[TheClimate.Vote] August 22 , 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/August 22, 2019/

[changes]
*Gov. Jay Inslee, Who Ran On Climate Change, Withdraws From Presidential 
Race*
August 21, 2019
AMITA KELLY
Democratic presidential candidate Jay Inslee announced Wednesday that he 
is withdrawing from the race.

"It's become clear that I'm not going be carrying the ball, I'm not 
going to be the president, so I'm withdrawing tonight from the race," 
the Washington governor said on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show.

Inslee made climate change a top issue as a candidate. He proposed a 
10-year action plan to, according to his campaign website, "achieve 100% 
clean electricity, 100% zero-emission new vehicles and 100% zero-carbon 
new buildings."

"[Climate change] does call for a president to make this Job 1, because 
if it is not Job 1, it won't get done," Inslee told NPR in March. "We 
have to understand if we don't solve the climate crisis, it will prevent 
us from dealing with all of our other hopes and challenges."

But despite his focus on the issue, he didn't qualify for CNN town hall 
on climate next month and hadn't qualified for the September 
presidential debate.

In an message to his supporters, Inslee thanked them for helping change 
the "entire national dialogue" on climate change.
https://www.npr.org/2019/08/21/753294631/washington-gov-jay-inslee-withdraws-from-presidential-race
- - -
[Six plans posted, Inslee released his latest plan Wednesday]
*Growing Rural Prosperity plan*, a comprehensive national plan for 
reinvestment in growing rural economies and in farm and land-based 
climate solutions.
https://www.jayinslee.com/issues/growing-rural-prosperity

*100% Clean Energy for America plan*: Bold standards that rapidly shift 
the economy to clean energy, with specific 100% clean energy targets for 
electricity, buildings, and transportation, and ending coal power by 2030.
https://www.jayinslee.com/issues/100clean

*Evergreen Economy plan:* A transformative agenda to leverage $9 
trillion to build the clean energy economy, spur innovation and grow 8 
million good-paying union jobs;.
https://www.jayinslee.com/issues/evergreen-economy
*
**Global Climate Mobilization plan:* Using ambitious American leadership 
and every tool in foreign policy to catalyze transformative global 
climate action.
https://www.jayinslee.com/issues/global-climate

*Freedom from Fossil Fuels plan:* A plan to end all fossil fuel 
subsidies and giveaways, hold corporate polluters accountable, and close 
the door on America's fossil fuel era.
https://www.jayinslee.com/issues/freedom-from-fossil-fuels

*Community Climate Justice plan:* A plan that puts environmental justice 
and equity at the center of national climate action, with prioritized 
investments in front-line communities and in bottom-up strategies for a 
Just Transition.
https://jayinslee.com/issues/climate-justice



[Sooner rather than later]
*'We Should Be Retreating Already From the Coastline,' Scientist 
Suggests After Finding Warm Waters Below Greenland*
Jordan Davidson Aug. 20, 2019
Andrew Yang's assertion that people move away from the coast at the last 
Democratic debate is the completely rational and correct choice for NASA 
scientists in Greenland.

"There is enough ice in Greenland to raise the sea levels by 7.5 meters, 
that's about 25 feet, an enormous volume of ice, and that would be 
devastating to coastlines all around the planet," said Josh Willis, a 
NASA oceanographer, to CNN. "We should be retreating already from the 
coastline if we are looking at many meters [lost] in the next century or 
two."

Willis and his research team at NASA's Ocean Melting Greenland have been 
seeing some alarming patterns as they jet around the island's coastline 
since heat waves bore down on the U.S. and Europe at the end of July, as 
CNN reported. Not only is the surface temperature warmer, turning 
Greenland into a slush-filled mess, but the ocean temperature deep under 
the water is also rising. The warming water eats away at the foundation 
of the glaciers, meaning Greenland's massive ice sheet is getting weaker 
at the top and the bottom, which spells trouble for the entire world.
"Greenland has impacts all around the planet. A billion tons of ice lost 
here raises sea levels in Australia, in Southeast Asia, in the United 
States, in Europe," said Willis to CNN. "We are all connected by the 
same ocean."

