[TheClimate.Vote] June 9, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest.
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Sun Jun 9 08:37:39 EDT 2019
/June 9, 2019/
[NPR]
*'We All Owe Al Gore An Apology': More People See Climate Change In
Record Flooding*
...Joe Hurst, the mayor of Van Buren, Ark., a town of about 24,000
people on the Arkansas River, says there do seem to be indications that
the climate is changing.
"I don't know what causes it," he says. "But all I know is that we're
dealing with a historic flood and now, in my mind, I'm going to be
prepared for this unprecedented event to happen now more often."
more at -
https://www.npr.org/2019/06/08/730456004/more-people-see-climate-change-in-record-floods-and-extreme-weather-will-that-me
[ignorant annotations]
*White House blocked intelligence agency's written testimony saying
climate change could be 'possibly catastrophic'*
Officials sought to excise the State Department's comments on climate
science on the grounds that it did not mesh with the administration's stance
White House officials barred a State Department intelligence agency from
submitting written testimony this week to the House Intelligence
Committee warning that human-caused climate change could be "possibly
catastrophic." The move came after State officials refused to excise the
document's references to federal scientific findings on climate change.
The effort to edit, and ultimately suppress, the prepared testimony by
the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research comes as the
Trump administration is debating how best to challenge the fact that
burning fossil fuels is warming the planet and could pose serious risks
unless the world makes deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions over the
next decade. Senior military and intelligence officials have continued
to warn climate change could undermine America's national security -- a
position President Trump rejects...
- - -
The document lays out in stark detail the implications of what the
administration faces in light of rising carbon emissions that the world
has not curbed.
"Absent extensive mitigating factors or events, we see few plausible
future scenarios where significant -- possibly catastrophic -- harm does
not arise from the compounded effects of climate change," the document said.
- - -
In another passage, Happer objected to the phrase "tipping point" when
describing how a certain level of warming could trigger devastating
climate-related impacts, the individual said.
Administration officials said the Office of Legislative Affairs
ultimately decided that Schoonover could appear before the House panel
but could not submit his office's statement for the record because it
did not, in the words of one official, "jibe" with what the
administration is seeking to do on climate change. The official added
that legislative affairs and staffers at the Office of Management and
Budget routinely review agency officials' prepared congressional
testimony before they submit it....
- - -
Francesco Femia, chief executive of the Council on Strategic Risks and
co-founder of the Center for Climate and Security, questioned why the
White House would not have allowed an intelligence official to offer a
written statement that would be entered into the permanent record.
"This is an intentional failure of the White House to perform a core
duty: inform the American public of the threats we face. It's
dangerous and unacceptable," Femia said in an email Friday. "Any
attempt to suppress information on the security risks of climate
change threatens to leave the American public vulnerable and unsafe."
- - -
Despite the internal controversy over the testimony prepared for
Wednesday's hearing, all three witnesses detailed ways in which
climate-related impacts could exacerbate existing national security
risks. Peter Kiemel, counselor at the National Intelligence Council, and
Jeffrey Ringhausen, a senior analyst at the Office of Naval
Intelligence, talked about issues ranging from how terrorist cells could
capitalize on water shortages to disputes with other nations over
shifting fishing grounds.
Schoonover, for his part, said in his opening statement that the planet
was warming and that it could pose a major risk to the United States and
other nations.
"The Earth's climate is unequivocally undergoing a long-term warming
trend, as established by decades of scientific measurements and
multiple, independent lines of evidence," he said, adding later:
"Climate change effects could undermine important international
systems on which the U.S. is critically dependent, such as trade
routes, food and energy supplies, the global economy and domestic
stability abroad."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/06/08/white-house-blocked-intelligence-aides-written-testimony-saying-human-caused-climate-change-could-be-possibly-catastrophic/
- - -
[Here's the document marked commentary by Trump administration - Happer]
*The Bureau of Intelligence and Research's 12-page prepared testimony,*
obtained by The Washington Post on Friday, includes a detailed
description of how rising greenhouse gas emissions are raising global
temperatures and acidifying the world's oceans. It warns that these
changes are contributing to the frequency and intensity of extreme
weather events.
https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/1103-rod-schoonover-testimony/9ea6b07179b17035421f/optimized/full.pdf#page=1
- -
[See also ]
*The Center for Climate and Security Stands Firmly in Support of
Intelligence Analysis on Climate Security*
https://climateandsecurity.org/2019/06/08/the-center-for-climate-and-security-stands-firmly-in-support-of-intelligence-analysis-on-climate-security/#more-17517
[Flying is the most polluting way to travel]
*The 'flight shame' issue comes home to Rick Steves*
June 7, 2019
By Danny Westneat - Seattle Times columnist
Rick Steves is in a bit of a conundrum. One that not even a million
bucks is likely to solve.
