[TheClimate.Vote] August 25, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest.

[Richard Pauli]

/August 24, 2019/

[political disappointment]
*DNC Votes 222-137 Against Allowing Candidates to Participate in Climate 
Debate*
...in a contentious 222-137 vote that comes amid ongoing devastation in 
the Amazon rainforest and growing evidence that scientists have 
underestimated the pace at which the world is warming...
- - -
"Tom Perez just killed a climate debate by undermining the DNC's own 
system and bypassing the will of the more than half a million grassroots 
activists, more than 100 DNC members in San Francisco, and most of the 
Democratic presidential candidates," the coalition wrote. "There are 
many DNC members from across the country who believe in listening to the 
grassroots and engaging in a transparent, democratic process. But Tom 
Perez made it clear today that he is not one of them."

"Our coalition has worked tirelessly within the DNC rules to get a 
climate debate, but Tom Perez decided it wasn't politically expedient to 
have Democrats discuss their solutions for our climate crisis on the 
same national stage as one another," the coalition added. "Our entire 
future is at stake, but Tom Perez just swept aside the climate crisis 
for someone else to solve. That isn't leadership. That isn't normal 
order. That isn't what it means to be a Democrat."
https://earther.gizmodo.com/dnc-votes-222-137-against-allowing-candidates-to-partic-1837543829



[Fire report from DW German TV]
*Amazon rainforest burning at a record rate | DW News*
DW News
Published on Aug 22, 2019
International concern is mounting over the record number of wildfires in 
the Amazon. French President Emmanuel Macron has called it an 
international crisis, tweeting
"Our house is burning. Literally. The Amazon rain forest, the lungs 
which produce 20% of our planet's oxygen is on fire." But Brazil's 
far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has criticized what he called foreign 
interference, slamming Macron's remarks as sensationalist. Bolsonaro 
says Brazil lacks the resources needed to fight the fires. He's also 
accused  environmental groups of starting them for political gain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZqk6Lc--hE
-- - -
*Smoke-Ready Toolbox for Wildfires*
Smoke from wildfires in the United States is adversely affecting air 
quality and potentially putting more people at health risk from smoke 
exposure. EPA, the U.S. Forest Service  (USFS) and other federal, state 
and community agencies and organizations are working together to 
identify ways the public can prepare to reduce their health risk before 
a wildfire. Public health officials and others can use the resources in 
the Smoke-Ready Toolbox to help educate people about the risks of smoke 
exposure and actions they can take to protect their health.
https://www.epa.gov/smoke-ready-toolbox-wildfires
- - -
[keep aware]
*2019 Revision of Wildfire Smoke Guide Now Available*
Wildfire smoke guide

The 2019 update to the Wildfire Smoke: A Guide for Public Health 
Officials (Wildfire Smoke Guide) is now available. The guide provides 
public health officials with the information they need to prepare for 
smoke events, communicate health risks and take measures to protect 
public health.  It is also a valuable resource for anyone interested in 
learning more about what to do when smoke travels from nearby forest fires.

This fourth edition of the guide offers new information and resources 
that can be used to get communities smoke ready, including fact sheets 
on what to do before, during and after a wildfire to protect your health.

The document has five chapters:
- Health effects of wildfire smoke
- Wildfire smoke and air quality impacts
- Specific strategies to reduce exposure to wildfire smoke
- Communicate air quality conditions during smoke events
- A PSA video offers an overview of what is in the guide and can be 
included in any communications outreach to prepare for wildfire smoke 
and smoke from prescribed burns.

The guide is a multi-agency document developed by EPA, U.S. Centers for 
Disease Control and Prevention/National Institute of Occupational Safety 
and Health (US CDC/NIOSH), the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), California 
Air Resources Board (CARB), California Department of Public Health (CA 
DPH), and California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment 
(CA OEHHA).
View the guide and other resources to prepare for wildfire smoke on the 
Smoke-Ready Toolbox for Wildfires
https://www.epa.gov/smoke-ready-toolbox-wildfires
- - -
[Wildfire Smoke Factsheet]
*Indoor Air Filtration*
When wildfire smoke gets inside your home it can make your indoor air 
unhealthy, but there are steps you can take to
protect your health and improve the air quality in your home. Reducing 
indoor sources of pollution is a major step toward
lowering the concentrations of particles indoors. For example, avoid 
burning candles, smoking tobacco products, using
aerosol products, and avoid using a gas or wood-burning stove or 
fireplace. Another step is air filtration. This fact sheet
discusses effective options for filtering your home's indoor air to 
reduce indoor air pollution.
https://www3.epa.gov/airnow/smoke_fires/indoor-air-filtration-factsheet-508.pdf



