[TheClimate.Vote] January 6, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Sun Jan 6 11:04:14 EST 2019
/January 6, 2019/
[Scenarios]
*Ten Grim Climate Scenarios If Global Temperatures Rise Above 1.5
Degrees Celsius*
The summer of 2018 was intense: deadly wildfires, persistent drought,
killer floods and record-breaking heat. Although scientists exercise
great care before linking individual weather events to climate change,
the rise in global temperatures caused by human activities has been
found to increase the severity, likelihood and duration of such conditions.
Globally, 2018 is on pace to be the fourth-hottest year on record. Only
2015, 2016 and 2017 were hotter. The Paris climate agreement aims to
hold temperature rise below 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius, but if humankind
carries on its business-as-usual approach to climate change, there's a
93 percent chance we're barreling toward a world that is 4 degrees
Celsius warmer by the end of the century, a potentially catastrophic
level of warming.
*A Warning and a Reckoning*
In 1992, 1,700 scientists around the world issued a chilling "warning to
humanity." The infamous letter declared that humans were on a "collision
course" with the natural world if they did not rein in their
environmentally damaging activities.
Such apocalyptic thinking might be easy to mock, and not entirely
helpful in inspiring political action if end times are nigh. In 2017,
however, more than 15,000 scientists from 184 countries co-signed their
names to an updated -- and even bleaker -- version of the 1992 manifesto.
The latest version, titled "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A
Second Notice," asserts that most of the environmental challenges raised
in the original letter -- i.e., depletion of freshwater sources,
overfishing, plummeting biodiversity, unsustainable human population
growth -- remain unsolved and are "getting far worse."
"Especially troubling is the current trajectory of potentially
catastrophic climate change due to rising [greenhouse gases] from
burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and agricultural production --
particularly from farming ruminants for meat consumption," the paper states.
"Moreover," the authors wrote, "We have unleashed a mass extinction
event, the sixth in roughly 540 million years, wherein many current life
forms could be annihilated or at least committed to extinction by the
end of this century."
But they stressed that, "Soon it will be too late to shift course away
from our failing trajectory, and time is running out."
More recently, President Trump's own administration released on November
23 the 1,600-page Fourth National Climate Assessment, a quadrennial
report compiled by 13 federal agencies. This report paints a
particularly grim picture, including more frequent droughts, floods,
wildfires and extreme weather, declining crop yields, the rise of
disease-carrying insects and rising seas -- all of which could reduce US
gross domestic product by a tenth by the end of the century.
So what we saw this summer? Unless humanity gets its act together, we
can expect much worse to come. Here's a peek into our climate-addled future.
*1. Species Extinction...*
*2. Food Insecurity and Nutritional Deficiencies...*
*3. Farewell to Coastal Cities and Island Nations...*
*4. Social Conflict and Mass Migration...*
*5. Lethal Heat...*
*6. Surging Wildfires...*
*7. Hurricanes: More Frequent, More Intense...*
*8. Melted Polar Ice and Permafrost...*
*9. The Spread of Pathogens...*
*10. Dead Corals...*
These climate predictions are worst-case scenarios, but there are many
more dangers to consider in our warming world. A report recently
published in the journal Nature Climate Change found "evidence for 467
pathways by which human health, water, food, economy, infrastructure and
security have been recently impacted by climate hazards such as warming,
heatwaves, precipitation, drought, floods, fires, storms, sea-level rise
and changes in natural land cover and ocean chemistry."
*Half a Degree Matters*
Since the 19th century, the Earth has warmed by 1 degree Celsius. Now, a
major IPCC special report released in October warns that even just a
half-degree more of warming could be disastrous. "Every extra bit of
warming matters, especially since warming of 1.5C or higher increases
the risk associated with long-lasting or irreversible changes, such as
the loss of some ecosystems," said Hans-Otto Pörtner, co-chair of IPCC
Working Group II.
The panel said that "limiting global warming to 1.5°C compared to 2°C
could go hand in hand with ensuring a more sustainable and equitable
society."
