[TheClimate.Vote] February 17, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/February 17, 2019/


[Activism video: "They can't stop us. There's too many of us"]
*The School Students On Strike To Stop Climate Change*
Newsweek
Published on Feb 15, 2019
School children in the U.K. are skipping school to protest inaction 
against climate change. The movement is inspired by Swedish student 
Greta Thunberg who has been striking every Friday for 26 weeks. Anna 
Taylor, 17, co-organised the U.K. strike.
https://youtu.be/5Z44bILS0KY
- - -
[why non-violent direct action]
*Rupert Read interview with Radio Norfolk Extinction Rebellion shutting 
down Norfolk CC Meeting*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUH_DffZRcE&t=28s


[NYT Opinion David Wallace-Wells ][...with*bolding]*
*Time to Panic*
The planet is getting warmer in catastrophic ways. And fear may be the 
only thing that saves us.
Feb. 16, 2019
The age of climate panic is here. Last summer, a heat wave baked the 
entire Northern Hemisphere, killing dozens from Quebec to Japan. Some of 
the most destructive wildfires in California history turned more than a 
million acres to ash, along the way melting the tires and the sneakers 
of those trying to escape the flames. Pacific hurricanes forced three 
million people in China to flee and wiped away almost all of Hawaii's 
East Island.

We are living today in a world that has warmed by just one degree 
Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 1800s, when records 
began on a global scale. We are adding planet-warming carbon dioxide to 
the atmosphere at a rate faster than at any point in human history since 
the beginning of industrialization.

In October, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 
released what has become known as its "Doomsday" report -- "a deafening, 
piercing smoke alarm going off in the kitchen," as one United Nations 
official described it -- detailing climate effects at 1.5 and two 
degrees Celsius of warming (2.7 and 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). At the 
opening of a major United Nations conference two months later, David 
Attenborough, the mellifluous voice of the BBC's "Planet Earth" and now 
an environmental conscience for the English-speaking world, put it even 
more bleakly: "If we don't take action," he said, "the collapse of our 
civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the 
horizon."

Scientists have felt this way for a while. But they have not often 
talked like it. For decades, there were few things with a worse 
reputation than "alarmism" among those studying climate change.

This is a bit strange. You don't typically hear from public health 
experts about the need for circumspection in describing the risks of 
carcinogens, for instance. The climatologist James Hansen, who testified 
before Congress about global warming in 1988, has called the phenomenon 
"scientific reticence" and chastised his colleagues for it -- for 
editing their own observations so conscientiously that they failed to 
communicate how dire the threat actually was.

That tendency metastasized even as the news from the research grew 
bleaker. So for years the publication of every major paper, essay or 
book would be attended by a cloud of commentary debating its precise 
calibration of perspective and tone, with many of those articles seen by 
scientists as lacking an appropriate balance between bad news and 
optimism, and labeled "fatalistic" as a result.

In 2018, their circumspection began to change, perhaps because all that 
extreme weather wouldn't permit it not to. Some scientists even began 
embracing alarmism -- particularly with that United Nations report. The 
research it summarized was not new, and temperatures beyond two degrees 
Celsius were not even discussed, though warming on that scale is where 
we are headed. Though the report -- the product of nearly 100 scientists 
from around the world -- did not address any of the scarier 
possibilities for warming, it did offer a new form of permission to the 
world's scientists. The thing that was new was the message: It is O.K., 
finally, to freak out. Even reasonable.

This, to me, is progress. Panic might seem counterproductive, but we're 
at a point where alarmism and catastrophic thinking are valuable, for 
several reasons...
-
*The first is that climate change is a crisis precisely because it is a 
looming catastrophe that demands an aggressive global response, now. In 
other words, it is right to be alarmed*. The emissions path we are on 
today is likely to take us to 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming by 2040, 
two degrees Celsius within decades after that and perhaps four degrees 
Celsius by 2100.

As temperatures rise, this could mean many of the biggest cities in the 
Middle East and South Asia would become lethally hot in summer, perhaps 
as soon as 2050. There would be ice-free summers in the Arctic and the 
unstoppable disintegration of the West Antarctic's ice sheet, which some 
scientists believe has already begun, threatening the world's coastal 
cities with inundation. Coral reefs would mostly disappear. And there 
would be tens of millions of climate refugees, perhaps many more, 
fleeing droughts, flooding and extreme heat, and the possibility of 
multiple climate-driven natural disasters striking simultaneously.

