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

[Richard Pauli]

/January 17, 2019/

[Why wouldn't they?]
*Utilities Knew: Report Shows Power Industry Studied Climate Change, 
Stuck With Coal*
https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2019/01/16/utilities-climate-change-liability/ 



[Opinion in the NYTimes]
*Could a Future President Declare a Climate Emergency?*
By John Schwartz and Tik Root
How far can a president go?
As the impasse continues over President Trump's demand for a border 
wall, Mr. Trump and his allies have floated the idea of his declaring a 
national emergency that they say might allow him to build it without 
congressional approval.
Mr. Trump has already pulled back somewhat from his earlier threats of 
an emergency declaration. But the idea alone has caused consternation, 
and not just among Democrats. Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of 
Florida, said last week that the precedent of declaring an emergency to 
build the wall worried him. "We have to be careful about endorsing broad 
uses of executive power," he said. "Tomorrow the national emergency 
might be climate change.
"Hmm," we thought here at Team Climate. Could a future president who 
accepts the seriousness of the climate threat declare an emergency to 
get things done? How would that work?
There are 136 statutory provisions that grant powers to the president 
under an emergency declaration, according to a recent report from the 
Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. These laws are very 
specific in their effects, said Elizabeth Goitein, a co-director of the 
center's Liberty and National Security Program.
Whether the laws would allow Mr. Trump to build a wall is questionable; 
whether they would allow action on climate change is even more so.
Some of the laws do allow the president to act on environmental 
safeguards and energy production, but "they all cut the other way," Ms. 
Goitein said. These are laws that allow the president to temporarily 
suspend environmental protections, for example, in the case of a 
national emergency that requires a quick surge in energy production. So, 
those laws could not be used to tighten environmental protections or to 
reduce energy production.
"There are no emergency provisions to protect the Earth," Ms. Goitein said.
What's more, the meaning of an emergency when invoking these powers is 
rooted in the idea of things that happen suddenly, without the kind of 
warning that gives Congress time to act -- and one thing that isn't 
sudden is knowledge about climate change.
The intention of the provisions, Ms. Goitein said, is not to "get around 
the law" or to perform an end run around a Congress that disagrees with 
the president's wishes.
"We are in a climate emergency," said Michael Burger, executive director 
of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. "But 
just because you call something an emergency doesn't mean that it fits 
under the president's statutory authority."
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/16/climate/climate-national-emergency-hot-water.html


[From Sailish Rao]
*Why Al Gore and Bill McKibben Don't Promote Veganism*
Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come
-- Victor Hugo
In 2013, Paul Chatlin had a problem. A big problem! One of his arteries 
was 100% blocked and two others were 65% blocked. His heart was 
enlarged, its right side thickened and he couldn't walk 10 steps without 
feeling excruciating chest pain. Fortunately for him, his cardiologist 
was mentored by Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn in medical school. He presented 
him with two treatment options:

    1) Triple Bypass Surgery; or
    2) Plant-Based Nutrition

Paul chose Plant-Based Nutrition and thus began his journey of recovery 
to robust health. Soon after he made this choice, Paul attended a 
plant-based cooking class hosted by the Esselstyns. It cost him $975. He 
tried to have Blue Cross/Blue Shield reimburse him for the class and was 
denied. He escalated his insurance claim all the way to BC/BS 
headquarters, pointing out the absurdity of them willing to cut a check 
for $125,000 for triple-bypass heart surgery, but not a $975 check for 
cooking classes. But BC/BS denied the claim and asked him to contact the 
legislature for any hope of future change in claim policies.

BC/BS had no "code" for cooking classes!

This is the system we live in. It has no "code" for a cure, but plenty 
of "codes" for pills and procedures to make money off our diseases.

This is the same system that has no code for solving climate change, 
species extinctions, ocean dead zones, tropical deforestation or 
desertification, but plenty of codes for wildfire fighting and disaster 
relief. The root cause of these environmental catastrophes is our 
unsustainable lifestyles. These lifestyles were conceived when the 
earth's bounty seemed virtually infinite compared to human demands on 
the earth. We now know that this is not true and that in fact, human 
impact on the earth's biogeochemical cycles has been substantial ever 
since the agricultural revolution began.

For the first 12,000 years after the agricultural revolution began, 
humans deforested vast swathes of land for growing crops and for animal 
husbandry. This caused the Earth to warm and the climate to change even 
more than all our fossil fuel burning over the last 200 years. However, 
this earlier climate change turned out to be good for life as it 
prevented the earth from going back into another ice age 6000 years ago. 
It also kept the earth's temperature remarkably constant for 10,000 
years as if it was set on a thermostat. Then over the past 200 years, 
human activities have caused the earth's temperature to increase by 
about 1 deg C, kicking the thermostat out of equilibrium and dangerously 
close to runaway increases through positive feedback loops. However, in 
the process, we developed all the scientific tools and technologies we 
need to understand and consciously fulfill our role as the "Thermostat 
Species" of the planet.

