[TheClimate.Vote] July 24, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/July 24 , 2019/

[language changes]
*The Language of Climate Reporting Is Heating Up, Too*
At one newspaper, "climate change" is out. "Climate crisis" is in.
- - -
The Guardian is ditching the term "climate change" almost entirely and 
defaulting instead to higher-pitched alarms like "climate emergency, 
crisis, or breakdown." The paper had reached the same conclusion as the 
pollster: "Climate change" is a timid label--as much a dud on the page 
as Luntz figured it would be at the ballot box.

The Guardian says "crisis" and "emergency" better convey the urgency of 
unchecked carbon. And the Guardian's style reboot doesn't stop there: 
Global warming is now called "global heating."

At least one news outlet is on board with the Guardian. Canada's 
national public broadcaster, CBC, briefed its reporters to say they can 
take the Guardian's style lead and default to "crisis" and "emergency" 
as first-choice nouns. Similar chats are underway internally at the 
Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times, but none 
has signaled agreement...
- - -
The Guardian's style memo is a bit clumsy, but it's clumsy in the right 
way. At the very least, the paper is plainly aware of the stakes. Just 
weeks ago, the White House blocked a senior intelligence analyst at the 
State Department from using the words "catastrophic" and "tipping point" 
to describe climate science in written testimony to Congress. The Trump 
administration shut him up because the science doesn't "jibe" with its 
policies, according to internal documents. The analyst quit in protest a 
few days ago. The White House may not care about the science, but it 
understands better than most media companies that the fight over the 
planet's future has to be waged on all fronts, even at the level of 
vocabulary.
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/07/the-language-of-climate-reporting-is-heating-up-too/



[BBC --  an informed opinion clips]
*Climate change: 12 years to save the planet? Make that 18 months*
Matt McGrath - Environment correspondent
@mattmcgrathbbc on Twitter
- - -
Now it seems, there's a growing consensus that the next 18 months will 
be critical in dealing with the global heating crisis, among other 
environmental challenges...
- -
"The climate math is brutally clear: While the world can't be healed 
within the next few years, it may be fatally wounded by negligence until 
2020," said Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founder and now director emeritus 
of the Potsdam Climate Institute.

The sense that the end of next year is the last chance saloon for 
climate change is becoming clearer all the time.

"I am firmly of the view that the next 18 months will decide our ability 
to keep climate change to survivable levels and to restore nature to the 
equilibrium we need for our survival," said Prince Charles, speaking at 
a reception for Commonwealth foreign ministers recently...
- - -
The Prince was looking ahead to a series of critical UN meetings that 
are due to take place between now and the end of 2020.

Ever since a global climate agreement was signed in Paris in December 
2015, negotiators have been consumed with arguing about the rulebook for 
the pact.

But under the terms of the deal, countries have also promised to improve 
their carbon-cutting plans by the end of next year.

Prince Charles has stressed how important the next 12 months are in 
tackling climate change...
One of the understated headlines in last year's IPCC report was that 
global emissions of carbon dioxide must peak by 2020 to keep the planet 
below 1.5C.

Current plans are nowhere near strong enough to keep temperatures below 
the so-called safe limit. Right now, we are heading towards 3C of 
heating by 2100 not 1.5.

As countries usually scope out their plans over five and 10 year 
timeframes, if the 45% carbon cut target by 2030 is to be met, then the 
plans really need to be on the table by the end of 2020.

What are the steps?
The first major hurdle will be the special climate summit called by UN 
Secretary General Antonio Guterres, which will be held in New York on 
September 23...
- -
Reasons to be cheerful?
Whether it's the evidence of heatwaves, or the influence of Swedish 
school striker Greta Thunberg, or the rise of Extinction Rebellion, 
there has been a marked change in public interest in stories about 
climate change and a hunger for solutions that people can put in place 
in their own lives.

People are demanding significant action, and politicians in many 
countries have woken up to these changes.

