[TheClimate.Vote] October 15, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/October 15, 2018/

[From the Financial Times]
*Bank of England tells institutions to prepare for climate change 
<https://www.ft.com/content/e1d2087e-ce34-11e8-9fe5-24ad351828ab>*
Banks and insurers put on notice to appoint top executives to oversee 
environmental risks
The Bank of England will put banks and insurers on notice to vastly 
improve their planning for the long-term risks of climate change, 
placing senior executives in the line of fire if their institutions take 
insufficient action.
In an unprecedented step for a regulator of a global financial centre, 
the BoE's Prudential Regulation Authority will on Monday tell boards of 
banks and insurers to identify a senior executive to take charge of 
managing climate-change risks and report to the board -- or face 
consequences...
more at- https://www.ft.com/content/e1d2087e-ce34-11e8-9fe5-24ad351828ab


[latest]
*Trump: Climate change scientists have 'political agenda' 
<https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45859325>*
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45859325
[whip-lash]
*President Trump Says Climate Change Isn't a Hoax, but Thinks It Might 
'Change Back Again' 
<http://time.com/5424427/donald-trump-60-minutes-climate-change/>*
http://time.com/5424427/donald-trump-60-minutes-climate-change/
[also Trump]
*Show me the scientists': Trump reiterates his climate change doubts – 
video 
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2018/oct/15/show-me-the-scientists-trump-reiterates-his-climate-change-doubts-video>*
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2018/oct/15/show-me-the-scientists-trump-reiterates-his-climate-change-doubts-video


[Independent]
*Climate change already causing increases in stress, depression and 
negative mental health, study shows 
<https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change-mental-health-extreme-weather-stress-depression-us-ipcc-a8583601.html>*
Women and people on low incomes are more likely to report mental health 
problems due to weather
Andy Gregory
- - - - -
On average, months with temperatures above 30C or more than 25 days of 
rainfall saw increased reports of stress, depression and "problems with 
emotions", scientists said in the journal Proceedings of the National 
Academy of Sciences.
Nick Obradovich, the study's co-author and Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology research scientist, said: "It's really important to consider 
this as yet another piece in the puzzle of understanding how climate 
change will influence society, and the conclusion here is that it's not 
likely to be good."

The sheer scale of the study adds important weight to the growing body 
of evidence that shows exposure to climate change-related heat worsens 
mental health and increases suicide rates.

Alarmingly, Dr Obradovich's team also found that women and those on low 
incomes were 60 per cent more likely to report mental health problems as 
a result of weather than the highest earners...
- - - -
Delving deeper into the findings, Dr Obradovich said: "One of our 
theories is it's possibly being driven through the effects of higher 
temperatures upon sleep. However, there's a lot of other ways it could 
be happening."

He believed other possible factors could include the negative effects of 
heat upon an individual's productivity and cognitive function, or its 
impact upon the brain's ability to regulate emotion.

"We don't know for sure and a big part of the work that we as climate 
change social scientists and impact scientists have to do is figure out 
what is driving the effects - largely because if you're a policymaker 
you want to know what you should target to reduce these effects," he said.

Dr Obradovich also pointed out the study did not take into account the 
impact that the existential risk of climate change could be having upon 
our collective mental health, or harder to quantify symptoms of climate 
change such as rising sea levels.
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change-mental-health-extreme-weather-stress-depression-us-ipcc-a8583601.html
- -- -
[related studies]
*As climate change worsens, mental health probably will too 
<https://qz.com/1421070/as-climate-change-worsens-mental-health-probably-will-too/>*
By Zoe Schlanger October 11, 2018
On Oct. 8, a consortium of 90 scientists from 40 countries published a 
report warning that inaction could lead to catastrophic climate change 
in the next 20 years. On the same day, a paper published in the 
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by researchers from MIT, 
Harvard, and other top American research institutions concluded that 
climate change has the potential to worsen mental health on a mass 
scale. And such changes may already be measurable in the US population.

The team used responses from the US Centers for Disease Control's 
long-running health survey of American adults, which samples randomly 
selected US residents each year. One question on the survey asks people 
about their mental health:

    "Now thinking about your mental health, which includes stress,
    depression, and problems with emotions, for how many days during the
    past 30 days was your mental health not good?"

