[TheClimate.Vote] July 5, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/July 5, 2019/

[Water changes]
*South Africa: cities without water | DW Documentary*
DW Documentary
Published on Jul 4, 2019
By the year 2050, a quarter of the every world's cities will be facing 
water shortages. Cape Town is already running out of water now. But the 
catastrophe was foreseeable: politicians have ignored periods of drought 
and the rapidly growing population for too long.

South Africa is facing its drought of the century. Cape Town's water 
supply is under threat because the metropolis is quenching its thirst 
with surface water alone. But climate change is making the weather more 
unpredictable and the reservoirs emptier. Those responsible are 
feverishly seeking a remedy. Can the worst still be averted?
Fear of social unrest, epidemics and the region's economic collapse is 
spreading. Only through the discipline of the population, who have 
limited their water consumption 50 liters of water per day per head for 
months, has staved off  "Day Zero," the day when the taps are turned off 
and people can only draw water from public faucets. The lack of water 
throws the country's social divisions into stark relief: rich South 
Africans can buy water, while poorer citizens cannot afford it. The 
filmmakers accompany a special police unit looking for people wasting 
water in the townships and meet farmers whose very existence is at 
stake. It is a race against time and a fight against political sleaze. 
Cape Town's predicament is a lesson to the whole world: by 2050 one in 
four cities in the world will be affected by water shortages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DyH3R3nA8w


[Some simple science from PBS]
*Understanding Natural Climate Cycles*
NOVA PBS Official
Published on Mar 18, 2019
The climate has changed on a schedule for millennia. But have humans 
broken this climate clock?
NOVA on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NOVAonline
NOVA on Twitter: @novapbs
NOVA on Instagram: @novapbs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKY7AN3tB_s


[important essentials of science talk - evaluate a research paper]
*Key to qualitative "state of knowledge" descriptors:*

*Well-established: models incorporate known processes;* observations 
largely consistent with models for important variables; or multiple 
lines of evidence support the finding)

*Established but Incomplete*: models incorporate most known processes, 
although some parameterizations may not be well tested; observations are 
somewhat consistent with theoretical or model results but incomplete; 
current empirical estimates are well founded, but the possibility of 
changes in governing processes over time is considerable; or only one or 
a few lines of evidence support the finding

*Competing Explanations: *different model representations account for 
different aspects of observations or evidence, or incorporate different 
aspects of key processes, leading to competing explanations

*Speculative:* conceptually plausible ideas that haven't received much 
attention in the literature or that are laced with difficult to reduce 
uncertainties or have few available observational tests
***********************************
[Moss, R.H. and Schneider, S.H., 2000:  Uncertainties in the IPCC TAR:  
Recommendations to lead authors for more consistent assessment and 
reporting.  In: Guidance Papers on the Cross Cutting Issues of the Third 
Assessment Report of the IPCC [eds. R. Pachauri, T. Taniguchi and K. 
Tanaka], World Meteorological Organization, Geneva, pp. 33-51.]
***********************************
- - -
[Apply this to some advanced presentations - Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean 
Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS)]
*What will life be like after Arctic Blue-Ocean-Zero: Abrupt Climate 
System Disruption*
Paul Beckwith
Published on Jul 4, 2019
Blue Ocean Zero (BO-0; first Sept with essentially zero Arctic sea ice) 
is ever more likely each year. I chat on when it will occur + dire 
consequences we can expect. BO+2 years will have 3 months ice-free 
(Aug-Sept-Oct); BO+6 extends to July and Nov; BO+9 will be ice-free year 
round. Greenland, alone and exposed, will shed ice like crazy (greatly 
increasing sea-level rise); the cold centroid will shift from the North 
Pole to be over Greenland. Jet streams can become quasi-stationary, only 
shifting with the seasons. Where will we live to avoid the worst; how 
will we grow food?
donate at http://paulbeckwith.net to support my video efforts to keep 
you informed on the latest abrupt climate change risks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_7OfhrbAPY
- - -
[part 2 ]
*To Arctic Blue Ocean Zero and Beyond. What? When? Where? Why? What then?*
Paul Beckwith
Published on Jul 4, 2019
If jet streams become quasi-stationary sometime after Blue Ocean Zero, 
as I contemplated last video, what happens?  Living under a trough will 
almost be stormy and raining; while living under a ridge you will have 
long duration heatwaves and drought. Neither situation makes it easy to 
grow food; how will we feed ourselves? Maybe the best place to live 
would be right under the Rossby wave, in the transition zone. Not at the 
wave peak, which has extended right up to the North Pole, or at the 
trough bottom, which has crossed the equator, but perhaps in regions 
where the wave moves nearly north-south or south-north?
Please donate at http://paulbeckwith.net
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_QtVN-BbJw


