[TheClimate.Vote] April 23, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest.
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Tue Apr 23 10:15:14 EDT 2019
/April 23, 2019/
[Greta calls for panic - video]
*Greta Thunberg warns: "Time to panic! Why 3 Brexit summits? Time for
"Notre Dame cathedral thinking"*
Swedish teenage environmental activist Greta Thunberg says time is
running out to halt climate change and she's urging European politicians
"to panic." Thunberg told Members of European Parliament today: "I want
you to act as if the house is on fire." She said that "if our house was
falling apart you wouldn't hold three emergency Brexit summits and no
emergency summit regarding the breakdown of the climate and
environment." During a speech met with a standing ovation, Thunberg
fought back tears as she warned about rapid species extinctions, soil
erosion, deforestation and the pollution of oceans. In a reference to
the international funding effort launched to rebuild the fire-ravaged
Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, she urged the lawmakers to use "cathedral
thinking" to tackle climate change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKd1V2NgAi4
[EarthDay should be everyday]
*Earth Matters: Climate change challenges from every corner of the globe*
On April 22, 1970, CBS News marked the first ever Earth Day with a
special report anchored by Walter Cronkite. "The gravity of the message
of Earth Day still came through: act or die," Cronkite said at the time.
CBS News correspondents reported on protests, clean-up efforts, and
calls to action from all over the country. It was the start of the
modern environmental movement. Now 49 years later, we are covering the
environmental issues of the day -- this time from every corner of the
globe...
https://www.cbsnews.com/live-news/earth-day-2019-earth-matters/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab8d&linkId=66406840
[NPR radio 11 min]
*Fighting climate change in our daily lives*
Hosted by Madeleine Brand Apr. 22, 2019
We often hear about the huge problems involving climate change: melting
glaciers, rising sea levels, plus intensifying hurricanes, tornadoes,
and other weather patterns. But what can we do about these problems, and
not feel so powerless against them?
Guest: Katharine Hayhoe - Texas Tech University - @KHayhoe
More: The most important thing you can do to fight climate change: talk
about it -
https://www.ted.com/talks/katharine_hayhoe_the_most_important_thing_you_can_do_to_fight_climate_change_talk_about_it
Host: Madeleine Brand
https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/press-play-with-madeleine-brand/should-citizenship-be-on-the-2020-census-the-supreme-court-will-decide/fighting-climate-change-in-our-daily-lives
[NHL - Sports Illustrated on global warming]
*Winter Is Going: How Climate Change Is Imperiling Outdoor Sporting
Heritage*
Globally, the last five years have been the hottest five on record, and
the 20 hottest years on record have all occurred in the last 22 years.
With so much warming, and so much at stake, it's easy to shrug off
global warming's effect on sports. It gets harder, though, when you see
just how much has already been lost. The Elfstedentocht, a famed
200-kilometer speedskating race traditionally staged in the Dutch
province of Friesland, hasn't been held in the Netherlands since 1997
for lack of suitable ice. Skaters, hoping to keep a winter tradition
alive, moved an unofficial version of the event to higher ground in
Austria. In 2018, the Montana Pond Hockey Classic, played on Foys Lake
in Kalispell, was canceled because of unstable ice conditions for the
second time in three years. In '17, the American Birkebeiner, the
biggest cross-country ski race in North America, was nixed because of
unseasonably warm weather and rain. In Alaska, the Iditarod has been
forced to veer from its traditional route for lack of snow and stable ice.
According to one recent study, western U.S. states' snowpack--the
lifeblood of winter mountain sports--has decreased by as much as 30% in
the last century. Another study, completed before last year's
PyeongChang Games, found that only eight of 21 previous Winter Olympic
sites would be dependably cold enough to host the event by 2100, barring
substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
A good skating day, experts say, is 22 Fahrenheit or colder but building
an outdoor rink requires several days of sustained subfreezing
temperatures, ideally hovering around 15 Fahrenheit. Rink-makers, who
scrape and flood the ice each night to maintain a smooth, durable
surface, perpetually eye the weather--one Canadian government
meteorologist issues a rink-making forecast--because temperatures too
close to the freezing point risk melting the ice; even on a cold day,
the sun can turn ice to slush, especially if a rink overlays a dark
surface like blacktop. To avoid starting from scratch after a winter
thaw, some backyard rink-makers attach a large tarp or plastic liner to
wooden boards, which causes the melted ice to pool rather than running
off. On natural ice, of course, thaws are dangerous: To safely skate on
a river or pond, the ice should be at least four inches thick; for
snowmobiling, it should be five...