[never too late for truth]
*ND'S PETROLEUM SPILL COULD BE U.S.'S LARGEST LAND SPILL*
by C.S. Hagen
WATFORD CITY - A reported 10-gallon spill of liquid gold at the Garden 
Creek I Gas Processing Plant in 2015 - just before the Dakota Access 
Pipeline controversy - could now be renamed as the largest land spill in 
human history.

The plant, operated by Oklahoma company, ONEOK Partners, reported 10 
gallons of condensate or liquid natural gas spilled, but the accident, 
which occurred over a long duration of time, was underreported, Bill 
Suess, the spill investigation program manager for North Dakota 
Department of Environmental Quality.

"Yes, it was reported at 10 gallons of concentrate floated into their 
hole, but they go on to say that the soil was saturated and they knew it 
was larger," Suess said. "With the nature of condensate we do not know 
and we'll never know exactly how big it is, because it was an internal 
pipeline that had no meter on it. The meter was on the other end of the 
location."

Information leaked to Desmog, and Rolling Stone Magazine, shows an 
internal memo inside ONEOK expected to find up to 11 million gallons of 
spilled condensate...
https://hpr1.com/index.php/feature/news/nds-petroleum-spill-could-be-u.s.s-largest-land-spill/
- - -
[the answer is: probably]
*Did North Dakota Regulators Hide an Oil and Gas Industry Spill Larger 
Than Exxon Valdez?*
By Justin Nobel - Monday, August 19, 2019
In July 2015 workers at the Garden Creek I Gas Processing Plant, in 
Watford City, North Dakota, noticed a leak in a pipeline and reported a 
spill to the North Dakota Department of Health that remains officially 
listed as 10 gallons, the size of two bottled water delivery jugs.

But a whistle-blower has revealed to DeSmog the incident is actually on 
par with the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, which released 
roughly 11 million gallons of thick crude.

The Garden Creek spill "is in fact over 11 million gallons of condensate 
that leaked through a crack in a pipeline for over 3 years," says the 
whistle-blower, who has expertise in environmental science but refused 
to be named or give other background information for fear of losing 
their job. They provided to DeSmog a document that details remediation 
efforts and verifies the spill's monstrous size.

"Up to 5,500,000 gallons" of hydrocarbons have been removed from the 
site, the 2018 document states, "based upon an…estimate of approximately 
11 million gallons released."...
- - -
Scott Skokos, Executive Director of the Dakota Resource Council, an 
organization that works to protect North Dakota's natural resources and 
family farms, questioned whether it was legal for the state to cover up 
or downplay spills.

"I have seen many instances where it appears spills are being covered 
up, and there appears to be a pattern of downplaying spills, which makes 
the narrative surrounding oil and gas development look rosy and makes 
the industry look better politically," says Skokos. "If this pattern is 
as widespread as it seems, then we have a government that is conspiring 
to protect the oil industry. This is not only reckless and unethical, 
but also potentially illegal."

"In my view," Skokos added, "this is not looking out for the best 
interest of the state or the people who live in the state, it is only 
looking out for corporations. And these are not even corporate citizens 
of this state, they are corporate citizens of somewhere else."...
https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/08/19/north-dakota-regulators-oil-gas-spill-exxon-valdez



[A disarming, charming statement from twenty something year old 
computational climate scientist Dr Kaitlin Naughten]
*How I became a scientist*
Posted on Aug 13, 2019
For the first fourteen years of my life, I thought science was boring. 
As far as I could tell, science was a process of memorising facts: the 
order of the planets, the names of clouds, the parts of a cell. 
Sometimes science meant building contraptions out of paper and tape to 
allow an egg to survive a two-metre fall, and I was really terrible at 
that sort of thing. So instead I spent all my spare time reading and 
writing, and decided to be a novelist when I grew up...
[more at:]
https://climatesight.org/2019/08/13/how-i-became-a-scientist/



