[TheClimate.Vote] July 14, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest.

[Richard Pauli]

/July 14, 2019/

[NPR explains]
*Climate Change Fuels Wetter Storms -- Storms Like Barry*
"Increasing precipitation, especially heavy rain events, has increased 
the overall flood risk," according to the most recent National Climate 
Assessment.

The water from this spring's rains flowed downstream, into the 
Mississippi River and down toward the Gulf of Mexico. As a result, the 
Mississippi River in New Orleans was already high when Barry arrived, 
pushing ocean water upstream as storm surge, and dumping rain onto the 
region...
https://www.npr.org/2019/07/13/741324506/climate-change-fuels-wetter-storms-storms-like-barry 



[Forbes says]
*A Massive Hunk Of Ice Will Reshape The World's Coastlines Sooner Than 
We Thought*
Eric Mack
Global mean sea level has risen by about eight inches (20 cm) since 
1900, with three of those inches coming in the last quarter century and 
coastal flooding becoming more common as result.

But a huge sheet of ice the size of Florida is growing unstable and 
could flow into the ocean sooner than expected, pushing the sea level up 
by another foot and a half. And this is all presuming that global 
temperatures stay like they are right now and don't continue to rise.

Spoiler alert: no one expects those temperatures to stop rising anytime 
soon.

A new study out this week looked at potential instability within the 
huge Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica that could accelerate its inevitable 
rate of flow into the ocean.

"If you trigger this instability, you don't need to continue to force 
the ice sheet by cranking up temperatures. It will keep going by itself, 
and that's the worry," said Georgia Tech professor Alex Robel, who led 
the NASA-funded study published in Proceedings of the National Academy 
of Sciences.

The instability has to do with the amount of ice that rests on the 
bedrock seafloor versus extending over water and contributing to sea 
level rise.

"Once ice is past the grounding line and only over water, it's 
contributing to sea level because buoyancy is holding it up more than it 
was before," Robel said. "Ice flows out into the floating ice shelf and 
melts or breaks off as icebergs."

Once the ice is over water it also speeds up the process by which more 
ice above it flows to the sea.

"The process becomes self-perpetuating," said NASA JPL scientist Helene 
Seroussi, who collaborated on the study. "After reaching the tipping 
point, Thwaites Glacier could lose all of its ice in a period of 150 
years. That would make for a sea level rise of about half a meter (1.64 
feet)."

Perhaps the most pernicious problem is that the instability within the 
ice sheet can make forecasting future flood risks particularly challenging.

"You want to engineer critical infrastructure to be resistant against 
the upper bound of potential sea level scenarios a hundred years from 
now," Robel said. "It can mean building your water treatment plants and 
nuclear reactors for the absolute worst-case scenario, which could be 
two or three feet of sea level rise from Thwaites Glacier alone, so it's 
a huge difference."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2019/07/12/a-massive-hunk-of-ice-will-reshape-the-worlds-coastlines-sooner-than-we-thought/#509d8a83577a



[Quack, quack]
*To Survive in a Wetter World, Raise Ducks, Not Chickens*
Farmers in Bangladesh are adapting to climate change, and it's having an 
impact in faraway places--including on restaurant menus...
- - -
Chickens catch infections much more easily than ducks do when they get 
wet, too hot, or too cold, Helal Uddin, the BRAC agriculturalist who 
first came up with the duck program, told me. And when it rained, Akter 
and her husband had to pay to raise the floor of their coop to protect 
the chickens, cutting into their profits. The couple "had to stress 
about selling them as soon as possible," Akter said.

Ducks are also more profitable, selling for almost twice as much as 
similar-size chickens. While the price might eventually go down as 
supply increases, duck raising still provides a year-round 
income--unlike rice crops, which, because of the region's weather 
patterns, can be harvested only once a year.
Mohamed Nazrul, a farmer in the Haors, has developed a thriving duck 
business. He and his small team take care of thousands of ducks, herding 
them to and from the water. (Susannah Savage)

Akter's ducks are sold as meat, but others are involved in different 
parts of duck farming. A decade ago, Pinku Das and his wife, Shipra, 
started to raise ducks for eggs when his work as a day laborer was not 
bringing in enough money. For the first four years, the couple had only 
about 20 ducks, but after receiving a loan and training from BRAC, they 
were able to scale up their business. Now they have a few thousand ducks 
and are collecting at least 500 eggs a day, and their income has jumped 
about tenfold...
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/07/bangladesh-climate-change-floods-ducks/593581/



