[TheClimate.Vote] March 6, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest.

[Richard Pauli]

/March 6, 2019/

[Military man's metaphor of the month]
Rear Admiral Jon White (Ret.), President and CEO of the Ocean Leadership 
Consortium and member of the Center for Climate and Security's Advisory 
Board says:

I do worry about things, especially in recent months, over the last
year too.
I've really started worrying more and more, that we are too late.
That we are getting close to being too late to take the action that
we need to take.
*I feel like I'm on a navy ship and I've got about 30 feet of draft,
that's the depth of the ship under water.**
**And we're heading towards shallow water and we know it's not deep
enough to keep me from running aground,**
**but we're arguing over, "is it 10 feet or 15 feet?"-- instead of
turning the ship before we run into it**
**Because it doesn't matter 10 or 15 feet -- we're gonna run aground. *
I feel like the same thing is happening with our climate with our
ocean and with a lot of our environment right now: is that we we
need to make some decisions and really take some action going
forward and I just worry about we're just
getting to that point - if we're gonna miss our turn opportunity

https://youtu.be/FT_N9rImCWU?t=93
- - -
[A more formal expression of concerns]
*Release: 58 Senior Military and National Security Leaders Denounce NSC 
Climate Panel*
Washington, DC, March 5, 2019 -- In an extraordinary letter published 
today by the Center for Climate and Security (CCS) and the American 
Security Project (ASP), a group of 58 senior retired military and 
national security leaders denounced the National Security Council (NSC) 
plan to set up an "adversarial" group to undermine the science that 
informs defense and intelligence threat assessments on climate change. 
The plan is being driven by vocal climate denier William Happer, who has 
expertise in neither climate science nor national security. The letter 
includes former secretaries of defense and state (Hagel and Kerry) 
former combatant commanders (such as Admiral Locklear and General 
McChrystal), former intelligence leaders (such as Greg Treverton, past 
Chair of the National Intelligence Council) and other senior military 
and national security officials that served in Republican and Democratic 
administrations stretching back to President Eisenhower. The letter 
represents an extraordinary rebuke from a very practical community that 
is normally focused on addressing external threats, not internal 
politics. This demonstrates how far outside the national security 
consensus the NSC proposal is. The letter states:

"…we are deeply concerned by reports that National Security Council
officials are considering forming a committee to dispute and
undermine military and intelligence judgments on the threat posed by
climate change. This includes second-guessing the scientific sources
used to assess the threat, such as the rigorously peer-reviewed
National Climate Assessment, and applying that to national security
policy.  Imposing a political test on reports issued by the science
agencies, and forcing a blind spot onto the national security
assessments that depend on them, will erode our national security."

Read the entire letter online: 
https://climateandsecurity.org/letter-to-the-president-of-the-united-states-nsc-climate-panel/
https://www.americansecurityproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Letter-to-the-President_Senior-Military-and-National-Security-Leaders-Denounce-NSC-Climate-Panel_2019_3_05.pdf
The Center for Climate and Security is a non-partisan security policy 
institute of the Council on Strategic Risks with a team and Advisory 
Board of senior military and national security experts.

The American Security Project (ASP) is a nonpartisan organization 
created to educate the American public and the world about the changing 
nature of national security in the 21st Century.
https://climateandsecurity.org/


[similarity of atmosphere and ocean]
*Heatwaves sweeping oceans 'like wildfires', scientists reveal*
Extreme temperatures destroy kelp, seagrass and corals - with alarming 
impacts for humanity...The number of heatwaves affecting the planet's 
oceans has increased sharply, scientists have revealed, killing swathes 
of sea-life like "wildfires that take out huge areas of forest".

The damage caused in these hotspots is also harmful for humanity, which 
relies on the oceans for oxygen, food, storm protection and the removal 
of climate-warming carbon dioxide the atmosphere, they say.

Global warming is gradually increasing the average temperature of the 
oceans, but the new research is the first systematic global analysis of 
ocean heatwaves, when temperatures reach extremes for five days or more.

The research found heatwaves are becoming more frequent, prolonged and 
severe, with the number of heatwave days tripling in the last couple of 
years studied. In the longer term, the number of heatwave days jumped by 
more than 50% in the 30 years to 2016, compared with the period of 1925 
to 1954.

