[TheClimate.Vote] August 23, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/August 23, 2019/

[CBC video news report 12 mins]
*Amazon rainforest ravaged by record number of wildfires*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5W-yTT0QV0


[audio and transcript]
*Activists Push Democrats On Climate Change, A New Priority For Party's 
Base*
August 22, 2019
- -
"The climate crisis is an emergency and we need the DNC to start acting 
like it," says Nicole Karsch, action lead for the Sunrise Movement in 
Philadelphia.
  - -
"The Sunrise Movement comes at just a perfect moment for them to get a 
lot of attention," says Anthony Leiserowitz, Director of the Yale 
Program on Climate Change Communication.

Leiserowitz says more Americans see climate change as something that is 
happening now and harming people. At the same, time he says the most 
liberal Democratic voters, the party's base, rank the environment and 
climate change as their top issues behind only healthcare.
- -
Still, Perez wrote, "I made clear to our media partners that the issue 
of climate change must be featured prominently in our debates. That 
didn't happen in 2016 -- and it was wrong."

Even if the Democratic Party rejects the Sunrise Movement's request for 
a climate debate, CNN plans to hold a climate change town hall with 
candidates next month. The Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public 
Service also plans to hold a climate forum with candidates that will air 
on MSNBC a few weeks later.
https://www.npr.org/2019/08/22/753122273/activists-push-democrats-on-climate-change-a-new-priority-for-partys-base



[Bernie summarized]
*Bernie Sanders' $16 Trillion Climate Plan Is Nothing Short of a Revolution*
- - -
At the end of the day, Sanders' plan is a $16.3 trillion microcosm of 
his entire ethos. His theory of change is that the system is broken so 
we have to tear it down and start anew. Reading his plan, it's clear 
he's not messing around about the idea of revolution. But it also fails 
to offer a clear roadmap with guideposts along the way aside from the 
carcasses of the fossil fuel industry and a slew of publicly owned 
goods; occasionally, it veers into the realm of dreams (at least if you 
believe we have to keep operating in the current system and world order 
that exists)...
https://earther.gizmodo.com/bernie-sanders-climate-plan-is-nothing-short-of-a-revol-1837456120
- - -
[Bernie lays it out]
*Sanders to unveil $16tn climate plan, far more aggressive than rivals' 
proposals*
Democratic presidential hopeful's 10-year plan warns of devastating 
economic consequences if crisis is not addressed
Bernie Sanders has laid out an ambitious 10-year, $16.3tn national 
mobilization to avert climate catastrophe, warning that the US risks 
losing $34.5tn in economic productivity by the end of the century if it 
does not respond with the urgency the threat demands.

The Vermont senator has long spoken of the climate crisis as a 
existential danger to the US and the world, and he has previously 
endorsed a Green New Deal, which he put forward with the New York 
congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Sanders will formally unveil his proposal on Thursday during a campaign 
visit to Paradise, California, a town that was destroyed in 2018 by one 
of the deadliest wildfires in US history. After the tour, the senator 
will hold a climate change town hall in Chico, California.

Sanders follows several other Democratic candidates in releasing a 
specific proposal for limiting the pollution from cars, power plants and 
other human activities that are heating the planet. Yet his proposal is 
much more aggressive than other candidates' - and far beyond what Barack 
Obama aimed to achieve during his presidency.

His goal is to eliminate US carbon emissions by 2050, a target laid out 
by scientists with the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 
He says he would create millions of jobs and rally the world's leaders 
to join forces in the fight against climate change.

Sanders' plan would reach for 100% renewable power for both electricity 
and transportation, the top two contributors to climate change in the 
US, by 2030 - aiming for complete decarbonization by 2050.

By comparison, Joe Biden, the former vice-president and currently the 
top-polling Democratic candidate, has proposed spending $1.7tn to 
neutralize the country's carbon emissions by 2050. Senator Elizabeth 
Warren has introduced a $2tn "green manufacturing plan" that would 
invest in renewable industries and create a National Institutes of Clean 
Energy.

And while Biden and other candidates have pledged to make the US carbon 
neutral by 2050, they stop short of aiming for complete decarbonization. 
Carbon neutrality could allow some emissions, as long as they are offset 
by pollution cuts elsewhere.

Jay Inslee, the Washington state governor who dropped out of the 
presidential race on Wednesday night, was perhaps the only candidate 
whose climate change plan was more extensive. Inslee had made climate 
change the centerpiece of his 2020 campaign, calling for a $9tn 
investment in green jobs over 10 years and vowed to make the US carbon 
neutral by 2045.

