[TheClimate.Vote] December 13, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Fri Dec 13 10:19:27 EST 2019
/*December 13, 2019*/
[Krugman opinion in the NYTimes]
*The Party That Ruined the Planet*
Republican climate denial is even scarier than Trumpism.
By Paul Krugman - Dec. 12, 2019
The most terrifying aspect of the U.S. political drama isn't the
revelation that the president has abused his power for personal gain. If
you didn't see that coming from the day Donald Trump was elected, you
weren't paying attention.
No, the real revelation has been the utter depravity of the Republican
Party. Essentially every elected or appointed official in that party has
chosen to defend Trump by buying into crazy, debunked conspiracy
theories. That is, one of America's two major parties is beyond
redemption; given that, it's hard to see how democracy can long endure,
even if Trump is defeated.
However, the scariest reporting I've seen recently has been about
science, not politics. A new federal report finds that climate change in
the Arctic is accelerating, matching what used to be considered
worst-case scenarios. And there are indications that Arctic warming may
be turning into a self-reinforcing spiral, as the thawing tundra itself
releases vast quantities of greenhouse gases.
Catastrophic sea-level rise, heat waves that make major population
centers uninhabitable, and more are now looking more likely than not,
and sooner rather than later.
But the terrifying political news and the terrifying climate news are
closely related.
Why, after all, has the world failed to take action on climate, and why
is it still failing to act even as the danger gets ever more obvious?
There are, of course, many culprits; action was never going to be easy.
But one factor stands out above all others: the fanatical opposition of
America's Republicans, who are the world's only major climate-denialist
party. Because of this opposition, the United States hasn't just failed
to provide the kind of leadership that would have been essential to
global action, it has become a force against action.
And Republican climate denial is rooted in the same kind of depravity
that we're seeing with regard to Trump.
As I've written in the past, climate denial was in many ways the
crucible for Trumpism. Long before the cries of "fake news," Republicans
were refusing to accept science that contradicted their prejudices. Long
before Republicans began attributing every negative development to the
machinations of the "deep state," they were insisting that global
warming was a gigantic hoax perpetrated by a vast global cabal of
corrupt scientists.
And long before Trump began weaponizing the power of the presidency for
political gain, Republicans were using their political power to harass
climate scientists and, where possible, criminalize the practice of
science itself.Perhaps not surprisingly, some of those responsible for
these abuses are now ensconced in the Trump administration. Notably, Ken
Cuccinelli, who as attorney general of Virginia engaged in a long
witch-hunt against the climate scientist Michael Mann, is now at the
Department of Homeland Security, where he pushes anti-immigrant policies
with, as The Times reports, "little concern for legal restraints."
But why have Republicans become the party of climate doom? Money is an
important part of the answer: In the current cycle Republicans have
received 97 percent of political contributions from the coal industry,
88 percent from oil and gas. And this doesn't even count the wing nut
welfare offered by institutions supported by the Koch brothers and other
fossil-fuel moguls.
However, I don't believe that it's just about the money. My sense is
that right-wingers believe, probably correctly, that there's a sort of
halo effect surrounding any form of public action. Once you accept that
we need policies to protect the environment, you're more likely to
accept the idea that we should have policies to ensure access to health
care, child care, and more. So the government must be prevented from
doing anything good, lest it legitimize a broader progressive agenda.
Still, whatever the short-term political incentives, it takes a special
kind of depravity to respond to those incentives by denying facts,
embracing insane conspiracy theories and putting the very future of
civilization at risk.
Unfortunately, that kind of depravity isn't just present in the modern
Republican Party, it has effectively taken over the whole institution.
There used to be at least some Republicans with principles; as recently
as 2008 Senator John McCain co-sponsored serious climate-change
legislation. But those people have either experienced total moral
collapse (hello, Senator Graham) or left the party.
The truth is that even now I don't fully understand how things got this
bad. But the reality is clear: Modern Republicans are irredeemable,
devoid of principle or shame. And there is, as I said, no reason to
believe that this will change even if Trump is defeated next year.
The only way that either American democracy or a livable planet can
survive is if the Republican Party as it now exists is effectively
dismantled and replaced with something better -- maybe with a party that
has the same name, but completely different values. This may sound like
an impossible dream. But it's the only hope we have.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/12/opinion/climate-change-republicans.html
[Rising risk]
*Scientists feared unstoppable emissions from melting permafrost. They
may have already started.*
The Arctic is a ticking time bomb that's close to going off.
By Brian Resnick - Dec 12, 2019
Every year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration releases
an Arctic Report Card, detailing the state of the frozen world at the
top of the globe.