[Activists storm German mine in anti-coal protest - DW video]
*German environment minister: No more 'soapbox speeches' on climate 
protection*
The Fridays for Future youth movement has piled on the pressure; in 
Germany, politicians are debating a carbon tax. DW spoke with 
Environment Minister Svenja Schulze about whether climate protection 
efforts are enough.
- - -
"Carbon pricing essential to stop climate change"...
- - -
It has to be enforced; I don't even want to think of the alternative. If 
we don't manage to make a shift, if our CO2 emissions keep being twice 
as high as the worldwide average, then it will be difficult for us, our 
environment, but also the economy, which will lag behind new developments.
- -
https://www.dw.com/en/german-environment-minister-no-more-soapbox-speeches-on-climate-protection/a-49567374?maca=en-newsletter_en_bulletin-2097-html-newsletter



[Activism organized independently - check your city http://bit.ly/2wri78B]
*Extinction Rebellion YouTube channel*
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYThdLKE6TDwBJh-qDC6ICA
- - -
[July 15th action Monday in UK]
*Summer Uprising Starts on 15 July - Time To Rebel | Extinction Rebellion*
Extinction Rebellion
Published on Jul 13, 2019
Starting Monday 15 July, we rise up in an organic, decentralised and 
coordinated action with one main message: ACT NOW!

Throughout the week, rebels will disrupt central spaces in five cities 
with the support of local groups from across the UK:

- Bristol (XR South West England)
- Cardiff (XR Wales)
- Leeds (XR North England)
- Glasgow (XR Scotland)
- London (XR Central and South England)

ACTIONS AT EACH CITY
Each of the five actions are being organised independently and operate 
on different schedules, so stay tuned to the main Extinction Rebellion 
UK page as well as local XR websites and social media channels for each 
plan:

- Extinction Rebellion Bristol
- Cardiff Extinction Rebellion
- Extinction Rebellion Scotland
- Extinction Rebellion Leeds
- Extinction Rebellion London

However, we can guarantee civil disobedience, family friendly spaces, 
love and music and an object of significance to be core elements at 
every site.
Edited by Lindford Lowe
Learn more and #RebelForLife #TheTimeIsNow
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=xdQYDcBbLgM



[Promising, so please hurry]
*New Designs Could Boost Solar Cells Beyond Their Limits*
- --
The ceiling on solar cell efficiency, known as the Shockley-Queisser 
limit, is between 29 and 33 percent, depending on how you measure it. It 
assumes a single-junction cell, meaning it's made using only one type of 
semiconductor and is energized by direct sunlight. To nose past the 
limit, researchers have tried stacking multiple types of semiconductors 
or using lenses to concentrate light so that the cell receives a blast 
hundreds of times more powerful than the sun. Earlier this year, the 
National Renewable Energy Lab set a world record when it used a 
six-junction solar cell and a beam 143 times more concentrated than 
sunlight to achieve a whopping 47.1 percent energy efficiency...
- - -
As detailed in a paper published last week in Nature, Baldo's team 
coated solar cells in a thin layer of tetracene, an organic molecule 
that effectively splits incoming photons in two. This process is known 
as exciton fission and means that the solar cell is able to use high 
energy photons from the blue-green part of the visible spectrum.

Here's how it works. Silicon solar cells generate an electric current by 
using incoming photons to knock electrons from the silicon into a 
circuit. How much energy does that take? It depends on an attribute of 
the material known as its bandgap. Silicon's bandgap corresponds to 
infrared photons, which carry less energy than photons in the visible 
part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Photons outside silicon's bandgap 
essentially go to waste. But here's where the tetracene comes in: It 
splits blue-green photons into two "packets" of energy that are each 
equivalent to an infrared photon. So rather than each infrared photon 
knocking free one electron, a single photon in the blue-green spectrum 
can knock free two electrons. It's essentially getting two photons for 
the price of one...
- - -
  Ultimately, getting more sunlight on the grid will likely involve a 
suite of solar technologies, each with its own advantages.
https://www.wired.com/story/new-designs-could-boost-solar-cells-beyond-their-limits/


