[TheClimate.Vote] November 14, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/November 14, 2018/

[Democracy Now video]
*Climate Scientist Who Fled CA Wildfire: We're Going to Keep Paying 
Price If We Ignore Climate Change 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rey8725Jdzs>*
Democracy Now!
Published on Nov 13, 2018
https://democracynow.org - At least 44 people are dead and more than 200 
remain missing as two massive wildfires, fueled by easterly winds and a 
historic drought, continue to rage in California. In Northern 
California's Butte County, the Camp Fire has become the state's 
deadliest fire in history, after the blaze swept through the town of 
Paradise, killing 42 people and destroying nearly 6,500 homes. In 
Southern California, a quarter-million residents of Los Angeles and 
Ventura counties were ordered to evacuate the Woolsey Fire—including the 
entire city of Malibu and parts of the San Fernando Valley. Governor 
Jerry Brown said Sunday that the fires were driven by climate change and 
that California needs to learn to adapt. We speak with climate expert 
Glen MacDonald, John Muir memorial chair of geography, director of the 
White Mountain Research Center and a UCLA distinguished professor. He 
was forced to evacuate his Thousand Oaks home due to the Woolsey Fire.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rey8725Jdzs

[burning midnight oil]
*Reporters gear up for around-the-clock coverage of California fires 
<https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/12/media/california-wildfire-news-coverage/index.html>*
By Brian Stelter, CNN Business - November 12, 2018
And as Lizzie Johnson of the San Francisco Chronicle tweeted Sunday 
night, "we aren't out of this yet." Not even close. Red-flag conditions 
persist both up north and down south. Reporters like Johnson will be 
covering the firefighting effort and the recovery for the foreseeable 
future.

The paper's top editor, Audrey Cooper, tweeted a budget of her 
newsroom's recent expenditures, to give readers a sense of what goes 
into the fire coverage. "About $24,000 to outfit 9 journalists and keep 
them safe," Cooper said.
The budget listed fire shelters, flame-resistant Nomex attire, gloves, 
goggles, boots, and other gear...
Cooper, the Chronicle editor, told Poynter that "we've unfortunately 
gotten very, very good at this," meaning covering these fires. "We know 
our interactive fire tracker will take off online, we know the 'What we 
know, what we don't' sidebars are very useful for people. Air quality 
sidebars are done from muscle memory. And we know we will meet residents 
who will be part of our reporting for months and years to come."
Sometimes reporters are among the affected. For part of the day on 
Sunday, the editor of the Chico Enterprise-Record, the closest daily 
paper to Paradise, was having a hard time locating several of his 
employees. They were found safe by the end of the day.
Amid hopes that the 228 people reported missing will be found alive, The 
Enterprise-Record printed the missing persons hotline phone number on 
the front page on Monday.
Paradise also has a twice-a-week paper, the Paradise Post, which is 
updating its website with practical information like lists of destroyed 
structures and guides to finding lost pets.
In Southern California, the Woolsey Fire near Malibu has killed 2 people.
Social media posts from celebrities -- some of whom have lost their 
homes -- have helped personalized the story.
There, too, video diaries from evacuees have provided harrowing up-close 
views of the danger.
TV stations in Los Angeles have had their helicopters in the air for 
long stretches to show the fire-fighting efforts.
The CBS-owned station posted a webpage full of "footage from our aerial 
shots across the Malibu area in effort to help residents discern if 
their homes have been affected."
Local reporters have been joined by national news crews from all the 
major networks. ABC and NBC's nightly newscasts were anchored from 
southern California on Friday, and ABC's David Muir will anchor from 
there again on Monday.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/12/media/california-wildfire-news-coverage/index.html
- - - -
[BBC explains the fire myths]
*Five myths about wildfires 
<http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181113-five-myths-about-wildfires>*
Are wildfires a natural, if tragic, event - or are they getting worse 
with climate change? Would logging help decrease them? And can they be 
kept under control with forward planning? BBC Future debunks five common 
myths.
By Diego Arguedas Ortiz - 13 November 2018
Wildfires are currently raging through California, with thousands of 
people forced to flee their homes and dozens of residents killed. 
Earlier this year, a series of wildfires in the Greek coast killed 99 
people in the deadliest wildfire worldwide since 2009. In July 2018, 
smoke from fires in Russia reached as far as North America. This is a 
new normal.
But as fires multiply around the world, so do questions about them - and 
misconceptions. Here are five common myths about wildfires - some of 
which can undermine our success in fighting them.
*Myth #1: Regularly logging forests prevents forest fires*