In a summary of Sanders' plan, his campaign compares the scale of the 
challenges the US is facing to the 1940s, when President Franklin Delano 
Roosevelt "within three short years restructured the entire economy in 
order to win the war and defeat fascism". The Green New Deal draws its 
name from Roosevelt's New Deal economic programs that helped lead the 
nation out of the Great Depression.

Sanders has struggled to break through in a crowded primary field. 
National public opinion polls consistently show Sanders vying for second 
place with Warren, who has gained ground with a stream of meaty policy 
proposals. His campaign sees the proposal as a way to stake out the most 
leftwing and ambitious plan on an issue that Democratic voters say is a 
top priority.

A CNN poll in April found that 96% of Democrats favor taking "aggressive 
action" to combat global warming while a CBS News survey found that 78% 
of Democrats in the early voting states said climate change was a "very 
important" issue.

Sanders says the plan will pay for itself over 15 years, including by 
"making the fossil fuel industry pay for their pollution, through 
litigation, fees, and taxes, and eliminating federal fossil fuel 
subsidies". He wants to cut emissions made in the US as well as some 
produced in developing countries.

His campaign says he would "reduce domestic emissions by at least 71% by 
2030 and reduce emissions in the non-China global south by 36% by 2030 - 
the total equivalent of reducing our domestic emissions by 161%."

He promises to "end unemployment" by creating 20m new jobs. He would 
also lead international climate efforts, declare climate change a 
national emergency and pay $200bn into the Green Climate Fund for 
countries to slash pollution.

He also commits to a fair transition for workers and wants to expand the 
climate justice movement to prioritize "young people, workers, 
indigenous peoples, communities of color, and other historically 
marginalized groups".

While the Green New Deal has become a rallying cry for Democrats and has 
been endorsed by several presidential candidates, the plan poses 
political risks. Republicans have seized on it as a way of demonizing 
the party as radical socialists. But by ignoring the issue, Republicans 
also risk turning off young people who overwhelmingly support action on 
climate change.

The issue will take center stage next month at a town hall and forum 
focused on climate change.

After months of pressure from progressive organizations and some 
Democratic hopefuls, CNN announced that it would host a climate change 
town hall with those 2020 candidates who qualify for the September 
primary debate. Ten Democrats have qualified for the event on 4 September.

Later that month, MSNBC will co-host a multi-day climate change forum 
with Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service and Our Daily 
Planet. All of the 2020 presidential candidates from both major parties 
have been invited to participate...
- - -
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/22/bernie-sanders-climate-change-plan


[The Guardian, for Australia - you may insert your nation's name below]
*Six sentences of hope: defining a unifying vision in the face of the 
climate crisis*
Richard Flanagan
A sense of futility haunts us all, so I sought to distill in as few 
words as possible what could be done by us as a people. Writing them, I 
felt my despair lift
- -
The question of the age is how. In the face of a human-induced change 
that threatens the future of our species how to act? How to live? How to be?

In seeking the answer we find ourselves alone in the universe without 
illusions. There are no leaders, no parties, no nation, no gods that 
will save us. We discover at this terrible moment a shocking truth: we 
only have ourselves. And each of us finds within ourselves only failure, 
cowardice, timidity, in short, a despair at our general weakness.
This sense of futility haunts us all.
And yet within that failure is hope. Having only ourselves we finally 
discover bedrock: ourselves.

Everywhere - in every party, organisation, workplace, club, gym, street, 
café and pub - are to be found those who do not agree with where power 
is taking our country.

And at the moment, we can still keep climate change within the 1.5C 
change. It is difficult. But it remains possible. And science tells us 
that at 1.5C we can still exercise control over our future.

But if we choose not to act now within a decade we will be looking at 
between 2C and 6C of warming by 2100. And at that point science tells us 
that we can no longer control anything.

It won't matter whether we fight or not, because the fight will be lost. 
The changes will not be able to be contained and we will be living on a 
planet increasingly hostile to human existence.

And so the situation is not yet terminal. It remains in our control if 
we wish to take control. There is hope if we dare hope. There is a 
better future if we are willing to express it and demand it.

And it is clear that the concerns that so many of us have dwarf the 
differences of groups and parties. I thought on the things that we could 
unite around as Australians, that we could use to go forward, that would 
make our country, as it has been in the past, a global leader, and a 
proud country once more.

Words only have the power others grant to them. If we do nothing we are 
endorsing Michael McCormack's words and Scott Morrison's actions in Tuvalu.

Or we can use other words.

And so I sought to distill into as few words as possible what could be 
done by us as a people. What was feasible, what was achievable. None are 
new ideas, all are founded in science, and all are being fought for in 
various ways. But everywhere we see them dismissed and attacked as 
impossible, ludicrous and unworkable.

