[TheClimate.Vote] November 4, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/November 4, 2019/

[adjustment]
*Madrid to host UN climate summit after Chile pulls out*
Event will take place from 2-13 December as planned after Spain 
intervenes to save talks
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/01/madrid-to-host-un-climate-summit-after-chile-pulls-out


[Damage evaluation]
*EPA Career Staffer Says Trump Has Effectively Immobilized the Agency*
https://truthout.org/articles/epa-career-staffer-says-trump-has-effectively-immobilized-the-agency/


[to stymie]
*Trump Stymies California Climate Efforts Even as State Burns*
California is feeling the brunt of climate change with more intense 
fires. The Trump administration is blocking the state's efforts to fight 
it...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/02/us/climate-change-california-fires-trump.html

- -

[political wrestling]
*Calif. governor hits back at Trump over wildfire criticism, threat to 
cut aid*
By Kim Bellware
November 3, 2019
President Trump on Sunday criticized California's Democratic governor 
for his handling of wildfires and made a vague threat to cut aid as 
blazes continue to burn in the northern and southern parts of the state. 
The comments are the latest installment of the president's long-standing 
grievance with California, a state that has clashed with Trump's 
administration, particularly on issues of environmental regulation.

In Trump's first significant mention of California's wildfires on 
Twitter since the massive Kincade Fire broke out in late October, the 
president accused Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of doing a "terrible" job 
of forest management...

- - -  see the video 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/national/broken-bottles-and-living-vines-kincade-fire-destroys-parts-of-historic-northern-california-winery/2019/10/30/2fc9d460-52e4-47ca-b3a3-ddd7f3a2d83f_video.html

Newsom later responded with his own tweet: "You don't believe in climate 
change. You are excused from this conversation." The governor's 
criticism was a jab at Trump's long-standing refusal to acknowledge the 
impact of climate change or the man-made factors that accelerate it.
As he has before, Trump made several erroneous claims about the causes 
of and potential solutions for the wildfires while writing that he had 
told Newsom previously to "clean" the forest floors....
- - -
While fire prevention generally includes some level of debris 
management, scientists and fire-prevention experts agree California's 
wildfire situation largely stems from the region's intensifying heat 
that dries out vegetation and creates tinderbox conditions come fire 
season -- which coincides with the prime time for powerful offshore 
winds like the Santa Ana and El Diablo that spread the easily-fueled fire...

- - -  See the video: 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/national/in-sonoma-county-a-plea-for-action-on-climate-change-as-fires-rage/2019/10/31/924864cb-90e7-435a-be00-592d984aaa48_video.html 


Sunday isn't the first time the rancor between Trump and Newsom has 
played out in public. The two clash ideologically on issues ranging from 
climate change to immigration, but the president first provoked Newsom's 
ire when he claimed -- falsely, according to Newsom -- that the governor 
had lavishly praised Trump as "one of the smartest people I've ever 
met." As impeachment talk coalesced around Trump in early October, 
Newsom backed booting the "corrupt" president from office.

Despite Newsom's harsh words for the president, he offered a positive 
assessment of the Trump administration's response to the recent spate of 
wildfires earlier in October.

"I have nothing but good things to say about the federal government's 
support," Newsom said, according to the Los Angeles Times. "In fact, the 
Homeland Security acting director proactively called me two days ago to 
check in...Hats off to them."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/11/03/california-burns-trump-slams-gov-newsom-over-wildfire-response/



[There was once a spark in Nantucket]
*Biggest Battery In New England Is Unveiled In Nantucket*
By BRUCE GELLERMAN - OCT 8, 2019
In the 18th century, Nantucket was the energy capital of the world. 
Ships departed the island, sailing to distant seas, hunting right whales 
for their oil.

On Tuesday, Nantucket is adding another page to the history books, as 
officials unveil a new energy source for the island: a giant battery. 
The battery will serve as backup for two insulated cables that run from 
Cape Cod to Nantucket, carrying the electric lifeblood that makes modern 
life on this timeless island possible.

The two electric cables come ashore at Galley Beach and run underground 
for a mile, beneath the tourist- and traffic-clogged streets of the 
historic district to National Grid's Candle Street substation.

Originally, coal was used to generate electricity for the island, then 
diesel fuel. The first electric undersea cable from the Cape was 
installed in 1996; the second in 2005. The changing technologies kept 
pace with the island's growth.

