[TheClimate.Vote] February 20, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/February 20, 2019/


[strong jet stream*]*
*Super strong jet stream recorded as another winter storm approaches*
CBS News
Published on Feb 19, 2019
Snow, ice and rain are in the forecast for much of the country over the 
next two days. And the jet stream is hitting possibly record speeds. CBS 
News weather producer David Parkinson joins CBSN with the latest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaiemnBhEho


[Follow the money]
*One in 10 companies going public say climate change is a risk to their 
business*
https://qz.com/1551546/around-10-of-companies-preparing-for-ipo-say-climate-change-is-a-risk/


[Liquid Arctic, limp jet streams, slow weather wobble]
*How climate change can make catastrophic weather systems linger for longer*
February 18, 2019
Many parts of Australia have suffered a run of severe and, in some 
cases, unprecedented weather events this summer. One common feature of 
many of these events - including the Tasmanian heatwave and the 
devastating Townsville floods - was that they were caused by weather 
systems that parked themselves in one place for days or weeks on end.
It all began with a blocking high - so-called because it blocks the 
progress of other nearby weather systems - in the Tasman Sea throughout 
January and early February.
- - -
Huge impacts
The social, economic and environmental impacts of Australia's recent 
slow-moving weather disasters have been huge. Catastrophic fires invaded 
ancient temperate rainforests in Tasmania, while Townsville's 
unprecedented flooding has caused damage worth more than A$600 million 
and delivered a A$1 billion hit to cattle farmers in surrounding areas.

Townsville's Ross River, which flows through suburbs downstream from the 
Ross River Dam, has reached a 1-in-500-year flood level. Some 
tributaries of the dam witnessed phenomenal amounts of runoff, reliably 
considered as a 1-in-2,000-year event

Up to half a million cattle are estimated to have died across the area, 
a consequence of their poor condition after years of drought, combined 
with prolonged exposure to water and wind during the rain event.

Farther afield, both Norfolk Island and Lord Howe Island - located under 
the clear skies associated with the blocking high - have recorded 
exceptionally low rainfall so far this year, worsening the drought 
conditions caused by a very dry 2018. These normally lush subtropical 
islands in the Tasman Sea are struggling to find enough water to supply 
their residents' and tourists' demands.

Many parts of Australia have tolerated widespread extreme weather events 
this year, including some records. This follows a warm and generally dry 
2018. In fact, 9 of the 10 warmest years on record in Australia have 
occurred since 2005, with only 1998 remaining from last century with 
reliable records extending back to 1910. Steady warming of our 
atmosphere and oceans is directly linked to more extreme weather events 
in Australia and globally.

If those extreme weather events travel more slowly across the landscape, 
their effects on individual regions could be more devastating still.
https://theconversation.com/how-climate-change-can-make-catastrophic-weather-systems-linger-for-longer-111832


[Democracy Now video 24 mins]
*The End of Ice: Dahr Jamail on Climate Disruption from the Melting 
Himalayas to Insect Extinction*
Democracy Now!
Published on Feb 12, 2019
https://democracynow.org - A new report finds at least a third of the 
Himalayan ice cap will melt by the end of the century due to climate 
change, even if the world's most ambitious environmental reforms are 
implemented. The report, released by the Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment 
earlier this month, is the culmination of half a decade's work by over 
200 scientists, with an additional 125 experts peer reviewing their 
work. It warns rising temperatures in the Himalayas could lead to mass 
population displacement, as well as catastrophic food and water 
insecurity. The glaciers are a vital water source for the 250 million 
people who live in the Hindu Kush Himalaya range, which spans from 
Afghanistan to Burma. More than 1.5 billion people depend on the rivers 
that flow from the Himalayan peaks. We speak with Dahr Jamail, 
independent journalist and author of the new book "The End of Ice: 
Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOLTclfqwjM


[collapse, we have to let go video, talk]
*Deep Adaptation - Jem Bendell & Toni Spencer*
Feb 14, 2019
Professor Jem Bendell is author of Deep Adaptation, which summarizes 
climate science and trends to suggest that humanity faces inevitable 
societal collapse, probably within 10 years.

