[TheClimate.Vote] March 7, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/March 7, 2019/


[Future prognostications]
*Far-Right Climate Denial Is Scary. Far-Right Climate Acceptance Might 
Be Scarier.*
By Eric Levitz at EricLevitz
The reality of climate change has a well-known liberal bias.

Once you accept that the (so-called) free market's price signals have 
guided humanity to the brink of destruction, laissez-faire conservatism 
becomes a filthy joke. And once you recognize that industrial policy in 
India could determine the fate of your grandchildren -- just as the past 
century of industrial policy in the developed world has (literally) 
shifted the ground beneath Bangladesh's feet -- jingoistic nationalism 
becomes a childish indulgence. Global carbon emissions can't be curbed 
without accepting more government intervention in national economies and 
more international oversight of nation-state governance...
- - -
Beyond the issue of immigration, there is a significant amount of 
political science research positing a correlation between material 
abundance and liberal pluralism. Such research suggests that in 
circumstances of scarcity, people might naturally gravitate toward more 
conformist and authoritarian attitudes and social structures. A nasty, 
brutish, and hot world -- routinely upended by massive storms and 
agricultural failures -- may be one in which mass publics are less 
tolerant of social difference, and more eager to submit to a political 
leviathan.

All of this underscores the necessity of minimizing temperature rise. 
But it also suggests that revitalizing faith in liberal, universalist 
ideals is an indispensable component of "climate readiness." In 2019, it 
is banal to say that the environmental movement's primary challenge is 
political. By now, advocates are well aware that IPCC reports can't 
force governments to mount an aggressive response to the crisis. But 
there is another, less appreciated dimension of difficulty: Persuading 
governments to mount an aggressive response to the crisis won't force 
them to mount a just response. Some critics of the Green New Deal -- 
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's inchoate plan for achieving fully renewable 
social democracy -- have lambasted the proposal for wedding action on 
climate to an explicitly egalitarian moral and ideological vision.

They should consider the hazards of the alternative.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/climate-science-invites-liberal-solutions-or-fascist-ones.html
- -
[wise of us to read this book]
*In 'The Uninhabitable Earth,' Apocalypse Is Now*
By Jennifer Szalai - March 6, 2019
More than halfway through "The Uninhabitable Earth," David Wallace-Wells 
addresses the reader directly, commending anyone who has "made it this 
far" for being "brave." After all, the previous pages of his book have 
depicted in meticulous and terrifying detail the possible future that 
awaits the planet should we continue to add carbon to the atmosphere and 
fail to arrest global warming. Floods, pestilence, famines, wildfires: 
What he calls the "elements of climate chaos" are veritably biblical in 
scope...
- - -
In the course of writing this book, even while staring down the bleak 
decades ahead, Wallace-Wells had a child. "She will watch the world 
doing battle with a genuinely existential threat," he writes. "She will 
be living it -- quite literally the greatest story ever told. It may 
well bring a happy ending."

Wait -- what? I found this lurching between sweet hopefulness on the one 
hand and lurid pessimism on the other to be bewildering, like a heat 
wave followed by a blizzard. But then Wallace-Wells has resolved to 
offer something other than the standard narrative of climate change and 
collective action, which "is, dramatically, a snore." Mobilization is 
impossible for people who are sleepwalking their way toward disaster; 
and mobilization is necessary, he says, to deploy the tools at our 
disposal, which include carbon taxes, carbon capture and green energy.

