[TheClimate.Vote] March 5, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/March 5, 2019/


[Friends filing]
*More Than a Dozen Groups File Briefs in Support of Kids Climate Suit*
By Dana Drugmand
More than a dozen groups filed friend-of-the-court briefs to the Ninth 
Circuit Court of Appeals in support of the landmark youth climate 
lawsuit Juliana v. United States.

The wide support came from businesses, members of Congress, 
environmental groups and environmental law organizations, environmental 
historians, law professors and international lawyers, the libertarian 
think tank Niskanen Center, public health experts, and religious and 
women's groups. One brief submitted on behalf of young people included 
more than 30,000 signatures from across the U.S. and around the world.

"The Trump administration is doing everything it can to stop ​Juliana v. 
United States​ from going to trial. The youth cannot let that happen. We 
are filing the Young People's brief to show that thousands of youth 
across America not only feel the urgency of climate action, but also 
understand that the youth climate lawsuit must proceed to secure a 
livable future," said Jamie Margolin​, 17-year-old founder of ​the 
nonprofit Zero Hour​ who is also a plaintiff in the Washington state 
climate lawsuit Aji P. v. State of Washington​. Margolin spearheaded a 
campaign called "Join Juliana" calling for young people under age 25 to 
sign the youth amicus brief.

The high-profile case was featured in a "60 Minutes" segment that aired 
Sunday night. Juliana alleges that the U.S. government's role in 
perpetuating a fossil fuel energy system-despite knowledge of the 
climate consequences-violates young people's Constitutional rights to 
life, liberty and property. It also claims the government has abandoned 
its public trust obligations to protect vital natural resources. The 
case is currently under a rare pre-trial appeal after the Ninth Circuit 
granted a Trump administration motion to review the case before trial.

The government recently filed its brief in that appeal, arguing that 
there is no "fundamental constitutional right to a 'stable climate 
system.'" The government's position is backed by one amicus brief filed 
by pro-fossil fuel interests including Merit Oil Company, Liberty 
Packing Company, Western States Trucking Association, and the National 
Federation of Independent Business Small Business Legal Center.

*The list of amicus briefs that lend support to the young plaintiffs has 
reached 15. They include:*
More than a half dozen businesses and trade associations including 
organic food companies and the skiing and snowsports industry, which 
argue that federal government action addressing climate change is 
essential to protecting their businesses, which are already being harmed 
by climate impacts.
Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden of Oregon and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse 
of Rhode Island, as well as Reps. Debra Haaland of New Mexico, Rashida 
Tlaib of Michigan, and Peter DeFazio and Earl Blumenauer of Oregon argue 
that the judiciary has a duty to assess the constitutionality of 
co-equal branches of government: "Not only does the Court have the power 
to interpret the law and provide remedies for systemic violations, the 
federal judiciary as a whole must fulfill its duty despite the 
inappropriate politicization of climate change."
Three different briefs were filed by environmental groups, including 
Earthjustice on behalf of Earth Rights International, Center for 
Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, Union of Concerned 
Scientists; Food and Water Watch, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace; 
and the Sierra Club. The briefs argue the plaintiffs have standing and 
the authority to bring a suit. The Sierra Club brief delves into what it 
calls the government's deliberate indifference in causing climate change.
Environmental law organizations including Center for International 
Environmental Law and Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide argue that 
international law, scientific and political consensus supports the 
recognition that fundamental rights include the right to a climate 
system capable of sustaining life.
A brief on behalf of 78 environmental historians explains the history 
and traditions underpinning the plaintiffs' substantive due process claim.
Legal scholars, including 82 law professors, defend the district court's 
recognition of valid constitutional claims under the due process clause.
International Lawyers for International Law say international law 
supports a legal remedy for violations of fundamental rights.
The Niskanen Center, which is supporting a Colorado climate liability 
suit against two oil companies, argues that the federal government has a 
public trust obligation that includes protecting the atmosphere and that 
the Clean Air Act does not displace this duty.
Public health experts, including a variety of medical and health 
organizations and 78 individual doctors, detail how today's children 
(the "Juliana generation") are particularly harmed by climate change 
impacts.
Two separate briefs were filed on behalf of multiple interfaith groups 
and two others represent young people. One of those comes from the 
Sunrise Movement, the environmental group behind the Green New Deal, and 
Zero Hour. The Sunrise brief includes an appendix of personal statements 
by more than 30 youth under age 18 explaining how climate change impacts 
them. The Zero Hour brief argues that the court has a duty to review 
infringements on the constitutional rights of young people.
"I am so hyped to see how many other young people feel empowered to 
support us in this amicus brief and push for change for our futures and 
future generations," said Miko Vergun​, 17-year-old ​Juliana p​laintiff 
from Beaverton, Ore. "The amount of young people, in the United States 
and around the world, who added their names to support this brief is a 
representation of all the youth who know that their futures and their 
planet are at stake."

