[TheClimate.Vote] July 20, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/July 20, 2019/

[Serious heat]
*Dangerous heatwave starts hitting US and Canada*
Extremely hot weather has started to hit most of the United States, with 
temperatures set to peak over the weekend, meteorologists say.

The heatwave could affect about 200 million people in major cities like 
New York, Washington and Boston in the East Coast, and the Midwest 
region too.

In some places, temperatures could be close to or exceed 100F (38C). 
Parts of Canada are also being hit.

Experts link more frequent heatwaves in recent years to climate change.

The world experienced its hottest June on record this year, with an 
average temperature worldwide of 61.6F (16.4C), according to new data.

Earlier this month, the US state of Alaska, part of which lies inside 
the Arctic Circle, registered record high temperatures.
- -
*What is the forecast?*
US meteorologists say the heatwave is expected to continue through the 
weekend, and some cities may see their highest temperatures in years.

In some cities it might feel as hot as in California's Death Valley - a 
desert region known for its extreme heat. But they say a dramatic change 
is on the way early next week, when it is expected to suddenly cool off.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49049378


[How heat destabilizes]
*The Security Threat of Extreme Heat*
by Caitlin Werrell and Francesco Femia
Heatwaves are all over the news this week. Forecasts indicate that 
two-thirds of the United States will experience a severe heatwave this 
weekend.

This comes days after the International Federation of Red Cross and Red 
Crescent Societies issued a new report on the topic. CBS News quoted the 
organization's president in describing heatwaves as "one of the 
deadliest natural hazards facing humanity," which "will only become more 
serious and more widespread as the climate crisis continues." The 
report, which provides guidance to cities for mitigating the myriad 
health and other risks associated with this trend, states that "More 
intense and frequent heatwaves are already occurring in many parts of 
the world," and with them come serious health consequences.

Such challenges at the intersection of climate and health have been on 
the radar of the security community for some time. The U.S. Department 
of Defense's January 2019 report on climate change effects on its 
missions and operations noted:

"Climate effects to the Department's training and testing are manifested 
in an increased number of suspended/delayed/cancelled outdoor 
training/testing events and increased operational health surveillance 
and health and safety risks to the Department's personnel."

DoD and the U.S. intelligence community have long noted that climate 
change will change disease patterns, increase the frequency of heatwaves 
that threaten human health, and other issues. As natural disasters 
increase in frequency and intensity, governments around the world may 
also have increasing difficulty managing the consequent health effects.

Heatwaves are of growing concern for the potential security 
implications. A series of MIT studies of recent years indicate that 
under some emission scenarios, excessive heat could make parts of India, 
Pakistan, and China virtually uninhabitable on a year-round basis by the 
end of the century. Similar studies have found the same for parts of the 
Arabian Peninsula. Indeed, these regions already set record temperatures 
regularly and at times see high death rates as a result. Will people 
find ways to deal with the health and economic effects of these changes? 
Or will they emigrate, urbanize, or take other actions?  What risks 
could this worsen for the nuclear-armed countries on this list?

Unlike for many threats, these security risks are known knowns. For 
years, experts worldwide have warned of myriad health effects of climate 
change--and they are already manifesting. Moreover, there are countless 
current and emerging technologies and tools across the health and 
climate fields to increase preparedness, and benefits to be realized by 
advancing cooperation between the health and climate security 
communities. This week's heatwaves and reports of their future in a 
climate-changed world highlight the critical need for such work.
https://climateandsecurity.org/2019/07/19/the-security-threat-of-extreme-heat/



[Insurance industry defines risk]
*Report: California Wildfires Will Get Worse, Blame Climate Change*
By Don Jergler | July 18, 2019
Hot, dry weather in California has resulted in a dramatic increase in 
wildfires. It will get worse - and you can blame climate change, 
according to a new report out.

The report, Observed impacts of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire 
in California, published on Monday shows that California experienced a 
five‐fold increase in annual burned area from 1972 to 2018.
*Banana Skins*
Climate change can be likened to a discarded banana peel in the road 
waiting for an unobservant traveler. Even by another name - the British 
call them banana skins - they pose a risk worth paying attention to.

The Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation, a non-profit 
think-tank that examines future developments in the international 
financial field, recently issued its seventh Insurance Banana Skins survey.

