[TheClimate.Vote] July 11, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/July 11, 2019/


[Major storm in vulnerable place]
*Rain Pounds New Orleans as a Hurricane Is Expected to Form in the Gulf*
A tropical storm is expected to form over the northern Gulf of Mexico by 
Thursday, the National Hurricane Center said, prompting the city of New 
Orleans to begin closing flood gates, officials to warn residents and 
oil companies to start shutting down offshore platforms and coastal 
operations.
- -
Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana declared a state of emergency on 
Wednesday. "The system will likely produce storm surge, hurricane-force 
winds, and up to 15 inches of rain across the state," he said. "This is 
going to be a Louisiana event that impacts every part of the state, and 
no one should take this storm lightly."
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/10/us/tropical-storms-cyclones.html


[Beckwith video]
*Grave Flooding Risks in New Orleans, LA: Yet Again*
Paul Beckwith
Published on Jul 10, 2019
Once again, New Orleans, LA (NOLA) is threatened with inundation, which 
could result in yet another water-world type flooding disaster. About a 
week ago, the European forecast models projected a low pressure region 
developing and passing southward from land into the Gulf of Mexico, 
strengthening into a potential hurricane in the exceptionally warm ocean 
surface waters, and then looping back ashore near NOLA. Unfortunately, 
this projection is playing out. The tropical storm, likely to become 
Hurricane Barry will dump several feet of water around and inside the 
city within a few short days. This huge amount of water will add to the 
already swollen, record duration flooding of the Mississippi River, 
which is at great risk of overtopping levees, flooding the city yet again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxVSABGsHTc
- - -
[Follow up video]
*Step Right Up in the Climate Casino: New Orleans Looks to Be Next*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YXy305tH-o


[Audio]
*Co-Extinction: Biological Threat Multiplier--Corey Bradshaw 
interview--Radio Ecoshock 2019-03-13*
Stop Fossil Fuels
Published on Mar 28, 2019
The End Is in Sight?
We are living in a time of mass extinction of species large and small. 
How serious is that? What are the rules of extinction? Two scientists, 
Italian and Australian, investigated. Their study published November 
2018 in Nature contains unpleasant surprises.

Our guest is Dr. Corey Bradshaw. He is the Matthew Flinders Fellow in 
Global Ecology, at Flinders University in South Australia. Corey has 
published at least 300 papers and three books. His latest is "The 
Effective Scientist: A Handy Guide to a Successful Academic Career".

Show by Radio Ecoshock, reposted under CC License. Episode details at 
https://www.ecoshock.org/2019/06/the-end-is-in-sight.html
Stop Fossil Fuels researches and disseminates effective strategies and 
tactics to halt fossil fuel combustion as fast as possible. Learn more 
at https://stopfossilfuels.org

*THREE RULES OF EXTINCTION*
1 During warming, the most ecologically important species go first, not last
2 Global warming drives more species to extinction faster than global 
cooling
3 During warming, plants tend to go extinct first

EXTINCTION IN AUSTRALIA
In Australia, The Conversation published "An end to endings: how to stop 
more Australian species going extinct". Corey explains we are losing a 
lot of creatures from the rare Australian ecosphere.

The authors propose ten steps including:

1 Commit to preventing any more extinctions
2 Craft an intergenerational social contract
3 Highlight our respect for, and obligation to, nature in our constitution

TRANSCRIPT EXCERPT
We are discussing Bradshaw's new paper with Giovanni Strona, 
"Co-extinctions annihilate planetary life during extreme environmental 
change".

Within the concept of co-extinction, Bradshaw and co-author Giovanni 
Strona portray interdependent webs of life that help diverse creatures 
survive. But interdependence also creates a fragility that can bring the 
web down. That sounds similar to worries about our human system during 
globalization. Can interdependence be both a source of strength and 
fragility?

 From the paper: "co-extinctions are often triggered well before the 
complete loss of an entire species, so that even oscillations in the 
population size of a species could result in the local disappearance of 
other species".