To solve climate change, we need to bring the earth's temperature back 
to its safe zone without causing harm in other respects. There are only 
two things we can do, starting today, that fit this description:

    *1) Go Vegan; and*
    *2) Burn less Fossil Fuels.*

Please note that my emphasis is different from that in mainstream 
circles, where these two steps are usually framed as:

    *1) Eliminate Fossil Fuels; and*
    *2) Eat less meat.*

The latter framing leads to inaction, since in my experience, everyone 
already thinks they are eating less meat than someone else. Secondly, a 
total elimination of fossil fuels is almost impossible for people to 
achieve today. Therefore, this mainstream framing promotes apathy, which 
serves to maintain the current economic system based on consumption and 
growth. In contrast, millions of people have already gone Vegan and 
millions of people are already burning less fossil fuels by becoming 
more conscious of their consumption patterns. This changes our lifestyle 
to one of conscious simplicity, which is precisely what we need to 
become sustainable.

Vice President Al Gore once wrote that climate change is an outer 
manifestation of an inner crisis that is spiritual. In other words, 
climate change is a symptom of our disconnection with our true nature 
and purpose. In order to solve climate change, we, humans, need to 
assume our rightful place in the ecosystems of the world as the 
Thermostat species and reconnect with our true nature, which is pure 
compassion. And given the urgency of climate change, we need to make 
these changes in a hurry. The best way to achieve that is to get the 
religious/spiritual community mobilized and fully involved at the 
grassroots. We cannot depend on Al Gore, Bill McKibben and the 
mainstream establishment to promote Veganism and conscious simplicity.
They have no "code" for that.
Namaste,
Sailesh
http://www.climatehealers.org/blog/2019/1/14/why-al-gore-and-bill-mckibben-dont-promote-veganism

[Rubber Ducky, gets some anxiety]
*The World's Oceans Are Turning Into Bathtubs*
*It sounds nice, but it's actually apocalyptic.*
BY JACK HOLMES - JAN 16, 2019
Wow! This seems bad!
A study in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences published 
Wednesday and tracked by CNN found 2018 was the hottest year on record 
for the planet's oceans. We started keeping track in 1958. Want to know 
what the previous hottest year was? 2017. How about the top five hottest 
years on record for the oceans? All have occurred since 2014. It's 
almost like there's something happening here!
- - -
Warming oceans lead to sea level rise, as it more swiftly melts adjacent 
ice. In the true nightmare scenario, scientists believe this has the 
makings of a feedback loop: as ice melts, it leaves more surface area to 
be occupied by water. This water stores more heat, accelerating the rate 
at which oceans warm and, in turn, accelerating the rate at which ice 
melts. Just something to look forward to.
- -
And then there are the consequences for the seas themselves. Warmer 
water can lead to coral bleaching, essentially the destruction of the 
coral reefs which form the backbone of ocean ecosystems. Bleaching does 
not immediately kill coral, but it can over time. This is one factor in 
why, even back in 2015, scientists feared humans could be precipitating 
a mass extinction event in the world's oceans. 3 billion humans depend 
on seafood to eat. This is just part of what scientists are calling the 
sixth mass extinction event. One scientist returned to a rainforest in 
Puerto Rico after 35 years to find 98 percent of the ground insects had 
vanished. It could be the first sign of the ecosystem's collapse.

These are just some dimensions of the catastrophe of a new world 
awaiting us if we continue on our current path. The climate is changing, 
and we will not like what it looks like soon enough. Massive wildfires, 
drastic drought, powerful storms, coastal flooding, and mass migration 
due to all of these--along with food and water scarcity--are not futures 
to look forward to. Neither are the wars that will inevitably result. 
Luckily, the president says it's all a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. 
His head of the Environmental Protection Agency does not accept the 
scientific consensus that it's happening and humans are causing it. And 
all of us will have to explain to our kids what the hell we were doing.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a25916176/2018-oceans-hottest-ever-climate-change/


[Understanding data presentations]
*Global Temperature: Why So Many Straight Lines?*
Posted on January 16, 2019
Probably the most commonly used way to estimate a trend in something is 
a mathematical process called linear regression. Basically, it means to 
fit a straight line [for those who must be pedantic, a flat hyperplane 
if we have multiple predictor variables]. In the case of time series, 
use time as the predictor variable and look for a linear relationship. 
If we find it, we declare "Trend!" and might even posit how big it is.