Oral arguments on the interlocutory appeal will begin June 3 in 
Portland, Ore.
https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2019/03/04/kids-climate-suit-juliana-briefs-ninth-circuit/


[Senate awakens]
*Pressed by Climate Activists, Senate Democrats Plan to 'Go on Offense'*
By Coral Davenport and Sheryl Gay Stolberg
March 4, 2019
WASHINGTON -- Facing a showdown vote as early as this month over the 
embattled "Green New Deal," Senate Democrats are preparing a 
counteroffensive to make combating climate change a central issue of 
their 2020 campaigns -- a striking shift on an issue they have shied 
away from for the past decade.

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, outlined the 
new strategy in an interview last week, casting it as a way to mobilize 
millennial voters, a key part of the Democratic constituency that the 
party will need to turn out to win in swing states.

With progressives pushing Democrats to embrace the Green New Deal -- and 
Republicans ridiculing the idea as socialism -- Mr. Schumer is 
effectively trying to turn a weakness into a strength. He is planning 
daily floor speeches attacking Republicans for inaction and a proposal 
for a special Senate committee focused on the issue, which he intends to 
announce this week.

And while there is virtually no chance of passing climate change 
legislation in a Republican-controlled Senate with President Trump in 
office, Mr. Schumer said he wanted legislation to run on next year -- 
and bring to a vote in early 2021, should his party win the White House 
and the Senate...
- - -
...Democrats see fighting climate change as a winning issue on the 
campaign trail -- a way to mobilize not only young voters but also 
progressives, who are increasingly talking about the environment in 
terms of economic and social justice, given the outsize effect pollution 
has on minority communities...
- -
Democrats have been skittish about embracing the "green activist" label 
at least since 2000, when Mr. Gore lost his bid for the White House. 
Their unease worsened in 2010, when President Barack Obama's effort to 
push a climate change bill through Congress crashed in the Democratic 
Senate and helped sink the careers of some Democrats who voted for it...
- -
Polls show that millennial voters, the largest voting demographic, 
consistently rank climate change as an issue of top concern -- something 
older generations never did. A 2018 poll by the Pew Research Center 
found that millennials are the only generation in which a strong 
majority -- 65 percent -- says both that there is solid evidence of 
global warming and that this is attributable primarily to human activity.
- -
Celinda Lake, a Democratic strategist, said that if Democrats talked 
about the issue correctly -- using phrases like "transitioning to green 
energy," rather than the more polarizing "climate change" -- they could 
win over Trump voters, who associate words like "transition" and 
"energy" with jobs...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/us/politics/senate-democrats-climate-change.html