    A common assumption is that logging, or removing some trees, would
    prevent fires. In fact, many forest experts say that logging is
    ineffective. This is because the tree remnants left over after
    logging, such as stumps and branches, provide a super-fuel for fire
    - one that is even drier (and more flammable) in the absence of a
    forest canopy.

    There is plenty of science backing these claims. For instance, a
    recent study showed that burn severity tended to be higher in areas
    with higher levels of management. Scholars working on wildfire
    conservation have also rebuked arguments that logging protects
    endangered species from forest fires, a common argument in favour of
    tree removal; in fact, it seems that animals like the iconic spotted
    owl still benefit from a burned-out forest and that removing the
    trees could hurt them. Even post-fire logging is counterproductive
    and can lead to more fires.
    A different practice is clearing entire areas of a forest, a common
    approach used by firefighters to prevent the fire from spreading.

*Myth #2: There is nothing you can do to protect your property*

    Wildfires are powerful and threatening, but households can reduce
    their risk by taking action at home. The building itself should be
    the first concern. Houses with fire-resistant roofs stand a better
    chance of surviving a blaze. Owners also should remove combustible
    materials from around the structure, including leaves in gutters and
    rooflines.
    Families can create a 'defensible zone' between their homes and
    their surrounding wilderness. This means clearing anything that
    could catch fire, like brush, dried leaves and wood piles within 30
    feet (9m) of structures. When they are 30-100 feet (9-30m) away from
    homes, trees should have large distances between canopies - 12 feet
    (3.6m) of space between tops that are between 30-60ft (9-18m) from a
    home, and 6 feet (1.8m) of space for tops that are 60 feet (18m)
    away. This interrupts the fire's path and slows its pace.

*Myth #3: Wildfires are an inevitable fact of nature*

    While wildfires are a natural phenomenon, the extent and intensity
    to which they're happening now are not - and one of the effects of
    climate change.
    We saw fewer fires between 1930 and 1980, a period that coincided
    with cooler and moister conditions. But as the climate has become
    hotter and drier in the last four decades, the number of fires have
    increased. In only two years between 1980 and 1999 did wildfires
    burn more than 6 million acres (2.4m hectares) of US wilderness. But
    between 2000 and 2017, there were 10 years with burnt acreage above
    that threshold.

    Globally, the length of the wildfire season increased by nearly 19%
    between 1978 and 2013.
    While you can't point to climate change as causing any particular
    fire on its own, it does influence factors that help spark and
    spread fires, like major drought, high temperatures, low humidity
    and high winds. As a result, scientists say that the increase of
    wildfires around the world, from Siberia to Portugal, is linked to
    climate change.

*Myth #4: All wildfires are bad and must be quenched immediately*

    Fires have played a crucial role in ecosystems for millennia and
    life has evolved beside them: some beetles breed only in the heat of
    fires, pine cones germinate with periodical fires and cleared space
    from burnt trees allows for new plants to spring.
    In fact, the benefits that many people now hope to achieve with
    logging or forest management - the clearing of dense woods - is
    naturally done by forest fires. The flames periodically consume
    smaller branches and trees, culling the forest which otherwise would
    otherwise serve as fuel.

    By fighting wildfires relentlessly during the past century, we have
    prevented this 'cleansing': less than 1% of US fires are allowed to
    burn. This strategy works better when there are fewer wildfires -
    but in our current extreme conditions, pumping more money to
    fighting fires might have a diminishing rate of returns.

*Myth #5: It is possible to eradicate (or control) all wildfires*

    As we have already seen, climate change, alongside other factors
    such as the spread of human settlements, is expected to increase
    wildfires, particularly in mid-to-high latitudes, in the coming
    decades. The tropics might see a decrease in fires, which might come
    as a relief for countries nearer the equator. But the rest of the
    globe would have to deal with an increasing number of them.