"The Uninhabitable Earth" wagers that we've grown inured to cool 
recitations of the facts, and require a more direct engagement of 
political will. "There is no single way to best tell the story of 
climate change, no single rhetorical approach likely to work on a given 
audience, and none too dangerous to try," Wallace-Wells writes. "Any 
story that sticks is a good one."
Follow Jennifer Szalai on Twitter: @jenszalai.
*The Uninhabitable Earth - Life After Warming*
By David Wallace-Wells
310 pages. Tim Duggan Books. $27.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/06/books/review-uninhabitable-earth-life-after-warming-david-wallace-wells.html



[Video - the first 35 seconds says it all]
*Climate Crisis : New 2019 UK Report*
Just Have a Think
Published on Mar 3, 2019
Climate and Environmental Crisis. That's the message of a new report 
published this week by the Institute of Public Policy Research in the 
UK. The report doesn't pull many punches in its description of our 
environmental predicament. This week we take a look at the detail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJGnYAjU8OY


OP-ED  POLITICS & ELECTIONS
*"Moderate" Democrats Are Really Conservatives -- and They Are Dangerous*
Refusing to take climate change seriously is a right-wing position.
Truthout March 5, 2019
https://truthout.org/articles/moderate-democrats-are-really-conservatives-and-they-are-dangerous/


[CO2]

*Our planet just set a scary new carbon dioxide record*
By Eric Holthaus on Mar 6, 2019

Our planet's level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached a new, 
jarring record last month. Scientists from Scripps Institution of 
Oceanography announced on Tuesday that February's average carbon dioxide 
measurement was 411.66 parts per million as measured in Mauna Loa, Hawaii.

Since humanity's greenhouse gas emissions were at an all-time high last 
year, a new record was expected. What was shocking was that it occurred 
so early in the year: Earth's carbon dioxide levels typically peak in 
May, when the vast northern forests of North America and Asia are just 
beginning to green up. Setting a new record in February is "rare," 
according to Scripps.

"In most years, the previous maximum is surpassed in March or April. The 
February record breaking is a measure of just how fast CO2 has been 
rising in the past months," said Scripps CO2 Group Director Ralph 
Keeling, in a statement. The suddenness of this year's record is the 
result of "the combination of weak El Nino conditions and unprecedented 
emissions from fossil-fuel burning," according to Keeling.

This year's carbon dioxide level is expected to peak around 415 parts 
per million in May.

There hasn't been this much carbon dioxide in our planet's atmosphere 
since before cars started clogging the roads a century ago, before 
agriculture was developed 10,000 years ago, and before modern humans 
evolved more than a million years ago. We have reached not only a new 
phase of civilizational history, but a new phase of our species' history.

In recent years, the rise in the planet's carbon dioxide levels has 
picked up speed. That's in line with scientists' predictions of a planet 
creeping toward dangerous and irreversible tipping points, and 
highlights the dangers of collective foot-dragging on shifting to a 
carbon-free economy.

https://grist.org/article/our-planet-just-set-a-scary-new-carbon-dioxide-record/


[cli-fi]
*Climate Fiction: A Special Issue*
We've known for years about climate change, but only 54% of Americans 
think it's a "serious issue." That's why, says guest fiction editor Amy 
Brady, we need to read climate fiction.
By Amy Brady
Where were you when 2018's record heat wave gripped the planet? I was 
camped in Maine's Acadia National Park, feeling wilted beneath a 
towering white birch. The air, thick with heat, hurt to breathe. As 
sweat pooled on my body, I listened for the birds but heard nothing--the 
woods had been heartbreakingly silent for days. A chipmunk, small and 
panting, appeared from behind a fern. I poured it some water in the 
crevice of a nearby boulder, and dismantled my tent. Maine's summers had 
changed. Everything has.

We've known for so long what we're doing to the earth. Scientific 
reports have predicted the devastating effects of climate 
change--including record heat waves--for decades. And yet, as of this 
writing, only 54 percent of Americans consider the situation "very 
serious." Why our refusal to listen? In his book, What We Think About 
When We Try Not To Think About Climate Change, psychologist Per Espen 
Stoknes argues that we distance ourselves because the facts of global 
warming are too often presented in abstract or guilt-inducing ways. In 
order for us to get it--to actually face it--we need vibrant narratives 
that help us feel an emotional connection to what we're losing, to see 
how planetary changes are afoot in our own backyards. We need the 
stories in this special issue.

