[TheClimate.Vote] June 22, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest..

[Richard Pauli]

/June 22, 2019/

[must adjourn by June 30th]
*Oregon Senate convenes again Friday with no Republicans as walkout over 
cap and trade continues*
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown has authorized the Oregon State Police, a 
division of her executive branch, to round up the missing senators.

SALEM, Ore. -- A day after the Republicans refused to be at the Capitol 
in protest of a cap-and-trade bill, the Oregon Senate convened Friday 
morning with only Democrats present.

After calling the session to order at 9 a.m., Senate President Peter 
Courtney abruptly ended the session. On the hour each hour Friday 
morning, the session was announced as remaining in recess...

Democrats in Oregon control both the House and the Senate. Democrats 
have an 18 to 12 majority in the chamber, but need 20 members present 
for a quorum. One GOP senator recently died and has not yet been replaced.

Republican Sen. Tim Knopp, who represents Bend, told KGW he is out of 
the state but alone. He said the senators remain united and in contact 
about the walkout.

"We had about 1,000 loggers in the Capitol the other day and it didn't 
seem to have any impact on the thinking of people who are pushing this 
bill forward," Knopp said over the phone. "So, the only options we had 
to slow this bill down and get the attention of the public and the 
majority was to deny a quorum and walk out."..

- - video from KCRW - https://youtu.be/Q_6fQsRT7bw

When Brown threatened to use police to bring back Republicans, a GOP 
senator from Dallas threatened violence against OSP. (Oregon State Police)
MORE: *'Send bachelors and come heavily armed'*: GOP state senator 
responds to Gov. Brown's police threat
https://www.kgw.com/article/news/politics/oregon-senate-convenes-again-friday-with-no-republicans-as-walkout-over-cap-and-trade-continues/283-0bf186e8-0cce-451c-83fe-92ac0be5eed4
- - -
[Representative government]
*Q&A: How will Oregon State Police go about finding GOP senators who 
walked out?*
The request for Oregon State Police to round up state legislators has 
been made before, but it's a rare step.

https://www.kgw.com/article/news/politics/oregon-senate-convenes-again-friday-with-no-republicans-as-walkout-over-cap-and-trade-continues/283-0bf186e8-0cce-451c-83fe-92ac0be5eed4


[Philly refinery explosion video]
*Philadelphia Fire Department Holds Press Conference Following Oil 
Refinery Fire, Explosion*
Philadelphia Fire Department Deputy Fire Commissioner Craig Murphy gives 
an update following a massive fire and explosion at Philadelphia Energy 
Solutions oil refinery.
- - -
*Dramatic Video Captures Explosion and Fire at Philly Oil Refinery*
The explosion occurred at the Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery in 
South Philadelphia around 4:00 a.m. Friday. The explosion could be heard 
and felt across the region around the.
https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Dramatic-Video-Captures-Explosion-and-Fire-at-Philly-Oil-Refinery_Philadelphia-511636722.html
- - -
*A fire at a Philadelphia oil refinery sparked an explosion felt for miles*
https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/21/us/philadelphia-refinery-fire/index.html


[1 min read]
*True Lies: 6 Things to Keep in Mind When Judging if Something Is the 
Truth or Fake News*
These findings from psychology researchers could help you avoid 
misinformation.
By Lance Ignon and Darrin S. Joy - June 17, 2019
Differentiating facts from "fake news" is becoming increasingly 
difficult, but it's not impossible if you keep your wits about you. 
(Illustrations: Dennis Lan for USC Dornsife Magazine.) Differentiating 
facts from "fake news" is becoming increasingly difficult, but it's not 
impossible if you keep your wits about you.

For decades, psychology researchers have studied how we form beliefs, 
and why we are often easily fooled. Here are six findings that, if kept 
in mind, could help you avoid pitfalls. 1

*When knowledge is uncertain, people turn to social consensus to gauge 
what is likely to be correct.* 2 It's easy to go along with the herd, 
but try not to get corralled into believing -- and spreading -- a lie.

*People are more confident in their beliefs if others share them. *3 
Don't be afraid to pop the bubble. Just because others agree with you 
doesn't mean any of you are right.

