[TheClimate.Vote] July 19, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest.

[Richard Pauli]

/*July 19, 2019*/

[NPR July 18, 2019]
*Heat Wave Blankets Much Of The U.S. This Week*
"We're seeing heat waves ride on a background temperature that is just 
getting warmer. So if you've got a situation where temperatures are ten 
degrees warmer than normal, normal itself is actually getting warmer. So 
a heat wave that might have happened back in the 50s, is going to be a 
lot hotter now," Francis said. "Another aspect that we see connected to 
climate change but that you don't hear about as much is the fact that 
there is also a lot more water vapor in the atmosphere now. As we warm 
the oceans and warm the air, there is more evaporation, and that water 
vapor makes us feel hotter."...
https://www.npr.org/2019/07/18/743268248/heat-wave-blankets-much-of-the-u-s-this-week
- - - -
[Heat wave]
*5 Great Public Health Resources for Dealing With Extreme Heat*
Rachel Licker, senior climate scientist | July 16, 2019
- -
These are five resources that can help you and your loved ones stay safe 
during an extreme heat event. There are others available, some of which 
you can find by way of these resources. You can also help keep others in 
your community safe, for example by checking in on elderly neighbors or 
other people you know who are particularly vulnerable to heat.

*Is there an active heat alert?* An important step in staying safe
is to know what conditions are like - and are forecast to be like -
outside. All US residents can turn to weather.gov - the National
Weather Service's homepage - to find out whether there are any
active heat alerts. The National Weather Service maintains a list of
phone apps, websites, and other sources of weather alerts here.
Local weather forecasters will also provide this information and it
is important to follow their advice - heat is currently one of the
top weather-related causes of death in the US, and there is a lot
that people can do to prevent heat-related illness.
*Learn the signs of heat-related illness.* The U.S. Center for
Disease Control (CDC) maintains this helpful guide to heat-related
illness signs and symptoms, and what to do if you exhibit them.
*What to do to stay safe*. The Heat Safety Tips and Resources
website from the National Weather Service is chock-full of resources
on how to stay safe during an extreme heat event. There is
information specific to particular segments of the US population,
including parents, outdoor workers, Spanish speakers, and
pet-owners. Similarly, the CDC also maintains this helpful website
that has information for many other groups, including older adults,
low-income households, those with diabetes, and athletes. It is
important to know about the unique vulnerability of yourself and any
dependents you might have.
*Find your closest cooling center and other local resources - call
211*. Many cities and communities have cooling centers in places
such as libraries, town government buildings, senior centers, or
shopping centers that residents can visit for respite from the heat.
The federal government set up 211 as a line that people can call to
get connected with expert help. Some states and communities,
including New York have this information online. Calling one's town
government, including a police station, can also help track down
this information.
*What's your plan?* It is important to have a plan in place on how
you and any dependents will stay safe should a heat wave hit.
Ready.gov provides suggestions on how to prepare.
Last but not least, there are measures that need to be taken now by
our federal and state governments, as well as our communities, to
reduce the threat of extreme heat in the future...

https://blog.ucsusa.org/rachel-licker/5-great-public-health-resources-for-dealing-with-extreme-heat?_ga=2.76632786.63543193.1563497444-427552223.1561526366



[acting on change]
*New York Awards Offshore Wind Contracts in Bid to Reduce Emissions*
The wind projects, one of which will be 14 miles south of Jones Beach 
and the other 30 miles north of Montauk, are meant to be an important 
part of the state's plan to get 70 percent of its electricity from 
renewable sources by 2030. The projects will be built by a division of 
Equinor, the Norwegian oil and gas company, and a joint venture between 
Orsted, a Danish company, and Eversource Energy, an American firm...
- - -
Other states, including California, are also looking closely at offshore 
wind. Lawmakers in California passed legislation last year requiring 
that 100 percent of the state's electricity come from carbon-free 
sources by 2045.

But the deep waters off the West Coast will require wind turbines that 
can float, rather than be attached to the sea floor. The waters off the 
East Coast are shallower, making it easier and cheaper to install 
turbines there.

There are only slightly more than a dozen floating wind turbines around 
the world, mostly in Europe and Japan.