The researchers used survey responses from 2002 to 2012, taking in about 
2 million participants cumulatively. Since the survey includes data on 
where the respondents lived and when they answered the question, the 
team was able to pair the results with historical meteorological data.

They found that, on average, every additional 1 degree Celsius of 
warming over five years was linked to an increase of mental health 
issues in those areas by 2%. In already-hot places, where the average 
monthly temperature was between 25C and 30C (77F and 86F), just making 
the shift to an average monthly temperature above 30C added 0.5% more 
mental health difficulties to the population.

To consider the impact of extreme weather disasters on mental health, 
they looked at the effect of Hurricane Katrina. The storm increased the 
prevalence of mental health difficulties among those affected by 4%, 
they found.
They also found that, on average, the mental health of low-income people 
was most harmed by hotter temperatures. Women, on average, were also 
harmed more than men. Given that this data was on people living in the 
US--a wealthy country with a relatively temperate climate--they note 
that countries with "less-temperate climates, insufficient resources, 
and greater reliance on ecological systems may see more severe effects 
of climate change on mental health."
Of course, survey responses can't indicate clinically diagnosed mental 
health conditions. But given that mental health conditions often go 
undiagnosed in a clinical setting, the researchers note that survey 
responses have the advantage of including instances of distress that 
would otherwise fly under the statistical radar.

What's more, the study is about correlation, not causation--we still 
don't know conclusively what, if anything, weather can do to cause 
mental distress. Exposure to more extreme weather "may produce 
physiological stressors that precipitate poor mental health," or "such 
extremes may initiate inflammatory processes that worsen mental health," 
the researchers hypothesize.

Or, they write, the effects may be caused "entirely through reductions 
in health maintenance behaviors, like exercise and sleep." Research 
already links warming nighttime temperatures to worse sleep quality, for 
example. And hotter summers in southern states is already projected to 
lead (pdf) to less exercise there. But more research is needed to truly 
determine the cause of the worsened mental health found in this study.

"Given the vital role that sound mental health plays in personal, 
social, and economic wellbeing--as well as in the ability to address 
pressing personal and social challenges--our findings provide added 
evidence that climatic changes pose substantial risks to human systems," 
the researchers write.
https://qz.com/1421070/as-climate-change-worsens-mental-health-probably-will-too/
- - - -
[even more]
*Empirical evidence of mental health risks posed by climate change 
<http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/09/25/1801528115>*
Nick Obradovich, Robyn Migliorini, Martin P. Paulus, and Iyad Rahwan
*Significance*

    Wellbeing falters without sound mental health. Scholars have
    recently indicated that the impacts of climate change are likely to
    undermine mental health through a variety of direct and indirect
    mechanisms. Using daily meteorological data coupled with information
    from nearly 2 million randomly sampled US residents across a decade
    of data collection, we find that experience with hotter temperatures
    and added precipitation each worsen mental health, that multiyear
    warming associates with an increased prevalence of mental health
    issues, and that exposure to tropical cyclones, likely to increase
    in frequency and intensity in the future, is linked to worsened
    mental health. These results provide added large-scale evidence to
    the growing literature linking climate change and mental health.

*Abstract*

    Sound mental health--a critical facet of human wellbeing--has the
    potential to be undermined by climate change. Few large-scale
    studies have empirically examined this hypothesis. Here, we show
    that short-term exposure to more extreme weather, multiyear warming,
    and tropical cyclone exposure each associate with worsened mental
    health. To do so, we couple meteorological and climatic data with
    reported mental health difficulties drawn from nearly 2 million
    randomly sampled US residents between 2002 and 2012. We find that
    shifting from monthly temperatures between 25 C and 30 C to >30 C
    increases the probability of mental health difficulties by 0.5%
    points, that 1C of 5-year warming associates with a 2% point
    increase in the prevalence of mental health issues, and that
    exposure to Hurricane Katrina associates with a 4% point increase in
    this metric. Our analyses provide added quantitative support for the
    conclusion that environmental stressors produced by climate change
    pose threats to human mental health.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/09/25/1801528115