Why linear? Does anybody really believe that global average temperature 
since, say, 1970 has followed a straight line? Couldn't it have wiggled 
around a little, just a little maybe -- not noise, mind you, but genuine 
signal, real climate change rather than random fluctuation? Might it 
actually have accelerated, or even decelerated, or -- heavens forbid! -- 
taken a "hiatus"? Hell, mightn't there have been brief episodes of all 
three, just not strong enough to be detected statistically (for a 
stickler like me)?

Of course. To my mind, the idea that as far as global temperature goes 
the climate -- the signal, not the noise -- followed a perfect straight 
line, is ludicrous.

So why the hell do I fit so many straight lines? I do it all the time, 
and if it's so obvious that the signal is not a straight line that 
nobody can get away with the idea, as often as not I'll resort to making 
a model out of straight-line pieces.

Then I can wax philosophic about the trend rate during each episode, 
i.e. along each straight-line piece, and estimate not only how fast it's 
going, but how uncertain we are about how fast it's going.

And I'm not the only straight-line maven. Far from it. Very, very, very 
far from it. Straight-line models (and that means linear regression) are 
everywhere. Global temperature, local temperature, rain, drought, snow, 
ice, rate of CO2 growth, the rate of growth of the rate of CO2 growth, … 
they're everywhere.

For all those physical variables, the idea of perfectly linear trend is 
ludicrous. In many cases, just looking at a graph makes one question 
whether or not the linear-trend model is even useful, let alone 
"correct." Yet linear regression persists. I think a lot of people, 
including many scientists, don't fully appreciate what linear regression 
is useful for, and in some cases damn good at.

I'll offer my opinion, that the most fundamental use of linear 
regression is to confirm or deny that the trend is doing something 
nontrivial.
By "trend" I mean the signal, the expected value apart from the noise, 
and by "doing something" I mean anything except lying there flat as a 
pancake going nowhere.

Whether or not things are changing is one of the most common and 
important questions in all of science. That's the same as whether or not 
the trend is doing something other than going nowhere. Note that 
according to my terminology, there's a trend even when it's going 
nowhere and doing nothing -- it's just a flat trend. Others would say 
that if it's not doing anything, there's no trend at all. Po-tay-to, 
To-mah-to.

For answering this most fundamental question, is there something or 
nothing, linear regression is terrific! It's one of, if not the (in many 
cases) most powerful methods. I believe that the source of its power is 
the fact that the null hypothesis -- that the trend is doing nothing -- 
is exactly the question of greatest importance. The fact that the 
"alternate hypothesis" (so says the statistician, the climate scientist 
might say "model") is a straight line does not (did I say that strongly 
enough?) mean that the real signal is a straight line. Not. Did I 
emphasize that strongly enough?

If linear regression confirms something going on, we can generally rely 
on it's answer to the additional question: is it heading generally up or 
down? But don't forget that the estimated rate of change that we get out 
of linear regression is really an estimate of the average over the 
entire interval. The true rate might not be following that straight line 
model.

But hey, we knew that. Everybody knows that! Basic stats, right? Nobody 
would ever take a powerfully significant linear regression 
(statistically significant, that is) and use that alone to conclude it's 
following a straight line? Especially when there's further evidence that 
it's not only doing something, it's doing something besides just that 
straight-line stuff.

Alas, too often, even in the scientific literature, I see that basic 
mistake of extending a linear relationship or interpreting it as 
physically real (not just a good model mind you, but physically real) 
when there's no justification for taking it that far. I won't be naming 
names.

None of which negates the tremendous usefulness of getting good answers 
to that most basic question. Linear regression has weaknesses (like all 
methods) and complications (love 'em!), but it remains a powerful, 
efficient, and effective way to test whether or not change is happening 
in scientific data.

When the data actually do follow a straight line, not perfectly perhaps 
but close enough to make a model that's downright useful, then the rate 
of increase or decrease will be constant, and it's very good to know 
what that rate is.
In many cases we can say that linear regression is the best method, 
meaning it gives the most precise and accurate answers. In some of the 
exceptional circumstances, that tend to trick analysis, we have clever 
methods to avoid the pitfalls (linear regression isn't just 
least-squares regression, you know). Here's another fundamental 
usefulness of linear regression

If you want to rely on the idea that the trend is linear, I think you 
should either have a compelling physical reason to support it, or you 
should search the data for evidence that there's something more.

