[TheClimate.Vote] November 5, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Mon Nov 5 08:44:25 EST 2018
/November 5, 2018/
[process of choosing]
*This group is helping voters make sense of which candidates take
climate change seriously
<https://www.vox.com/2018/10/29/18022736/2018-midterm-elections-climate-change-voters-guide>*
Vote Climate US PAC's guide to House and Senate races scores candidates
on their positions on climate change and a carbon price.
By Umair Irfan Updated Nov 4, 2018, 9:37am EST
SHARE
Climate change, a major threat to the United States, has become
impossible to ignore this election season, and is finding its way into
midterm debates, along with gun violence, health care, and immigration.
In places like Florida, the devastation wrought by Hurricane Michael
placed the consequences of the warming world front and center in the
minds of many voters. And earlier this month, the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change warned that the world may have as little as 12
years to limit warming this century to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
At the same time, clean energy is booming, but many states are seeing a
concerted push to roll back climate policies and to boost fossil fuels.
more at -
https://www.vox.com/2018/10/29/18022736/2018-midterm-elections-climate-change-voters-guide
[projections for your location]
*WEATHER 2050 America is warming fast.
<https://www.vox.com/a/weather-climate-change-us-cities-global-warming>*
See how your city's weather will be different in just one generation.
By Umair Irfan, Eliza Barclay, and Kavya Sukumar
Our world is getting warmer. This we know.
Just look at Los Angeles, which experienced all-time record heat in
July, topping out at 118 degrees Fahrenheit. Dozens of other heat
records across the United States were smashed this summer alone.
But how much will temperatures in US cities change by 2050? By then,
scientists say average global warming since preindustrial levels could
be about twice what it is in 2018 -- and much more obvious and
disruptive. It's a world you'll (probably) be living in. And it's the
one we're definitely handing off to the next generation.
To answer this question, we looked at the average summer high and winter
low temperatures in 1,000 cities in the continental US, comparing
recorded and modeled temperatures from 1986 to 2015 to projections for
2036 to 2065. This offers us the best possible estimate on how much
winters and summers will shift from 2000 to 2050. (More on our
methodology here.)
Here's how much the winters and summers in the city closest to you are
predicted to change about 30 years from now.
Winters and summers will be warmer in every city by 2050. Type in other
cities to see for yourself:
more at -
https://www.vox.com/a/weather-climate-change-us-cities-global-warming
[Vote, says the talking penguin - 2 videos]
*Earth for America: Breaking News Ahead of the Midterms
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwBr_8fvWaM>*
Climate Reality
Published on Nov 2, 2018
https://earthforamerica.com/
*Earth: A New Breed of Politician
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7f6yfxGFmo>*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7f6yfxGFmo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwBr_8fvWaM
[New Yorker text and audio]
November 5, 2018 Issue
*The Day the Great Plains Burned
<https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/05/the-day-the-great-plains-burned>*
Alerts had been going out for weeks that conditions in Oklahoma, Kansas,
and Texas were perfect for wildfires.**On*March 6, 2017*, the prairie
went up in flames.
By Ian Frazier
Slapout, Oklahoma, at the intersection of a county road and a much used
east-west state highway, has a population of five...
- - -
In the dark of early morning, it's jumping with truckers, oil-field
workers, guys who drive the county road graders, and farmers who have
been baling hay all night. A hand-lettered sign on the door reads
"Please hang on to the door." This is so the howling prairie wind won't
keep yanking it open and undoing the feeling of comfort inside.
- - -
For weeks, the National Weather Service out of Norman, Oklahoma,
Amarillo, Texas, and Dodge City, Kansas, had been sending alerts. The
conditions were perfect for wildfires. There had been almost no
precipitation for six months; before that, however, a lot of rain had
fallen, and now the plentiful prairie grasses stood up tall and
tinder-dry. On some days, like this one, the winds blew at fifty-plus
miles an hour, while the humidity dipped down into the single digits. An
ice storm in January had damaged scores of power lines, making them more
vulnerable. Often, the Weather Service alerts are mainly precautionary.
But on this day the south-central Great Plains did indeed catch fire.
Huge wildfires spread over the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles and in
western Kansas, with a smaller burn in Colorado...
more at -
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/05/the-day-the-great-plains-burned
[Compliance]
*The Role Harassment Plays in Climate Change Denial
<https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/11/the-role-harassment-plays-in-climate-change-denial/>*
Many of the same patterns have appeared when extremists attack other
targets.
REBECCA LEBER - NOVEMBER 2, 2018
- - -
The link between hate groups and climate denial is complex and anecdotal
at best, with little research examining the overlap between the two. But
there is enough anecdotal experience to prompt prominent figures who
study and advance science and policy to see a connection. In an
interview with Mother Jones, Steyer said he sees the intolerance and
hyperpartisanship that has marked the GOP as fundamentally connected
with the party's "willingness to directly lie" on climate change science...