[OK - we are impressed]
*Belgian Scientists Announce New Solar Panel That Makes Hydrogen*
Heating homes and buildings with oil, propane, or natural gas costs a 
lot of money and pumps a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. How 
great would it be if there was a solar panel that would convert sunlight 
into clean burning zero emissions hydrogen to keep us all toasty warm at 
home and at work?
According to Belgian news source VRT NWS, scientists at KU Leuven, 
located in Flanders, Belgium, say they have created a solar panel that 
uses sunlight to make hydrogen from the moisture in the air. It can 
produce up to 250 liters of hydrogen gas a day. Professor Johan Martens 
and his team have been working on this for a decade. At first, the 
amount of hydrogen produced was minuscule but in a recent demonstration 
on a cloudy day, observers could see large quantities of hydrogen 
bubbles appear almost as soon as the demonstration panel was rolled into 
the sunlight.
"It's actually a unique combination of physics and chemistry," Martens 
says. "It the beginning we had 0.1 percent yield and we really had to 
search for those hydrogen molecules, today you see them coming up in 
bubbles, so that's ten years of work, always improving, looking for 
problems, so you end up with something that can work effectively." 
Researcher Jan Ronge adds, "Over an entire year, the panel produces an 
average of 250 liters per day, which is a world record. Twenty of these 
panels produce enough heat and electricity to get through the winter in 
a very well insulated house and still have electricity left over."
The panels are still a long way from commercial production, but a new 
prototype will soon be installed at the nearby home of Leen Peeters, an 
engineer who has turned her home into a living lab where she tests and 
evaluates energy conservation technologies. Her well insulated house has 
solar panels that power a solar water heater and a heat pump. It is not 
connected to the local natural gas supply. Only in the winter months 
does she use electricity from the grid.
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/03/03/belgian-scientists-announce-new-solar-panel-that-makes-hydrogen/
- -
[another discovery]
*Chirality yields colossal photocurrent*
Unique Weyl semimetal delivers largest intrinsic conversion of light to 
electricity
Date: March 4, 2019
Source: Boston College
Summary:
Typically, light is converted to electricity by chemically altering a 
semiconductor to have a built-in electric field. A team of researchers 
has developed an alternative means using a unique semi-metal that 
intrinsically generates direct current through the nonlinear mixing of 
the waves of light.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190304121605.htm


[Measuring Jet Stream weather events]
*New Scale to Characterize Strength and Impacts of Atmospheric River Storms*
12 FEBRUARY, 2019 BY FLOODLIST NEWS - IN FORECASTING AND WARNING 
SYSTEMS, USA
A team of researchers led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the 
University of California San Diego has created a scale to characterize 
the strength and impacts of "atmospheric rivers," long narrow bands of 
atmospheric water vapor pushed along by strong winds. They are prevalent 
over the Pacific Ocean and can deliver to the Western United States much 
of its precipitation during just a few individual winter storms.
They are the source of most of the West Coast's heaviest rains and 
floods, and are a main contributor to water supply. For example, 
roughly, 80 percent of levee breaches in California's Central Valley are 
associated with landfalling atmospheric rivers.

The scale, described in the February 2019 Bulletin of the American 
Meteorological Society, assigns five categories to atmospheric rivers 
(ARs) using as criteria the amount of water vapor they carry and their 
duration in a given location. The intention of the scale is to describe 
a range of scenarios that can prove beneficial or hazardous based on the 
strength of atmospheric rivers...
*The scale ranks ARs as follows:*

    *AR Cat 1 (Weak)*: Primarily beneficial. For example, a Feb. 23,
    2017 AR hit California, lasted 24 hours at the coast, and produced
    modest rainfall.
    *AR Cat 2 (Moderate)*: Mostly beneficial, but also somewhat
    hazardous. An atmospheric river on Nov. 19-20, 2016 hit Northern
    California, lasted 42 hours at the coast, and produced several
    inches of rain that helped replenish low reservoirs after a drought.
    *AR Cat 3 (Strong):* Balance of beneficial and hazardous. An
    atmospheric river on Oct. 14-15, 2016 lasted 36 hours at the coast,
    produced 5-10 inches of rain that helped refill reservoirs after a
    drought, but also caused some rivers to rise to just below flood stage.
    *AR Cat 4 (Extreme)*: Mostly hazardous, but also beneficial. For
    example, an atmospheric river on Jan. 8-9, 2017 that persisted for
    36 hours produced up to 14 inches of rain in the Sierra Nevada and
    caused at least a dozen rivers to reach flood stage.
    *AR Cat 5 (Exceptional):* Primarily hazardous. For example, a Dec.
    29 1996 to Jan. 2, 1997 atmospheric river lasted over 100 hours at
    the Central California coast. The associated heavy precipitation and
    runoff caused more than $1 billion in damages.

