[TheClimate.Vote] May 20, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Mon May 20 10:03:46 EDT 2019
/May 20, 2019/
[Politics and Policy - 65 million displaced humans in 2019]
*Jay Inslee Calls For Accepting 'Historic Levels' Of Refugees Amid
Climate Crisis*
The Democratic presidential candidate said fighting far-right
anti-immigrant fervor is "the same battle America has always fought."
By Alexander C. Kaufman - May 17, 2019
Jay Inslee vowed Friday to resettle record numbers of refugees in the
United States if elected president, casting a stark contrast between
himself and President Donald Trump at a moment when extreme weather and
unprecedented climatic changes are displacing millions around the world.
The Washington governor, who is running for the White House on a promise
to enact sweeping economic reforms in the face of a climate crisis,
called the record-low cap of 45,000 refugee applicants that the Trump
administration set last year "damaging and unacceptable."
"At an absolute minimum, we have to be at historic levels," Inslee, 68,
told HuffPost in a wide-ranging interview in New York. "We know the
climate crisis is today driving mass migration."
The United States resettled just 22,491 refugees in 2018, a figure that
ticked up only to 24,369 this year. That's despite the United Nations
recording more than 65 million people displaced worldwide. Depending on
how you count, the global figure represents the highest number of
refugees ever.
Catastrophic weather disasters have displaced an average of 24 million
people per year since 2008, according to the Internal Displacement
Monitoring Centre, the Swiss-based international organization. By 2050,
that number could surge to anywhere from 140 million to 300 million to 1
billion. In 2018, the World Bank estimated the climate change impacts on
three regions -- Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America --
could compel 143 million people to flee by the middle of the century...
- - -
Inslee remains far behind in polls. But his singular, scientifically
sound focus on climate change could resonate with voters if he makes it
to the Democratic debate stage. In March, 81% of self-described
liberals, 77% of Democrats and 53% of independents reported feeling
"highly worried" about climate change in a Gallup poll. An April CNN
poll found climate change was a top issue for 82% of registered
Democrats planning to vote in the 2020 presidential primary.
While at least nine of Inslee's rivals publicly backed the Green New
Deal framework activists are promoting, the governor's 15,000-word
Evergreen Economy Plan offered the most fleshed out policy vision yet
for how to zero out most emissions by 2030.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jay-inslee-refugees-climate-crisis_n_5cdf0432e4b00e035b8fc74f
[Down under is torn asunder]
NEWS ANALYSIS
*It Was Supposed to Be Australia's Climate Change Election. What Happened?*
By Damien Cave - May 19, 2019
SYDNEY, Australia -- The polls said this would be Australia's climate
change election, when voters confronted harsh reality and elected
leaders who would tackle the problem.
And in some districts, it was true: Tony Abbott, the former prime
minister who stymied climate policy for years, lost to an independent
who campaigned on the issue. A few other new candidates prioritizing
climate change also won.
But over all, Australians shrugged off the warming seas killing the
Great Barrier Reef and the extreme drought punishing farmers. On
Saturday, in a result that stunned most analysts, they re-elected the
conservative coalition that has long resisted plans to sharply cut down
on carbon emissions and coal.
What it could mean is that the world's climate wars -- already raging
for years -- are likely to intensify. Left-leaning candidates elsewhere,
like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, may learn to avoid making
climate a campaign issue, while here in Australia, conservatives face
more enraged opponents and a more divided public.
- - -
And yet the path to victory for Scott Morrison, the incumbent prime
minister, will make agreeing on a response more difficult. He and his
Liberal-National coalition won thanks not just to their base of older,
suburban economic conservatives, but also to a surge of support in
Queensland, the rural, coal-producing, sparsely populated state
sometimes compared to the American South.
The coalition successfully made cost the dominant issue in the climate
change debate. One economic model estimated that the 45 percent
reduction in carbon emissions proposed by the opposition Labor Party
would cost the economy 167,000 jobs and 264 billion Australian dollars,
or $181 billion. Though a Labor spokesman called the model "dodgy," Mr.
Morrison and his allies used it to argue against extending Australia's
existing efforts to reduce emissions and invest in clean energy.
- - -
Neither side seems open to compromise. In some ways, the election was
foreshadowed last month in the Queensland town of Clermont, where
environmentalists protesting the Carmichael mine were met by pro-coal
activists, including a man on a horse who rode into the crowd and
knocked a woman unconscious.
- -
In some ways it was a clash of cultures as well as political views.
