[TheClimate.Vote] September 11, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Tue Sep 11 10:54:28 EDT 2018
/September 11, 2018/
[National Hurricane Center = NHC]
*Hurricane Florence Forecast Discussion
<https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh/MIATCDAT1+shtml/091450.shtml>*
Key Messages:
1. A life-threatening storm surge is likely along portions of the
coastlines of South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, and
a Storm Surge Watch will likely be issued for some of these areas by
Tuesday morning. All interests from South Carolina into the mid-
Atlantic region should ensure they have their hurricane plan in
place and follow any advice given by local officials.
2. Life-threatening freshwater flooding is likely from a prolonged
and exceptionally heavy rainfall event, which may extend inland over
the Carolinas and Mid Atlantic for hundreds of miles as Florence is
expected to slow down as it approaches the coast and moves inland.
3. Damaging hurricane-force winds are likely along portions of the
coasts of South Carolina and North Carolina, and a Hurricane Watch
will likely be issued by Tuesday morning. Damaging winds could also
spread well inland into portions of the Carolinas and Virginia.
4. Large swells affecting Bermuda and portions of the U.S. East
Coast will continue this week, resulting in life-threatening surf
and rip currents.
More discustion at:
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh/MIATCDAT1+shtml/091450.shtml
- - - -
*Hurricane Florence September 2018
<http://www.climatesignals.org/headlines/events/hurricane-florence-september-2018>*
The NHC warns of two life-threatening impacts from Hurricane Florence:
storm surge at the coast and freshwater flooding from a prolonged heavy
rainfall event inland
[Some Florence signals breakdown]
Sea surface temperatures are 3.6F (2C) hotter than normal along
Hurricane Florence's path, allowing for further strengthening, according
to the National Hurricane Center.
Jim Kossin reports that Florence is currently forecast to stall out over
North Carolina, moving as slow as 3 miles per hour, in contrast with the
average speed for Atlantic hurricanes over land of 16 miles per hour.
Florence is intensifying rapidly as it approaches the US East Coast,
aided by sea surface temperatures 3.6F (2C) hotter than normal.
Florence is expected to stall for as many as six days near the Atlantic
coast due to a strong ridge of high pressure over the Mid-Atlantic that
will block its forward progress[5], amplifying rainfall totals and
driving up flood risk. A similar situation contributed to the record
rainfall during Hurricane Harvey in August 2017.
The stalling weather pattern is consistent with the weather patterns
that have increasingly forced tropical cyclones to stall.
Five attribution studies found that global warming added to the deluge
of rainfall dumped by Hurricane Harvey.
From 1963 to 2012, 88 percent of storm-related fatalities occurred in
water-related incidents; storm surge caused 49 percent and freshwater
floods due to heavy rainfall caused 27 percent...
More discussion at:
http://www.climatesignals.org/headlines/events/hurricane-florence-september-2018
[Opinion]
*We won't save the Earth with a better kind of disposable coffee cup
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/06/save-earth-disposable-coffee-cup-green>*
George Monbiot
We must challenge the corporations that urge us to live in a throwaway
society rather than seeking 'greener' ways of maintaining the status quo...
Disposable coffee cups made from new materials are not just a
non-solution: they are a perpetuation of the problem. Defending the
planet means changing the world.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/06/save-earth-disposable-coffee-cup-green
[Video: Democracy Now]
*Rise for Climate: Tens of Thousands March in San Francisco Calling for
Fossil-Free World <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0NU5Brgsy4>*
Democracy Now! - Sep 10, 2018
https://democracynow.org - Hundreds of thousands of protesters in more
than 90 countries joined a worldwide day of protest demanding urgent
action to address climate change Saturday. In San Francisco, up to
30,000 people took part in the Rise for Climate, Jobs and Justice march.
It is believed to be the largest climate march ever on the West Coast.
The protest came just days before the start of the Global Climate Action
Summit being organized by California Governor Jerry Brown. Democracy
Now! was in the streets of San Francisco for the march.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0NU5Brgsy4
- - - - -
[California acts fast]
*FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
<http://climatehawksvote.com/news/press-releases/congrats-california-100-percent-clean-energy/>*
CONTACT: RL MILLER
Climate Hawks Vote congratulates California on passage of Kevin de
Leon's SB 100, the boldest climate bill in the world, requiring
California to get 100 percent of its electricity from clean sources
by 2045. Gov. Jerry Brown signed SB 100 on Monday, September 10,
2018 in the face of mounting criticism that he hasn't done anything
to transition the state away from fossil fuel production.