The linear model means a straight line, and that means whether it's up 
or down it's going at a constant rate. What if the rate is changing? 
Wouldn't linear regression fail to detect that?
Of course it would. If your model doesn't include rate change, it's 
never going to detect rate change.

That means you need another analysis. A common choice is to fit a 
quadratic function of time, a model that allows rate change. Then we 
test the quadratic term (which is responsible for that rate change) for 
significance. If it passes, we can declare that the rate is not 
constant, and even give a decent answer whether it's getting faster or 
slower.

Again, that doesn't mean that the signal is actually following a 
quadratic curve. But it can confirm that it's not just a straight line, 
and give us an idea of how large the effect is.

A quadratic curve is only one choice. Another is a function made of two 
straight-line pieces joined at their endpoints. I call it the continuous 
(joined at their endpoints) piecewise-linear (made of straight-line 
pieces) model. It too allows for a rate change, but only a single, 
sudden rate change. Just when that happens, is one of the parameters of 
the model.

There are enough possible such models (enough "degrees of freedom") to 
make the stats rather complicated, in particular the choice of 
changepoint time, the moment when the rate changes. But it can be done, 
and it turns out that the continuous piecewise-linear model is very 
powerful for detecting rate changes. It's one of the main weapons in my 
arsenal when I going looking for that.

This is, essentially, another fundamental usefulness of linear 
regression, rooted in the fact that any function [for the pedantic: 
bounded smooth] can be approximated by a continuous piecewise linear 
function as closely as we want. For high precision it might require a 
lot of pieces, but it can be done.

And now we come to a drawback. The statistics of fitting multiple 
straight lines must be tested with great care, it's oh so way too easy 
to get a result one thinks is significant (rate change!) which really 
isn't (sorry!). The drawback is that although the piecewise linear model 
(continuous or not) is terrific for statistical testing of trend change 
when done right, it's also so easily done wrong that it's the source of 
far too many mistaken results published in the scientific literature. 
I'm not naming names.

Do bear in mind that the piecewise linear model is just one choice. 
There are polynomials, smoothing and averaging filters, splines, you can 
get exceptionally fancy if you want to (wavelets and singular spectrum 
analysis). But for reliability and power of testing whether rates have 
changed or not, those piecewise linear models are among the best.

Perhaps the best use of linear models (such as piecewise linear) is that 
they enable us to say when there is *no evidence* for a rate change. 
There are so many claims of rate change, often used unwisely (sometimes 
nefariously) that such is a very fundamental usefulness.

Sometimes, they even make good models. The piecewise linear model of 
global average temperature (data from NASA) shown in this post is one 
example. The model isn't just useful, it's competitive with other 
statistical models including some pretty fancy schmancy stuff. Let's 
face it, sometimes things actually do follow a straight line very 
closely. Damn closely.
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2019/01/16/global-temperature-why-so-many-straight-lines/


[another warning]
*Warning: A 'Shrinking Window' of Usable Groundwater*
New analysis reveals that we have much less water in our aquifers than 
we previously thought -- and the oil and gas industry could put that at 
even greater risk.
Oceans & Clean Water
January 11, 2019 - by Tara Lohan
- - -
A Different Approach
Instead of examining how fast water tables were falling, as in previous 
studies, the researchers looked at water chemistry to determine how deep 
underground you could drill for freshwater or brackish water before that 
water became too salty to use.

"We looked at the bottom limit of groundwater resources," says McIntosh.

The researchers used information from the U.S. Geological Survey on the 
quality of groundwater across the country and looked specifically at 
salinity -- how salty the water is. "We looked basin by basin at how 
that depth of fresh and brackish water changes across the United 
States," says McIntosh.

The results were about half as much usable water as previous estimates. 
That means that deep groundwater reserves are not nearly as plentiful as 
we'd thought in some places.

That's important because when shallow groundwater reserves become 
depleted or polluted, the strategy so far has been to drill deeper and 
deeper wells to keep the water flowing.

But we may not always be able to drill our way out of water shortages. 
"Tapping into these deep waters works for now, but the long-term 
prospects for using these waters are quite concerning," says the 
report's lead author, Grant Ferguson, an associate professor in the 
department of Civil and Geological Engineering at the University of 
Saskatchewan.

The problem isn't evenly distributed across the country. While a number 
of aquifers in the West have deep freshwater reserves, the water in 
parts of the eastern and central United States becomes salty at much 
shallower depths. "Drilling deeper water wells to address groundwater 
depletion issues represents no more than a stopgap measure in these 
areas," the researchers concluded in their paper. One area of particular 
concern the researchers noted was in the Anadarko and Sedgwick basins 
underlying parts of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, which has particularly 
shallow freshwater reserves.