Yet when reduced to their essence how reasonable they are. When 
conceived as a mutual and national endeavour how possible they become. 
And writing them I felt my despair lift. I realised that there can be a 
positive vision for our future, a future that brings us together rather 
than divides us, that makes us a better, stronger country.

And in six sentences I saw hope is possible.
We believe Australia can be an affirming light in a time of despair, a 
global leader in transitioning to a carbon-free and socially just 
society, and that is why we wish our government to -

    Work with Australian land managers to stop land clearing, protect
    existing forests and grow new forests to absorb existing carbon
    pollution.

    Work with Australian farmers and graziers to make farming carbon
    neutral.

    Work with Australian miners to ensure a transition into 21st century
    minerals (nickel, rare earth) and end thermal coalmining and gas
    fracking in Australia.

    Work with Australian regulators to make all Australian ground
    transport powered by renewable energy by 2030.

    Work with Australian industry to make Australia a renewable energy
    giant and carbon-neutral economy by 2050, funded by progressive
    pollution tariffs on global heaters.

We will discover the language of hope in the quality of our courage.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/22/six-sentences-of-hope-defining-a-unifying-vision-in-the-face-of-the-climate-crisis



[Cough, cough]
*Air Pollution Linked to Psychiatric Illness*
Poor air quality is associated with higher rates of several psychiatric 
disorders, new research suggests.
Analyzing large datasets from the United States and Denmark, 
investigators found significant correlations between air pollution and 
bipolar disorder in both countries and between air pollution and 
depression, schizophrenia, and personality disorder in Denmark.
"If we know which environmental insults can trigger disease, we can 
probably prevent it in some patients, especially if we know they are 
genetically vulnerable," corresponding author Andrey Rzhetsky, PhD, 
professor of medicine and human genetics, University of Chicago, 
Illinois, told Medscape Medical News.
The findings were published online August 20 in PLOS Biology.
- -
This analysis assessed four psychiatric illnesses -- bipolar disorder, 
major depression, personality disorder, and schizophrenia -- and two 
neurologic disorders -- Parkinson disease (PD) and epilepsy. The 
neurologic disorders were included to act as a control, and "we did not 
expect to find an association," said Rzhetsky.

Results showed that, compared with the best air quality, the worst air 
quality was associated with about a 27% increase in the rate of bipolar 
disorder (95% credible interval, 15% - 40%; P < 10−4).
- -
Air pollution is a complex mixture of small particulate matter, gases, 
metals, and organic contaminants generated by natural erosion of stones 
and human-made materials, exhaust of transport vehicles, industrial 
activity, and fires...
- -
To quantify air pollution, the researchers used the Environmental 
Protection Agency air quality index, which is a summary measure of 87 
potential air pollutants. Rzhetsky noted that for this analysis, the 
researchers had air quality measurements at only one time point and at a 
county level...
- -
The most likely mechanism by which pollutants engender psychiatric 
illnesses is through neuroinflammation. "We have quite a bit of evidence 
on this from animal studies, for example in dogs, and anecdotal evidence 
in humans," Rzhetsky said.

The investigators note that it is impossible to pinpoint specific 
airborne compounds that might lead to mental illnesses; it is likely 
that multiple pollutants contribute to negative effects on the human 
nervous system in an additive or synergistic way.

However, there are "some suspects," including small ambient particles, 
which can enter the lungs and bloodstream or cross the blood brain 
barrier, said Rzhetsky. "They can also go through the olfactory system 
to the brain, which is a more direct route because we have olfactory 
neurons in our nose," he added.

He's convinced that halting neuroinflammation can reverse psychiatric 
symptoms...
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/917128
- - -
[research paper]
*Environmental pollution is associated with increased risk of 
psychiatric disorders in the US and Denmark*
Atif Khan, Oleguer Plana-Ripoll, Sussie Antonsen, Jørgen Brandt, Camilla 
Geels, Hannah Landecker, Patrick F. Sullivan, Carsten Bøcker Pedersen, 
Andrey Rzhetsky
Published: August 20, 2019https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000353

    Abstract
    The search for the genetic factors underlying complex
    neuropsychiatric disorders has proceeded apace in the past decade.
    Despite some advances in identifying genetic variants associated
    with psychiatric disorders, most variants have small individual
    contributions to risk. By contrast, disease risk increase appears to
    be less subtle for disease-predisposing environmental insults. In
    this study, we sought to identify associations between environmental
    pollution and risk of neuropsychiatric disorders. We present
    exploratory analyses of 2 independent, very large datasets: 151
    million unique individuals, represented in a United States insurance
    claims dataset, and 1.4 million unique individuals documented in
    Danish national treatment registers. Environmental Protection Agency
    (EPA) county-level environmental quality indices (EQIs) in the US
    and individual-level exposure to air pollution in Denmark were used
    to assess the association between pollution exposure and the risk of
    neuropsychiatric disorders. These results show that air pollution is
    significantly associated with increased risk of psychiatric
    disorders. We hypothesize that pollutants affect the human brain via
    neuroinflammatory pathways that have also been shown to cause
    depression-like phenotypes in animal studies.