- - -
"Climate change was really one of the seminal points for the Republicans
because they decided they could straight-up lie," he said in a phone
interview. "When you look at the kind of violent and dehumanizing
rhetoric that the president has indulged in, it's entirely consistent
with the idea that there is no cost to lying, there is no cost to really
attacking the basic interest of the American people. So I think climate
was the template."
These questions about tensions concerning the climate change debate are
not as well understood or explicitly drawn as the immigration debate,
where George Soros is charged in coded language with pulling all the
strings in a vast global conspiracy, as the New York Times reported, to
"undermine the established order and a proponent of diluting the white,
Christian nature of their societies through immigration."
But the right's denial of climate change science nonetheless repeats
many of the same patterns that have appeared in other extremist targets,
from guns to immigration to abortion. These patterns include the
appropriation of Nazi or anti-Semitic imagery, the demonization of
funders and prominent advocates, and the distortion of the terms of the
debate. Climate change has become another flashpoint for irrational,
hateful, sometimes violent rhetoric, and even personal attacks on people
who have risen to some prominence as scientists, funders, and advocates.
Stephan Lewandowsky, a University of Bristol cognitive scientist who
studies science denial, notes how the virulently anti-government message
that has long dominated climate denial discourse shares common themes
with people who believe in conspiracy theories writ large. "Science as
well as respect for others' religions or ethnicity are considered
establishment norms, just like truth-telling, and hence the people who
support (and are incited by) Donald Trump are likely to reject all of
those norms," Lewandowsky tells Mother Jones, "which again would link
science denial, anti-Semitism, and conspiracy theories as a cluster or
related phenomena."...
- - -
Katharine Hayhoe, a Texas Tech climate scientist and self-identified
evangelical Christian, often invokes her faith in explaining the need to
act to slow down the progress of global warming. Often prominent deniers
invoke their faith to advance fossil-fuel-friendly talking points--think
Scott Pruitt, who invoked God to justify burning fossil fuels. Hayhoe,
who also finds herself facing harassment for her work, draws on her
religion to make a moral case to act on the scientific evidence, not
bury one's head in the ground. A scientist alarmed by the impacts of
climate change, she has also observed that the anger surrounding the
climate debate may have its roots in similar impulses present in other
toxic debates. "I think that right now we're facing a time of tremendous
change in race, gender, socioeconomic status, and privilege. It's
especially frightening if you feel you're going to lose from the change."
That fear of change and uncertainty, Hayhoe thinks, is connected to the
anger. Replacing coal, oil, and gas, which we've used for hundreds of
years, with solar panels and wind turbines, is still another example of
the unpredictability inherent in change.
"I think we often tend to treat these issues as all separate issues,"
she says. "Rejection of climate change and harassment of scientists is a
package. It's not an issue that stands by itself. It goes along with
symbols of change, racial issues and gender issues and political."
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/11/the-role-harassment-plays-in-climate-change-denial/
[Classic video sample]
*Professor George Lakoff on Climate Denial and Logic
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bXBqb5rkaA>*
Climate One
Published on Feb 24, 2017
George Lakoff, a professor of linguistics at UC Berkeley discusses
climate denial. "Climate deniers don't come around and say I'm going to
deny climate or I'm going to deny science," Lakoff said. Adding "They
don't do that at all."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bXBqb5rkaA
- - -
[Full Program video 1:11:09]
*Why Facts Don't Trump the President (Full Program)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enE9MyzwFA8>*
Climate One
Published on Mar 14, 2017
Facts are overrated. Sure, they are the concrete foundation of
narratives and they should be defended when the president of the United
States and his team make false claims. But the obsession with facts can
be taken too far at the expense of other deeper means of communication.
George Lakoff says if progressives want to learn from the election of
Donald Trump they need to change what they study in college, how they
think about facts as adults, understand framing and learn to repeat,
repeat, repeat. Robert Rosenthal joins us from The Center For
Investigative Reporting to help us understand the importance of facts in
reporting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enE9MyzwFA8
[UK study]
*Pension funds fail to insulate against climate-change risks
<https://www.ft.com/content/99d5c50a-30bf-39c0-b67d-6752abd7e53d>*
Few UK schemes have specific policy covering effect of global warming on
investment returns
Only 5 per cent of the UK's biggest corporate pension funds, which
collectively oversee £479bn in assets, have a policy on climate change
despite growing concern about the possible effect of global warming on
returns.
None of the 43 funds analysed had a target for investment in low-carbon,
energy-efficient or sustainable assets, while all also lacked a
decarbonisation target for their investment portfolio, according to
research by Pinsent Masons, the law firm.
The lack of action comes despite pressure from policymakers and
investors for pension funds to factor the risks of climate change into
investment decisions.