As heatwaves have increased, kelp forests, seagrass meadows and coral 
reefs have been lost. These foundation species are critical to life in 
the ocean. They provide shelter and food to many others, but have been 
hit on coasts from California to Australia to Spain.

"You have heatwave-induced wildfires that take out huge areas of forest, 
but this is happening underwater as well," said Dan Smale at the Marine 
Biological Association in Plymouth, UK, who led the research published 
in Nature Climate Change. "You see the kelp and seagrasses dying in 
front of you. Within weeks or months they are just gone, along hundreds 
of kilometres of coastline."

As well as quantifying the increase in heatwaves, the team analysed 116 
research papers on eight well-studied marine heatwaves, such as the 
record-breaking "Ningaloo Niño" that hit Australia in 2011 and the hot 
"blob" that persisted in the north-east Pacific from 2013 to 2016. "They 
have adverse impacts on a wide range of organisms, from plankton to 
invertebrates, to fish, mammals and seabirds," Smale said.


The scientists compared the areas where heatwaves have increased most 
with those areas harbouring rich biodiversity or species already near 
their temperature limit and those where additional stresses, such as 
pollution or overfishing, already occur. This revealed hotspots of harm 
from the north-east Atlantic to the Caribbean to the western Pacific. "A 
lot of ocean systems are being battered by multiple stresses," Smale said.


The natural ocean cycle of El Niño is a key factor in pushing up 
temperatures in some parts of the ocean and the effect of global warming 
on the phenomenon remains uncertain, but the gradual overall heating of 
the oceans means heatwaves are worse when they strike.

"The starting temperature is much higher, so the absolute temperatures 
[in a heatwave] are that much higher and more stressful," said Smale. 
Some marine wildlife is mobile and could in theory swim to cooler 
waters, but ocean heatwaves often strike large areas more rapidly than 
fish move, he said.

The researchers said ocean heatwaves can have "major socioeconomic and 
political ramifications", such as in the north-west Atlantic in 2012, 
when lobster stocks were dramatically affected, creating tensions across 
the US-Canada border.

"This [research] makes clear that heatwaves are hitting the ocean all 
over the world…The ocean, in effect, is spiking a fever," said Prof 
Malin Pinsky, at Rutgers University, US, and not part of the team. 
"These events are likely to become more extreme and more common in the 
future unless we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

Dr Éva Plaganyi at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research 
Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia also likened ocean heatwaves to 
wildfires. "Frequent big hits can have long-lasting effects," she said. 
"This study shows that record-breaking events are becoming the new normal."

The damage global warming is causing to the oceans has also been shown 
in a series of other scientific papers published in the last week. Ocean 
warming has cut sustainable fish catches by 15% to 35% in five regions, 
including the North Sea and the East China Sea, and 4% globally, 
according to work published by Pinsky and colleagues.

"We were stunned to find that fisheries around the world have already 
responded to ocean warming," he said. Another study showed that 
achieving the 2C climate change target set out in the Paris agreement 
would protect almost 10m tonnes of fish catches each year, worth tens of 
billions of dollars.

Separate work by Plaganyi's team showed that climate change will reverse 
the recovery of whales in the Southern Ocean by damaging the krill on 
which they feed. "Models predict concerning declines, and even local 
extinctions by 2100, for Pacific populations of blue and fin whales, and 
Atlantic and Indian Ocean fin and humpback whales," they said.

"In the space of one week, scientific publications have underscored that 
unless we take evasive action, our future oceans will have fewer fish, 
fewer whales and frequent dramatic shifts in ecological structure will 
occur, with concerning implications for humans who depend on the ocean," 
said Plaganyi.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/04/heatwaves-sweeping-oceans-like-wildfires-scientists-reveal


[Inslee report]
*Inslee: Trump 'simply moronic' on wind power*
BY BRETT SAMUELS - 03/04/19
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) said Monday that President Trump's view 
of wind power and other environmentally friendly initiatives are 
"moronic" and "narrow-minded."

Inslee, who announced last week his bid for president in 2020, pushed 
back on ABC's "The View" against Trump's speech at the Conservative 
Political Action Conference over the weekend in which the president 
mocked the Green New Deal and Democrats' focus on wind power.

