[TheClimate.Vote] November 15, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/November 15, 2019/

[art crumbles]
*Venice flooding: Salt threatens frescoes and paintings*
Salt crystalized by historic floodwaters poses a great threat to 
Venice's many wall paintings and frescoes. German art conservator Sven 
Taubert says good planning is key to preserving the historic works of art...
https://www.dw.com/en/venice-flooding-salt-threatens-frescoes-and-paintings/a-51258284
- - -
[or any city near sea level]
*Venice is underwater. Other major European cities could be next.*
- - -
Even though the conclusions are based on data from previous years, the 
researchers suggest "that climate-driven changes are already happening" 
and that the changes "are broadly consistent with climate model 
projections for the next century."

As a result, the focal points of flood protection will increasingly move 
to some of Europe's most populous cities in the north that are built 
along mighty rivers, including London, Paris, Hamburg and Prague. Given 
their historic and densely populated centers, city planners have 
struggled to come up with solutions that would protect those cities 
against major floods...
- - -
This week's historic tidewater levels in Venice were yet another 
reminder for residents of northwestern Europe, who have been largely 
insulated from climate-change effects, that their lives could be easily 
upended, too.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/11/14/venice-is-underwater-other-major-european-cities-could-be-next/


[university study]
*Stalled weather patterns will get bigger due to climate change*
Relationship between jet stream, atmospheric blocking events
Climate change will increase the size of stalled high-pressure weather 
systems called "blocking events" that have already produced some of the 
21st century's deadliest heat waves, according to a Rice University study.

Atmospheric blocking events are middle-latitude, high-pressure systems 
that stay in place for days or even weeks. Depending upon when and where 
they develop, blocking events can cause droughts or downpours and heat 
waves or cold spells. Blocking events caused deadly heat waves in France 
in 2003 and in Russia in 2010.

Using data from two sets of comprehensive climate model simulations, 
Rice fluid dynamicists Ebrahim Nabizadeh and Pedram Hassanzadeh, and 
colleagues found that the area of blocking events in the northern 
hemisphere will increase by as much as 17% due to anthropogenic climate 
change. The study, which is available online from Geophysical Research 
Letters, was co-authored by Da Yang of Lawrence Berkeley National 
Laboratory and the University of California, Davis, and Elizabeth Barnes 
of Colorado State University.

Hassanzadeh, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and of 
Earth, environmental and planetary sciences, uses computational, 
mathematical and statistical models to study atmospheric flows related 
to a broad range of problems from extreme weather events to wind energy. 
He said researchers have increasingly been interested in learning how 
climate change might affect blocking events, but most studies have 
focused on whether blocking events will become more frequent as the 
atmosphere warms because of greenhouse gas emissions.

"Studies in the past have looked at whether you get more or less 
blocking events with climate change," he said. "The question nobody had 
asked is whether the size of these events will change or not. And the 
size is very important because the blocking events are more impactful 
when they are larger. For example, if the high-pressure system becomes 
bigger, you are going to get bigger heat waves that affect more people, 
and you are likely going to get stronger heat waves."...
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191113075107.htm
- - -
Size of the atmospheric blocking events: Scaling law and response to 
climate change. Geophysical Research Letters, 2019; DOI: 
10.1029/2019GL084863



[click links to view]
*How the Climate Crisis Is Killing Us, in 9 Alarming Charts*
A new report from over 100 experts paints a devastating picture of how 
climate change is already imperiling human health.
https://media.wired.com/photos/5dcb4a6ff3485600081260cd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/figure10_EMBARGOEDclimatecountdown-20.jpg

https://media.wired.com/photos/5dcb4a6d0aa0150008816df1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/figure2_EMBARGOEDclimatecountdown-10.jpg

https://media.wired.com/photos/5dcb4a6f182de80009f7ff3c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/figure4_EMBARGOEDclimatecountdown-12.jpg

https://media.wired.com/photos/5dcb4a6edea30b00096c6cdf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/figure6_EMBARGOEDclimatecountdown-14.jpg

https://media.wired.com/photos/5dcb4a6fa0ab490008bbf613/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/figure8_EMBARGOEDclimatecountdown-16.jpg

https://media.wired.com/photos/5dcb4a70f3485600081260cf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/figure12_EMBARGOEDclimatecountdown-23.jpg

https://media.wired.com/photos/5dcb4a700da2b80009c7fc21/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/figure17_EMBARGOEDclimatecountdown-27.jpg

https://media.wired.com/photos/5dcb4a71b8fdfa0008290a64/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/figure20_EMBARGOEDclimatecountdown-31.jpg
This is what inaction looks like--in cold, hard cash. In 2018, the world 
suffered $166 billion US in losses from extreme events related to 
climate change. Failing to cut greenhouse gas emissions will lead to yet 
more damage, loss of life, degradation of human health, and weakening of 
Earth's interconnected systems.
https://www.wired.com/story/how-the-climate-crisis-is-killing-us/