But now, Nantucket's population swells from 11,000 year-round residents 
to over 50,000 in the summer. And the median house price is $1.7 million.

"They're building big houses," says Karen Marsh, a lifelong Nantucket 
resident who works at National Grid's island headquarters. She says that 
the use of electricity more than doubles during tourist season.

"Demand is going up but I think we do a good job," she says. "We keep 
the lights on."

The two existing cables can handle the current load, even during the 
peak summer months. But the future of Nantucket's modern lifestyle hangs 
largely by those two threads -- the undersea extension cords from the Cape.

"If we lost both cables, the island will go flat," says National Grid 
Project Manager John Skrzypczak. "There was a storm situation two or 
three years ago over the winter, and we lost the supply from Cape Cod 
and both cables went flat."

"Flat" means lights out for Nantucket.

To keep the lights on, National Grid had two, aging diesel generators on 
standby, installed in the late 1980s. When they reached the end of their 
lifespan, the utility replaced them with a modern diesel generator, 
which has a one-day fuel supply at the ready.

Over the next decade, National Grid predicts the demand for electricity 
on Nantucket will increase three times faster than the state average. To 
meet demand, the utility concluded the island would need a third 
undersea cable. Problem is, Nantucket residents are still paying off the 
first two. And undersea cables don't come cheap.

"Building a third cable -- we're talking roughly about $200 million," 
says Terron Hill, National Grid's director of network strategy.

Hill helped devise an energy-efficient alternative -- one that cost less 
than one-third the price and will buy the island time before installing 
a third undersea cable. It's a state-of-the-art battery energy storage 
system, "BESS" for short. And right now, it's the largest energy storage 
installation in New England.

Project Manager Skrzypczak says that BESS is made up of lithium-ion 
batteries -- the same chemistry used in your cellphone. Think cellphone 
batteries the size of refrigerators. The 234 Tesla power packs are lined 
up in three long rows, storing backup electricity that can be fed onto 
Nantucket's grid. If Nantucket goes flat or loses a cable, BESS would 
kick in before the diesel backup.

"So if we lose one of the cables, we'll use energy storage that is a 
cleaner alternative to keep the island going," Hill says. "That's the 
main purpose of it -- resiliency."

BESS can provide eight hours of electricity to about half of the 13,000 
homes on the island, and can be recharged with the turbine diesel 
generator or undersea cables -- when they're up and running.

Hill says National Grid considered using solar panels to recharge the 
batteries, but that wasn't feasible. "The footprint is a limiting factor 
here," says Hill. "You could do solar plus energy storage, but you would 
need a lot of land for the amount of capacity we need."

BESS buys National Grid time; the utility predicts it won't need to 
build a third cable for another 20 years or so. By then, there could be 
even better grid-scale batteries.

Hill says the future of energy storage is "bright" and could help pave 
the way for renewables like wind and solar. Across New England, there 
are 24 proposals to build battery storage systems. Total capacity: 500 
times that of Nantucket's BESS. While it's likely that most of the 
projects won't get built, there is no doubt that batteries of all shapes 
and sizes will play a critical role in transforming New England's energy 
future.
https://www.wbur.org/earthwhile/2019/10/08/nantucket-energy-storage-lithium-ion-giant-battery



[observing]
*Russia finds market for its vast reserves of Arctic coal*
 From the vulnerable tundra lands of the remote peninsula of Taymyr will 
soon be extracted many million tons of coal. Much of it will be shipped 
along the Northern Sea Route to India.
By Atle Staalesen - November 01, 2019
It was not alternative and green power that was discussed when Indian 
Minister of oil, natural gas and steel Dharmendra Debendra Pradhan 
visited Russia last month.
- - -
According to Pradhan, India needs about 70 million tons of high-quality 
coal for its aluminum and steel industry.
- -
There are huge reserves of high-quality coal in the Taymyr Peninsula. 
Map by Vostok Coal
Vostok Coal plans to extract an annual 30 million tons of anthracite, a 
high-quality coal, from its fields in Taymyr...
- - -
Russia in 2018 exported a total of 4.5 million tons of coal to India...
- -
Already in 2017, Vostok Coal and its regional subsidiary Arctic Mining 
Company was sued by the federal Environmental Protection Agency and 
subsequently fined 600 million rubles.

