[TheClimate.Vote] July 16, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Richard Pauli richard at theclimate.vote
Tue Jul 16 10:53:18 EDT 2019 

/July 16, 2019/

[hunker down]
*'Breaking' the heat index: US heat waves to skyrocket as globe warms, 
study suggests*
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/07/16/heat-waves-worsen-because-global-warming-study-says/1734127001/ 



[NBC News video - some new briefing information]
*How Storms Are Changing | NBC News Now*
NBC News
Published on Jul 15, 2019
Sea surface temperatures have risen over the last 25 years. According to 
NOAA, that will likely mean future hurricanes have higher rainfall rates 
than current rainfall rates. And higher sea levels may also mean more 
damaging storm surges.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7oOezunmxo



[Inside Climate News]
*Could Climate Change Spark a Financial Crisis? Candidates Warn Fed It's 
a Risk*
Some of the Democrats running for president are urging the U.S. central 
bank to actively confront climate risks to protect the nation's 
financial system.
By JOHN LIPPERT
A few of the Democrats running for president have started warning about 
climate change in a way that voters rarely think about yet can 
profoundly affect their lives. To sum it up: If you think the housing 
crisis was bad, wait until you see how the climate crisis plays out for 
financial markets.

The candidates are urging the Federal Reserve--the United States' 
central bank--to work with financial institutions around the world to 
confront climate risks that could trigger cascading collapses.

They also want regulators to ensure that America's financial system is 
resilient to the impacts of climate change.

It's not just that fossil fuel projects, like other infrastructure 
investments, are at risk from severe weather events, a risk that lenders 
and insurance companies must shoulder. It's also that when the world 
finally weans itself away from the fossil fuels whose use is driving 
global warming, the business models of some of the most heavily 
capitalized world industries could crumble along with demand for their 
products.
***
**Investors call the problem "stranded assets," and they've been warning 
about it for years.*

The challenge for the candidates is to convert the experts' somewhat 
arcane and technical policy recommendations into a stump-speech sound 
bite or a debate-stage zinger. Candidates haven't yet been able to put 
the issue in such simple terms.

When they do, it might go something like this: "If we keep investing in 
a carbon bubble, the financial disaster that awaits us could make the 
subprime-mortgage crisis of 10 years ago look like penny-ante poker."

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, in a policy statement on June 24, became the 
latest 2020 candidate to call on the Fed to join the Network for 
Greening the Financial System (NGFS), a global coalition of 34 central 
banks and supervisors who are already mobilizing against what they call 
the systemic financial risk of climate change...
- - -
Sen. Elizabeth Warren has a prescription, first laid out last year in 
proposed legislation, that calls for publicly owned companies to 
disclose climate-related risks to their shareholders. This kind of 
public disclosure of risks to shareholders is featured in the policies 
of many other candidates, too. The Securities and Exchange Commission, 
which doesn't have as broad a mandate as the Fed to regulate the 
economy, would enforce this kind of standard.

In January, 20 senators--including Warren and fellow 2020 Democratic 
candidates Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and Bernie 
Sanders--wrote to the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell saying, 
"U.S. regulators must join their international peers in ensuring the 
financial system is resilient to climate-related risks."

When the housing crisis hit "in 2008, the idea that everything is fine 
and we have a nicely-regulated financial system that's not subject to 
radical change got blown to bits," said Eric Orts, a University of 
Pennsylvania business professor. "If you think we can do nothing about 
climate change, and let all these floods and hurricanes and wildfires 
get worse without having an economic disaster, then you're not looking 
reality in the face."

*Fed Chair Powell's Views on Climate Risk*
As a concept, systemic risk to financial institutions from climate 
change may be too technical to resonate in the breathless, 
thrust-and-parry swirl of U.S. politics, Orts said.

But central bankers have to acknowledge the threat because they're 
legally required to promote the stability of the banks and other 
financial institutions that they help regulate.
- - -
Still, it cautioned that "while the effects and risks of climate change 
are relevant factors for the Fed to consider, the Fed is not in a 
position to use monetary policy actively to foster a transition to a 
low-carbon economy."
Avoiding 'Sudden Collapse' of Asset Prices

The NGFS, whose members regulate two-thirds of the world's important 
banks and insurers but do not include the U.S. Fed, was cautious, too, 
when it urged its member central banks in April to collect better data 
for measuring systemic risk and to advance sustainability within their 
own vast portfolios.

