[TheClimate.Vote] November 16, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Fri Nov 16 10:22:43 EST 2018
/November 16, 2018/
[Climate Scientist meet Congress]
*How do I schedule a meeting with my Member of Congress?
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLT1dAru4SM>*
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Published on Nov 15, 2018
Meeting with your elected officials face-to-face is one of the most
effective ways of communicating with them. Join the AGU Public Affairs
team as they answer "How do I schedule a meeting with my Member of
Congress?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLT1dAru4SM
[New word: Agrovoltaics]
*Neglected pastures thrive under solar panels
<http://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2018/11/solar-arrays-can-create-prolific-microclimates-on-dry-farmland/>*
by Prachi Patel | Nov 8, 2018
Solar panels could increase productivity on pastures that are not
irrigated and even water-stressed, a new study finds. The new study
published in PLOS One by researchers at Oregon State College finds that
grasses and plants flourish in the shade underneath solar panels because
of a significant change in moisture. The results bolster the argument
for agrovoltaics, the concept of using the same area of land for solar
arrays and farming. The idea is to grow food and produce clean energy at
the same time...
They found that areas under the solar panels had a different
microclimate than exposed areas. Shaded areas were 328 percent more
water efficient, and maintained higher soil moisture throughout the heat
of summer. That led to twice as much grass under the arrays as in the
unshaded areas. The plants also had more nutritional value. And the
researchers also found a 90 percent increase in late-season plant mass
in areas under PV panels...
http://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2018/11/solar-arrays-can-create-prolific-microclimates-on-dry-farmland/
[see also https://www.proactivehouse.com/]
[Moral and Ethics from a climate scientist]
*Where We Are Now and Where We Are Going?
<https://www.colorado.edu/bartlettcenter/2017/11/25/where-we-are-now-and-where-we-are-going>*
Professor James White reviews the basic science behind the Earth's
climate system and discusses how humans are impacting it and put the
current climate situation into the context of natural variability. White
is director of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.
https://www.colorado.edu/bartlettcenter/2017/11/25/where-we-are-now-and-where-we-are-going
[in fire your faith will be repaid]
*California's wildfires are hardly "natural" -- humans made them worse
at every step
<https://www.vox.com/2018/8/7/17661096/california-wildfires-2018-camp-woolsey-climate-change>*
We fuel them. We build next to them. We ignite them.
video https://youtu.be/OerszexsuLw
https://www.vox.com/2018/8/7/17661096/california-wildfires-2018-camp-woolsey-climate-change
[Cryology does astro-paleo-castrophism - video report]
*Did a Greenland Asteroid Cause Abrupt Warming Last Ice Age?
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZA4gRxM4W0>*
Climate State
Published on Nov 14, 2018
We report the discovery of a large impact crater beneath Hiawatha
Glacier in northwest Greenland. From airborne radar surveys, we identify
a 31-kilometer-wide, circular bedrock depression beneath up to a
kilometer of ice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZA4gRxM4W0
[informed opinion]
*Air pollution rots our brains. Is that why we don't do anything about
it?
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/24/air-pollution-cognitive-improvement-environment>*
James Bridle
- - - -
Human cognitive ability is being damaged not just by CO2 and lead, but
the way social media feeds us information, making us shockingly
ill-equipped to clean up the air we breathe
Researchers from Beijing University and Yale School of Health published
research last month showing that people who live in major cities - which
is, today, most of us - are not only suffering from increases in
respiratory illnesses and other chronic conditions due to air pollution,
but are losing our cognitive functions. The study showed that high
pollution levels lead to significant drops in test scores in language
and arithmetic, with the impact on some participants equivalent to
losing several years of education. Other studies have shown that high
air pollution is linked to premature birth, low birth weight, mental
illness in children and dementia in the elderly.
We're only just beginning to understand how the air we breathe affects
not just our physical environment, but our mental capacity as well. And
the air we breathe is changing in the long term, as well as the short.
Rising carbon dioxide levels - the main driver of climate change -
aren't just a hazard to the earth and other living creatures, they're
also affecting our thinking. At higher levels, CO2 clouds the mind: it
makes us slower and less likely to develop new ideas, it degrades our
ability to take in new information, change our minds, or formulate
complex thoughts.
Global atmospheric CO2 levels passed 400 parts per million in 2016, and
despite global agreements to keep runaway climate change under control,
little action has been taken. The very worst-case scenario - AKA
business as usual, which is the track we're on - predicts atmospheric
CO2 concentration of 1,000ppm by 2100. At 1,000ppm, human cognitive
ability drops by 21%.
