[TheClimate.Vote] July 4, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/July 4, 2019/


[July 4th fireworks]
*German Wildfires Cause Old War Munitions to Explode at Abandoned Firing 
Range*
Sweeping wildfires forced the evacuation of four villages in eastern 
Germany, the latest fallout from a Europe-wide heatwave that has raised 
concerns about climate change.
Discarded bullets and other munitions exploded at an abandoned military 
firing range as fires covering 600 hectares (1,500 acres) neared the 
villages of Trebs, Alt Jabel, Volzrade and Jessenitz-Werk about 55 miles 
southeast of Hamburg...
- - -
"The situation is tense," district politician Stefan Sternberg said to 
reporters."At the moment, it's not about extinguishing the fire. It's 
about securing the villages, life and limb."

Last week's heat broke records in France and also exceeded the highest 
readings for the whole month of June in Germany. Scientists at the PIK 
Potsdam institute for climate research blamed shifting weather patterns 
probably caused by human activity for sending a blast of air from the 
Sahara desert into Western Europe.

Changes to the north Atlantic jet stream, which would normally blow in 
cooler weather from the Atlantic Ocean, are contributing to "the buildup 
of hot and dry conditions over the continent, sometimes turning a few 
sunny days into dangerous heatwaves," said Dim Coumou, climatologist at 
the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-02/german-wildfires-force-evacuations-as-old-war-munitions-explode 




[summary so far]
*Watch presidential candidates get grilled on climate change*
By Zoe Sayler on Jul 3, 2019
In the first Democratic debates of 2019, presidential hopefuls racked up 
a whopping 15 minutes talking about what several candidates called the 
greatest threat facing America: climate change.

Sure, that's better than four years ago, when the topic got almost no 
play--but it's not enough for folks like Washington Governor Jay Inslee 
(the self-proclaimed climate candidate) and the Sunrise Movement, who 
have called for a separate primary debate completely dedicated to the topic.

The DNC will consider putting the idea to a vote this August. In the 
meantime, if the candidates really want to talk about their plans for 
climate change in front of an audience, they can just head to Iowa.

That's where State Senator Rob Hogg (who made the Grist 50, our list of 
emerging climate leaders, in 2016) is hosting a series of "Climate 
Conversations" with as many 2020 candidates as he can get to 
participate. He's already talked with Inslee and Orb Queen Marianne 
Williamson, and he's got plans to feature several other candidates, 
including John Delaney (who you may remember from the first debate 
as"wait, who's that guy again?").

"It's one thing to have a plan on paper," says Hogg (pronounced like you 
couldn't be bothered to finish the word"hoagie")."It's another thing for 
a candidate to have internalized that plan and be able to articulate it. 
I want every candidate to make the case for why they would be the 
climate candidate."

The one-hour conversations--part stump speech, part Q&A, and part 
meet-and-greet--each feature just one candidate, and are hosted at 
different venues around Cedar Rapids, the heart of Hogg's district: Jay 
Inslee's on a picturesque riverbank; Delaney's at a local pay-it-forward 
cafe; Williamson's in a community college lecture hall (someone get this 
lady an oddities shop!).

Hogg usually starts the conversations off, but then he turns it over to 
the audience--and let's just say these Iowans' questions are way better 
than Chuck Todd's. One audience member asked Inslee why he'd backed down 
on his support for a carbon fee--it didn't pass in Washington, Inslee 
said, and it doesn't go far enough anyway.

(Note that these aren't studio-quality videos--we're just glad they 
exist! And, anyway: Much like Sasquatch, who also hails from the Pacific 
Northwest, it's Inslee himself who is blurry.)

Some audience members asked candidates who don't support the Green New 
Deal to explain that position. One woman asked Williamson about her 
foreign policy positions in the context of the climate crisis. 
Williamson's reply:"It's not an accident that our first secretary of 
state in this administration was the ex-CEO of Exxon."

"Here's the thing--when you've got 45 seconds to talk about healthcare, 
it's pretty hard to point out its connections to climate change," Hogg 
says."We need an opportunity to have these candidates talk about the 
issue in more detail."