*People are more likely to accept a claim that is compatible with their 
own beliefs than one that is not.* 4 If it fits with your current world 
view, it's easy to accept it. Avoid being seduced into the status quo.

*People are more likely to believe statements when they are made in a 
familiar and easy to understand accent and when the speaker's name is 
easy rather than difficult to pronounce.* 5 Fear of "the other" can lead 
to suspicion. Fight the urge to vilify those you don't know or understand.

*A given claim is more likely to be accepted when it appears with a 
photo -- even when the photo has no probative value. 6* Pretty pictures 
sell; ask anyone posting on Craigslist. Don't let the eye candy fool you.

*False information is notoriously difficult to correct.…Corrections 
after exposure are often futile.* 7 Once the cat's out of the bag, it's 
very hard to put it back. Don't be afraid to question a long- and widely 
held belief. (That's the principle at the heart of science.)

1 Schwarz, Newman and Leach, 2016.
2 Festinger, 1954.
3 Visser and Mirabile, 2004.
4 Abelson, et al., 1968; Wyer, 1974.
5 Lev-Ari and Keysar, 2010; Newman, Sanson, Miller, Quigley-McBride,
Foster, Bernstein and Garry, 2014.
6 Newman, Garry, Bernstein, Kantner and Lindsey, 2012.
7 Schwarz, Sanna, Skurnik and Yoon, 2007; Lewandowsky, Ecker,
Seifert, Schwarz and Cook, 2012.

https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/3038/how-to-know-if-something-is-fake-news/


[[offensiveness warning] - rude video comment shows Media Fakes - by an 
outrageous culture commentator NSFW]
*Internet Comment Etiquette: "Deepfakes"**
*Internet Comment Etiquette with Erik
https://youtu.be/q9bgYHURGRw Published on Jun 21, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9bgYHURGRw


[instincts everywhere agree]
*Revealed: air pollution may be damaging 'every organ in the body'*
Exclusive: Comprehensive analysis finds harm from head to toe, including 
dementia, heart and lung disease, fertility problems and reduced 
intelligence
Damian Carrington - Environment editor
Fri 17 May 2019 11.00 GMT
Air pollution may be damaging every organ and virtually every cell in 
the human body, according to a comprehensive new global review.

The research shows head-to-toe harm, from heart and lung disease to 
diabetes and dementia, and from liver problems and bladder cancer to 
brittle bones and damaged skin. Fertility, foetuses and children are 
also affected by toxic air, the review found.

The systemic damage is the result of pollutants causing inflammation 
that then floods through the body and ultrafine particles being carried 
around the body by the bloodstream.

Air pollution is a "public health emergency", according to the World 
Health Organization, with more than 90% of the global population 
enduring toxic outdoor air. New analysis indicates 8.8m early deaths 
each year - double earlier estimates - making air pollution a bigger 
killer than tobacco smoking.

But the impact of different pollutants on many ailments remains to be 
established, suggesting well-known heart and lung damage is only "the 
tip of the iceberg".

"Air pollution can harm acutely, as well as chronically, potentially 
affecting every organ in the body," conclude the scientists from the 
Forum of International Respiratory Societies in the two review papers, 
published in the journal Chest. "Ultrafine particles pass through the 
[lungs], are readily picked up by cells, and carried via the bloodstream 
to expose virtually all cells in the body."

Prof Dean Schraufnagel, at the University of Illinois at Chicago and who 
led the reviews, said: "I wouldn't be surprised if almost every organ 
was affected. If something is missing [from the review] it is probably 
because there was no research yet."

The review represents "very strong science", said Dr Maria Neira, WHO 
director of public and environmental health: "It adds to the very heavy 
evidence we have already. There are more than 70,000 scientific papers 
to demonstrate that air pollution is affecting our health."

She said she expected even more impacts of air pollution to be shown by 
future research: "Issues like Parkinson's or autism, for which there is 
some evidence but maybe not the very strong linkages, that evidence is 
coming now."

How air pollution reaches every part of the body ...
The WHO has called air pollution the "silent killer" because its 
widespread effects are often not ascribed to toxic air.