Some fires, like California's Camp Fire, are too fast to be managed. 
Evacuation and relocation are the only reasonable responses. This leads 
to the question of whether communities like Paradise, which was 
destroyed almost entirely by the fire, should stay where they are - or 
move elsewhere.
Some experts are calling for a return to traditional indigenous fire 
knowledge to deal with the flames. As efforts to cull fires seem 
insufficient - and as fires are likely to only get worse - those are 
questions policymakers must face.
--
Diego Arguedas Ortiz is a science and climate change reporter for BBC 
Future. He is @arguedasortiz on Twitter.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181113-five-myths-about-wildfires


[ART19 - Russel Brand gets "Under the Skin"] (the first step is to admit 
we have no clue what to do)
*#050 Systems Of The Damned (with Charles Eisenstein) 
<https://art19.com/shows/under-the-skin/episodes/0033254b-a410-4bd0-a03a-b3123be469e4>*
Under The Skin with Russell Brand
COMEDY SOCIETY & CULTURE PHILOSOPHY
On today's episode of Under The Skin I'm joined by author Charles 
Eisenstein to discuss alternative economic systems, find out what's 
wrong with the current climate change narrative and how we can actually 
change the world, challenge the powerful and empower the powerless.
https://art19.com/shows/under-the-skin/episodes/0033254b-a410-4bd0-a03a-b3123be469e4

[Activists need bail $]
*Youth Climate Activists' Bail Fund 
<https://www.gofundme.com/youthclimatebailfund>*
On Tuesday, November 13th, over 150 young people joined together to 
deliver our demands to the newly elected Congress and call out the real 
obstacle to climate action in this country -- the crisis of failed 
political leadership.

In peacefully showing our resolve by sitting in, 51 young people were 
arrested during this action.  Donate to the bail fund of the brave young 
people who put their bodies on the line.
https://www.gofundme.com/youthclimatebailfund
safety: https://www.gofundme.com/guarantee-refund-policy

[Politics and Global Warming]
*THE FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY SPENT $100 MILLION TO KILL GREEN BALLOT 
MEASURES IN THREE STATES -- AND WON 
<https://theintercept.com/2018/11/07/midterm-elections-green-ballot-measures-fossil-fuel/>*
"We had a pretty good shot, but they definitely had way more resources 
than we did. I guess the oil and gas industry is just another example of 
money buying elections."...

On the heels of the latest IPCC report -- which makes the need to 
decarbonize every sector of the economy painfully clear -- there isn't 
really an alternative to going toe to toe with those companies, no 
matter how much of a David and Goliath fight it might be.

"This isn't over for me, personally.  We have had a warning," Nelson 
said, referencing that report, "that we either end our dependence on 
fossil fuels or things are going to get extremely rough for mankind. For 
me, it shows that it's just about greed and money for this industry.
https://theintercept.com/2018/11/07/midterm-elections-green-ballot-measures-fossil-fuel/
- - -
[overview]
*Climate on the 2018 Ballot: What Can We Learn? 
<https://www.the-trouble.com/content/2018/11/13/climate-on-the-2018-ballot-what-can-we-learn>*
Last week showed us the fossil fuel industry's power to crush ballot 
measures. Still, there are lessons to learn about how to tweak climate 
politics strategy in other states and possibly for the federal level...

Finally, while the "broad benefits-broad coalition" strategy was worth 
trying in Washington state, the odds of persuading voters (particularly 
suburban ones) in the face of scare campaigns about energy price 
increases were probably low to begin with. However, this same strategy 
-- making the benefits of such a bill as concentrated as possible (in 
constituencies that can be mobilized, and in green industries) -- has 
some merit to be used in state legislatures and Congress. The success of 
a broad-based coalition achieving significant decarbonization policy in 
Illinois, for example, offers a morale-boosting counterexample to 
Washington's failure, and deserves closer examination in its own right. 
Meanwhile, other states should take the examples of successes from the 
2018 ballot and run with them.
https://www.the-trouble.com/content/2018/11/13/climate-on-the-2018-ballot-what-can-we-learn


[patterns of change]
*Climate Change Likely to Increase Frequency of Extreme Summer Weather 
 From "Stuck" Jet Stream Patterns 
<https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Climate-Change-Likely-Increase-Frequency-Extreme-Summer-Weather-Stuck-Jet-Stream-Patterns>*
Dr. Jeff Masters  ·  November 2, 2018, 10:14 AM EDT
During the summer of 2018, the future of climate change became the 
present. Highly amplified jet stream patterns that remained stuck in 
place for unusually long periods of time brought the planet a series of 
remarkable weather catastrophes--unprecedented heat waves in East Asia 
and Northern Europe, choking smoke from a record fire season in 
California and Washington, and Japan's deadliest floods since 1982, to 
name a few.

