[TheClimate.Vote] October 23, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Tue Oct 23 11:05:25 EDT 2018
/October 23, 2018/
[about 1 million people]
*Austin ordered to boil water; flood silt stalls treatment
<https://www.statesman.com/news/20181022/austin-ordered-to-boil-water-flood-silt-stalls-treatment>*
By Kelsey Bradshaw
The city of Austin's water utility told all residents early Monday to
boil water before using until the city's water treatment system is
stabilized.
- -
Austin Water warned that inadequately treated water could contain
bacteria, viruses, and parasites that can cause diarrhea, cramps,
nausea, headaches or illness. Infants, young children, some of the
elderly and people with severely compromised immune systems also would
be at risk.
See - http://www.austintexas.gov/boilH2O
The city recommends <http://www.austintexas.gov/boilH2O> that customers
do the following:
Reduce water use as much as possible to ensure adequate supply for
basic needs, fire protection, public health and safety.
Boil water intended for drinking. To ensure destruction of all
harmful bacteria and other microbes, water for drinking, cooking and
for making ice should be boiled and cooled. The water should be
brought to a rolling boil for three minutes.
In lieu of boiling water, use bottled water.
Businesses should not use drinking fountains or soda fountains that
rely on tap water.
Austin Water said the water is safe for washing dishes, but you
should use hot, soapy water and rinse dishes in boiled water.
The water is safe for laundry and for bathing, officials said.
However, the utility said customers should only use boiled or
bottled water for cooking, making ice, washing fruits and
vegetables, and making baby formula.
Even if you have your own water filtration device in your kitchen, you
should still boil your drinking water, Austin Water director Greg
Meszaros said.
"Anyone who's seen the water running through Lady Bird Lake can see how
muddy it is," said Austin Mayor Steve Adler. "The good thing is that we
can continue with most of our daily routines - like showering, hand
washing and laundry - but we all need to do our part to conserve where
we can, and boil the tap water we consume."
- - -
For more information and frequently asked questions about boil water
notices visit http://www.austintexas.gov/boilH2O.
This is a developing story; check back for updates.
https://www.statesman.com/news/20181022/austin-ordered-to-boil-water-flood-silt-stalls-treatment
[opinion from Tamino]
*Global Warming's Golden Opportunity
<https://tamino.wordpress.com/2018/10/22/global-warmings-golden-opportunity/>*
Posted on October 22, 2018
Opportunity knocks, but not often. Right now, it's knocking loud and long.
That opportunity is renewable energy. There are many forms, including
solar, wind, geothermal, and biofuels. There are certaintly challenges,
including energy storage, deployment, and efficiency. Yet despite the
challenges, costs are plummeting while installations are muliplying. The
race is on: whatever nation or nations find the technological solutions
first, and make them available in markets world-wide, is going to WIN
BIG. As in, win SO big that they will become the economic powerhouses of
the next few decades.
Whatever nations drag their feet, too sluggish to keep up with the rapid
advance of renewable energy technology because they're still banking on
fossil fuels, are going to LOSE. Lose BIG.
If you don't believe global warming is real, you're not just mistaken,
you're committing economic suicide. Renewable energy technology is
already way beyond the early "model T" phase, moving rapidly into the
era of computerized and efficient high performance, while you're still
married to the horse-and-buggy days of energy. How do you think that's
going to work out?
Unfortunately, the backward thinking of the Trump administration has
doomed the United States to depending on fossil fuels just when they're
poised to go the way of the dinosaurs.
Each year brings us closer and closer to a world in which nobody wants
your fossil fuels. It's still a way off, but it's still a sure thing.
When I was young, a trip to the moon seemed so far off that many
believed president Kennedy's committment to get there before the decade
was out was just a hopeless fantasy. But the Russians were working hard
at it, and we wanted to beat them there so: the race was on. We won --
and not just the race to the moon, but the economic race to develop the
new technology, new knowledge, new manufacturing, that would ensure our
dominance for decades to come. We got a lot more out of winning the
space race than just some moon rocks, a lot more than just an explosion
of amazing technology, we also got pride, pride in a job brilliantly
done, in achieving something good in the name of peace and progess,
something for all mankind. America led the way.
Not any more. China leads the way while the U.S. crawls backwards. The
banner of world leadership, economically at least, is leaving America
and heading overseas. As economic pre-eminence deserts us, so too will
moral leadership. Trump and his partners are handing the world to China
on a silver platter.
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2018/10/22/global-warmings-golden-opportunity/
[A Gaslighting tactic will reassign blame]
*Why conservatives keep gaslighting the nation about climate change*
<https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/10/22/18007922/climate-change-republicans-denial-marco-rubio-trump>
Republican climate rhetoric shifts (again), but the goal remains the same.
By David Roberts - Oct 22, 2018
In recent years, leaders of the Republican Party have become aware that
denying the existence of global warming makes them look like idiots.
Changes in climate have become obvious, not just to scientists, but to
ordinary people -- they can be directly measured, with such exotic
instruments as a "thermometer." Majorities of every group except the
most conservative Republicans (who will trust their media over their
lying eyes) believe it is happening.
Denying visible, tangible reality is a dicey business, even for the
modern US right. It makes the party look like a death cult. So
Republican climate-communication strategy has undergone something of an
adjustment...
- - - -
*Conservatives have been gaslighting the nation about climate change for
years*
That is obviously true when it comes to Trump, because he scarcely
tries, indeed doesn't know how, to pretend otherwise. But it's just as
true of the entire conservative movement, for decades now.
All the denialist talking points -- nefarious scientists, sunspots,
natural cycles -- have their true believers in the base, among the
chumps who drink the Kool-Aid and fill up the comment sections.