[activism for March 2020]
*Reference: The worldwide Online Conference CLIMATE 2020*
The 7th worldwide online conference, CLIMATE 2020, whose theme is
"Integrating Mitigation & Adaptation Initiatives for a Better Management 
of Climate Change and Its Impacts" will be held on 23rd-30th March 2020. 
This is an on-line conference, with no travel and no unnecessary CO2 
emissions, but reaching thousands of people
round the world. It offers an ideal opportunity to promote research, 
projects and case studies on climate change adaptation to a wide audience.
Details on how to take part can be seen at: 
https://www.haw-hamburg.de/en/ftz-nk/events/climate2020.html
Rgds, The ICCIRP Team
https://www.haw-hamburg.de/en/ftz-nk/events/climate2020.html


[pleasant dreams]
*Spiders become more aggressive after extreme weather, study says*
Hurricanes are making at least one spider species more hostile.
Through their research, they also discovered that more aggressive 
colonies produced more baby spiders than spiders living areas that 
weren't struck by as many powerful storms.

While the research doesn't prove why the storms make this specific 
species of spiders more apt to lash out, the researchers speculate that 
the spiders have less food after a storm, so they get more focused on 
hunting and protecting their limited resources.
https://www.cnet.com/news/spiders-more-aggressive-due-to-extreme-weather-study-says/ 




[Opinion from Oreskes and Lifton]
*The false promise of nuclear power in an age of climate change*
By Robert Jay Lifton, Naomi Oreskes, August 20, 2019
Editor's note: This article was originally published...by the Boston Globe.

Commentators from Greenpeace to the World Bank agree that climate change 
is an emergency, threatening civilization and life on our planet. Any 
solution must involve the control of greenhouse gas emissions by phasing 
out fossil fuels and switching to alternative technologies that do not 
impair the human habitat while providing the energy we require to 
function as a species.

This sobering reality has led some prominent observers to re-embrace 
nuclear energy. Advocates declare it clean, efficient, economical, and 
safe. In actuality it is none of these. It is expensive and poses grave 
dangers to our physical and psychological well-being. According to the 
US Energy Information Agency, the average nuclear power generating cost 
is about $100 per megawatt-hour. Compare this with $50 per megawatt-hour 
for solar and $30 to $40 per megawatt-hour for onshore wind. The 
financial group Lazard recently said that renewable energy costs are now 
"at or below the marginal cost of conventional generation"--that is, 
fossil fuels--and much lower than nuclear.

In theory these high costs and long construction times could be brought 
down. But we have had more than a half-century to test that theory and 
it appears have been solidly refuted. Unlike nearly all other 
technologies, the cost of nuclear power has risen over time. Even its 
supporters recognize that it has never been cost-competitive in a 
free-market environment, and its critics point out that the nuclear 
industry has followed a "negative learning curve." Both the Nuclear 
Energy Agency and International Energy Agency have concluded that 
although nuclear power is a "proven low-carbon source of base-load 
electricity," the industry will have to address serious concerns about 
cost, safety, and waste disposal if it is to play a significant role in 
addressing the climate-energy nexus.

But there are deeper problems that should not be brushed aside. They 
have to do with the fear and the reality of radiation effects. At issue 
is what can be called "invisible contamination," the sense that some 
kind of poison has lodged in one's body that may strike one down at any 
time--even in those who had seemed unaffected by a nuclear disaster. Nor 
is this fear irrational, since delayed radiation effects can do just 
that. Moreover, catastrophic nuclear accidents, however infrequent, can 
bring about these physical and psychological consequences on a vast 
scale. No technological system is ever perfect, but the vulnerability of 
nuclear power is particularly great. Improvements in design cannot 
eliminate the possibility of lethal meltdowns. These may result from 
extreme weather; from geophysical events such as earthquakes, volcanoes, 
and tsunamis (such as the one that caused the Fukushima event); from 
technical failure; and from unavoidable human error. Climate change 
itself works against nuclear power; severe droughts have led to the 
shutting down of reactors as the surrounding waters become too warm to 
provide the vital cooling function.