It doesn't even take extinction of one species to trigger the end of 
others. A sudden drop in one species may remove the food chain for other 
species, who become extinct. Think about the 90% decline of large fish 
in the ocean, or the 75% drop in insects in some places. All that before 
extreme climate change has kicked in.

In the 2017 paper "The Resilience of Life to Astrophysical Events", 
David Sloan's team offered some comfort: humans may go extinct, but some 
hardy creatures like the Tardigrade will survive even extreme climate 
change.

But wait! Tough tardigrades rely on other biological life for food. 
Their food supplies may be much less hardy. Human food may be much less 
adaptive to rapid climate change than we are.

  Bradshaw and Strona's paper suggests that 5C warming could be the 
beginning of the biological end--not because we couldn't survive it, but 
because of co-extinction, which drives extinction at a rate ten times 
greater than previous estimates.

"In a simplified view, the idea of co-extinction reduces to the obvious 
conclusion that a consumer cannot survive without its resources. Because 
resource and consumer interactions in natural systems (e.g., food webs) 
are organized in various hierarchical levels of complexity (e.g., 
trophic levels), it follows that the removal of resources could result 
in the cascading (bottom-up) extinction of several higher-level consumers."

"That paper shocked me," Corey tells us. "I get bad news every day. The 
world is in an extinction spiral right now and environmental degradation 
is happening across the board. Climate change, deforestation, pollution, 
feral species, invasive species, the loss of insects... Climate change 
is a very strong stressor in a system that's already highly stressed. 
But when we did this paper, I had to sit back and go 'Wow!' I did not 
expect it to be this bad."

Some institutional and business plans try to accommodate 5 or 6C 
warming. The public doesn't know we're rapidly approaching a heat 
ceiling. Bradshaw seems to accept 2C warming as a given. I could add 
another half to one degree just from a cleanup of pollution. We continue 
to accelerate our emissions of greenhouse gases. As the atmosphere loads 
up, other natural systems are kicking in more greenhouse gases, or 
losing their ability to store excess carbon.

Starting from 2C by 2030--humanity only has 2 or 3 degrees more warming 
before a mass extinction that includes our food sources. We're running 
out of heat space, or heat time. Bradshaw and Strona show we've 
overestimated the ability of life to survive a rapid burst of climate 
change. If you only listen to one interview this month, or only pass one 
on to others, this is it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYkYp6yZ0QE
https://www.ecoshock.org/2019/06/the-end-is-in-sight.html



[an important idea has come: stop building carbon fuel infrastructure]
Dear Readers of Climate-I
*(A) **newly published article in the journal Climate Policy on the need 
for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty building on growing momentum 
to address the supply-side of climate policy.*
The article is available as open access and the abstract and policy 
insights are summarised below.
ABSTRACT

    A new approach is needed to tackle the climate crisis, in which the
    long overlooked supply-side of fossil fuels takes centre stage. A
    crucial aspect of this is the need for international agreements and
    law to effectively and fairly leave large swathes of remaining
    fossil fuels in the ground. Towards that end, we make the case for a
    Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty (FF-NPT) to deal with emissions
    at source. Having explained the need for such a treaty, we propose
    overall aims, and both a process and principles for the sequencing
    of efforts across fuel types and regions based on equity and
    justice. We discuss the form an FF-NPT could take, as well as some
    of the key challenges it would have to overcome. We suggest
    strategies for overcoming key challenges in relation to reserves in
    developing countries, questions of the just transition, and
    incentives for countries to sign up to such a treaty.

Key policy insights

    -The supply-side of fossil fuels should occupy a central place in
    collective efforts to address climate change.
    -A proposed new Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty (FF-NPT) could
    help to keep large swathes of fossil fuels in the ground,
    effectively and fairly.
    -A process towards this end could start with an assessment of
    existing reserves, as well as agreement on the principles for the
    sequencing of production phase-down targets across countries and
    fuel types, with the aim of aligning fossil fuel use with the Paris
    Agreement's 1.5C warming threshold.
    -Strategies to advance the proposed FF-NPT will have to recognize
    current and historical exploitation of fossil fuel reserves, provide
    alternative ways of meeting the development needs of the poorest
    countries without fossil fuels, and include credible systems of
    monitoring and compliance to induce trust and cooperation.