The severe summer weather helped bring the 2018 tally of billion-dollar 
weather-related disasters to 35--a startlingly high number that is 
already the third highest such total for any year since 1990, according 
to statistics supplied by Steve Bowen of insurance broker Aon Benfield. 
Research published on Wednesday (open access), led by climate scientist 
Dr. Michael Mann of Penn State, predicted that our future climate is 
likely to bring a significant increase in "stuck" summertime jet stream 
patterns capable of bringing a rise in extreme destructive weather 
events like we experienced in 2018. Their paper was titled, Projected 
changes in persistent extreme summer weather events: The role of 
quasi-resonant amplification.
***Two fundamental atmospheric flow patterns are resonating more often 
due to global warming*
Earth's atmosphere has two fundamental patterns. One is a series of 
wave-like troughs and ridges in the jet stream called planetary (or 
Rossby) waves, which march from west-to-east around the globe at about 
15 - 25 mph. The other pattern behaves more like a standing wave, with 
no forward motion, and is created by the unequal heating of the 
equatorial regions compared to the poles, modulated by the position of 
the continents and oceans. A number of papers have been published 
showing that these two patterns can interact and resonate in a way that 
amplifies the standing wave pattern, causing the planetary waves to 
freeze in their tracks for weeks, resulting in an extended period of 
extreme heat or flooding, depending upon where the high-amplitude part 
of the wave lies.

Because human-caused global warming is causing the Arctic to heat up at 
least twice as rapidly as the rest of the planet, the two patterns are 
interacting more frequently during the summer. A 2013 paper by Coumou et 
al., which I reviewed in my blog post, Are atmospheric flow patterns 
favorable for summer extreme weather increasing? found that during the 
11-year period 2002 - 2012, there was a doubling in this unusually 
extreme resonance pattern in summer, compared to the two previous eleven 
year periods, 1991 - 2001 and 1980 - 1990. The phenomenon is known as 
Quasi-Resonant Amplification or "QRA", and is described in excellent 
detail in an October 2018 realclimate.org post by Michael Mann.
- - -
*Conclusion*
In commentary at realclimate.org, lead author Michael Mann brought up 
some additional concerns the research brought up: climate model 
"attribution studies", used to assess the degree to which current 
extreme weather events can be attributed to climate change, are likely 
underestimating the climate change influence. One model-based study, for 
example, suggested that climate change only doubled the likelihood of 
the extreme European heat wave this summer. As he commented at the time, 
that estimate is likely too low, since it did not account for the role 
that QRA played in that event. Furthermore, climate models used to 
project future changes in extreme weather behavior likely underestimate 
the impact that future climate changes could have on the incidence of 
persistent summer weather extremes like those of the summer of 2018. Dr 
Mann concluded:

"So, is there any hope to avoid future summers like the summer of 2018? 
Probably not. But in the scenario where we rapidly move away from fossil 
fuels and stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations below 450 parts per 
million, giving us a roughly 50% chance of averting 2°C (3.6°F) 
planetary warming (the so-called "RCP 2.6" IPCC scenario) we find that 
the frequency of QRA events remains roughly constant at current levels.