[life legacy]
*Climate change exposes future generations to life-long health harm*
Kate Kelland
LONDON (Reuters) - A child born today faces multiple and life-long 
health harms from climate change - growing up in a warmer world with 
risks of food shortages, infectious diseases, floods and extreme heat, a 
major global study has found.
Climate change is already harming people's health by increasing the 
number of extreme weather events and exacerbating air pollution, 
according to the study published in The Lancet medical journal. And if 
nothing is done to mitigate it, its impacts could burden an entire 
generation with disease and illness throughout their lives.

"Children are particularly vulnerable to the health risks of a changing 
climate. Their bodies and immune systems are still developing, leaving 
them more susceptible to disease and environmental pollutants," said 
Nick Watts, who co-led The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change 
study.

He warned that health damage in early childhood is "persistent and 
pervasive", and carries lifelong consequences.

"Without immediate action from all countries to cut greenhouse gas 
emissions, gains in wellbeing and life expectancy will be compromised, 
and climate change will come to define the health of an entire 
generation," he told a London briefing.

Yet introducing policies to limit emissions and cap global warming would 
see a different outcome, the research teams said.
In that scenario, a child born today, would see an end to coal use in 
Britain, for example, by their 6th birthday, and the world reaching 
net-zero emissions by the time they were 31.

VULNERABLE
The Lancet study is a collaboration by 120 experts from 35 institutions 
including the World Health Organization, the World Bank, University 
College London and China's Tsinghua University.

On a "business-as-usual" pathway, with little action to limit climate 
change, it found that amid rising temperatures and extreme weather 
events, children would be vulnerable to malnutrition and rising food 
prices, and the most likely to suffer from warmer waters and climates 
accelerating the spread of infectious diseases such as dengue fever and 
cholera.

Among the most immediate and long-lasting health threats from climate 
change is air pollution, the researchers said.

They called for urgent action to reduce outdoor and indoor pollution 
through the introduction of cleaner fuels and vehicles, and policies to 
encourage safe and active transport such as walking and cycling.
The WHO says that globally in 2016, 7 million deaths were due to the 
effects of household and ambient air pollution. The vast majority of 
these were in low and middle-income countries.

"If we want to protect our children, we need to make sure the air they 
breathe isn't toxic," said Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson, a global health 
specialist at Britain's Sussex University who worked on the Lancet study.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-health/climate-change-exposes-future-generations-to-life-long-health-harm-idUSKBN1XN2WQ


Live video
*The world's psychologists take action on climate change*
Live streaming of select sessions begins Friday, Nov. 15 at 7:30 p.m. 
EST on the summit website, featuring remarks from  U.N. Secretary 
General Antonio Guterres (schedule permitting), Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, 
president of Portugal, Arthur Evans, CEO of APA, and Francisco 
Rodrigues, president of the Order of Portuguese Psychologists.
https://www.apa.org/news/apa/2019/climate-change-summit



*This Day in Climate History - November 15, 1999 - from D.R. Tucker*
Speaking at the London Institute of Petroleum, former Defense Secretary 
Dick Cheney declares:

    "From the standpoint of the oil industry obviously and I'll talk a
    little later on about gas, but obviously for over a hundred years we
    as an industry have had to deal with the pesky problem that once you
    find oil and pump it out of the ground you've got to turn around and
    find more or go out of business. Producing oil is obviously a
    self-depleting activity. Every year you've got to find and develop
    reserves equal to your output just to stand still, just to stay
    even. This is true for companies as well in the broader economic
    sense as it is for the world. A new merged company like Exxon-Mobil
    will have to secure over a billion and a half barrels of new oil
    equivalent reserves every year just to replace existing production.
    It's like making one hundred per cent interest discovery in another
    major field of some five hundred million barrels equivalent every
    four months or finding two Hibernias a year.

    "For the world as a whole, oil companies are expected to keep
    finding and developing enough oil to offset our seventy one million
    plus barrel a day of oil depletion, but also to meet new demand. By
    some estimates there will be an average of two per cent annual
    growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with
    conservatively a three per cent natural decline in production from
    existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of
    an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going
    to come from?

    "Governments and the national oil companies are obviously
    controlling about ninety per cent of the assets. Oil remains
    fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world
    offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of
    the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize
    ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greater
    access there, progress continues to be slow."

 From the full text of Dick Cheney's speech at the Institute of 
Petroleum Autumn lunch, 1999 - 
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2004-06-08/full-text-dick-cheneys-speech-institute-petroleum-autumn-lunch-1999
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