"I feel like there's quite a lot of scorn about the way Queenslanders
feel about environmental issues, and that doesn't help," said Susan
Harris-Rimmer, a law professor at Griffith University in Queensland.
"The predominant Queensland characteristic is pride and you can't pour
scorn on them."
She said doing so was a strategic mistake for politicians comparable to
Hillary Clinton's description of some Donald Trump supporters as
"deplorables" during the 2016 United States presidential election.
"You can't trigger the pride response," Ms. Harris-Rimmer said.
- -
Scholars of Australian populism agree, arguing that the weakening of the
major parties and the country's tilt to the right have been driven
mainly by class envy and alienation, including the belief that the elite
do not understand the needs and values of the working class.
- -
The question that now confronts the new government is how much sway to
give the forces that led to victory. Climate change may be the first
battle in the long war that is reshaping democracy all over the world.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/19/world/australia/election-climate-change.html
[AOC in a classic rant]
*Ocasio-Cortez blows roof off building with EPIC speech*
[11 minute YouTube video - she speaks for the first 8mins]
Brian Tyler Cohen - Published on May 16, 2019
BREAKING: Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just blew the roof off
of the building with an epic speech. Turn up the volume--this is a
MUST-WATCH.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZyiZ2dXtVc
[Big changes in Arctic and Norwegian energy]
*Pompeo's CIA (Climate Insanity Again!)*
Just Have a Think
Published on May 19, 2019
Climate Change once again hit the news in May at the 11th Ministerial
Meeting of the Arctic Council. Most of the member states agreed that
Climate Change was a clear and present danger that required extremely
careful stewardship, and nowhere more so than up in the arctic region.
But the Trump Administration, in the form of Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo, represented a voice of dissent that effectively scuppered any
progress. This week we take a look at the battle for arctic supremacy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQwIAFL7i48
[Jared Diamond recent interview]
*Author Jared Diamond on the 'breakdown' of American democracy*
PBS NewsHour - Published on May 14, 2019
Award-winning writer and historian Jared Diamond has spent his career
studying the rise and fall of civilizations. In his latest book,
"Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis," he examines major
geopolitical events of recent decades, in search of lessons to navigate
an uncertain future. William Brangham asks Diamond about whether the
U.S. is in crisis now and how it can solve its problems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6aGdn67kgU
[Who knows? rambling academic discussion in a 15 min video]
*Will God Forgive Us? Christianity and Climate Change | Renegade Cut*
Renegade Cut
Published on May 19, 2019
What do conservative Christians in America, the Republican Party and
billion dollar energy companies have in common?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnBbOemMIWs
[Harsh news]
*Harsh News from the Weatherman--Nick Humphrey climate change
interview--Radio Ecoshock 2019-05-08*
Stop Fossil Fuels - Published on May 19, 2019
Are you tired of nightly news reporting horrible weather disasters and
never mentioning climate? You need a real meteorologist like Nick
Humphrey. Nick lives in the American heartland, Nebraska, just wrecked
by floods. We go from harsh new weather around the world to climate
change and back.
Climate change hardly ever comes up in the news. All the advertising
selling pickup trucks and SUVs tells us why. But this Spring it seems
every newscast is about massive storms, from Texas through Nashville and
right up to New York City and Boston. In this interview we get the
weather expert view on that persistent storm track this past winter and
spring in America.
Show by Radio Ecoshock, reposted under CC License. Episode details at
https://www.ecoshock.org/2019/05/harsh-news-from-the-weatherman.html
Stop Fossil Fuels researches and disseminates effective strategies and
tactics to halt fossil fuel combustion as fast as possible. Learn more
at https://stopfossilfuels.org
SHOW DETAILS
Nick gives us the real news about what happened to the Nebraska farm
community this spring. It's just devastating. Some farms are now
useless, after the river floods loaded the fields up with several feet
of sand! Others lost all their seed reserves. The financial hardships
are extreme.
Nick calculated humans are burning "5,576 years worth of plant growth
per day". That's all the solar energy stored up in fossil form we burn.
"All the carbon released by humanity in the past 25 years is equivalent
to over 50 million years of plant growth which was needed to sequester
it. This comes to around 250,000 yrs worth of plant growth in 45 days
and 5,576 yrs worth of plant growth per day! Humanity has burned nearly
200 million years worth of plant growth in just 160 yrs."
A collection of climate models from big names like NOAA and the National
Science Foundation project much faster climate heating that older
models. Instead of 2.5C of warming, our current path takes us to 5C
warming and beyond. If confirmed, this is another game-changer. The
public has no idea this is happening.
