[TheClimate.Vote] November 20, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Wed Nov 20 06:15:01 EST 2019

/November 20, 2019/

[video warns of 300 thousand power outage]
*Bay Area Residents Prepare For Next PG&E Safety Power Shutoff*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzsOYUsPDZQ

[NYT buries the lead way down in the very last paragraph]
*Her Message About Climate Change: It's Not Too Late*
Kate Marvel is committed to spreading the word about climate science. 
Her TED Talk on the subject drew more than a million viewers...
- -
*Are we doomed? Is there hope?*
We can be doomed, if we choose to be. I think it is true that our 
choices in this coming decade really, really matter. We have to take 
drastic action A.S.A.P. That is true. A lot of people say catastrophic 
climate change is inevitable. Climate change is inevitable; it's already 
happening. But there is a difference between bad, disruptive and 
completely catastrophic. And we still have time to prevent that catastrophe.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/19/climate/kate-marvel-environment.html

[Forbes speaks out]
*Greta Is Right: Study Shows Individual Lifestyle Change Boosts Systemic 
Climate Action*
Jeff McMahon - Contributor Green Tech
The climate movement has been riven lately by a debate pitting 
individual lifestyle change against systemic change, as if the two compete.

Many experts contend both are needed, and new research links them even 
more closely. The public is more likely to support systemic action, the 
study finds, if those advocating it have a low carbon footprint...
- - -
Recently Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann 
warned that climate denialists are exploiting calls for individual 
action to distract from the need for systemic change. Some writers 
interpreted this argument to pit Mann against Thunberg, but in fact, 
Mann, an ardent supporter of Thunberg, merely argued that individual 
action cannot replace systemic...
- -
Led by Shahzeen Z. Attari at Indiana University, the researchers 
presented 3,600 participants with one of six policy proposals:

    Regulate CO2 emissions
    Tax CO2 emissions
    Increase generation of nuclear power
    Stabilize human population
    Increase renewable energy
    Enhance infrastructure for public transit...

- - -
The study has implications for advocates and communicators in general.

    "Advocates for energy conservation and for policies that reduce
    carbon emissions must expect ad hominem arguments based on their own
    energy use. Such arguments are probably best countered personally,
    by leading the way and demonstrating how to act in concordance with
    one's own beliefs and recommendations, and by being an exemplar
    others can follow, rather than relying primarily on communicating
    scientific facts about global warming and its risks."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2019/11/19/greta-is-right-study-shows-individual-climate-action-boosts-systemic-change/#23cd1d344a54
- - -
[Source material]
*Climate change communicators' carbon footprints affect their audience's 
policy support*
Abstract

    Global warming is caused mainly by CO2 emission from burning fossil
    fuels and is beginning to have large negative impacts on human
    well-being and ecosystems (IPCC 2014; IPCC 2018). Policies that
    mitigate CO2 emissions will require public support. Here, we examine
    how support for several possible decarbonization policies varies as
    a function of the personal carbon footprint of a researcher who
    advocates the policy. We find that people are more likely to support
    policies if the advocate for these policies has a low carbon
    footprint. Replicating our prior work, we find that the
    communicators' carbon footprint massively affect their credibility
    and intentions of their audience to conserve energy (Attari, Krantz
    and Weber 2016). Our new finding is that their carbon footprint also
    affects audience support for public policies advocated by the
    communicator. In a second study, we show that the negative effects
    of a large carbon footprint on credibility are greatly reduced if
    the communicator reforms their behavior by reducing their personal
    carbon footprints. The implications of these results are stark:
    effective communication of climate science and advocacy of both
    individual behavior change and public policy interventions are
    greatly helped when advocates lead the way by reducing their own
    carbon footprint.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-019-02463-0

[Techno hope]
*A clever new solar solution to one of the trickiest climate problems*
Making high-temperature industrial heat from sunlight.
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/11/19/20970252/climate-change-solar-heat-heliogen-csp

[Shell sells sea shells]
*Shell Claims It Has Not Lobbied Against Climate Action, Despite Ties to 
Anti-Climate Groups*
November 18, 2019
By Karen Savage
A Shell official falsely said the company has  not lobbied against 
climate action during an energy debate staged by the oil giant and 
live-streamed on Twitter Monday.

