[TheClimate.Vote] March 31, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/March 31, 2019/

[MSNBC dramatically great AOC.."This was a FABULOUS program... one of 
the best presentations of modern times!" -Susan Anderson]
*Ocasio-Cortez: Republicans made 'total fools of themselves' attacking 
the Green New Deal*
By Dartunorro Clark
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., gave a vigorous defense of her 
signature Green New Deal initiative on Friday, rejecting Republican 
criticism that it's socialist.
The freshman Democrat said she expected the pushback from the GOP to her 
plan, which calls for a complete transition to renewable energy by 2030.

"But I didn't expect them to make total fools of themselves," she told 
MSNBC's Chris Hayes during an "All In" town hall at the Albert Einstein 
Medical Center in the Bronx. "I expected a little more nuance, and I 
expected a little more 'concern trolling,'" meaning disingenuously 
expressing concern.

Ocasio-Cortez argued that the plan is economically and politically 
feasible and called for Congress to allow hearings on the issue.

"We don't have time for five years of a half-baked, watered-down 
position," she said. "This is urgent, and to think that we have time is 
such a privileged and removed-from-reality attitude that we cannot 
tolerate."

She told the audience that her mission is to use the initiative to spark 
a conversation beyond Washington about how to address climate change and 
harness the American economy to drastically reduce the effects of global 
warming through a national effort akin to what the country did during 
the Great Depression and World War II.he freshman Democrat spoke on 
Friday about her climate plan at an MSNBC town hall in the Bronx...

"The entire United States government knew that climate change was real 
and human-caused in 1989 -- the year I was born. So, the initial 
response was to let markets handle it, they will do it," Ocasio-Cortez 
said. "Forty years of free-market solutions have not changed our 
position. So this does not mean that we change our entire structure of 
government, but what it means is we need to do something. Something!"

She said she was not concerned with convincing her fellow lawmakers or 
even her own party, but rather wanted to focus on going directly to 
voters to galvanize support.

"This is not a partisan issue, because there are Democrats who will get 
in the way of us saving ourselves," she said. "We encourage everyone 
here to look it up. I'm here not to convince my colleagues, but the 
electorate...If the electorate prioritizes it and overwhelmingly 
supports it, then we create the political room to pass it."

She also rejected the idea that the Green New Deal is socialist, or even 
radical, which has been a steady criticism of right-wing media, 
Republican members of Congress and President Donald Trump.

"This is not a Tea Party of the left, this is a return to representative 
democracy," she said. "And here's a really big difference, the Koch 
brothers funded the Tea Party and everyday people funded my campaign."

She added, "What I'm tired of is us worrying about the future of fossil 
fuels and not the future of fossil fuel workers. They wave this wand and 
they say it's going to cost a gazillion dollars and they sound like Dr. 
Evil. How about we fully fund the pensions of coal miners in West 
Virginia? How about we start by re-building Flint?"
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/aoc-dismisses-green-new-deal-s-hill-critics-i-m-n989006



[Test your smarts - Pew Research Center]
*How much do you know about science topics?*
Test your knowledge of science facts and applications of scientific 
principles by taking our 11-question quiz. When you finish, you will be 
able to compare your scores with the average American and compare 
responses across demographic groups. Our nationally representative poll 
of 4,464 randomly selected U.S. adults was conducted on Pew Research 
Center's American Trends Panel between Jan. 7 and Jan. 21, 2019. The 
analysis of the findings from the poll can be found in the full report, 
"What Americans Know About Science."
https://www.pewresearch.org/science/quiz/science-knowledge-quiz/


[pack the citronella]
*CHART: Where Disease-Carrying Mosquitoes Will Go In The Future*
March 28, 2019
Disease-bearing mosquitoes are on the move.

Scientists have been pretty sure of that for decades. As temperatures 
rise in certain parts of the world, warmth-seeking mosquitoes will 
invade, making themselves at home in previously inhospitable patches of 
the globe.

Now researchers are trying to figure out exactly how far north these 
mosquitoes will migrate.
Based on estimates of future temperatures across the world, the authors 
of a study published this week in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases 
mapped where the mosquitoes that transmit diseases like dengue and Zika 
might travel if climate change continues unchecked.

Based on their worst-case scenario projections, the researchers believe 
as many as a billion people could be newly exposed to these illnesses 
within the century.