The scientists looking at the ice and waters found a large opening of 
water near Helheim glacier, a huge 4-mile glacier on Greenland's east 
coast, that had warm water along its entire depth, more than 2,000 feet 
below the surface, as CNN reported.

"It's very rare anywhere on the planet to see 700 meters of no 
temperature variation, normally we find colder waters in the upper 
hundred meters or so, but right in front of the glacier it's warm all 
the way up," said Ian Fenty, a climate scientist at NASA, to CNN. "These 
warm waters now are able to be in direct contact with the ice over its 
entire face, supercharging the melting."

Helheim has made news the past two summers. Two years ago it lost a huge 
2-mile piece. Last summer a chunk the size of lower Manhattan broke off 
and was captured on video, as National Geographic reported.

This year the glacier has continued to melt.

"It retreats by many meters per day, it's tens of meters per day. You 
can probably set your iPhone on timelapse and actually see it go by," 
said Willis to CNN.

The ice in Greenland started the summer weak. There was little snowfall 
this past winter to reinforce the ice or to absorb the sunlight in the 
peak of summer, when the sun never fully goes down. Fresh snow stays 
bright and reflective, which bounces away solar radiation. Older snow is 
less reflective and absorbs the sun's heat. When the first heat wave hit 
in June, 45 percent of Greenland's ice sheet was ready to melt, 
according to National Geographic.

Arctic ice like Greenland's is also vital to removing carbon from the 
atmosphere, according to a study in the journal Polar Biology. The 
calcium carbonate crystals that make up sea ice trap carbon dioxide in a 
cold brine. When the sea ice melts, it drops that carbon dioxide into 
the ocean where it binds to algae, which stops it from circulating 
around the atmosphere.

As sea ice decreases, less carbon will be removed from the atmosphere. 
Plus, the melting ice will raise sea levels. Glaciers like Helheim are 
big enough to make global sea levels rise by one millimeter in just one 
month, which concerns scientists, as CNN reported.
https://www.ecowatch.com/greenland-melting-ocean-warming-below-2639919864.html



[Noam Chomsky]
*Chomsky: By Focusing on Russia, We Ignore Trump's Existential Threat to 
Climate*
We should be focused on dealing with the environmental crisis while we 
still have time to do so, says Noam Chomsky.
David Barsamian, Truthout
PUBLISHED August 21, 2019
In this continuation of an extensive interview, world-renowned public 
intellectual Noam Chomsky discusses the growing extremism of the 
Republican Party, Trump's ongoing trade war with China, Democrats' 
abandonment of the working class and impending threat of the climate 
crisis. Read Part 1 of this interview here, and Part 2 here.

*David Barsamian: Talk about the present occupant of the White House. In 
some ways, his boorish and grotesque behavior is a pretty easy target. 
People can feel very virtuous about denouncing Trump. But Public Citizen 
warns, "Every day we witness a further slide toward authoritarianism 
under Trump." Are you concerned about that?*

*Noam Chomsky:* I'm less concerned than they are. I think the system is 
resilient enough to withstand a figure who is defying subpoenas, defying 
congressional orders and so on. I think Trump is in many ways 
underestimated. He's a highly skilled politician who is very successful 
in what he's doing.

He's got two major constituencies. One is the actual, standard 
constituency, the Republican Party -- both parties, but much more the 
Republicans -- private wealth, corporate power. You've got to keep them 
satisfied...
- - -

*Maureen Dowd, a columnist for The New York Times, writes, "My head 
hurts, puzzling over whether Trump is just a big blowhard who's flailing 
around, or a sinister genius laying traps to get himself impeached to 
animate the base ahead of the election."...*

[...] I don't know if you've looked at this, one of the most amazing 
documents in human history that came out of the Trump administration, 
from a part of the bureaucracy, naturally. It was a 500-page 
environmental assessment study done by the Transportation 
Administration, the point of which was to argue that we should not 
impose new emissions controls on cars and trucks. And they had a very 
sound argument. The argument is, "Look, we're going off the cliff 
anyway, and car emissions don't make that much of a difference. So who 
cares?"

