[TheClimate.Vote] November 24, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/November 24, 2019/

[Another one]
*Bloomberg Is a Climate Leader. So Why Aren't Activists Excited About a 
Run for President?*
Michael Bloomberg has poured his time and hundreds of millions of 
dollars into projects aimed at getting the world 'beyond carbon,' but 
can he win the presidency?
- - -
Their concerns go beyond the general worry among Democrats that 
Bloomberg's entry will prolong an internecine battle among the party's 
hopefuls. They wonder if the moderate, unabashedly pro-business 
Bloomberg, whose personal wealth is estimated at more than $50 billion, 
is the right leader for the kind of climate action they believe is 
needed now--a sweeping transformation of the U.S. economy and its energy 
mix.

"The first reaction is just a huge, 'Why?,'" said RL Miller, political 
director of the advocacy group Climate Hawks Vote. "Why is he doing this?...
- -
Komanoff gives Bloomberg credit for the groundwork he laid as New York 
mayor for initiatives like congestion pricing to reduce vehicle traffic 
in Manhattan--a proposal that was finally approved by the state 
legislature early this spring. His climate plans while mayor were widely 
seen as the most ambitious city-level efforts to mitigate and adapt to 
global warming.

And Komanoff recalls that it was seen as a bold stand in 2007 when 
Bloomberg came out in favor of a national carbon tax, at a time when 
most political leaders who favored climate action were still talking 
about cap-and-trade. But Komanoff, who himself is looking beyond carbon 
tax advocacy to campaign for a Green New Deal transformation, believes 
the times call for a different kind of leadership.

"Mike Bloomberg is the perfect climate candidate for 2007," Komanoff said.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23112019/michael-bloomberg-president-climate-change-activists-concerns-green-new-deal-wealth-tax



[New discovery]
*Amazonian tree with human-sized leaves finally gets ID'd as new species*
More than 35 years after it was first seen, researchers have described 
Coccoloba gigantifolia, a tree species from the Brazilian Amazon with 
gigantic leaves that can reach 2.5 meters (8 feet) in length.

Although C. gigantifolia has been known to the public and the scientific 
community for a long time, describing it formally and giving it an 
official name was essential to be able to assess its conservation status 
and design conservation strategies to protect it, the researchers say.

image 
https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2019/11/22093720/Coccoloba-4-photo-Rogerio-Gribel-610x801.jpg

The species is rare and likely has disjointed populations occurring in a 
rapidly changing landscape, and the researchers recommended listing it 
as endangered on the IUCN Red List.
https://news.mongabay.com/2019/11/amazon-tree-giant-leaves-coccoloba-gigantifolia-new-species-brazil/



[videos Harvard + Yale = climate activism]
*Harvard-Yale Game Delayed By Climate Change Protest*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czmDPmEL7GE
*- - -*
*Harvard-Yale football game has been delayed due to students protesting 
climate change 👀*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48y26O9WZN8
- - -
*Harvard Vs. Yale Protest 2019*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7D_jdO8KwA
- - -
*Over 150 Yale and Harvard students and alumni stormed the field and 
disrupted the #HarvardYale football game to call for climate justice and 
divestment! *
Yale Endowment Justice Coalition, Fossil Free Yale, and Divest Harvard 
students are acting together, saying that #NobodyWins when our 
universities invest their combined $70 billion endowments in fossil 
fuels and Puerto Rican debt holdings. This is a 🏈 GAME-CHANGING moment 
for the student divestment movement, and the first time in HISTORY that 
students have disrupted a major sporting event for fossil fuel divestment.

Follow along at NobodyWins2019.com. Sign the pledge to not donate to 
Harvard & Yale until they divest.
https://www.facebook.com/divesteddotorg/photos/a.2210509725886297/2495813190689281/?type=3&theater
- - -
*Fossil Free Yale*
@FossilFreeYale
BREAKING: Over 150 Yale + Harvard students, alumni, faculty  stormed the 
field at #HarvardYale to demand DIVESTMENT from fossil fuels & cancel 
holdings in Puerto Rican debt. When it comes to the status quo, 
#NobodyWins.
@YaleEJC
@FossilFreeYale
@DivestHarvard
- - -


[EPA mess]
*Climate change threatens 945 US toxic waste sites with flood and fire*
By Zoe Schlanger
November 20, 2019
You really, really don't want a toxic waste site to flood. But 60% of 
the waste sites designated the most hazardous in the US, known as 
"Superfund" sites, are threatened by rising sea levels, flooding, storm 
surge, and wildfires made more destructive and frequent by climate 
change, according to a report released Monday (Nov 18) by the US 
Government Accountability Office (GAO).

That's 945 toxic waste sites in the crosshairs. And right now, the US 
environment agency doesn't prioritize the threat of climate change in 
management plans for its Superfund sites--whether indirectly through 
lack of resources, or directly, through lack of any clear guidance on 
climate change, according to the report...
- - -
But at EPA headquarters in Washington, DC, leadership downplayed the 
GAO's findings. "The EPA strongly believes the Superfund program's 
existing processes and resources adequately ensure that risks and any 
effects of severe weather events, that may increase in intensity, 
duration, or frequency, are woven into risk response decisions at 
non-federal [National Priorities List] sites," EPA assistant 
administrator Peter Wright said in a statement Monday.