Some experts believe floating systems on the West Coast could eventually 
become a major energy source because the winds are even stronger and 
more consistent in the Pacific Ocean than in the Atlantic Ocean.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/business/energy-environment/offshore-wind-farm-new-york.html


[Canada legal ruling]
*Canadian Judge Halts Youth Climate Lawsuit*
By Dana Drugmand
A Canadian judge halted a climate lawsuit filed by a group of young 
people in Quebec against the Canadian government, rejecting its class 
action status in a ruling last week.

The lawsuit was brought by the organization ENvironnement JEUnesse 
(ENJEU) on behalf of people age 35 and under in Quebec. The group said 
it plans to appeal the narrow procedural ruling, in which the judge 
questioned the age definition of the class of young Canadians.

In his ruling, Justice Gary Morrison of the Superior Court of Quebec 
wrote, "the choice of age 35 by [ENvironnement JEUnesse] to the maximum 
age of members, leaves the Tribunal perplexed…But why choose 35 years? 
Why not 20, 30 or 40? Why not 60?"

Advocates representing the young plaintiffs said they did not expect the 
judge to take issue with the case's age limit, chosen to emphasize that 
the climate crisis will disproportionately impact young people.

"I was really surprised with the judge asking what about people 60 years 
old," said Catherine Gauthier, executive director of ENJEU.

"It goes without saying that a 60-year-old could not qualify as a young 
person," added Bruce Johnston, a lawyer and partner at Trudel Johnston & 
Lespérance, which is representing ENJEU pro bono.

Morrison also questioned the "35 and under" classification with no 
defined minimum age. Class members, he said, should be at least 18 years 
old...
https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2019/07/15/canadian-youth-climate-lawsuit-quebec/


[Turkish television...evidence of trauma]
*Femia on TRT World: The Strategic Benefit of Acting on Climate and 
Security*
Francesco Femia on TRT WorldIn an interview segment released yesterday 
by TRT World, Francesco Femia, the Co-Founder of the Center for Climate 
and Security and CEO of the Council on Strategic Risks, spoke with host 
Ghida Fakhry and WRI's Rebecca Carter about the increasing evidence of a 
connection between climate change and conflict, the  growing bipartisan 
consensus in the United States about the security risks of climate 
change, and the idea of action on climate and security as a strategic 
benefit for countries that wish to expand their leadership and 
influence.  The interview begins at 17:45, below.
https://youtu.be/A5L1EyRxD6k
- - -
*Climate Conflict? | Bigger Than Five*
TRT World
Published on Jul 17, 2019
Extreme droughts and flooding in India, a heat wave in Europe and 
security threat warnings in the US.  Global emissions are on the rise, 
prompting the United Nations to warn about what it calls the risks of 
'climate apartheid', where the wealthy pay to escape the devastating 
consequences of climate change, leaving the poor to suffer.  Are big 
polluters ignoring the climate crisis and the risks it poses to their 
countries and the world-at-large?
Guests:
Myron Ebell- President Trump's Former EPA Transition Chief & Director of 
the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise 
Institute
Rebecca Carter- Deputy Director of the Climate Resilience Practice at 
the World Resources Institute
Francesco Femia- Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of The Council 
on Strategic Risks & Co-Founder of The Center for Climate and Security
https://youtu.be/A5L1EyRxD6k


[clipping from a great, classic essay by Chris Hedges]
*We Are All Aboard the Pequod*
Melville, who had been a sailor on clipper ships and whalers, was keenly 
aware that the wealth of industrialized societies came from the 
exploited of the earth. "Yes; all these brave houses and flowery gardens 
came from the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans," Ishmael says of New 
England's prosperity. "One and all, they were harpooned and dragged up 
hither from the bottom of the sea."

Our country is given shape in the form of the ship, the Pequod,
named after the Indian tribe exterminated in 1638 by the Puritans
and their Native American allies. The ship's 30-man crew--there were
30 states in the Union when Melville wrote the novel--is a mixture
of races and creeds. The object of the hunt is a massive white
whale, Moby Dick, which, in a previous encounter, maimed the ship's
captain, Ahab, by biting off one of his legs. The self-destructive
fury of the quest, much like that of the one we are on, assures the
Pequod's destruction. And those on the ship, on some level, know
they are doomed--just as many of us know that a consumer culture
based on corporate profit, limitless exploitation and the continued
extraction of fossil fuels is doomed.