Ralph is considered a leading authority on atmospheric rivers, which 
were officially defined by the American Meteorological Society in 2017. 
Researchers have only begun to study atmospheric rivers in depth in the 
past two decades building on earlier research into extratropical cyclone 
structure and precipitation, especially in the United Kingdom. In that 
time, they have also come to understand how these events frequently make 
the difference between flood and drought years in key coastal regions 
around the world such as California...
http://floodlist.com/america/usa/new-scale-to-characterize-strength-and-impacts-of-atmospheric-river-storms
- - -
[source paper]
*A Scale to Characterize the Strength and Impacts of Atmospheric Rivers*
F. Martin Ralph - Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes, Scripps 
Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La 
Jolla, California

    Abstract
    Atmospheric rivers (ARs) play vital roles in the western United
    States and related regions globally, not only producing heavy
    precipitation and flooding, but also providing beneficial water
    supply. This paper introduces a scale for the intensity and impacts
    of ARs. Its utility may be greatest where ARs are the most impactful
    storm type and hurricanes, nor'easters, and tornadoes are nearly
    nonexistent. Two parameters dominate the hydrologic outcomes and
    impacts of ARs: vertically integrated water vapor transport (IVT)
    and AR duration [i.e., the duration of at least minimal AR
    conditions (IVT >/- 250 kg m-1 s-1)]. The scale uses an observed or
    predicted time series of IVT at a given geographic location and is
    based on the maximum IVT and AR duration at that point during an AR
    event. AR categories 1-5 are defined by thresholds for maximum IVT
    (3-h average) of 250, 500, 750, 1,000, and 1,250 kg m-1 s-1, and by
    IVT exceeding 250 kg m-1 s-1 continuously for 24-48 h. If the AR
    event duration is less than 24 h, it is downgraded by one category.
    If it is longer than 48 h, it is upgraded one category. The scale
    recognizes that weak ARs are often mostly beneficial because they
    can enhance water supply and snowpack, while stronger ARs can become
    mostly hazardous, for example, if they strike an area with
    antecedent conditions that enhance vulnerability, such as burn scars
    or wet conditions. Extended durations can enhance impacts. Short
    durations can mitigate impacts.

https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/BAMS-D-18-0023.1



[Obscure essay may apply to the subject at hand]
*Mr. Rogers' Apocalyptic Environmentalism for Children by Jason King*
January 3, 2019
In the United States, Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood is an iconic children's 
television show. It defined the genre through its slow pacing, the way 
Mr. Rogers spoke directly to the audience, and his constant message to 
children that "You've made this day a special day, by just your being 
you. There's no person in the whole world like you; and I like you just 
the way you are."
The gentleness and positivity makes it easy to miss the work the show is 
doing. As the recent documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor? reminds us, 
Rogers did a series of shows on divorce when divorce rates were rising 
in the 1970s and on King Friday building a wall to keep out the 
"changers" when the country was in the midst of the Vietnam War. On a 
hot day, he soaked his feet in a baby pool with Officer Clemens - who 
was portrayed by the African-American opera singer Francois Clemens - 
during cultural debates over desegregating public swimming pools.

It should not be too surprising then, when Earth Day was set to go 
international in 1990, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood ran a series of 
episodes that focused on environmentalism.

In these shows, Mr. Rogers took an apocalyptic approach. He did use the 
popular idea of the apocalypse that focuses on a cataclysmic ending with 
all things being destroyed. This approach is problematic for children. 
As Susan Jean Strife argues in "Children's Environmental Concerns," 
children already "express great anxiety over the state of the natural 
environment and are becoming increasingly ecophobic." Such things as the 
destruction of natural forests and animal habitats, global warming, air 
pollution, and the death and endangering of animals cause children to 
experience environmental problems as vast, overwhelming, intractable, 
"distant and abstract." As a result, children feel "overwhelmed, 
helpless, and pessimistic about the state of the world."

Instead, Mr. Roger's apocalypticism is of a different kind. While never 
directly addressing faith or God on his show, Mr. Rogers was an ordained 
Presbyterian ministry, so he drew on biblical apocalypticism to address 
environmentalism. As Christopher McMahon notes in "Imaginative Faith," 
biblical apocalypticism: 1) uses fantastical narratives to alert people 
to problems in the present social order, 2) sustains hope that the 
situation will improve, and 3) results in action to address "the plight 
of those who are suffering, and the structures which foster that suffering."