"In the travel business, we are contributing to the destruction of our
environment," the Europe tour king, from Edmonds, acknowledged last month.
That is an understatement. In terms of carbon emissions that lead to
global warming, there's probably nothing worse we can do on an
individual basis than take an intercontinental flight. A single
round-trip flight between Seattle and, say, Rome, emits about 3.5 tons
of CO2 per person -- the same as nine months of driving in the average
U.S. car, according to the EPA.
The carbon cost of flying is so steep that in Europe it's led to a new
movement that the Swedes call "flygskam." It translates as "flight
shame." The premise is: fly less, or even, don't fly at all.
The idea has taken off enough in Europe that flygskam was the talk of an
airline conference last week. Headline: "Airlines scramble to overcome
polluter stigma as 'flight shame' movement grows."
Sounds like trouble if you're in the travel business.
- - -
Of course there's no sign Americans actually suffer much from flight
shame. Take Seattle. As green as we say we are, emissions from flights
at Sea-Tac have soared 40 percent since 2008, even as total emissions
from all Seattle cars have declined slightly.
I have already taken four cross-country round-trip flights this year,
spewing 5.2 tons of CO2, so I'm not pointing fingers. Prakash said I
could try to relieve my flygskam by buying carbon offsets (it would cost
about $50). But the best thing to do? Fly less in the future, he said.
A big reason climate change is such a tough political sell, he said, is
that "the elites, we tend to have no skin in the game. If we're asking
the coal miners to shut down the mine, but we aren't willing to reduce
our flying even a little bit, then we're hypocrites. People see a real
disconnect."
For a travel company this is an existential issue, so it took courage
for Rick Steves to raise it. But it sure doesn't seem like a million
dollars a year is going to make that disconnect go away.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/the-flight-shame-issue-comes-home-to-rick-steves/
[Book blurb]
*New Book on Transformational Resilience for Climate Change by Bob Doppelt*
Transformational Resilience: How Building Human Resilience to Climate
Disruption Can Safeguard Society and Increase Wellbeing
http://www.theresourceinnovationgroup.org/tr-book/
[learning resilience from the public library restoration]
*Library Preparedness for Hurricane Season*
Source: American Library Association (ALA)
Date Published: 5/22/2019
Format: Video or Multimedia
Annotation: This one-hour, 16-minute webinar provides lessons on
planning and preparing a library for the likelihood of a disastrous
hurricane. Speakers review the basic principles of emergency management
as an effective way to update a library's own emergency plans. They also
highlight the steps to create a template for emergencies if one hasn't
yet been developed, and discuss valuable lessons learned from librarians
in Houston and Puerto Rico, who explain how they were able to rebuild
while serving and collaborating with their communities in the aftermath
of the devastating Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017.
[Introductions for the first 7 minutes - content begins thereafter]
Authors: Garcia-Febo, Loido; Colbert, Mariel; Mayer, Elizabeth; Centeno,
Miriam; Haley, Alan; et al.
Type: Instructional/Training Material
ID: 19342. From: Disaster Lit a database of the U.S. National Library of
Medicine.
URL:
https://ala-events.zoom.us/recording/play/yLk_vOXO81yqSiOj_ckhNgGAN2EVeKCgTGDP8uxxlSevFfKd4UNBWzmJ8icbjJ2-?continueMode=true
[This is why I provide links to source materials for every clip that I post]
*Many Americans Say Made-Up News Is a Critical Problem That Needs To Be
Fixed*
Politicians viewed as major creators of it, but journalists seen as the
ones who should fix it
Many Americans say the creation and spread of made-up news and
information is causing significant harm to the nation and needs to be
stopped, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of 6,127 U.S.
adults conducted between Feb. 19 and March 4, 2019, on the Center's
American Trends Panel.
Indeed, more Americans view made-up news as a very big problem for the
country than identify terrorism, illegal immigration, racism and sexism
that way. Additionally, nearly seven-in-ten U.S. adults (68%) say
made-up news and information greatly impacts Americans' confidence in
government institutions, and roughly half (54%) say it is having a major
impact on our confidence in each other.
U.S. adults blame political leaders and activists far more than
journalists for the creation of made-up news intended to mislead the
public. But they believe it is primarily the responsibility of
journalists to fix the problem. And they think the issue will get worse
in the foreseeable future.