The survey has been published since 2007. This is the second survey in 
which the risks surrounding technology and cyber have come out as the 
top risks...
https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2019/07/18/532767.htm
- - -
["A 3 degree world may not be insurable"]
*Insurance Banana Skins 2019* surveys the risks facing the insurance 
industry in early
2019, and identifies those that appear most urgent to insurance 
practitioners and close
observers of the insurance scene around the world.
The Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation is a non-profit 
think-tank, established in 1993
to look at future developments in the international financial field - 
particularly from the point of
view of practitioners. Its goals include identifying new areas of 
business, flagging areas of danger
and provoking a debate about key financial issues. The Centre has no 
ideological brief, beyond a
belief in open markets.
- -
*Climate change is seen as a much more urgent threat to the insurance 
industry than**
**four years ago*, when it ranked in the bottom half largely because it 
was considered a
long-term risk. This year, it would have placed even higher up the table 
but for the
perception that it has little impact on the life side of the industry, 
which had it at No.
19. It was No. 3 for P&C insurers and No.2 for reinsurers - and many 
respondents
saw it as the top threat beyond the near future.

A common theme was the growing economic destructiveness of extreme weather
events, including hurricanes and typhoons, floods, droughts, and 
wildfire. The
president of a P&C insurer in Canada said: "The frequency and severity 
of events has
more than doubled in the past 10 years and is expected to continue to 
increase as
global temperatures continue to rise. New flood products have not been 
fully tested
for price adequacy and wildfire risk is growing as well without models 
to assist in
measuring exposure"

Christoffel van Riet, board member and chief operating officer of Klaverblad
Verzekeringen in The Netherlands, said: "It is not just about an 
unexpected hail storm.
It is about a possible substantial change of the fabric of our societies 
as a result of
potential massive migration driven by climate change invoked food 
shortages".
Several respondents made the point that as a consequence of climate 
change, some
risks will become very difficult or impossible to insure. Lisa 
Guglietti, chief operating
officer P&C Manufacturing at The Co-operators in Canada, said: "The 
escalation in
trends and volatility will challenge the sustainability of traditional 
insurance products
unless we start putting more focus on prevention as opposed to 
indemnification.
Many clients are unable to afford the risks that they are exposed to, 
and more
alarmingly many of these same clients are unaware that they have this 
exposure". The
chief actuary at a P&C insurer in New Zealand said: "In the short term 
this looks like
greater use of risk-based pricing; however, as the response evolves 
there will be more
restrictions and potential withdrawal of cover".

*Massive over the long-term. A 3-degree world may not be insurable.*
Chief executive, P&C industry, New Zealand
Moreover, the additional uncertainty about the frequency of catastrophic 
events is
"breaking actuarial models", as one respondent put it, particularly in 
the reinsurance
industry. A respondent in India said: "If Global Warming increases the 
number of
disasters, reinsurance pricing could produce shocks for the insurance 
industry". A
regional chief executive of a Chinese reinsurer said: "Many P&C insurers 
are not
taking out adequate reinsurance protection as they want to reduce the 
cost of
protection. This may result in sizeable financial impact to their capital".
Respondents who ranked this risk lower were overwhelmingly from the life 
insurance
industry, which had it close to the bottom of the table. One said: 
"There's no direct
risk for the life insurance industry. Indirect risk as it may impact 
financial markets";
and another: "As we are life insurer, our primary risk from climate 
change is in our
investment portfolio".

Another question which affected its ranking is how much time insurers 
have to prepare
for climate change. A respondent in the UK said: "In the next few years, 
it will
continue to worsen extreme weather events, but to a manageable extent". 
But others
were already seeing notable impacts on their business. A respondent in 
the Philippines
said: "Change in weather has greatly affected the way we underwrite 
risks. We have
seen a shift in the direction of typhoons lately. We have had to change 
some our
business modelling because of this"...
38 pages - download - 
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54d620fce4b049bf4cd5be9b/t/5d024ff71ac35c0001a7147d/1560432655309/Insurance+Banana+Skins+2019+Final.pdf


[cool sleep]
*The worst part of a heat wave is when it doesn't cool off at night*
A major heat wave is affecting most of the United States. Its biggest 
risks may come at night.
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/7/19/20700662/heat-wave-2019-health-new-york-washington


[hide and go deceit]
*Trump's USDA buried sweeping climate change response plan*
By HELENA BOTTEMILLER EVICH
07/18/2019
The Agriculture Department quashed the release of a sweeping plan on how 
to respond to climate change that was finalized in the early days of the 
Trump administration, according to a USDA employee with knowledge of the 
decision.

Staff members across several USDA agencies drafted the multiyear plan 
that outlines how the department should help agriculture understand, 
adapt to and minimize the effects of climate change.

Top officials, however, decided not to release the plan and told staff 
members to keep it for internal use only, the employee told POLITICO. 
The person spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution.

The goal was to map out "the science that USDA needs to pursue over the 
next five to eight years for the department to meet the needs of the 
nation," according to the plan, a copy of which was shared with POLITICO.

The revelation comes after a recent POLITICO investigation found that 
the department had largely stopped promoting its own scientific findings 
about the consequences of climate change. The USDA has also moved away 
from using phrases like climate change, climate, and greenhouse gas 
emissions in press releases and social media posts.

