[TheClimate.Vote] February 16, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/February 16, 2019/


[Greta watch]
*'The beginning of great change': Greta Thunberg hails school climate 
strikes*
The 16-year-old's lone protest last summer has morphed into a powerful 
global movement challenging politicians to act
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/15/the-beginning-of-great-change-greta-thunberg-hails-school-climate-strikes
- - -
[youths stand up]
*Climate strike: Why are students striking and will it have an impact?*
By Matt McGrath
It may not represent a paradigm shift just yet, but the speed and scale 
of this young person's movement does make it feel more than a momentary 
splutter of impotent anger...
- -
According to the UK Student Climate Network, there are four key demands.

They want the government "to declare a climate emergency", and inform 
the public about the seriousness of the situation.
They also want the national curriculum reformed to include "the 
ecological crisis as an educational priority".

To fully include young people in decision-making, especially about 
issues related to climate change, they are calling on the government to 
lower the age of voting to 16.

These goals are being supported by a group of around 200 UK academics, 
who have written to a national newspaper to say they stand in solidarity 
with the strikers...
- -
"They have put the climate issue on the public agenda," said Conner 
Rousseau, a spokesperson for the Flemish Socialist party in Belgium.

"They've forced all of the Belgian political parties to take a stand on 
the climate issue. We have elections in May, it will be one of the main 
themes."

Observers believe the same thing can happen in the UK.

"If the government is serious about winning over the next generation of 
voters, then they need to heed their most pressing concerns," said 
Richard Baker, from Christian Aid.

"But more importantly they are sparking a national debate, they are 
forcing teachers, parents and politicians to re-evaluate the issue of 
climate breakdown and, what is most important, while lifting our gaze 
beyond just immediate short-term national concerns."
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47242477


[pass the Tabasco sauce please]
*The maker of Tabasco hot sauce prepares for floods The company has 
already constructed a 20-foot levee around its factory in coastal 
Louisiana. *
By Daisy Simmons Thursday, February 7, 2019 audio 01 : 30
For 150 years, the family-owned McIlhenny Company has made Tabasco hot 
sauce on Avery Island, in coastal Louisiana. It's the only place it's made.

Osborn: "My great-great grandfather started it in 1868 and we've been 
making it here ever since."

Executive Vice President Harold Osborn says to ensure that legacy, the 
company must protect itself from climate change.

Avery Island is essentially a hill surrounded by grassy marsh. Its 
elevation makes it less likely to end up underwater than other areas 
nearby. But flooding is still a concern at the Tabasco plant.

Osborn: "When we had Hurricane Rita here in 2005, the water came right 
up to the edge of it, so that was too worrisome for us. So we built a 
levee that was 20 feet tall all the way around the facility."

They're also preserving the island's natural buffer: the marsh.
Osborn: "When a hurricane comes in, it hits that marsh first and it 
breaks the storm up so that the effects on Avery Island are much, much 
less. So one of our major things that we do here is marsh and habitat 
restoration."

He says the island is an essential part of the company's history.
Osborn: "For my family, it's very important that Avery Island is here 
and we do a lot of work to protect it."
Reporting credit: Sarah Kennedy/ChavoBart Digital Media.
https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2019/02/maker-of-tabasco-sauce-preps-for-floods/


[Light chitchat on climate video - 46 min]
*The Greenland Episode (w/ Malene Simon of the Greenland Climate 
Institute & Josh Willis)*
Hotpocalypse
Published on Feb 15, 2019
If all of Greenland melts, it could raise sea levels by 25 feet. 
Comedian Andy Cobb and climate scientist Josh Willis discuss the climate 
impact on Greenland with Malene Simon, head of the Greenland Climate 
Institute.