"We're really worried about major urban centers in places like Europe, 
the United States and China especially," says Colin Carlson, co-lead 
author of the study and postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University, 
who specializes in ecological modeling....
- - -
"Once the mosquito arrives in a place where it hasn't been before, it 
basically puts a lot of people at risk who have never been exposed to 
any of the diseases it transmits," he says.

In this way, mosquito-borne diseases work a lot like the measles, 
Carlson says.

"If you have a population that has no vaccination, no protection and one 
person comes in with measles, you get a huge explosive outbreak," he 
says. "Mosquito-borne disease works the same way."

And, he says, while "there's no guarantee that any introduction leads to 
an explosive outbreak," climate change makes it a whole lot more likely.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/03/28/707604928/chart-where-disease-carrying-mosquitoes-will-go-in-the-future



[Predictable]
*Climate Change and the Death of the Small Farm*
The catastrophic flooding in the Midwest is forcing more farmers to 
consider a stark choice: quit or consolidate.
By EMILY ATKIN - March 27, 2019
Sometimes you have a bad year. That's always been the reality of being a 
farmer or rancher. The business of growing crops and raising animals for 
profit requires two crucial elements for success that are out of 
farmers' control: good weather, and good government policy. No one 
enters the agricultural profession thinking that every season is going 
to be successful.

But farmers and ranchers, particularly in the Midwest, have had more 
than just a bad year or two. Wisconsin's dairy farms are in crisis, 
having lost about half of their net income between 2011 and 2018. 
They're now shutting down at a record rate, due to low milk prices, 
overproduction, and President Donald Trump's trade war with China and 
Mexico. That war has also caused billions in combined losses to Iowa's 
soybean, corn, and hog industries. Nebraska farmers lost between $700 
million and $1 billion in income last year. In Minnesota, farmer income 
fell 8 percent, making 2018 the worst year since the farm crisis of the 
1980s.

And now the Midwest has been hit with historic, devastating floods. 
Excessive snow melt and rainfall, notably the "bomb cyclone" two weeks 
ago, have caused vast fields of corn, soy, and other crops to be washed 
away. Countless hogs, calves, and chickens have been killed. Iowa is 
estimating $1.6 billion in losses, Nebraska $1.3 billion, but the 
overall damage is hard to calculate because the floodwaters haven't 
receded. It's likely they'll get worse. "The extensive flooding we've 
seen in the past two weeks will continue through May and become more 
dire," Ed Clark, director of NOAA's National Water Center, said in a 
statement to Vox.

While bad luck is indeed normal for the farming business, this season's 
crisis is neither normal nor a matter of luck. The volatile weather is 
part of a larger pattern of human-caused climate change, and the Trump 
administration is deliberately prioritizing industrial-scale 
agriculture; both are making it harder for small and midsized family 
farms to stay afloat. If these trends become the new normal, local 
family farming as we know it will die...
- - -
Such weather is becoming more common. According to the National Climate 
Assessment, heavy-rain events have risen 37 percent in the Midwest since 
the 1950s, and the magnitude of river floods is steadily increasing. The 
region also has been hit with a series of anomalous disasters that tend 
to affect farmers and ranchers more dramatically: In 2011, eleven of the 
country's 14 weather-related disasters with damages exceeding $1 billion 
were in the Midwest. The assessment says that climate change is likely 
to "increasingly disrupt" American farming with extreme heat, drought, 
wildfires, and heavy downpours. These effects vary with the season. As 
the tech news site Seeker reported in January, "Kansas is likely to see 
earlier spring-like weather, more heat waves, longer gaps between 
rainfall, and heavier downpours when the rain does arrive." And in the 
summer, swings between rainfall "often coincide with heat waves that can 
damage crops."

While the effects of climate change may vary from season to season and 
place to place, the result is the same: Small and midsize farmers are 
more worried than ever about their future, and feel their only choices 
are to quit or consolidate. Schroeder, who frequently answers calls for 
Farm Aid's farmer help hotline, says he hears it almost every day. "It's 
people on the kind of continuum where they no longer have any control 
over their own demise," he said. "They're just participating in a way 
that causes the least destruction, or gives them a little more time."

Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is running for president, unveiled a plan 
on Wednesday to help these farmers, promising to "tackle consolidation 
in the agriculture and farming sector head on and break the stranglehold 
a handful of companies have over the market." Her plan may help ease the 
crisis, but ultimately, it will require tackling the much bigger problem 
of climate change. "Maybe these floods are the beginning of a washed-out 
grain belt that no longer produces grain," Schroeder said.

