[TheClimate.Vote] December 26, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*December 26, 2019*/

[OK, let's not]
*Study Finds Not Logging Some Northwest Forests Could Offset Climate Change*
by Cassandra Profita - Dec. 23, 2019 | Portland, Ore.

A new study finds some Northwest forests have a lot of potential to 
capture carbon and offset climate change. That is, if they're preserved 
and not logged.

Researchers at Oregon State University and the University of 
California-Berkeley looked at which forests in the Western United States 
should be prioritized for preservation under climate change scenarios.
They analyzed which forests have the most potential to sequester carbon, 
are least vulnerable to drought and fire, and also provide valuable 
habitat for endangered species.

Many of the forests that hit that trifecta are along the Oregon and 
Washington coast and in the Cascade and Olympic mountains.

"The amount of carbon per acre that they take up is as high or higher 
than tropical forests," said Beverly Law, a professor of global change 
biology and terrestrial system sciences at Oregon State University and 
co-author of the study. "Those are really what I call the land sinks 
that are so critical to try and make sure we preserve them."

The study, published Dec. 4 in the journal "Ecological Applications," 
finds not logging high-value forests would be equivalent to halting six 
to eight years of the region's fossil fuel emissions...
"To some, it might seem like a sacrifice," Law said. "To others, it 
might be 'Thank goodness, I can do something to help us get out of this 
problem we've gotten ourselves into.' It is serious."

Burning fossil fuels like coal, gasoline and natural gas produce carbon 
that gets trapped in the atmosphere. This is resulting in rising average 
temperatures and many dire consequences: melting glaciers, extended 
droughts and more severe wildfires, among them.

The study found the high-value forests makes up about 10% of the 
forestland in the West, including some areas in northern Idaho and Montana.

The Oregon Forest Industries Council did not respond to a request for 
comment. The industry group has criticized Law's previous research 
findings that concluded timber harvest is the leading source of carbon 
emissions in Oregon.
https://www.opb.org/news/article/climate-change-study-carbon-offset-logging-northwest-forests/
- - -
[Article source]
*Carbon sequestration and biodiversity co-benefits of preserving forests 
in the western USA*
DR. POLLY C BUOTTE (Orcid ID : 0000-0002-6572-2878)
MR. LOGAN TRAVIS BERNER (Orcid ID : 0000-0001-8947-0479)
Abstract

    Forest carbon sequestration via forest preservation can be a viable
    climate change mitigation strategy.
    Here we identify forests in the western conterminous United States
    with high potential carbon
    sequestration and low vulnerability to future drought and fire, as
    simulated using the Community
    Land Model and two high-carbon emission scenario (RCP 8.5) climate
    models. High-productivity,
    low-vulnerability forests have the potential to sequester up to
    5,450 TgCO2 equivalent (1,485 Tg C)
    by 2099, which is up to 20% of the global mitigation potential
    previously identified for all temperate
    and boreal forests, or up to ~6 years of current regional fossil
    fuel emissions. Additionally, these
    forests currently have high above- and below ground carbon density,
    high tree species richness, and a
    high proportion of critical habitat for endangered vertebrate
    species, indicating a strong potential to
    support biodiversity into the future and promote ecosystem
    resilience to climate change. We stress
    that some forest lands have low carbon sequestration potential but
    high biodiversity, underscoring the
    need to consider multiple criteria when designing a land
    preservation portfolio. Our work
    demonstrates how process models and ecological criteria can be used
    to prioritize landscape
    preservation for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and preserving
    biodiversity in a rapidly
    changing climate.

http://opb-imgserve-production.s3-website-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/original/buotte_eap.2039_accepted_1576697573797.pdf



[basic scripts for civil conversation]
*How to talk to your family about climate change*
With the climate crisis making more headlines than ever, difficult 
conversations about climate change will be hard to avoid this holiday 
season. So we asked a therapist, a scientist, a policy expert, and a 
psychologist about how to navigate these conversations with relatives 
who might not share your point of view. When that uncle breaches the 
topic this Christmas, how can you respond in a way that could actually 
change his mind?
https://blog.ecosia.org/how-to-talk-to-your-family-about-climate-change/



[Analogy - video 77 seconds]
*James White PhD: Why Abrupt Climate Change is like My Baby Brother*
Dec 25, 2019
greenmanbucket
Good story from Jim White, told at the American Geophysical Union Fall 
Meeting in 2014.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEy_6ceEatY