"This groundbreaking, historic bill owes its passage to two forces
of nature: Kevin de Leon, who stumped relentlessly for the bill and
refused to let it be watered down, and grassroots enthusiasm. We
were honored to play a small part in a big coalition for SB 100,"
says RL Miller, president of Climate Hawks Vote. "The bill was given
up for dead by the political elite several times over the last year,
but tens of thousands of climate hawks engaged in grassroots work
for its passage -- including over a thousand letters sent from
California Climate Hawks Vote members to Gov. Brown in the last five
days."
Kevin de Leon led the California state senate until recently, and is
now running for United States Senate, with climate change as one of
his signature issues. His opponent Dianne Feinstein last sponsored a
climate initiative with Olympia Snowe in 2007.
To view this release on the web:
http://climatehawksvote.com/news/press-releases/congrats-california-100-percent-clean-energy/
[ BLOG ] UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS
*For Washington Voters, I-1631 is a Chance to Tackle Climate Change Head
On <https://blog.ucsusa.org/julie-mcnamara/wa-1631-takes-on-climate-change>*
JULIE MCNAMARA, ENERGY ANALYST | AUGUST 16, 2018
The magnitude of the climate challenge is daunting; a constellation of
causes and impacts, promising no simple fix.
But a new proposal in Washington state has identified a powerful place
to start.
I-1631, on the ballot this November, is grounded in the reality that to
truly address climate change today, it's simply no longer enough to
drive down carbon emissions--communities must now also be readied for
climate impacts, including those already at hand, and all those still to
come.
As a result, this community-oriented, solutions-driven carbon pricing
proposal is generating enthusiastic support from a broad and growing
coalition across the state.
No single policy can solve all climate challenges, but I-1631 presents a
critically important start. And, because it was specifically designed to
prioritize those most vulnerable to climate change and the inevitable
transitions to come--through intersections with jobs, health, geography,
and historical social and economic inequities--the policy stands to be a
powerful change for good, and that is the very best metric we've got.
Here, a summary of what it's all about.
Overarching framework
I-1631 is organized around a commonsense framework: charge a fee for
carbon pollution to encourage the shift toward a cleaner economy, then
accelerate that transition by investing the revenues in clean energy and
climate resilience.
The Clean Air, Clean Energy Initiative states:
Investments in clean air, clean energy, clean water, healthy forests,
and healthy communities will facilitate the transition away from fossil
fuels, reduce pollution, and create an environment that protects our
children, families, and neighbors from the adverse impacts of pollution.
Funding these investments through a fee on large emitters of pollution
based on the amount of pollution they contribute is fair and makes sense.
I-1631 emerged as the result of a years-long collaboration between
diverse stakeholders--including labor, tribal, faith, health,
environmental justice, and conservation groups--leading to a proposal
that's deeply considerate of the many and varied needs of the peoples
and communities caught in the climate crossfire. The Union of Concerned
Scientists is proud to have been a part of this alliance and to now
support I-1631.
How it works
There are two main components to I-1631--the investments and the fee.
Let's take them in turn.
Investing in a cleaner, healthier, and more climate-resilient world.
I-1631 prioritizes climate solutions by investing in the communities,
workforces, and technologies that the state will need to thrive moving
forward. This means identifying and overcoming the vulnerabilities these
groups face, and re-positioning the state's economic, health, and
environmental priorities to achieve a resilient and robust future.
The policy proactively approaches this by assigning collected fees to
one of three investment areas, guided by a public oversight board and
content-specific panels:
Clean Air and Clean Energy (70 percent): Projects that can deliver tens
of millions of tons of emissions reductions over time, including through
renewables, energy efficiency, and transportation support. Within four
years, would also create a $50 million fund to support workers affected
by the transition away from fossil fuels, to be replenished as needed
thereafter.
Clean Water and Healthy Forests (25 percent): Projects that can increase
the resiliency of the state's waters and forests to climate change, like
reducing flood and wildfire risks and boosting forest health.
Healthy Communities (5 percent): Projects that can prepare communities
for the challenges caused by climate change--including by developing
their capacity to directly participate in the process--and to ensure
that none are disproportionately affected...
https://blog.ucsusa.org/julie-mcnamara/wa-1631-takes-on-climate-change
- - - - -
[Election date November 6, 2018 ballot initiative]
*Washington Initiative 1631, Carbon Emissions Fee Measure (2018)
<https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_1631,_Carbon_Emissions_Fee_Measure_%282018%29>*
Washington Initiative 1631, the Carbon Emissions Fee Measure is on the
ballot in Washington as an Initiative to the People, a type of initiated
state statute, on November 6, 2018.