[because MIT says so]
*Why Climate Models Aren't Better 
<https://www.technologyreview.com/s/543546/why-climate-models-arent-better/>*
Even as computer models grow more powerful and more precise, they remain 
uncertain as to regional effects.
by Richard Martin - November 18, 2015
- - - -
Accurate climate models are critical to understanding the consequences 
of rising greenhouse-gas emissions.
There are two types of widely used climate models: large, complicated, 
planetary-scale models that harness supercomputing capabilities at major 
research institutes, generally known as atmosphere-ocean general 
circulation models, and higher-resolution models that use input from the 
general circulation models to make calculations at regional scales. 
Around 40 of the general circulation models were used for the Fifth 
Assessment Report, released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate 
Change in November 2014; they are more accurate for long-term, worldwide 
forecasts, including the key measure of climate sensitivity--the amount 
of warming, in global mean temperature, that will happen when the amount 
of carbon in the atmosphere doubles from pre-industrial levels. The 
smaller, high-resolution models are better for examining the likely 
regional effects of climate change.

So models continue to get better. But most climate scientists 
acknowledge that there are limits: no matter how sophisticated our 
models become, *there will always be an irreducible element of chaos in 
the earth's climate system that no supercomputer will ever eliminate...*
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/543546/why-climate-models-arent-better/


  Elizabeth Kolbert:
"if a smoke alarm rings in the kitchen and everyone's watching "Fox & 
Friends" in the den, does it make a sound?
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/what-is-donald-trumps-response-to-the-uns-dire-climate-report


[solastalgia is a new word]
*A philosopher invented a word for the psychic pain of climate change 
<https://qz.com/1423202/a-philosopher-invented-a-word-for-the-psychic-pain-of-climate-change/>*
By Zoe Schlanger - October 13, 2018
- - - -
Last year, the American Psychological Association validated "ecoanxiety" 
as a clinically legitimate diagnosis.
But where is the language for the grief itself?
In the early 2000s, a philosopher named Glenn Albrecht at the University 
of Newcastle in Australia began to look for the words...
- - - -
Solastalgia, Albrecht writes, has the added benefit of being a "ghost 
reference" to nostalgia, sounding similar enough to evoke the feeling of 
longing contained in that word. "Hence, literally, solastalgia is the 
pain or sickness caused by the loss or lack of solace and the sense of 
isolation connected to the present state of one's home and territory," 
he writes. Solastalgia, then, is a very intimate word, describing a 
psychic pain with very specific origins. Here are the best parts of 
Albrecht's definition:

[Solastalgia] is the pain experienced when there is recognition that the 
place where one resides and that one loves is under immediate assault 
(physical desolation). It is manifest in an attack on one's sense of 
place, in the erosion of the sense of belonging (identity) to a 
particular place and a feeling of distress (psychological desolation) 
about its transformation.
…
Solastalgia is not about looking back to some golden past, nor is it 
about seeking another place as "home." It is the "lived experience" of 
the loss of the present as manifest in a feeling of dislocation; of 
being undermined by forces that destroy the potential for solace to be 
derived from the present. In short, solastalgia is a form of 
homesickness one gets when one is still at "home."

Other thinkers recognized the symptoms described by solastalgia as a 
type of sickness long before the word was coined. For example, Albrecht 
writes that he was influenced by the Australian environmental thinker 
Elyne Mitchell, who wrote a warning as early as 1946 of the harm that 
befalls society when humanity loses its stable bond to Earth's cycles 
and systems. In her book Soil and Civilization, she wrote that when 
healthy ties between people and their ecological environment are 
severed, "the break in this unity is swiftly apparent in the lack of 
"wholeness" in the individual person."

"Divorced from his roots, man loses his psychic stability," Mitchell wrote.

If our wholeness is predicated on our natural environment, the grief 
Zadie Smith describes watching her pear tree drown is all at once deep 
sorrow for the tree, for the seasons, and for herself. In 2018, life can 
feel in need of a dirge for the whole world, with scarcely the language 
to write it. As climate change reaches its fine tendrils into every 
ecosystem, reorganizing our corners of the planet and our lives in 
subtle or brutal ways, a lack of language to describe the sense of 
dislocation that comes with it is dislocating in itself. We need more 
"intimate words" for this feeling. Solastalgia is a start.
https://qz.com/1423202/a-philosopher-invented-a-word-for-the-psychic-pain-of-climate-change/