"If I had been downright honest with myself," Ishmael admits, "I
would have seen very plainly in my heart that I did but half fancy
being committed this way to so long a voyage, without once laying my
eyes on the man who was to be the absolute dictator of it, so soon
as the ship sailed out upon the open sea. But when a man suspects
any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in
the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even
from himself. And much this way it was with me. I said nothing, and
tried to think nothing."
We, like Ahab and his crew, rationalize madness. All calls for
prudence, for halting the march toward environmental catastrophe,
for sane limits on carbon emissions, are ignored or ridiculed. Even
with the flashing red lights before us, the increased droughts,
rapid melting of glaciers and Arctic ice, monster tornadoes, vast
hurricanes, crop failures, floods, raging wildfires and soaring
temperatures, we bow slavishly before hedonism and greed and the
enticing illusion of limitless power, intelligence and prowess. We
believe in the eternal wellspring of material progress. We are our
own idols. Nothing will halt our voyage; it seems to us to have been
decreed by natural law. "The path to my fixed purpose is laid with
iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run," Ahab declares. We
have surrendered our lives to corporate forces that ultimately serve
systems of death. Microbes will inherit the earth.

In our decline, hatred becomes our primary lust, our highest form of
patriotism and a form of eroticism. We are made supine by hatred and
fear. We deploy vast resources to hunt down jihadists and
terrorists, real and phantom. We destroy our civil society in the
name of a war on terror. We persecute those, from Julian Assange to
Bradley Manning to Edward Snowden, who expose the dark machinations
of power. We believe, because we have externalized evil, that we can
purify the earth. We are blind to the evil within us. Melville's
description of Ahab is a description of the bankers, corporate
boards, politicians, television personalities and generals who
through the power of propaganda fill our heads with seductive images
of glory and lust for wealth and power. We are consumed with
self-induced obsessions that spur us toward self-annihilation.

After the attacks of 9/11, Edward Said saw the parallel with "Moby
Dick" and wrote in the London newspaper The Observer:

Osama bin Laden's name and face have become so numbingly familiar to
Americans as in effect to obliterate any history he and his shadowy
followers might have had before they became stock symbols of
everything loathsome and hateful to the collective imagination.
Inevitably, then, collective passions are being funneled into a
drive for war that uncannily resembles Captain Ahab in pursuit of
Moby Dick, rather than what is going on, an imperial power injured
for the first time, pursuing its interests systematically in what
has become a suddenly reconfigured geography of conflict.

Ahab, as the historian Richard Slotkin points out in his book
"Regeneration Through Violence," is "the true American hero, worthy
to be captain of a ship whose 'wood could only be American.' "
Melville offers us a vision, one that D.H. Lawrence later
understood, of the inevitable fatality of white civilization brought
about by our ceaseless lust for material progress, imperial
expansion, white supremacy and exploitation of nature.

https://portside.org/2013-07-08/we-are-all-aboard-pequod
https://portside.org/node/3157/printable/print
- - -
[From the novel, quoting Ahab]

"Come, Ahab's compliments to ye; come and see if ye can swerve me.
Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves! man has
ye there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron
rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges,
through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds,
unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the
iron way!"
-- Herman Melville (1819-1891), Moby-Dick, Chapter 37.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/17/ye-cannot-swerve-me-moby-dick-and-climate-change/



[Redefining future]
*Climate Change Will Bring More Deadly Heat to Texas, Study Warns*
Unless drastic action is taken, Dallas could see an average of 18 days 
per year by century's end in which heat index values climb so high they 
can't be calculated, a new report suggests.

The study, which was released Tuesday by the Union of Concerned 
Scientists, sheds light on some of the possible effects of climate 
change on parts of the United States, including Texas. Climate change 
driven by greenhouse gas emissions is expected to bring a sharp uptick 
in deadly heat to Texas and much of the rest of the country, according 
to the report.
By mid-century, a large swath of the U.S., including most of Texas, 
could see a few days in an average year when the heat index value -- a 
measure that takes temperature and humidity levels into account -- 
surpasses the National Weather Service's heat index scale. The only 
place in the U.S. that experiences such off-the-charts heat index values 
in an average year is the Sonoran Desert, on the border between 
California and Arizona, according to the report. Those extreme 
conditions pose extreme health risks, according to the report...
- - -
"The report clearly shows how actions taken, or not taken, within the 
next few years to reduce emissions will help determine how hot and humid 
our future becomes," scientists said.
https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/climate-change-could-mean-more-dangerously-hot-days-in-dallas-report-suggests-11709893
- - -
[Union of Concerned Scientists]
*Killer Heat in the United States: Climate Choices and the Future of 
Dangerously Hot Days (2019)*
The United States is facing a potentially staggering expansion of 
dangerous heat over the coming decades.