The scuttled plan, prepared in 2017, liberally uses those terms. The 
document also calls on USDA to help farmers, ranchers and forestland 
owners "understand their effect on climate change."
Morning Agriculture

A spokesperson for the department declined to answer specific questions 
about the plan but said that USDA has no policy in place to discourage 
dissemination of climate science or use of climate-related terms. The 
spokesperson also noted President Donald Trump repealed an Obama era 
executive order that required government agencies to conduct climate 
planning and that the current administration has different requirements 
in place.

The USDA's climate resilience plan was supposed to be an update to a 
2010 plan on climate science -- a document that was released publicly 
during the Obama administration.

The plan had begun to go through an internal clearance process before a 
senior official quashed its release, according to the person familiar 
with the decision.

The 33-page plan sets ambitious goals for addressing a broad range of 
climate change effects. It proposes "moving agriculture and natural 
resource systems to carbon neutral and beyond" by reducing greenhouse 
gas emissions through practices such as increasing carbon storage in 
crops and soils.

It also notes the importance of studying the "human dimensions" of 
climate change -- such as how it affects production, trade, pricing, and 
producer and consumer behavior.

The agenda proposes to make climate change "an explicit and functional 
component" of "all USDA mission areas through the timely development, 
delivery, and application of relevant science."

The document acknowledges that climate change is already affecting 
farmers and ranchers as well as forests.

"Changing temperatures and precipitation, along with altered pest 
pressures, influence rates of crop maturation and livestock 
productivity," the document states.

"Forests are already experiencing increased disturbance, including 
widespread wildfires and pest-related die-offs, as a result of changing 
climactic conditions and prolonged drought," the plan continues. 
Elevated carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is already affecting the 
quality of grassland forage, the report notes.

But the plan also suggests farmers can make money by cutting greenhouse 
gas emissions and adopting practices that promote carbon sequestration.

The document also says that USDA should be working to "increase public 
awareness of climate change" and how it is likely to affect agriculture 
and forestry in particular.

News of the report comes as USDA's chief scientist is scheduled to 
testify before the Senate Agriculture Committee this morning.

Scott Hutchins, deputy undersecretary for research, education and 
economics, is expected to field pointed questions from lawmakers about 
burying climate science at the department as well as on plans to 
relocate two research agencies out of Washington to Kansas City, as 
recently announced by Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue.

Both those agencies -- the Economic Research Service and the National 
Institute of Food and Agriculture -- were cited as important partners in 
carrying out the climate change plan.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/18/usda-suppresses-climate-change-plan-1598987
- -
[Here is the draft copy of the study]
USDA Climate Resilience Science Plan
Draft September14, 2017
https://static.politico.com/b7/ce/e495d2824d08b1957a1ea6b0affd/climate-science.pdf


[Beckwith video on threshhold tipping points]
*Nonlinear Tipping of Oceanic Carbon Cycle Driving Mass Extinctions: 1 of 2*
Paul Beckwith
Published on Jul 19, 2019
A characteristic of the five large mass extinctions in Earth's 
geological history is disruption of the ocean carbon cycle, causing 
large, rapid ocean acidification. Acidification is proceeding extremely 
fast today, in what is a human-caused sixth mass extinction. Some of the 
rapidly rising carbon dioxide in our atmosphere reacts with water 
forming carbonic acid, dissociating to bicarbonate ions, then carbonate 
ions, making the oceans much more acidic. Like a canoe reaching the 
tipping point, the ocean carbon cycle can cross a threshold and tip as 
we drive emissions ever higher.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y9j-fkv9HM
- - -
[Second of 2]
*Tipping Point Threshold in Ocean Carbon Chemistry and Mass Extinctions: 
2 of 2*
Paul Beckwith
Published on Jul 19, 2019
What do tipping canoes, phase transitions like water freezing to ice, 
breaking sticks, chopping down dead trees, the carbon cycle in the 
ocean, and human relationships all have in common? Answer: they are 
highly nonlinear, dynamic systems, that exist in stable states until 
pushed by some factor above so-called critical thresholds. Then abrupt 
disruption sweeps the systems to abruptly change towards a new, distant, 
eventually stable state. Rapid increases in ocean acidification from 
fossil fuel combustion emissions risks crossing the threshold to a mass 
extinction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mzSYxhTNSQ
- - - -
[article]
*Breaching a 'carbon threshold' could lead to mass extinction*
by Jennifer Chu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Daniel Rothman, professor of geophysics and co-director of the Lorenz 
Center in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, 
has found that when the rate at which carbon dioxide enters the oceans 
pushes past a certain threshold--whether as the result of a sudden burst 
or a slow, steady influx--the Earth may respond with a runaway cascade 
of chemical feedbacks, leading to extreme ocean acidification that 
dramatically amplifies the effects of the original trigger.