[simple song and image]
*Regenerative Culture at Scottish Rebellion | Extinction Rebellion*
Extinction Rebellion
Published on Jul 4, 2019
 From June 16th to June 20th 2019 Extinction Rebellion Scotland camped 
outside the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh while MPs were working on 
the climate bill.
"Despite being known to the public for its most disruptive actions, the 
reality I've seen behind local XR groups shows a positive, 
family-friendly environment. Besides roadblocks and human chains there 
are workshops, talks, performances, music, ceilidh and in general just 
people helping each other. Sharing what they have, what they know, in a 
time of crisis. Students and parents, grannies and friends. Together."
"An important part of the rebellion is demonstrating the kind of world 
we want to live in"
Learn more and #rebelforlife
Website: https://Rebellion.Earth
World Map of Extinction Rebellion Groups: http://bit.ly/2wri78B
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ExtinctionR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRdzUGRVjWM


[Book reviews]
*Try Not to Breathe*
John Vidal

    *Choked: The Age of Air Pollution and the Fight for a Cleaner Future*
    By Beth Gardiner
    Granta Books 290pp 14.99 order from our bookshop

    *Clearing the Air: The Beginning and the End of Air Pollution*
    By Tim Smedley
    Bloomsbury Sigma 320pp 16.99 order from our bookshop

    *The Invisible Killer: The Rising Global Threat of Air Pollution -
    and How We Can Fight Back*
    By Gary Fuller
    Melville House UK 288pp 12.99

Something changed in around 2012. People started talking about the air. 
Perhaps they heard their children wheezing, or granny told them she 
couldn't climb the stairs, or they were fed up with having constant 
headaches.

China woke up when the city of Beijing had to shut half its factories to 
make sure its coal-polluted air was safe enough for Olympic athletes to 
breathe. Two years later the great Sahara dust episode was the alarm 
call in Britain. After weeks of choking on traffic fumes, Londoners 
found their cars covered in a fine red dust. The prime minister, David 
Cameron, said it was fine because the pollution was natural, but nobody 
believed him and news desks at last started to tease out the biggest 
public health scandal of the past fifty years.

And what a scandal! The scale of this modern plague, we have begun to 
see, is staggering. We have long known that nearly three million people 
in poor countries die prematurely each year from inhaling wood smoke 
from open fires used for cooking, but we didn't know until quite 
recently that many people in modern cities are having their lives cut 
short as a result of breathing in vehicle exhaust gases and industrial 
fumes. The official narrative has been that since the end of 
coal-burning in homes in the 1950s and the demise of heavy industry, 
urban air has been relatively clean, leaving us with nothing to worry 
about. The reality is shockingly different. We understand now that air 
pollution doesn't just harm our lungs, as coal dust did, but also gets 
into the bloodstream. The World Health Organisation reckons that nine in 
ten people around the world breathe air containing 'high levels' of 
pollution; it is responsible for 26 per cent of premature deaths from 
heart disease, 24 per cent of those from strokes and nearly one-third of 
all deaths from lung cancer. It is linked to obesity in children, autism 
and dementia.

The plague does not strike all equally. The air in high-income cities 
like London and New York may be toxic and polluted to sometimes illegal 
levels, but it is very many times worse in most African and Asian 
megacities, where not only wood but also coal and old tyres are burned, 
and where cars are older and fuels may be contaminated. In such places 
there is little monitoring of air quality and health services are often 
minimal.

The cost, in wasted life and money, is crippling. The deaths attributed 
to air pollution are now triple those from AIDS, malaria and TB 
combined. Pollution already costs some countries as much as 4 per cent 
of their GDP - a figure likely to increase because children are the 
worst affected and deaths across much of the world are set to double 
within thirty years.