[in video]
*How Extinction Rebellion was Born | CNN | Extinction Rebellion*
Dec 25, 2019
Extinction Rebellion
Extinction Rebellion's meteoric rise has left many people -- including 
some of its founders -- wondering how they managed it, and whether the 
movement can maintain the momentum. Source: CNN 
(https://tinyurl.com/slsgb59)

Join the rebellion: https://Rebellion.Earth/
International: https://Rebellion.Global/

1. #TellTheTruth
2. #ActNow
3. #BeyondPolitics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P6UJyaeT4M



[In text, how Extinction Rebellion was born]
*A psychedelic journey, a radical strategy and perfect timing. How the 
world's fastest-growing climate movement was made*
By Eliza Mackintosh, CNN
December 25, 2019
- - -
Bradbrook recalls being terrified but determined to push herself to the 
limit and divine a greater sense of purpose. During an ayahuasca 
ceremony one evening, she offered up a prayer calling on the universe to 
show her the "codes for social change."
Two years later, Extinction Rebellion was born.
'This was my prayer being answered'
Bradbrook, one of the founders of the world's most high-profile 
environmental movements, felt as though the trip had rewired her brain. 
"It was utterly transformative," she told CNN in a recent interview at 
her home in the English town of Stroud.
After Bradbrook returned, she ended her marriage and began to work with 
a group of activists, including Roger Hallam, a Welsh organic farmer 
pursuing a PhD at King's College London in radical campaign design.
When their first lengthy meeting wrapped, Hallam turned to Bradbrook and 
said, unprompted, that he had just given her the "codes" she had been 
searching for. His words sent a chill down her spine.
"It's an Extinction Rebellion mythic story that's out there, but it's 
true," said Bradbrook, who has a PhD in molecular biophysics herself. "I 
was very gobsmacked and at the time I remember thinking, 'goodness me, 
if he hadn't used that phrase, I wouldn't have recognized that this was 
my prayer being answered.'"
- - -
Together they helped start the radical campaigning organization Rising 
Up!, which ultimately spawned Extinction Rebellion in the spring of 
2018. It was during a gathering of about 15 activists, crowded into the 
living room of Bradbrook's ex-council house, that she said the decision 
was made to embark on a mission to transform the conversation about the 
climate emergency.
They sketched out a strategy of nonviolent, mass civil disobedience and 
made it their mission to activate 3.5% of the UK population -- roughly 2 
million people -- in order to force the government to act. The 
movement's first demand is perhaps its most salient: that authorities 
"Tell the truth" about climate change.
They started giving talks around the country about the ecological crisis 
and providing training on nonviolent direct action. Initially, the 
facilitators outnumbered the participants, but the group's ranks quickly 
swelled.
 From the start, Extinction Rebellion -- or XR, as it is known -- sought 
to draw a line in the sand between its movement and past environmental 
campaigns. In October 2018 the group staged one of its first actions, at 
the Greenpeace offices in London.
- -- 
Extinction Rebellion has grown so fast and is so decentralized that it's 
almost impossible to keep up with the pace, particularly for those 
inside of it. One of the biggest challenges for its founders is how to 
help steer that expansion while also allowing for individual 
experimentation. That has become a constant balancing act, with the risk 
looming that an action might alienate the public.
In the wake of criticisms, especially over a lack of diversity, 
Extinction Rebellion is focusing its attention on outreach to different 
demographics and cultivating regenerative culture, to cope with climate 
anxiety. The existential question is how it can avoid the same fate of 
disobedience campaigns of the past, which have fizzled out as a result 
of waning interest and a lack of impact....
- - -
For all its ambitions, XR's long-term success is still far from 
guaranteed, Bradbrook said. After all, she has seen campaigns like it 
fall apart before.
"This movement has opened a conversation, so it's already achieved 
something that I feel glad to be part of, and I hope it carries on," 
Bradbrook said. "But I also think, if not, something else will emerge."
https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/25/uk/extinction-rebellion-gail-bradbrook-gbr-intl/index.html



[another one down]
*The 2010s were another lost decade on climate change*
The only measurement that matters is greenhouse-gas emissions--and they 
continued to rise.
Dec 24, 2019
We've lost another decade on climate change.

Even as greenhouse gases in the atmosphere race toward levels that could 
lock in catastrophic warming, the world continued to pump out more. Our 
collective failure to begin cutting emissions over the last 10 years 
almost certainly shatters the dream of halting rising temperatures at 
1.5C. Indeed, it's hard to imagine achieving the pace and scale of 
change now required even to prevent 2C.