This analysis shows the rapid, widespread increases in extreme heat that 
are projected to occur across the country due to climate change, 
including conditions so extreme that a heat index cannot be measured. 
The analysis also finds that the intensity of the coming heat depends 
heavily on how quickly we act now to reduce heat-trapping emissions.

The results highlight a stark choice: We can continue on our current 
path, where we fail to reduce emissions and extreme heat soars. Or we 
can take bold action now to dramatically reduce emissions and prevent 
the worst from becoming reality...
- - -
The analysis includes four different heat index thresholds, each of 
which brings increasingly dangerous health risks: above 90F, above 100F, 
above 105F, and "off the charts." (Off-the-charts days are so extreme 
they exceed the upper limits of the National Weather Service heat index 
scale, which starts topping out at or above a heat index of 127F, 
depending on the combination of temperature and humidity.)

The report features three time frames--historical, midcentury, and late 
century--and three different scenarios of climate action.

Location-specific results can be found using the interactive tool above. 
Complete findings are available in the full report....
https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/global-warming-impacts/killer-heat-in-united-states



[US Government]
*Climate Change Will Strain Federal Finances*
Climate-related disasters are happening more frequently and affecting a 
broad cross-section of the economy...
- - -
The federal government is ill-prepared to shoulder what could be a 
trillion-dollar fiscal crisis associated with extreme weather, floods, 
wildfires and other climate disasters through 2100, federal 
investigators have found.

In the latest of a series of reports, the Government Accountability 
Office says that costs of disaster assistance to taxpayers since 2005 
have swelled to nearly $500 billion--and they keep getting higher.
- - -
GAO also identified two types of potential benefits from climate change: 
fewer deaths from cold weather in the Upper Midwest and improved 
agricultural yields in the northern Great Plains and parts of the 
Northwest, mainly associated with longer growing seasons.

Financial exposure to climate disasters will be felt hardest in three 
pots of government spending: disaster response, flood and crop 
insurance, and operation and management of federally owned property and 
public lands.

Investigators noted that the National Flood Insurance Program, for 
example, owes the U.S. Treasury $21 billion associated with massive 
payouts to flood victims dating back to 2005.
- - -
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-will-strain-federal-finances/



[Not (yet) a plot for a Hollywood movie]
*Ancient life awakens amid thawing ice caps and permafrost*
 From about 1550 to 1850, a global cold snap called the Little Ice Age 
supersized glaciers throughout the Arctic. On Canada's Ellesmere Island, 
Teardrop Glacier extended its frozen tongue across the landscape and 
swallowed a small tuft of moss.

*Researcher Discovers Ancient Nematodes, Still Alive, in Melting 
Permafrost *
The author writes, "Clocking in at a half-millimeter long, the nematodes 
that wriggled back to life were the most complex creatures [Tatiana] 
Vishnivetskaya -- or anyone else -- had ever revived after a lengthy 
deep freeze. She estimated one nematode to be 41,000 years old -- by far 
the oldest living animal ever discovered. This very worm dwelled in the 
soil beneath Neanderthals' feet and had lived to meet modern-day humans 
in Vishnivetskaya's high-tech laboratory."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/ancient-life-awakens-amid-thawing-ice-caps-and-permafrost/2019/07/05/335281f8-7108-11e9-9f06-5fc2ee80027a_story.html



*This Day in Climate History - July 19, 2001 - from D.R. Tucker*
July 19, 2001: Proving that the wish is the father to the thought, White 
House adviser Karen Hughes tells CNN, "The whole issue of global climate 
change is something our administration is serious about."
http://web.archive.org/web/20140427081627/http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/07/19/hughes.access.cnna/
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