[TheClimate.Vote] September 27, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Richard Pauli richard at theclimate.vote
Thu Sep 27 09:57:08 EDT 2018


/September 27, 2018/

[PR today, manufacturing 3-5 years hence]
*Chinese Solar Giant to Make All Its Panels With Just Solar Power 
<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-26/chinese-solar-giant-to-make-all-its-panels-with-just-solar-power>*
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-26/chinese-solar-giant-to-make-all-its-panels-with-just-solar-power


[The biggest destabilization ever.]
*Climate Change Is Causing Earth to Wobble on Its Axis, NASA Says 
<https://weather.com/science/space/news/2018-09-25-climate-change-earth-wobble-more-nasa>*
By Pam Wright
For the first time, scientists have identified why Earth wobbles as it 
spins.
The decrease in Greenland's ice mass is the main reason for the wobble, 
NASA says.
Changes in the Earth's wobble could impact the accuracy of satellite 
tools like GPS systems, according to NASA.
- - - -
Over the past century, Earth's axis - the imaginary line that passes 
through the North and South Poles - has drifted about 4 inches, and a 
decrease in Greenland's ice mass is the main contributor to the wobble, 
the space agency has announced.
As temperatures increased throughout the 20th century because of humans, 
Greenland's ice mass decreased.
"A total of about 7,500 gigatons -- the weight of more than 20 million 
Empire State Buildings -- of Greenland's ice melted into the ocean 
during this time period," NASA said in a press release. "This makes 
Greenland one of the top contributors of mass being transferred to the 
oceans, causing sea level to rise and, consequently, a drift in Earth's 
spin axis."...
- - - -
The agency notes that while melting has occurred at other locations, 
including Antarctica, Greenland's location has had a greater influence 
on Earth's wobble.
"There is a geometrical effect that if you have a mass that is 45 
degrees from the North Pole -- which Greenland is -- or from the South 
Pole (like Patagonian glaciers), it will have a bigger impact on 
shifting Earth's spin axis than a mass that is right near the Pole," 
said coauthor Eric Ivins.
Scientists also believe glacial rebound plays a role in the planet's 
wobble, but it's not the major contributor scientists previously thought.
"During the last ice age, heavy glaciers depressed Earth's surface much 
like a mattress depresses when you sit on it. As that ice melts, or is 
removed, the land slowly rises back to its original position," NASA 
says. "In the new study, which relied heavily on a statistical analysis 
of such rebound, scientists figured out that glacial rebound is likely 
to be responsible for only about a third of the polar drift in the 20th 
century."
Mantle convection, or the movement of tectonic plates on Earth's 
surface, is another reason for Earth's wobble, NASA scientists say.
"It is basically the circulation of material in the mantle caused by 
heat from Earth's core," NASA says. "Ivins describes it as similar to a 
pot of soup placed on the stove. As the pot, or mantle, heats, the 
pieces of the soup begin to rise and fall, essentially forming a 
vertical circulation pattern -- just like the rocks moving through 
Earth's mantle."
So, what does this change in Earth's rotation change for us here on 
Earth's surface?
Nothing that dramatically changes day-to-day life, but the shift can 
impact the accuracy of GPS and other satellite functions, NASA notes.
https://weather.com/science/space/news/2018-09-25-climate-change-earth-wobble-more-nasa


[understatement]
*Obama jabs at Trump's lack of 'commitment' on climate change 
<https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/408596-obama-jabs-at-trumps-position-on-climate-change>*
BY ARIS FOLLEY - 09/26/18
Former President Obama slammed the Trump administration on environmental 
sustainability on Wednesday.
While delivering remarks to business leaders in Oslo, Norway, Obama said 
the world needs "political and social commitment" in order to achieve 
sustainability, The Associated Press reported.
"Unfortunately we have a U.S administration that deals differently 
around these issues," he reportedly said to a crowd of laughter at the 
Oslo Business Forum.
"The single highest priority that I see globally at this point is the 
issue of environmental sustainability," he continued, while also adding 
that the Paris climate agreement is "a first step in the right 
direction. But only the first step."
Obama went on to say that environmental sustainability can only be 
achieved when leaders adopt new technologies.
"But that takes political and social commitment that right now is not 
forthcoming," Obama added.
The AP reported that Obama did not use President Trump's name...
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/408596-obama-jabs-at-trumps-position-on-climate-change