There are many reasons to think we may not get to four degrees Celsius, 
but globally, emissions are still growing, and the time we have to avert 
what is now thought to be catastrophic warming -- two degrees Celsius -- 
is shrinking by the day. To stay safely below that threshold, we must 
reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, 
according to the United Nations report. Instead, they are still rising. 
So being alarmed is not a sign of being hysterical; when it comes to 
climate change, being alarmed is what the facts demand. Perhaps the only 
logical response.

This helps explain the second reason alarmism is useful: *By defining 
the boundaries of conceivability more accurately, catastrophic thinking 
makes it easier to see the threat of climate change clearly. *For years, 
we have read in newspapers as two degrees of warming was invoked as the 
highest tolerable level, beyond which disaster would ensue. Warming 
greater than that was rarely discussed outside scientific circles. And 
so it was easy to develop an intuitive portrait of the landscape of 
possibilities that began with the climate as it exists today and ended 
with the pain of two degrees, the ceiling of suffering.

In fact, it is almost certainly a floor. By far the likeliest outcomes 
for the end of this century fall between two and four degrees of 
warming. And so looking squarely at what the world might look like in 
that range -- two degrees, three, four -- is much better preparation for 
the challenges we will face than retreating into the comforting relative 
normalcy of the present.

***The third reason is while concern about climate change is growing -- 
fortunately -- complacency remains a much bigger political problem than 
fatalism. *In December, a national survey tracking Americans' attitudes 
toward climate change found that 73 percent said global warming was 
happening, the highest percentage since the question began being asked 
in 2008. But a majority of Americans were unwilling to spend even $10 a 
month to address global warming; most drew the line at $1 a month, 
according to a poll conducted the previous month.

Last fall, voters in Washington, a green state in a blue-wave election, 
rejected even a modest carbon-tax plan. Are those people unwilling to 
pay that money because they think the game is over or because they don't 
think it's necessary yet?

This is a rhetorical question. If we had started global decarbonization 
in 2000, according to the Global Carbon Project, we would have had to 
cut emissions by only about 2 percent per year to stay safely under two 
degrees of warming. Did we fail to act then because we thought it was 
all over already or because we didn't yet consider warming an urgent 
enough problem to take action against? Only 44 percent of those surveyed 
in a survey last month cited climate change as a top political priority.

But it should be. The fact is, further delay will only make the problem 
worse. If we started a broad decarbonization effort today -- a 
gargantuan undertaking to overhaul our energy systems, building and 
transportation infrastructure and how we produce our food -- the 
necessary rate of emissions reduction would be about 5 percent per year. 
If we delay another decade, it will require us to cut emissions by some 
9 percent each year. This is why the United Nations secretary-general, 
Antonio Guterres, believes we have only until 2020 to change course and 
get started.

*A fourth argument for embracing catastrophic thinking comes from 
history. Fear can mobilize, even change the world*. When Rachel Carson 
published her landmark anti-pesticide polemic "Silent Spring," Life 
magazine said she had "overstated her case," and The Saturday Evening 
Post dismissed the book as "alarmist." But it almost single-handedly led 
to a nationwide ban on DDT.

Throughout the Cold War, foes of nuclear weapons did not shy away from 
warning of the horrors of mutually assured destruction, and in the 1980s 
and 1990s, campaigners against drunken driving did not feel obligated to 
make their case simply by celebrating sobriety. In its "Doomsday" 
report, the United Nations climate-change panel offered a very clear 
analogy for the mobilization required to avert catastrophic warming: 
World War II, which President Franklin Roosevelt called a "challenge to 
life, liberty and civilization." That war was not waged on hope alone.

*But perhaps the strongest argument for the wisdom of catastrophic 
thinking is that all of our mental reflexes run in the opposite 
direction, toward disbelief about the possibility of very bad outcomes*. 
I know this from personal experience. I have spent the past three years 
buried in climate science and following the research as it expanded into 
ever darker territory.

The number of "good news" scientific papers that I've encountered in 
that time I could probably count on my two hands. The "bad news" papers 
number probably in the thousands -- each day seeming to bring a new, 
distressing revision to our understanding of the environmental trauma 
already unfolding.

I know the science is true, I know the threat is all-encompassing, and I 
know its effects, should emissions continue unabated, will be 
terrifying. And yet, when I imagine my life three decades from now, or 
the life of my daughter five decades now, I have to admit that I am not 
imagining a world on fire but one similar to the one we have now. That 
is how hard it is to shake complacency. We are all living in delusion, 
unable to really process the news from science that climate change 
amounts to an all-encompassing threat. Indeed, a threat the size of life 
itself.