- - -
When we lose something to environmental change, we feel a sense of
distress known as solastalgia. The term, coined in 2003 by the
philosopher Glenn Albrecht, could easily apply to Brantfordians unable
to skate under slate-colored winter skies, or cross-country skiers
unable to glide along any old chosen-at-random trail.
In Canada, where winter recreation is sacrosanct, that void would create
a national identity crisis. "It speaks to the Canadian culture and ethos
as an outdoor culture--we are out skiing and skating and tobogganing and
sledding and all of those things," says Davidson, the director of the
sustainability nonprofit. "And we actually are seeing a shift in the
reality of who we are as a nation, because the climate is changing."
We can say with certainty that humans are warming the planet. What's
less certain is how the planet will respond--in other words, the
climate's sensitivity to human-induced change--and, more importantly,
how we respond. Global warming's dangers have been apparent for decades,
but the situation has become dire and is growing more dire every day. In
hockey parlance, it's long past time to pull the goalie.
"You hear about climate change and it's almost overwhelming," Kevin
Davis, Brantford's mayor, says. "As one person, or one city, what can we
do? And the reality is we can do our little bit, and we are going to,
but probably the overall impact of that is negligible." The NHL and ski
resorts, likewise, are eager to reduce their carbon footprints--and the
league has even launched an initiative to encourage all indoor rinks
throughout North America to improve their ice-making processes, upgrade
their refrigeration equipment and cut their emissions. But global
warming would continue unabated even if entire sports leagues and
industries zeroed out their emissions; the broader change required to
recool northern winters would have to come from sweeping, coordinated
action.
There isn't much cause for environmental optimism these days. But it's
hard not to feel a glimmer of hope when Brantford's volunteer
rink-makers labor for hours every night in the cold, tenderly caring for
their ice, motivated solely by a desire to bequeath their children the
same pastimes they once enjoyed. And just as importantly, they--and, for
that matter, winter athletes of all kinds--understand better than most
that we have not conquered nature, and that we must learn to live within
it...
https://www.si.com/nhl/2019/04/22/climate-change-canada-winter-sports-hockey-backyard-rinks
[or so we have noticed]
*The media are complacent while the world burns*
By Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope
Last summer, during the deadliest wildfire season in California's
history, MSNBC's Chris Hayes got into a revealing Twitter discussion
about why US television doesn't much cover climate change. Elon Green,
an editor at Longform, had tweeted, "Sure would be nice if our news
networks--the only outlets that can force change in this country--would
cover it with commensurate urgency." Hayes (who is an editor at large
for The Nation) replied that his program had tried. Which was true: in
2016, "All In With Chris Hayes" spent an entire week highlighting the
impact of climate change in the US as part of a look at the issues that
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were ignoring. The problem, Hayes
tweeted, was that "every single time we've covered [climate change] it's
been a palpable ratings killer. So the incentives are not great."
The Twittersphere pounced. "TV used to be obligated to put on
programming for the public good even if it didn't get good ratings. What
happened to that?" asked @JThomasAlbert. @GalJaya said, "Your 'ratings
killer' argument against covering #climatechange is the reverse of that
used during the 2016 primary when corporate media justified gifting
Trump $5 billion in free air time because 'it was good for ratings,'
with disastrous results for the nation."
When @mikebaird17 urged Hayes to invite Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech
University, one of the best climate-science communicators around, onto
his show, she tweeted that "All In" had canceled on her twice--once when
"I was literally in the studio w[ith] the earpiece in my ear"--and so
she wouldn't waste any more time on it.
"Wait, we did that?" Hayes tweeted back. "I'm very very sorry that
happened."...
- - -
We were inspired to ask these questions by a piece that Margaret
Sullivan, the media columnist at The Washington Post, wrote last fall.
She was responding to that landmark IPCC report, "Global Warming of
1.5C," which warned that the previously accepted target of climate
policy--limiting the temperature rise to 2C above the pre-industrial
level--was far more dangerous than realized. The IPCC scientists warned
that new research and real-world observations, such as the unexpectedly
rapid melting of polar ice and sea-level rise, dictated a 1.5C limit
instead. Over the next 11 years, global emissions of carbon dioxide must
therefore fall by a staggering 45 percent on the way to net zero by
2050. The challenge is technologically feasible and economically
affordable, the scientists added, though there is "no documented
historical precedent" for the scale of the changes required.