This isn't merely a problem for the future - as if that would make it
better. As we come to understand more about the effects of CO2, we have
been measuring more of it, and finding that as it increases outside, it
increases inside, too. Outdoor CO2 already reaches 500ppm regularly in
industrial cities; indoors, in poorly ventilated homes or school
workplaces, it can regularly exceed 1,000ppm. A study of bedrooms in
Denmark found that overnight concentrations of CO2 exceeded 2,000ppm,
with measurable effects on student's performance the following day...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/24/air-pollution-cognitive-improvement-environment
[Noam Chomsky summary]
*Global Warming's Worst Case Projections seem increasingly likely
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4PisLH8J2g>*
Climate State
Published on Jul 17, 2018
One of the most cited scholars in history, Noam Chomsky speaks at St
Olaff College
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4PisLH8J2g
[Potholer 54 skewers Prager University with well researched journalism]
*Are electric cars really green? An investigation of Bjorn Lomborg's
claims. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwMPFDqyfrA>*
potholer54
Published on Nov 14, 2018
If you would like to support this channel financially, I don't need the
money. I make these videos if people donate to a charity I strongly
endorse called Health in Harmony. It's building clinics in Borneo that
provide affordable health care to villages in return for a pledge not to
cut down trees. The pledges are monitored, and the result is a dramatic
decrease in deforestation rates and an increase in the health of the
local population.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwMPFDqyfrA
[paleoclimatology and extinction]
*Massive crater under Greenland's ice points to climate-altering impact
in the time of humans
<https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/massive-crater-under-greenland-s-ice-points-climate-altering-impact-time-humans>*
By Paul VoosenNov. 14, 2018 , 2:00 PM
- - -
Hidden beneath Hiawatha is a 31-kilometer-wide impact crater, big enough
to swallow Washington, D.C., Kjær and 21 co-authors report today in a
paper in Science Advances. The crater was left when an iron asteroid 1.5
kilometers across slammed into Earth, possibly within the past 100,000
years.
Though not as cataclysmic as the dinosaur-killing Chicxulub impact,
which carved out a 200-kilometer-wide crater in Mexico about 66 million
years ago, the Hiawatha impactor, too, may have left an imprint on the
planet's history. The timing is still up for debate, but some
researchers on the discovery team believe the asteroid struck at a
crucial moment: roughly 13,000 years ago, just as the world was thawing
from the last ice age. That would mean it crashed into Earth when
mammoths and other megafauna were in decline and people were spreading
across North America.
- - -
The news of the impact discovery has reawakened an old debate among
scientists who study ancient climate. A massive impact on the ice sheet
would have sent meltwater pouring into the Atlantic Ocean--potentially
disrupting the conveyor belt of ocean currents and causing temperatures
to plunge, especially in the Northern Hemisphere. "What would it mean
for species or life at the time? It's a huge open question," says
Jennifer Marlon, a paleoclimatologist at Yale University.
A decade ago, a small group of scientists proposed a similar scenario.
They were trying to explain a cooling event, more than 1000 years long,
called the Younger Dryas, which began 12,800 years ago, as the last ice
age was ending. Their controversial solution was to invoke an
extraterrestrial agent: the impact of one or more comets. The
researchers proposed that besides changing the plumbing of the North
Atlantic, the impact also ignited wildfires across two continents that
led to the extinction of large mammals and the disappearance of the
mammoth-hunting Clovis people of North America. The research group
marshaled suggestive but inconclusive evidence, and few other scientists
were convinced. But the idea caught the public's imagination despite an
obvious limitation: No one could find an impact crater.
Proponents of a Younger Dryas impact now feel vindicated. "I'd
unequivocally predict that this crater is the same age as the Younger
Dryas," says James Kennett, a marine geologist at the University of
California, Santa Barbara, one of the idea's original boosters...
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/massive-crater-under-greenland-s-ice-points-climate-altering-impact-time-humans
[first printed in 1995]
*Revisiting Mike Davis' case for letting Malibu burn
<http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-arellano-malibu-burn-20181114-story.html>*
By Gustavo Arellano
Nov 14, 2018 | 3:15 AM
Revisiting Mike Davis' case for letting Malibu burn
During fire season, I always think about Mike Davis, author of one of
the most -- pardon the pun -- incendiary essays in the annals of SoCal
letters: "The Case for Letting Malibu Burn." I return to this chapter
from his book "Ecology of Fear" any time that the Santa Ana winds howl
and thousands flee raging infernos -- a ritual that used to happen every
couple of years but now seems to happen every couple of months.
"The Case for Letting Malibu Burn" is a powerhouse of history, science,
Marxist analysis -- and a certain amount of trolling. Its main point is
that Southern Californians will never accept that fire is not only
common here, but part of our ecology going back centuries. To spend
millions saving homes in areas never meant for neighborhoods and power
lines is not just folly, but a waste of public resources.