[UN delivery]
*Macron rebukes Trump's isolationist message 
<https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/25/politics/macron-unga-speech-trump/index.html>*
New York (CNN)French President Emmanuel Macron delivered a fiery rebuke 
of US policies under President Donald Trump at the UN General Assembly 
Tuesday, signaling that he is ready to take up the mantle of global 
leadership usually assumed by a US leader.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/25/politics/macron-unga-speech-trump/index.html


[melts as it should, but it moves much faster than thought]
*New research shows the world's ice is doing something not seen before 
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/sep/26/new-research-shows-the-worlds-ice-is-doing-something-not-seen-before>*
John Abraham - Wed 26 Sep 2018
In this warming world, some parts of the planet are warming much faster 
than others.  The warming is causing large ice bodies to start to melt 
and move rapidly, in some cases sliding into the ocean.

This movement is the topic of a very new scientific study that was just 
published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. The Arctic 
is warming much faster than other parts of the planet and the ice there 
is showing the signs of rapid warming.  This fact has serious 
consequences. First, melting ice can cause sea levels to rise and 
inundate coastal areas - it also makes storms like hurricanes and 
typhoons more destructive.  Melting ice also causes a feedback loop, 
which can cause more future warming and then more ice loss.

It should be noted that there are different types of ice.  Some ice 
floats on water and is called sea ice.  When it melts, the ocean water 
level hardly budges because the ice is already in the sea displacing 
liquid water.  But, sea ice is really important for this feedback loop I 
mentioned above.

Other ice is on land and may be a large ice sheet or a smaller glacier.  
These ice bodies sit atop the land and "rest" there.  In some cases, 
they extend out off the land and into the ocean where they partly float 
on liquid water.  When this land ice melts, the liquid flows into the 
oceans and can cause significant ocean level rising.

So, the importance of ice depends on what type it is, where it is 
located, and how fast it is melting. And this brings us to the new paper.

The researchers looked at a type of high latitude glacier in their 
study.  These glaciers hold enough water to cause about 1 foot (about a 
third of a meter) in sea level rise. Typically, they exist in cold and 
dry areas, where snowfall is limited.

How do glaciers move?  Well really by either sliding over the underlying 
bedrock or surface that they sit on, or by deforming and stretching 
under their weight. The colder glaciers tend to move by the deforming 
and stretching process.  Glaciers that have wetter and more temperate 
regions involve more sliding.  But regardless of how they move, these 
glaciers, particularly the glaciers that have both cold and temperate 
parts, experience surges in their motion.  These surges are short 
duration times where the glacier moves a lot. During a surge, ice is 
redistributed from one part of the glacier to another region.

The authors in this study observed such a glacier surge.  It happened at 
an outlet glacier that is mainly of the "cold" type in Russia.  At the 
Vavilov Ice Cap on October Revolution Island, the authors find it "is 
undergoing extraordinary acceleration and thinning but displays no 
previous evidence of surging."  The authors write,

the 300-600 meter thick 1820 square kilometer Vavilov Ice Cap is frozen 
to its bed over the majority of its area, apart from a region along its 
western margin where basal sliding is potentially important for faster flow.

In 2010 the ice in the region began to accelerate and the next year, 
crevasses were observed that matched the patterns of ice acceleration. 
The researchers were able to watch this surge in ice motion in real-time 
using satellite images. They could track the motion and show the 
incredible speed of flow.

What caused the rapid motion? This is an important question because if 
the motion is caused by human warming, we can expect the behavior to be 
repeated elsewhere as temperatures rise.  Importantly both air and 
ocean-water temperatures could be a factor.  One potential cause is 
surface meltwater.  The top of the ice can melt, and liquid water then 
can flow downwards, into the ice through cracks and holes. This flowing 
water can precondition the ice for rapid motion.

This fact may be a contributing cause to the motion.  Basically, the 
melted water lubricated the ice/ground interface causing more sliding 
and more friction.  The friction caused some of the bottom ice to melt 
and released more liquid water, and a cycle had begun.