Lungs and heart
The harmful effects of dirty air shown in the review begin when the 
pollution is inhaled.

This results in breathing problems, from asthma to emphysema to lung 
cancer. There is now overwhelming evidence that air pollution results in 
serious harm not only to the lungs, but also to the heart. Here it 
increases the risk of heart attacks as arteries narrow and muscles weaken.

One reason for the wide-ranging damage from air pollution is that very 
small particles can penetrate the lungs and be carried around the body. 
"They land in the organs directly," Schraufnagel said.

"Animal studies have shown they can even travel right up the olfactory 
nerve into the brain." An emerging area of research also suggests air 
pollution can affect how genes function, he added.

Brain and mind
Strokes, dementia and reduced intelligence are all conditions affecting 
the brain that have been linked to air pollution.

There is also evidence that poor sleep can be a consequence of breathing 
toxic air.

The main reason for the far-reaching damage from air pollution is 
systemic inflammation, said Schraufnagel.

"Immune cells think a [pollution particle] is a bacteria, go after it 
and try to kill it by releasing enzymes and acids," he said.

"Those inflammatory proteins spread into the body, affecting the brain, 
the kidneys, the pancreas and so forth. In evolutionary terms, the body 
has evolved to defend itself against infections, not pollution."

Abdominal organs
Among the many other organs affected is the liver. Schraufnagel said the 
latter surprised him, until he thought about the liver's role in 
removing toxins from the body: "It makes perfect sense, but I would not 
have thought about it before starting the study."

Research highlighted in the review also links air pollution to numerous 
cancers, including in the bladder and the gut, where an increase in 
irritable bowel syndrome has also been found.

Even skin and bones are affected, with skin ageing, hives and brittle 
bones associated with toxic air.

Reproduction, babies and children
Perhaps the most disturbing impact of toxic air is the damage to 
reproduction and children. Fertility is reduced and miscarriages 
increased by exposure to air pollution.

The unborn are also affected, with a recent study finding pollutants in 
the placentas that nourish foetuses.

Air pollution is also strongly linked to low birthweights for babies, 
which has lifelong consequences.

Children are especially vulnerable, the review found, as their bodies 
are still developing.

Exposure to dirty air leads to stunted lungs, increases in childhood 
obesity, leukemia and mental health problems.

'Doctors need to speak up'

Schraufnagel is concerned that many doctors are unaware of this 
wide-ranging damage associated with air pollution.

"Some have no idea air pollution affects the organs they specialise in. 
But it affects their organs too and they had better pay attention," he 
said. "They need to educate their patients and then they should speak 
up" in favour of action.

Researchers cannot experiment on people and so by necessity many studies 
show significant associations between poor air quality and disease, but 
cannot prove cause and effect.

However, Schraufnagel said particularly compelling evidence comes from 
three types of study: where air pollution and illness change in tandem 
over time, where the "dose" of pollution correlates with levels of 
disease and from animal studies.

For example, government action to slash pollution before the Beijing 
Olympics in 2008 led to a rise in birth weights in the city.

"Harmful effects occur even at levels below air quality standards 
previously considered to be safe," warn the review scientists, who 
between them represent every continent. But they add: "The good news is 
that the problem of air pollution can be addressed."

"The best way to reduce exposure is to control it at its source," said 
Schraufnagel. Most air pollution comes from burning fossil fuels to 
generate electricity, heat homes and power transport.

"We need to work on these factors in a very dramatic way," said Neira. 
"We are probably the first generation in history to be exposed to such a 
high level of pollution. People will say that in London or other places 
it was worse 100 years ago, but now we are talking about an incredible 
number of people exposed for a long time."

"We have megacities where all the citizens are breathing toxic air," she 
said. "However, with all the tonnes of evidence we are collecting now, 
politicians will not be able to say we didn't know."
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2019/may/17/air-pollution-may-be-damaging-every-organ-and-cell-in-the-body-finds-global-review



[Demonizing Koch]
June 18, 2019
*Koch-Oil Big Lies and Ecocide Writ Large in Canada*
by John McMurtry
As we know, big lies can run free across borders with few joining the dots.