[combined weather assaults]
*Flood Risks from All Sides: Barry's Triple Whammy in Louisiana*
With climate change loading the dice for disaster, a storm fueled by 
warmer-than-normal Gulf water is headed for a Mississippi River already 
swollen with floodwater.
The Gulf Coast is about to be pummelled by a three-punch combo: Flooding 
from heavy rains over the winter and spring has been sending record 
floodwaters coursing down the Mississippi River, pushing the river close 
to the top of its protective levees in Louisiana. Now a cyclone fueled 
by warm offshore waters is threatening to bring downpours to the same 
area and to push a storm surge up the bayous at the river's mouth...
- -
Climate scientists warn that as global warming trends persist, rising 
sea levels, coupled with more intense storms and heavy rainfall, will 
pummel coastal cities like New Orleans, making storm surge and rainfall 
flooding more frequent and recovery efforts more costly.

"Water is the biggest risk," said Kevin Trenberth, a scientist at the 
National Center for Atmospheric Research, noting that floods not only 
pose immediate danger, but also broader health risks by potentially 
spreading toxins and disease.
- - -
Two studies last summer warned of a rising risk of simultaneous crop 
failures across the world's breadbaskets, and the potential for food 
shocks and malnutrition that would likely hit the poorest countries 
hardest. One study found that the likelihood of the four biggest 
corn-exporting regions--the U.S., Brazil, Argentina and Ukraine--all 
losing 10 percent or more of their crop at the same time would rise from 
a percentage in the single digits at 2 degrees Celsius ( warming to more 
than 85 percent at 4°C.

University of Hawaii scientist Camilo Mora and a team explored more 
interconnections in a study published last December, including the risks 
simultaneous climate hazards such as heat waves, droughts and storms 
would pose to the environment, food security, infrastructure and human 
health. By the end of the century, they found, populations could be 
facing three or more large-scale climate crises concurrently if the 
greenhouse gas emissions driving global warming aren't reduced.

The state of Louisiana recognizes many of the risks facing its residents 
as the planet warms and has started to take steps to prepare.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/12072019/climate-change-hurricane-mississippi-river-flooding-storm-surge-barry-new-orleans
-- - -
[500 page IPCC report is vitally important, yet difficult to read]
*Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to 
Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX). *
Summary for Policymakers
Context
This Summary for Policymakers presents key findings from the Special 
Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance 
Climate Change Adaptation (SREX). The SREX approaches the topic by 
assessing the scientific literature on issues that range from the 
relationship between climate change and extreme weather and  climate 
events ('climate extremes') to the implications of these events for 
society and sustainable development. The assessment concerns the 
interaction of climatic, environmental, and human factors that can lead 
to impacts and disasters, options for managing the risks posed by 
impacts and disasters, and the important role that non-climatic factors 
play in determining impacts. Box SPM.1 defines concepts central to the 
SREX. The character and severity of impacts from climate extremes depend 
not only on the extremes themselves but also on exposure and 
vulnerability. In this report, adverse impacts are considered disasters 
when they produce widespread damage and cause severe alterations in the 
normal functioning of communities or societies. Climate 
extremes,exposure, and vulnerability are influenced by a wide range of 
factors, including anthropogenic climate change, natural climate 
variability, and socioeconomic development. Disaster risk management and 
adaptation to climate change focus on reducing exposure and 
vulnerability and increasing resilience to the potential adverse impacts 
of climate extremes, even though risks cannot fully be eliminated. 
Although mitigation of climatechange is not the focus of this report, 
adaptation and mitigation can complement each other and together can 
significantly reduce the risks of climate change.
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/SREX_Full_Report-1.pdf



[please recommend theClimate.Vote]
*US philanthropists vow to raise millions for climate activists*
Fund donates [pound sterling] 500,000 to grassroots Extinction Rebellion 
and other groups, with promise of more to come
Neilson, who co-founded investment company IX investments, said although 
he had been a longtime backer of environmental projects, it was only 
when he was forced to flee his house in California last year during a 
wildfire that he realised that radical action was needed.   "Something 
about throwing my two-year-old and wife in the car and evacuating from 
the worst fire in the history of southern California brought the issue 
into a new type of focus," he said...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/12/us-philanthropists-vow-to-raise-millions-for-climate-activists