[Al Gore, Al Gore, Al Gore]
*PBS Newshour: Al Gore on Michael, Florence, Harvey and Climate Change 
<https://climatecrocks.com/2018/10/13/pbs-newshour-al-gore-on-michael-florence-harvey-and-climate-change/>*
October 13, 2018
For right wingers, there is a psychological necessity to demonize Al Gore.
They know that the theft of the 2000 election, (with the active low 
level participation of newly appointed SCOTUS member Brett Kavanaugh..) 
lead to the elevation of the worst President in history, at least until now.
George Bush went on to kill thousands of innocents in Iraq and 
Afghanistan, drive the economy into the Great Recession, and encumber us 
with trillions in extra debt to pay for these catastrophes.  The psychic 
weight of taking responsibility for that is simply too great for the 
fragile psyches of right wing Fox-a-holics to bear - "..if I'm 
responsible for that,  what am I?"
The continuing confirmation of Gore's prescience on the climate issue is 
simply more weight on the delicate structure.
The only way out is that Al Gore MUST be a demon of the most dangerous 
kind - so it makes for a cottage industry of self reinforcing ideations.
*Al Gore calls Trump's deregulation proposals 'literally insane' 
<https://youtu.be/CT-x-j1FeSQ>*
PBS NewsHour
Published on Oct 12, 2018
Former vice president and climate change activist Al Gore warns that 
climate change could be an "existential threat" and calls President 
Trump's response an "outlier reaction." In a wide-ranging interview, 
Judy Woodruff speaks with Gore about Hurricane Michael, President Trump, 
the UN Climate Change report out this week, and why he thinks Democrats 
will fare well in the midterm elections.
https://youtu.be/CT-x-j1FeSQ
https://climatecrocks.com/2018/10/13/pbs-newshour-al-gore-on-michael-florence-harvey-and-climate-change/


[sardonic Jimmy Kimmel Live video 1:40 ]
*We Are Doomed <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0Xaplni0lc>*
Jimmy Kimmel Live
Published on Oct 10, 2018
There is a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 
that says we have 12 years to get our act together or we will face 
catastrophic events including flooding, droughts, wildfires, disease and 
mass death. The Trump Administration issued their own report agreeing 
that climate change is going to be a catastrophe, but concluded that 
we're doomed anyway, so why bother doing anything about it? But there's 
always a silver lining.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0Xaplni0lc


*This Day in Climate History - October 15, 2007 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/opinion/15krugman.html?_r=0> - from 
D.R. Tucker*
October 15, 2007: New York Times columnist Paul Krugman ridicules 
right-wing outrage over Al Gore's Nobel Prize win.
On the day after Al Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize, The Wall Street 
Journal's editors couldn't even bring themselves to mention Mr. Gore's 
name. Instead, they devoted their editorial to a long list of people 
they thought deserved the prize more.

    What is it about Mr. Gore that drives right-wingers insane?

    Partly it's a reaction to what happened in 2000, when the American
    people chose Mr. Gore but his opponent somehow ended up in the White
    House. Both the personality cult the right tried to build around
    President Bush and the often hysterical denigration of Mr. Gore
    were, I believe, largely motivated by the desire to expunge the
    stain of illegitimacy from the Bush administration.

    And now that Mr. Bush has proved himself utterly the wrong man for
    the job -- to be, in fact, the best president Al Qaeda's recruiters
    could have hoped for -- the symptoms of Gore derangement syndrome
    have grown even more extreme.

    The worst thing about Mr. Gore, from the conservative point of view,
    is that he keeps being right. In 1992, George H. W. Bush mocked him
    as the "ozone man," but three years later the scientists who
    discovered the threat to the ozone layer won the Nobel Prize in
    Chemistry. In 2002 he warned that if we invaded Iraq, "the resulting
    chaos could easily pose a far greater danger to the United States
    than we presently face from Saddam." And so it has proved.

    But Gore hatred is more than personal. When National Review decided
    to name its anti-environmental blog Planet Gore, it was trying to
    discredit the message as well as the messenger. For the truth Mr.
    Gore has been telling about how human activities are changing the
    climate isn't just inconvenient. For conservatives, it's deeply
    threatening.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/opinion/15krugman.html?_r=0

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