"While we will presumably have to contend with many more summers like 
2018 in the future, we could likely prevent any further increase in 
persistent summer weather extremes. In other words, the future is still 
very much in our hands when it comes to dangerous and damaging summer 
weather extremes. It's simply a matter of our willpower to transition 
quickly from fossil fuels to renewable energy."
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Climate-Change-Likely-Increase-Frequency-Extreme-Summer-Weather-Stuck-Jet-Stream-Patterns


[Big promises]
*Big Oil claims it's doing its part to combat climate change. A new 
study finds it's not even close. 
<https://www.businessinsider.com/big-oil-claims-its-doing-its-part-on-climate-change-its-not-even-close-2018-11>*
Callum Burroughs
Big oil spent only 1.3% of 2018 capital expenditure on green energy
European majors are making greater efforts than the US oil giants to 
invest in clean energy
Low carbon infrastructure seen as essential to combatting climate change
Despite years of claims and commitments about clean investment and 
alleviating climate change, the world's largest oil companies have 
contributed just 1% of their spending budgets to green energy in 2018.

Companies like Royal Dutch Shell, Total, and BP, have all accelerated 
efforts into renewables and battery technology in recent years. But many 
efforts have been overshadowed by the oil industry's efforts to block or 
overturn environmental regulations.

CDP, an environmental research charity that works with over 650 major 
institutional investors with $87 trillion in assets, claim that the 
world's top 24 publicly-listed companies spent just 1.3 percent of total 
budgets of $260 billion on low carbon energy in 2018.

"This 1% figure pales in comparison with the amount of money Big Oil 
spends blocking climate initiatives and regulations, and invests in 
fossil-fuel projects that have no place in a well-below 2 degree Celsius 
world," Jeanne Martin at campaign group ShareAction, told Reuters.

CDP's research suggests that European oil majors have made greater 
strides than their US counterparts, and that 70% of the energy sector's 
renewables capacity came from European oil majors.

"With less domestic pressure to diversify, US companies have not 
embraced renewables in the same way as their European peers," CDP said 
in a report.

Norway's Equinor leads the way with plans to spend up to 20% of its 
budget on renewables by 2030, while European major Total has spent the 
most on low-carbon energies, around 4.3% of its budget, since 2010, 
according to the study. Shell plans to invest up to $2 billion each year 
in renewables and electric vehicles alongside a pledge in 2017 to halve 
the carbon footprint of the energy it sells by 2050.
These efforts pale in comparison to the required need for drastic 
climate control measures.

An explosive report last month from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on 
Climate Change said "rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in 
all aspects of society" are required to limit global warming to 1.5 
degrees Celsius.

The report said: "Global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide 
would need to fall by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, 
reaching 'net zero' around 2050."

Russian and US firms are investing the least, the study said, while 
China's energy powerhouse PetroChina doesn't even report emissions.
https://www.businessinsider.com/big-oil-claims-its-doing-its-part-on-climate-change-its-not-even-close-2018-11


[Domestic Refugee]
*We're moving to higher ground': America's era of climate mass migration 
is here 
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/24/americas-era-of-climate-mass-migration-is-here>*

"People will get very grumpy and upset with very hot temperatures," said 
Amir Jina, an environmental economist at the University of Chicago who 
co-authored the research on economic losses. "Even if you have air 
conditioning, some areas start to look less habitable.

By the middle of the century parts of the south-westand south-east won't 
look attractive to live in.

"That insidious climate migration is the one we should worry about. The 
big disasters such as hurricanes will be obvious. It's the pressures we 
don't know or understand that will reshape population in the 21st century."