The researchers also took measurements of elevation to better understand 
areas where ice was becoming thicker or thinner.  In addition, they 
studied the forces that exist within the ice itself to help elucidate 
the cause of the increased speed. Obviously, this is an evolving area of 
study and all of the questions have not yet been answered.  However, I 
was impressed when I read that even though these types of surges are 
becoming more common, what the researchers observed in Russia was still 
unique.  They describe the rate of ice loss at Vavilov as "extreme." The 
authors also point out,

It is startling that the Vavilov Ice Cap, until recently, an apparently 
stable ice cap with an almost entirely frozen bed that is almost 
entirely above sea level, is able to rapidly discharge such a large 
proportion of its ice in the ocean over such a short period.

So, to answer the question, how fast is it moving?  In 2015, it reached 
speeds of up to 82 feet in a single day. It currently is sliding 15-35 
feet a day. For comparison, that is much faster than the average 2 
inches per day we would see with no surge events.

The takeaway message is that once we thought these large bodies of ice 
responded slowly to changing conditions.  But this research shows us 
differently.  It shows that ice sheet can move quickly and once we pass 
a threshold, they may be hard to stop.  This finding makes it more 
crucial for us to slow down global warming before it's too late.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/sep/26/new-research-shows-the-worlds-ice-is-doing-something-not-seen-before


[Not Kansas anymore]
*Our Changing World; A Tornado Outbreak in Canada 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpzkfZMHJpA>*
Paul Beckwith - Sep 26, 2018
After an outbreak of 6 tornadoes in Ontario and Quebec on Friday 
September 21, 2018 there have been many questions. In Ontario, there was 
an EF1 near Calabogie, an EF3 that destroyed much of Dunrobin, then 
tracked through Ottawa and went across the Ottawa River to damage 
Gatineau in Quebec, and an EF2 in the southern part of Ottawa. There 
were 3 additional tornadoes in northern regions of Quebec. Is this a 
freak of nature or part of a worrying new trend?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpzkfZMHJpA
- - - -
September 25 2018
*Environment Canada now confirms 6 tornadoes hit ON, QC 
<https://globalnews.ca/video/4487155/environment-canada-now-confirms-6-tornadoes-hit-on-qc>*
https://globalnews.ca/video/4487155/environment-canada-now-confirms-6-tornadoes-hit-on-qc
- - - -
*Investigating windstorms: Why it took days to confirm Ontario, Quebec 
tornadoes 
<https://globalnews.ca/news/4485573/investigating-windstorms-why-it-took-days-to-confirm-ontario-quebec-tornadoes/>*
https://globalnews.ca/news/4485573/investigating-windstorms-why-it-took-days-to-confirm-ontario-quebec-tornadoes/


[common sense]
*Climate change is a global injustice. A new study shows why. 
<https://www.vox.com/2018/9/26/17897614/climate-change-social-cost-carbon>*
The US is second only to India when it comes to the economic cost of 
global warming.
By Umair Irfan - Sep 26, 2018
All efforts to fight climate change face the money test: Are the 
benefits of stopping global warming -- and avoiding sea level rise, heat 
waves, and wildfires -- greater than the costs?
The dollar balance we arrive at should be one of the biggest factors in 
deciding what we're willing to do to tackle the problem, whether that's 
shuttering all coal plants or building thousands of nuclear reactors.
Some groups have taken a stab at calculating what climate change will 
cost the world, or conversely, how much humanity would save by becoming 
more sustainable. Earlier this month, the Global Commission on the 
Economy and Climate tallied the number at a truly massive $26 trillion 
in savings by 2030.

Getting a slice of those savings requires figuring out which actors 
stand to lose the most as the climate changes, whether that's countries, 
companies, or even individuals.

And this is where the idea of the social cost of carbon comes in. It's a 
policy tool that attaches a price tag to the long-term economic damage 
caused by one ton of carbon dioxide, hence the cost to society. It's 
related to a carbon tax (more on that below), and it serves as a way to 
distill the vast global consequences of climate change down to a 
practical metric.

Critically, it's also the foundation of US climate policies, including 
the Clean Power Plan. Revising this number down has been a key part of 
the Trump administration's strategy to roll back environmental rules. 
Under Obama, the social cost of carbon was set at $45 per ton of carbon 
dioxide; under Trump, it's as little as $1.