Please watch the video all the way through as the mental, emotional and 
psychological support comes after the 'bad news' is presented and discussed.

The presentation, to 300 people in Bristol, UK, was his first recorded 
lecture on the Deep Adaptation. Using a more informal format than a 
University lecture, the Professor of Sustainability Leadership at the 
University of Cumbria, invites the audience to explore forms of action 
additional to cutting and drawing down carbon from the atmosphere - 
actions associated with personal and collective preparedness for coming 
disruption. Accompanying him was Toni Spencer, a facilitator who works 
on Deep Adaptation and Transition.

After Jem's talk, Toni led the audience in a reflective process to 
explore feelings and ideas emerging. She also offered some poems and 
reflections during the process. Members of the Climate Psychology 
Alliance spoke from the floor, explaining their new initiative to 
provide therapeutic support to people working on or affected by this 
agenda. The event was organized by the local Constituency Labour Party 
and Momentum group, but made open to anyone with any political interest 
or none.
To engage on this topic see http://www.deepadaptation.info
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=67&v=daRrbSl1yvY


[History of Atmospheric Science- podcast audio 24 mins]
*Centennial E1 - How the Cold War advanced atmospheric science*
Tensions escalated between the United States and Soviet Union in the 
wake of World War II as the two countries stockpiled nuclear weapons and 
detonated hundreds of test bombs in the atmosphere. But this arms race 
had an unexpected side effect: scientists learned for the first time how 
air behaves in Earth's upper atmosphere and how pollution, volcanic ash, 
and radioactive fallout travel around the globe.

In this inaugural episode of Third Pod from the Sun's Centennial Series, 
researchers from NOAA's Air Resources Laboratory discuss how scientists' 
understanding of Earth's atmosphere changed as a result of the Cold War. 
Listen to one meteorologist describe witnessing nuclear bomb tests in on 
a remote Pacific Island and hear how scientists used their newfound 
knowledge of the atmosphere to trace radioactivity from Chernobyl, the 
most disastrous nuclear power plant accident in history.
https://thirdpodfromthesun.com/2018/12/13/centennial-e1-how-the-cold-war-advanced-atmospheric-science/
https://blubrry.com/thirdpodfromthesun/40196915/how-the-cold-war-advanced-atmospheric-science


[from Nature Communications]
*Recent increases in tropical cyclone intensification rates*
Nature Communications volume 10, Article number: 635 (2019) - Download 
Citation
Abstract
Tropical cyclones that rapidly intensify are typically associated
with the highest forecast errors and cause a disproportionate amount
of human and financial losses. Therefore, it is crucial to
understand if, and why, there are observed upward trends in tropical
cyclone intensification rates. Here, we utilize two observational
datasets to calculate 24-hour wind speed changes over the period
1982-2009. We compare the observed trends to natural variability in
bias-corrected, high-resolution, global coupled model experiments
that accurately simulate the climatological distribution of tropical
cyclone intensification. Both observed datasets show significant
increases in tropical cyclone intensification rates in the Atlantic
basin that are highly unusual compared to model-based estimates of
internal climate variations. Our results suggest a detectable
increase of Atlantic intensification rates with a positive
contribution from anthropogenic forcing and reveal a need for more
reliable data before detecting a robust trend at the global scale.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08471-z

OBITUARIES
*'Grandfather Of Climate Science' Wallace Broecker Dies At 87*
February 18, 201911:35 PM ET
FRANCESCA PARIS
Wallace Broecker, a professor at Columbia University in New York, 
speaking during the Balzan Prize ceremony in Rome in 2008. Broecker, a 
climate scientist who popularized the term "global warming," died Monday.
Gregorio Borgia/AP
Wallace Broecker, a climate scientist who brought the term "global 
warming" into the public and scientific lexicon, died on Monday. He was 87.

Broecker, a professor in the department of earth and environmental 
science at Columbia, was among the early scientists who raised alarms 
about the drastic changes in the planet's climate that humans could 
bring about over a relatively short period of time.