A *yes vote supports* the initiative to do the following:
enact a carbon emissions fee of $15 per metric ton of carbon
beginning on January 1, 2020;
increase the fee by $2 annually until the state's greenhouse gas
reduction goals are met; and
use the revenue from the fee to fund various programs and projects
related to the environment.
A *no vote opposes* the initiative to do the following:
enact a carbon emissions fee of $15 per metric ton of carbon
beginning on January 1, 2020;
increase the fee by $2 annually until the state's greenhouse gas
reduction goals are met; and
use the revenue from the fee to fund various programs and projects
related to the environment.
https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_1631,_Carbon_Emissions_Fee_Measure_(2018)
- - -
*[See the 1631 campaign funding for yourself - data updated daily]
<https://www.pdc.wa.gov/browse/more-ways-to-follow-the-money/committees/statewide?category=Committees>*
https://www.pdc.wa.gov/browse/more-ways-to-follow-the-money/committees/statewide?category=Committees
[YES on 1631 is about $4.5 million - see 45 local and state donors found
in contributions section]
https://www.pdc.wa.gov/browse/campaign-explorer/committee?filer_id=CLEAAC%20101&election_year=2018
[NO on 1631 is about $11.1 million - primarily national carbon fuel
industry donors]
Cash contributions $11,093,776.42
https://www.pdc.wa.gov/browse/campaign-explorer/committee?filer_id=NO1631%20507&election_year=2018
Contributions detail of top 9 against the initiative from
<https://www.pdc.wa.gov/browse/campaign-explorer/committee?filer_id=NO1631%20507&election_year=2018>
https://www.pdc.wa.gov/browse/campaign-explorer/committee?filer_id=NO1631%20507&election_year=2018
PHILLIPS66, WASHINGTON, DC, $3,701,186.54
ANDEAVOR, SACRAMENTO, CA Cash $3,162,827.17
BP, SACRAMENTO, CA, Cash $3,000,000.00
CHEVRON U.S.A. INC,. SAN RAMON, CA, Cash $500,000.00
BP AMERICA, HOUSTON, TX, Cash $396,031.40
U.S. OIL & REFINING COMPANY, TACOMA, WA Cash $308,531.31
WESTERN STATES PETROLEUM ASSOCIATION, SACRAMENTO, CA, $27,390.42
POTATO PAC, PASCO, WA, Cash $15,000.00
ASSOCIATED GENERAL CONTRACTORS OF WA (BUILD PAC), SEATTLE WA,
Cash $10,000.00
[Food Bank for hurricane relief]
*Harvest Hope Food Bank Preps for Hurricane Florence
<https://www.wltx.com/article/weather/forecast/tracking-the-tropics/harvest-hope-food-bank-preps-for-hurricane-florence/101-592397185>*
Volunteers at Harvest Hope Food Bank made over 500 bags of food for SC
in preparation for Hurricane Florence.
Updated: September 10, 2018
Columbia, SC (WLTX) -- Harvest Hope Food Bank held a bagging event
Sunday to prepare for Hurricane Florence.
Volunteers worked to make sure everyone has enough food to last through
the potentially severe weather.
They made over 500 bags of food for communities in need. Those bags will
be distributed throughout the state.
Program leaders say they've been monitoring the storm and felt now was
the time to act.
https://www.wltx.com/article/weather/forecast/tracking-the-tropics/harvest-hope-food-bank-preps-for-hurricane-florence/101-592397185
[cold irony]
*With green power load on board, Chinese ships choose a route through
Arctic ice
<https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/industry-and-energy/2018/09/green-power-load-board-chinese-ships-choose-route-through-arctic-ice>*
As if a symbol of clean intents for the Arctic, Chinese shipping company
COSCO has sent 4 vessels loaded with wind power equipment through the
Northern Sea Route.
Ice conditions were complicated, Russian icebreaker assistance company
Rosatomflot says about the escort of the Chinese vessels through the
Arctic route. The cargo vessels "Tian You", "Tian Jian", "Tian Hui",
"Tian En" all transited from east to the west on the northern ship route
in August. At least two of them carried equipment for the wind power
industry.
The green power equipment was delivered to buyers in Europe.