A new study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change 
calculates the social cost of carbon down to individual countries. This 
adds an important bit of nuance because climate change is going to cost 
some countries more than others, a fact that's lost when you try to 
tabulate a global average...
- - -
We're drastically underestimating how much climate change will cost the 
global economy
Even if you've just skimmed climate policy discussions in recent years, 
you've likely come across the idea of a carbon tax. In short, a carbon 
tax helps attach the consequences of climate change to the greenhouse 
gas sources that are driving it. Ideally, it would push economies toward 
sustainability by making dirtier energy sources and industries more 
costly relative to their alternatives. It's a useful tool in estimating 
the costs and benefits of different ways to fight climate change.

Though a tax is just one way to price emissions, most economists and 
scientists agree that pricing in some form is the sine qua non of 
fighting climate change. (My colleague David Roberts has written 
extensively about the limits of a carbon tax and the recent Republican 
carbon tax proposals.)

How high you set your carbon tax is a function of how aggressively you 
want to clean up your act and how much damage you're expecting if you 
don't. The former is an objective that's set by policymakers, but the 
latter, in theory, has an empirical value. This is the social cost of 
carbon...
- - - -
Calculating the social cost of carbon is merely the starting point for 
climate policy
Suppose every country in the world suddenly wakes up tomorrow in 
ecstatic cahoots on climate change and decides to implement a carbon tax 
at the level of their respective social costs of carbon. Will that solve 
climate change?

Not even remotely.

"If countries were to price their own carbon emissions at their own 
[country-level social cost of carbon], approximately 5 [percent], a 
small amount, of the global climate externality would be internalized," 
the researchers wrote.

That's because there are some countries that emit very little and will 
be hit hard by climate change, while others emit a lot and won't see as 
many damages. So for a country to set a meaningful carbon tax, or any 
other price on carbon, it has to include damages caused to other 
countries, as former Obama adviser Jason Bordoff wrote in the Wall 
Street Journal:

Unlike other regulated pollutants that have almost entirely domestic 
consequences, CO2 impacts are global, and climate change is a "tragedy 
of the commons" problem. A ton of CO2 contributes equally to climate 
change regardless of where it comes from. If all nations looked only at 
the impact of a ton of CO2 on their own nations, the collective response 
would be vastly inadequate to address the true damages from climate 
change...
- - https://www.vox.com/2018/9/26/17897614/climate-change-social-cost-carbon


[Bloomberg report]
*New Climate Debate: How to Adapt to the End of the World 
<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-26/new-climate-debate-how-to-adapt-to-the-end-of-the-world>*
  Researchers are thinking about social collapse and how to prepare for it.
By Chirstopher Flavelle
September 26, 2018, 1:00 AM PDT
At the end of 2016, before Puerto Rico's power grid collapsed, wildfires 
reached the Arctic, and a large swath of North Carolina was submerged 
under floodwaters, Jonathan Gosling published an academic paper asking 
what might have seemed like a shrill question: How should we prepare for 
the consequences of planetary climate catastrophe?

"If some of the more extreme scenarios of ecocrisis turn out to be 
accurate, we in the West will be forced to confront such 
transformations," wrote Gosling, an anthropologist who'd just retired 
from the University of Exeter in England.

Almost two years later, as the U.S. stumbles through a second 
consecutive season of record hurricanes and fires, more academics are 
approaching questions once reserved for doomsday cults. Can modern 
society prepare for a world in which global warming threatens 
large-scale social, economic, and political upheaval? What are the 
policy and social implications of rapid, and mostly unpleasant, climate 
disruption?

Those researchers, who are generally more pessimistic about the pace of 
climate change than most academics, are advocating for a series of 
changes--in infrastructure, agriculture and land-use management, 
international relations, and our expectations about life--to help manage 
the effects of crisis-level changes in weather patterns.

In the language of climate change, "adaptation" refers to ways to blunt 
the immediate effects of extreme weather, such as building seawalls, 
conserving drinking water, updating building codes, and helping more 
people get disaster insurance. The costs are enormous: The U.S. 
government is considering a 5-mile, $20 billion seawall to protect New 
York City against storm surges, while Louisiana wants to spend $50 
billion to save parts of its shoreline from sinking. Poorer countries 
could require $500 billion a year to adapt, according to the United Nations.