And each year, its findings grow more dire. This year, the report
revealed that the Arctic itself may now be contributing to climate
change. That's because Arctic soil contains a lot of carbon, which would
stay there if it weren't for the fact that the planet is warming. As the
frozen ground across the Arctic starts to thaw, it releases that carbon,
which turns into a greenhouse gas. Some of that carbon gets taken up by
plants growing in the summertime, but more and more of it is now
escaping into the atmosphere.
"Thawing permafrost throughout the Arctic could be releasing an
estimated 300-600 million tons of net carbon per year to the
atmosphere," the NOAA writes in the report. That's roughly the
equivalent of Japan's annual emissions.
And those emissions are going to increase. "We think that should be two
to three times bigger by the end of the century based on the kind of
forecasting we've done," Ted Schuur, an ecologist and the author of the
report's section on permafrost, said.
Scientists have long feared this tipping point. The Arctic permafrost --
permanently frozen soil -- contains a huge amount of carbon, trapped in
ice. As the permafrost warms, it starts to release that carbon. That
fuels more warming, which melts more permafrost, and...you get it. The
cycle continues.
Now those fears are beginning to come true: "The accelerating feedback
from changing permafrost ecosystems to climate change may already be
underway," the report states, ominously.
- - -
Nowhere on Earth is changing as quickly as the Arctic. Every year, it
becomes easier to see, and we're just starting to learn the consequences.
It's also never been more important to act quickly and make sure
feedback loops don't spiral out of control.
"If we set off these cascades, these potential accelerations, we may not
be able to rein them back in," Schuur sayid.
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/12/12/21011445/permafrost-melting-arctic-report-card-noaa
- -
[Top climate scientist Michael Mann at AGU lecture warns of new level of
risk]
*"This final slide from @MichaelEMann is devastating. The time for
incremental climate policy is over*. - He estimates annual emissions may
have to drop by 15% a year (rather than 7.5%). - In other words we have
zero years to tackle climate change."
https://twitter.com/DrNoelHealy/status/1204204976953626624
[NYTimes photos in infrared]
Do you see the methane leak billowing from this tank?
*It's a Vast, Invisible Climate Menace. We Made It Visible.*
But a highly specialized camera sees what the human eye cannot: a major
release of methane, the main component of natural gas and a potent
greenhouse gas that is helping to warm the planet at an alarming rate.
Two New York Times journalists detected this from a tiny plane, crammed
with scientific equipment, circling above the oil and gas sites that dot
the Permian, an oil field bigger than Kansas. In just a few hours, the
plane's instruments identified six sites with unusually high methane
emissions...
- - -
Next year, the administration could move forward with a plan that would
effectively eliminate requirements that oil companies install technology
to detect and fix methane leaks from oil and gas facilities. By the
E.P.A.'s own calculations, the rollback would increase methane emissions
by 370,000 tons through 2025, enough to power more than a million homes
for a year...
- -
Scientists say that, in weakening the rules, the Trump administration
underestimates methane's global climate effects. It also disregards
research that suggests methane emissions from oil and gas infrastructure
are far larger than previously estimated.
The findings address the mystery behind rising levels of methane in the
atmosphere. Methane levels have soared since 2007 for reasons that still
aren't fully understood. But fracking natural-gas production, which
accelerated just as atmospheric methane levels jumped, is a prime suspect...
- - -
One site where we identified leakage with the infrared camera was an
unmanned well pad with a battery of gray tanks. "There's a lot of volume
coming out of there," Mr. Doty later said of the images. "If this is
going 100 percent of the time, that's a lot of emissions."
The site was owned by MDC Texas Operator, which we discovered had filed
for bankruptcy that very day.
Calls to the company went unanswered, and its bankruptcy lawyers didn't
return requests for comment. It is unknown whether the tank is still
spewing gas.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/12/climate/texas-methane-super-emitters.html
[electrifying!]
*'World's first' fully-electric commercial aircraft takes flight*
The 15 minute test flight involved a 62-year-old, six-passenger DHC-2 de
Havilland Beaver seaplane retrofitted with an electric motor.
Greg McDougall, the chief executive of Harbour Air, flew the plane. "For
me that flight was just like flying a Beaver, but it was a Beaver on
electric steroids. I actually had to back off on the power," he said.
As well as fuel efficiency, the company said it would save millions in
maintenance costs, as electric motors require "drastically" less upkeep,
McDougall said.
- - -
Range remains a key limitation of electric aircraft, however. Mr
Ganzarski said that planes similar to the one flown on Tuesday can only
fly about 100 miles on lithium battery power.