Greenland's economy is completely dependent on fishing, and climate 
change is having a big impact on whales and other fish.
Includes some NSFW language during the fake 23 and me commercial break.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoZ_5p1PUmo


[Says the Washington Post $]
*Wildfires, hurricanes and other extreme weather cost the nation 247 
lives, nearly $100 billion in damage during 2018*
The number of billion-dollar weather disasters in the United States has 
more than doubled in recent years, as devastating hurricanes and 
ferocious wildfires that ...
[After you get a subscription, you will find it somewhere]



[Last option]
*For Geoengineers, a Scientific Existential Crisis*
Technofixes for the climate crisis are no one's first choice. What is it 
like to study something you wish would disappear?
01.16.2019 / BY Dave Levitan
MID-DECEMBER, more than 28,000 people met in Washington, D.C. to discuss 
everything earth science-related at the American Geophysical Union Fall 
Meeting. But amid the dry data and scientific acronyms at a session on 
solar geoengineering, the science had a patina of existentialist dread 
that you might not see in a similar forum. There were questions of 
public disclosure, talk of slippery slopes, and an inescapable 
nervousness, as if maybe this subject was only barely sitting on the 
respectable side of science.

"SRM is only being considered because the world is broken."

It isn't hard to understand why. Geoengineering refers to a 
controversial set of proposals centered around one basic idea: to use 
technology to help cool down a rapidly warming planet. The most 
prominent scheme is solar radiation management (SRM), whereby sunlight 
is reflected back into space to reduce global warming. Such a feat may 
be attempted through a variety of techniques including stratospheric 
aerosol injection, which acts much like a volcano does naturally by 
dumping tons of tiny sulfur particles 60,000 feet in the sky.

This is not, generally speaking, a popular idea. "SRM is only being 
considered because the world is broken," says Simon Nicholson, director 
of American University's Global Environmental Politics Program, who 
works on the politics and governance of geoengineering. The approach is 
a measure of last resort, a stopgap that might stave off some of the 
worst effects of warming in the face of plodding progress toward 
reducing carbon emissions. SRM also has plenty of potential downsides -- 
such as regional changes to weather patterns and related effects on crop 
yields -- and it would do nothing to address climate-adjacent issues 
like ocean acidification.

Though it remains divisive, solar geoengineering has started to gain 
traction both in climate science and with the broader public, thanks to 
the increasing direness of climate change. Still, most geoengineering 
researchers agree that reducing carbon dioxide emissions is by far the 
highest priority. If humanity somehow managed to switch off the CO2 
spigot tomorrow, though, geoengineers' field could disappear. The point 
of geoengineering today is to slow down climate change, and if we could 
do that through less controversial means, there might not be a need to 
study the concept at all.

So the geoengineers find themselves in the somewhat odd position of 
working in a field that they wish did not exist. What is that like?

ACROSS THE FIELD, the reactions to this existential crisis are mixed. 
"SRM is peculiar, in the sense that most of those who study it do so 
with some amount of reluctance or ambivalence," Nicholson says. 
Researchers studying geoengineering generally acknowledge the subject 
matter is "unpalatable," he adds, which leads to an uncommon degree of 
self-reflection and caution.

This cautious approach is partially informed by sharp criticism from 
those who think that even studying SRM gives tacit permission to ignore 
the imperative of emissions reductions; there are plenty of angry 
responses from the public, as well as from climate scientists and those 
in other fields. But many geoengineering experts think this criticism is 
short-sighted. "Wishing it weren't so won't make it go away," says 
Joshua Horton, a research director of geoengineering at Harvard 
University. "The world is full of things we wish didn't exist but ignore 
at our peril. Climate change is one of those things, and so is solar 
geoengineering -- ignoring the former will lead to catastrophe, but 
ignoring the latter is also likely to lead to unnecessary pain and 
suffering."

While some scientists may still wish geoengineering was a fringe idea, 
there is no doubt that it is heading toward the mainstream. The United 
Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which assesses 
and synthesizes the scientific research on climate change, as well as 
potential impacts and mitigation strategies, has increasingly included 
discussion of geoengineering in its publications. The IPCC's most recent 
special climate report featured big chunks of a chapter on the topic, 
though it explicitly refrained from using the term geoengineering itself 
and separated SRM from carbon dioxide removal, which is much less 
controversial. One of the conveners of the AGU session, David Keith, a 
professor of applied physics and public policy at Harvard and among 
field's most prominent academics, missed the D.C. meeting because he was 
in Poland, where he participated in a panel session on geoengineering at 
the United Nations climate meeting.

Some geoengineers have noticed the shift in perspective in their daily 
work. "The first time I ever mentioned that I was going to work on 
geoengineering, it was basically the end of my talk and I got yelled off 
the stage," says Douglas MacMartin, an engineer and climate scientist at 
Cornell University. Today, he adds, no one he interacts with -- other 
scientists or the general public -- says the research is a bad idea.