If a record doesn't fall, we tend to think, "that isn't so bad, we've
seen worse than this". But Nick Humphrey says we should not always be
looking for records. We need to see the changing trends that happen for
longer periods.
FLOODS IN CANADA
Meanwhile, thousands of people had to abandon their homes in Ontario and
Quebec Canada. But that won't stop the Canadian Government in their
crazy buy-out of a pipeline from the tar sands to Vancouver, or the
so-called Canada East line. It seems we just can't stop building
fossil-fuel infrastructure, even as our population gets flooded out,
burned out, or just dies in the heat.
CARBON DIOXIDE LEVELS
Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are hovering around 414ppm, literally
off the charts. And that's just CO2--it doesn't count the stronger
greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous dioxide. Where do you expect
the CO2 level to go and what does this really mean Nick?
On top of flooded coastal mega-cities and food failures, our descendants
will have to face climate refugees on a scale we can barely imagine.
Nothing in human recorded history compares with the fast-arriving future.
FOOD AND BILL MCKIBBEN'S "FALTER"
Bill McKibben is usually a little bit hopeful. But his new book "FALTER:
Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?" predicts food-system
collapse. I said the same thing a couple of weeks ago: We should be
ready to feed ourselves if the global food trade system breaks down
during the climate shift.
McKibben even seems to suggest humans may not make it out of climate
change, if we don't make monumental changes to our whole system starting
yesterday. Do you think there is a chance of human extinction, where we
join the other disappearing species?
I wish we had a Nick Humphrey reporting from Russia. The government
there is not supportive of climate change journalism. Many of the
extreme climate threats hitting North America are trashing Russia as
well. We just don't hear about weird weather from Siberia to Moscow. We
need a truly global weather report that includes climate disruption.
AFRICA CYCLONES
A second major cyclone hit the coast of East Africa. It may take years
to rebuild Zambia and Mozambique. Tropical Cyclone Kenneth in late April
destroyed around 3500 homes plus roads, power lines, & farms. Kenneth
struck just a couple of weeks after Cyclone Idai, the giant that wrecked
parts of Mozambique, Malawi & Zimbabwe.
SINKING CITIES
Jakarta is sinking, and Dhaka in Bangladesh, Lumberton, South Carolina,
Italy's Venice, and Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and the whole New
England coast. "The Sinking Cities Project" has a photo and video
exhibition traveling around the world. Rising seas will not be reported
first by climatologists. It will be reported as "weather", as storm
surge smashes ashore, as salt water replaces the ground water. Nick
Humphrey will be on the front lines of that reporting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8IJYZyqbN4
https://www.ecoshock.org/2019/05/harsh-news-from-the-weatherman.html
[Harming students - information pollution]*
**Looking for climate change info, teachers find propaganda*
May 15, 2019
By MICHAEL MELIA Associated Press
When science teacher Diana Allen set out to teach climate change, a
subject she'd never learned in school, she fell into a rabbit's hole of
misinformation: Many resources presented online as educational material
were actually junk.
"It is a pretty scary topic to take on," said Allen, a teacher at
Sanford Junior High School, in southern Maine. "There are some pretty
tricky websites out there. You kind of have to be an expert to be able
to see through that like, 'Oh, no, these guys aren't telling you the
truth.'"
There are materials produced by climate change doubters, lesson plans
developed by the oil industry, and countless other sites with misleading
or outdated information. The Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness
Network , funded by federal grants, reviewed more than 30,000 free
online resources and found only 700 acceptable for use in schools.
"There's a lot of information that's out there that is broken, old,
misleading, not scientifically sound, not sound technically," said Frank
Niepold, a climate education coordinator at the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration.
The Heartland Institute, an Illinois-based group that dismisses climate
change, in 2017 sent thousands of science teachers copies of a book
titled "Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming" The book,
attributed to the group's Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate
Change, misrepresents the near-universal consensus of scientists and the
United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that global
warming is real and man-made.
Another resource, a set of six lesson plans on understanding climate
change, is available online from the Canada-based Fraser Institute,
which counts the Charles Koch Foundation among its financial supporters.
The lessons claim that mainstream climate scientists have made selective
use of data and that it's a matter of debate whether human-generated
carbon dioxide emissions have contributed to climate change, saying "the
issues are far from settled."
"Our history is full of examples where 'common knowledge' was discarded
in favor of more correct hypotheses," the lesson plans say. Among them,
it lists, "Are diseases caused by evil spirits? Are natural disasters
caused by angry gods?"