"Shell has never lobbied against climate action, not 30 years ago, not 5 
years ago, not 10 years ago," said Maarten Wetselaar, director of 
Integrated Gas and New Energies for Shell and a member of the Royal 
Dutch Shell executive committee said.

Shell was a member of the Global Climate Coalition, a fossil fuel 
industry front group launched in 1988 to undermine the growing 
scientific consensus that global warming was a major global threat and 
was overwhelmingly caused by burning fossil fuels. The GCC was set up 
primarily to block international action to fight climate change and to 
build public support for delaying action in the U.S. The group disbanded 
in 2002.

Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Total have spent more than $1 billion on 
misleading climate messaging and lobbying since 2015, according to a 
report published earlier this year by the United Kingdom-based research 
group Influence Map.

Wetselaar's comment came  during what Shell billed as the "Great Energy 
Debate." Held at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, the 
debate focused on tackling climate change while meeting energy demand. 
It included questions from audience members at Delft, Imperial College 
London and people participating via Twitter...
- -
Shell spent more than $50 million on greenwashing campaigns to convince 
the public it is supporting action on climate change, according to 
Influence Map. It also continues to invest in oil and gas projects, 
including a $13 billion liquefied natural gas project in Canada.

Shell, headquartered in the Netherlands, has employed 42 lobbyists and 
spent more than $5.5 million in U.S. lobbying in 2019. That figure is 
down from a high of nearly $15 million in 2011. It spent the equivalent 
of about $41 million on lobbying in the European Union since 2010. It's 
difficult to tell how much was spent targeting climate-related issues,

The company's insistence that it did not target climate action with that 
lobbying did not convince everyone in the audience.

"I'm a bit upset about this and I think that's also why most 
environmentalists also say why Shell is an evil company, it's because of 
the lobbying it did against climate," the Delft student said.
https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2019/11/18/shell-climate-change-lobbying/

[cough, cough]
*Air pollution nanoparticles linked to brain cancer for first time*
Exclusive: tiny particles produced by motor traffic can invade the brain 
and carry carcinogens
- - -
The discovery of abundant toxic nanoparticles from air pollution in 
human brains was made in 2016. A comprehensive global review earlier in 
2019 concluded that air pollution may be damaging every organ and 
virtually every cell in the human body.

Toxic air has been linked to other effects on the brain, including huge 
reductions in intelligence, dementia and mental health problems in both 
adults and children. The World Health Organization says air pollution is 
a "silent public health emergency".
The new study, published in the journal Epidemiology, found that a 
one-year increase in pollution exposure of 10,000 nanoparticles per 
cubic centimetre - the approximate difference between quiet and busy 
city streets - increased the risk of brain cancer by more than 10%...
- - -
Prof Barbara Maher, at the University of Lancaster, UK, said iron-rich 
nanoparticles from traffic pollution were likely to be carcinogenic and 
were therefore a plausible possible cause of brain cancer. She said 
nanoparticles were not regulated and were rarely even measured.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/13/air-pollution-particles-linked-to-brain-cancer-in-new-research
- - -
[in the Journal Epidemiology - research paper]
*Within-City Spatial Variations in Ambient Ultrafine Particle 
Concentrations and Incident Brain Tumors in Adults*
https://journals.lww.com/epidem/Abstract/publishahead/Within_City_Spatial_Variations_in_Ambient.98468.aspx

[yes, yes we are]
*What is a 'mass extinction' and are we in one now?*

A mass extinction is usually defined as a loss of about three quarters 
of all species in existence across the entire Earth over a "short" 
geological period of time. Given the vast amount of time since life 
first evolved on the planet, "short" is defined as anything less than 
2.8 million years.
- -
It would likely take several millions of years of normal evolutionary 
diversification to "restore" the Earth's species to what they were prior 
to human beings rapidly changing the planet. Among land vertebrates 
(species with an internal skeleton), 322 species have been recorded 
going extinct since the year 1500, or about 1.2 species going extinction 
every two years.
- -
Although biologists are still debating how much the current extinction 
rate exceeds the background rate, even the most conservative estimates 
reveal an exceptionally rapid loss of biodiversity typical of a mass 
extinction event.