Still others think of their work in terms of risk management. "If you 
know there's some chance of catastrophic risk, then you need to know if 
you have options or not," says Holly Buck, a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA 
who works on the socio-political side of geoengineering. Buck thinks the 
anger over the need for the field is "a completely appropriate 
response," but geoengineering researchers are not the right target. 
"People should be livid that elites and governments are presiding over a 
slow-motion apocalypse," she says, "and have let global warming get to a 
point where some careful geoengineering research is warranted."

MacMartin agrees, and compares geoengineering to putting an airbag in a 
car. "Yes we should take the foot off the gas, yes we should put the 
foot on the brakes," he says, "but if you're going to have an accident, 
we'd really actually like to reduce the impacts. We'd like to understand 
whether that's possible."

Despite some claims to the contrary, there have so far been almost no 
physical geoengineering experiments -- it's essentially all computer 
modeling. At the AGU meeting, though, one of the themes was exactly 
where to go next. Some experts, such as Ken Caldeira, a climate 
scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in California, think 
the modeling has more or less run its course; others, including 
MacMartin, think there is plenty more that the computers have to offer, 
and that "we don't know what experiments we need to do." (One small but 
prominent outdoor experiment, dubbed SCoPEx, is planned, though it 
awaits the establishment of an external advisory board before it 
receives full approval.)

There was a hint of defensiveness in the room as well, a sense that 
they're only studying this because the world has forced it upon them. 
Presenters mentioned the dramatic effects of unchecked climate change, 
and how the uncertain negative effects of SRM likely pale in comparison 
to the alternative.

But mostly, these scientists appear to like going to work every day, 
even though their chosen field is, to put it gently, a bit noisy. 
Nicholson calls the field "complex and intellectually enlivening," and 
MacMartin enjoys the interdisciplinary nature of the work -- you can't 
separate the science from the sociopolitical angles, and that makes for 
a stimulating environment.

That's not to say that there aren't still discouragements along the way. 
Some research has suggested that actually explaining SRM to the public 
causes support for it to drop, so it remains an open question whether 
the brighter spotlight on the field will improve its reputation. Jadwiga 
Richter, a geoengineering scientist at the National Center for 
Atmospheric Research in Colorado, says while most of her colleagues 
support her research, she still sometimes gets a sense of disapproval 
from other scientists. "There are definitely people who, you walk down a 
hall, and they're shaking their head," she says. They feel that "this is 
not what you should be doing."

Dave Levitan is a freelance journalist based in Philadelphia who writes 
about energy, the environment, and health. He is the author of "Not A 
Scientist: How Politicians Mistake, Misrepresent, and Utterly Mangle 
Science."
https://undark.org/article/geoengineers-wish-field-didnt-exist/


[classic geoengineering thought exercise]
*Can We Terraform the Sahara to Stop Climate Change?*
Real Engineering
Published on Sep 14, 2018
Be one of the first 73 people to sign up with this link and get 20% off 
your subscription with Brilliant.org! https://brilliant.org/realengineering/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfo8XHGFAIQ


[optimism bias]*
**Lawmakers Tell Pentagon: Revise and Resubmit Your Climate-Change Report*
- -
"I think Congress was looking for specific analysis that would help them 
prioritize resources and then try and look at where to direct 
investments and resilience," Conger said. "This report is less helpful 
in doing that than they intended it to be."

In the report, which DOD said cost $329,000 to produce, Pentagon 
officials looked at whether 79 bases were currently experiencing or 
might in the future experience five natural phenomena: recurrent 
flooding, drought, desertification, wildfires, and thawing permafrost. 
It also described efforts to mitigate threats, listing studies 
commissioned on wildfire risk in 2014 in sensors that determine 
subsurface ice levels at northern bases.

But critics said the report left out a lot of required elements. For 
example, it mentions Tyndall Air Force Base, which was decimated by 
Hurricane Michael in 2018, but does not evaluate its climate risk. The 
79 bases include no overseas bases, nor any that belong to the Marine 
Corps. Most striking to Conger was the absence of the list of the top 10 
most vulnerable installations, a list specifically requested in the 
amendment.