Among other sharply escalating dangers, that half-degree difference 
could doom the world's coral reefs and regularly expose nearly 40% of 
world's population to staggering heat waves.

There were faint signs of progress. Renewables and electric vehicles 
finally took off, and nearly 200 countries committed to cutting their 
emissions under the landmark Paris climate agreement in 2016.

But nations are already falling behind on their pledges, and the US is 
in the process of pulling out of the deal entirely, at a point when much 
deeper cuts are required. And for all the momentum behind clean energy 
technologies, they've done very little so far to displace the power 
plants, cars, factories, and buildings polluting the atmosphere with 
more emissions each year.

The charts that follow reveal how much ground we lost on climate change 
during the last 10 years.

*Rising CO2 concentrations*
The measurement that ultimately matters on climate change is global 
emissions. And they continued to rise.

There was a brief hope that greenhouse-gas pollution had finally 
plateaued. Carbon dioxide from fossil fuels, which makes up about 90% of 
total emissions from human activities, was relatively flat from 2013 
through 2016.

Improving energy efficiency, rising use of renewables, and the shift 
from coal to natural gas likely drove much of this, particularly in 
wealthy economies like the US and European Union. But emissions have 
surged in the years since, driven largely by economic growth and 
increasing energy demands in emerging nations, led by China and India.

Fossil-fuel emissions rose an estimated 0.6% to a record 37 billion 
metric tons in 2019, capping three straight years of growth, the Global 
Carbon Project reported in early December.

These trends, plus additional emissions from land-use changes and other 
human activities, added up to steadily rising carbon dioxide 
concentrations in the atmosphere throughout the 2010s.

*Reaching the peak*
When we reach peak emissions matters. The longer we take, the deeper 
we'll need to cut carbon pollution in the coming years if we hope to 
avoid dangerous warming thresholds, as the charts below show.

To get a sense of how much harder we've made the job of halting warming 
at 1.5C by frittering away the last decade, click on the chart and 
compare the steepness of the slope shown if we had plateaued in 2010 
with what is projected should we reach the peak in 2020.

We'll have to radically accelerate emissions reductions to have any hope 
of limiting warming to 2C as well.

In addition to aggressive emissions cuts, most models now find we'll 
also need to use trees, plants and other methods to remove and store 
vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to stay below these 
temperature targets. But achieving these so called "negative emissions" 
on a large-enough scale will be incredibly costly, and compete directly 
with other crucial land-uses, most notably the farming needed to feed a 
growing global population.

*Environmental impacts*
Decades of rising emissions continued to do what scientists have long 
warned they would: make the world hotter.

In early December, the World Meteorological Organization announced that 
2019 is likely to be the second or third warmest on record, capping a 
"decade of exceptional global heat." Average temperatures for the 
preceding five- and 10-year periods will almost certainly be the highest 
on record.

This chart, using data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric 
Administration, clearly highlights the rise in global land temperatures 
above the 20th-century average. Note the particularly pronounced 
increase in the last 10 years.
- -
Ocean temperatures rose as well, and warmer water expands. That plus the 
accelerating loss of ice sheets and glaciers pushed up ocean levels 
further, as this chart from NASA satellite data highlights.

Indeed, the 2010s mark the decade when the impacts from climate change 
became unmistakable, at least for any objective-minded observer. As 
temperatures rose, Arctic sea ice melted far faster than models had 
predicted. The world's coral reefs suffered widespread and devastating 
bleaching events. And regions around the world grappled with some of the 
costliest, deadliest, and most extreme droughts, hurricanes, heat waves, 
and wildfires in recorded history.

Since carbon dioxide takes years to reach its full warming effect, and 
we have yet to even begin cutting emissions, we'll face even starker 
dangers in the coming decade.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614843/the-2010s-were-another-lost-decade-on-climate-change/



[See the chart - 
https://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/styles/icn_full_wrap_wide/public/image_large/Vulnerable-Military-79-Bases-1058px.png?itok=xbBHFaNS]
*U.S. Military Precariously Unprepared for Climate Threats, War College 
& Retired Brass Warn*
National security and service members' lives are at stake, and working 
under a president who rejects science and ignores climate risks isn't 
helping.
By David Hasemyer - DEC 23, 2019

A string of climate-related disasters that crippled the strategic 
capability of multiple U.S military bases in recent years has exposed 
the military's vulnerability to extreme weather, putting a spotlight on 
its failure to prepare and the consequences to national security.