This is the apocalyptic future that America is facing. It's surely a 
long way off. But year to year, season to season, small family farmers 
are glimpsing that future on their own land today. They're facing their 
own personal apocalypses.
Emily Atkin is a staff writer at The New Republic.
https://newrepublic.com/article/153390/climate-change-death-small-farm



[Totten Glacier melt = 21 feet of sea level rise]
*Antarctic mission reveals Totten Glacier secrets, along with rethink on 
sea level rise*
By Jessica Hayes
Key points:

    The Totten Glacier is the biggest of four glaciers in east Antarctica
    It is named after sailor George Totten, who took part in a US Navy
    expedition between 1838 to 1842
    It is feared continued melting of Antarctic ice will raise sea
    levels to catastrophic levels

Scientists using seismic testing at the largest glacier in east 
Antarctica find massive subglacial lakes beneath its surface -- which 
they say radically alters estimates on predicted sea level rise.
A team of international researchers from the Australian Antarctic 
Program have this week returned from a 160-day expedition at the Totten 
Glacier, located near Casey Station -- about 3,431 kilometres (2,132 
miles) from Hobart.

Glaciologist Dr Ben Galton-Fenzi said in order to find out what was 
underneath, researchers drilled into the ice sheet and set off small 
explosives about two metres below the surface of the glacier, which is 
up to 30 kilometres wide and up to two kilometres thick.

"These explosions sent out sound waves, which then echoed off different 
layers in the ice and bedrock," he said.
- -
"If I took all the ice contained in the catchment, spread it out over 
the global oceans, sea levels would go up seven metres.

"We actually know for a fact that the Totten Glacier is one of the 
regions that's actually changing.

"We know there's warm water present under the glacier, so we expect this 
is one of the regions in east Antarctica that's going to change first."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-25/totten-glacier-antarctica-research-using-seismic-study/10936998



*This Day in Climate History - March 31, 2009 - from D.R. Tucker*
March 31, 2009:
*MSNBC's Keith Olbermann rips denialist Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL):*

    "But our winner, Congressman John Shimkus, Republican of Illinois,
    with two fascinating and utterly contradictory statements. A,
    Congressman Shimkus on why there isn't global warming. 'Today we
    have about 388 parts per million of Carbon Dioxide in the
    atmosphere. I think in the age of the dinosaurs, when we had most
    flora and fauna, we were probably at 4,000 parts per million. 
    There's a theological debate that this is a carbon-starved planet,
    not too much carbon.'

    "Number one, Carbon and Carbon Dioxide are not the same thing.
    Number two, the only theological debate over how much carbon the
    plan needs would be taking place in the church of the Labrea Tar
    Pits. Number three, didn't the freaking dinosaurs go extinct? Or do
    they just have a bad public relations person?

    "But I'm digressing. B, Congressman Shimkus on why it doesn't matter
    anyway.  'The Earth will end only when God declares it's time to be
    over. A man will not destroy this Earth. This Earth will not be
    destroyed by a flood. I appreciate having panelists here who are men
    of faith, and we can get into the theological discourse of that
    position. But I do believe that God's word is infallible,
    unchanging, perfect.'

    "So a man pressing a button to start a nuclear war, that would be
    God's infallible word? Why do we bother trying to govern? Can't he
    do something about the budget deficit? By the way, as you hit me
    over the head with your Bible, Congressman, there ain't a word in it
    about those dinosaurs you mentioned earlier.
    "Congressman John Shimkus of Illinois, today's worst person in the
    world!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBf75v2k3EE

*MSNBC's Rachel Maddow also mocks Shimkus during her "GOP in Exile" 
segment:*

    "While the Republican Party continues its search for mean in the
    minority, one Republican congressman, John Shimkus of Illinois,
    maybe should stop searching.  Just sit down, Congressman and take a
    breather, honestly. Check this out:
    "REP. JOHN SHIMKUS (R-IL): Today, we have about 388 parts per
    million in the atmosphere. I think in the age of dinosaurs, where we
    had more flora and fauna, we were probably at 4,000 parts per
    million. There is a theological debate that this is a carbon starved
    planet, not too much carbon.
    "MADDOW: In other words, we shouldn't bother trying to reduce the
    amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere because the dinosaurs did
    just fine with the tons of carbon that God gave them for their
    atmosphere. Also, the dodo bird ate plenty of cholesterol. And the
    saber tooth tiger never, ever flossed. Stop worrying, people."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF9z-QkeO-E
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