This global reflex causes huge changes in the amount of carbon contained 
in the Earth's oceans, and geologists can see evidence of these changes 
in layers of sediments preserved over hundreds of millions of years.
- -
"It's difficult to know how things will end up given what's happening 
today," Rothman says. "But we're probably close to a critical threshold. 
Any spike would reach its maximum after about 10,000 years. Hopefully 
that would give us time to find a solution."

"We already know that our CO2-emitting actions will have consequences 
for many millennia," says Timothy Lenton, professor of climate change 
and earth systems science at the University of Exeter. "This study 
suggests those consequences could be much more dramatic than previously 
expected. If we push the Earth system too far, then it takes over and 
determines its own response--past that point there will be little we can 
do about it."
https://phys.org/news/2019-07-breaching-carbon-threshold-mass-extinction.html
- - -
[the source article]
*Characteristic disruptions of an excitable carbon cycle*
Daniel H. Rothman
*Significance*

    The great environmental disruptions of the geologic past remain
    enigmatic. Each one results in a temporary change in the oceans'
    store of carbon. Although the causes remain controversial, these
    changes are typically interpreted as a proportionate response to an
    external input of carbon. This paper suggests instead that the
    magnitude of many disruptions is determined not by the strength of
    external stressors but rather by the carbon cycle's intrinsic
    dynamics. Theory and observations indicate that characteristic
    disruptions are excited by carbon fluxes into the oceans that exceed
    a threshold. Similar excitations follow influxes that are either
    intense and brief or weak and long-lived, as long as they exceed the
    threshold. Mass extinction events are associated with influxes well
    above the threshold.

*Abstract*

    The history of the carbon cycle is punctuated by enigmatic transient
    changes in the ocean's store of carbon. Mass extinction is always
    accompanied by such a disruption, but most disruptions are
    relatively benign. The less calamitous group exhibits a
    characteristic rate of change whereas greater surges accompany mass
    extinctions. To better understand these observations, I formulate
    and analyze a mathematical model that suggests that disruptions are
    initiated by perturbation of a permanently stable steady state
    beyond a threshold. The ensuing excitation exhibits the
    characteristic surge of real disruptions. In this view, the
    magnitude and timescale of the disruption are properties of the
    carbon cycle itself rather than its perturbation. Surges associated
    with mass extinction, however, require additional inputs from
    external sources such as massive volcanism. Surges are excited when
    CO2 enters the oceans at a flux that exceeds a threshold.
    ...Consequently the unusually strong but geologically brief duration
    of modern anthropogenic oceanic CO2 uptake is roughly equivalent, in
    terms of its potential to excite a major disruption, to relatively
    weak but longer-lived perturbations associated with massive
    volcanism in the geologic past.

https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/07/02/1905164116



[Well identified]
*Airplane contrails are changing the climate*
By Dawn Stover, July 18, 2019
It's no secret that air traffic is growing. The International Air 
Transport Association predicts that the number of passengers flying 
could double by 2037, to 8.2 billion, and air freight is following a 
similar trajectory. As the demand for air travel soars, so too will the 
climate-altering gases emitted by airplanes burning fossil fuels.

But emissions aren't the only way airplanes contribute to global 
heating. They also streak the skies with condensation trails 
(contrails), which act like cirrus clouds--reflecting sunlight but also 
trapping heat in the atmosphere. The science of how contrails, and 
clouds in general, affect the climate is still developing. But the 
latest study estimates that the global-heating effect of contrails will 
triple between 2006 and 2050. That makes them air travel's "dirty 
secret," in the eyes of some atmospheric scientists.

Sky-high emissions. In 2018, for the third year in a row, transportation 
was the largest source of US greenhouse gas emissions, if fuels for 
international travel are included. Within the transportation sector, 
aviation is the most carbon-intensive form of travel. And emissions from 
aircraft are rising much faster than from cars, because of improvements 
in cars' fuel efficiency and the spread of electric cars.
- - -
As is so often the case, the White House is doing the exact opposite of 
what's needed to solve the environmental problems created by air travel. 
Michael Kratsios, deputy assistant to the president for technology 
policy at the White House and President Trump's nominee for chief 
technology officer of the United States, wrote in a June 25 Washington 
Post op-ed: "President Trump's push to remove regulatory barriers to 
innovation means a return to supersonic flight for civilians is just 
over the horizon." The Concorde retired in 2003, but NASA is conducting 
research that could lead to a new supersonic aircraft that would reduce 
the Concorde's loud sonic boom to a "gentle thump." However, nobody has 
figured out how to make a plane go that fast without using more 
fuel--and creating more climate-altering emissions.
https://thebulletin.org/2019/07/airplane-contrails-are-changing-the-climate/


*This Day in Climate History - July 20, 2006 - from D.R. Tucker*
July 20, 2006: NPR reports on the GOP's show trials, er, hearings 
regarding climate research in the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5569901
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