Offutt Air Force base in Nebraska, home to the U.S. Strategic Command, 
was incapacitated by historic flooding that swept through the Midwest in 
March. More than 130 structures were destroyed, and the cost of 
rebuilding has hit $1 billion and could go higher.

Hurricane Michael, a monster Category 5 storm, wiped out Tyndall Air 
Force Base in Florida in 2018, damaging 17 grounded F-22 stealth 
fighters and causing an estimated $5 billion in damage. Heat illnesses 
in the military are also rising, putting service members' lives at risk, 
a 2019 investigation by InsideClimate News and NBC News showed.

Yet the Defense Department, now facing a presidential administration 
that rejects science and ignores climate risks, has been slow to 
respond, and that's raising concerns across the military and from 
Congress's watchdog agency and military think tanks. In a series of 
reports this year, they questioned the military's readiness, offering 
foreboding conclusions that climate change poses significant threats to 
national security, military preparedness and personnel safety--threats 
they say the military is not fully equipped to handle.

*2019 Year in Review*
"The Department of Defense is precariously underprepared for the 
national security implications of climate change-induced global security 
challenges," a U.S. Army War College study bluntly concluded.

The projections are also worrisome for U.S. military operations 
overseas, where armed forces face extreme weather, sea level rise and 
the risk that diminishing water supplies, changing disease patterns or 
crop failures could destabilize a country, the Government Accountability 
Office wrote in a recent report to Congress.

The reports stress the need for massive military infrastructure 
safeguards. They also highlight concerns that some sectors of the 
Department of Defense remain resistant to climate change projections; 
have failed to take steps to mitigate its effects; and are unprepared 
for the consequences.

"It seems apparent from those of us on the outside that the level of 
preparedness doesn't match the level of risk," said Alice Hill, a 
National Security Council advisor during the Obama administration who 
specializes in global risks.

The military had a clear picture a decade ago of the threats posed by 
climate change, she said.

"It's not like we've been caught unawares," said Hill. "It's not to say 
no efforts are underway, but are they enough? There is concern they are 
not sufficient given how quickly climate is changing."

*Chart report - 
https://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/styles/icn_full_wrap_wide/public/image_large/Vulnerable-Military-79-Bases-1058px.png?itok=xbBHFaNS*

The undercurrent in these reports suggests the Pentagon and Congress are 
reacting to climate change without comprehensive preparation at a time 
that demands broader strategies be incorporated into climate planning.

The reports are especially striking given the Trump administration's 
record of climate science denial and its disregard of the consequences 
of environmental policy rollbacks. The War College report said the 
government was "perceived to be an irresponsible actor in the global 
environment," citing President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from 
the Paris climate accord as an example.

Senior military leaders have testified to Congress that the Defense 
Department recognizes the risks from climate change. Still, adaptation 
is slow in coming, said John Conger, director of the Center for Climate 
and Security and a former assistant secretary of defense for Energy, 
Installations and Environment.

"The DOD is a large organization," he said. "You can't change its 
direction quickly."

That turn becomes even more sluggish given the anti-climate posture 
taken by the Trump administration.

"There is a reticence to take on the White House overtly," he said. 
"(Military) leaders won't omit climate change in their planning 
calculations. They will move slowly and systematically in the right 
direction."...
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23122019/military-climate-change-unprepared-national-security-conflict-heat-risk-war-college-2019-year-review



[Students are ready]
*Students want climate change lessons. Schools aren't ready*

CSU Chancellor Timothy White said the 23-campus system is "integrating 
climate and [environmental] sustainability courses across all of our 
academic disciplines" to help teachers enrolled in credentialing courses 
and other students.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-12-23/students-want-climate-change-lessons-schools-arent-ready


*This Day in Climate History - December 26, 2006 - from D.R. Tucker*
Joseph Romm's book "Hell and High Water: Global Warming, the Solution 
and the Politics, and What We Should Do" is released. (On January 17, 
2007, Romm would appear on Air America's "EcoTalk with Betsy Rosenberg" 
to discuss the book.)

http://www.amazon.com/Hell-High-Water-Warming-Politics/dp/B000WPPY8G
https://archive.org/details/HellAndHighWater
http://blogsofbainbridge.typepad.com/ecotalkblog/2007/01/dr_joseph_romm_.html

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