This year, 14 of the UK's biggest pension funds, including the Tesco
Pension Scheme, British Airways Pensions and the BP Pension Fund, were
warned by lawyers that they risk legal action if they fail to consider
the effect of climate change on their portfolios...
more at - https://www.ft.com/content/99d5c50a-30bf-39c0-b67d-6752abd7e53d
[Dave Roberts report]
*Big Oil is using brute financial force to kill 2 state sustainability
initiatives
<https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/10/26/18026074/koch-industries-bp-colorado-washington-fracking-carbon-tax>*
Oil and gas has dumped at least $47 million into efforts to crush ballot
measures in Washington and Colorado.
By David Roberts - Nov 4, 2018
The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) makes it vividly clear that averting catastrophic climate change
means rapidly reducing the use of fossil fuels, getting as close to zero
as possible, as soon as practicably possible. The US needs to fully
decarbonize by mid-century or shortly thereafter.
Big Oil, at least with its public face, has acknowledged that reality
and is supporting a revenue-neutral carbon tax in the US (one that, not
incidentally, would shelter the industry from legal threats based on
climate change). It is attempting to act, or at least to be seen as
acting, as a reasonable partner in the federal climate effort.
Down at the state level, where media pays less attention? Not so much.
Take what's happening in Washington and Colorado. In those states,
citizens who are tired of waiting for their elected officials to act are
resorting to direct democracy: with ballot initiatives, up for votes on
November 6, that would directly take on fossil fuels. (Washington's
would put a price on carbon emissions; Colorado's would radically reduce
oil and gas drilling.)...
- - -
Climate hawks often debate whether it works to frame Big Oil as the
villain in the climate fight. But it's not really a "messaging" question
here. In these state fights over fossil fuels, Big Oil is playing the
villain in a very non-metaphorical, non-symbolic way, in the form of
spending outrageous amounts of money to fight off climate action.
These initiatives illustrate, if it wasn't already obvious, that
state-by-state climate policy is going to be an uphill battle. In each
state, support for the climate side comes from underfunded citizen and
public-interest groups -- and for the most part, only the ones inside
the state. Meanwhile, Big Oil, backed by ideologically aligned
billionaires like the Koch brothers, has effectively unlimited funds to
spend on every one of these fights. It's overwhelmingly asymmetrical.
- - -
more at -
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/10/26/18026074/koch-industries-bp-colorado-washington-fracking-carbon-tax
[lax enforcement]
*More Evidence Points to China as Source of Ozone-Depleting Gas
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/climate/china-ozone-cfcs.html>*
By Chris Buckley - Nov. 3, 2018
BEIJING -- An environmental group says it has new evidence showing that
China is behind the resurgence of a banned industrial gas that not only
destroys the planet's protective ozone layer but also contributes to
global warming.
The gas, trichlorofluoromethane, or CFC-11, is supposed to be phased out
worldwide under the Montreal Protocol, the global agreement to protect
the ozone layer. In May, however, scientists published research showing
that CFC-11 levels in the atmosphere had begun falling more slowly.
Their findings suggested significant new emissions of the gas, most
likely from East Asia.
Evidence then uncovered by The New York Times and the Environmental
Investigation Agency pointed to rogue factories in China as a likely
major source...
more at - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/climate/china-ozone-cfcs.html
- - -
[chilling report]
*EIA Briefing to the 30th Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal
Protocol
<https://content.eia-global.org/posts/documents/000/000/796/original/EIA_US_CFC11_MOP30.pdf?1541105595>*
Tip of The iceberg: implications of illegal cfc production and Use
November 2018
In May 2018 scientists revealed that atmospheric levels of CFC-11, a
potent ozone depleting substance banned globally since 2010, were
significantly higher than expected, indicating new illegal production
and use of CFC-11 occurring in East Asia.
EIA investigations quickly pinpointed that illegal use of CFC-11 in
China's polyurethane (PU) foam insulation sector was likely a major
source of the new emissions. Eighteen out of 22 companies interviewed
from ten provinces confirmed using CFC-11 as the main blowing agent in
the production of foam panels and spray foams.
Traders and buyers of CFC-11 in China repeatedly stated that it was used
in the majority of China's rigid PU foam sector...
full report-
https://content.eia-global.org/posts/documents/000/000/796/original/EIA_US_CFC11_MOP30.pdf?1541105595
*This Day in Climate History - November 5, 1965
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/nov/05/scientists-warned-the-president-about-global-warming-50-years-ago-today>-
from D.R. Tucker*
November 5, 1965: President Johnson's Science Advisory Committee issues
a report, "Restoring the Quality of Our Environment," that cites the
hazards of carbon pollution.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/nov/05/scientists-warned-the-president-about-global-warming-50-years-ago-today
https://dge.carnegiescience.edu/labs/caldeiralab/Caldeira%20downloads/PSAC,%201965,%20Restoring%20the%20Quality%20of%20Our%20Environment.pdf
http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab/Caldeira%20downloads/PSAC,%201965,%20Restoring%20the%20Quality%20of%20Our%20Environment.pdf
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