Prodded to name refuges in the US, researchers will point to Washington 
and Oregon in the Pacific north-west, where temperatures will remain 
bearable and disasters unlikely to strike. Areas close to the Great 
Lakes and in New England are also expected to prove increasingly 
attractive to those looking to move.
By 2065, southern states areexpected 
<https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/697168>to lose 8% 
of their US population share, while the north-east will increase by 9%. 
A recent study forecast that the population in the western half of the 
US willincrease by more than 10% 
<https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/697168>over the next 
50 years due to climate migration, largely from the south and midwest.
But these population shifts are uncertain and are bound by a tangle of 
other factors and caveats. People will still largely follow paths guided 
by nearby family or suitable jobs. Even those who do want to move may 
find favoured locations too expensive.
Some will just grimly hang on. "With property rights as strong as they 
are in the US, some people may choose to go down with the ship," said 
Harvard's Keenan. "The question is whether they have the means and the 
options to do anything else."
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"People can usually cope with being a little less comfortable, but if 
you see repeated storms or severe damage to crops, that will trigger 
change," said Solomon Hsiang, who researches how climate change will 
affect society at the University of California.
"There will be pressure to move a little north. It won't be everyone, 
though, it won't be like the great migration of wildebeest in Africa. 
Whole cities picking up and moving would be hugely expensive."...
- - -
Smaller towns are giving relocation a go, however. In 2016, the 
community of Isle de Jean Charles in Louisiana was thefirst place to be 
given federal money 
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/15/louisiana-isle-de-jean-charles-island-sea-level-resettlement> 
to replant itself. The population, situated on an island being eaten 
away by the sea, is looking to move to a former sugar cane farm 30 miles 
inland.
"We are called climate refugees but I hate that term," said Chantal 
Comardelle, who grew up in the Isle de Jean Charles community.
"We will be the first ones to face this in the modern US but we won't be 
the last. It's important for us to get it right so other communities 
know that they can do it, too."
About a dozen coastal towns in Alaska are also looking to relocate, as 
diminishing sea ice exposes them to storms and rising temperatures thaw 
the very ground beneath them. One, Newtok, has identified a new site and 
hassome federal funding 
<https://www.alaskapublic.org/2018/03/27/newtok-to-congress-thank-you-for-saving-our-village/>to 
begin uprooting itself.
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How Business Owners Started

Learn About What Inspires Owners To Start Small Businesses & Become 
Successful.

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A buyout of damaged and at-risk homes has already occurred in New York 
City's Staten Island in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, while certain 
flood-prone houses in Houston, pummeled by Hurricane Harvey last year, 
are also being purchased and razed.
But the cost of doing this for all at-risk Americans would be 
eye-watering. Estimates range from $200,000 to $1m per person to 
undertake a relocation. If 13 million people do have to move, it seems 
fantastical to imagine $13tn, or even a significant fraction of this 
amount, being spent by governments to ease the way.
"As a country we aren't set up to deal with slow-moving disasters like 
this, so people around the country are on their own," said Joel Clement, 
a former Department of the Interior official who worked on the 
relocation of Alaskan towns.
"In the Arctic I'm concerned we've left it too late. Younger people have 
left because they know the places are doomed. These towns won't be 
relocated within five years and I'm sure there will be a catastrophic 
storm up there. My hope is no lives will be lost."
Ultimately, the US will have to choose what it wants to defend and hope 
its ingenuity outstrips the environmental changes ranged against it. Not 
everyone will be able to shelter behind fortifications like the 'big U 
<http://www.rebuildbydesign.org/our-work/all-proposals/winning-projects/big-u>' 
planned to defend lower Manhattan. Wrenching decisions will have to be 
made as to what and where will be sacrificed.
"We won't see whole areas abandoned but neighborhoods will get sparse 
and wild looking, the tax base will start to crumble," said Stoddard, 
mayor of South Miami. "We don't have the laws to deal with that sort of 
piecemeal retreat. It's magical thinking to think someone else will buy 
out your property.
"We need a plan as to what will be defended because at the moment the 
approach is that some kid in a garage will come with a solution. There 
isn't going to be a mop and bucket big enough for this problem."
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/24/americas-era-of-climate-mass-migration-is-here


[Everything is connected]
*Connected and vulnerable: Climate change, trade wars and the networked 
world 
<https://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-11-11/connected-and-vulnerable-climate-change-trade-wars-and-the-networked-world/>*
By Kurt Cobb, originally published by Resource Insights
November 11, 2018
The increasing connectedness of the global economic system has long been 
touted as the path to greater prosperity and peaceful relations among 
nations and their peoples. There's just one hitch: Complex systems have 
more points of failure and also hidden risks that only surface when 
something goes wrong.

For example, our dependence on cheap shipping to move commodities and 
finished goods has resulted in a system vulnerable to environmental 
disruption, particularly climate change, and to rising political and 
military tensions.

The extreme drought in Germany last summer, the warmest ever recorded in 
the country, has resulted in such low water in the Rhine River that 
shipping has been greatly curtailed. Ships can only be loaded lightly so 
as to avoid running aground. Consequently, many more barges and other 
vessels have been pressed into service to carry the lighter but more 
numerous loads along the river. This has driven up the cost of shipping 
considerably. In addition, fuel tankers have not been able to reach some 
river ports resulting in scattered fuel shortages. Some industrial 
installations along the river have had to reduce operations.