Such measures "will help avoid a climate-driven 'Minsky moment,' -- the 
term we use to refer to a sudden collapse of asset prices," NGFS leaders 
said. (Hyman Minsky was an American economist who studied financial 
panics; he died in 1996.)

"It's a lot harder to dismiss the idea of systemic risk as 'some 
scientist trying to make a buck' when it's central bankers who are 
saying it," said Jamie Bonham, manager of corporate engagement at NEI 
Investments, a Toronto firm which manages $7.6 billion for investors. 
"They're as conservative a group as you can get, so I do hope this issue 
will start to influence the electoral side of things.''...
- - -
James Thurber, a presidential historian at American University, said the 
current climate denial in the Oval Office will only postpone the day of 
reckoning with climate change.

"Can our institutions deal with a problem like this when we're highly 
polarized and getting more polarized?" he asked. "That's the challenge 
for our democracy, and I worry about it every day."
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15072019/climate-change-financial-crisis-fed-powell-presidential-candidates-stranded-assets



[Global warming now has an opera]
Critic's Pick in the NYTimes
*Review: In Venice, an Opera Masks Climate Crisis in a Gentle Tune*
"Sun & Sea (Marina)," which won the top prize at this year's Venice 
Biennale, portrays a deceptively relaxing day at the beach.
An opera-performance by:
Rugile Barzdziukaite, Vaiva Grainyte and Lina Lapelyte
Curator: Lucia Pietroiusti
Commissioner: Rasa Antanaviciute
Honorary Commissioner: Jean-Baptiste Joly

Imagine a beach – you within it, or better: watching from above –
the burning sun, sunscreen and bright bathing suits and sweaty palms
and legs. Tired limbs sprawled lazily across a mosaic of towels.
Imagine the occasional squeal of children, laughter, the sound of an
ice cream van in the distance. The musical rhythm of waves on the
surf, a soothing sound (on this particular beach, not elsewhere).
The crinkling of plastic bags whirling in the air, their silent
floating, jellyfish-like, below the waterline. The rumble of a
volcano, or of an airplane, or a speedboat. Then a chorus of songs:
everyday songs, songs of worry and of boredom, songs of almost
nothing. And below them: the slow creaking of an exhausted Earth, a
gasp.

VENICE -- When "Sun & Sea (Marina)" won this year's Golden Lion, the top 
prize of the Venice Biennale, it was measured against works of 
predominantly visual art.

But "Sun & Sea" is an opera -- an excellent one that, in the event of a 
similar contest among new operas from around the world, could still come 
out on top. Within a single hour of dangerously gentle melodies, it 
manages to animate a panoramic cast of characters whose stories coalesce 
into a portrait of an apocalyptic climate crisis that goes down as 
easily as a trip to the beach...
- - -
"Sun & Sea" avoids political didacticism with poetic obliqueness, and a 
haunting simplicity that insinuates itself into your memory and, 
possibly, your opinions.

This is a remarkable achievement for a work that, put bluntly, is about 
climate change and the ways humans have brought about a crisis they 
can't fathom. Political art comes in all shapes and sizes, from agitprop 
to ambiguous elegy; "Sun & Sea" lands at neither end of the spectrum. By 
presenting an overwhelming dose of contemporary leisure, and all that it 
implies, the opera is more similar to the old-fashioned parenting trick 
of forcing a child caught smoking to finish the entire pack as punishment...
- - -
Libretto: https://www.sunandsea.lt/Sun-and-Sea_libretto.pdf
- - -
The libretto becomes more poetic as the afternoon continues, perhaps 
because these people have the luxury of being rendered a little 
delirious by the sun, like becoming sick after an indulgent dinner. One 
young man, lying down with his shirt open, recounts a fever dream that 
comes to a nightmarish swell -- the loudest and most explicitly 
disturbing moment of the score. Another, wearing headphones, lets his 
mind wander to thoughts about how the modern world has made it possible 
for exotic produce to travel thousands of miles to your grocery store...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/14/arts/music/sun-and-sea-lithuania-venice-biennale-review.html
- - -
[a few videos]
Lithuania - Sun & Sea (Marina) - Venice Art Biennale 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZPF6DFWPjk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p368BYi5IS0
Watch this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npxpX2t8aJs
- -
[from the libretto]
22. 3D SISTERS' SONG–