*Fantastical Narrative and the Present Social Order*
Over the course of these episodes of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, there is 
an ecological catastrophe building in the fantastical Neighborhood of 
Make-Believe. The story begins on garbage day, with Handyman Negri 
hearing a rumor that the dump is full. The dump is located in Someplace 
Else, the location of Harriet Cow's school and Donkey Hodie's farm. 
Harriet Cow informs Handyman Negri that the dump is full, so full in 
fact that they are building a fence to keep it from overflowing onto the 
farm and the school.

This portrayal of the dump critiques the social order. Trash is often 
transported "someplace else" so that it can be forgotten about. Its 
reality is removed from daily life, so the situation becomes abstract, 
far away, and, too often, unimportant. Further, Someplace Else is 
portrayed as an area of the United States known as Appalachia, from 
Harriet Cow's accent to her dress, from living on a small farm with 
animals, to the hilly terrain. Not only is this the area from where Fred 
Rogers is from, Appalachia is an area of historic environmental 
exploitation and often forgotten about. The timber industry stripped the 
hillsides. The coal industry hollowed out the mountains. Now, natural 
gas industry destabilizes the land and poisons the water. It is and has 
been a national sacrifice zone. In other words, in his show, Rogers 
critiques how society dumps its problems, including environmental ones, 
on areas where the poor and vulnerable live.

 From the initial voice of Harriet Cow crying out in the wilderness, the 
situation worsens. The smell of the accumulating trash in King Friday's 
land is getting worse. Factory worker, Mrs. Dingelborder stops working 
on her rocking chairs to make nosemuffs for everyone so that they are 
not overwhelmed by the stench. This occurs in the fourth of a 
five-episode arc, and so, even as an adult, it is easy to wonder how it 
could ever be resolved in just one episode.

*Sustaining Hope*
Despite the impending catastrophe, the scenario is meant to sustain 
hope. Throughout the story, the characters continually work toward 
solutions. The first round of solutions is to find another dump where 
everyone can dump the trash. This fails. The dumps in Southwood and 
Westwood are full. Other ideas are worse. Lady Elaine Fairchild suggests 
that "We could put all of our garbage into an airplane and send it away 
. . . [to] . . . Just Anywhere." When Lady Aberlin notes that the people 
of Just Anywhere might not like it, Lady Elaine says, "I never thought 
of that." While misguided, these attempts sustain hope because they 
indicate a world where everyone trying to help and no one is giving up.

In the last episode, the solutions come. Old Goat and New Goat arrive 
from Northwood. They come up with the plan to "divide and conquer": 
divide up trash into different piles so that it can be recycled. 
Alongside the Goats' plan, Hilda Dingleboarder creates a device that 
creates new things out of old, thrown-away things. While recycling is 
important, its role in the story is more than a simple solution. 
Recycling is symbolic of a world that is not hurtling toward doom and 
destruction but a world that works toward and eventually finds 
solutions. It is world where hope, not despair, reigns.

*Resulting Actions*
Finally, Rogers' apocalyptic environmentalism does not stop with a 
hopeful world but rather pushes people - in this case children, his 
audience - to action, to bring about a world that is more caring, less 
destructive, of nature. Rogers makes this shift when the show moves out 
of the fantastical Neighborhood of Make-Believe to the more realistic 
neighborhood of Mr. Rogers. There, Rogers provides a plethora of 
recycling activities that enable children to bring the environmental 
story of the Neighborhood of Make-Believe into their lives. These mainly 
take the form of crafts created by reusing household materials. Rogers 
shows how to make greeting cards with left over scraps of paper, a 
building out of scrap wood blocks, a tree out of toilet paper tubes and 
tissue paper, and a bird feeder from an old milk carton.