But some researchers are going further, calling for what some call the 
"deep adaptation agenda." For Gosling, that means not only rapid 
decarbonization and storm-resistant infrastructure, but also building 
water and communications systems that won't fail if the power grid 
collapses and searching for ways to safeguard the food supply by 
protecting pollinating insects.

Propelling the movement are signs that the problem is worsening at an 
accelerating rate. In an article this summer in the Proceedings of the 
National Academy of Sciences, 16 climate scientists from around the 
world argued that the planet may be much closer than previously realized 
to locking in what they call a "hothouse" trajectory--warming of 4C or 
5C (7F or 9F), "with serious challenges for the viability of human 
societies."

Jem Bendell, a professor at the University of Cumbria who popularized 
the term deep adaptation, calls it a mix of physical changes--pulling 
back from the coast, closing climate-exposed industrial facilities, 
planning for food rationing, letting landscapes return to their natural 
state--with cultural shifts, including "giving up expectations for 
certain types of consumption" and learning to rely more on the people 
around us.

"The evidence before us suggests that we are set for disruptive and 
uncontrollable levels of climate change, bringing starvation, 
destruction, migration, disease and war," he wrote in a paper he posted 
on his blog in July after an academic journal refused to publish it. "We 
need to appreciate what kind of adaptation is possible."


A man collects firewood on a dried up-dam in Indonesia's West Java 
province on Sept. 15, 2018.PHOTOGRAPHER: ANDREW LOTULUNG/GETTY IMAGES
It might be tempting to dismiss Bendell and Gosling as outliers. But 
they're not alone in writing about the possibility of massive political 
and social shocks from climate change and the need to start preparing 
for those shocks. Since posting his paper, Bendell says he's been 
contacted by more academics investigating the same questions. A LinkedIn 
group titled "Deep Adaptation" includes professors, government 
scientists, and investors.

William Clark, a Harvard professor and former MacArthur Fellow who 
edited the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper, is 
among those who worry about what might come next. "We are right on the 
bloody edge," he says.

Clark argues that in addition to quickly and dramatically cutting 
emissions, society should pursue a new scale of adaptation work. Rather 
than simply asking people to water their lawns less often, for example, 
governments need to consider large-scale, decades-long infrastructure 
projects, such as transporting water to increasingly arid regions and 
moving cities away from the ocean.

"This is not your grandfather's adaptation," he says.

Diana Liverman, a professor at the University of Arizona School of 
Geography and Development and one of the authors of this summer's paper, 
says adapting will mean "relocation or completely different 
infrastructure and crops." She cites last year's book New York 2140, in 
which the science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson imagines the city 
surviving under 50 feet of water, as "the extreme end of adaptation."

Relocating large numbers of homes away from the coast is perhaps the 
most expensive item on that list. The U.S. Federal Emergency Management 
Agency has spent $2.8 billion since 1989 to buy 40,000 homes in areas 
particularly prone to flooding, giving their owners the chance to move 
somewhere safer. But if seas rose 3 feet, more than 4 million Americans 
would have to move, according to a 2016 study in the journal Nature: 
Climate Change.

"The government's going to have to spend more money to help relocate 
people," says Rob Moore, a policy expert at the Natural Resources 
Defense Council who specializes in flooding. The alternative, he says, 
is "a completely unplanned migration of hundreds of thousands, if not 
millions, of people in this country."

Cameron Harrington, a professor of international relations at Durham 
University in England and co-author of the 2017 book Security in the 
Anthropocene, says adapting to widespread disruption will require 
governments to avoid viewing climate change primarily as a security 
threat. Instead, Harrington says, countries must find new ways to manage 
problems that cross borders--for example, by sharing increasingly scarce 
freshwater resources. "We can't raise border walls high enough to 
prevent the effects of climate change," he says.

There are even more pessimistic takes. Guy McPherson, a professor 
emeritus of natural resources at the University of Arizona, contends 
climate change will cause civilization to collapse not long after the 
summer Arctic ice cover disappears. He argues that could happen as early 
as next year, sending global temperatures abruptly higher and causing 
widespread food and fuel shortages within a year.

Many academics are considerably less dire in their predictions. Jesse 
Keenan, who teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and advises 
state governments on climate adaptation, says warnings about social 
collapse are overblown. "I think for much of the world, we will pick up 
the pieces," Keenan says. But he adds that the prospect of 
climate-induced human extinction has only recently become a widespread 
topic of academic discourse.