The worst air I ever breathed was in Kabul. At the height of the war in 
Afghanistan, I visited one of the city's largest hospitals, expecting to 
hear stories of the wounded. Instead, I found wards full of people with 
cardiac and respiratory diseases. The doctors were adamant that one in 
four people there were dying from polluted air. The war? I asked. The 
air is much more dangerous, I was told.

A handful of scientists, campaigners, lawyers and journalists have spent 
years exposing the scandal. But while in the past ten years a ton of 
books has been published on climate change, the fall of forests and 
plastic pollution, only a few authors have stopped to consider the 
quality of modern air. We must now thank the journalists Beth Gardiner 
and Tim Smedley and the scientist Gary Fuller for taking up the story at 
length. They have written complementary books which together graphically 
show how air pollution has become so deeply embedded in everyday life 
that we barely notice it. They also go some way to explaining how 
governments did not just sleepwalk into the present crisis but knowingly 
condoned the mass poisoning of their peoples.

The story has few heroes and many villains. Politicians have flouted 
laws and UN guidelines; cynical oil and cheating car companies have made 
pollution worse; watchdog agencies and environment groups have been too 
weak or fixated on climate change to do much; consumer ignorance has 
been relied upon and encouraged by the authorities.

In Choked, Gardiner, an American living in London, travels to smoggy 
China, India, Germany and Poland, drops in on Malawi, compares 
bike-riding in Berlin and London, marvels at how California cleaned up 
its act and makes sense of some complex chemistry. Along the way, she 
weaves in her personal story, nails Dieselgate and produces some awkward 
but effective lyrical passages about the act of breathing dirty air.

Tim Smedley, who is described as a 'sustainability' journalist, follows 
a similar but more circuitous path through many of the same countries in 
Clearing the Air. He is honest enough to say that he knew air pollution 
was bad in London but paid little attention to it until his own child 
was born. While harrowing, his narrative is compromised by a surfeit of 
statistics and technical details, and the book is not helped by 
type-dense pages.

Gardiner's and Smedley's books both get glowing endorsements from Arnold 
Schwarzenegger, who of all Western politicians has most effectively 
demonstrated the link between air pollution and climate change, showing 
how if you want to solve one, you must address the other. Sadly, both 
authors treat air pollution in relative isolation.

Not so Fuller, who leads a team of air researchers at King's College 
London. Fuller wears his learning lightly in The Invisible Killer, looks 
to history for context and shows how foul air has perplexed and angered 
societies for centuries. Importantly, he links it to recent forest 
fires, shipping, acid rain, farming, holes in the ozone layer and the 
whole way we live and burn.

Fuller is old-fashioned. He doesn't offer a personal narrative or try to 
engage in fine writing. Instead, he tells a straight-up horror story, 
leavened with impressive detail. He, too, travels the now-familiar route 
to burgeoning Delhi and Beijing, but he also drops in on New Zealand, 
which boasts of having some of the cleanest air in the world. But 
instead of celebrating the pure Antipodean air, he heroically punctures 
the clean, green Kiwi image by revealing the amount of wood that is 
burned there.

The consensus of all three writers is that the air of the future will be 
more breathable as technologies improve and people understand the 
dangers. I am less sure. Many European cities have indeed taken up the 
challenge to reduce air pollution in their centres and are driving out 
petrol and diesel cars. But old cars and pollution-producing machinery 
often end up being exported to the poorest countries, and the air of 
Accra, Nairobi and Kathmandu is already close to being unbreathable.

The global health crisis resulting from air pollution will be with us 
for generations. The world's urban population is set to double in the 
next forty years. Most of that growth will be in the kind of chaotic, 
lawless cities to which these writers have barely ventured. The full 
horror of how we are poisoning the world for profit has yet to be revealed.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/try-not-to-breathe



[Classic from 2017 - Australia]
*Climate scientists reveal their fears for the future*
ABC News (Australia)
Published on Jun 27, 2017
Climate scientists rarely speak publicly about their personal views. But 
in the wake of some extreme weather events in Australia, the specialists 
who make predictions about our climate reveal they're experiencing 
sometimes deep anxieties.
https://youtu.be/jIy0t5P0CUQ


[Followup is attempted satire]
*The Age of Stupid (10th Anniversary Mini-Sequel)*
UPFSI
Published on Jul 3, 2019
"Why didn't we save ourselves when we had the chance?" is The 
Archivist's question.  He is one of the last few humans alive the a 
post-climate change, devastated world of 2055.  And this is the 
direction we are headed folks.