And: "Does smoking pose a threat to your health?"
Also vying for educators' attention are classroom-ready materials made
available by the oil companies. ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and other
companies have invested heavily in promoting science, technology,
engineering and math education in K-12 schools. Such materials are used
widely to teach topics related to energy, but critics say they can
mislead by not addressing the role of burning fossil fuels in global
warming.
For teachers in cash-strapped schools, it can be hard to pass up the
free handout materials.
Melissa Lau, a sixth-grade teacher in Piedmont, Oklahoma, attended one
of the training sessions put on regularly for teachers by the Oklahoma
Energy Resource Bureau, which is funded by the oil and gas companies.
She kept the $50 stipend and the tub full of science equipment she got
from the group but she tossed its illustrated lesson plans featuring the
character "Petro Pete."
In a book available online, Petro Pete has a nightmare about everything
that would be missing from his life if there were no petroleum products,
from his toothbrush to his school bus.
"I get free beakers and cool things like that," Lau said. "But the
curriculum itself is borderline propaganda."
A spokeswoman for the industry group, Dara McBee, said their materials
align with Oklahoma standards, which do not reference climate change,
and they are intended to supplement what students learn in school.
Kevin Leineweber, a science teacher at Cascade High School in Clayton,
Indiana, said he is skeptical about resources sent to him, including oil
industry materials, but some colleagues are less so. At a districtwide
science meeting a couple months ago one elementary school teacher
expressed excitement about receiving unsolicited materials on climate
change in the mail, to help introduce the topic to students. After
talking it over with Leineweber, the teacher tossed the mailing of
unknown origin.
"I'm just like, 'Oh, jeez,'" Leineweber said.
The oil industry materials have the effect of pushing climate change to
the periphery, Charles Anderson, a professor of science education at
Michigan State University.
"The school systems of the country are so fragmented and under-resourced
that they have no choice but to turn to people like the oil industry who
offer them free stuff," he said.
Climate change education varies across states, and often from one
classroom to the next. The Next Generation Science Standards, which
emphasize climate change and how humans are altering the planet, have
been adopted by or served as a model for most states. But many teachers
report that they shy away from the topic not only because of issues with
materials but also the political sensitivities, and uncertainty over
where to introduce an issue that crosses so many disciplines.
Diana Allen, 48, said she began to see it as her duty to teach climate
change even though it's not required under Maine's science education
standards.
For her lesson plans on climate change, she turns primarily to other
teachers, pulling resources they have vetted and shared on an email
thread overseen by the National Association of Science Teachers. Other
teachers have turned to the National Center for Science Education, which
posts free climate change lessons and has a "scientist in the classroom
" program.
Many educators say that climate change as an area of instruction is
still so new that textbook publishers have not caught up enough to
provide useful materials.
"I have a Ph.D. from Stanford in biochemistry, and it's still hard for
me to source stuff that works in my classroom right," said Kirstin
Milks, an Earth science teacher at Bloomington High School South in Indiana.
Milks helps train educators on how to teach climate change. In their
applications, many teachers display a sense of urgency in their
applications, she said.
"I think we all are in that same boat of understanding that this might
be one of the most important social justice issues of our time, one of
the most important environmental issues of our time, one of the most
important political issues of our time," she said.
Sometimes educators have to push back against what their students are
taught in other classrooms.
Leigh Foy, a science teacher at York Suburban High School in
Pennsylvania, said a social studies teacher at her school has told
students for years that climate change is a hoax and he could prove it
with an experiment. He would fill a cup in the classroom with ice and
water, mark the water level, and show students it didn't rise as the ice
melted. The problem, Foy said, is his lack of accounting for the
difference between sea ice and land ice or the expansion of water as it
gets warmer.
"This is just an example of what we're up against," Foy said.
Teachers who have gotten themselves up to speed on climate change often
say they make it a primary goal to help their students identify
untrustworthy materials.
Sarah Ott, who teaches physical science to eighth-graders in Dalton,
Georgia, dedicates a section of her class to climate literacy. In one
April class, she discussed how to identify misinformation, highlighting
materials including a petition signed by more than 30,000 purported
scientists that dismisses the dangers of global warming.
"These people are fake experts and this is being used to mislead
people," she told her students. "So we're going to be learning about
misinformation and ways for you to spot misinformation. And this is a
great skill because you're not just going to use this for science.
You're going to use this for all of your subjects."