"When Donald Trump said that, you know, we're not going to have toasters 
and TVs if we have wind power, that's just simply moronic is the best 
way I can say it," Inslee said.

"He is just such a pessimistic and a narrow-minded thinker," he added. 
"He needs to get with the rest of Americans that understand the country 
that sent a man to the moon can develop a clean-energy economy."...
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/432548-inslee-trump-simply-moronic-on-wind-power


[CO2 changes]
*Developed Economies' CO2 Emissions Efforts Are Beginning To Pay Dividends*
The efforts of developing economies to cut carbon dioxide emissions and 
tackle climate change are beginning to pay off, according to new 
research led by the Tyndall Centre at the University of East Anglia, 
with policies supporting renewable energy and energy efficiency 
development helping to reduce emissions in 18 developed economies.

renewable energyAccording to the research, published in the journal 
Nature Climate Change last week, University of East Anglia (UEA) 
researchers analyzed the drivers of decreasing carbon dioxide (CO2) 
emissions in a group of 18 developed economies -- including France, 
Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, and Denmark -- 
which together represents 28% of global emissions. The research team 
analyzed the reasons behind changes in CO2 emissions levels in countries 
where emissions declined significantly between 2005 and 2015, and showed 
that the fall in CO2 emissions was mainly due to the ever-increasing 
role of renewable energy over that of fossil fuels, as well as a 
decrease in energy usage.

Conversely, however, the decrease in energy usage in these countries was 
also partly explained by lower economic growth naturally reducing the 
demand for energy following the global financial crisis of 2008-2009.

More importantly, however, is the finding that countries where CO2 
emissions had decreased the most were those countries with the largest 
number of energy and climate policies in place.
"Our findings suggest that policies to tackle climate change are helping 
to decrease emissions in many countries," said Lead researcher Prof 
Corinne Le Quere, of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at 
UEA. "This is good news, but this is just the start. There is a long way 
to go to cut global emissions down to near zero, which is what is needed 
to stop climate change. Deploying renewable energy worldwide is a good 
step but by itself it is not enough, fossil fuels also have to be phased 
out."...
- - -
The researchers also compared countries with declining emissions with 
countries with increasing emissions and found that policies encouraging 
energy efficiency were linked to emissions decreases across all 
countries. The research also showed that policies encouraging renewable 
energy were linked to cuts in emissions, but primarily in developed 
economies with decreasing emissions, not across the board like energy 
efficiency policies.
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/03/04/developed-economies-co2-emissions-efforts-are-beginning-to-pay-dividends/



[Eu Sued]
*EU Sued for Climate Impacts of Burning Wood for Energy*
By Karen Savage
Burning wood for energy--a practice known as biomass-- undermines 
efforts to slow climate change and is no better for the climate than 
burning fossil fuels, according to a lawsuit filed Monday against the 
European Union.

The suit, which was filed in the European General Court in Luxembourg, 
asks the court to prevent EU countries from counting forest wood as a 
renewable energy source under the 2018 revised Renewable Energy 
Directive known as RED II. The plaintiffs--individuals and 
non-governmental organizations from Estonia, France, Ireland, Romania, 
Slovakia, and the U.S.--allege the practice is harming their health and 
livelihoods. They point to research that shows wood-burning power plants 
are worse for the climate than coal-fired plants and result in an 
increase in greenhouse gas emissions and degradation of forest carbon 
sinks, which absorb carbon from the atmosphere.

Carbon emissions from wood-fired power plants are not counted under RED 
II, making it appear as if they have zero emissions. And because wood is 
considered a renewable energy source, companies that convert their 
facilities from fossil fuel-burning to wood-burning receive renewable 
energy subsidies and helps them avoid taxes on carbon pollution.

The plaintiffs say energy derived from wood-burning also undermines the 
goals of the Paris Agreement. The agreement urges countries to protect 
carbon sinks, including forests and to "take action to implement and 
support […] activities relating to reducing emissions from deforestation 
and forest degradation."
https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2019/03/04/biomass-european-union-lawsuit/



[some real serous politics]
*How A Tiny Offshore Wind Farm In Scotland Could Unseat A US President*
File this one under P for Proof that karma is a bitch. The Trump 
Organization's ill-fated legal action against a relatively small, 
11-turbine offshore wind farm in Scotland took yet another twist last 
week when the country's Court of Sessions ruled that Trump's company and 
the Trump International Golf Club in Aberdeen are on the hook for the 
country's legal costs.