If you did not see The Age of Stupid when it came out (2010) then you 
are really missing the best movie on climate change we've seen. It's 
available on YouTube at no cost, and on several other movie streaming 
platforms.  See it.  This tongue-in-cheek 'mini-sequel' will make much 
more sense.  Granted that this one is shorter.  So if you watch it 
first, perhaps it will whet your appetite for the 'real deal' (which was 
more 'kick in the pants' than 'tongue in cheek').

This is a prophetic movie.  We cannot recommend it highly enough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcluMvn8ZAI


*This Day in Climate History - July 5, 2012 - from D.R. Tucker*

July 5, 2012: Economist Yoram Bauman and law professor Shi-Ling Hsu 
point out the benefits of a federal carbon tax in a New York Times article.

The Most Sensible Tax of All
By YORAM BAUMAN and SHI-LING HSUJULY 4, 2012
- - .
...Let's start with the economics. Substituting a carbon tax for some of 
our current taxes -- on payroll, on investment, on businesses and on 
workers -- is a no-brainer. Why tax good things when you can tax bad 
things, like emissions? The idea has support from economists across the 
political spectrum, from Arthur B. Laffer and N. Gregory Mankiw on the 
right to Peter Orszag and Joseph E. Stiglitz on the left. That's because 
economists know that a carbon tax swap can reduce the economic drag 
created by our current tax system and increase long-run growth by 
nudging the economy away from consumption and borrowing and toward 
saving and investment.

Of course, carbon taxes also lower carbon emissions. Economic theory 
suggests that putting a price on pollution reduces emissions more 
affordably and more effectively than any other measure. This conclusion 
is supported by empirical evidence from previous market-based policies, 
like those in the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act that targeted 
sulfur dioxide emissions. British Columbia's carbon tax is only four 
years old, but preliminary data show that greenhouse gas emissions are 
down 4.5 percent even as population and gross domestic product have been 
growing. Sales of motor gasoline have fallen by 2 percent since 2007, 
compared with a 5 percent increase for Canada as a whole.

What would a British Columbia-style carbon tax look like in the United 
States? According to our calculations, a British Columbia-style $30 
carbon tax would generate about $145 billion a year in the United 
States. That could be used to reduce individual and corporate income 
taxes by 10 percent, and afterward there would still be $35 billion left 
over. If recent budget deals are any guide, Congress might choose to set 
aside half of that remainder to reduce estate taxes (to please 
Republicans) and the other half to offset the impacts of higher fuel and 
electricity prices resulting from the carbon tax on low-income 
households through refundable tax credits or a targeted reduction in 
payroll taxes (to please Democrats).

Revenue from a carbon tax would most likely decline over time as 
Americans reduce their carbon emissions, but for many years to come it 
could pay for big reductions in existing taxes. It would also promote 
energy conservation and steer investment into clean technology and other 
productive economic activities.

Lastly, the carbon tax would actually give Americans more control over 
how much they pay in taxes. Households and businesses could reduce their 
carbon tax payments simply by reducing their use of fossil fuels. 
Americans would trim their carbon footprints -- and their tax burdens -- 
by investing in energy efficiency at home and at work, switching to 
less-polluting vehicles and pursuing countless other innovations. All of 
this would be driven not by government mandates but by Adam Smith's 
invisible hand.

A carbon tax makes sense whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, a 
climate change skeptic or a believer, a conservative or a 
conservationist (or both). We can move past the partisan fireworks over 
global warming by turning British Columbia's carbon tax into a 
made-in-America solution.

Yoram Bauman, an environmental economist, is a fellow at Sightline 
Institute in Seattle. Shi-Ling Hsu, a law professor at Florida State 
University, is the author of "The Case for a Carbon Tax."
A version of this op-ed appears in print on July 5, 2012, on Page A19 of 
the New York edition with the headline: The Most Sensible Tax of All. 
Today's Paper|Subscribe

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/opinion/a-carbon-tax-sensible-for-all.html
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/

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