[Guardian article links global warming  with colonialism, racism, 
sexism, social disruptions]
*We were already over 350ppm when I was born*
Jamie Margolin
The devastation is too great. We can't simply slap solar panels 
everywhere and call it a day, writes 17-year-old climate activist Jamie 
Margolin

The climate crisis is such an overwhelming problem that many people 
understandably want to keep it separate from other issues. After all, 
the task seems daunting enough already. To avoid catastrophic climate 
disruption, global emissions of greenhouse gases must be slashed by 45% 
by 2030, requiring unprecedented transformations in energy, agriculture 
and other key economic sectors, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on 
Climate Change declared last October. But treating the climate crisis as 
a stand-alone problem is a mistake. Issues of justice - economic 
justice, racial justice, gender justice and intergenerational justice - 
lie at the heart of this crisis, and these injustices must be addressed 
if the fight for a livable future is to succeed. We can't simply slap 
solar panels everywhere and call it a day. We have to dismantle the 
systems of oppression that gave rise to and perpetuate the climate 
crisis, including colonialism, racism and patriarchy.

Many people trace the origins of today's climate crisis to the 
Industrial Revolution, when humans first began to burn large amounts of 
coal, but the crisis's true roots extend further back to the onset of 
colonialism. When European colonizers ventured to Africa, Asia, North 
and South America, they invariably plundered the local natural 
resources, damaged habitats, hunted species to extinction and often 
forced human inhabitants into slavery. Undergirding European colonialism 
was the assumption that everything on the earth was meant to be 
extracted, bought and sold - and to make an elite minority very rich. In 
the eyes of the colonizers, the "new" lands they encountered had no 
owners - no one had purchased them with a recognizable currency or could 
prove ownership with property records - so it was free pickings. Along 
with this attitude came the idea that nothing - not air, not water, not 
trees, not animals - was sacred or priceless.

Colonialism's mindset of heedless extraction, greed and human 
exploitation not only planted the seeds of today's climate crisis, it 
remains visible in the crisis's central injustice: although the poor are 
responsible for only a tiny share of humanity's greenhouse gas 
emissions, they generally suffer first and worst from the heatwaves, 
droughts, storms, rising seas and other effects of those emissions. Most 
countries in Asia, Africa and South America that endured centuries of 
colonization remain relatively poor today, and even countries like India 
and China whose prosperity is increasing emit much less per capita than 
do the rich countries in North America and Europe. Extreme weather and 
other climate impacts strike all over the world, but the rich are better 
positioned to withstand those impacts. The rich have the money to build 
seawalls, for example, and to operate satellites that warn about an 
impending hurricane so coastal dwellers can retreat to safety. And when 
disaster strikes, nonwhite or non-affluent communities are often 
shortchanged during relief efforts. After Hurricane Katrina devastated 
New Orleans in 2005, black homeowners received $8,000 less per family in 
government resettlement aid than did white homeowners. Which helps 
explain why, even eight years after the storm, roughly 80% of the mostly 
black residents of the city's Lower Ninth ward had not returned.

That brings us to the next system of oppression driving today's climate 
crisis - racism. Study after study has shown that people of color and 
those living in poverty are exposed to higher levels of environmental 
pollution and suffer commensurately greater health problems. More than 
half of the residents within two miles of toxic waste facilities in the 
United States are people of color, according to a study by the Natural 
Resources Defense Council. People of color are nearly twice as likely as 
white people to live close to an industrial facility, a report by the 
Center for Effective Government found. People who lived close to 
industrial facilities and waste sites in the Bronx borough of New York 
City were 66% more likely to be hospitalized for asthma, according to 
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Why are the vast majority of fossil fuel production sites located in low 
income or immigrant or communities of color? Because these people have 
long been victimized by racism, and their perceived powerlessness makes 
them easy targets for the corporations that operate those facilities and 
the governments that permit them. By contrast, wealthy white citizens 
tend to have the money and power to keep such projects out of their 
neighborhoods. Take the Dakota Access pipeline, a project designed to 
transport up to half a million barrels of crude oil daily from North 
Dakota to Illinois. As ABC News reported, that pipeline was originally 
set to be built through a majority white community, Bismarck, North 
Dakota, but when that community rejected it, the pipeline was rerouted 
through indigenous land. Jesse Jackson, who joined the protests against 
the rerouting, called it "the ripest case of environmental racism I've 
seen in a long time"