In addition to these concrete activities, Rogers offers conceptual 
recycling activities. He reminds the viewers to think if something can 
be recycled before throwing it away. He talks about imagination as a key 
to recycling as it helps people think of ways to reuse objects and 
materials. He likens memory to recycling because it is a way for people 
to use their past again and again. To emphasize this point on memory, 
Rogers uses a clip from a 1972 episode where Mrs. McFeeley uses old 
clothes and fabrics to make pillows and rugs. While these are activities 
that kids could do, they are also meant to show kids that they can take 
action and do something, however small, about the problems they face. 
Such activities develop agency in children, stave off ecophobia, and 
help children grow into a caring and active member of the community.

While directed toward children, these small actions are essential for 
everyone. In one of his few sermons, "Invisible Essential" given in 1997 
at Memphis Theological Seminary, Rogers reflected on his childhood as 
"Fat Freddy." As an overweight and shy child, Rogers was bullied. Once, 
while being chased, he fled to his neighbor's house, Mrs. Stewart, who 
quickly took him in. He retreated from bullies through music and the 
library. His grandfather, Fred McFeeley, helped him just by saying, 
after Rogers visited him, "Freddy, you made this day a special day for 
me." Each of these simple tasks, performed by family, friends, and 
neighbors were all essential for helping Rogers overcoming bullying. He 
came to see these actions as "times in which God's presence was so clear 
- so real." It was these small actions, little kindnesses, where the 
true, loving world was revealed. Rogers' called these actions the 
"invisible essentials" as they are necessary for life but also do not 
require any fame, fortune, or power. They can be performed by anyone. 
They are just choices to help in times of need, small daily choices, and 
yet they are some of the most important parts of reality. In this way, 
everyone can contribute to overcoming suffering and its causes and so 
bring about a kinder and more loving world.
- -
Jason King is Professor of Theology at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, 
PA. He is also editor of the Journal of Moral Theology. He is the author 
of Faith with Benefits: Hookup Culture on Catholic Campuses (Oxford 
University Press, 2017), and you can see his other works on his Academia 
page. You can follow him on Twitter @kingjasone.
The blog post is made available for non-commercial purposes, if you wish 
to copy and redistribute the blog you may do so without making changes, 
and you must credit the author and the source (censamm.org).
https://censamm.org/blog/mr-rogers-apocalyptic-environmentalism-for-children-by-jason-king 



[physical systems, political situations]
*What Does It Take to Destroy a World Order?*
*How Climate Change Could End Washington's Global Dominion*
At least 200 empires have risen and fallen over the course of history, 
and the United States will be no exception.
By Alfred McCoy FEBRUARY 28, 2019
Once upon a time in America, we could all argue about whether or not US 
global power was declining. Now, most observers have little doubt that 
the end is just a matter of timing and circumstance. Ten years ago, I 
predicted that, by 2025, it would be all over for American power, a 
then-controversial comment that's commonplace today. Under President 
Donald Trump, the once "indispensable nation" that won World War II and 
built a new world order has become dispensable indeed.

The decline and fall of American global power is, of course, nothing 
special in the great sweep of history. After all, in the 4,000 years 
since humanity's first empire formed in the Fertile Crescent, at least 
200 empires have risen, collided with other imperial powers, and in time 
collapsed. In the past century alone, two dozen modern imperial states 
have fallen and the world has managed just fine in the wake of their 
demise...
- - -
Cataclysm and Collapse
Yet there is mounting evidence that climate change, as it accelerates, 
is creating the basis for the sort of cataclysm that will be capable of 
shaking even such a deeply rooted world order. The cascading effects of 
global warming will be ever more evident, not in the distant future of 
2100 (as once thought), but within just 20 years, impacting the lives of 
most adults alive today.

Last October, scientists with the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on 
Climate Change issued a "doomsday report," warning that humanity had 
just 12 years left to cut carbon emissions by a striking 45% or the 
world's temperature would rise by at least 1.5 degrees Celsius above 
preindustrial levels by about 2040.  This, in turn, would bring 
significant coastal flooding, ever more intense storms, fierce drought, 
wildfires, and heat waves with damage that might add up to as much as 
$54 trillion -- well over half the current size of the global economy. 
Within a few decades after that, global warming would, absent heroic 
measures, reach a dangerous 2 degrees Celsius, with even more devastation.