Sullivan, a former New York Times public editor whose Postcolumn has
become a critical watchdog for American journalism, articulated the
challenge this way:
Just as the world, especially the United States, needs radical change to
mitigate the coming crisis, so too for the news media…. This subject
must be kept front and center, with the pressure on and the stakes made
abundantly clear at every turn…. Just as the smartest minds in earth
science have issued their warning, the best minds in media should be
giving sustained attention to how to tell this most important story in a
way that will create change.
So how would the media do that? And can they do it? The answer to both
of these questions requires returning to the one that Hayes and his
Twitter critics were debating: Why haven't the media been covering the
climate crisis thus far?...
- - -
Last October, the scientists of the United Nations' Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a landmark report, warning that
humanity had a mere 12 years to radically slash greenhouse-gas emissions
or face a calamitous future in which hundreds of millions of people
worldwide would go hungry or homeless or worse. Only 22 of the 50
biggest newspapers in the United States covered that report...
- - -
Judging by the climate coverage to date, most of the US news media still
don't get grasp the seriousness of this issue. There is a runaway train
racing toward us, and its name is climate change. That is not alarmism;
it is scientific fact. We as a civilization urgently need to slow that
train down and help as many people off the tracks as possible. It's an
enormous challenge, and if we don't get it right, nothing else will
matter. The US mainstream news media, unlike major news outlets in
Europe and independent media in the US, have played a big part in
getting it wrong for many years. It's past time to make amends.
You can't solve a problem by ignoring it. Moderators did not ask
presidential candidates a single question about climate change during
the three prime-time general-election debates in 2016--or in 2012 or
2008 or ever. News stories about Hurricane Maria's devastation of Puerto
Rico, this spring's floods in the Midwest, and other extreme-weather
events almost never mention climate change, though scientists have been
drawing the connection for decades. Instead, human-interest fluff
prevails. In an 18-month period, TV and print outlets gave 40 times more
coverage to the Kardashians than to the acidification of oceans caused
by rising temperatures, according to a 2012 report by the press watchdog
Media Matters.
This journalistic failure has given rise to a calamitous public
ignorance, which in turn has enabled politicians and corporations to
avoid action. According to polls by Pew and others, as recently as the
2016 presidential race, only half of the people in this country said
they thought that climate change was occurring and was attributable to
human activities, and only 27 percent said they knew that almost all
climate scientists held this view. The other half of the population said
climate change was either not happening or was a result of natural
cycles. This 50-50 split has existed since at least 2006, the polls
indicate. By December 2018, the number of Americans who said they were
"somewhat worried" about climate change had risen to 69 percent, in part
because many had now experienced its effects. Still, only 29 percent
said they were "very worried," though "very worried" is exactly how most
climate scientists have long felt.
- - -
We were inspired to ask these questions by a piece that Margaret
Sullivan, the media columnist at The Washington Post, wrote last fall.
She was responding to that landmark IPCC report, "Global Warming of
1.5C," which warned that the previously accepted target of climate
policy--limiting the temperature rise to 2C above the pre-industrial
level--was far more dangerous than realized. The IPCC scientists warned
that new research and real-world observations, such as the unexpectedly
rapid melting of polar ice and sea-level rise, dictated a 1.5C limit
instead. Over the next 11 years, global emissions of carbon dioxide must
therefore fall by a staggering 45 percent on the way to net zero by
2050. The challenge is technologically feasible and economically
affordable, the scientists added, though there is "no documented
historical precedent" for the scale of the changes required.
Sullivan, a former New York Times public editor whose Post column has
become a critical watchdog for American journalism, articulated the
challenge this way:
Just as the world, especially the United States, needs radical change to
mitigate the coming crisis, so too for the news media….This subject must
be kept front and center, with the pressure on and the stakes made
abundantly clear at every turn…. Just as the smartest minds in earth
science have issued their warning, the best minds in media should be
giving sustained attention to how to tell this most important story in a
way that will create change.
So how would the media do that? And can they do it? The answer to both
of these questions requires returning to the one that Hayes and his
Twitter critics were debating: Why haven't the media been covering the
climate crisis thus far?...