For example, no media reports that China's growing dispute with Canada 
is based on Canada's enforcement of the Trump administration's 
unilateral and illegal embargo against oil-competitor Iran. A cynical 
reply is that this is predictable. Canada attacks any designated US 
Enemy in junior partnership with global corporate command.
But this time there is a new twist. Canada is attacking itself without 
knowing it.
- - -
Canada's vast tar-sands deposits are world famous as surpassing Saudi 
Arabia oil-field capacities in total barrels of potential yield. Great 
Canada! Yet few notice that over two-thirds of the entire tar-sands 
operations are owned by foreign entities sending their profits out of 
Canada, and almost all its raw product is controlled for refining and 
sale in the US.
What is especially kept out of the daily news is the incendiary fact 
that the infamous, election-interfering and oft-EPA-convicted Koch 
brothers have a dominant stake in the toxic crude of the Alberta 
tar-sands seeking a massive BC-pipeline out to their US refineries.

Koch-owned industries have already extracted countless billions of their 
near $100-billion fortune from the tar-sands and deployed their 
well-known voter-manipulations to change the balance of power in Canada 
as they have done in the US.
The objective is the same in both cases - ever more tax-free, publicly 
subsidized and state-enforced control by US Big Oil of Alberta's massive 
oil resources with no government regulations or interferences in the way.
- - -
Prior to the wide-mouth pipelines of toxic Alberta crude planned through 
BC mountains, lands and waters to US processors, oil has to be extracted 
from the tar-sands first. This demands a continuous gargantuan depleting 
and polluting of the great Athabaska Lake, River and watershed to 
steam-boil the tar out of the vast open-pit mines. The immense open-pit 
mines are not formed or pumped out of desert as in the Middle East. They 
are torn in state-size chunks out of the earth's mantle by monstrous 
wrecking machines ripping out the boreal forest lands by the roots to 
destroy the carbons sinks and water-hold stabilization they provide in 
the Northern region as well as pump out ever more climate-changing gases.

To boil the tar out of the endless open-pit mines already demands the 
equivalent of twice the amount of water the entire City of Calgary uses 
and recycles in a year. But water consumed by the tar-sand boiling is 
permanently polluted and wasted, and its fresh- water take from the 
great Athabaska watershed will only increase as the tar-sands 
'development' is maximized, accessible oil fields are exhausted and 
prices rise. So too the annihilation of the boreal forests acting as a 
sink for carbon and holding the watershed together will be permanently lost.
Yet this is only the beginning of what ends up being the biggest single 
point-source of carbon pollution and climate destabilization in the 
world. It pollutes 2.5 times more carbon gases than natural oil. 
Extraction mechanisms cost almost 8-times more fossil fuels than natural 
oil, and use overall almost as much energy as is produced!

For many years now, the Kochs have made most of their vast fortune from 
processing billions of barrels of tar-sand crude in the US, not Canada. 
This is why their octopi funding fronts have relentlessly pushed for 
ever more pipelines through others' lands (including Dakota's indigenous 
Standing Rock) to control this bigger and safer business than tar-sand 
extraction itself.
This is also why the Kochs have led the huge financing of climate change 
denial against the known science, in which tar-sand extractions and 
burning produce far more toxic carbon gases than high-grade oil. Most of 
all, the Kochs have acted out of sight to ensure control over elected 
governments that might regulate and control their above-the-law 
activities. They spent more than the Republican Party itself on the 2012 
US elections.

They invented and funded the Congress-upending Tea-Party, and finance 
endless attack ads against all resisters to their will to dominate the 
US Congress and Senate (and behind the scenes the Trump presidency).
Yet just as climate science does not matter to rogue Big Oil, so too the 
prevention of toxic Alberta crude running through Canada by processing 
it in Canada first is erased from discussion. No public voice even 
mentions the environmental risks of pipelining the toxic crude through 
the mountains and coats of BC when it could be cleaned up in Alberta 
first. None yet flags all the lost Canadian fortune and economic 
development going down the drain by raw-crude pipelines straight to the 
control, refineries and global sale of foreign Big-Oil 
multi-billionnaires like the Koch brothers. As for the foreign 
interference in Canada's elections manipulating every step, no-one 
reports this either.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/18/koch-oil-big-lies-and-ecocide-writ-large-in-canada/