His 1975 paper "Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced 
Global Warming?" predicted the current rise in global temperatures as a 
result of increased carbon dioxide levels -- and popularized the term 
"global warming" to describe the phenomenon.

The geoscientist was also known for recognizing the global "conveyor 
belt," a system of deep-ocean currents that circulate water between the 
continents.

Sean Solomon, director of Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, 
where Broecker worked, called his late colleague a force for scientific 
innovation.

"It is difficult to imagine ... a Columbia University without 
[Broecker's] intellectual vision, his gift for distilling the important 
from the merely interesting, and his sustained passion for his science, 
his colleagues, and his planet," Solomon wrote in an email to colleagues 
that he shared with NPR. "One of the last of the giants of our field no 
longer walks among us."

Broecker's work focused on the ocean's role in climate change and the 
behavior of the climate throughout the planet's history, as The New York 
Times reported in 1998. As early as the '70s, Broecker spoke openly 
about the need to restrict fossil fuels and the disruptive effects that 
just a few degrees of warming could have on the environment.

"The climate system is an angry beast and we are poking it with sticks," 
he told the Times.

He accumulated a long list of honors and awards, including a National 
Medal of Science, the Balzan Prize, the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge 
Award and honorary doctorates from Harvard, Cambridge and Oxford, among 
other universities.

A spokesperson for the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory told The 
Associated Press that Broecker died in a New York hospital and that he 
had been ailing in recent months.

Broecker was born in Chicago in 1931 and grew up in Oak Park, according 
to AP. He received his bachelor's and master's from Columbia University, 
as well as his doctorate in geology, which he earned in 1958. He joined 
the university's faculty the next year.

In a testament to his impact on the field, Broecker came to be known by 
his peers as the "grandfather of climate science" and "dean of climate 
scientists." But to his many friends, he was just "Wally."
https://www.npr.org/2019/02/18/695797869/grandfather-of-climate-science-wallace-broecker-dies-at-87
- - -
[the paper from 1975]
*Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?"*
Wallace S. Broecker
Science  08 Aug 1975:
Vol. 189, Issue 4201, pp. 460-463
DOI: 10.1126/science.189.4201.460
Abstract
If man-made dust is unimportant as a major cause of climatic change, 
then a strong case can be made that the present cooling trend will, 
within a decade or so, give way to a pronounced warming induced by 
carbon dioxide. By analogy with similar events in the past, the natural 
climatic cooling which, since 1940, has more than compensated for the 
carbon dioxide effect, will soon bottom out. Once this happens, the 
exponential rise in the atmospheric carbon dioxide content will tend to 
become a significant factor and by early in the next century will have 
driven the mean planetary temperature beyond the limits experienced 
during the last 1000 years.
- - -
The agricultural consequences of this ensuing warming are not obvious 
(neither
are the implications to global sea level). A knowledge of the mean 
global temperature
tells us little about the rainfall patterns in the chief grain-producing 
regions. There is
little doubt, however, that this gradual warming will lead to changes in 
the pattern
of global precipitation. Our efforts to understand and eventually to 
predict these
changes must be redoubled.
WALLACE S. BROECKER
Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory
and Department of Geological Sciences,
Columbia University,
Palisades, New York 10964
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/189/4201/460
pdf file - 
https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu//files/2009/10/broeckerglobalwarming75.pdf


[video recording while ice skating]
*RANT: How Abrupt Climate Change is Redrawing the Map*
Paul Beckwith
Published on Feb 18, 2019
Climate Disruption is Ubiquitous. Tropics have expanded by 0.5 degrees 
in latitude per decade since 1970s. Sahara Desert enlarged 10% since 
1910. US 100th Meridian has shifted 140 miles to East since 1980. 
Tornado Alley moved 500 miles East since 1990. Plant Hardiness Zones in 
US move North 13 miles per decade. Permafrost Line in Canada moved 80 
miles North in last 50 years. Wheat Belt pushed poleward 160 miles per 
decade, and is rapidly moving out of Australia. Thousands of Northern 
Hemisphere lakes are losing ice cover. Climate of Cities is shifting up 
to 500 miles within one generation. Arctic has lost 80% of coldest air 
in 6 decades. Uggggggg..... Grrrrrrrr... WTF... What's Next???
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34aqoJIQa8w