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000353


[Military still gets it OK]
*UPDATE: Chronology of U.S. Military Statements and Actions on Climate 
Change and Security: Jan 2017- August 2019*
https://climateandsecurity.org/2019/08/22/update-chronology-of-u-s-military-statements-and-actions-on-climate-change-and-security-jan-2017-august-2019/



[culture needs philosophy]
Society for Humanistic Psychology Newsletter | July 2019
*Planet Earth: Crumbling Metaphysical Illusion*
What can help us face up to the horrors with which climate change 
threatens us?
By Robert D. Stolorow, PhD
Wittgenstein (1953) characterized philosophy as "a battle against the 
bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language" (section 109). 
In an earlier essay (Stolorow & Atwood, 2017), Atwood and I employed 
Wittgenstein's conception of such bewitchment to give an account of the 
genesis of various forms of metaphysical illusion. In place of a word a 
picture is projected, which is then imagined as a thing-in-itself, an 
everlasting entity. Such metaphysical illusion, mediated by words and 
reified pictures, replaces the tragic finitude and transience of 
existence with a permanent and eternally changeless reality. We claimed 
that this metaphysicalization of experience is pervasive in everyday life.
An entity central to our everyday well-being is planet earth itself. The 
earth, both literally and ontologically, gives us the ground we stand 
on. It grounds our way of being.

Heidegger, in his later work, is said to have moved away from 
phenomenology and toward a metaphysical realism. It is probably more 
accurate to say that he moved toward a complex amalgam of the two. This 
characterization certainly holds for his lecture, "Building Dwelling 
Thinking" (1951), which gives important glimpses into the ontological 
significance of the earth. Indeed, Heidegger claims in this essay that 
the fundamental character of the human kind of being (existence) is 
dwelling. Such dwelling requires a space, a location, a home, and that 
home is the earth. In this vision, the earth provides grounding for the 
human kind of being. For humans, to be is to dwell on earth, and to 
dwell requires that they safeguard and preserve the earth that grounds 
them. Characteristically, such protectedness is sought in metaphysical 
illusion -- the transformation of this vulnerable planet into an 
invincible everlasting entity. This age-old metaphysical illusion is not 
faring well in the face of the perils of climate change.

Heidegger uses several interrelated phrases to characterize the 
comportment of dwelling on earth: To dwell there is to cherish, to 
protect, to preserve, to care for, to nourish, to nurture, to nurse, to 
keep safe, to spare, to save. "Mortals dwell in that they save the 
earth" (Heidegger, 1951, p. 148). What is most noteworthy to me is that 
all of these manifestations of dwelling entail recognition of and 
responsiveness to earth's vulnerability, rather than an evasive turning 
away. They entail, in other words, renunciation of comforting 
metaphysical illusions of earth's everlasting invincibility.

A personal vignette (Stolorow, 2018) alludes to the enormous impact of 
having earth's permanence and changelessness thrown open to question:

"More than three decades ago I took my young son to a planetarium show 
at the New York Museum of Natural History. During that show it was 
predicted that a billion years from now the sun will become a 'red 
giant' that will engulf and destroy our entire solar system. This 
prospect filled me with intense horror…. [T]he sun's becoming an 
engulfing red giant represents not just the destruction of individual 
human beings but of human civilization itself…. I want to call the 
horror that announces such a possibility apocalyptic anxiety" (p. 12).

It also announces, I now add, the shattering of metaphysical illusions 
of earth's permanence and indestructability. The human way of being 
cannot survive the impending homelessness with which climate change 
threatens us, a prospect so horrifying that people turn away from it 
altogether, thereby evading the threat and abandoning the search for 
solutions. (Such apocalyptic homelessness is foreshadowed concretely in 
the destruction of individual homes and other buildings by massive 
storms, floods, wildfires and other manifestations of global warming.)