The exact sum has yet to be disclosed but it could amount to a tidy pile 
of Euros, considering that the lawsuit has festered since 2015.

As if the Commander-in-Chief needed any more headaches right now!

*The Scottish Offshore Wind Farm Debacle*
The golf debacle is more than just another notch on the decades-long 
belt of private sector failures credited to the President Trump. It is 
also a microcosm for his losing battle against renewable energy.

To begin at the end, last week the Aberdeen Evening Express neatly 
summarized the latest legal development:

A firm formerly headed by US president Donald Trump has been ordered to 
pay Holyrood's legal bills over Aberdeen Bay wind farm battle.

Judges at the Court of Session ruled Trump International Golf Club 
Scotland Ltd should pay legal bills incurred by the Scottish Ministers.

Ouch! The ruling follows a decision against the Trump holdings at the 
Supreme Court in London.

As of this writing, the Scotland Court of Sessions has not published its 
decision. However, you can get some insights into the dustup from the 
papers filed in 2015 against the Scottish Ministers, in which the Trump 
Organization and Trump International Golf Course listed their objections 
to the new wind farm:

 From the inception of the [offshore wind farm project], the petitioners 
have opposed it on planning, environmental and amenity grounds; and have 
done so on a consideration of its apprehended financial impact on the 
petitioners' development. The petitioners have sent numerous letters of 
objection and representations to the respondents.

Basically, Trump argued that the offshore wind farm would spoil the 
views from his newly built golf club, which went into operation in 2012.

That bit about environmental concerns is funny considering that the 
International Golf Course was roundly opposed by environmental groups 
when planning began in 2006. The plan was finally approved in 2008 under 
reportedly "unprecedented" circumstances demonstrating "exceptionally 
poor judgement" on the part of then-First Minister of Scotland Alex 
Salmond, who reportedly greenlighted the project following a private 
dinner with Trump.

Adding to the irony, construction of the course reportedly destroyed a 
"virgin" sand dune habitat.
*
**Offshore Wind Farm Part Of A Pattern*
Too bad Salmond didn't travel to the future and listen to the advice of 
Michael Cohen before he decided to push the Trump project forward.

Cohen is facing serious jail time following his longtime role as Trump's 
"fixer." During his testimony before Congress last week, Cohen warned 
legislators and others who "blindly" support Trump that they could end 
up suffering 'the same consequences that I'm suffering.'"

Anyways, that sounds par for the course concerning Trump's 
use-'em-and-lose-'em treatment of political allies. By 2017, Salmond 
himself was warning other economic development planners against taking 
Trump at his word. He also had this to say about the current Leader of 
the Free World:

"The Grand Canyon is a minor crevice compared to the vast chasm of 
ignorance of that man."

Sick burn!

*Karma & The Offshore Wind Farm*
As for the possibility that the offshore wind farm could play a role in 
future legal or Congressional action against the current occupant of the 
Oval Office, file that under T for That appears to run afoul of the 
Foreign Emoluments Clause of the US Constitution, aka Article I, Section 
9, Paragraph 8:

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no 
Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without 
the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, 
or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

The prevailing view among Constitutional scholars is that the Foreign 
Emoluments clause prohibits the President of the United States to act in 
his personal financial interest.

Nevertheless, shortly after news of the Court of Sessions decision 
broke, the Leader of the Free World deployed his Twitter account to 
inform the public that he is "very proud of perhaps the greatest golf 
course anywhere in the world."

Trump also noted that the golf course "furthers U.K. relationship," in 
case you need any additional reminder that there seems to be no wall 
between his personal financial interests and affairs of state.

And, in case you were wondering which golf course he was referring to, 
he linked to a Trump Organization web page citing the designer of the 
Aberdeen course, well known golf course architect Martin Hawtree, 
praising his own work (how's that for an objective endorsement):

"The landscape framework of @TrumpScotland comes close to an ideal. 
There is nothing missing & there are no weak holes." Dr. Martin Hawtree 
http://TrumpGolfScotland.com."