These stories exemplify the genre of "climate fiction," or "cli-fi," by 
exploring what the world might become if climate change continues 
unabated. Its roots are in science fiction, but here, it's tinged, 
beautifully so, with realism and the supernatural. At its best, cli-fi 
conjures, spell-like, meditative spaces in which we ponder our deepest 
fears before emerging transfigured. To that end, the writers of this 
issue are magicians: Lydia Millet's "Woodland" follows a young woman who 
struggles to survive at a "leisure facility" in the Pacific Northwest, 
where wealthy clients pay to see forest creatures--once plentiful but 
now rare--in their natural habitat. Her apprehension over what's to come 
is assuaged by helping others. "I felt peace descend," she thinks as she 
follows her clients through the woods, watching them spot the animals 
she'd just released. The language teacher in Pitchaya Sudbanthad's 
"Floating" expresses a similar altruism, even as she prepares her home 
against rising sea levels. The surreal nature of the imminent flood, 
meanwhile, moves her to question the existence of another 
impossibility--a Thai spirit called a "krasue." If the sea can overcome 
an entire city, why can't a disembodied head, curious and searching, 
hover through the streets after dark?

Helen Phillips's "The Disaster Store" is the most intimate of the issue. 
It brings us into the mind of a mother, whose worry over impending 
disasters leaks like slow-acting poison into her relationship with her 
young daughter. As her unease grows, so does the rift between them. The 
only way she can repair their bond is to learn to sit with the hardest 
of feelings--anger, resentment, shame. Bonds likewise get tested in Omar 
El Akkad's "Factory Air," which drops us in the middle of a labor 
strike. The factory's working conditions are dire, the air full of 
toxins--"the waste particulate, the evaporated chemicals, the dust, the 
heaviness." When the union's spokesperson meets with the boss man, she 
must weigh her loved ones' needs against those of her comrades.

Taken together, these stories emphasize not only the range of climate 
fiction, but also of climate change: it burns our forests, floods our 
homes, wreaks havoc on our psyches, and renders our air unbreathable. 
Where news reports often fall short, these works of fiction make clear 
that the effects of global warming are far from monolithic. To my 
pleasant surprise, each of them also features a woman protagonist. This 
was not an editorial mandate, nor was it something I discussed with the 
writers beforehand. The coincidence nonetheless lays bare another 
frustrating truth about the age in which we live: when everything goes 
to hell, it's usually the women who are left to deal with the mess.

To drive home the reality of the world the stories depict, I've paired 
them with original photographs by Nathan Kensinger, a New York-based 
photographer and filmmaker whose work centers on decrepit industrial 
sites and coastal communities threatened by sea-level rise. The haunting 
quality of his work suggests that the fictional futures of these stories 
are closer to our present day than we may realize.

One last note on craft. I selected these writers because I greatly 
admire their work and knew them to be experienced cli-fi creators. That 
is to say, I trusted them to tackle an immense challenge posed by the 
genre--climate change isn't a traditional antagonist. It can't be 
stopped by a hero with a bullet or a clever ruse. The forces that drive 
it are deeply systemic. The drama, then, lies in the emotional arcs of 
the characters as they face their lives with alternating hope and 
despair, knowing that while the future looks bleak, it has yet to be 
written.

We face a similar unknown. 2018 was, according to NASA, the fourth 
hottest year on record (the past five years are collectively the 
hottest). Carbon dioxide levels in the air are at their highest in 
650,000 years, and Arctic sea ice is at its smallest in recorded 
history. Clearly, we are in crisis. But as Bill McKibben once wrote, 
change will follow once we feel "in our gut" the gravity of our 
situation. My hope is that these stories will help spark the internal 
churning we desperately need. So to that end, please read them all, and 
then share them widely. Our future, quite literally, depends on it.
https://www.guernicamag.com/climate-fiction/



[A classic article from 2012 - climate psychology]
*'Hug the Monster' for Realistic Hope in Global Warming (or How to 
Transform Your Fearful Inner Climate)*
May 6, 2012
By BILL BLAKEMORE - Correspondent via WORLD NEWS
A Metaphor to Change Fear Into Action and Extinguish the Panic and 
Despair so Deadly in a Great Crisis

Nature's Edge Notebook #27

Observation, Analysis, Reflection, New Questions

Sometimes, the right metaphor can save your life.