According to the environmental inspectors, Vostok Coal has inflicted 
serious damage to local environment and did not have the permissions needed.

The inspectors reportedly found about 70,000 tons of extracted coal 
stored on site. In addition, more than 180,000 tons were exported in a 
complex logistical operation in winter of 2017...
- - -
Despite the violations, Vostok Coal and its partners got federal 
authorities' blessing for the building of two major seaport terminals on 
the coast of the Kara Sea.

The two projected seaports, the Chaika and the Severny, are to provide 
the necessary infrastructure for the export of coal from the nearby mines.

However, the problem for Vostok Coal has been that the terminals are 
located within areas strictly regulated by environmental legislation...
- - -
While coal is a dying industry in Europe, nearby Russia continues to 
place its bets of the polluting mineral.

Over the last 10 years, Russia has boosted its coal production by more 
than 30 percent to a total of 440 million tons, and the country is now 
the world's third biggest producer.

In the same period, investments in the industry surged 150 percent.

And production is to continue upwards. According to a draft development 
program, annual coal production might reach as much as 670 million tons 
in the course of the next 15 years.
https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/industry-and-energy/2019/11/russia-finds-market-its-vast-reserves-arctic-coal
- - -
[Coal is still popular]
*Climate change: Asia 'coal addiction' must end, UN chief warns*
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said countries in the region were 
among the most vulnerable to global warming and should be on the "front 
line" of efforts to stop it.

He cited a new study that found that Asian countries were at particular 
risk of climate-driven flooding.

Coal is a major source of power in many Asian countries...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50276983



[On the Media radio segment]
*Band-Aid On A Bulletwound*
In a Burning California, Decades of Technical Debt Comes Due
As wildfires tear through California, our decades-old infrastructure 
comes back to bite us. On this week's On the Media, how we can 
understand this latest climate catastrophe through a metaphor from the 
computer world.
- -
Writer Quinn Norton [@quinnnorton] on how California's wildfires are 
caused in large part by infrastructure decays, or the "technical debt" 
being accumulated by the state, and governments around the country. Listen.
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/burning-california-decades-technical-debt-comes-due
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/on-the-media-2019-11-01



[really, there is no question about it]
*Why Faith in Science Is Critical: Five Questions for Naomi Oreskes*
//by Hope Reese
The historian and author of "Why Trust Science" argues that trusting 
scientists can be a matter of life and death.
"SCIENTISTS ARE our designated experts for studying the world," says 
Naomi Oreskes, a science historian at Harvard University, in her new 
book, "Why Trust Science?" And trusting them can be a matter of life and 
death. "If we cannot answer the question of why we should trust 
science," she writes, "then we stand little chance of convincing our 
fellow citizens, much less our political leaders, that they should get 
their children vaccinated, floss their teeth, and act to prevent climate 
change."
*
**"Why Trust Science?" by Naomi Oreskes (Princeton University Press, 376 
pages).*
Based on the 2016 Tanner Lectures on Human Values she delivered at 
Princeton University, Oreskes' book offers a history of scientific 
thought, presenting a reasoned case for how science has evolved and how 
its collaborative nature and diversity provide a foundation for trust. 
That foundation, she argues, rests on the process for vetting claims, 
which results in accepted scientific knowledge that is "fundamentally 
consensual" and has "survived critical scrutiny."

Trust in experts should not be limited to science, she emphasizes. "In 
the modern world we have to trust experts," she says. "Society would 
come to a crashing halt if we didn't - if we didn't have trust in our 
car mechanic or dentist." But trust in science is particularly critical 
if we want to ensure our survival, as well as the survival of the planet.

For this installment of the Undark Five, I spoke with Oreskes about how 
to trust science that may conflict with our moral or religious values 
and what we can do to prevent bias in scientific communities, among 
other topics. Here is our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

*Undark: Why, especially at this moment in our history, is trust in 
science critical?*

*Naomi Oreskes: *We have a number of issues that are truly life and 
death that hinge upon our understanding and taking to heart scientific 
evidence. The two obvious ones on the global scale? Climate change and 
vaccinations.

If we don't address climate change in a very rigorous and vigorous way 
in the next decade or so, we're likely to see massive dislocation, 
social, economic, political, environmental dislocations that will lead 
to loss of property, loss of life. We're seeing it already in the recent 
events in the Bahamas, [and] with respect to deadly heat waves.