Their estimate was that by the end of this century, global temperatures 
will have risen 4 degrees Centigrade. That's way beyond what the 
scientific consensus says will make life unlivable. So, what they're 
saying is, "We're finished, it's all done anyhow, by the end of the 
century, everything will be destroyed. So why stop driving?" Can you 
think of anything like this in human history, ever? Hitler wasn't 
saying. "Let's destroy the world."

Of course, they're assuming that…nobody is going to do anything about 
it. But all of this passes without anybody paying attention. Let's worry 
about whether Russia had some minor influence on the election...

*Talk about the young people in Congress like Representatives Alexandria 
Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley and others, 
and teen activist students like Greta Thunberg of Sweden, Haven Coleman 
of Denver, and other young people involved in Extinction Rebellion and 
the Sunrise Movement.*

That's very exciting. That's really the hope for the future. These are 
very impressive people. Extinction Rebellion are great people. The 
Sunrise Movement -- which is, after all, a small group of young people 
-- succeeded partly just through their activism, like sitting-in in 
congressional offices, got some support from especially Representative 
Ocasio-Cortez, who is doing a wonderful job.

They managed to put on the agenda the Green New Deal. Now, of course, it 
immediately got denounced as a "crazy" this, that, and the other thing. 
But it's a great achievement. There has to be some kind of Green New 
Deal if we're going to survive. And they managed to move it from 
obscurity to the legislative agenda, along with Ed Markey, the senator 
from Massachusetts. That's a real achievement. And there are very solid, 
substantive proposals as to how you could implement these proposals. One 
of the most detailed and persuasive I know of is by Robert Pollin, an 
economist at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. It can be done. 
These groups have broken through the silence and apathy on it. That's a 
remarkable achievement.

In fact, it's the hope for survival of any kind of civilized life. This 
is not a small thing. The human species is facing questions that have 
never arisen before: Is organized human life going to survive in any 
recognizable form? We're approaching the level of global warming of 
roughly 125,000 years ago, when sea levels were about 25 feet higher 
than they are now. You don't have to have much of an imagination to know 
what that means.

Shall we race toward it the way the Trump administration and the 
Republican Party wants us to do? Or shall we do something about it, the 
way Sunrise Movement and Extinction Rebellion and Ocasio-Cortez want to 
do? That's the decision that has to be made. It's good that you bring 
that up, because that's of extraordinary importance.

[This is a heavily edited transcript of an interview that first aired on 
Alternative Radio].
https://www.alternativeradio.org/products/chon256/
https://truthout.org/articles/chomsky-by-focusing-on-russia-we-ignore-trumps-existential-threat-to-climate 




*This Day in Climate History - August 22, 2008 - from D.R. Tucker*
August 22, 2008: MSNBC's Keith Olbermann notes:

    "While lunatic groups like [the Koch Brothers-backed] Americans for
    Prosperity continue to deny [that human-caused climate change is]
    happening, this from the Bush administration‘s own wildlife monitors
    off the northwest coast of Alaska:  Nine polar bears were spotted
    swimming in ocean water last Saturday.

    "So what?  Sounds like fun, sort of.  Except they weren‘t swimming
    near their homes on the Alaskan ice--they were swimming because
    their ice homes broke off or melted due to the fact that summer ice
    is disappearing so quickly that at this rate, it will all be gone by
    the year 2030.  The grim reality behind what those wildlife monitors
    saw was: those nine bears were on their way to either dying from
    exhaustion or drowning.

    "So Americans for Prosperity—keep denying and start swimming."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwjaomthkgc
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/center/articles/2008/los-angeles-times-08-22-2008.html
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