"Hug the monster" is a metaphor taught by U.S. Air Force trainers to 
those headed into harm's way.

The monster is your fear in a sudden crisis - as when you find yourself 
trapped in a downed plane or a burning house.

If you freeze or panic - if you go into merely reactive "brainlock" - 
you're lost.

But if your mind has been prepared in advance to recognize the 
psychological grip of fear, focus on it, and then transform its intense 
energy into action - sometimes even by changing it into anger - and by 
also engaging the thinking part of your brain to work the problem, your 
chances of survival go way up.

Around the world, a growing number of people are showing signs of 
hugging the monster of what the world's experts have plainly shown to be 
a great crisis facing us all.

Established scientists, community and government leaders and 
journalists, as they describe the disruptions, suffering and destruction 
that manmade global warming is already producing, with far worse in the 
offing if humanity doesn't somehow control it, are starting to allow 
themselves publicly to use terms like "calamity," "catastrophe", and 
"risk to the collective civilization."

Sooner or later, everyone who learns about the rapid advance of manmade 
global warming must deal with the question of fear.

For many years now, the worlds scientists and economists have depicted  
upheavals in security plans, financial networks, and food and water 
systems due to the rapidity with which annual global temperature is 
rising as a result of excess carbon emissions.

But those who have also hugged this monster are finding that doing so 
transforms the crisis:

    for government leaders around the world, into a wide field of ways
    to inspire action as they begin to find reasons for what the
    Holocaust scholar Philip Hallie calls "realistic hope."
    for climate scientists, economists and other academic specialists,
    into the most fascinating, challenging and complex puzzle they've
    ever faced together - fascinating and challenging, not least because
    its biggest unknown is "what will the humans do?"  (The world's
    scientists have been the heroes and leaders of this story from the
    start. They've had to live longest with the fear it can induce.)
    and for journalists, into what we call "a great story" - and please
    note that for us professional reporters, the word "story" is a term
    of art. This story is exciting professionally for its enormous and
    unprecedented journalistic problems, and for the variety it presents
    to our imaginations and skills, our art and our craft.  It may even
    be greater, in some ways, than the approach of World War Two must
    have been for journalists in the 1930s, given the projected effects
    of the rapid global change the world's climate scientists report is
    now under way.

The climate scientists and some other experts have actually been hugging 
this monster, transforming their fearful inner climate into action, 
doing so for some time, albeit privately.

Past Silence 'for Fear of Paralyzing the Public'

A few years ago, this reporter heard a prominent climate and environment 
scientist speaking at a large but off-the-record conference of experts 
and policy makers from around the world who had gathered at Harvard 
University's Kennedy School.

(The conference was held under "Chatham House Rules"; in hopes of 
encouraging vigorous and free discussion, they allow the content of 
talks and discussions to be reported later but not the identity of the 
speakers or participants.)

He told us that he and most other climate scientists often simply didn't 
want to speak openly about what they were learning about how disruptive 
and frightening the changes of manmade global warming were clearly going 
to be for "fear of paralyzing the public."

That speaker now has an influential job in the Obama administration.

But even The White House is showing signs of more open discussion about 
climate change in the near future. President Obama recently told Rolling 
Stone that global warming may well be an issue even during his 
reelection campaign, which would likely highlight the question of just 
how how serious - even frightening - it is.

References in some media to looming catastrophic consequences of climate 
change seem to this reporter to be more frequent.

