[TheClimate.Vote] April 15, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest.

Richard Pauli richard at theclimate.vote
Mon Apr 15 08:14:07 EDT 2019 

/April 15, 2019/

[Tornado in NYC]
Tornado watch issued for New York City on Monday
https://nypost.com/2019/04/15/tornado-watch-issued-for-new-york-city-on-monday/
- -
[Tracking flight delays and cancellations]
*MiseryMap*
https://flightaware.com/miserymap/


[Yes, we know]
*Allergy Season Is Getting Worse, Thanks To Climate Change*
"The best you can do is stay inside and wait for pollen season to end. 
You can always catch up on your reading of The Lancet Planetary Health. 
According to Ziska et al.'s study, more pollen-filled springs are the 
new normal. Their projections indicate that pollen seasons will continue 
to get longer in the future, and that the amount of pollen in the air 
will also increase during the spring and again in the fall, when ragweed 
pollen is at its peak."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2019/04/15/allergy-season-is-getting-worse-thanks-to-climate-change/#7dfc3c2c5a9f
- - -
*Temperature-related changes in airborne allergenic pollen abundance and 
seasonality across the northern hemisphere: a retrospective data analysis*
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542519619300154?via%3Dihub


[betting on melting ice, money will flow]
*Nenana Ice Classic 2019' has been posted to RealClimate.org*
Nenana Ice Classic 2019 -- gavin @ 14 April 2019
Wow.
Perhaps unsurprisingly given the exceptional (relative) warmth in Alaska 
last month and in February, the record for the Nenana Ice Classic was 
shattered this year.
The previous official record was associated with the exceptional 
conditions in El Nino-affected winter of 1939-1940, when the ice went 
out on April 20th 1940. Though since 1940 was a leap year, that was 
actually a little later (relative to the vernal equinox) than the ice 
out date in 1998 (which wasn't a leap year).
Other records are also tumbling in the region, for instance the ice out 
data at Bethel, Alaska:
Filed under: Arctic and Antarctic Climate Science Instrumental Record...
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=22403


[See the images]
*Student climate change protests: best of the banners - in pictures*
The best banners and placards from Friday's student climate change 
protests across the world
Fri 12 Apr 2019
https://www.theguardian.com/media/gallery/2019/apr/12/student-climate-change-protests-best-of-the-banners-in-pictures


[Follow the money]
*Climate-Change Funds Try to Profit From a Warming World*
By Tim Gray
April 12, 2019
For investors, the risks of climate change are already raging, with 
intense storms and wildfires leading to property damage and business 
disruption.
- - -
"More and more clients, individuals and institutions, are asking for 
funds that address climate change and climate risk," said Leslie 
Samuelrich, president of Green Century Capital Management in Boston. 
"Because of that, asset managers are starting to develop portfolios to 
meet that demand."

The Hartford Environmental Opportunities Fund is one such fund. It's not 
just "about the weather," said Alan T. Hsu, portfolio manager. "It's 
about technology and assets being created today to address 
climate-related risks that are visible already." The fund, with a net 
expense ratio of 0.89 percent, returned an annual average of 6.51 
percent over the three years through March.

More than half the fund's assets are invested in companies involved in 
low-carbon electricity and energy efficiency, such as Iberdrola, a 
Spanish utility that relies on wind power. But holdings also include 
water and agriculture stocks, such as Deere & Company, the 
farm-equipment maker.

"In a world with a more adverse climate, a lot of arable land will 
become much less productive at the same time as population increases the 
demand on that land," Mr. Hsu said. Outfits that can help farmers 
increase fertility stand to benefit...
- - -
Or you might consider investing in nontraditional sorts of farms -- 
which is why aquaculture is one of the themes of the GMO Climate Change 
Fund. Its manager, Lucas White, includes in the fund less obvious 
industries, like fish farming and copper mining, alongside obvious ones, 
like clean energy and energy efficiency. Mr. White's fund caters to 
institutional investors like pension funds and has returned an annual 
average of 8.54 percent since its April 2017 inception through February 
2018, the latest information available from the fund.

"If you think agricultural productivity will be challenged, people will 
need to get their protein from somewhere," he said. "Cattle is a 
disaster for climate change, but salmon is very carbon efficient." Cows 
produce methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and tropical forests, which 
absorb carbon dioxide, are often razed for ranching...
- - -
For some investors, climate change isn't just a money problem but also a 
moral one; these folks want their money to help the transition to a 
greener economy. Investment companies are aware of that and increasingly 
offer funds and E.T.F.s that let shareholders express their values in 
this way.

Dimensional Fund Advisors offered its first two sustainable funds more 
than a decade ago. They aim to buy the best environmental performers in 
each economic sector, said Gerard K. O'Reilly, the company's co-chief 
executive and chief investment officer.

Mr. O'Reilly said he's not convinced a sustainable strategy can 
outperform the broader market. "Investors can account for firms' social 
and sustainable practices without meaningfully changing the expected 
return of their portfolios," he said. Dimensional's funds have kept pace 
with their benchmark indexes. Its U.S. Sustainability Core 1 Portfolio, 
with an expense ratio of 0.25 percent, returned an annual average of 
13.18 percent for the three years through March, compared with 13.48 
percent for the Russell 3000 index.