If we think about the problem of vaccine rejection, this is also a 
matter of life and death. People who don't vaccinate their children put 
their own children at risk for serious childhood illnesses and put other 
people's children at risk as well.

There are these particular issues where significant numbers of people 
have rejected scientific evidence. And what we know about those 
particular issues - and some others as well, like evolutionary biology - 
is that people reject scientific claims that they fear threaten their 
personal, political, or religious interests.

We also know that there have been organized campaigns designed to 
generate this distrust of science. That's what I'm particularly 
concerned about.

We certainly had people rejecting science in the 19th century. 
Vaccination skepticism is a very old phenomenon - we can track it back 
pretty much as far as there have been vaccinations. But this phenomenon 
of organized professional disinformation designed to generate distrust 
in science by people whose interests are threatened is a relatively 
recent phenomenon, and a very frightening one - because of how cynical 
it is, how amoral it is, and how effective it has been.

*UD: You argue that we don't actually have a "scientific method." Can 
you explain?*

NO: Well, it's a remarkably popular and persistent myth that there is a 
scientific method. And there are historical reasons why we think that 
there is a scientific method, but it's not really true.

The thing that many people think is the scientific method is what 
philosophers call the hypothetico-deductive model. We develop a 
hypothesis, we deduce its consequences logically, and we do some kind of 
test to see if those consequences are true. Some kind of experiment, 
observation, clinical trial, et cetera.

But from a philosophical standpoint, that model doesn't hold up - 
because we find, logically speaking, even if the prediction of the 
theory comes true, it doesn't actually prove that that theory is 
correct. So if we think of the scientific method as necessarily 
demonstrating the truth about claims in a logical way, that model does 
not stand up to scrutiny.

Moreover, if we stepped back from logic and theory, and simply asked, 
"What do scientists actually do?" we find that scientists do a lot of 
different things. Some scientists are following the 
hypothetico-deductive model. But we can also find many cases where 
they're doing other things.

So this tells us that if scientific knowledge is reliable, it's not 
because scientists are following a unique, logically bulletproof method. 
It has to be something else. That led me to ask: What is that something 
else? And to conclude that that "something else" was not the methods by 
which claims are generated, or even tested by individuals, but this 
collective process by which claims are vetted.

UD: Science is an inherently social endeavor, and scientists are 
affected by the world they live in. In the past, women and minority 
groups have been left out, both in terms of being part of the scientific 
community, but also in the research itself. *How can we trust science 
when we know it's biased? Can we prevent bias?**
*
NO: We don't prevent it - we identify it and we try to weed it out. 
Science isn't biased because it's a social process - science is biased 
because it's human beings. All human beings bring their biases, their 
preferences, their predilections, their "priors,'' as statisticians call 
it, to any question. That cannot be eliminated. There's simply no way 
for any human being to expunge all of their priors.

But we don't rely on science [based] on the views of an individual. We 
have this collective process. So the social aspect of science is 
actually a potential remedy for bias.

What I argue, drawing on the work of a number of philosophers of 
science, including a number of important feminist philosophers of 
science, is that if the social process is working correctly and the 
community is diverse, so people are looking at the question from a 
number of different angles, then you have the opportunity to identify 
bias and correct for it. To say, "Hey, but maybe you didn't look at 
this, or maybe you didn't fully consider that, or maybe you discounted 
this body of evidence that I think you really need to pay attention to."

So we're not eliminating bias - that's an impossible dream - but we're 
finding a mechanism to correct for it.

UD: How can we trust science if it conflicts with our moral beliefs, or 
our religious teachings? For instance, *why should we trust the science 
of evolution over creationism?*

NO: How we speak about it and the words we choose are very important. I 
don't believe that evolutionary biology conflicts with religious faith. 
I'm not alone in that - there are plenty of religious people who agree 
with me. The Pope agrees. The leaders of most modern religious 
organizations agree.

One of the things we know about evolutionary biology is that many 
evangelical Christians in the United States think or perceive that 
evolutionary biology conflicts with evangelical Christianity. And in 
part, they feel that way because they interpret evolutionary biology to 
say that life is meaningless, that it's because it's random, that 
therefore life is purposeless. But that doesn't necessarily follow.

There are many wonderful theologians and biologists who have pointed out 
that that is actually a non sequitur. Whether my life has meaning is a 
separate and different question than how the biological function of my 
organism came to be today. So it's possible to unpack those questions.