Walter Shaub, an advisor to the US ethics watchdog organization CREW, 
took to Twitter with a quick observation that hints at more trouble 
between Congress and the President:

This is Trump's most explicit commingling of personal interests and 
public office to date. This is the tone from the top that leads his 
appointees to violate ethics rules. This is shameless, corrupt and 
repugnant presidential profiteering. This is an invitation to graft.

Yikes!

Anyways, in consideration of his praise for the golf course apparently 
the President does not consider those 11 wind turbines out in Aberdeen 
Bay to be such eyesores after all. They were built last year and began 
operation last fall as the centerpiece of the new European Offshore Wind 
Deployment Center.

*More Karma & The Offshore Wind Farm*
Despite the considerable legal, financial, and political levers of power 
available to Trump, the global wind industry is moving forward.

EOWDC was designed as an R&D facility aimed at staking Scotland's 
leadership role in ramping up the offshore wind industry worldwide. It 
has also become a local tourist attraction.

The US has some catching up to do, but it is poised to sprint ahead on 
offshore wind. Yes, Energy Secretary Rick Perry has been toeing the 
Trump line on fossil energy, but so far that amounts to so much lip service.

Here's a short list of US wind industry developments since Trump took 
office in January 2017:

Atlantic coast lease activity picks up momentum, adding hundreds of
turbines to the waters of New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New
Jersey and other states. The US currently has only one five-turbine
offshore wind farm in operation, at Block Island in Rhode Island).
Energy Department selects New York State to spearhead a new R&D
effort aimed at accelerating the US wind industry.
Energy Department promotes "disruptive" floating offshore wind
technology to open up Pacific Coast and other deep waters for wind
development.
The Energy Department has also gone out on a legal limb to support
new wind energy transmission lines in the US interior, so there's that.

For the record, here's the President at the annual conservative 
convention CPAC poking fun of wind power just last Saturday:

I think it's really something that they should promote. They should work 
hard on it. … When the wind stops blowing that's the end of your 
electric. Let's hurry up. Darling, is the wind blowing today? I'd like 
to watch television, darling.

Meanwhile, Dr. Hawtree's enthusiasm for the Aberdeen golf course does 
not seem to reflect in the facility's ledger books.

Our friends over at Business Insider provided some insights under the 
headline, "Trump boasts about his controversial Scottish golf course, 
even though it loses $1 million a year and many locals despise it:"

A review by Business Insider of the accounts for Trump International 
Golf Club Scotland Limited, which runs the course, found losses of 
between $1 million and $2.4 million for every year since it opened in 2012.

Bummer!
CleanTechnica is reaching out to NYSERDA, the New York State agency 
tasked with leading the new US wind energy consortium, for an update, so 
stay tuned for more on that.
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/03/03/how-a-tiny-offshore-wind-farm-in-scotland-could-unseat-a-us-president/



[Book review]
*The Criminal Dimension of Climate Change*
by Andrew Glikson
(Mar 01, 2019)
Peter D. Carter and Elizabeth Woodworth, Unprecedented Crime: Climate 
Science Denial and Game Changers for Survival (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 
2017), 270 pages, $27.95, paperback.

"We're simply talking about the very life support system of this
planet."
--Joachim Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute of Climate
Impacts

The extreme rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide since the onset of the 
industrial age, reaching ~403 parts per million (ppm) in 2017, and the 
corresponding rise in mean global temperature to 1.3C above 
preindustrial temperature, pose an existential risk for the future of 
civilization and nature.

Unprecedented Crime: Climate Science Denial and Game Changers for 
Survival, a book by Peter Carter and Elizabeth Woodworth, with a 
foreword by leading climate scientist James Hansen, outlines the 
criminality of those who actively promote the continuing emission of 
carbon gases into the atmosphere despite having full knowledge of the 
consequences. These consequences include the breakdown of large ice 
sheets, rising sea levels, and the intensification of extreme weather 
events around the world, such as hurricanes, floods, and fires.

The book highlights the collusion of large parts of the mainstream media 
with climate change denial and its cover up, stating that

there is no benign explanation for a full media blackout of a 
significant global development that was heralded by the United Nations 
Secretary-General. This blackout goes far beyond ignorance or 
negligence. It is a willful obstruction of public knowledge of the 
extraordinary extent of global efforts to combat the greatest 
existential threat of all time by changing business-as-usual. We define 
this willful, methodical blocking of vital survival information as an 
unprecedented crime against life on the planet.

