[TheClimate.Vote] November 8, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Fri Nov 8 07:37:50 EST 2019

/November 8, 2019/

[sudden fires in Australia]
*Australia bushfires: Record number of emergencies in New South Wales*
More than 90 blazes were raging across the state on Friday.

Gusty winds and up to 35C heat [95F] have exacerbated the fires, many of 
which are in drought-affected areas.

There are reports of people trapped in their homes in several places, 
with crew unable to reach them due to the strength of the fires.

"We are in uncharted territory," said Rural Fire Service Commissioner 
Shane Fitzsimmons. "We have never seen this many fires concurrently at 
emergency warning level."...
- - -
The Rural Fire Service tweeted on Friday that "due to the size and speed 
of the fires we couldn't get to everyone, even by road or helicopter". 
The blazes are spread across about 1,000 km (621 miles) of Australia's 
coast, stretching the emergency response.

Some people were warned to seek shelter from fires rather than flee, as 
it was now too late to leave...
- - -
The bureau's State of the Climate 2018 report said climate change had 
led to an increase in extreme heat events and increased the severity of 
other natural disasters, such as drought.

Even if global temperatures are contained to a 2C rise above 
pre-industrial levels - a limit set out in the landmark Paris accord, 
agreed by 188 nations in 2015 - scientists believe the country is facing 
a dangerous new normal.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-50341207

[Opinion]
*The Climate Crisis in Terms Trump Can Understand*
**The president is abandoning America's future by quitting the Paris 
climate accord.
By Ban Ki-moon and Patrick Verkooijen
Mr. Ban was secretary general of the United Nations. Mr. Verkooijen is 
the chief executive of the Global Center on Adaptation.
President Trump made good on his promise this week to withdraw from the 
Paris Climate Agreement. This wasn't a surprise. But it still baffles 
us. Try as we might, we cannot see how America's interests are served by 
this decision...
- - -
The Paris Agreement is not a trade agreement. There is no trade-off 
between Detroit, Youngstown and Pittsburgh, on the one side, and Paris 
on the other. Tariffs and sanctions will not make this problem go away.

Instead, the Paris Agreement is more like a collective insurance policy, 
into which we all invest to protect our futures. And like most insurance 
policies, it makes sound business sense. The best investments we can 
make right now are those that will protect our food, water and energy 
sources, our transportation, homes and cities, and our businesses and 
finances from the worst impacts of climate change.

We must invest to adapt to higher temperatures, rising seas, fiercer 
storms, water scarcity, wildfires -- conditions that are now inevitable. 
The Global Commission on Adaptation estimates that investing just $1.8 
trillion to build climate resilience over the next decade would yield 
more than $7 trillion in net benefits. That is a great return on investment.

In other words, we can either plan now and prosper -- or do nothing and 
pay for the consequences later. It seems to us that Mr. Trump is 
choosing to do nothing and let the country pay later. How is this smart?...
- - -
It is not too late for Mr. Trump to reconsider his decision. Staying in 
the Paris Agreement is the right thing to do, for America's sake and for 
the rest of the world. Winston Churchill is said to have once remarked 
that you could always count on Americans to do the right thing, after 
they'd tried everything else. We hope Mr. Trump proves him wrong and 
stays in the Paris Climate Agreement -- that he does the right thing 
from the beginning.

Ban Ki-moon was secretary general of the United Nations from 2007 
through 2016 and is deputy chair of The Elders, a group of global 
leaders. Patrick Verkooijen is the chief executive of the Global Center 
on Adaptation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/opinion/paris-climate-change-trump.html

[great start]
*Italy to become first country to make studying climate change 
compulsory in schools*
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/italy-to-become-first-country-to-make-studying-climate-change-compulsory-in-schools/

[paleo past is future prologue ]
*Scientists Study Sea Levels 125,000 Years Ago And It's a Terrifying 
Look at Our Future*
Sea levels rose 10 metres above present levels during Earth's last warm 
period 125,000 years ago, according to new research that offers a 
glimpse of what may happen under our current climate change trajectory...
- - -
The Earth is presently in an interglacial period which began about 
10,000 years ago. But greenhouse gas emissions over the past 200 years 
have caused climate changes that are faster and more extreme than 
experienced during the last interglacial.

This means past rates of sea level rise provide only low-end predictions 
of what might happen in future.
- - -
Looking to the future
What is striking about the last interglacial record is how high and 
quickly sea level rose above present levels. Temperatures during the 
last interglacial were similar to those projected for the near future, 
which means melting polar ice sheets will likely affect future sea 
levels far more dramatically than anticipated to date.

Read more: Australia's only active volcanoes and a very expensive fish: 
the secrets of the Kerguelen Plateau

The last interglacial is not a perfect scenario for the future. Incoming 
solar radiation was higher than today because of differences in Earth's 
position relative to the Sun. Carbon dioxide levels were only 280 parts 
per million, compared with more than 410 parts per million today.

Crucially, warming between the two poles in the last interglacial did 
not happen simultaneously. But under today's greenhouse-gas-driven 
climate change, warming and ice loss are happening in both regions at 
the same time. This means that if climate change continues unabated, 
Earth's past dramatic sea level rise could be a small taste of what's to 
come.
https://theconversation.com/scientists-looked-at-sea-levels-125-000-years-in-the-past-the-results-are-terrifying-126017

- - -

[source material]
*Asynchronous Antarctic and Greenland ice-volume contributions to the 
last interglacial sea-level highstand*
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12874-3

[one of many audio talks]
*Building a Better Understanding of "Resilience"*
May 28, 2019
The concept of resilience is an important one in conservation science 
and resource management. However, the term itself is often poorly 
understood, or understood differently by different parties, with 
potentially troublesome effects for land managers, researchers, and others.
Read more at https://bioscienceaibs.libsyn.com/#vshkrwfxsCcybHmX.99
https://bioscienceaibs.libsyn.com/building-a-better-understanding-resilience#j7szdX3DBlFxmCpK.03

[radical change]
*THIS IS WHAT RECOVERY LOOKS LIKE: Shape-Shifting the Traumasphere We 
Now Inhabit*
**One image says it nicely 
https://medium.com/@thubtenzhiwa/this-is-what-recovery-looks-like-shape-shifting-the-traumasphere-we-now-inhabit-524d04d10851

As Hubl puts it, "we are swimming in the soup of a collectively 
traumatized humanity." This trauma acts like sand in the gears of social 
transformation, he says. We know that we must somehow quickly transform 
our social structures if we are to survive the 21st Century Holocaust -- 
the biospheric trauma that is currently driving species to extinction -- 
but it often feels like we are getting nowhere fast.
Itis as if, in this age of interconnectivity, we suddenly find ourselves 
inhabiting a traumasphere -- an atmosphere of pervasive and 
interpenetrating traumas that is inhibiting our natural abilities to 
respond to clear and present dangers. Paradoxically, while everything is 
telling us to speed up, Hubl has found that it is only when we slow our 
minds down to the frequency of our heart that the truth is liberated...
https://medium.com/@thubtenzhiwa/this-is-what-recovery-looks-like-shape-shifting-the-traumasphere-we-now-inhabit-524d04d10851

*This Day in Climate History - November 8, 1989 - from D.R. Tucker*
Margaret Thatcher delivers an address to the UN General Assembly on 
global warming, noting that societies should have economic growth "which 
does not plunder the planet today and leave our children to deal with 
the consequences tomorrow."
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107817
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnAzoDtwCBg&sns=em
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