*UD: What are your biggest concerns when it comes to the ways that 
scientists, or the scientific community, may not be impartial?*

NO: There are a few things I worry about. One is methodological 
fetishism. I think that many scientists get fixated on the idea that 
there is a particular method - I don't mean the scientific method, that 
hypothetico-deductive method - but some method that is uniquely powerful 
or useful. We see this with the contraceptive pill and also with dental 
flossing: This privileging of the double-blind clinical trial [where 
neither the participants nor the researchers know who is getting a 
treatment].

There's no question that double-blind clinical trials are an excellent 
tool when you can do them. But there are many problems for which they're 
simply not possible.

This came up recently with the claim that there's no good evidence that 
eating less meat makes you healthier. This is a very clear example of 
methodological fetishism in action. We have huge amounts of evidence 
that eating less meat is better for almost all of us. But it's 
impossible to do a double-blind clinical trial of meat-eating, because 
people know what they eat, and people lie about what they eat.

This is the main reason why nutrition is so difficult. It's a very 
challenging science in which to get robust evidence. So we have to rely 
on patient studies or animal studies, and we have to look at the body of 
evidence. But when we just cherry pick evidence of a particular type and 
insist that that evidence is the only evidence that counts, then I think 
we will make serious mistakes.

I also worry about what I call performative diversity - communities that 
invite in people of color or women but treat them in a tokenistic way. 
So, yes, they're there in the room, but they're not being listened to. 
That happens and requires more attention.

Also, we have enormous amounts of evidence that funding influences 
outcomes, but a lot of scientists are reluctant to accept that because 
they feel that it's an attack on their own personal objectivity. But 
it's wrong to view this as an issue of whether I am an objective person. 
The question is, are the processes of the scientific community 
functioning well?

We have evidence that when a lot of funding has come from a vested 
party, that distorts the scientific research. The most well-documented 
example is tobacco. We have very robust studies that show that when 
research was funded by the tobacco industry, it was much less likely to 
find that tobacco caused cancer or other diseases than independently 
funded research. It contributed to the delay in implementing tobacco 
control - to the sense, for a long time, that the science wasn't really 
settled.

People died. We can't guarantee that those people would have quit 
smoking, but if we had had better information sooner, governments and 
other organizations might have taken steps sooner to discourage tobacco 
use. Tobacco taxes and bans on smoking in certain places are effective. 
So if governments had taken action, there's every likelihood that we 
would have reduced mortality and morbidity from tobacco-related disease.

Hope Reese is a writer and editor in Louisville, Kentucky. Her writing 
has appeared in Undark, The Atlantic, The Boston Globe, The Chicago 
Tribune, Playboy, Vox, and other publications.
https://undark.org/2019/11/01/five-questions-naomi-oreskes/


*This Day in Climate History - November 4, 1988 - from D.R. Tucker*
Discussing the conflict of visions at the heart of the 1988 presidential 
campaign, the New York Times notes:

    "Neither candidate has a record in office as a committed
    environmentalist. [Vice President George] Bush, for example, headed
    a Reagan Administration task force that recommended relaxing many
    environmental regulations. [Massachusetts Governor Michael] Dukakis
    sought waivers of Federal requirements that Boston Harbor be cleaned
    up. Yet both candidates are campaigning as strong conservationists,
    and protection of the environment has become a widely discussed
    issue for the first time in a Presidential campaign.

    "Mr. Bush ran a series of television advertisements attacking Mr.
    Dukakis for pollution in Boston Harbor. Mr. Dukakis, saying he was
    not at fault, responded with ads blaming Reagan budget cuts for the
    harbor's pollution and criticizing the Vice President for opposing
    renewal of the Clean Water Act and strong regulation of corporate
    polluters.

    "Mr. Dukakis has won the endorsement of most national environmental
    organizations. The League of Conservation Voters, the political arm
    of the main environmental groups, gives Mr. Dukakis a rating of B,
    Mr. Bush a grade of D+, based on their records and stated positions.

    "Neither man has promised to spend much new money on the
    environment. But both have endorsed a program to reduce pollution
    that causes acid rain, both say they would bring an end to ocean
    dumping and both promise to call a meeting of world leaders to
    address the threat of global warming caused by man-made gases."

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/04/us/emotional-issues-are-the-1988-battleground.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm
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