In January, scientists, using new data from sophisticated floating 
sensors, reported that the world's oceans were heating 40% faster than 
estimated only five years earlier, unleashing powerful storms with 
frequent coastal flooding. Sooner or later, sea levels might rise by a 
full foot thanks to nothing but the thermal expansion of existing 
waters. Simultaneous reports showed that the rise in world air 
temperature has already made the last five years the hottest in recorded 
history, bringing ever more powerful hurricanes and raging wildfires to 
the United States with damages totaling $306 billion in 2017. And that 
hefty sum should be considered just the most modest of down payments on 
what's to come.

Surprisingly fast-melting ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic will 
only intensify the impact of climate change. An anticipated rise in sea 
level of eight inches by 2050 could double coastal flooding in tropical 
latitudes -- with devastating impacts on millions of people in low-lying 
Bangladesh and the mega-cities of southeastern Asia from Mumbai to 
Saigon and Guangzhou. Meltwater from Greenland is also disrupting the 
North Atlantic's "overturning circulation" that regulates the region's 
climate and is destined to produce yet more extreme weather events. 
Meanwhile, Antarctic meltwater will trap warm water under the surface, 
accelerating the break-up of the West Antarctic ice shelf and 
contributing to a rise in ocean levels that could hit 20 inches by 2100.

In sum, an ever-escalating tempo of climate change over the coming 
decades is likely to produce massive damage to the infrastructure that 
sustains human life. Seven hundred years later, humanity could be facing 
another catastrophe on the scale of the Black Death, one that might, 
once again, set the world in motion.

The geopolitical impact of climate change may be felt most immediately 
in the Mediterranean basin, home to 466 million people, where 
temperatures in 2016 had already reached 1.3 degrees Celsius above 
pre-industrial levels.  (The current global average was still around 
0.85 degrees.)  This means that the threat of devastating drought is 
going to be brought to a historically dry region bordered by sprawling 
deserts in North Africa and the Middle East. In a telling example of how 
climate catastrophe can erase an entire world order, around 1200 BC the 
eastern Mediterranean suffered a protracted drought that "caused crop 
failures, dearth, and famine," sweeping away Late Bronze Age 
civilizations like the Greek Mycenaean cities, the Hittite empire, and 
the New Kingdom in Egypt.

 From 2007 to 2010, ongoing global warming caused the "worst three-year 
drought" in Syria's recorded history -- precipitating unrest marked by 
"massive agricultural failures" that drove 1.5 million people into city 
slums and, next, by a devastating civil war that, starting in 2011, 
forced five million refugees to flee that country. As more than a 
million migrants, led by 350,000 Syrians, poured into Europe in 2015, 
the European Union (EU) plunged into political crisis.  Anti-immigrant 
parties soon gained in popularity and power across the continent while 
Britain voted for its own chaotic Brexit.

Projecting the Middle East's history, ancient and modern, into the near 
future, the ingredients for a regional crisis with serious global 
ramifications are clearly present. Just last month, the U.S. National 
Intelligence Council warned that "climate hazards," such as "heat waves 
[and] droughts," were increasing "social unrest, migration, and 
interstate tension in countries such as Egypt, Ethiopia, Iraq, and Jordan."

If we translate those sparse words into a future scenario, sometime 
before 2040 when average global warming is likely to reach that 
dangerous 1.5 degrees Celsius mark, the Middle East will likely 
experience a disastrous temperature rise of 2.3 degrees. Such intense 
heat will produce protracted droughts far worse than the one that 
destroyed those Bronze Age civilizations, potentially devastating 
agriculture and sparking water wars among the nations that share the 
Tigris and Euphrates rivers, while sending yet more millions of refugees 
fleeing toward Europe. Under such unprecedented pressure, far-right 
parties might take power across the continent and the EU could rupture 
as every nation seals its borders. NATO, suffering a "severe crisis" 
since the Trump years, might simply implode, creating a strategic vacuum 
that finally allows Russia to seize Ukraine and the Baltic states.