With President Trump saying he doesn't believe his own administration's
climate report, that sustainable and equitable society remains a distant
dream.
This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the
Independent Media Institute.
https://truthout.org/articles/ten-grim-climate-scenarios-if-global-temperatures-rise-above-1-5-degrees-celsius/
[video - Drawdown is a book]
*100 solutions to reverse global warming - Chad Frischmann*
TED video 17 minutes - Published on Dec 19, 2018
What if we took out more greenhouse gases than we put into the
atmosphere? This hypothetical scenario, known as "drawdown," is our only
hope of averting climate disaster, says strategist Chad Frischmann. In a
forward-thinking talk, he shares solutions to climate change that exist
today -- conventional tactics like the use of renewable energy and
better land management as well as some lesser-known approaches, like
changes to food production, better family planning and the education of
girls. Learn more about how we can reverse global warming and create a
world where regeneration, not destruction, is the rule.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4vjGSiRGKY
[Uncovering opinion manipulation]
*Senators Demand Trump Admin Reveal Marathon Petroleum, Koch Influence
on Clean Car Standards Rollback*
By Ben Jervey - Saturday, December 22, 2018
Two Senate Democrats this week ordered several Trump administration
cabinet members and agency officials to reveal how the oil industry and
Koch network have worked behind closed doors to influence the proposed
rollback of auto efficiency and emissions standards.
Senator Tom Carper of Delaware and Senate Democratic Leader Charles
Schumer sent a letter to the current heads of the Department of
Transportation, the Environmental Protection Agency, and others in the
administration to demand information about a "covert lobbying campaign
with oil industry groups to support Trump Administration efforts to
weaken fuel economy standards and increase demand for oil consumption."
Last week, The New York Times reported on this covert campaign, exposing
in particular the efforts of Marathon Petroleum, the largest oil refiner
in the country, and groups connected to Koch Industries and the refinery
magnates Charles and David Koch.
From the Senators' letter:
"As reported by the Times, the campaign included contacts with federal
agencies, including meetings between former Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt and Marathon Petroleum CEO Gary
Heminger. The campaign also reportedly used a front group, Energy4US, to
mask its ties to the oil industry and advertise on social media urging
consumers to comment on and support the Department of Transportation and
EPA rulemakings that would weaken fuel economy standards.
It is no surprise that weakened fuel economy standards would increase
greenhouse gas emissions and the amount of gasoline consumers would have
to buy which would, in turn, increase oil industry profits. As
Marathon's CEO recently told its investors, a rollback of fuel economy
standards would amount to Americans consuming an additional 350,000 to
400,000 barrels of gasoline per day."
The front group mentioned, Energy4US, was first identified by DeSmog's
KochVsClean as a project of American Fuel and Petrochemical
Manufacturers (AFPM) and the Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA).
Specifically, Senators Carper and Schumer requested the following:
"Please provide a list of all meetings (including in-person meetings,
telephonic and video conferences) that have occurred since January 20,
2017 between any political appointee at the covered agency, and any
representative of Marathon Petroleum, AFPM (or any of its member
companies), Koch Industries, ALEC (or any of its members) or Americans
for Prosperity, at which fuel economy or greenhouse gas tailpipe
standards was discussed, including the date of the meeting and a list of
all meeting attendees and their affiliation(s).
For each such meeting, please provide copies of all emails, meeting
notes and summaries, memos, or other written materials, provided in
advance of, at, or following the meeting, to any political appointee at
the covered agency.
Please provide copies of all correspondence (including letters, memos,
emails, powerpoint presentations or other materials) received (or sent
by) any political appointee at the covered agency from (to) any
representative of Marathon Petroleum, AFPM (or any of its member
companies), Koch Industries, ALEC (or any of its members) or Americans
for Prosperity related to fuel economy or greenhouse gas tailpipe
standards."
The senators have requested that the agencies to provide these records
by the end of January 2019.