A few days ago in the New York Times, a thoroughgoing front page article 
about global warming quoted a range of scientists on the overall effect 
of the global upheavals that can be expected from manmade global 
warming. Here are three excerpts - bolded highlights mine:

"'The big damages come if the climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases 
turns out to be high,' said Raymond T. Pierre-humbert, a climate 
scientist at the University of Chicago. 'Then it's not a bullet headed 
at us, but a thermonuclear warhead.'" (Recent scientific studies report 
the climate's sensitivity to greenhouse gases is proving to be higher 
than expected.)
"Ultimately, as the climate continues warming and more data accumulate, 
it will become obvious how clouds are reacting. But that could take 
decades, scientists say, and if the answer turns out to be that 
catastrophe looms, it would most likely be too late."
"'Even if there were no political implications, it just seems deeply 
unprofessional and irresponsible to look at this and say, "We're sure 
it's not a problem," ' said Kerry A. Emanuel, another M.I.T. scientist. 
'It's a special kind of risk, because it's a risk to the collective 
civilization.'"
'A Risk to the Collective (Global) Civilization'

Global warming's "risk to the collective civilization" (meaning global 
civilization) has been continually spoken of in secret or unofficial or 
private conversations among engaged climate scientists and government 
and policy leaders around the world.

Such terms - catastrophe, threat to civilization itself - have been 
commonplace in carefully worded private discussions among peer-reviewed 
experts that this reporter and other journalists have often experienced 
and sometimes engaged in.

Careful not to prompt destructive panic, nor to lose credibility, 
responsible experts have been careful to temper their public depictions 
of what the world's climate science has been revealing about the worst 
effects - if humanity does not handle the problem immediately - of the 
rapid climatic and oceanic changes already under way.

But clearly, with so enormous and inclusive a truth as this one, the 
proven details of which are widely available to anyone with access to 
the Internet, "the truth will out, we see it day by day," as English 
poet Geoffrey Chaucer wrote long ago.

And so, inevitably, experts and leaders around the world are beginning 
to be more open about the frightening prospects.

However, in doing so, they are also beginning to demonstrate how to hug 
this monster - to embrace the fear it instills. They need to have done 
so to speak with credibility.

This is something leaders may do almost instinctively, as in the famous 
case of FDR.

'Nothing to Fear But…' - Leaders' Meta-Psychology in a Grave Crisis

"We have nothing to fear… but fear itself!" - FDR's most famous words. 
Soon after he was elected president in the midst of the Great 
Depression, he delivered them before the newsreel cameras with an 
intentionally determined and jaunty self-confidence.

He was using even his voice and body language to demonstrate the affect 
- the attitude - with which to hug the monster, fear.

It was a form of meta-psychology, asking Americans to think about their 
own psychology, in this case their fear, asking them to get their minds 
around it, embrace it, and, in a way, to become their own shrinks - to 
examine their fears and try to convert them into effective action, to 
get on with it.

This reporter has seen a variety of leaders in the United States and 
other countries in recent years begin to do something similar regarding 
manmade global warming - in speeches at the global climate summit in 
Durban, South Africa, in December 2011, at a variety of policy, 
scientific and academic conferences, and in news reports about leaders 
at all levels from local activists and mayors to governors to heads of 
state.

(It's even tempting to suspect that the growing number of apocalyptic 
and post-apocalyptic movies now flowing out of Hollywood are somehow a 
response to the growing concern and quiet fear that more people may be 
feeling as the worrisome news from climate scientists increases 
alongside inescapable and increasingly erratic and extreme weather and 
shifting seasons.)

"Hug the Monster: How Fear Can Save Your Life" is the title of a chapter 
in The Survivor's Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your 
Life, the book in which this reporter, after five years of wrestling 
with the enormous and daunting story of manmade global warming, first 
learned the phrase "Hug the monster" - a phrase that immediately struck 
me for its pertinence to the climate story.