As tensions rise on both sides of the Atlantic, the U.N. could be 
paralyzed by a great-power deadlock in the Security Council as well as 
growing recriminations over the role of its High Commissioner for 
Refugees. Pummeled by these and similar crises from other climate-change 
hot spots, the international cooperation that lay at the heart of 
Washington's world order for the past 90 years would simply wither, 
leaving a legacy even less visible than that block of the Berlin Wall in 
midtown Manhattan...
- - -
In a distinctly ironic twist, a rising China has defied the 
long-standing doctrine of open seas, now sanctioned under a U.N. 
convention, instead effectively reviving the /mare clausum/ version of 
imperial power by claiming adjacent oceans as its sovereign territory. 
When the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the original world court, 
unanimously rejected its claim to the South China Sea in 2016, Beijing 
insisted that the ruling was "naturally null and void" and would not 
affect its "territorial sovereignty" over an entire sea. Not only did 
Beijing in that way extend its sovereignty over the open seas, but it 
also signaled its disdain for the international rule of law, an 
essential ingredient in Washington's world order.

More broadly, Beijing is building an alternative international system 
quite separate from established institutions. As a counterpoise to NATO 
on Eurasia's western extremity, China founded the Shanghai Cooperation 
Organization in 2001, a security and economic bloc weighted toward the 
eastern end of Eurasia thanks to the membership of nations like Russia, 
India, and Pakistan. As a counterpoint to the World Bank, Beijing formed 
the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank in 2016 that quickly attracted 
70 member nations and was capitalized to the tune of $100 billion, 
nearly half the size of the World Bank itself. Above all, China's $1.3 
trillion Belt and Road Initiative, 10 times the size of the U.S. 
Marshall Plan that rebuilt a ravaged Europe after World War II, is now 
attempting to mobilize up to $8 trillion more in matching funds for 
1,700 projects that could, within a decade, knit 76 nations across 
Africa and Eurasia, a full half of all humanity, into an integrated 
commercial infrastructure.

By shedding current ideals of human rights and the rule of law, such a 
future world order would likely be governed by the raw realpolitik of 
commercial advantage and national self-interest. Just as Beijing 
effectively revived the 1455 doctrine of mare clausum, so its diplomacy 
will be infused with the self-aggrandizing spirit of the 1885 Berlin 
conference that once partitioned Africa. China's communist ideals might 
promise human progress, but in one of history's unsettling ironies, 
Beijing's emerging world order seems more likely to bend that "arc of 
the moral universe" backward.

Of course, on a planet on which by 2100 that country's agricultural 
heartland, the north China plain with its 400 million inhabitants, could 
become uninhabitable thanks to unendurable heat waves and its major 
coastal commercial city, Shanghai, could be under water (as could other 
key coastal cities), who knows what the next world order might truly be 
like.  Climate change, if not brought under some kind of control, 
threatens to create a new and eternally cataclysmic planet on which the 
very word "order" may lose its traditional meaning.

Alfred W. McCoy, a TomDispatch regular, is the Harrington professor of 
history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of The 
Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, the 
now-classic book which probed the conjuncture of illicit narcotics and 
covert operations over 50 years, and the recently published In the 
Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global 
Power (Dispatch Books).
https://www.thenation.com/article/end-of-world-order-empire-climate-change/
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176533/tomgram%3A_alfred_mccoy%2C_climate_change_as_the_end_game_for_u.s._global_power/


[another invention]
*Climate rewind: Scientists turn carbon dioxide back into coal*
New technique can efficiently convert CO2 from gas into solid particles 
of carbon
Date: February 26, 2019
Source: RMIT University
Summary:
Scientists have harnessed liquid metals to turn carbon dioxide back into 
solid coal, in research that offers an alternative pathway for safely 
and permanently removing the greenhouse gas from our atmosphere. The new 
technique can convert carbon dioxide back into carbon at room 
temperature, a process that's efficient and scalable. A side benefit is 
that the carbon can hold electrical charge, becoming a supercapacitor, 
so it could potentially be used as a component in future vehicles.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/02/190226112429.htm


*This Day in Climate History - March 5, 2015 - from D.R. Tucker*
March 5, 2015: - The New York Times reports:
"Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and majority leader, is 
urging governors to defy President Obama by refusing to implement the 
administration's global warming regulations."
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/05/us/politics/mcconnell-urges-states-to-defy-us-plan-to-cut-greenhouse-gas.html?mwrsm=Email
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/

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