The few public records that have already emerged have revealed many
touchpoints between the Marathon and Koch network officials and the
administration. According to documents obtained by the Sierra Club,
former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt had two meetings scheduled with
Marathon executives. A copy of top EPA air regulator Bill Wehrum's
private calendar lists another meeting with Marathon.
Meanwhile, records provided to The New York Times by the watchdog group
Documented revealed Marathon's efforts to gain support from Republican
state leaders for the proposed standards rollbacks.
"This process to reconsider the existing CAFE [corporate average fuel
economy] standards is important, as there are significant concerns about
the existing standards potential negative impacts on vehicle safety,
cost, and consumer choice," wrote Steven Higley, manager of federal
government affairs for Marathon Petroleum, in an email to Wisconsin Rep.
Kuglitsch, who is a member of the American Legislative Exchange
Council's (ALEC) Energy, Environment, and Agriculture (EEA) task force.
"Therefore MPC is strongly supportive of the model resolution on CAFE
standards that will be considered at the Aug. 9 EEA task force meeting."
Senators Carper and Schumer aren't the only ones looking for these
records. Earlier this week, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) sued
the Department of Transportation over the agency's failure to release
public records that EDF requested about meetings and correspondences
between the oil industry and the agency on the subject of the Safer
Affordable Fuel Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles Proposed Rule, which is how
the proposed clean car standards rollback is officially known.
"EDF is going to court to enforce the American people's right to know
what's driving the Trump administration's attacks on our nation's clean
car and freight truck standards," EDF attorney Ben Levitan said on
Wednesday.
Now facing a lawsuit and demands from sitting senators, perhaps the
agency will finally release the public records that will reveal who was
working to rollback clean car standards, and just how much influence the
oil industry had in shaping the proposed rules.
https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/12/22/senators-carper-schumer-trump-marathon-petroleum-koch-industries-clean-car-standards
- - -
[PR opinion manipulation]
*Kochs Fund Study to Kill Electric Vehicle Tax Credit Via Same Group
That Defended Tobacco Industry*
When Koch Industries needs a study to cast doubt on the benefits of
electric vehicles (EVs), where does it turn?
Unsurprisingly, to an industry-funded study mill that infamously
produced a key report defending the tobacco industry that was deployed
by Philip Morris in the 1990s, and which has since published studies
commissioned by the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry, the coal
industry, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
As Congress debates whether to extend, end, or leave alone the federal
EV tax credit, a study critical of the incentive has been making the
rounds in conservative media outlets and Koch-affiliated free market
advocacy groups.
The study, conducted and published by NERA (National Economic Research
Associates) Economic Consulting, was commissioned by Flint Hills
Resources, a refinery group and fuels marketing company that also
happens to be a wholly owned subsidiary of Koch Industries...
https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/12/06/koch-commissioned-nera-study-aims-kill-electric-vehicle-tax-credit
[practice, practice, practice]
*5 Buddhist Practices to Help Tackle Climate Change*
BY LAMA WILLA B. MILLER - NOVEMBER 26, 2018
Climate change can feel so immense that it hurts just to think about.
Lama Willa Miller offers five meditations to help bring the truth of
climate change into your awareness and lay the ground for a skillful
response.
*1. Find a grounding in ethics...
* *2. Get comfortable with uncertainty...
* *3. Work with emotions...
* *4. Access new wisdom...
* *5. Find community...
*
By practicing with ethics, uncertainty, emotion, wisdom, and community,
we develop an intimate understanding that being human is about what we
think and what we believe -- and we deepen our ability to embody our work.
Embodiment sends an indelible message that peace and sustainability can
become a lived reality. Even when they are imperfectly realized, we can
inspire the sense that our lives have meaning, and that we are living
our way into ever-increasing integrity with -- and service to -- our
beautiful, unfathomable and sacred world.
https://www.lionsroar.com/5-practices-to-help-you-skillfully-contemplate-climate-change/
[A little more spiritualism]
*We Were Made For These Times*
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have
heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They
are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a
time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the
latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.