[video Beckwith discusses medical paper]
*Twenty-Seven Ways to Die from Wetbulb 35 C (95 F) Temperatures on the 
Pakistan-India Border*
Paul Beckwith
Published on Jun 19, 2019
Since our average human core body temperature is 37 C (98.6 F) (with 
some variation) and our skin temperature is a few degrees C cooler than 
this, a wetbulb temperature of 35 C (95 F) is the limit for human 
shedding of heat and thus survival. This is true for other mammal 
species as well, dependent on their specific core body temperatures. How 
do we die with these conditions, even the very healthiest among us? It 
turns out there are 7 major organs that can crap out, each essentially 
by 5 different mechanisms. Luckily, some of these 7x5 combinations are 
not possible, so there are only 27 different ways to die; not 35:)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axoIWmB97uw
- - -
[continuing]
*Fatal Wetbulb Temperatures Reached at Pakistan-India Border*
Paul Beckwith
Published on Jun 19, 2019
Analyzing data from the Meteologix website for India suggests that 
present extremely hot temperatures combined with high humidities exceed 
the 35 C (95F) wetbulb temperature threshold of human survivability 
(even sitting naked in the shade, in a gale, covered in sweat, your 
survive 6-8 hours at most). It doesn't matter how healthy, fit, and 
strong you are; the physics is fatal. Luckily, the worst conditions seen 
on the Pakistan-India border (mostly in Pakistan) are for a few hours, 
and not the full day, but death rates in this region must be huge (and 
are currently unreported).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4nud3-ncRI
- - -
[refer to a classic MIT paper from 2010]
*An adaptability limit to climate change due to heat stress*
Steven C. Sherwood and Matthew Huber
PNAS May 25, 2010 107 (21) 9552-9555; 
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0913352107 - Edited by Kerry A. Emanuel, 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, and approved March 
24, 2010 (received for review November 19, 2009)
*Abstract*
Despite the uncertainty in future climate-change impacts, it is often 
assumed that humans would be able to adapt to any possible warming. Here 
we argue that heat stress imposes a robust upper limit to such 
adaptation. Peak heat stress, quantified by the wet-bulb temperature TW, 
is surprisingly similar across diverse climates today. TW never exceeds 
31 C. Any exceedence of 35 C for extended periods should induce 
hyperthermia in humans and other mammals, as dissipation of metabolic 
heat becomes impossible. While this never happens now, it would begin to 
occur with global-mean warming of about 7 C, calling the habitability of 
some regions into question. With 11-12 C warming, such regions would 
spread to encompass the majority of the human population as currently 
distributed. Eventual warmings of 12 C are possible from fossil fuel 
burning. One implication is that recent estimates of the costs of 
unmitigated climate change are too low unless the range of possible 
warming can somehow be narrowed. Heat stress also may help explain 
trends in the mammalian fossil record...
- - -
We propose that a somewhat neglected aspect of global warming, the 
direct impact on humans and other mammals in the form of heat stress, 
may provide a climate impacts benchmark that is relatively 
well-constrained by physical laws. We find a tolerance limit that is 
well above other oft-cited thresholds, such as the 2 C target now 
adopted by many nations, but still reachable if things go badly, 
therefore an important linchpin for risk estimates...
https://www.pnas.org/content/107/21/9552

*This Day in Climate History - June 22, 2014 - from D.R. Tucker*
June 22, 2014: In the New York Times, former Treasury Secretary Hank 
Paulson observes:

"There is a time for weighing evidence and a time for acting. And if
there's one thing I've learned throughout my work in finance,
government and conservation, it is to act before problems become too
big to manage.

"For too many years, we failed to rein in the excesses building up
in the nation's financial markets. When the credit bubble burst in
2008, the damage was devastating. Millions suffered. Many still do.

"We're making the same mistake today with climate change. We're
staring down a climate bubble that poses enormous risks to both our
environment and economy. The warning signs are clear and growing
more urgent as the risks go unchecked."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/opinion/sunday/lessons-for-climate-change-in-the-2008-recession.html 

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