But the motive force is not any assessment of science. It's the tight
alliance between the cultural politics of white resentment and the power
of fossil fuel and related industries. To acknowledge anthropogenic
climate change is to empower liberals, open the door to additional taxes
and regulations, and threaten the power of the fossil fuel industry.
The Republican Party as currently constituted will simply never do those
things. Ever. The arguments are secondary...
more at -
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/10/22/18007922/climate-change-republicans-denial-marco-rubio-trump
[gee whiz invention]
*Bill Gates-funded startup in Squamish sucks up carbon dioxide to make
fuel
<http://dailyhive.com/vancouver/carbon-dioxide-fuel-squamish-june-2018>*
A startup based in Squamish and funded by international investors has
created revolutionary new technology has the potential to combat climate
change if it could be implemented on a larger scale.
As well, it could also potentially alter the global political landscape
and our entire paradigm of the effects of fossil fuels and pollution.
Carbon Engineering (CE) uses banks of fans to capture air as part of a
process to capture carbon dioxide. When altered through chemical
reactions with limestone, hydrogen, and air, the process creates an end
product of new synthetic fuels such as gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel.
And new research released this week shows that the process carries a
relatively low cost - far lower than initial estimates of USD$600 per
ton to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
With new data and engineering to support its findings, it believes it
can achieve the same for between USD$94 and USD$232 per ton. The
resulting fuel could be made at a relatively low cost of just USD$1 per
litre.
"CE's vision is to reduce the effects of climate change by first cutting
emissions, then by reducing atmospheric CO₂," said Steve Oldham, CEO of
CE, in a statement.
"Our clean fuel is fully compatible with existing engines, so it
provides the transportation sector with a solution for significantly
reducing emissions, either through blending or direct use. Our
technology is scalable, flexible, and demonstrated. Today, we're
actively seeking partners who will work with CE to dramatically reduce
emissions in the transportation sector and help us move to a
carbon-neutral economy."
The project was the brain-child of David Keith, a Harvard professor and
founder of CE. The latest findings are based on three years of research
from CE's pilot plant located on a 1.2-acre industrial site on the
future site of the Oceanfront development on Squamish's central waterfront.
The plant has been operational since 2015, and it began converting its
captured carbon dioxide into fuels late last year. However, the plant is
not a complete small-scale version of a commercial plant.
"Direct air capture technology offers a highly-scalable pathway to
removing carbon from the atmosphere," said Noah Deich, the executive
director of the Center for Carbon Removal. "This analysis demonstrates
the potential for Carbon Engineering's technology to fall to a cost that
would drive significant investment and corporate adoption in the near
future."
more at -
http://dailyhive.com/vancouver/carbon-dioxide-fuel-squamish-june-2018
[Video Classic from April 2018 ]
*In 10-15 Years World May Hit 2C of Warming
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6j0y8ml74E>*
Climate State
Published on Apr 12, 2018
Back in 2011, a Cornell University research team first made the
groundbreaking discovery that leaking methane from the shale gas
fracking boom could make burning fracked gas worse for the climate than
coal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6j0y8ml74E
- - - -
*A Different Energy Future, if Not for Fracking?
<https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/04/11/climate-change-two-degree-warming-fracking-natural-gas-rush-ingraffea>*
By Sharon Kelly
So what happened?
Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, U.S. natural gas production was
flat or falling. If that trend had continued along the same track it was
following from 2006-2008, then wind, solar, and other renewable energy
sources might have had a chance to displace both natural gas and coal as
major energy sources in America, according to Ingraffea.
Instead, the shale gas rush, propelled by hydraulic fracturing
(fracking), swept across the U.S., with drillers snapping up land to
drill for previously inaccessible fossil fuels locked in geologic
formations of shale rock from coast to coast.
If the shale gas rush hadn't disrupted trends around that time,
Ingraffea estimates that the wind energy sector alone could have
produced roughly triple the amount of energy expected by the end of this
coming decade, a difference of roughly 400 gigawatts.
"We can easily see there is a loss of potential -- large amounts of wind
energy -- because of the injection of shale gas into our energy
economy," Ingraffea explains in the lecture.
While the shale gas industry promised benefits like jobs and American
energy security, Ingraffea notes, those benefits would have been almost
exclusively aimed at just 5 percent of the world's population, North
Americans. But the harms will affect the remaining 95 percent of the
world as well.
It's an alarming message -- even though the shale rush has stumbled
somewhat as gas prices collapsed and many drillers went bankrupt, the
cumulative impact of American fracking appears to have set the entire
world on a collision course with climate change's most extreme effects...
more at -
https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/04/11/climate-change-two-degree-warming-fracking-natural-gas-rush-ingraffea
[the start date for the disinformation war ]
*This Day in Climate History - October 23, 2007 - from D.R. Tucker*
October 23, 2007: Dr. Julie Gerberding of the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention addresses a US Senate committee regarding the
health risks of climate change. Her testimony was extensively edited by
the Bush White House to dramatically downplay the severity of the risks.
CDC officials are now revealing that the White House heavily edited
Gerberding's testimony, which originally was longer and had more
"information on health risks":
"It was eviscerated," said a CDC official, familiar with both
versions, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the
sensitive nature of the review process.
The official said that while it is customary for testimony to be
changed in a White House review, these changes were particularly
"heavy-handed," with the document cut from its original 14 pages to
four. It was six pages as presented to the Senate committee.
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2007/10/23/17139/gerberding-global-warming/
http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2007/10/24/the-censored-testimony-of-cdc-director-julie-gerberding/
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/25/science/earth/24cnd-climate.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2008/07/08/174078/burnett-cheney-boiling/
http://www.c-span.org/video/?201698-1/HumanImp
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