As the Washington Post notes, this is the latest in a string of 
instances where Trump's EPA has rejected the warnings of outside experts 
on climate change, while simultaneously rolling back environmental rules 
meant to curb its effects.
https://qz.com/1752777/how-climate-change-threatens-the-majority-of-us-toxic-waste-sites/



[cough, cough]
*Smoke plumes from Australia bushfires crossing oceans*
By Michael Carlowicz and Adam Voiland
21 November 2019
(NASA) – Three weeks into November 2019, springtime bush fires continued 
to blaze across southern and eastern Australian states. As of November 
20, government agencies counted 45 fires in South Australia and 49 in 
New South Wales, and dangerously dry and windy weather was fanning 
flames in Victoria and Queensland.

The fires have sent smoke rising high into the atmosphere and half-way 
around the world, with satellites detecting aerosols and other smoky 
pollutants crossing the Pacific and moving over the South Atlantic 
Ocean. Locally, the smoke has blanketed the Sydney metropolitan area, 
significantly degrading air quality.

On 19 November 2019, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer 
(MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite acquired a natural-color image (above) 
of thick smoke plumes rising from New South Wales (NSW) and Queensland. 
The animation below depicts the abundance and direction of black carbon 
blowing through the atmosphere from November 1-18...
https://desdemonadespair.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/NASA-animation-shows-black-carbon-from-Australia-bushfires-blowing-through-atmosphere-1-18-November-2019-Joshua-Stevens-NASA-Earth-Observatory.mp4
https://desdemonadespair.net/2019/11/smoke-plumes-from-australia-bushfires-crossing-oceans.html 




[Opinion]
*Editorial: The world refuses to slow its suicidal course toward 
catastrophic climate change*
Los Angeles Times
By The Times Editorial Board
Nov. 22, 2019

The United Nations' Environment Program released a rather dire report 
Wednesday concluding that by 2030, global production of fossil fuels -- 
extracted coal, oil and natural gas -- would be more than double what we 
can safely consume if we hope to limit the most severe impacts from 
human-caused global warming.

In other words, rather than adopting policies and practices to slow the 
rise in global temperatures, humanity is essentially continuing on the 
same suicidal course it's been on for decades. And, of course, Trump 
administration policies seeking ever more fossil fuel production in the 
U.S. are exactly opposite of what we need to do.

The Emissions Gap Report is the first U.N. effort to compare projected 
global emissions with the stated goals of the 2015 Paris agreement, in 
which world governments acknowledged the looming danger and pledged to 
take steps to limit emissions of greenhouse gases. The agreement, which 
aimed to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius 
above preindustrial levels, was shepherded by the Obama administration; 
President Trump's decision to withdraw from the pact would leave the 
U.S., despite its key role in forging the agreement, as a global 
outlier, the sole country not a party to it.

The new report extrapolates from emissions data from the U.S. and seven 
other nations that account for 60% of global fossil fuel production. It 
also builds on an earlier report that projects that even if nations meet 
their current commitments under the Paris agreement temperatures would 
still rise somewhere between 3 and 4 degrees Celsius. Even more 
troublesome: Global carbon emissions "have remained exactly at the 
levels projected a decade ago, under the business-as-usual scenarios 
used in Emissions Gap Reports," wrote Inger Andersen, executive director 
of the Environment Program.

That spotlights a key hurdle in making meaningful changes in how we 
create and consume energy. Too many nations pursue too many policies -- 
from pushing increased fossil fuel production to subsidies for coal, oil 
and gas industries -- that work against their promised reductions in 
emissions.

There is no easy way to fix this, but there are some pretty clear steps 
that could be taken, including dropping tax breaks and subsidies for the 
fuels that are imperiling us, thus letting market prices more accurately 
reflect the true cost; changing the market itself by using government 
policies, including carbon taxes, to push a rapid global transition to 
renewable energy; and helping developing nations whose demands for power 
are growing to build renewable energy infrastructures that do not rely 
on fossil fuels.

And we must do this with a sense of urgency, and without deluding 
ourselves about the fate that awaits us if we do not.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-11-22/fossil-fuel-paris-agreement-trump-global-warming



[Nitrous Oxide is a greenhouse gas]
*Rising Laughing Gas Levels In Atmosphere Also Driving Global Warming*
Nitrous Oxide (N2O), more popularly known as laughing gas, has adverse 
effects
on our environment that are no laughing matter and these effects are far 
worse than first assumed.
- - -
"In Europe and North America, we have succeeded in decreasing growth in 
nitrous oxide emissions, an important contributor to climate change and 
stratospheric ozone depletion," Davidson added. "Unfortunately, the same 
can't be said for Asia and South America, where fertilizer use, 
intensification of livestock production, and the resulting nitrous oxide 
emissions are growing rapidly.

According to Davidson, the good news is this problem can be solved, "but 
the less good news is that it will take a global effort, and we are far 
from there yet."
https://www.medicaldaily.com/rising-laughing-gas-levels-atmosphere-also-driving-global-warming-446261
**

*This Day in Climate History - November 24, - from D.R. Tucker*

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