How can we be this deluded? One answer comes from behavioral economics. 
The scroll of cognitive biases identified by psychologists and fellow 
travelers over the past half-century can seem, like a social media feed, 
bottomless, and they distort and distend our perception of a changing 
climate. These optimistic prejudices, prophylactic biases and emotional 
reflexes form an entire library of climate delusion.

[see Wikipedia list of cognitive biases - 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases]

We build our view of the universe outward from our own experience, a 
reflexive tendency that surely shapes our ability to comprehend 
genuinely existential threats to the species. We have a tendency to wait 
for others to act, rather than acting ourselves; a preference for the 
present situation; a disinclination to change things; and an excess of 
confidence that we can change things easily, should we need to, no 
matter the scale. We can't see anything but through cataracts of 
self-deception.

The sum total of these biases is what makes climate change something the 
ecological theorist Timothy Morton calls a "hyperobject" -- a conceptual 
fact so large and complex that it can never be properly comprehended. In 
his book "Worst-Case Scenarios," the legal scholar Cass Sunstein wrote 
that in general, we have a problem considering unlikely but potential 
risks, which we run from either into complacency or paranoia. His 
solution is a wonky one: We should all be more rigorous in our 
cost-benefit analysis.

That climate change demands expertise, and faith in it, at precisely the 
moment when public confidence in expertise is collapsing is one of its 
many paradoxes. That climate change touches so many of our cognitive 
biases is a mark of just how big it is and how much about human life it 
touches, which is to say, nearly everything.

And unfortunately, as climate change has been dawning more fully into 
view over the past several decades, all the cognitive biases that push 
us toward complacency have been abetted by our storytelling about 
warming -- by journalism defined by caution in describing the scale and 
speed of the threat.

So what can we do? And by the way, who's "we"? The size of the threat 
from climate change means that organization is necessary at every level 
-- communities, states, nations and international agreements that 
coordinate action among them. But most of us don't live in the halls of 
the United Nations or the boardrooms in which the Paris climate 
agreement was negotiated.

Instead we live in a consumer culture that tells us we can make our 
political mark on the world through where we shop, what we wear, how we 
eat. This is how we get things like The Lancet's recent dietary 
recommendations for those who want to eat to mitigate climate change -- 
less meat for some, more vegetables -- or suggestions like those 
published in The Washington Post, around the time of New Year's 
resolutions. For instance: "Be smart about your air-conditioner."

But conscious consumption is a cop-out, a neoliberal diversion from 
collective action, which is what is necessary. People should try to live 
by their own values, about climate as with everything else, but the 
effects of individual lifestyle choices are ultimately trivial compared 
with what politics can achieve.

Buying an electric car is a drop in the bucket compared with raising 
fuel-efficiency standards sharply. Conscientiously flying less is a lot 
easier if there's more high-speed rail around. And if I eat fewer 
hamburgers a year, so what? But if cattle farmers were required to feed 
their cattle seaweed, which might reduce methane emissions by nearly 60 
percent according to one study, that would make an enormous difference.

That is what is meant when politics is called a "moral multiplier." It 
is also an exit from the personal, emotional burden of climate change 
and from what can feel like hypocrisy about living in the world as it is 
and simultaneously worrying about its future. We don't ask people who 
pay taxes to support a social safety net to also demonstrate that 
commitment through philanthropic action, and similarly we shouldn't ask 
anyone -- and certainly not everyone -- to manage his or her own carbon 
footprint before we even really try to enact laws and policies that 
would reduce all of our emissions.

That is the purpose of politics: that we can be and do better together 
than we might manage as individuals.

And politics, suddenly, is on fire with climate change. Last fall, in 
Britain, an activist group with the alarmist name Extinction Rebellion 
was formed and immediately grew so large it was able to paralyze parts 
of London in its first major protest. Its leading demand: "Tell the 
truth." That imperative is echoed, stateside, by Genevieve Guenther's 
organization End Climate Silence, and the climate-change panel's calls 
to direct the planet's resources toward action against warming has been 
taken up at the grass roots, inspiringly, by Margaret Klein Salamon's 
Climate Mobilization project.

Of course, environmental activism isn't new, and these are just the 
groups that have arisen over the past few years, pushed into action by 
climate panic. But that alarm is cascading upward, too. In Congress, 
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York has rallied liberal 
Democrats around a Green New Deal -- a call to reorganize the American 
economy around clean energy and renewable prosperity. Washington State's 
governor, Jay Inslee, has more or less declared himself a single-issue 
presidential candidate.

And while not a single direct question about climate change was asked of 
either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential 
debates, the issue is sure to dominate the Democratic primary in 2020, 
alongside "Medicare for all" and free college. Michael Bloomberg, poised 
to spend at least $500 million on the campaign, has said he'll insist 
that any candidate the party puts forward has a concrete plan for the 
climate.