The book cites Tom Engelhardt, author of Terracide and the Terrarists: 
Destroying the Planet for Record Profits:

The fossil-fuel companies are guilty of the ultimate crime, because
they are earning their profits directly off melting the planet,
knowing that their extremely profitable acts are destroying the very
habitat, the very temperature range that for so long made life
comfortable for humanity.…However, Big Carbon could never have been
able to continue its polluting ways--long after the scientific
community had reached consensus about the connection between
fossil-fuel emissions, global warming, and climate change--without
the assistance of the media.

According to James Hansen, the National Aeronautics and Space 
Administration's former chief climate scientist,

burning all fossil fuels would create a different planet than the
one that humanity knows. The paleoclimate record and ongoing climate
change make it clear that the climate system would be pushed beyond
tipping points, setting in motion irreversible changes, including
ice sheet disintegration with a continually adjusting shoreline,
extermination of a substantial fraction of species on the planet,
and increasingly devastating regional climate extremes.

Following the presentation of definitive evidence of anthropogenic
climate change, a plethora of websites have emerged reporting the
views of nonscientists as well as scientists known to receive
funding from the fossil fuel industry. These views, in breach of the
basic laws of physics and of direct observations, ignore
peer-reviewed, published climate and paleoclimate science,
misrepresent observed atmospheric and oceanic processes and trends,
fabricate evidence, and conduct personal attacks against climate
scientists.

Examples of this abound:

Climate change deniers claim carbon dioxide is not a factor driving
global warming, contrary to the rise of carbon dioxide by more than
40 percent since the onset of the industrial age and the laws of
black-body radiation--Stefan-Boltzmann law, Planck's law, and
Kirchhoff's law.

Whereas the average global temperature has been rising sharply since 
about 1975, there was a relative lull during 2000-14, with high warming 
rates resuming in 2015. This was mainly due to (1) albedo increase from 
heavy sulfur-aerosol emission, and fewer sunspots. Climate-change 
deniers claim this transient period represents a cessation of global 
warming.

Whereas the large Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets have been
melting at a rate of more than 500 billion metric tons per year, the
ice-melt water flowing off these glaciers cooled adjacent ocean
regions, resulting in transient extension of circum-Antarctic sea
ice, which climate-change deniers claim to represent global cooling.

Virulent attacks on climate scientists followed. To use one example
from the book, a climate change denier "argued that the
'demonization of carbon dioxide really differs little from the Nazi
persecution of the Jews, the Soviet extermination of class enemies
or ISIL slaughter of infidels.'"

Large parts of the conservative press have taken strong exception to
the evidence of anthropogenic global warming, as reported in Robert
Manne's essays "Diabolical" and "Bad News."

The manifest paralysis of the political and media classes in the face of 
the climate impasse, evidenced by the failure of a succession of United 
Nations Framework Conventions on Climate Change to undertake meaningful 
steps to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions--since 2009: Copenhagen, 
Cancún, Doha, Durban, Warsaw, Paris--requires alternative avenues to 
limit the deleterious consequences of continuing carbon emissions on the 
biosphere.

These consequences have been reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on 
Climate Change Working Group II (Climate Change 2014: Impacts, 
Adaptation, and Vulnerability) and Working Group III (WGIII - Climate 
Change 2014: Mitigation of climate change).

Traditionally, political and economic negotiations aim to compromise. 
Unfortunately, no negotiation is possible with the basic laws of physics 
and chemistry, or with processes in the atmosphere-ocean-cryosphere system.

Is there anything in international and national law that can avert 
ongoing carbon emissions? Do global and national legal systems offer any 
possibilities in this regard? In exploring potential restrictions on 
carbon emissions, the following international and national laws and 
conventions are relevant:

Crimes against humanity, as defined by the Rome Statute of the 
International Criminal Court Explanatory Memorandum. Such crimes are 
particularly odious offenses that constitute a serious attack on human 
dignity, or grave humiliation or degradation of one or more human 
beings. Crimes against humanity are not isolated or sporadic events, but 
are part of either government policy (although perpetrators need not 
identify themselves with policy) or a wide practice of atrocities 
tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto authority.