"Even if they thought it would be too difficult to do, they don't 
explain why they didn't answer the question," he said. "There are gaps."

Titley said some of the information presented in the report is 
inaccurate. For example, it says the Naval Observatory was at current 
and future risk of drought. "I was at the Naval Observatory during the 
time they talk about this. I do not recall any drought," he said. "There 
were no operational impacts on the Naval Observatory."

"When you read things like these, I think it's really unfortunate, 
because I think the DOD diminishes credibility with the Congress when 
they put things like that in the report," he said.

Conger said there was a kernel of hope in that the report indicates that 
DOD leaders are not among the climate-change deniers elsewhere in the 
U.S. government.

DOD is "paying attention to climate change," Conger said. "They have 
been for multiple administrations, Republican and Democratic, well 
before the Obama administration. They have been consistent in their 
belief that climate change is a thing they have to pay attention to and 
deal with…That is reflected in this report."

Pentagon leaders have prepared several previous climate reports, both on 
their own initiative and at the behest of Congress. In 2014, DOD issued 
the Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap, which Conger said is still used 
as a framework for DOD's response to climate change. The following year, 
Congress formally requested a review of climate risks to each combatant 
command, which DOD met with a report that asserted that climate change 
is "a present security threat, not strictly a long-term risk." In 
January 2018, DOD conducted an "initial look" at which global 
installations were most threatened by climate change through a Screening 
Level Vulnerability Assessment Survey. The report concluded that such a 
survey was best used to identify which sites merited further assessment, 
and was just a "first step" in mitigating climate threats to DOD missions.
Paulina Glass is an editorial fellow at Defense One.
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2019/02/lawmakers-tell-pentagon-revise-and-resubmit-your-climate-change-report/154657/



[Serious]
*Climate change, terrorism top global security concerns: PEW study*
A new survey has found rising concerns about climate change, the 
"Islamic State" and cyberattacks. But more people now see US power and 
influence as a threat, marking a significant rise from only two years ago...
A 26-country survey published on Monday found that a majority of 
countries see climate change as "the top international threat." 
Terrorism, especially the kind perpetrated by the "Islamic State" 
militant group, came up as the second-highest threat, topping security 
concerns in eight of the countries surveyed in the Pew Research Center 
study.

China's power and influence was at the bottom of the threat list, which 
included cyberattacks, North Korea's nuclear program and the condition 
of the global economy. Meanwhile, compared to similar surveys conducted 
in 2013 and 2017, more people now believe US power and influence is a 
major threat.
Top threats:

    Thirteen countries, including Germany and Canada, see global climate
    change as the top threat.
    The "Islamic State" is seen as the top threat in eight countries,
    including France and Italy.
    State-sponsored cyberattacks are seen as the top threat in four
    countries, including the US and Japan.
    Russia's power and influence is seen as the top threat in only one
    country: Poland.
    Nearly half of German respondents said US power and influence is a
    major threat to their country.

https://www.dw.com/en/climate-change-terrorism-top-global-security-concerns-pew-study/a-47452001


[Wallace-Wells interview]
*Climate Change & Our Health with DAVID WALLACE WELLS*
Climate Reality
Published on Feb 1, 2019
http://climaterealityproject.org - David Wallace Wells, the Deputy 
Editor and climate columnist with New York Magazine joined 24 Hours of 
Realty to discuss his article, "The Uninhabitable Earth."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LlRu1N2uoY


[NOAA weather satellites]
*GOES-17 Is Now Operational. Here's What It Means for Weather Forecasts 
in the Western U.S.*
Tuesday, February 12, 2019
It's official: GOES-17 is now operational as NOAA's GOES West satellite.
- -
In its new role, GOES-17 will serve as NOAA's primary geostationary 
satellite for detecting and monitoring Pacific storm systems, fog, 
wildfires, and other weather phenomena that affect the western United 
States, Alaska, and Hawaii.