Depth to water with total dissolved solids (a) <3000 and (b) <10 000 mg 
l−1 based on median values in 100 m bins. (c) TDS distribution relative 
to the 50th and 95th percentile of water well depths.
Oil and Water
The study looked at a total of 28 sedimentary basins across the United 
States that were chosen because they're known to contain oil and gas 
reserves.

The researchers found that the oil and gas industry uses fresh and 
brackish water, both of which are drawn from the bottom up. And that's 
another element of the research that could raise concern.

In some cases the industry pumps out brackish water as part of its 
drilling operations. Industry waste is then injected back underground 
into deep aquifers. As a result, water reserves are depleted from 
pumping and possibly contaminated during re-injection, the researchers 
found.

Deep groundwater resources can be threatened by oil and gas production 
or injection wells.
The depth between oil and gas activities and drinking water reserves 
varied greatly across the country. Wyoming and the Michigan basin were 
two places where oil and gas activities are relatively shallow and in 
close proximity to fresh and brackish water, which could increase the 
chances of contamination of water resources. Water contamination from 
oil and gas activity has already been documented in Pavillion, Wyoming.

The authors suggest that carefully monitoring for potential 
contamination or overexploitation of water reserves may be crucial in 
these areas with minimal separation between groundwater and oil and gas 
wells used for either production or disposal.

The Future Is…Saltier
While brackish water can be used for some types of agriculture and by 
oil and gas activities, it hasn't been used much yet for drinking 
because it requires desalination (although not as intensively as 
seawater). But as water resources become more constrained, particularly 
in the arid West where some communities and farms rely exclusively on 
groundwater, brackish water may be a more valuable future resource and a 
larger part of the water supply.

"I think of it in terms of water security. Both fresh and brackish 
aquifers are part of our potential water source into the future," says 
McIntosh.

But further utilizing these deep-water resources will have "all kinds of 
policy and economic consequences because they aren't going to be 
replenished as quickly as other waters" closer to the surface, says 
Ferguson. And that may mean better monitoring of oil and gas activity is 
needed in those regions, along with a possible rethinking of how we 
permit and manage drilling into those deep waters. "That would change 
the nature of how we're using water in a lot of places," he says.

While this research adds to our growing knowledge of groundwater 
resources, there is still a lot we don't know about the chemistry of 
these deep aquifers beyond just salinity, says McIntosh. Addressing that 
knowledge gap, she says, will be important as we work to match water 
resources to our varying needs for drinking, industry and agriculture.

"This 'bottom up' approach is a novel one and will find great utility, 
but it does depend upon the availability of deep groundwater data," says 
Michael Campana, a professor and hydrogeologist at Oregon State 
University who did not participate in the study. And the deeper we go, 
the less data we have, says Ferguson.

Both the researchers and outside experts suggest that more research is 
needed. This is particularly true in areas not associated with oil and 
gas activity that weren't part of the study, points out Campana. But the 
authors say their results may still show the need for important changes 
on policy or behavioral levels regarding how we use our nation's 
groundwater.

"There was this idea that deeper groundwater would be more pristine, and 
it is to a point, but there are all kinds of natural salinity and 
hydrocarbon problems once you get into deeper and deeper groundwater 
systems," says Ferguson. "So we're working with that idea that maybe the 
window of freshwater is not as big as we thought and it's probably 
getting even smaller in a lot of areas."
In an age of climate change, that's something that may play out sooner 
rather than later.
https://therevelator.org/shrinking-groundwater/


[radical politics]
*How Governments React to Climate Change: An Interview with the 
Political Theorists Joel Wainwright and Geoff Mann*
By Isaac Chotiner
January 14, 2019
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, like Donald Trump, is making 
environmental decisions that could be calamitous far beyond national 
borders.
Photograph by Carl De Souza / AFP / Getty

On New Year's Day, the far-right populist Jair Bolsonaro took power in 
Brazil, posing an urgent threat to Brazilians and to the planet. 
Bolsonaro has promised to open up the Amazon to rapid development and 
deforestation, which would lead to the release of massive amounts of 
carbon into the air and the destruction of one of the earth's most 
potent tools in limiting global warming. Like President Trump, Bolsonaro 
is making environmental decisions that could be calamitous far beyond 
national borders.

In "Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future," Joel 
Wainwright, a professor of geography at Ohio State University, and Geoff 
Mann, the director of the Center for Global Political Economy at Simon 
Fraser University, consider how to approach a problem of such 
international dimensions. They look at several different political 
futures for our warming planet, and argue that a more forceful 
international order, or "Climate Leviathan," is emerging, but unlikely 
to mitigate catastrophic warming.