The rise of school strikers like Great Thunberg has reflected growing 
interest in the climate question
Ideas like the green new deal in the US, which might have seemed 
unfeasible a few years ago have gained real traction...
- - -
"All at once we are witness to a collective convergence of public 
mobilization, worsening climatic impacts and dire scientific warnings 
that compel decisive climate leadership."

"Without question, 2020 is a hard deadline for that leadership to 
finally manifest itself."

Reasons to be fearful?
With exquisite timing, the likely UK COP in 2020 could also be the 
moment the US finally pulls out of the Paris agreement...
- -
"If we cannot use that moment to accelerate ambition we will have no 
chance of getting to a 1.5 or 2C limit," said Prof Michael Jacobs, from 
the University of Sheffield, a former climate adviser to Prime Minister 
Gordon Brown.

"Right now there's nothing like enough understanding of or commitment to 
this among leading countries. That's why the UN Secretary General is 
holding a summit in September."...
- - -
While the decisions taken on climate change in the next year or so will 
be critical, there are a number of other key gatherings on the 
environment that will shape the nature on preserving species and 
protecting our oceans in the coming decades.

Earlier this year a major study on the losses being felt across the 
natural world as result of broader human impacts caused a huge stir 
among governments.

The IPBES report showed that up to one million species could be lost in 
coming decades.

To address this, governments will meet in China next year to try and 
agree a deal that will protect creatures of all types...