The "Tian En" on September 5th arrived in French port of Rouen. It was
the vessel's first voyage through the Arctic, and the first ever transit
shipment via the NSR between China and France, Mer et Marine informs. On
board were 63 pieces of equipment, some of them up to 70 ton heavy,
among them 21 blades for wind turbines...
https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/industry-and-energy/2018/09/green-power-load-board-chinese-ships-choose-route-through-arctic-ice
[Beckwith conjectures the Blue Ocean event - video]
*Jet Stream Center-of-Rotation to Shift 17 degrees Southward from North
Pole to Greenland with Arcti <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFme3C9e-cs>*
Paul Beckwith
Published on Sep 9, 2018
When all the sea-ice in the Arctic has vanished from melt and transport,
what will happen? This so-called Blue-Ocean-Event (BOE) in the Arctic
will mean that the last bastion of ice and coldness in the Arctic will
be Greenland. Thus, instead of the Center-of-Coldness or Centroid (I
name it ColdTroid) being near the North Pole, as it has been in human
history it will be centred over the middle of Greenland, and thus be at
about 73 degrees N latitude. Thus, to first-order simplicity, one can
expect the jet streams to shift their center of rotation 17 degrees from
the North Pole where they are now towards Greenland. This jet stream
shift, causing a decoupling from Earth's axis of rotation, obviously has
profound consequences for our global weather patterns and climate system
and human civilization, and plants and animals, and, for example our
ability to grow food. But hey; humans will at least be able to drill and
mine the Arctic, at least those of us that are left.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFme3C9e-cs
[Book Review]
*The Most Honest Book About Climate Change Yet
<https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/william-vollmann-carbon-ideologies/568309/>*
William T. Vollmann's latest opus is brilliant, but it offers no comfort
to its readers.
NATHANIEL RICH
OCTOBER 2018 ISSUE
Authors like to flatter themselves by imagining for their work an "ideal
reader," a cherubic presence endowed with bottomless generosity, the
sympathy of a parent, and the wisdom of, well, the authors themselves.
In Carbon Ideologies, William T. Vollmann imagines for himself the
opposite: a murderously hostile reader who sneers at his arguments,
ridicules his feeblemindedness, scorns his pathetic attempts at
ingratiation. Vollmann can't blame this reader, whom he addresses
regularly throughout Carbon Ideologies, because she lives in the future,
under radically different circumstances--inhabiting a "hotter, more
dangerous and biologically diminished planet." He envisions her turning
the pages of his climate-change opus within the darkened recesses of an
underground cave in which she has sought shelter from the unendurable
heat; the plagues, droughts, and floods; the methane fireballs racing
across boiling oceans. Because the soil is radioactive, she subsists on
insects and recycled urine, and regards with implacable contempt her
ancestors, who, as Vollmann tells her, "enjoyed the world we possessed,
and deserved the world we left you."
Carbon Ideologies is a single work published in two parts, No Immediate
Danger and No Good Alternative, the bifurcation due to the insistence of
Vollmann's weary publisher and the limitations of modern bookbinding. Of
all the writers working today, Vollmann must be the most free: He writes
fiction, essays, monographs, criticism, memoir, and history, usually
merging several forms at once, taking on subjects as diverse as Japanese
Noh theater, train hopping, and the Nez Perce War, all the while
dilating to whatever length suits him. (After 25 books, his career word
count now rivals Zane Grey's.)
NO IMMEDIATE DANGER: VOLUME ONE OF CARBON IDEOLOGIES
BY WILLIAM T. VOLLMAN
Viking
As is often the case with Vollmann, his decades-long war of
attrition with his editors spills over into the pages of the
finished book. Carbon Ideologies begins with the confession that the
original manuscript was "several times longer than its contractually
stipulated maximum"; after "anxious negotiations," his publisher
"finally agreed to indulge me once more." Not, mind you, his
nonfiction publisher--which he walked away from after it proposed an
advance that was less than the amount of money he had already spent
on research--but his fiction publisher. ("I sincerely hope that
someday all this will be worth it to you," he writes in a loving
acknowledgment.) Viking did hold the line when it came to the
endnotes, which run to 129,000 words and can be examined online or
in Vollmann's archive at Ohio State University...
- - - - -
Nearly every book about climate change that has been written for a
general audience contains within it a message of hope, and often a prod
toward action. Vollmann declares from the outset that he will not offer
any solutions, because he does not believe any are possible: "Nothing
can be done to save [the world as we know it]; therefore, nothing need
be done." This makes Carbon Ideologies, for all its merits and flaws,
one of the most honest books yet written on climate change. Vollmann's
undertaking is in the vanguard of the coming second wave of climate
literature, books written not to diagnose or solve the problem, but to
grapple with its moral consequences.