United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 
Part III, Article 6, which states that "every human being has the 
inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one 
shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life. When deprivation of life 
constitutes the crime of genocide, it is understood that nothing in this 
article shall authorize any State Party to the present Covenant to 
derogate in any way from any obligation assumed under the provisions of 
the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide."

Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, July 17, 1998, Article 
7, Crimes Against Humanity, extermination. Extermination includes the 
intentional infliction of conditions of life, inter alia the deprivation 
of access to food and medicine, calculated to bring about the 
destruction of part of a population. Australian Commonwealth and State 
laws regarding air quality standards and the prohibition of pollution.
Recently, a successful legal challenge has been raised in the United 
States in this regard, as evidenced in the statement by Professor James 
Hansen.
Some of the consequences of the above include:

Since the onset of the industrial age and particularly since the
Second World War, an abrupt rise in atmospheric temperature levels
has been driven by an increase in the concentration of greenhouse
gases due to the release of more than 600 billion metric tons of
carbon (gigatons of carbon, or GtC) into the atmosphere. This is
leading to a dramatic shift in the state of the atmosphere-ocean
system, unprecedented in recorded geological history with the
exception of events that led to mass extinctions, such as massive
volcanism, extraterrestrial impacts, and large-scale releases of
methane.

As a direct consequence of the above, mean global temperatures have 
risen by about 1.3C and, had it not been for emitted sulfur, aerosol 
temperatures have risen by nearly 2.0C, reaching levels similar to those 
of the Pliocene period roughly 2.6-5.3 million years ago. This shift is 
occurring at the fastest rate recorded by paleoclimate studies. Whereas 
many species can adapt to gradual environmental changes, the current 
temperature-rise rate, resulting from ~2-3 ppm carbon dioxide/year, 
cannot be sustained. The current change is manifested by an increase in 
the melting rate of the major ice sheets, the accelerating rise in sea 
levels, and the greater frequency and intensity of extreme weather 
events, reflecting elevated energy levels of the atmosphere-ocean system.

Continuing carbon emissions and the consequent rise of mean global 
temperatures will render large parts of Earth's land surfaces 
uninhabitable due to extreme temperatures, droughts, storms, and 
flooding of coastal deltas and lower river regions due to the rise in 
sea levels. The rise in sea levels is estimated to be about 25 +/- 12 
meters--Pliocene-like conditions--constituting an existential calamity 
for civilization and nature.17 Leaving aside the injection of transient, 
short-residence time sulfur aerosols, the arrest of current climate 
trends would require (1) a meaningful reduction in the current rate of 
carbon emissions (~9 GtC/year), and (2) the application of carbon 
dioxide drawdown technologies, such as large-scale sea grass farming, 
biochar, and carbon dioxide capture by air streaming through basalt and 
serpentine, aimed at reducing atmospheric greenhouse gases by at least 
50 ppm. There are enough reserves of conventional and unconventional 
(oil shale, tar sands, coal seam gas) fossil fuels whose combustion 
would raise atmospheric and oceanic temperatures to the levels of the 
early Eocene and the Cretaceous periods, excluding most current forms of 
advanced life on Earth.

As Robert Manne writes: "Unless by some miracle almost every climate 
scientist is wrong, future generations will look upon ours with 
puzzlement and anger--as the people who might have prevented Earth from 
becoming a habitat unfriendly to humans and other species but 
nonetheless failed to act.… Our conscious destruction of a planet 
friendly to humans and other species is the most significant development 
in history."

The carbon-oxygen cycle of the atmosphere-ocean-land constitutes the 
lungs of the biosphere. Burning the vast carbon reserves buried in 
sediments can only result in a demise rivaling the five great mass 
extinctions in Earth's history. Survivors of the sixth mass extinction 
may hold responsible those who promoted carbon emissions and turned a 
blind eye to the unfolding tragedy: the fossil fuel barons, the 
political classes, and their media mouthpieces.
https://monthlyreview.org/2019/03/01/the-criminal-dimension-of-climate-change/


*This Day in Climate History - March 6, 2007 - from D.R. Tucker*
CBS Evening News" reports on California's efforts to combat carbon 
pollution.
http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/calif-fights-global-warming/
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