Wondering why you haven't seen hide nor hair of these climate 
conversations? Well, Hogg says he just doesn't have the capacity to 
videotape them and get them online, though some candidates have uploaded 
clips, audience members are welcome to record, and the local blog 
Neighborhood Network News has made efforts to pick up the slack.

You're welcome to travel to join in on the fun, though. One man, Hogg 
says, came all the way from Indianapolis to Cedar Rapids to hear Inslee 
speak (for the Coastal Elites out there, that's about the distance 
between San Francisco and Los Angeles … or between New Yorkers and even 
thinking about going to Cedar Rapids).

There might be some more recognizable faces in town soon: Hogg is in 
touch with all of the Democratic candidates, and hopes every one of them 
comes to Iowa to talk climate change as the primaries go on." Or New 
Hampshire," he says."I'll cut 'em slack."

It's a goal that feels distinctly possible in 2019. Fifteen of the 
Democratic candidates, including Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren, support 
a dedicated climate debate. Democratic primary voters consistently rank 
climate change as one of their top issues. More Americans are"alarmed" 
about climate change than ever.

Although Hogg's usually Democratic swing state went for Trump in 2016, 
he thinks that the Democratic candidates' positions on climate change 
will be crucial for Iowa voters come 2020, too. They're farmers, 
business owners, and workers who have lived through catastrophic floods.

And given Trump's track record of going on like climate change simply 
doesn't exist, Democratic candidates can hit him hard on the issue--if 
they're equipped to do it.

"Virtually all the Dems are talking about climate change," Hogg 
says."But we do want to make sure our candidates have a chance to go 
beyond the 30-second soundbite."
Dying to hold some candidates' feet to the fire? Check out this Facebook 
page for news about future Climate Conversations.
https://grist.org/article/watch-presidential-candidates-get-grilled-on-climate-change/
- - -
[Facebook page on candidates]
*Climate Action Across America*
https://www.facebook.com/pg/climateactionacrossamerica/events/
- -
[more volunteers]
*Pete Buttigieg Proposes National Service Programs for Climate Change 
and Mental Health*
His plan calls for expanding existing national service organizations 
like AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps and also adding new ones focused on 
combating climate change, treating mental health and addiction, and 
providing caregiving for older people. The new programs would prioritize 
bringing volunteers into predominantly minority communities and rural areas.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/03/us/politics/buttigieg-national-service.html



[common sense]
*Climate change: Heatwave made 'at least' five times more likely by warming*
- - -
They defined the heatwave as the highest three-day averaged daily mean 
temperature in June, arguing that this is a better indicator of health 
impacts than maximums or minimums.

The researchers compared the observations of temperatures recorded 
during the month of June with climate models that can show how the world 
would be without the human influence on the climate.

They found that, over France, the probability of having a heatwave had 
increased by at least a factor of five. However, the researchers say 
that this influence could be much higher still, by a factor of 100 or more.

"We are very confident that this lower boundary of factor five is valid 
- but we are not confident we can say much more than that," said Dr 
Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, senior researcher at the Royal Netherlands 
Meteorological Institute.

"The reason we are fairly careful is because we found fairly large 
discrepancies between the modelled properties of heatwaves and the 
observed properties of heatwaves. They all show stronger heatwaves but 
the trend in the observations is much larger than in the trends in the 
model."
The scientists say that the observations indicate a heatwave trend of 
around 4C in June, where the models show a much lower trend.

According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, June generally was 
more than 2 degrees above the long term average. Globally the 
temperature was also the highest for June on record, being about 0.1C 
higher than 2016.

Heatwaves in the 1970s and 1980s in Europe were limited somewhat because 
of what's termed aerosol cooling. This is essentially the impact of air 
pollution which for a number of years exerted a cooling influence. 
However, as the air has become clearer, heatwaves have come back with a 
vengeance.

According to those involved with this study, this trend in heatwaves is 
likely to get worse.