It is also a deeply idiosyncratic project: Vollmann's idiolect is
obsessive, punctilious, twitchy, hyperobservational, and proudly
amateurish. The data he presents are at times revelatory. A homeless
person in America uses twice as much energy as the average global
citizen; 61 percent of the energy generated in the United States in 2012
"accomplished no useful work whatsoever"; from 1980 to 2011, global
energy use nearly tripled. Elsewhere the data are impossibly arcane
("Power Wastage by Group-Driven Machine Tools, ca. 1945 [Deducting Idle
Machines]") or defiantly unscientific ("I am sorry that I could not make
my table simple, complete or accurate"). His insatiable appetite for
detail yields both irrelevant trivia ("Embarking on the Super Limited
Hitachi Express, which was also known as the Super Hitachi 23 Limited
Express") and magisterial portraits of landscapes befouled by poking and
prodding and, in the case of West Virginia's mountains, decapitating...
- - - - -
The demand problem, the growth problem, the complexity problem, the
cost-benefit problem, the industry problem, the political problem, the
generational-delay problem, the denial problem--Vollmann scrupulously
catalogs all the major unsolved problems that contribute to the colossus
of climate change. "Whatever 'solution' I could have proposed in 2017,"
he writes, "would have been found wanting before the oceans rose even
one more inch!" (The title of a late chapter, "A Ray of Hope," is to be
read sarcastically.) Nor have his six years of traveling the world,
tabulating data, and interviewing experts changed his mind about any
major aspect of the issue. The reader who begins Carbon Ideologies
hopeless will finish it hopeless. So will the hopeful reader.
But there exist other kinds of readers--those who do not read for advice
or encouragement or comfort. Those who are sick of dishonesty crusading
as optimism. Those who seek to understand human nature, and themselves.
Because human nature is Vollmann's true subject--as it must be. The
story of climate change hangs on human behavior, not geophysics.
Vollmann seeks to understand how "we could not only sustain, but
accelerate the rise of atmospheric carbon levels, all the while
expressing confusion, powerlessness and resentment." Why did we take
such insane risks? Could we have behaved any other way? Can we behave
any other way? If not, what conclusions must we draw about our lives and
our futures? Vollmann admits that even he has shied away from fully
comprehending the damage we've done. "I had never loathed myself
sufficiently to craft the punishment of full understanding," he writes.
"How could I? No one person could." He's right, though books like Carbon
Ideologies will bring us closer.
The planet's atmosphere will change but human nature won't. Vollmann's
meager wish is for future readers to appreciate that they would have
made the same mistakes we have. This might seem a humble ambition for a
project of this scope, but only if you mistake Carbon Ideologies for a
work of activism. Vollmann's project is nothing so conventional. His
"letter to the future" is a suicide note. He does not seek an
intervention--only acceptance. If not forgiveness, then at least acceptance.
[The full] article appears in the October 2018 print edition with the
headline "The Brutal Truth About Climate Change."
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to
the editor or write to letters at theatlantic.com.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/william-vollmann-carbon-ideologies/568309/
[10 min Video DJ beat - get off our feet, into the streets, Neat, greet,
meet... Sweet! Lather, rinse, repeat.]
*Chomsky, Mann, Hurricanes, Wildfires, Climate, and Music
<https://youtu.be/B0mrv_rT3xw>*
Climate State
Published on Sep 10, 2018
Music by Kaempfer and Dietze, "Shear Force"
BUY the track here
https://www.beatport.com/track/shear-force-original-mix/5214631
https://youtu.be/B0mrv_rT3xw
*This Day in Climate History - September 11, 2017
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/11/climate/hurricane-irma-climate-change.html>
- from D.R. Tucker*
September 11, 2017:
The New York Times reports:
"Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency,
says it is insensitive to discuss climate change in the midst of deadly
storms.
"Tomas Regalado, the Republican mayor of Miami whose citizens raced to
evacuate before Hurricane Irma, says if not now, when?
"'This is the time to talk about climate change. This is the time that
the president and the E.P.A. and whoever makes decisions needs to talk
about climate change,' Mr. Regalado told the Miami Herald. 'If this
isn’t climate change, I don’t know what is. This is a truly, truly
poster child for what is to come.'"
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/11/climate/hurricane-irma-climate-change.html
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