In fact, some studies show that the interacting conditions experienced 
today, such as accelerated climate change, changing atmospheric 
composition caused by human industry, and abnormal ecological stresses 
arising from human consumption of resources, define a perfect storm for 
extinctions. All these conditions together indicate that a sixth mass 
extinction is already well under way.
https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-mass-extinction-and-are-we-in-one-now-122535

[a little humor]
*Leave 'em laughing instead of crying: Climate humor can break down 
barriers and find common ground*
September 30, 2019
Climate change is not inherently funny. Typically, the messengers are 
serious scientists describing how rising greenhouse gas emissions are 
harming the planet on land and at sea, or assessing what role it played 
in the latest wildfire or hurricane.

Society may have reached a saturation point for such somber, gloomy and 
threatening science-centered discussions. This possibility is what 
inspires my recent work with colleague Beth Osnes to get messages out 
about climate change through comedy and humor.

I have studied and practiced climate communication for about 20 years. 
My new book, "Creative (Climate) Communications," integrates social 
science and humanities research and practices to connect people more 
effectively through issues they care about. Rather than "dumbing down" 
science for the public, this is a "smartening up" approach that has been 
shown to bring people together around a highly divisive topic.
*Why laugh about climate change?*
Science is critically important to understanding the enormity of the 
climate challenge and how it connects with other problems like 
disasters, food security, local air quality and migration. But stories 
that emanate from scientific ways of knowing have failed to 
significantly engage and activate large audiences.

Largely gloomy approaches and interpretations typically stifle audiences 
rather than inspiring them to take action. For example, novelist 
Jonathan Franzen recently published an essay in The New Yorker titled 
"What If We Stop Pretending?" in which he asserted:

    "The goal (of halting climate change) has been clear for thirty
    years, and despite earnest efforts we've made essentially no
    progress toward reaching it."

Social science and humanities research have shown that this kind of 
framing effectively disempowers readers who could be activated and moved 
by a smarter approach.

Comics took a different path when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate 
Change released a report in 2018 warning that the world only had until 
about 2030 to take steps that could limit warming to manageable levels. 
Trevor Noah, host of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," observed:

    "You know the crazy people you see in the streets shouting that the
    world is ending? Turns out, they're all actually climate scientists."

On ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live," Kimmel commented:

    "There's always a silver lining. One planet's calamity is another
    planet's shop-portunity."

He then cut to a going-out-of-business advertisement for Planet Earth 
that read:

    "Everything must go! 50% of all nocturnal animals, insects, reptiles
    and amphibians…priced to sell before we live in hell. But you must
    act fast because planet Earth is over soon. And when it's gone, it's
    gone."

https://theconversation.com/leave-em-laughing-instead-of-crying-climate-humor-can-break-down-barriers-and-find-common-ground-120704

*This Day in Climate History - November 20, 2008 - from D.R. Tucker*
The Weather Channel cancels the climate-change series "Forecast Earth."

    NBC Universal made the first of potentially several rounds of
    staffing cuts at The Weather Channel (TWC) on Wednesday, axing the
    entire staff of the "Forecast Earth" environmental program during
    the middle of NBC's "Green Week," as well as several on-camera
    meteorologists. The layoffs totaled about 10 percent of the
    workforce, and are the first major changes made since NBC completed
    its purchase of the venerable weather network in September.

    The layoffs affected about 80 people, but left the long-term
    leadership of the network unclear, according to a source who
    requested anonymity due to the continuing uncertainty at the station.

    Among the meteorologists who was let go was Dave Schwartz, a Weather
    Channel veteran and a viewer staple due to his lively on camera
    presentations. USA Today reported that meteorologists Cheryl Lemke
    and Eboni Deon were also let go.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitalweathergang/2008/11/nbc_fires_twc_environmental_un.html
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2008/11/22/203375/nbc-nixes-tvs-only-climate-show-during-green-week/
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