Advocates of nuclear energy invariably downplay the catastrophic events 
at Fukushima and Chernobyl. They point out that relatively few immediate 
deaths were recorded in these two disasters, which is true. But they 
fail to take adequate account of medical projections. The chaos of both 
disasters and their extreme mishandling by authorities have led to great 
disparity in estimates. But informed evaluations in connection with 
Chernobyl project future cancer deaths at anywhere from several tens of 
thousands to a half-million.

Studies of Chernobyl and Fukushima also reveal crippling psychological 
fear of invisible contamination. This fear consumed Hiroshima and 
Nagasaki, and people in Fukushima painfully associated their own 
experiences with those of people in the atomic-bombed cities. The 
situation in Fukushima is still far from physically or psychologically 
stable. This fear also plagues Chernobyl, where there have been large 
forced movements of populations, and where whole areas poisoned by 
radiation remain uninhabitable.

The combination of actual and anticipated radiation effects--the fear of 
invisible contamination--occurs wherever nuclear technology has been 
used: not only at the sites of the atomic bombings and major accidents, 
but also at Hanford, Washington, in connection with plutonium waste from 
the production of the Nagasaki bomb; at Rocky Flats, Colorado, after 
decades of nuclear production; and at test sites in Nevada and elsewhere 
after soldiers were exposed to radiation following atomic bomb tests.

Nuclear reactors also raise the problem of nuclear waste, for which no 
adequate solution has been found despite a half-century of scientific 
and engineering effort. Even when a reactor is considered unreliable and 
is closed down, as occurred recently with the Pilgrim reactor in 
Plymouth, or closes for economic reasons, as at Vermont Yankee, the 
accumulated waste remains at the site, dangerous and virtually immortal. 
Under the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the United States was required 
to develop a permanent repository for nuclear waste; nearly 40 years 
later, we still lack that repository.

Finally there is the gravest of dangers: plutonium and enriched uranium 
derived from nuclear reactors contributing to the building of nuclear 
weapons. The technology needed to enrich uranium to commercial reactor 
grade can easily be scaled up to enrich uranium to weapons grade. When 
commercial uranium reactors operate, the fissioning of their fuel 
produces plutonium, which ends up in the high-level radioactive waste. 
Wherever extensive nuclear power is put into use there is the 
possibility of its becoming weaponized. Of course, this potential 
weaponization makes nuclear reactors a tempting target for terrorists.

There are now more than 450 nuclear reactors throughout the world. If 
nuclear power is embraced as a rescue technology, there would be many 
times that number, creating a worldwide chain of nuclear danger zones--a 
planetary system of potential self-annihilation. To be fearful of such a 
development is rational. What is irrational is to dismiss this concern, 
and to insist, after the experience of more than a half-century, that a 
"fourth generation" of nuclear power will change everything.

Advocates of nuclear power frequently compare it to carbon-loaded coal. 
But coal is not the issue; it is already making its way off the world 
stage. The appropriate comparison is between nuclear and renewable 
energies. Renewables are part of an economic and energy revolution: They 
have become available far more quickly, extensively, and cheaply than 
most experts predicted, and public acceptance is high. To use renewables 
on the necessary scale, we will need improvements in energy storage, 
grid integration, smart appliances, and electric vehicle charging 
infrastructure. We should have an all-out national effort--reminiscent 
of World War II or, ironically, the making of the atomic bomb--that 
includes all of these areas to make renewable energies integral to the 
American way of life. Gas and nuclear will play a transitional role, but 
it is not pragmatic to bet the planet on a technology that has 
consistently underperformed and poses profound threats to our bodies and 
our minds.

Above all, we need to free ourselves of the "nuclear mystique": the 
magic aura that radiation has had since the days of Marie Curie. We must 
question the misleading vision of "Atoms for Peace," a vision that has 
always accompanied the normalization of nuclear weapons. We must free 
ourselves from the false hope that a technology designed for ultimate 
destruction could be transmogrified into ultimate life-enhancement.
https://thebulletin.org/2019/08/the-false-promise-of-nuclear-power-in-an-age-of-climate-change/


*This Day in Climate History - August 25, 2004 - from D.R. Tucker*
August 25, 2004: The U.S. Climate Change Science Program releases the 
report "Our Changing Planet: The U.S. Climate Change Science Program for 
Fiscal Years 2004 and 2005."
http://web.archive.org/web/20041015135521/http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/Library/ocp2004-5/ocp2004-5.pdf 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/26/science/26climate.html
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