He added that he saw nothing wrong with investing with the hope of 
achieving good returns while helping along the climate transition.

"Customers have the right to express their preferences around what kind 
of investments they want to make. Will that action help get companies to 
pay more attention to sustainability? Well, every little bit helps."
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/business/climate-change-funds-profit-global-warming.html



[Climate Refugees]
*Central American Farmers Head to the U.S., Fleeing Climate Change**
***César Rodríguez for The New York Times
- - -
"If Donald Trump withdraws all the funds for Honduras, it's going to 
generate more unemployment, and that's going to generate more 
migration," said María Esperanza Lopez, the general manager of Copranil, 
a coffee-growers cooperative here in western Honduras. "And that's going 
to result in more abandoned farms."...
- - -
After large caravans of migrants arrived last fall in Tijuana, Mexico, a 
United Nations survey found that 72 percent of those surveyed were from 
Honduras -- and 28 percent of the respondents had worked in the 
agricultural sector...
- - -
"The weather is crazy," said Carlos Pena Orellana, 58, a farmer and 
member of a local coffee cooperative. "Everything's out of control."

He owns 12 acres of land but can afford to farm only about five. He gets 
by with income from a tomato greenhouse he built with the cooperative's 
help, and with remittances from two sons who migrated to the United 
States after struggling through the rust crisis of 2012-13.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/13/world/americas/coffee-climate-change-migration.html



[New magazine printed on paper]
*This sleek new magazine adds a fashion-world spin to solving climate 
change*
We know climate change will affect every aspect of society. Atmos, a 
beautiful new biannual magazine, extends that idea to art, design, and 
global culture.
This sleek new magazine adds a fashion-world spin to solving climate change
BY ADELE PETERS
On a newsstand, a new magazine called Atmos sits next to art and fashion 
magazines. Like the others, it covers culture. But the magazine also 
focuses explicitly on climate change.

"We chose to explore climate and culture because in order for us to have 
an impact on our changing climate, it has to start with people," says 
editor-in-chief William Defebaugh. The magazine's founder, Jake Sargent, 
previously ran a fashion brand but realized that he wanted to do work 
that better aligned with his values. Sargent cofounded a venture fund 
that invests in sustainable consumer product companies, but wanted to 
also invest in media as a way to shift culture.
The inaugural issue–book-size, at 228 pages–looks at current challenges 
through photography, interviews with artists such as Anonhi and Yoko 
Ono, and trips to rural India and the island of Kiribati to see how 
communities are adapting to climate change. It explores a range of 
solutions of the kind that Fast Company also covers, including "clean" 
lab-grown meat, mushroom-grown leather, vertical farms, and robots that 
pollinate crops or plant trees. A poet writes about tasting Soylent; 
photos from Ryan McGinley point to the fallacy that humans consider 
themselves separate from nature. A fashion editorial includes clothing 
made from biosynthetic materials.

Atmos will be published twice a year; each issue will feature the same 
thoughtful approach to subject matter and artist collaboration. "We 
really wanted to create a platform where we could tell stories about the 
environment through an art and design lens, and actually take the space 
to tell them in depth," says Defebaugh. Atmos aims to inspire leaders 
from the art and design world, in particular, to focus on the issue of 
climate change in a way that some may not have in the past.

"Everyone needs to have a voice on climate and the environment: It's 
something that needs to be in our daily conversation and permeate 
throughout our culture," says Sargent. "We want everyone to be 
collaborating on this and speaking about it."
https://www.fastcompany.com/90333093/this-sleek-new-magazine-adds-a-fashion-world-spin-to-solving-climate-change



[It's real, it's us, it's bad, scientists agree, there's hope]
[Texas-based, foundational discussion from Deceleration News]
*PODCAST: MARCHING FOR SCIENCE … AND CLIMATE ACTION*
April 5, 2019 · by Greg Harman
[podcast] https://soundcloud.com/gharman/march-for-science-san-antonio
[March 24th video of Dessler] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB7L7OLeuMk
*Climate Change: Worry, Then Act. A Talk By Andrew Dessler*
Deceleration
Published on Mar 24, 2019 - video https://youtu.be/LB7L7OLeuMk
Dr. Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist from Texas A&M University, 
speaks March 24, 2019, to an audience at the San Antonio Botanical 
Garden about "Climate Change: The Evidence, Why You Should Be Worried, 
and What We Can Do About It." He is introduced by San Antonio 
Councilmember Ana Sandoval. From the Garden press release: "As San 
Antonio moves forward with the final phase of the SA Climate Ready 
Climate Action and Adaptation Plan (view on saclimateready.org ), the 
talk is both timely and informative. Dr. Dessler studies both the 
science of climate change and the policies, at all levels of government, 
required to address this dangerous challenge to our communities. The 
talk was a partnership between the Garden and William R. Sinkin Eco 
Centro and sponsored by San Antonio Water System (SAWS).
https://deceleration.news/2019/04/05/podcast-marching-for-science-and-climate-action/


[Classic, brief video humor on science information of Global Warming]
*Straw Men of the Apocalypse*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_v7v1tyjk4


*This Day in Climate History - April 15,2013 - from D.R. Tucker*
April 15, 2013: InsideClimate News wins the Pulitzer Prize for national 
reporting.
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20130415/insideclimate-news-team-wins-pulitzer-prize-national-reporting
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