- -
Three pillars: non-proliferation, disarmament and peaceful use

The NPT has a three-pillar structure that its fossil fuel equivalent 
could emulate. The first is 'non-proliferation' itself, which in the 
climate change case would refer to preventing the exploitation of new 
fossil fuel resources: at minimum, do no further harm. As the Lofoten 
Declaration states, 'We are in a deep hole with climate. We must begin 
by not digging ourselves any deeper' (Lofoten declaration, 2018 Lofoten 
Declaration. (2018). Retrieved from http://www.lofotendeclaration.org/

[Google Scholar]...
You can access the paper here:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14693062.2019.1636759
Peter Newell
Professor of International Relations
Department of International Relations - School of Global Studies
University of Sussex, Brighton, East Sussex
BN1 9SN -UK

*Conclusion*
This paper has made the case for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, 
as part of a new wave of supply-side climate policies that deal with 
emissions at source. We argued that there is a significant window of 
opportunity opening up to start negotiations towards such a Treaty as a 
complement to the Paris Agreement. This is provided by the clear need to 
leave substantial remaining reserves of fossil fuels in the ground 
underscored by the latest science on climate change, the falling costs 
of alternatives to fossil fuels and the growing adoption of supply-side 
policies by states including bans and moratoria on new fossil fuel 
extraction.


We spelled out the three key pillars of such an agreement which parallel 
those of the nuclear NPT: non-proliferation (an agreement not to exploit 
new reserves), disarmament (the managed decline of existing fossil fuel 
infrastructures) and peaceful use (the financing of low carbon 
alternatives through a Global Transition Fund). We proposed how 
commitments to phase-out fossil fuels in the form of national targets 
and timetables could be sequenced reflecting countries current 
emissions, historical contributions and capacity to transition to 
alternative energy sources. We suggested the means are already available 
to undertake both a global mapping and assessment of those fossil fuel 
reserves which, if burned, would carry us across the 1.5C warming line 
and the monitoring and verification of commitments to leave them in the 
ground. A global inventory of supply-side actions that countries commit 
themselves to could be established while negotiations proceed in order 
to build up momentum. These would be actions which Parties would also 
list as part of their NDC commitments under the Paris Agreement to raise 
the level of ambition. We then explored where the basis of political 
support for such a Treaty may lie: in countries vulnerable to the 
effects of climate change, as well as among those countries already 
taking supply-side actions that want to multilateralise such efforts to 
avoid free-riding by others, and a whole host of businesses, cities, 
civil society organizations and others that have committed to divesting 
from fossil fuels and resisting new fossil fuel investments.

The challenges such a Treaty would have to overcome are not to be 
under-estimated. But nor are they insurmountable. National efforts are 
crucial and have set the ball rolling. But a new global Fossil Fuel 
Non-Proliferation Treaty could provide a transparent and fair means to 
stop climate breakdown. As E. F. Schumacher said, 'Perhaps we cannot 
raise the winds. But each of us can put up the sail, so that when the 
wind comes we can catch it' (1974 Schumacher, E. F. (1974). Small is 
beautiful. London: Abacus. [Google Scholar], p. 30).
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14693062.2019.1636759
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14693062.2019.1636759


[Scenario view]
*1000s of heat deaths coming--Eunice Lo: climate change & American 
cities--Radio Ecoshock 2019-06-19*
Stop Fossil Fuels
Published on Jul 10, 2019
More people will die from heat as the world warms. A new study estimates 
how many more will die in 15 major American cities according to how hot 
we make it. Lead author Dr Eunice Lo is a Research Associate in the 
Climate Dynamics group at University of Bristol UK.