On top of colonialism and racism, the third system of oppression shaping 
the climate crisis is patriarchy. Simply put, women are more affected by 
climate disruption than men are. The UN's Gateway on Gender Equality and 
Empowerment project has documented that 80% of the people displaced by 
climate disasters are female. Women's roles as primary caregivers and 
providers of food and fuel make us more vulnerable when flooding and 
drought occur. In central Africa, where up to 90% of Lake Chad has 
disappeared, nomadic indigenous women are particularly at risk. As the 
lake's shoreline recedes, women have to walk much further to collect 
water. With dry seasons becoming longer, women are forced to work harder 
to feed and care for their families. In addition, women worldwide are 
more likely to be living in poverty, so it's more difficult for them to 
recover after climate-related and other disasters.
Advertisement

This is how systems of oppression intertwine with the climate crisis. 
People of color, women, poor people, disabled people, queer people, 
homeless people - pretty much everyone who is already vulnerable is 
disproportionately at risk from climate disruption.
Which is why the climate crisis demands bigger solutions than we 
initially thought. We need to see the climate crisis not as a 
stand-alone issue floating separately from everything else, but as the 
grand culmination of societal injustices that have been building up for 
centuries. We must speak truth to power, call out these systems of 
oppression and put social justice at the center of our fight for a 
livable future. We must pressure elected leaders, corporations, the news 
media and others in power not only to abandon fossil fuels and other 
climate-destructive activities but also to address the systems of 
oppression that gave rise to the climate crisis in the first place.

You can take action by joining Zero Hour, a youth-led climate action 
group that I co-founded. Zero Hour is hosting a summit 12-14 July in 
Miami where activists will discuss how these systems of oppression 
intersect with the climate crisis and what we can do about it. This Is 
Zero Hour: The Youth Climate Summit is open to everyone, but it will 
highlight the voices of youth who are at the receiving end of these 
systems and fighting back.

Join us! Because the only way to overcome a crisis this big is with a 
climate action revolution.
Jamie Margolin, 17, is a Colombian American student, author, activist 
and a founder of the youth climate action organization Zero Hour
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/12/jamie-margolin-zero-hour-climate-change




[TED talk on systemic change]
*How I Became a Localist | Deborah Frieze | TEDxJamaicaPlain*
Most of our big systems--education, healthcare, government, 
business--are failing our communities. What if we stopped trying to fix 
them? Deborah Frieze says it's not possible to change big systems--we 
can only abandon them and start over or offer hospice to what's dying. 
This talk explores the underlying beliefs in our culture that continue 
to prop up the global mindset and shares a radical theory of change that 
reveals how localism is the hope of the future--and you have a critical 
role to play.
Deborah Frieze is an author, entrepreneur and activist committed to 
strengthening local economies. Her award-winning book, co-authored with 
Margaret Wheatley, 'Walk Out Walk On: A Learning Journey into 
Communities Daring to Live the Future Now,' profiles pioneering leaders 
who walked out of organizations failing to contribute to the common 
good--and walked on to build resilient communities. She is a founding 
partner of the Boston Impact Initiative and founder of the Old Oak Dojo, 
an urban learning center in Jamaica Plain where neighbors gather to 
rediscover how to create healthy and resilient communities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jTdZSPBRRE


*This Day in Climate History - July 14, - from D.R. Tucker*
July 14, 2016:
The Associated Press reports:

"Escalating a political fight over global warming, a Republican
House chairman issued subpoenas Wednesday to two Democratic state
attorneys general, seeking records about their investigation into
whether Exxon Mobil misled investors about global warming.

"Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Science Committee, is
pursuing records from New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman
and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey along with nine
environmental, scientific and philanthropic organizations. Smith
insisted he acted only after they refused for months to give the
panel information lawmakers had requested on the Exxon Mobil case.

"Smith, who is among a large group of congressional Republicans who
reject mainstream climate science, said Schneiderman and Healey were
pursuing "a political agenda" on behalf of environmental groups that
are fighting Exxon over decades-old research related to climate change.

"The groups accuse Exxon of hiding early findings showing a link
between global warming and the burning of fossil fuels such as oil
and gas. Exxon denies that it suppressed findings from its own
research that dates back more than 30 years."

https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2016/07/13/maura-healey-among-ags-subpoenaed-house-gop/QvfnvnIpXVOVhwASqs0SwL/story.html
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