"We experienced a heatwave whose intensity could become the norm in the 
middle of the century," said Dr Robert Vautard, Senior Scientist, CNRS, 
France.

"The new record of 45.9C set in France last Friday is one more step to 
confirmation that, without urgent climate mitigation actions, 
temperatures in France could potentially rise to about 50C or more in 
France by the end of the century."

The researchers believe that if global warming continues to the 2C level 
envisioned in the Paris climate agreement, heatwaves like the one 
experienced last week will become the norm in June.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48838698
- - -
[More crowded, more hot]
*Temps Have Topped 120 In India. How Are They Coping With The Heat Wave?*
July 2, 2019
Lauren Frayer
Nobody knows exactly when the truck will arrive. Its schedule varies. 
But when it pulls up -- sometime in the morning and then again after 
dusk -- it's often the neighborhood children, playing cricket in the 
street, who are first to sound the alarm.

"Tanker! Tanker!" the children yell in unison, alerting their neighbors 
to a precious delivery from the Indian government: water.

The neighbors all drop what they're doing, grab jerrycans and buckets 
and get in line. They need to collect enough water for all their 
washing, cooking and drinking. Sometimes brawls break out.

This scene, in a New Delhi slum, has been repeated this spring and 
summer across India, where heat waves and water shortages have left 
millions desperate. Many reservoirs have dried up. As temperatures top 
120 degrees Fahrenheit, municipalities are delivering water by tanker. 
Hospitals report a spike in heat-related deaths. Asphalt roads melt.

Experts say this could be the new normal in India's already-sweltering, 
overcrowded cities.

"India is going to be perhaps the most hit by a changing climate," says 
Arunabha Ghosh, CEO of India's Council on Energy, Environment and Water. 
He cites India's geography, near the equator and the tropics, its 
poverty, high population and relative lack of energy resources."How well 
prepared are we? I would say not very well prepared."
In New Delhi, behind the American Embassy School, where high school 
costs more than $30,000 a year, a slum has burgeoned in recent years 
with migrants from the countryside. Two decades ago, it consisted of 
about 500 tidy cinder block houses, residents say. Now it has more than 
5,000 -- and none with indoor plumbing. They all share a communal water tap.

But it went dry two summers ago.

"What can we do?" asks Bhagwati Devi, 59, squatting amid buckets in the 
courtyard of her two-room home, waving a wicker fan."We're trying to 
manage."

Devi and her neighbors now rely solely on free government tanker 
deliveries for all their water needs.

There's an economic impact as well. Researchers at Stanford University 
looked at India's economy between the years 1960 and 2010 and concluded 
that the country's total economic output, or GDP, may be 31% less than 
it would have been in the absence of global warming.

"Most of the people want to come here to Delhi to earn money. So the 
city's getting more crowded and more hot, because of more vehicles and 
pollution," says Sandeep Kumar, 24, who works at the American Embassy 
School."Even the cold drinks are getting more expensive."

Kumar says that a couple of years ago, he used to pay 10 rupees--about 
15 cents--for a cold drink at a local kiosk. Now it costs 15 rupees--a 
50% markup. A glass of tap water has doubled in price, he says, from 1 
rupee to 2.

"And you crave it more!" Kumar exclaims."Because it's hotter."

To mitigate the heat, New Delhi has proposed planting more than 1 
million trees and converting more buses to run on cleaner natural gas. 
Some Indian cities have also mandated rainwater harvesting.

But despite the heat, India's economy is growing fast. Millions of 
Indians are emerging from poverty--buying cars, moving to the city and 
consuming more energy. Currently only about 6% of Indian households have 
air conditioning. But manufacturers say they expect double-digit sales 
growth this summer.

It feels like there's a new appliance shop on every street corner.

In one such shop, in a busy Delhi marketplace, an air conditioner 
salesman, Arun, who goes by one name, says about 30% of his customers 
are first-time buyers -- newcomers to the middle-class, air-conditioned 
lifestyle.

By 2022, India is forecast to have a quarter of world's AC units. That 
could exacerbate an already-alarming rate of warming, says Tarun 
Gopalakrishnan, a climate change expert at the Centre for Science and 
Environment in New Delhi.