"The range now is not where we'd love it to be, but it's enough to start
the revolution," he said.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2019/12/11/worlds-first-fully-electric-commercial-aircraft-takes-flight/
[click for pics]
*On the front line of the climate emergency – in pictures*
As COP25 takes place in Madrid, this collection of photographs from
Getty Images highlights the climate crisis around the world, from
Greenland's melting ice sheets to rising seal levels in Alaska and
Louisiana, the forest fires in the Amazon and Indonesia, and the impact
of forests and the Lobster fishery in Maine
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2019/dec/11/on-the-front-line-of-the-climate-emergency-in-pictures
[More discoveries]
*A Dark River Nearly 1,000 Miles Long May Be Flowing Beneath Greenland's
Ice*
By Mindy Weisberger - Senior Writer
SAN FRANCISCO -- Far below the frozen cover of the Greenland ice sheet
sprawls miles of bedrock -- and extending through that bedrock for close
to 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) is a valley that may contain a
subterranean river, transporting water from central Greenland to the
northern coast.
In the past, planes flying overhead had partially mapped a rocky,
subsurface valley under the ice, but their radar coverage of the region
left gaps, said Christopher Chambers, a researcher at Hokkaido
University in Sapporo, Japan.
To build a clearer picture of what lurks below Greenland's surface,
Chambers and his colleagues created simulations to explore the valley at
different depths and model how water might melt from the surface of a
glacier to the depths below -- perhaps creating a flowing river,
Chambers told Live Science. He presented their findings on Dec. 9 here
at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).
Related: Stunning Photos of Greenland's Supraglacial Lakes
Radar maps showed that the valley floor was extremely level at depths of
980 feet and 1,640 feet (300 meters and 500 meters) below the surface,
Chambers said. This is highly unusual for a feature that is so long,
"and that in itself is like a potential smoking gun that this could be"
a spot with active erosion or sediment deposition, such as a river, he
explained.
First, the researchers digitally modeled the valley and removed the
blocks of missing data. Once they had a continuous, open valley, they
put it in a Greenland simulation, and melting water from the glacier
began to redistribute itself underground, flowing along the valley's
base. In the simulations, the scientists also incorporated a known
hotspot located deep in Greenland's interior, and they found that the
hotspot generated enough flowing water to travel along the valley all
the way from Greenland's center to the northern coast.
"Eventually if you get it deep enough -- minus 500 meters [1,640 feet]
-- the water is now flowing the entire length along the valley and then
exiting at Petermann Fjord," creating a pathway that measures up to
1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) long Chambers said.
Because this river would be running in darkness for hundreds of miles
under the ice, the researchers named it "the Dark River," they wrote in
a summary of their research. The Dark River likely doesn't have a very
strong or constant flow, because glacier melt disperses over a large
area, Chambers said. The river could occasionally be quite powerful "but
only at certain times," when large reservoirs of meltwater build up and
then release into the valley, he added.
https://www.livescience.com/hidden-subglacial-river-greenland.html
["Oh Max, where can we go?" - collected links]
*Where to go if you're fleeing climate change*
[The Financial Times $ Dec12, 2019]
https://www.ft.com/content/e6d5f064-1baa-11ea-97df-cc63de1d73f4
APRIL 15, 2019
*Want to Escape Global Warming? These Cities Promise Cool Relief*
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/15/climate/climate-migration-duluth.html
https://environment.harvard.edu/news/faculty-news/want-escape-global-warming-these-cities-promise-cool-relief
- -
SEP. 19, 2019
*Here's The Best Place To Move If You're Worried About Climate Change*
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/heres-the-best-place-to-move-if-youre-worried-about-climate-change/
- - -
Oct. 6, 2019
*The Best Places to Live in a Future Troubled by Climate Change*
https://www.thebalancesmb.com/best-places-to-live-in-a-climate-change-future-4582407
- -
Oct. 2018*
**We asked 11 climate scientists where they'd live in the US to avoid
future natural disasters -- here's what they said*
https://www.businessinsider.com/where-to-live-to-avoid-natural-disaster-climatologists-2018-8
- - -
August 23, 2019
*Climate Change: Where We'll Have to Live and Where We'll Need to Leave*
Climate change is a global phenomenon, and no place on Earth will be
truly safe from it's effects, but some places will fare better than others.
https://interestingengineering.com/climate-change-where-well-have-to-live-and-where-well-need-to-leave
*This Day in Climate History - December 13, 2000 - from D.R. Tucker*
Having lost the Presidential election by only five votes, Vice President
Al Gore delivers a gracious concession speech, noting: "As for the
battle that ends tonight, I do believe as my father once said, that no
matter how hard the loss, defeat might serve as well as victory to shape
the soul and let the glory out."
http://youtu.be/U4BZcH8bqRk
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