May 15, 2011
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/climate-change-denial-becomes-harder-to-justify/2011/05/13/AF44QQ4G_story.html>
- from D.R. Tucker*
May 13, 2011: In an editorial, the Washington Post declares, "Climate
change denial becomes harder to justify."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/climate-change-denial-becomes-harder-to-justify/2011/05/13/AF44QQ4G_story.html
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