This is what the beginning of a solution looks like -- though only a 
very beginning, and only a partial solution. We have probably squandered 
the opportunity to avert two degrees of warming, but we can avert three 
degrees and certainly all the terrifying suffering that lies beyond that 
threshold.

But the longer we wait, the worse it will get. Which is one last 
argument for catastrophic thinking: What creates more sense of urgency 
than fear?
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/16/opinion/sunday/fear-panic-climate-change-warming.html



[Paul Beckwith video dives into distressing science]
*Arctic Blue-Ocean-Event Consequences for Greenland: 1 of 2*
Paul Beckwith
Published on Feb 15, 2019
Between 60,000 and 22,000 years ago there were numerous abrupt 
temperature fluctuations recorded by oxygen and nitrogen isotopes 
(paleo-thermometer proxies) in Greenland ice cores. Temperatures over 
parts of Greenland rose by up to 16.5 C within a decade or two, in the 
largest of these so-called Dansgaard-Oescher (D-O) Oscillations. I chat 
on the latest science, about how a lack of Arctic sea-ice was the 
primary factor. This is crucial info to help us figure out what will 
happen to Greenland when we have no surrounding sea ice left.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxt6zkwoB84
- -
[paleo-cryology shows 16 degree rise within decade]
*Impact of Abrupt Sea-Ice Loss on Greenland: 2 of 2*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGmJgJ1d02Y
- - -
[Wikipedia reference ]
Dansgaard–Oeschger event
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dansgaard%E2%80%93Oeschger_event
- - -
Heinrich Event
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_event


[Forbes magazine]
*6 Compelling Reasons Climate Change Might Be A National Emergency*
Marshall Shepherd
Contributor
There is talk of a national emergency declaration. The National 
Emergencies of 1976 spells out the broad powers and limitations of such 
an executive declaration. Some argue that activities at the U.S. 
Southern border pose a grave threat to American lives. Statements from 
the Pentagon and other sources offer alternative perspectives on how 
"dire" things really are at the border. Experts estimate that between 
445 and 600 homicides (not multiple thousands as claimed) were killed by 
undocumented immigrants in 2018. Studies also show that they are not 
more likely than U.S-born individuals to commit homicide. I will let 
others debate the reality of the situation at the border, but I do want 
to make a point. Roughly 500 people were killed in only hurricanes 
(Harvey, Maria, Irma, Michael, Florence) from 2017 to 2018. The 2018 
Camp Fire in California killed at least 85 people. Heat and flooding 
kills more people in the U.S. annually than any other weather disaster, 
and the numbers in 2018 were no different. If a precedent is being set 
for national emergencies, there is a compelling argument for a future 
leader to consider climate change. Here are six reasons why.

National security. Numerous reports by military entities note the 
immediate threats of climate change to national security. The American 
Security Project website compiles a good list of recent reports and 
articles on this topic. A 2019 Defense Department report stated:

The effects of a changing climate are a national security issue with 
potential impacts to Department of Defense (DoD or the Department) 
missions, operational plans, and installations.

I served as an expert scientist and author on a National Academy of 
Sciences report on climate change impacts on U.S. Naval Operations so 
have a first-hand view of this challenge. A top admiral is also quoted 
as saying climate change is the biggest threat in the Pacific not North 
Korea.

Public Health. An array of public health concerns can be linked to 
climate change: increased heat related illness, vector-borne diseases in 
places they have traditionally not thrived, water-borne disease in flood 
waters, cardiovascular stress, injuries from extreme weather events, 
respiratory problems, and so forth. The Centers for Disease Control 
website says:
Climate change, together with other natural and human-made health 
stressors, influences human health and disease in numerous ways. Some 
existing health threats will intensify and new health threats will 
emerge. Not everyone is equally at risk. Important considerations 
include age, economic resources, and location.

Sea Level Rise. According to NOAA, nearly 40% of the U.S. population 
lived in counties bordering shorelines in 2010. By 2020, that number 
could be closer to 50%. A NOAA Ocean Services website is clear:

Scientists have determined that global sea level has been steadily 
rising since 1900 at a rate of at least 0.04 to 0.1 inches per year. Sea 
level can rise by two different mechanisms with respect to climate 
change. First, as the oceans warm due to an increasing global 
temperature, seawater expands--taking up more space in the ocean basin 
and causing a rise in water level. The second mechanism is the melting 
of ice over land, which then adds water to the ocean.