What can help us face up to the horrors with which climate change 
threatens us? I suggest a form of dwelling with one another that I call 
emotional dwelling (Stolorow & Atwood, 2018), an active, engaged, 
participatory comportment that I have recommended for the therapeutic 
approach to emotional trauma. In dwelling, one leans into the other's 
emotional pain and participates in it. The language that one uses to 
address another's experience of trauma meets the trauma head-on, 
articulating the unbearable and the unendurable, saying the unsayable, 
unmitigated by any efforts to soothe, comfort, encourage or reassure -- 
such efforts invariably being experienced by the other as a turning away 
from the experience of trauma. In order to tackle the overwhelming 
perils of climate change we must include in our dwelling on earth an 
emotional dwelling with one another that renders shared apocalyptic 
anxiety more tolerable.

I am grateful to George Atwood, Susanne Claxton, and Julia Schwartz for 
their encouraging comments and valuable suggestions.

References
Heidegger, M. (1951).  Building Dwelling Thinking. In Poetry, Language, 
Thought, Trans. A. Hofstadter. New York: Perennial, 2001, pp. 141-159.

Stolorow, R. D. (2018). Death, afterlife, and doomsday scenario. Trauma 
Psychology News, 13(3), 12-13.

Stolorow, R. D. & Atwood, G. E. (2017). The phenomenology of language 
and the metaphysicalizing of the real.  Language and Psychoanalysis, 
6(1):4-9.

Stolorow, R. D. & Atwood, G. E. (2018). The Power of Phenomenology: 
Psychoanalyticand Philosophical Perspectives. London & New York: Routledge.

Wittgenstein, L. (1953).  Philosophical Investigations. Malden, MA: 
Blackwell
https://www.apadivisions.org/division-32/publications/newsletters/humanistic/2019/07/climate-change



[RCP8.5 is the scenario we are in - there is none worse ]
21 August 2019
*Explainer: The high-emissions 'RCP8.5' global warming scenario*
A sizeable portion of recent studies on future climate impacts have 
focused on a warming scenario called "RCP8.5". This high-emissions 
scenario is frequently referred to as "business as usual", suggesting 
that is a likely outcome if society does not make concerted efforts to 
cut greenhouse gas emissions...
- - -
Four pathways were developed based on their end-of-century radiative 
forcing: RCP2.6 (indicating a 2.6 watts per metre squared - W/m2 - 
forcing increase relative to pre-industrial conditions), RCP4.5, RCP6.0, 
and RCP8.5...
  - -
They suggest that "RCP8.5 should be seen as a high emission scenario" 
while "RCP6.0 can be interpreted as either a medium baseline or a high 
mitigation case". This suggests that the authors say no reason to 
consider RCP8.5 a more likely "business as usual" outcome than, say, RCP6.0.

RCP8.5 was specifically selected as a high-end baseline scenario, and 
was not intended to be portrayed as the most likely "business as usual" 
no-policy outcome. The researchers emphasise this point in their paper, 
showing how the emissions in each scenario compared to the range found 
in the energy modelling literature at the time...
- - -
Modelling high-forcing scenarios like RCP8.5 can be a useful scientific 
endeavour even if they do not represent particularly likely outcomes. 
For example, high-forcing scenarios have a much higher signal-to-noise 
ratio for the detection of significant changes in the climate system. In 
other words, because global temperature rise is more prominent in these 
scenarios, it is easier for researchers to isolate the climate change 
signal in model simulations. This is particularly useful for 
"attribution" studies that aim to identify the contribution of  
human-caused warming to climate impacts, as compared to natural 
variability. RCP8.5 is also used for consistency, as it was included in 
the past IPCC modeling effort - CMIP5 - and is similar to scenarios 
included in IPCC reports prior to that (such as A2 and A1F1 in the SRES 
scenarios)...
- -
The literature around the development of RCP8.5 makes it clear that the 
scenario represents the high-end of possible baseline emissions 
scenarios rather than the most likely "business as usual" outcome. The 
original paper outlining the RCPs suggest that there is no reason to 
think that a high-emission RCP8.5 baseline would be any more likely than 
a lower emission RCP6.0 baseline in a no-policy world...
https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-the-high-emissions-rcp8-5-global-warming-scenario


*This Day in Climate History - August 23, 1971 - from D.R. Tucker*
August 23, 1971: Attorney and future Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. 
Powell Jr. writes a memo to the US Chamber of Commerce urging a greater 
special-interest pushback against public-interest groups. The memo 
becomes the template for efforts by the fossil-fuel industry to generate 
faux-outrage over, and ginned-up opposition to, efforts to regulate 
greenhouse gases.
http://web.archive.org/web/20120129225919/http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/campaigns/global-warming-and-energy/polluterwatch/The-Lewis-Powell-Memo/ 

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