This time around, as California burned from the north to the south, I
checked in via email with Davis, now professor emeritus at UC Riverside.
He's best known for his literary double whammy against Los Angeles
exceptionalism: 1990's "City of Quartz" and 1998's "Ecology of Fear."
Those books made the Los Angeles of "Chinatown" seem as sinister as
Mayberry. Davis' tales of racism, poverty, corruption and other sins --
backed by copious footnotes -- inspired a generation of radical
historians and writers, including yours truly. He also riled an army of
detractors who so hated his apocalyptic warnings that they ridiculed
everything from his scholarship to his marriages to the fact that he was
born in Fontana.
But as the years go on, Davis' bleak words read more like revelations
than rants. Just as he argued, we build deeper into canyons and
foothills, daring Mother Nature to give us her best shot -- and then are
shocked when she does.
The Woolsey fire has already scorched more than 96,000 acres in Ventura
and Los Angeles counties, destroying 435 structures in Malibu and other
cities. It's yet another "fire of the century" for the beach city.
"Maybe 10 or 20 years ago, you stayed in your homes when there was a
fire and you were able to protect them," Ventura County Fire Chief Mark
Lorenzen said during a news conference this weekend. "We're entering a
new normal. Things are not the way they were 10 years ago."
In other words, we now live in Mike Davis' world. He has ascended to the
pantheon of Golden State visionary authors like Helen Hunt Jackson,
Upton Sinclair and Carey McWilliams who held up a mirror to us that we
have ignored at our own peril.
"The Case for Letting Malibu Burn" depicted Malibu and other wealthy
cities built in the boonies as created not for "love of the great
outdoors or frontier rusticity," but rather as "thickets of privacy"
against L.A.'s working classes and people of color.
We enable this white flight into the mountains, he argued, by not just
allowing development where there shouldn't be any, but also subsidizing
those affected by the inevitable wildfire in the form of cheap fire
insurance and squadrons of first responders deployed around the clock at
the hint of an ember.
He went through a litany of Malibu blazes over the last century,
concluding with the Old Topanga blaze of 1993 -- which consumed about
18,000 acres but destroyed 323 structures. Throw in climate change,
Davis noted in a version of his essay that appeared in the L.A. Weekly,
and the catastrophe "marked a qualitative escalation in fire danger, if
not the actual emergence of a new, post-suburban fire regime."
And, almost exactly 25 years later, here we are again.
Davis' work on Malibu's flames has aged far better than the criticism of
it. Chapman University urban studies fellow Joel Kotkin, for instance,
said of "Ecology of Fear" back in the 1990s that it "basically mugs Los
Angeles" and is "truly nauseating stuff." Yet by 2007, Kotkin told the
Economist, in an article about the fires that fall that wreaked havoc
from San Diego to Santa Barbara, that "nature still has a lot of power"
in the once-unspoiled areas where we build homes -- which is what Davis
contended all along.
Then there's former Malibu real estate agent Brady Westwater, who
refashioned himself as a downtown L.A. booster. You couldn't write about
"Ecology of Fear" for years without mentioning Westwater, who hounded
reporters with screeds and stats about Davis' real and alleged errors
until the press finally began to cite him as a legitimate critic.
In his own 1998 essay (whose titled described Davis as a "purposefully
misleading liar"), Westwater predicted that "fire damage will decrease
over the years" in Malibu because of better infrastructure and
better-built homes. Of the Old Topanga disaster, he plainly declared:
"That kind of fire can never happen again."
And yet here we are again.
Davis remains /persona non grata/ in Malibu, from Neptune's Net to
Pepperdine University. Malibuites took "The Case…" as a direct attack on
their beliefs and ways of life.
Davis takes no satisfaction in seeing his analysis come true all over
again. But the author, who's recovering from cancer, stands by what he
wrote.
"I'm infamous for suggesting that the broader public should not have to
pay a cent to protect or rebuild mansions on sites that will inevitably
burn every 20 or 25 years," he told me. "My opinion hasn't changed."
mexicanwithglasses at gmail.com
Twitter: @GustavoArellano
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-arellano-malibu-burn-20181114-story.html
Journal Article
The Case for Letting Malibu Burn
Mike Davis
Environmental History Review
Vol. 19, No. 2 (Summer, 1995), pp. 1-36 (36 pages)
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Forest History
Society and American Society for Environmental History
DOI: 10.2307/3984830
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3984830
*This Day in Climate History - November 16, 2005
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/15/AR2005111501842.html>
- from D.R. Tucker*
November 16, 2005:
The Washington Post reports:
"A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met
with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 -- something long
suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by
industry officials testifying before Congress..
“The document, obtained this week by The Washington Post, shows that
officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with
Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House
complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy
policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being
debated."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/15/AR2005111501842.html
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