The latest milestone for GOES-17 comes exactly eleven months after the 
satellite first reached its geostationary orbit 22,000 above Earth. 
Launched March 1, 2018, GOES-17 is NOAA's second advanced geostationary 
weather satellite and the sister satellite to GOES-16 (also known as 
GOES East). Together the two satellites provide high-resolution visible 
and infrared imagery as well as lightning observations of more than half 
the globe - from the west coast of Africa to New Zealand, and from near 
the Arctic Circle to the Antarctic Circle...
https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov



[Take a deep breath]
*The Weight of Numbers: Air Pollution and PM2.5*
Across the globe, particulate air pollution kills millions of people 
each year. It doesn't have to be that way.
*EMANATING FROM* smokestacks, vehicle engines, construction projects, 
and fires large and small, airborne pollution - sometimes smaller than 
the width of a human hair, and very often the product of human activity 
- is not just contributing to climate change. It is a leading driver of 
heart disease and stroke, lung cancer, and respiratory infections the 
world over. Exposure to such pollution, the most deadly of which 
scientists call PM2.5, is the sixth highest risk factor for death around 
the world, claiming more than 4 million lives annually, according to 
recent global morbidity data. Add in household pollutants from indoor 
cooking fires and other combustion sources, and the tally approaches 7 
million lives lost each year.

Undark and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting visited seven 
countries on five continents, rich and poor, north and south, to examine 
the impacts of this sort of air pollution on the lives of everyday 
people, and to uncover what's being done -- or not -- to address this 
ambient and ultimately controllable killer. As it stands, developing 
nations bear the brunt of the problem, but particulate pollution doesn't 
discriminate, and the odds are high that wherever you live, you're 
breathing it in, too.

*What is PM2.5?*
HAZARDOUS AIRBORNE particles and chemicals can come in a variety of 
forms, and from a variety of sources, even some natural ones. Wind-blown 
desert and mineral dust, wildfires, volcanoes, and even sea spray -- 
these can all cloud the air and make people sick.

But when scientists talk about air pollution, they're generally thinking 
about those sources and variants that arise from human activity: things 
like sulfur dioxide from power plant and other emissions, nitrogen 
dioxide from vehicle exhaust, and ground level ozone -- as well as 
particulate matter. That last category is crucial, because it's the 
microscopic stuff that can actually slip past the respiratory system's 
defenses and cause both acute, short-term impacts, and over time, 
chronic diseases that kill.

The smaller the particles, the more worrying they are. Particulate 
matter measuring 10 micrometers or less in diameter -- a fraction of the 
width of a human hair -- is referred to as PM10, and it is most often 
associated with road dust, construction activities, and other sources of 
coarse, airborne particles that tend to settle more quickly. Fine 
particulate matter 2.5 micrometers or smaller is more frequently 
associated with burning things -- whether it's coal in a power plant or 
gasoline in your car. And at that diminutive size, it can get deep into 
the lungs and bloodstream, and over time, research suggests, it can 
ravage the body...
https://undark.org/breathtaking/#home-top


*This Day in Climate History - February 16, 2002 - from D.R. Tucker*
February 16, 2002: In response to President George W. Bush's February 
14, 2002 speech on climate change, the New York Times editorial page 
declares:

    "The obvious conclusion to be drawn from President Bush's latest
    global warming strategy, unveiled this week, is that he does not
    regard warming as a problem. There seems no other way to interpret a
    policy that would actually increase the gases responsible for
    heating the earth's atmosphere. That the policy demands little from
    the American people, while insulting allies who have agreed to take
    tough steps to deal with the problem, only adds to one's sense of
    dismay."

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/16/opinion/backward-on-global-warming.html
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/

/Archive of Daily Global Warming News 
<https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/2017-October/date.html> 
/
https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote

/To receive daily mailings - click to Subscribe 
<mailto:subscribe at theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request> 
to news digest./

*** Privacy and Security:*This is a text-only mailing that carries no 
images which may originate from remote servers. Text-only messages 
provide greater privacy to the receiver and sender.
By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain must be used for democratic 
and election purposes and cannot be used for commercial purposes.
To subscribe, email: contact at theclimate.vote 
<mailto:contact at theclimate.vote> with subject subscribe, To Unsubscribe, 
subject: unsubscribe
Also you may subscribe/unsubscribe at 
https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote
Links and headlines assembled and curated by Richard Pauli for 
http://TheClimate.Vote <http://TheClimate.Vote/> delivering succinct 
information for citizens and responsible governments of all levels. List 
membership is confidential and records are scrupulously restricted to 
this mailing list.