[Political opinion: tide rising]
*The Climate Movement's Decades-Long Path to the Green New Deal*
How the climate movement learned to play politics.
Matthew Miles Goodrich - February 15, 2019
That the public sector must be massively mobilized in the fight against 
climate change has long been a bugbear of the right. But the failure to 
conceive of just how large a role the federal government will have to 
play in combating climate change has been the left's own climate denial. 
The chasm between our present addiction to fossil fuels and the 
decarbonized economy the world needs is so daunting that it has proven 
easier to chant "we have the solutions" than it has been to build the 
political power to win in government.

Hence the Pollyannaish mood among mainstream politicians slapping energy 
credits on the problem. But Teslas and carbon taxes are unsatisfying 
responses to a crisis that, as the world's scientists remind us, 
threatens to eradicate life on earth. Faced with the prospect of 
annihilation, however gradual it may be, half-measures do not inspire 
faith...
- -
The speed at which the Green New Deal has gone from fringe proposal to 
tentative pillar of many leading 2020 Democratic presidential 
candidates' platforms suggests that there is a desire among the majority 
of Americans for a different approach to climate politics. The Green New 
Deal makes fighting climate change a political project at a moment when 
the Democratic Party's left-flank is resurgent for the first time in a 
generation. Perhaps paradoxically, a political approach to fighting 
climate change has, in a moment of political crisis, become a source of 
hope....
- - -
The subtitle on the cover of Naomi Klein's fourth book, This Changes 
Everything, sums up the lessons that the younger activists of the 
climate movement drew from the cap-and-trade fight. The stark sans-serif 
of "capitalism vs. the climate" conveyed with almost cartoonish gravity 
this generation's radicalization against its establishment counterparts. 
In four words, Klein distilled the confrontational impulses of the 
climate movement's new politics--to name the enemy in the broadest 
possible terms, and fight without compromise.

It's worth noting how Klein came to give climate change, in her words, 
"the crisis treatment." One of the anti-globalization movement's leading 
intellectuals, Klein understood firsthand how masses of citizens taking 
direct action could force a reckoning between the people and the elite. 
But it was not until she understood climate change as a galvanizing 
force for scaled solutions--a Marshall Plan for the earth, as described 
by the Bolivian ambassador to the World Trade Organization, a shock 
doctrine for the left, a Green New Deal--that Klein began to view the 
crisis as a political struggle. In the wake of Great Recession, she 
writes, "we had all just watched as trillions of dollars were marshaled 
in a moment when our elites decided to declare a crisis." A mass 
movement need only apply the same logic to climate change in order to 
turn it into "the best argument progressives have ever had to demand the 
rebuilding and reviving of local economies."

The technocratic capture of climate policy at the time, however, meant 
that Big Green's response to the crisis was neither positive nor 
galvanizing. Failing to summon the requisite moral urgency, the 
environmental institutions that tried to broker the cap-and-trade deal 
between business and bureaucracy disillusioned the younger members of 
the movement from the possibility of substantial government action on 
climate. For many, the task, henceforth, was the destruction of the 
system writ large.