The Convention on Biological Diversity is the UN body tasked with 
putting together a plan to protect nature up to 2030..
more at - https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48964736
- - -
[From Carbon Brief newsletter --
A group of academics write in the journal Nature Climate Change to argue 
against "the rise of the political rhetoric of setting a fixed deadline 
for decisive actions on climate change". The findings of the 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's special report on 1.5C of 
global warming, the group argues, were interpreted by some to mean that 
the world has a "12-year deadline for [avoiding] catastrophic climate 
change". This "sparked widespread calls for urgent radical actions, 
ranging from the Green New Deal proposal in the United States to the 
youth activism of climate school strikes around the world, civil 
disobedience by the Extinction Rebellion group", the group says. They 
continue: "However, setting a near-term deadline to urge immediate 
policy actions could do the opposite of what is intended. The speed of 
the countdown to a climate deadline is set by the rate of CO2 emissions. 
Emissions reductions slow the countdown. Whereas policymakers are urged 
to take policy actions to meet the deadline, they might instead be 
motivated to extend the deadline."]
- -
[comment snips taken from the journal Nature]
*Why setting a climate deadline is dangerous*
Shinichiro Asayama, Rob Bellamy, Oliver Geden, Warren Pearce & Mike Hulme
The publication of the IPCC Special Report on global warming of 1.5C 
paved the way for the rise of the political rhetoric of setting a fixed 
deadline for decisive actions on climate change. However, the dangers of 
such deadline rhetoric suggest the need for the IPCC to take 
responsibility for its report and openly challenge the credibility of 
such a deadline...
- - -
Trouble with extending deadline However, setting a near-term deadline to 
urge immediate policy actions could do the opposite of what is intended. 
The speed of the countdown to a climate deadline is set by the rate of 
CO2 emissions. Emissions reductions slow the countdown. Achieving 
net-zero CO2 emissions before exceeding 1.5C would eventually stop the 
clock. Net negative emissions through the use of carbon dioxide removal 
methods would 'turn back' the clock. Whereas policymakers are urged to 
take policy actions to meet the deadline, they might instead be 
motivated to extend the deadline. There are several ways this might be 
done. One way would be to shift some of the benchmarks. For example, 
time could be 'added' to the clock by allowing a temporary overshoot of 
the temperature threshold. In overshoot scenarios, there are two 
deadlines for the carbon budget, differing by how the budget is defined 
-- either when a specific temperature threshold is first exceeded or 
else when the temperature returns to this threshold at a later point. If 
the budget was defined in the latter way, overshoot could significantly 
extend the deadline, which would provide policymakers with a source of 
political flexibility to avoid the appearance of policy failure...
- -
This climate deadline has been given public expression through the 
ticking clock metaphor: clocks that are constantly counting down each 
second until the allowable carbon budget is exhausted. For example, 
Concordia University in Canada 
(https://www.concordia.ca/news/climateclock.html) and the Mercator 
Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change in Germany 
(https://www.mcc-berlin.net/en/research/CO2-budget.html) both operate 
countdown clocks on their websites, showing the time remaining before 
the carbon budgets for 1.5C and 2C are exhausted. From a communication 
perspective, this translation is understandable. Neither global 
temperature nor carbon budgets convey any great sense of urgency to 
non-experts6, whereas time -- and the associated notion of a deadline -- 
is a metric that converts the abstract, statistical notion of climate 
change to a more recognizably human experience13. Rather than degrees 
Celsius rise in temperature, or gigatonnes of CO2 emitted, the ticking 
countdown clock sends an alarming message to the public of time slipping 
away...
- - -
After accepting an invitation from the UNFCCC to prepare a special 
report on 1.5 C, the IPCC increasingly finds itself in a catch-22 
position: operating under a singular regime of consensual policy 
neutrality, yet trying to meet the different expectations of 
governmental policymakers and a new generation of civic activists25. Now 
the IPCC faces a challenge to its historical stance of policy 
neutrality. To remain silent about the 2030 deadline rhetoric is perhaps 
a safe option for the IPCC. It can retreat into a comfort zone that 
appears to preserve its integrity as a policy-neutral advisor.But 
because of the dangers of climate deadline-ism that we have outlined, 
this would be irresponsible. The alternative would be to challenge the 
political rhetoric of "Science says we have only 12 years left." This 
may invite a backlash from activists that the IPCC has become too 
political. But the IPCC should recognize that the knowledge it produces 
is already unavoidably political. It should therefore act as a 
politically responsible agent in the public sphere and challenge openly 
the credibility of this deadline rhetoric. The rise of deadline-ism is 
but the latest example that climate science has an inescapably political 
dimension and that acknowledgement of this by the IPCC is long overdue. 
The IPCC can no longer hide its political responsibility behind the 
'neutrality' of its science.
- - -
The political danger of deadline-ism Pushing hard to meet a deadline may 
also cause (unintentionally) dangerous political side effects. For 
example, deadline-ism incubates the political opportunism of declaring a 
climate emergency. It is no surprise that new political movements 
calling for the declaration of a climate emergency in parliaments, 
cities, schools and universities have arisen in the months after the 
release of the IPCC SR15 (see 
https://www.theclimatemobilization.org/climate-emergency-campaign). The 
rhetoric of emergency emerges from the worldview of millenarianism and 
its conception of 'compressed time' that calls for immediate actions 
before it is too late. However, regardless of the original intentions, 
an empty call for emergency actions can be interpreted in myriad ways. 
In the worst case, the emergency rhetoric could become 'stolen 
rhetoric', used as justification for solar geoengineering and 
potentially for more authoritarian forms of governance and regulation. A 
more fundamental problem with deadline-ism is that it might incite 
cynical, cry-wolf responses and undermine the credibility of climate 
science when an anticipated disaster does not happen. The imagery of 
deadlines and countdown clocks offers an illusory cliff-edge after which 
the world heads inevitably to its imminent demise. It promulgates the 
imaginary of extinction and the collapse of civilization. The impacts of 
climate change are more likely to be intermittent, slow and gradual.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0543-4



[Some classic video on climate science from http://climatecrocks.com/]
*In the 70s, They said there'd be an Ice Age*
greenman3610
Published on Dec 14, 2009
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB3S0fnOr0M&feature=youtu.be



*This Day in Climate History - July 24, 2000 - from D.R. Tucker*
July 24, 2000: BP launches its controversial "Beyond Petroleum" 
advertising campaign.
http://web.archive.org/web/20010525195935/http://www.commondreams.org/news2001/0508-09.htm
http://youtu.be/GVsPT6ePKPw
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