Even mainstream researchers concede there's room for concern about the 
effects of accelerating change on social stability. Solomon Hsiang, a 
professor at the University of California at Berkeley who studies the 
interplay between the environment and society, says it's too soon to 
predict the pace of global warming. But he warns that society could 
struggle to cope with rapid shifts in the climate.

"If they are indeed dramatic and fast, there exists substantial evidence 
that many human systems, including food production and social stability 
more broadly, will be sharply and adversely affected," Hsiang says.

For Bendell, the question of when climate change might shake the Western 
social order is less important than beginning to talk about how to 
prepare for it. He acknowledges that his premise shares something with 
the survivalist movement, which is likewise built on the belief that 
some sort of social collapse is coming.

But he says deep adaptation is different: It looks for ways to mitigate 
the damage of that collapse. "The discussion I'm inviting is about 
collective responses to reduce harm," he says, "rather than how a few 
people could tough it out to survive longer than others."
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-26/new-climate-debate-how-to-adapt-to-the-end-of-the-world


[Major legal strategy shift]
*Trial Will Test New Weapon Against Climate Change: Necessity Defense 
<https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2018/09/25/necessity-defense-valve-turners-climate/>*
By Seamus McGraw
No one--least of all the defendants--disputes the facts of the case 
against four people known as valve-turners: activists who trespassed on 
private property to shut down an oil pipeline in 2016. As their 
otherwise straightforward case goes to trial in October, it's their 
defense that has everyone's attention.
- - - -
Indeed, Regan said she was confident that she could provide evidence not 
just that the climate peril posed by the tar sands oil in the Enbridge 
pipeline was immediate, but that the specific actions taken by the valve 
turners--not just in Minnesota but in all the states where the activists 
acted--would have been a reasonable and effective response. "I'm sure 
you're aware that the five pipelines that were shut down were all 
pipelines carrying tar sands into the United States," she said. "If all 
of that tar sands flow had actually stopped and the pipeline companies 
had not been permitted to restart those pipelines, then the action would 
have achieved the 15 percent reduction in carbon emissions that is 
required according to scientists in order to regain control of the 
out-of-control spiral that's currently going on in regards to carbon 
emissions."

Whether that argument is compelling enough to persuade a jury in a 
conservative county remains an open question. Regan said she is 
optimistic. So is Kushner. Moderately. While the necessity defense might 
find a more receptive audience in Hennepin or Ramsey counties in the 
Minneapolis-St. Paul region, it could still work in Clearwater.  
"Sometimes," Kushner said, "you get receptive views from people that you 
wouldn't expect."...
https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2018/09/25/necessity-defense-valve-turners-climate/


TUE SEP 25, 2018 / 4:34 AM EDT
*Love in the time of climate change: Indian film with a new take on 
romance <https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSL8N1WA33F>*
Annie Banerji, Thomson Reuters Foundation
  BHUBANESWAR, India Sept 25 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Eschewing 
the typical Bollywood storyline of young lovers facing family 
opposition, an upcoming Indian film instead features a couple battling 
climate change in order to be together.

"Kokoli", which is the name of the female protagonist and also a type of 
fish, tells a story of a fishing community facing the loss of 
livelihoods and land as sea levels rise in the eastern state of Odisha. 
It will be released in November.

The Oriya-language film centres on Kokoli and her boyfriend, who sets 
out to build a wall to keep towering waves from destroying and uprooting 
his village - a task he must succeed at in order to win her mother's 
approval.

"Fishing is the only livelihood for them and the only skill they know. 
They are victims of climate change," filmmaker Snehasis Das told the 
Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"Simultaneously, I focus on how love - a relationship - can be disturbed 
due to calamities," said the 43-year-old. "It is a lot about how they 
adapt to love and climate change. Their future hinges on adaptation."

With a nearly 500 km (300 mile) coastline, Odisha is home to many 
coastal communities that depend on the sea.
The state is also one of India's most vulnerable to the effects of 
global warming, hit by rising sea levels, cyclones and floods, with vast 
stretches of the shoreline being lost to erosion.

In June, the state government warned in a report that fishermen's 
catches could plummet with rising temperatures.
India faces the most severe threat from climate change, followed by 
Pakistan, the Philippines and Bangladesh, HSBC showed in a March survey 
of 67 countries.