The natural inhabitants of the river have also suffered as die-offs of 
fish and other marine life have spread along the river.

A world away trade tensions between China and the United States are 
resulting in an unexpected threat to the preparedness of the U.S. 
military. The neoliberal program of free trade embraced by one U.S. 
president after another regardless of party has resulted in curious 
vulnerabilities for the military.

Because of the hollowing out of American manufacturing—as much of it 
migrated to China's low-cost labor market—the military can no longer 
fulfill certain needs from U.S. or even European manufacturers. Instead, 
the only place to source certain supplies is China, a country many now 
consider a potential military adversary of the United States.

Complicating the issue are recent U.S. trade sanctions against the 
Chinese. This could lead the Chinese to retaliate by withholding crucial 
goods such as rare earth metals over which it currently has a virtual 
monopoly and which are essential for modern electronics.

This is a political and military problem. But it illustrates the fact 
that complexities can trip us up because of both human-created and 
natural events. (Come to think of it, climate change isn't really a 
natural event; but the cause and the effect are delayed and diffuse 
unlike trade wars and real wars.)

Back in the United States the connectivity offered by the electric grid 
has become a huge liability for California utilities whose power lines 
have been implicated in past wildfires and who paid dearly for starting 
them. The combination of dry trees coming in contact with power lines 
and high winds which can down lines has forced utilities currently 
dealing with huge wildfires in their service areas to turn off gas and 
electric service in some places as a precaution. So frightened were 
investors about the potential liability facing California utility PG&E 
Corp. that the company's shares lost 16.5 percent of their value on 
Friday. Another utility, Edison International which serves the Los 
Angeles area, was down 12 percent for the day. Climate change and 
complex vulnerable infrastructure are intersecting in ways that have 
far-reaching and costly consequences, both in human and financial terms.

Anthropologist Joseph Tainter explains in his book The Collapse of 
Complex Societies that young societies solve problems through greater 
and greater complexity. The success of this strategy becomes so 
ingrained that the thought that complexity could become a negative is 
simply not contemplated. But that is what happens, Tainter explains. 
Returns on complexity diminish and then finally turn negative. The day 
complexity creates more problems than it solves foretells a decline.

Why does this complexity become a problem? Complexity makes it hard to 
understand the cause of difficulties. Because complex societies tend to 
be hierarchical and because those at the top of the hierarchy who make 
the major decisions also tend to be the most insulated from the problems 
of their society, they often don't even notice when important 
institutions and key environmental indicators are flashing red. They are 
slow to see and slow to act, often too slow to avert great damage and 
ultimately collapse.

The precursors of such a collapse are already present. But it takes an 
alert and aware mind to see the signs and link them to a larger danger. 
I have written in the past that the chief intellectual challenge of our 
age is that we live in complex systems, but we don't understand 
complexity. The danger signs are telling us something very difficult to 
hear: It is time to reduce the complexity of our society voluntarily or 
risk that the forces of nature (nudged in perilous ways by us) will do 
it for us.

This is a message almost impossible to absorb in an age that touts our 
increasingly complex and interconnected world as an unalloyed good. But 
there are experiments, for example, to bring farm and dinner table 
closer together; to build more energy self-sufficient communities; to 
live more simply without the largely useless abundance of consumer 
society; and to focus on the value of our relationships instead of our 
possessions. We should pay close attention to such experiments and 
participate in them as we are able.
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-11-11/connected-and-vulnerable-climate-change-trade-wars-and-the-networked-world/


*This Day in Climate History - November 14, 2012 - from D.R. Tucker*
November 14, 2012: At a post-election press conference, President Obama 
declares:

"I think the American people right now have been so focused, and will 
continue to be focused on our economy and jobs and growth, that if the 
message is somehow we're going to ignore jobs and growth simply to 
address climate change, I don't think anybody is going to go for that.  
I won't go for that. If, on the other hand, we can shape an agenda that 
says we can create jobs, advance growth, and make a serious dent in 
climate change and be an international leader, I think that's something 
that the American people would support."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlF6ikIbjGU
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/

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