Show by Radio Ecoshock, reposted under CC License. Episode details at 
https://www.ecoshock.org/2019/06/the-end-is-in-sight.html
Stop Fossil Fuels researches and disseminates effective strategies and 
tactics to halt fossil fuel combustion as fast as possible. Learn more 
at https://stopfossilfuels.org

SHOW DETAILS
The US Government is retracting climate controls, but city governments 
continue climate action, leading the nation from below. The new paper 
"Increasing mitigation ambition to meet the Paris Agreement's 
temperature goal avoids substantial heat-related mortality in US cities" 
give Mayors, Councils & voters more information & motivation for local 
climate action. They can see how climate mitigation could directly save 
lives.

The authors investigated future heat deaths in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, 
Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, 
Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, and Washington 
DC. A city-by-city approach is vital because there are so many different 
factors from adaptation to local weather. A national approach isn't 
enough to know what the future will bring.

Counter-intuitively, mortality risk is higher for northern cities such 
as Boston, Detroit, NYC, and Philadelphia than for southern cities such 
as Houston, Miami, and Phoenix. The authors concede that their numbers, 
though shocking, are very conservative. For the purposes of the model, 
they kept the population numbers the same right through 2050. But with 
population increasing, heat deaths likely would too.

Other conservative assumptions may be balanced somewhat by the unknown 
effect of adaptation. Cities in many countries reduced heat deaths after 
the 2003 Europe mass mortality event with better planning, public 
cooling centers & checking on seniors. We may manage to keep deaths down 
despite more deadly heat (until it overwhelms our ability to respond.)

THE IPCC NEVER ASKED ABOUT 3 DEGREE WARMING
The recent report by IPCC only compared possible outcomes of heating to 
1.5C (by 2100) versus 2C. Importantly, this paper considers a 3C future.

Like many of my guests, I ask Why bother talking about 1.5C warming? We 
are practically already there in many places, including in India for 9 
months per year. The only hope of 1.5C warming would be amazing and 
massive shift of whole economies to carbon capture and storage, removing 
CO2 from the atmosphere instead of adding it more rapidly as we did last 
year. [Stop Fossils Fuels adds: or by dedicated activists directly 
shutting down fossil fuels]

SOME OF MY CONCERNS
I worry that science is not getting to the full horror. Eunice Lo and 
her team did excellent science that is needed. However, science 
consistently understates the developing climate reality.

In my June 5th show, I interviewed Dr. Jane Baldwin, who found 
back-to-back heat waves are a new development since the year 2000. We 
don't know yet whether this phenomenon will kill more people. This new 
development would not be included in this paper's base-line climate, 
which ran from 1987 to 2000, so it may underestimate future heat deaths.

Will heat deaths follow a predictable ramp-up pattern, or will there be 
steep steps up as we warm? we don't know if warming above 2C will be 
experienced differently. We haven't been there before.

What if we don't have the stable social future this study assumes?

What if air conditioning isn't always available? If the grid goes down 
heat deaths could multiply greatly. California utility PG&E recently 
shut down the grid for some northern CA cities due to wildfire risk. 
Their grid actually started forest fires that burned out places like 
Paradise last year. Nuclear and coal stations have to shut down if 
cooling water supplies become too warm. A solar storm can knock down the 
grid. We can't count on air-conditioning to keep people alive, every 
year for the rest of this century.

What if we reach 3C of warming by 2050, not 2100?

Perhaps the future is too unstable to predict future heat deaths, other 
than saying they will be higher, and could be  much higher.

This paper finds almost 2,000 New Yorkers "would be saved from a 
heat-related death at a 2C increase compared with 3C heating." Forty 
thousand Americans died from guns last year. I'm not sure heat deaths 
will really motivate climate action. They may be seen as just another 
cost of business-as-usual. Are these numbers really high enough to 
motivate state actors at upcoming climate conferences?