Changing weather, along with more frequent droughts and heat waves, will 
hurt agricultural output and food security in developing nations such as 
India, according to studies by HSBC, the World Bank and the World Health 
Organization.

Climate change will also lead to water shortages and outbreaks of water 
and mosquito-borne diseases such as diarrhea and malaria, according to 
their research.
"The effects (of climate change) creep up on you and many of these 
communities know there is something brewing - more tides, water reaching 
their huts - but don't see any immediate danger," said Das.

"But they have to understand that they must start adapting now, before 
it is too late, which is something I have touched upon in my film."

CHANGE MAKERS
In order to appeal to a wide audience, Das also threw a song sequence 
into the mix, like Bollywood does, but he said the main aim is to get a 
message across to people.
"A good way to do this is through a human angle that says, 'If this is 
happening to them, it can happen to you too,' - to make it relatable. 
And what is better than a love story? Everybody likes a good love story."

He urged Bollywood - the world's largest film industry - to steer away 
from glitz and glamour and make some movies about climate change, even 
if the prospects of producing blockbusters about such subjects are slim.
"Bollywood has the power to reach the masses so easily. And it can be 
challenging weaving in a social message in a commercial film, but it can 
be done," said Das, who has made about 15 documentaries and several 
music videos on the topic.
More than anyone else, Das hopes his film reaches the country's youth 
who he says are "future change makers".

"This problem is only going to snowball and the younger generation can 
help, perhaps by dedicating some of their work to this cause and create 
awareness," he said.

"They are my target audience." (Reporting by Annie Banerji 
@anniebanerji, Editing by Jared Ferrie ; Please credit the Thomson 
Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters that covers 
humanitarian issues, conflicts, land and property rights, modern slavery 
and human trafficking, gender equality, climate change and resilience. 
Visit news.trust.org to see more stories)
https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSL8N1WA33F


[no longer just salt water]
*Toxic Algae Found in Colorado's Blue Mesa Reservoir 
<https://weather.com/news/news/2018-09-24-blue-mesa-reservoir-toxic-algae>*
By Ron Brackett
The cyanotoxins are produced by blue-green algae blooms.
The toxins can be harmful to humans and to animals.
The National Park Service says it has found unsafe levels of blue-green 
algae toxins in the Blue Mesa Reservoir.
Testing determined that the concentration of cyanotoxins in the Iola 
Basin section of the reservoir exceed safe exposure levels and could be 
harmful to humans.
Cyanotoxin levels rise when blue-green algae multiply rapidly and form 
blooms, particularly in warm, shallow water.
The Blue Mesa Reservoir is in the Curecanti National Recreation Area, 
near Gunnison, Colorado.
The park service said visitors should avoid any contact with shallow and 
near-shore waters of the Iola Basin and should avoid unnecessary 
exposure to reservoir water if fishing or boating.
The park service said boating and fishing remain open throughout Blue 
Mesa. It suggests that anglers clean caught fish in treated water.
Dogs and other animals should not drink from any portion of the Iola 
Basin. The park also recommended that dogs not swim in or drink 
reservoir water
https://weather.com/news/news/2018-09-24-blue-mesa-reservoir-toxic-algae


*This Day in Climate History - September 27, - from D.R. Tucker*



/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
//Archive of Daily Global Warming News 
<https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/2017-October/date.html> 
//
/https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote//
///
///To receive daily mailings - click to Subscribe 
<mailto:subscribe at theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request> 
/to news digest. /

        *** Privacy and Security: * This is a text-only mailing that
        carries no images which may originate from remote servers.
        Text-only messages provide greater privacy to the receiver and
        sender.
        By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain must be used for
        democratic and election purposes and cannot be used for
        commercial purposes.
        To subscribe, email: contact at theclimate.vote with subject: 
        subscribe,  To Unsubscribe, subject: unsubscribe
        Also youmay subscribe/unsubscribe at
        https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote
        Links and headlines assembled and curated by Richard Paulifor
        http://TheClimate.Vote delivering succinct information for
        citizens and responsible governments of all levels.   List
        membership is confidential and records are scrupulously
        restricted to this mailing list.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/attachments/20180927/983f9205/attachment.html>


More information about the TheClimate.Vote mailing list