You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have
aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders,
everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking.
Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit
dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope.
Most particularly because, the fact is that we were made for these
times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in
training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.
I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see
one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels
in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are
fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the
history of humankind.
Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls
on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every
wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing
your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained
lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own,
and to advance, regardless.
In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how
much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a
tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is
outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is
spending the wind without raising the sails.
We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance,
we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us,
and we will know them when they appear. Didn't you say you were a
believer? Didn't you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater?
Didn't you ask for grace? Don't you remember that to be in grace means
to submit to the voice greater?
Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of
stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.
Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to
assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely.
It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the
critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.
What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding,
adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take
everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small,
determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or
hundredth gale.
One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in
a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines
like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send
up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To
display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these - to be fierce
and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and
greatest necessity.
Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and
willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of
the strongest things you can do.
There will always be times when you feel discouraged. I too have felt
despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it. I will
not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate.
The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you.
It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to
Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and
the good deeds we do are not ours. They are the words and deeds of the
One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on
your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there
can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.
By Clarissa Pinkola Estes, American poet, post-trauma specialist and
Jungian psychoanalyst, author of Women Who Run With the Wolves.
http://www.grahameb.com/pinkola_estes.htm,
http://www.clarissapinkolaestes.com/bio.htm
[Thanks goes to the http://www.goodgriefgroup.org/ ]
[science work]
*Climate warming experiment finds unexpected results*
January 4, 2019 by Emily Pontecorvo, American Geophysical Union
Dried leaf samples are bagged and numbered before being returned to
study sites in Puerto Rico's El Yunque National Forest. Heaters warmed
experimental plots to four degrees higher than the ambient temperature
of the tropical forest. Credit: Stephanie Roe
Tropical forests store about a third of Earth's carbon and about
two-thirds of its above-ground biomass. Most climate change models
predict that as the world warms, all of that biomass will decompose more
quickly, which would send a lot more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
But new research presented at the American Geophysical Union's 2018 Fall
Meeting contradicts that theory....
- -
Stephanie Roe, an ecology Ph.D. student at the University of Virginia,
measured the rate of decomposition in artificially warmed plots of
forest in Puerto Rico. She found biomass in the warmed plots broke down
more slowly than samples from a control site that wasn't warmed.
Her results indicate that as the climate warms, forest litter could pile
up on the ground, instead of breaking down into the soil. Less
decomposition means less carbon dioxide released back into the
atmosphere. But it also means less carbon taken up by the soil, where
it's needed to fuel microbial processes that help plants grow...
- - -
"We would expect that microbes tend to work faster, like their
metabolisms increase, with warmer temperatures," Roe said. "So we would
expect to see an increase of activity of microbes and other decomposers
to decompose the litter."
But instead of seeing faster rates of decomposition, Roe observed the
warming produced a drying effect in the plots, which slowed
decomposition. "What we found is actually it went the other way because
moisture was impacted so much," Roe said. Moisture in the litter from
the treatment sites was reduced by an average of 38 percent.
Roe pointed out that the increase in frequency and severity of storms in
the region could amplify this effect. Hurricane Maria reduced
significant portions of the tree canopy in El Yunque, allowing a lot
more sunlight to reach the forest floor that can dry up the litter.
The results Roe shared are preliminary and not yet published. Her next
project is to do further analysis of the nutrients in the litter and of
the microbial communities to see if there are other factors that could
explain the unexpected slowdown in decomposition.
Read more at:
https://phys.org/news/2019-01-climate-unexpected-results.html#jCp
*This Day in Climate History - January 6, 2014 - from D.R. Tucker*
January 6, 2014:
The Washington Post reports on the vast political network established by
billionaire climate-change deniers Charles and David Koch.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/koch-backed-political-network-built-to-shield-donors-raised-400-million-in-2012-elections/2014/01/05/9e7cfd9a-719b-11e3-9389-09ef9944065e_story.html?hpid=z1
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