I recently spoke by phone with Wainright and Mann. An edited and 
condensed version of the conversation follows.

Does global warming fundamentally change how you evaluate international 
politics and sovereignty and the idea of the nation-state, or is it more 
evidence of a crisis that already existed?

Wainright: One of the arguments in our book is that, under pressure from 
the looming challenges of climate change, we can expect changes in the 
organization of political sovereignty. It's going to be the first major 
change that humans have lived through in a while, since the emergence of 
what we sometimes think of as the modern period of sovereignty, as 
theorized by Thomas Hobbes, among others. We should expect that after, 
more than likely, a period of extended conflict and real problems for 
the existing global order, we'll see the emergence of something that we 
describe as planetary sovereignty.

So, in that scenario, we could look at the current period with the 
crisis of liberal democracies all around the planet and the emergence of 
figures like Bolsonaro and Trump and [Indian Prime Minister Narendra] 
Modi as symptoms of a more general crisis, which is simultaneously 
ecological, political, and economic. Maybe this is quibbling with your 
question, of trying to disaggregate the causal variable. Which comes 
first--is it the ecological or the political and economic?--is a little 
bit difficult because it's all entangled.

Mann: I think we're going to witness and are already witnessing, in its 
emergent form, lots of changes to what we think of as the sovereign 
nation-state. Some of that change right now is super-reactionary--some 
groups are trying to make it stronger and more impervious than it's been 
in a long time. Then, other kinds of forces are driving it to 
disintegrate, both in ways we might think of as pretty negative, like 
some of the things that are happening in the E.U., but also in other 
ways that we might think of as positive, in the sense of international 
coöperation. There's some discussion about what to do about climate 
migration, at least.

I think one of the interesting things that's happening right now is that 
we have so few political, institutional tools, and, I would say, 
conceptual tools to handle the kinds of changes that are required. 
Everyone knows climate change is happening and it's getting worse and 
worse, and everyone's trying to fight off the worst parts of it, but 
we're not really getting together as everyone thinks that we need to.

I think that the nation-state is one of the few tools that people feel 
like they have and so they're wielding it in crazy ways. Some people are 
trying to build walls. Other people are trying to use their powers to 
convince others to go along with their plans. I think we have so few 
tools to deal with this problem that the nation-state is kind of being 
swung around like a dead cat, with the hope that it'll hit something and 
help.

One of the most depressing and scary parts of this is that global 
warming is exacerbating economic problems, and migration and 
refugee-related problems, that are actually making the political 
dynamics within these countries worse and opening up a window for people 
like Trump.

Wainright: I think your hypothesis, of a cyclical undermining of the 
global liberal order, is potentially valid. In fairness, it's not 
exactly what Geoff and I are saying in the book. You may be right and 
you may be wrong. If you wanted to strengthen that hypothesis, you'd 
have to clarify in exactly what way the authoritarian, neoliberal, 
climate-denialist position that we see represented by those diverse 
figures--again Modi, Bolsonaro, Trump, et cetera--represents the 
opposite of something else.

Part of the reason we wrote the book is because--I think Geoff and I 
would both say--there's a lot of talk right now in places like Canada 
and the United States about what we have and what we need, that when it 
comes to climate change is pretty vague, on the political, philosophical 
fundamentals. What exactly do Trump and Modi represent? Where does it 
come from, and why is it so clearly connected to climate denialism, and 
in what way is that crazy ensemble--or what appears to us as crazy and 
new--connected to the liberal dream of a rational response to climate 
change that's organized on a planetary basis?

This gets to some of the scenarios you lay out in the book, and why you 
are so pessimistic about the current order. What are those scenarios?

Mann: In the book, we lay out what we think of as possible futures. 
They're really, really broad, and there's lots of room for maneuvers in 
them and they could blur a bit.

One of them, which we think is quite likely, is what we call Climate 
Leviathan. Another one is Climate Mao--that would be a sovereign, but it 
would operate more on the principles of what we might think of as a 
Maoist tradition, a quasi-authoritarian attempt to fix climate change by 
getting everyone in line. Then there's the Behemoth [their term for a 
reactionary order]. We, at the time we started to work on the book, had 
in our heads the caricature of Sarah Palin, because that was the moment 
of "Drill, baby, drill."

The last thing we call Climate X, and that's the hopeful scenario. That 
is the sense we both have that the way to address climate change is 
definitely not international meetings that achieve nothing over and over 
again, in big cities all over the world. The attempts by liberal 
capitalist states like Canada or the U.S. to regulate tiny bits here and 
there, implement tiny little carbon taxes, to try to get people to buy 
solar panels. This is not anywhere near enough, nor coördinated in any 
meaningful way to actually get us out of this problem.