___
Associated Press writer Sarah Blake Morgan contributed to this report
from Dalton, Georgia.
https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2019/05/15/teachers-grapple-with-climate-change-pretty-scary-topic/
*This Day in Climate History - May 20, 2001, 2013 - from D.R. Tucker*
May 20, 2001: New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd summarizes the
anti-conservation mentality of the George W. Bush administration:
*Liberties; Drill, Grill and Chill*
By MAUREEN DOWD - MAY 20, 2001
We want big. We want fast. We want far. We want now. We want 345
horsepower in a V-8 engine and 15 miles per gallon on the highway.
We drive behemoths. We drive them alone. This country was not built
on H.O.V. lanes.
We don't have limits. We have liberties.
If we don't wear our seat belts, it doesn't matter, because we have
air bags. If the air bags don't deploy, it doesn't matter, because
our cars are so beefy, we'll never get bruised. If we need to widen
the streets for our all-wheel drives, we will. If we need to
reinforce all the bridges in the country, so that they don't buckle
and collapse under our 5,800-pound S.U.V.'s, our engineers will do that.
We'll bake the earth. We'll brown & serve it, saute' it, simmer it,
sear it, fondue it, George-Foreman-grill it. (We invented the
Foreman grill.) We might one day bring the earth to a boil and pull
it like taffy. (We invented taffy.)
If rising seas obliterate the coasts, our marine geologists will
sculpt new ones and Hollywood will get bright new ideas for disaster
movies. If we get charred by the sun, our dermatologists will
replace our skin.
If the globe gets warmer, we'll turn up the air-conditioning. (We
invented air-conditioning.) We'll drive faster in our gigantic,
air-conditioned cars to the new beaches that our marine geologists
create.
We will let our power plants spew any chemicals we deem necessary to
fire up our Interplaks, our Krups, our Black & Deckers and our
Fujitsu Plasmavisions.
We will drill for oil whenever and wherever we please. If tourists
don't like rigs off the coast of Florida, they can go fly fishing in
Wyoming. We won't be deterred by a few Arctic terns. We don't care
about caribou. We don't care for cardigans. Give us our 69 degrees,
winter and summer. Let there be light -- no timers, no freaky-shaped
long-life bulbs. (We invented the light bulb.)
We want our refrigerators cold and our freezers colder. Bring on the
freon. Banish those irritating toilets that restrict flow. When we
flush, we flush all the way.
We will perfect the dream of nuclear power. We will put our toxic
waste wherever we want, whenever we waste it. We have whole states
with nothing better to do than serve as ancestral burial grounds for
our effluvium. It can fester in those wide open spaces for thousands
of years.
We will have the biggest, baddest missiles, and we will point them
in any direction we like, across the galaxies, through eternity,
forever and ever.
We will thrust as many satellites as we want into outer space, and
we will surround them with a firewall of weapons for their protection.
We will guarantee broadband and fast connections to the Internet. We
will not permit anybody, anywhere, at any time to threaten the
delivery of all the necessities to computers, Palm Pilots and
BlackBerrys: stock quotes, sports scores, real estate listings,
epicurean.com recipes, porn. (O.K., so we didn't invent porn.)
By arming space, and protecting satellites, we ensure life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness -- our 500 TV channels drawn from the
ether.
We will secure the inalienable right of every citizen driving by
himself in his big car to be guided by a global positioning system.
Nobody should have to call in advance for directions to a party when
the satellite can show the way.
We will modify food in any way we want and send it to any country we
see fit at prices that we and we alone determine in the cargo ships
we choose at the time we set.
Our international banking arm -- the World Bank and the I.M.F. --
will support whatever dictatorships suit us best.
We will fly up any coast of any nation on earth with any plane
filled with any surveillance equipment and top guns that we possess.
We will build superduperjumbo jets so Brobdingnagian that runways
will be crushed under their weight at the most congested airports in
the history of aviation. (We invented aviation.)
We will buy, carry, conceal and shoot firearms whenever and wherever
we want, as is our constitutionally guaranteed right. (We invented
the Constitution.) We will kill any criminal we want, by lethal
injection or electrocution. (We invented electricity.)
We are America.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/opinion/liberties-drill-grill-and-chill.html?pagewanted=print
- -
May 20, 2013: The US Supreme Court refuses to hear an appeal of the 9th
US Circuit Court of Appeals' decision in the Kivalina v. ExxonMobil
case, effectively ending one effort to hold fossil fuel companies
legally accountable for carbon pollution.
http://environblog.jenner.com/corporate_environmental_l/2013/05/high-court-refuses-to-take-up-kivalina-climate-suit.html
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