Increased sea level causes transportation issues because of "blue sky" 
flooding, threatens drinking water supply because of saltwater intrusion 
in some locations, and amplifies risk from hurricane-related storm 
surge. Many U.S. military installations are also at or below sea level, 
which creates challenges for the Department of Defense.

Food supply and agricultural productivity. Scientific studies suggest 
that agricultural productivity is extremely vulnerable to climate 
change. The executive summary of a 2013 U.S.Department of Agriculture 
report led with the following statement:

Increases of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), rising temperatures, and 
altered precipitation patterns will affect agricultural productivity. 
Increases in temperature coupled with more variable precipitation will 
reduce productivity of crops, and these effects will outweigh the 
benefits of increasing carbon dioxide. Effects will vary among annual 
and perennial crops, and regions of the United States; however, all 
production systems will be affected to some degree by climate change.
The most recent National Climate Assessment discussed how fish and 
seafood stocks were also threatened. I documented such concerns in a 
previous Forbes article also.

Infrastructure. This is an area where there is likely potential room for 
bipartisan collaboration in the political world. Everyone recognizes the 
importance of roads, bridges, electrical grids, railways, and buildings. 
However, the 2014 National Climate Assessment offered a dire warning:

Sea level rise, storm surge, and heavy downpours, in combination with 
the pattern of continued development in coastal areas, are increasing 
damage to U.S. infrastructure including roads, buildings, and industrial 
facilities, and are also increasing risks to ports and coastal military 
installations. Flooding along rivers, lakes, and in cities following 
heavy downpours, prolonged rains, and rapid melting of snowpack is 
exceeding the limits of flood protection infrastructure designed for 
historical conditions. Extreme heat is damaging transportation 
infrastructure such as roads, rail lines, and airport runways.

Attribution studies are increasingly identifying the fingerprint of 
climate change on current extreme weather events, and this is not likely 
to subside. In fact, things may get worse.  Former Congressman Bob 
Inglis (R-SC) often argues that it is against sound conservative 
principle to ignore risk and not prepare for all possible scenarios.

Water. We can't survive without water. Period. It is that simple. This 
is arguably the greatest threat of all. Much of the world is already 
water-stressed and in recent decades, this problem has not been 
restricted to the developing world. Parts of the southern and western 
United States are struggling with water issues. The EPA website suggests 
that:

In many areas, climate change is likely to increase water demand while 
shrinking water supplies. This shifting balance would challenge water 
managers to simultaneously meet the needs of growing communities, 
sensitive ecosystems, farmers, ranchers, energy producers, and 
manufacturers. In some areas, water shortages will be less of a problem 
than increases in runoff, flooding, or sea level rise. These effects can 
reduce the quality of water and can damage the infrastructure that we 
use to transport and deliver water.

Beyond fatalities, a 2018 government report suggests that climate change 
could harm or erode the U.S. economy and U.S. Gross Domestic Product 
(GDP). As much as I care about polar bears, I didn't mention them once. 
Climate change certainly impacts them, and actions must be taken on 
their behalf too. However, I laid out six "kitchen table" or 
societally-relevant threats to all of us. For us and our kids, this is a 
national emergency too.

Dr. Marshall Shepherd, Dir., Atmospheric Sciences Program/GA Athletic 
Assoc. Distinguished Professor (Univ of Georgia), Host, Weather 
Channel's Popular Podcast, Weather Geeks, 2013 AMS President
https://www.forbes.com/sites/marshallshepherd/2019/02/15/6-compelling-reasons-climate-change-might-be-a-national-emergency/#2f8e67a644c9


*This Day in Climate History - February 17, 1993 - from D.R. Tucker*

In an address to a joint session of Congress, President Clinton,
noting the "challenges to the health of our global environment,"
declares, "Our plan does include a broad-based tax on energy, and I
want to tell you why I selected this and why I think it's a good
idea. I recommend that we adopt a BTU tax on the heat content of
energy as the best way to provide us with revenue to lower the
deficit because it also combats pollution, promotes energy
efficiency, promotes the independence, economically, of this country
as well as helping to reduce the debt, and because it does not
discriminate against any area. Unlike a carbon tax, that's not too
hard on the coal States; unlike a gas tax, that's not too tough on
people who drive a long way to work; unlike an ad valorem tax, it
doesn't increase just when the price of an energy source goes up.
And it is environmentally responsible. It will help us in the future
as well as in the present with the deficit."

(The effort to implement the BTU tax would ultimately fail, thanks to 
aggressive attacks on the concept by fossil-fuel-industry front groups 
such as the Koch Industries-funded Citizens for a Sound Ecnomy, the 
forerunner to Americans for Prosperity.)

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=840MahAgJh0
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/

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