I think Joel and I really feel strongly that Climate X describes a whole 
array of stuff that isn't attached to this completely failing set of 
institutions. So, with Climate X, we're going to see activity happening 
at local levels, bridges across boundaries that you don't think about 
now, institutions refuting the state entirely, like so many indigenous 
people from Canada going ahead and doing things on their own, building 
new alliances, discovering ways of managing the collapsing ecosystems 
and political institutions around in creative ways. We don't see a map 
to this and the attempts to map it thus far have been a total and 
complete failure. Our hope is that we reinforce what is already 
happening in so many communities.

Climate change has caused me to think not just about what kinds of 
action are needed but also about whether our whole moral framework 
should change. I don't want people in Bangladesh to start blowing up 
Chinese coal plants, but I also wonder whether we need to start thinking 
about what is and is not O.K. differently because this is so dire.

Wainwright: We agree with you completely. What's notable is the 
disjuncture between what any clear-eyed observer will see really needs 
to happen fast and the depth of the seeming incapacity in the world's 
political and economic arrangements to move beyond even the first basic 
steps. So, the masses as well as many élites are realigning in all these 
strange combinations and producing figures like Trump and Bolsonaro.

As far as refugees go, the world has a large number of people who are 
sometimes called climate refugees today. There is still no international 
definition of a climate refugee that is generally accepted. If we take a 
reasonably capacious definition of a climate refugee, it's someone who 
has been displaced, at least in part, because of climate change. There 
are probably already tens of millions of climate refugees in the world 
today, including a pretty significant number of people from places like 
Honduras and Guatemala and Mexico, who have come to the United States, 
although we don't tend to talk about them that way.

Some estimates are as high as two hundred million climate refugees by 
2050 or so, although that's really speculation because no one really 
knows. It could easily creep into [several] hundreds of millions if the 
expectations of flooding in places like Bangladesh and the Caribbean and 
Indonesia come to pass.

In the face of all that, the present liberal-capitalist international 
order has utterly failed, as we've all said, and we can't expect people 
to just do nothing. They're going to look elsewhere for answers to their 
problems. To make a huge generalization, they're not turning toward the 
mainstream ideological resources of liberal modernity. They're turning 
to variations on religious metaphysics and often, unfortunately, forms 
of ethnic and religious exclusion. So, hence the desperate need for us 
to develop a new political theory of this moment and new utopian ideas.

I don't think that's entirely wrong, but, at least in the United States, 
people say they don't believe in climate change because there's been a 
systematic campaign to lie to them. Exxon documents are coming out in 
lawsuits all the time. It is one thing to say, "Well, this is a failing 
of the liberal order," and people looking for alternatives, which I 
think is true, but it's also true that people are being taken advantage 
of and lied to, and maybe the critique of capitalism is that it allows 
people like Rupert Murdoch to shape the perceptions of large chunks of 
the country.

Mann: You're right, there's tons of media flying around, there's all 
sorts of efforts to hide the truth, to hide the science, to twist things 
to get people to naïvely take up positions that are not only against 
everyone's interests but against their own as well, and in the interests 
of the most powerful.

It's also the case that these are generally characterized, and 
accurately so, as class issues. One aspect of the critique of capitalism 
that you mentioned is the way in which capitalism produces and 
reinforces class divides that lead to a situation in which, to some 
extent, we're seeing different fations of the élite struggle over the 
support of the masses. So, in many ways, the problem can be attributed 
to the fact that so many voters don't believe in climate change, but in 
actual fact, I would say that the problem really is a failure of the 
liberal order that can produce a situation in which, for one thing, that 
can occur, but secondly, in which the élites who control the state water 
down all its attempts to confront climate change.

Even here in Canada, where of course the problems are bad, but not as 
bad as they are in the U.S., we have a state that says it's fully 
committed to addressing climate change, but it actually is doing no more 
than Trump. So we're in a situation where it's hard to believe that it's 
only conspiracy theory that has prevented us achieving anything. I 
really do think it's much more systematic than that.

How do you want people to think and respond to something like what 
Bolsonaro is proposing with the rain forest?

Mann: I think both Joel and I would say that the most effective 
mechanisms are supporting those in Brazil who oppose Bolsonaro, and 
there are millions and millions. We sometimes forget that a lot of 
leaders are in power with the support of far less than half their 
population, just because of the way that the elections work. So it's not 
like there's not an enormous part of Brazil that is terrified of 
Bolsonaro and doing everything they can to stop him. I think that our 
reaction from far away, of course, should take into account the fact 
that we can't restart imperialism in the interest of climate change, but 
we can figure out ways to support those who are doing their best to stop 
this from happening.