The book was written by Ben Sherwood after he served as executive 
producer for ABC News' "Good Morning America," during which, as he 
explains it, he had noticed so many survivors of different kinds among 
the guests on the TV show that he set out to discover and report what 
was known in different companies and disciplines about who survives 
different kinds of crises and why.

He published it in 2009, two years before he became president of ABC 
News, and established a related website, www.thesurvivorsclub.org.

Nowhere in the book does Sherwood mention climate change, but here's a 
passage from the end of that chapter that struck this reporter for its 
relevance to the increasingly public questions about how our global 
civilization will deal with the advance of global warming:

Fear as a Security System - When Properly Used (Air Force Mantra)

"Without a doubt, fear is the most ancient, efficient, and effective 
security system in the world. Over many thousands of years, our 
magnificently wired brains have sensed, reacted, and then acted upon 
every imaginable threat. Practically speaking, when you manage fear, 
your chances improve in almost every situation. But if your alarms go 
haywire, your odds plummet."

He concludes:

"For survival then, here's the bottom line. If you're scared out of your 
mind, try to remember this Air Force mantra: Hug The monster. Wrap your 
arms around fear, wrestle it under control, and turn it into a driving 
force in your plan of attack. 'Survival is not about bravery and 
heroics,' award-winning journalist Laurence Gonzales writes in his 
superb book Deep Survival. 'Survivors aren't fearless. They use fear: 
They turn it into anger and focus.' The good news is that you can learn 
to subdue the monster and extinguish some of the clanging bells. The 
more you practice, the easier it becomes. Indeed, with enough hugs, you 
can even tame the beast and turn him into your best friend and most 
dependable ally."

As a growing number of professional journalists around the world are 
finding, the story of manmade global warming (and the other evil twin of 
excess carbon emissions, the rapid acidification of the oceans) is 
unprecedented in its scale, almost "too big to cover," and frightening.

But there are now signs that, little by little, voices and personalities 
are beginning to emerge around the world who are starting to hug this 
monster, manage the fear, and turning the emotions it causes into action.

For us journalists, the core responsibilities of our profession include 
knowing how to report unpleasant but important facts - and to do so in 
ways that nonetheless engage groups small and large, even in a sense 
"entertain" them, as in entertaining the mind, and to try to win their 
tacit appreciation for doing so.

Obviously, when the news is horrendous, such as, say, a looming world 
war or the rapid climb in global temperature and ocean acidification, 
our job includes the very essence of what it means to hug the monster.

But as this reporter and a growing number of others now working the 
story can report, once we do so, manmade global warming transforms into 
"a great story" (in our profession's term of art) - and even one in 
which it is possible to glimpse a number of reasons for "realistic hope."...
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/05/hug-the-monster-for-realistic-hope-in-global-warming-or-how-to-transform-your-fearful-inner-climate/


[video from Rebecca Watson]
*The Republican Plan to Stop Students from Learning about Global Warming*
Rebecca Watson
Published on Mar 6, 2019
States around the US are trying to pass legislation requiring science 
teachers to lie to students about global warming.
+
ABOUT: Rebecca Watson is the founder of the Skepchick Network, a 
collection of sites focused on science and critical thinking. She has 
written for outlets such as Slate, Popular Science, and the Committee 
for Skeptical Inquiry. She's also the host of Quiz-o-tron, a rowdy, live 
quiz show that pits scientists against comedians. Asteroid 153289 
Rebeccawatson is named after her (her real name being 153289).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGd_9-s4IJM


*This Day in Climate History - March 7, 2013 - from D.R. Tucker*
  Kate Sheppard of Mother Jones reports:

    "Despite record heat and extreme weather disasters in recent years,
    insurers aren't adequately planning for climate change, according to
    a report issued Thursday. Only 13 percent of insurance companies
    have a 'specific, comprehensive strategy' to deal with global warming."

http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2013/03/report-insurers-still-ignoring-climate-change 

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