I worry the numbers of future heat deaths in this paper are extremely 
conservative, given the large factors in play and the climate surprises 
already underway. This information is aimed at policy makers. Isn't it a 
danger for science to understate the risk?
https://www.ecoshock.org/2019/06/the-end-is-in-sight.html



[Reuters]
*UN: Global Warming Threatens to Defeat Effort to Fix World Ills*
By Reuters
July 10, 2019
NEW YORK - Relentless global warming threatens the potential success of 
a sweeping set of goals established by the United Nations to tackle 
inequality, conflict and other ills, officials said on Tuesday.

Climate change imperils food supplies, water and places where people 
live, endangering the U.N. plan to address these world problems by 2030, 
according to a report by U.N. officials.

Member nations of the U.N. unanimously adopted 17 global development 
goals in 2015, setting out a wide-ranging "to-do" list tackling such 
vexing issues as conflict, hunger, land degradation, gender inequality 
and climate change.

The latest report, which called climate change "the greatest challenge 
to sustainable development," came as diplomatic, business and other 
officials gathered for a high-level U.N. forum to take stock of the 
goals' progress.

"The most urgent area for action is climate change," said Liu Zhenmin, 
U.N. Under-Secretary General for Economic and Social Affairs, in the report.

"The compounded effects will be catastrophic and irreversible," he said, 
listing increased extreme weather events, more severe natural disasters 
and land degradation. "These effects, which will render many parts of 
the globe uninhabitable, will affect the poor the most."

Progress has been made on lowering child mortality, boosting 
immunization rates and global access to electricity, the report said.

Yet extreme poverty, hunger and inequality remain hugely problematic, 
and more than half of school-age children showed "shockingly low 
proficiency rates" in reading and math, it said.

Two-thirds of those children were in school.

Human trafficking rates nearly doubled from an average 150 detected 
victims per country in 2010 to 254 in 2016.

But it was unclear how much of the increase reflected improved reporting 
systems versus an increase in trafficking, said Francesca Perucci of the 
U.N.'s statistics division, who worked on the report.

"It's hard to exactly distinguish the two," she said at a launch of the 
report.

But climate change remained paramount.

Greenhouse gases have continued to climb, and "climate change is 
occurring much faster than anticipated," the report said.

At this week's goals summit, 47 countries were expected to present 
voluntary progress reviews. Almost 100 other countries and four cities 
including New York have done so.

Earlier U.N. reports said the goals were threatened by the persistence 
of violence, conflict and lack of private investment. Outside 
assessments have also cited nationalism, protectionism and insufficient 
funding.

The cost of implementing the global goals has been estimated at $3 
trillion a year.
https://www.voanews.com/science-health/un-global-warming-threatens-defeat-effort-fix-world-ills



*This Day in Climate History - July 11, 1990 - from D.R. Tucker*
July 11, 1990: The Los Angeles Times observes that President George H. 
W. Bush seems to have dissociative identity disorder when it comes to 
climate:

"The tension is often explained as a dispute between Bush's 
strong-willed chief of staff, John H. Sununu, who is deeply suspicious 
of environmentalists, and his Environmental Protection Agency chief, 
William K. Reilly.

"That explanation, however, is an inaccurate characterization, 
Administration officials say. Although Reilly has advocated a stronger 
environmental policy, he has neither the clout nor the access to Bush to 
challenge Sununu, the officials say. In fact, Reilly has been 
conspicuous by his absence from the economic summit, virtually the only 
senior Administration official with an interest in the summit issues 
whom Bush left in Washington.

"Instead, the disputes within the Administration reflect Bush's own 
ambivalence about the issues. Throughout his Administration, he has been 
pulled in opposite directions on the environment, tugged between his 
desire to placate environmentally-conscious voters on the one side and 
his instinct to protect business people from government regulation on 
the other."

The Times also notes:

"Bush's top aides are unanimous in believing that the scientific 
evidence is shaky on all aspects of global warming--the problem's 
dimensions, its potential effects and its causes."
http://articles.latimes.com/1990-07-11/news/mn-224_1_global-warming-issue
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