The vast majority of Americans say they sometimes or often encounter
made-up news. In response, many have altered their news consumption
habits, including by fact-checking the news they get and changing the
sources they turn to for news...
more at -
https://www.journalism.org/2019/06/05/many-americans-say-made-up-news-is-a-critical-problem-that-needs-to-be-fixed
]Time to check the library]
*5 novels about climate change to read now*
May 31, 2019
Countless reports and studies have told us for decades that human-driven
climate change is affecting life around the planet, with more dire,
long-term devastation to come. As scientists, international
organizations and frustrated citizens sound the alarm against inaction,
a new crop of writers have sought to depict what a future world might
look like if humans don't do something.
This genre of climate fiction is a "kind of imaginative worrying," said
author Pitchaya Sudbanthad, one that helps to illuminate "what we've
collectively done to the planet and the likely consequences ahead."
Sudbanthad's 2019 debut novel, "Bangkok Wakes to Rain," depicts
Thailand's low-lying and vulnerable capital in ruins after it's been
submerged under water. The book, which spans both past and present, is
an elegy to what might disappear.
While he says climate novels adhere to science to some degree, they are
still fiction, and facts are used to suit "their narrative situation."
What he finds alarming is that "what had been unimaginable is arriving
faster than writers can keep up,"
As the climate crisis becomes more apparently urgent, "related
narratives become even more necessary as a mirror that both reflects and
warns," Sudbanthad said.
Below, Sudbanthad recommends five other climate fiction books, including
some older titles, to read now. In his words:
*1. "Cloud Atlas" by David Mitchell*
It's a book that brilliantly weaves across time and place, as well as
multiple voices, for the expansive canvas required to tell its
far-reaching story of greed and cruelty -- and their devastating effects
on the world. One of the threads takes us to the wrecks of "Civ'lise
Days," a future post-apocalyptic setting that seems like a warped mirror
of our history. This kind of environmental collapse is an avoidable fate
that feels immensely difficult to escape, if Mitchell is right about
human nature.
*2. "Parable of the Sower" by Octavia Butler*
Many books, films and TV shows likely owe a debt to this classic by
Butler. It depicts a brutal world with walled communities fending off
invaders and drug-fueled arsonists, and the forced exodus of survivors
into the unknown. As a hyper-empathetic main character posits, change is
a fundamental truth, and what we change truly comes back to change us.
Because of this dearly held faith, one that keeps survivors moving
forward in spite of carnage and danger, Butler's is also a novel about a
resilient hope for renewal in the aftermath of a fallen society on a
ruined Earth.
*3. "Gold Fame Citrus" by Claire Vaye Watkins*
With the flight of its characters through a landscape devastated by a
climate crisis, Watkins' novel can be seen as an offshoot of Butler's
classic, but this novel does not hint toward much hopefulness for the
future. Within it is a cavalcade of situations and consequences made
more severe in a future California devoid of water. Across the dunes, we
follow Watkins' characters through a place so transformed that it needs
its own field guide of animals newly adapted for strange survival, as a
result of acts we do or do not commit now.
*4. "2140" by Kim Stanley Robinson*
Robinson's vision of New York City a little over a hundred years from
now is populated by characters whose lives do not feel so distant from
our own. In a city long swallowed by risen seas, they find ways to live
as normally as they can -- ice skating over frozen canals that once were
streets or trying to get rich on inundated asset derivatives. So many
things familiar to us survive, including mass inequality and the kind of
harmfully calculated economics that bring catastrophe for the many and
enrichment for the few.
*5. "The Overstory" by Richard Powers*
The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is told through several narrators whose
lives are progressively shown to be interconnected through their
reverent relationship with trees. One life touches on another and then
another, as would occur in an ecosystem, wherein lives are bound
together in ways that at first seem unapparent but are vital for mutual
hope of survival. In Powers' book, qualities of life, intelligence, and
society extend far beyond the human story, as they also do in our own
living world.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/5-novels-about-climate-change-to-read-now
*This Day in Climate History - June 9, 2008 - from D.R. Tucker*
June 9, 2008:
Deputy EPA administrator Jason Burnett resigns; he later claims that he
did so after repeated interference from the White House on issues
related to carbon pollution.
https://www.sfgate.com/green/article/Ex-EPA-aide-tells-of-White-House-censorship-3205205.php
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2008-07-09/news/36799342_1_climate-change-epa-deputy-associate-administrator-congressional-testimony
http://youtu.be/IPjyauzrrv0
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