"Because what air conditioning essentially does is cools the interiors 
for a few people, while making the ambient weather far worse for 
others," Gopalakrishnan says."It cools bedrooms while spewing heat out 
into the open."

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates 
that the global temperature rose 0.85 degrees Celsius in the 20th 
century. But in India, that figure is at least 1.2 degrees Celsius -- 
and climbing. The Paris Agreement, ratified in 2016, suggests that all 
countries try their best to limit warming to under 1.5 degrees Celsius 
-- a threshold that India is fast approaching.

"The effects of crossing that threshold are much more serious than 
initially anticipated and particularly in regions of the world like 
India -- closer to the equator and the tropics -- and particularly in 
developing countries where there are large vulnerable populations to 
begin with," Gopalakrishnan says."That India has been warming at a 
higher pace should be enormously concerning."

But in the slum behind the American Embassy School in New Delhi, many 
residents have never heard of the phrase"climate change" or" global 
warming."
"I may have heard something about it on television once, about 
shortages," says Shakuntala Devi, a 26-year-old mother of three, as she 
washes clothes by hand on a cement floor.

She says she has been too busy fetching water and trying to cool her 
family with an electric fan to pay much attention.
NPR producer Furkan Latif Khan contributed to this report.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/07/02/730378851/temps-have-topped-120-in-india-how-are-they-coping-with-the-heat-wave


[Book review]
July 3, 2019
*THE ICE AT THE END OF THE WORLD**
*An Epic Journey Into Greenland's Buried Past and Our Perilous Future
By Jon Gertner
More than a million years ago, snow fell on Greenland in the summer. 
Temperatures were low enough that it stuck, and the ice pack accumulated 
over the millenniums, eventually stacking higher than 10,000 feet and 
covering over 700,000 square miles. This frozen desert supported no 
life. Temperatures regularly ran dozens of degrees below zero, 
especially during the many months the sun declined to appear. As one 
18th-century visitor recorded, the ice sheet was a frigid, deadly place 
that had"no use to mankind."

Of course, if there's a place so miserable that most humans avoid it, 
there will be a hardy minority spurred by the challenge. These 
courageous, often exhibitionist explorers, questing after knowledge as 
much as fame, are the subject of Jon Gertner's fascinating and 
encyclopedic book,"The Ice at the End of the World." Rather than limit 
himself to a handful of picturesque expeditions, he follows a 
century-long parade of adventurers and scientists onto the ice, 
delineating how each laid the groundwork for the next."To an unusual 
degree, problems in the Arctic are worked on not just at a particular 
moment in time, but over generations," he writes in this engrossing 
history of a once useless place now transformed into one essential to 
confronting the existential threat of global warming...
- - -
How fast is the world warming? When he arrives at the present, he joins 
modern-day Wegeners on airplane flights that use lasers to measure the 
stupendous amount of meltwater pouring off Greenland each summer as they 
attempt to understand how all these changes will transform the world.

It is here that the book completes its last metamorphosis, from a 
scientific history into a submission to the ever-growing canon of 
climate change literature."Big Climate Change Book" is an identity that 
Gertner and his publisher work mightily to claim, and yet the book felt 
to me too idiosyncratic, too multifaceted, to be neatly pegged there. 
Gertner provides us with the obligatory descriptions of the catastrophic 
upheavals that may ensue when Greenland's three quadrillion tons of ice 
liquefy and rising seas send half a billion refugees fleeing their 
drowned homes. But unlike other recent books that have captured the 
public's attention with excruciating play-by-plays of how the 
environmental apocalypse will go down or poetic laments for the ailing 
natural world, Gertner invests his writerly energies less in describing 
what is happening to Greenland's ice than to how we know it. It is the 
baton race of science, with knowledge passed from one Arctic 
investigator to the next, that seems to captivate him most.