I cried so much when I learned that corals will be gone.
And together with the Great Barrier Reef
  the fish would go extinct
- From sharks to the smallest fry.
- I cried so much when I learned bees are massively falling from the
sky,
And with them all the world's plant life will die.
- I cried so much when I understood that I am mortal,
That my body will one day get old and wither.
And I won't see, or feel, or smell ever again...
- My mother left a 3D printer turned on.
And the machine began to print me out.
When my body dies, I will remain,
In an empty planet without birds, animals  and  corals.
Yet with the press of a single button, I will remake this world again:
- 3D corals never fade away!
- 3D animals never lose their horns!
- 3D food doesn't have a price!
- 3D me lives forever!
I will print you out, mother,
When I need you,
My sister too, I will print you out,
When I miss you dearly.
All of us together will print out some meat,
And shrimp as well,
When we want something savoury to eat.And we will print out the bees,
So that at least some sweetness is left

3D CORALS NEVER FADE AWAY!
3D ANIMALS NEVER LOSE THEIR HORNS!
3D FOOD DOESN'T HAVE A PRICE!
3D ME LIVES FOREVER!

https://www.sunandsea.lt/Sun-and-Sea_libretto.pdf



[Interesting, classic book of catastrophic paleoclimatology]
*Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of Modern Civilization - 
February 1, 2000*
by David Keys (Author)
 From Publishers Weekly
In Keys's startling thesis, a global climatic catastrophe in A.D. 
535-536--a massive volcanic eruption sundering Java from Sumatra--was 
the decisive factor that transformed the ancient world into the 
medieval, or as Keys prefers to call it, the "proto-modern" era. Ancient 
chroniclers record a disaster in that year that blotted out the sun for 
months, causing famine, droughts, floods, storms and bubonic plague. 
Keys, archeology correspondent for the London Independent, uses 
tree-ring samples, analysis of lake deposits and ice cores, as well as 
contemporaneous documents to bolster his highly speculative thesis. In 
his scenario, the ensuing disasters precipitated the disintegration of 
the Roman Empire, beset by Slav, Mongol and Persian invaders propelled 
from their disrupted homelands. The sixth-century collapse of Arabian 
civilization under pressure from floods and crop failure created an 
apocalyptic atmosphere that set the stage for Islam's emergence. In 
Mexico, Keys claims, the cataclysm triggered the collapse of a 
Mesoamerican empire; in Anatolia, it helped the Turks establish what 
eventually became the Ottoman Empire; while in China, the ensuing 
half-century of political and social chaos led to a reunified nation. 
Huge claims call for big proof, yet Keys reassembles history to fit his 
thesis, relentlessly overworking its explanatory power in a manner 
reminiscent of Velikovsky's theory that a comet collided with the earth 
in 1500 B.C. Readers anxious about future cataclysms will take note of 
Keys's roundup of trouble spots that could conceivably wreak planetary 
havoc. Maps. BOMC and QPBC selections. (Feb.)
https://www.amazon.com/Catastrophe-Investigation-Origins-Modern-Civilization/dp/0345408764/ref=sr_1_4


*This Day in Climate History - July 16, - from D.R. Tucker*
July 16, 1992: At the 1992 Democratic National Convention, Senator and 
Vice-Presidential nominee Al Gore notes:

"I've spent much of my career working to protect the environment,
not only because it is vital to the future of my State of Tennessee,
our country and our earth, but because I believe there is a
fundamental link between our current relationship to the earth and
the attitudes that stand in the way of human progress. For
generations we have believed that we could abuse the earth because
we were somehow not really connected to it, but now we must face the
truth. The task of saving the earth's environment must and will
become the central organizing principle of the post-Cold War world.

"And just as the false assumption that we are not connected to the
earth has led to the ecological crisis, so the equally false
assumption that we are not connected to each other has led to our
social crisis."

He also declares that President George H. W. Bush and Vice President
Dan Quayle  "embarrassed our nation when the whole world was asking
for American leadership in confronting the environmental crisis. It
is time for them to go."

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/27161-1
http://www.speeches-usa.com/Transcripts/al_gore-1992dnc.htm
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