This Changes Everything signaled the rise of the movement's more radical 
faction. More confrontation was necessary to fight the corporate 
interests that had scuttled previous climate efforts. Driven by protests 
against fossil fuel infrastructure by indigenous peoples and 
environmental justice organizations, the movement found a public enemy 
in the carbon industry. Whereas the institutions backing cap-and-trade 
centered the climate debate around individual consumer choices amid 
tweaks to the market, this more combative generation began to frame the 
crisis as a battle between corporations and the people, capitalism 
versus the climate. The campaigns against the Keystone XL pipeline and 
fossil fuel investments inverted responsibility from consumer to 
supplier, injecting the climate narrative with the moral energy that Al 
Gore's zigzagging charts lacked. By naming its enemy, the climate 
movement began to politicize.
- -
Capitalism, however, was an enemy against which a nascent movement would 
always lose. Amplifying the worst habit of the left--to chose righteous 
defeat over qualified victory--this story of massive structural 
confrontation positioned its protagonists for perpetual defeat....
- - -
Political struggle through elections and state institutions may not 
sound like a visionary prospect, but given its neglect by social 
movements through 2016, Sunrise, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and their ilk 
stand a world to win. Gaining political power through the path most 
familiar to Americans--candidates in the two-party system campaigning to 
appeal to voters--provides a much larger megaphone for movement demands 
than most symbolic demonstrations. And while #FloodWallStreet activists 
struggled to get coverage of 100 arrests, Bernie Sanders consistently 
won headlines during the presidential campaign railing against fossil 
fuel executives' culpability for the climate crisis. Electoral politics, 
more easily accessible to the average American, breaks a movement's 
habit to talk only to itself...
- - -
The only institution conceivably capable of effecting change on a 
massive enough scale to rapidly transition off fossil fuels--the federal 
government--responds most directly to two political parties. The fastest 
path to taking over the government is taking over the Democratic Party. 
The decimation of establishment leadership in 2016 provided an opening 
for those alienated from the political system to contest for power 
within it. By embracing primaries, town halls, and get-out-the-vote 
canvassing (in other words, the tactics of conventional political 
struggle inside the two-party system), Sunrise organizers have brought 
the Green New Deal from the Democratic Party's fringe to its mainstream.

The Green New Deal has set a course for the country to combat climate 
change at scale. The journey will require more protest, more power, and 
especially more politics.

A total transformation of the economy, away from fossil capital and 
towards a more equitable distribution of resources, is the same putative 
goal of Power Shift, the People's Climate March, Flood Wall Street, and 
grassroots campaigns across the country. Until now, that goal has always 
felt beyond the climate movement's abilities. As both a campaign slogan 
and a policy platform, the Green New Deal captures the values and vision 
that resonate with Americans failed by decades of neoliberal consensus. 
It is a sweeping program with historic precedent to rein in society's 
greedy elite and put everyday citizens to work to avert calamity. In the 
same way that Medicare for All signals more than a single-payer 
healthcare system, the Green New Deal signals more than a set of 
policies like a jobs guarantee and a renewable energy mandate. It 
signals ambitious change in an era when Americans long for it...
- - -
Defining the Green New Deal is one challenge, but making it the law of 
the land is another. To do this the climate movement, and indeed the 
left in general, must fully shed its electoral agnosticism. The earliest 
any of the Green New Deal's policies could make it into law is 2021. In 
that time, Democrats must retain their majority in the House, take 
control of the Senate, and win the presidency. The disproportionate 
power that rural states hold in Senate and presidential races means that 
the traditionally urban left must make in-roads fast in less populated 
states. Here, the Green New Deal, with its emphasis on agriculture 
reform and renewable electrification, will be an asset. Ending the 
minority party's de facto veto power in the Senate filibuster will also 
be necessary. So will statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico. The primaries 
over the next two years provide the climate movement with a window to 
push agenda-setting candidates to race each other to develop a plan to 
actualize the Green New Deal's full scope. Sitting on the sidelines 
again would be nihilism.

Though still far from our goal, the chasm between necessity and reality 
no longer seems so insurmountable. The Green New Deal has set a course 
for the country to combat climate change at scale. The journey will 
require more protest, more power, and especially more politics.
Matthew Miles Goodrich is a writer, teacher, and organizer.
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/sunrise-movement-green-new-deal


*This Day in Climate History - February 20, 2013 - from D.R. Tucker*
In his first major policy speech as Secretary of State, John Kerry 
directly addresses the risks of climate change.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqJt_WSGoVI
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/02/21/1620201/speech-kerry-climate-hawk-courage-reject-dirty-keystone-xl-pipeline/
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