This is an intriguing way to frame a book about global warming, but it 
also raises the question: What makes this one unique? By the end of the 
book, his approach appealed to me for several reasons, most notably 
because it impressed on me like nothing I've read before how hard-earned 
climate change facts are, with statements as taken-for-granted as The 
earth is warming having been gleaned only at the cost of lives and 
decades of cumulative toil. And yet I couldn't shake the feeling that 
Gertner never really saw his project as primarily about climate change.

Gertner spends a lot of pages in the introduction offering multiple and 
sprawling rationales for the existence of this book, but it seemed to me 
that ultimately he was seized by the same irresistible" charms and 
mysteries of this unknown world" that had possessed his forebears. This 
is a book about obsession. Nansen's and Peary's and Wegener's and 
Bader's and--ultimately--Gertner's obsession. I mean that as a 
compliment, for despite the book's composure, it is this wild and viral 
obsession that is the most compelling thing about it. And when, in the 
final paragraph, Gertner stands on the shore of Greenland, watching 
icebergs that have calved off glaciers floating past, I couldn't help 
thinking that he had won a place for himself in the lineage of explorers 
he had been chronicling.

Doug Bock Clark's first book,"The Last Whalers: Three Years in the Far 
Pacific With an Ancient Tribe and a Vanishing Way of Life," was 
published earlier this year.

    THE ICE AT THE END OF THE WORLD
    An Epic Journey Into Greenland's Buried Past and Our Perilous Future
    By Jon Gertner
    Illustrated. 418 pp. Random House. $28.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/03/books/review/the-ice-at-the-end-of-the-world-jon-gertner.html


[now for something completely different]
*Manure Pile Sparked Wildfire In Spain*
Wochit News
Published on Jun 28, 2019
The spontaneous combustion of manure on a farm in Northeastern Spain is 
the likely cause of a wildfire now burning out of control. According to 
Geek.com, firefighters are battling the inferno, which is affecting more 
than 10,000 acres of forest and other vegetation near Tarragona, Spain. 
Authorities from the Catalan regional government said the fire likely 
began when an"improperly managed" pile of manure on a farm in Torre de 
l'Espanyol, self-ignited in the heat. According to the US National Parks 
Service, spontaneous ignitions can occur when flammable materials, such 
as piles of hay, compost, or manure heat up to a temperature high enough 
to cause combustion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZNT3piH2wU
- - -
[No smoking on the can]
*Manure Pile Spontaneously Combusted, Sparked Wildfire in Spain, 
Officials Say*
Spontaneous combustion of a manure pile on a farm amid a record-breaking 
heat wave likely sparked a wildfire now burning out of control in 
northeastern Spain, authorities say.
Firefighters are battling the fire, which is affecting more than 10,000 
acres of forest and other vegetation near Tarragona, CNN reported.
https://www.geek.com/news/manure-pile-spontaneously-combusted-sparked-wildfire-in-spain-officials-say-1793794/?source
- - -
[some more research]
*Spontaneous combustion or spontaneous ignition* is a type of combustion 
which occurs by self-heating (increase in temperature due to exothermic 
internal reactions), followed by thermal runaway (self heating which 
rapidly accelerates to high temperatures) and finally, autoignition.
Cause and ignition

    A substance with a relatively low ignition temperature (hay, straw,
    peat, etc.) begins to release heat. This may occur in several ways,
    either by oxidation in the presence of moisture and air, or
    bacterial fermentation, which generates heat.
    The heat is unable to escape (hay, straw, peat, etc. are good
    thermal insulators), and the temperature of the material rises.
    The temperature of the material rises above its ignition point (even
    though much of the bacteria are destroyed by ignition temperatures).
    Combustion begins if sufficient oxidizer, such as oxygen, and fuel
    are present to maintain the reaction into thermal run-away.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_combustion


*This Day in Climate History - July 4, 2011- from D.R. Tucker*
July 4, 2011: The Fox News Channel celebrates its independence from 
reality by bringing on infamous climate-change denier Joe Bastardi to 
attack those concerned about carbon pollution.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2011/07/06/fox-celebrates-july-4-by-trying-to-debunk-globa/180569

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