Some of that, of course, could be something as simple as a consumer 
boycott, but I think that, fundamentally, it's going to require 
alliances and support that reach much further down in the political, 
economic strata of Brazil. Figuring out how to get in there and help 
those people, that's a challenge in and of itself.

We've heard a lot about how Western countries industrialized at a time 
when we didn't really know climate change was happening, and we here in 
the West got really rich. Now countries in the rest of the world want to 
go through the same process to raise the standard of living for their 
people, but at the same time we know that climate change is happening. 
I'm curious how you, as leftists, think about a situation where rich 
countries start telling poor ones what they can and can't do and 
enforcing that in some way, even if it's in the service of an end that 
we all think is beneficial to the planet.

Mann: That scenario you just described is a pretty big part of what Joel 
and I call Climate Leviathan. That's not what we're hoping for, but we 
think it's very likely.

Wainright: I would say that, right now, the core powerful capitalist 
societies are in fact telling developing and poor countries what to do 
about all kinds of things. But their general encouragement--whether it's 
through financial policy or trade policy or military bases or what have 
you--tends to be in the direction of locking in fossil-fuel extraction 
and consumption. There is no way around the fact that the U.S. 
government has played a major role in building, reinforcing, and 
protecting the global oil industry--Saudi Arabia is just the best-known 
illustration. What Geoff and I would point to instead, as an alternative 
to imperialism, is a lot more old-fashioned transnational solidarity on 
behalf of ordinary people all over the world, in the name of climate 
justice. That's what we desperately need.

On this point about transnational, trans-class solidarity and climate 
justice, it might be worth taking a look at Pope Francis's encyclical 
Laudato Si, which has probably been, to my mind, the most important book 
on these questions in my lifetime. In a series of statements that Pope 
Francis makes in that text, he reconfigures Catholic theology as a 
process of forging a planetary solidarity for humanity, in a world still 
to come. O.K., we're not Catholics. Geoff and I aren't directly quoting 
Francis and saying, "You see, the Pope has it all figured out," but 
we're basically stretching and pointing in the same direction.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/how-governments-react-to-climate-change-an-interview-with-the-political-theorists-joel-wainwright-and-geoff-mann


[really, ice hockey?  In April? We'll see. Check back]
*Big hockey coming to North Pole*
An Arctic match of the year is to be held on ice near 90 degrees North.
By Atle Staalesen - January 14, 2019
It is Soviet ice hockey star Vyacheslav Fetisov who is behind the 
initiative to assemble a bunch of former top players on the Arctic ice. 
The date of the event is 24th April and the site - the drifting station 
of Barneo.

The interest in the match is huge, Fetisov says to TASS. The 
International Hockey Federation and the Olympic Committee both support 
the project, he claims. Invitations have been sent to former top players 
from a number of countries and some of them have reportedly already 
confirmed their participation.

Extreme sports event have previously been held on the polar ice sheet, 
but never an ice hockey match of this kind.

Fetisov has the political weight and influence needed for succeeding. 
The two times winner of Olympic Gold and seven-time world champion is 
now a Russian top political with powerful posts in Russian sports. In 
2004 he was appointed Minister of Sports and in 2008 he became member of 
the Federation Council, Russia's upper chamber of Parliament. Since 
2016, he has served as member of the State Duma...

He is a central figure in the Night-time Hockey League, the notorious 
hockey gathering of a big number of Russia's most powerful men, 
including President Vladimir Putin himself.

Lately, he has engaged also in Russian environmental affairs and now 
holds the position as UN Goodwill Ambassador on the Arctic and Antarctic.
https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/arctic-life-and-public/2019/01/big-hockey-coming-north-pole


*This Day in Climate History - January 17, 2006 - from D.R. Tucker*
January 17, 2006: The Fred Barnes book "Rebel-in-Chief: Inside the Bold 
and Controversial Presidency of George W. Bush" is released. In the 
book, Barnes notes that in 2005, Bush had a private meeting with 
overrated novelist and climate-change denier Michael Crichton, during 
which Bush and Crichton "were in near-total agreement" about the 
supposed alarmism of climate activists.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/national/19warming.html?pagewanted=print&_r=0
http://scienceblogs.com/intersection/2006/02/16/the-full-barnes-treatment-of-b/
http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2008/11/07/michael-crichton-author-of-state-of-fear-leaves-global-warming-disinformation-legacy/
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/

/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.