- - -
Although brilliant investigative journalism established in 2015 that
ExxonMobil and others have been lying about the dangers of burning
fossil fuels since the 1970s, this fact has not been incorporated into
most ongoing news coverage. Leading figures in climate science and
diplomacy have accused top fossil-fuel executives of crimes against
humanity: they not only knew the damage their products would cause, but
they also lied about it to continue profiteering. "This was a crime,"
said Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the chief climate adviser to Angela
Merkel's conservative government in Germany, in an interview for
Hertsgaard's book HOT. Tim Wirth, who as US under secretary of state
helped negotiate the Kyoto Protocol--the international treaty that
committed dozens of countries to curbing carbon emissions--in 1997,
agrees: those CEOS and political leaders who deny the well-established
science of climate change "should be tried for crimes against humanity."...
- - -
Instead, climate deniers are still given respectful treatment by US news
outlets across the ideological spectrum. The companies that funded the
disinformation, the Republicans (plus a handful of Democrats) who
carried their water on Capitol Hill, and the right-wing media machine
that injected their lies into the public consciousness continue to be
treated as legitimate participants in the debate. But these entities in
fact deserve to have their social licenses revoked, just as tobacco
companies did. More than anyone else, it is climate deniers who got us
into this mess; they don't get to decide what we do about it now.
If American journalism doesn't get the climate story right--and soon--no
other story will matter. The news media's past climate failures can be
redeemed only by an immediate shift to more high-profile, inclusive, and
fearless coverage. Our #CoveringClimateNow project calls on all
journalists and news outlets to join the conversation about how to make
that happen. As the nation's founders envisioned long ago, the role of a
free press is to inform the people and hold the powerful accountable.
These days, our collective survival demands nothing less.
https://www.cjr.org/special_report/climate-change-media.php
[Dave Roberts insightful article]
*A closer look at Washington's superb new 100% clean electricity bill*
The bill contains groundbreaking changes to the way the state's
utilities do business...
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/4/18/18363292/washington-clean-energy-bill
[Pew Research Center]
*For Earth Day, a look at how people around the world view climate change*
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/18/for-earth-day-a-look-at-how-people-around-the-world-view-climate-change/
[Audio on BBC -Book of the Week]
*Losing Earth - The Activist and the Scientist*
BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, Losing Earth, The Activist and the Scientist
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0004dzb
[USA Today prints a fantasy world]
*Life after solving climate change: Not mud huts and gruel but clean air
and warm homes*
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/04/22/heres-what-world-look-like-once-we-solve-climate-change/3400271002/
*This Day in Climate History - April 23, 2007 - from D.R. Tucker*
In a speech on climate change and energy at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies in Washington, D.C., Senator John McCain (R-AZ) notes:
"The burning of oil and other fossil fuels is contributing to the
dangerous accumulation of greenhouse gases in the earth's
atmosphere, altering our climate with the potential for major
social, economic and political upheaval. The world is already
feeling the powerful effects of global warming, and far more dire
consequences are predicted if we let the growing deluge of
greenhouse gas emissions continue, and wreak havoc with God's
creation. A group of senior retired military officers recently
warned about the potential upheaval caused by conflicts over water,
arable land and other natural resources under strain from a warming
planet. The problem isn't a Hollywood invention nor is doing
something about it a vanity of Cassandra like hysterics. It is a
serious and urgent economic, environmental and national security
challenge.
"National security depends on energy security, which we cannot
achieve if we remain dependent on imported oil from Middle Eastern
governments who support or foment by their own inattention and
inequities the rise of terrorists or on swaggering demagogues and
would be dictators in our hemisphere.
"There's no doubt it's an enormous challenge. But is it too big a
challenge for America to tackle; this great country that has never
before confronted a problem it couldn't solve? No, it is not. No
people have ever been better innovators and problem solvers than
Americans. It is in our national DNA to see challenges as
opportunities; to conquer problems beyond the expectation of an
admiring world. America, relying as always on the industry and
imagination of a free people, and the power and innovation of free
markets, is capable of overcoming any challenge from within and
without our borders. Our enemies believe we're too weak to overcome
our dependence on foreign oil. Even some of our allies think we're
no longer the world's most visionary, most capable country or
committed to the advancement of mankind. I think we know better than
that. I think we know who we are and what we can do. Now, let's
remind the world."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca-82G-mEvs
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=77106
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/23/AR2007042301763.html
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