[TheClimate.Vote] October 11, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest.

[Richard Pauli]

/October 11, 2019/

[Opinion clip]
*The Guardian view on the Extinction Rebellion protests: of course 
they're an inconvenience**
**Editorial*
Critics complain that the civil disobedience campaign is unrealistic and 
disruptive. But its tactics are forcing the public and politicians to 
confront the climate emergency
- - -
More troubling is the strain of opinion that holds that, though sincere 
and well-intentioned, XR's supporters fail to supply adequate or 
practical answers to a crisis they describe in hyperbolic terms. The 
protests, it is suggested, are self-indulgent theatre. Overstating the 
problem with banners stating "We're f****d", while failing to offer 
realistic solutions, may even harm the cause the protesters wish to promote.
- - -
Some, at least, are finally treating the crisis as on a par with the 
economy in terms of importance. The frame of the debate has palpably 
shifted, as it must, and XR deserve much of the credit.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/10/the-guardian-view-on-the-extinction-rebellion-protests-of-course-theyre-an-inconvenience


[Activism: Today is "Fire Drill Friday" called by Jane Fonda]
*Oct 11th Fire Drill Fridays Action*
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
We can no longer stand by and let our elected officials ignore - and 
even worse - empower - the industries that are destroying our planet for 
profit. Join us to launch Fire Drill Fridays at 11am ET and every Friday 
after!
https://www.facebook.com/events/746738729131098/
Our demands center and uplift those of youth climate strikers across the 
country, who on September 20,2019 sounded the alarm on the climate 
emergency and answered Greta Thunberg's call to action.
*1 A GREEN NEW DEAL...*
- -
*2 RESPECT OF INDIGENOUS LAND AND SOVEREIGNTY...*
- -
*3 ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE...*
*- - -
**4 PROTECTION AND RESTORATION OF BIODIVERSITY...*
- -
*5 IMPLEMENTATION OF SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE...*
- - -
As Greta Thunberg said, "Our House Is On Fire", and we need to act like it.

Inspired by Greta and the youth climate strikes as well as Reverend 
Barber's Moral Mondays and Randall Robinson's often daily anti-apartheid 
protests, I've moved to Washington, D.C. to be closer to the epicenter 
of the fight for our climate. Every Friday through January, I will be 
leading weekly demonstrations on Capitol Hill to demand that action by 
our political leaders be taken to address the climate emergency we are 
in. We can't afford to wait.

Welcome to Fire Drill Fridays.

The climate crisis is not an isolated issue -- it involves every part of 
our economy and society. Because of that, each Friday demonstration will 
have a different focus as it relates to climate. Scientists, movement 
leaders, experts, activists, Indigenous leaders, community members and 
youth will come together to share their stories and demand that action 
be taken before it's too late. To ensure the topic and its connection to 
the climate crisis is thoroughly explained, I will host a live-streamed 
"Teach-In" with a panel of experts each Thursday evening before the 
demonstration, for the public to attend virtually.

Our climate is in crisis. Scientists are shouting an urgent warning: we 
have little more than a decade to take bold, ambitious action to 
transition our economy off of fossil fuels and onto clean, renewable 
energy. We need a Green New Deal to mobilize our government and every 
sector of the economy to tackle the overlapping crises of climate 
change, inequality, and structural racism at the scale and speed our 
communities require. We need and deserve a world beyond fossil fuels 
while creating millions of family-sustaining, union jobs, and 
prioritizing justice and equity for working people and communities of 
color on the frontlines of climate disaster and fossil fuel 
exploitation, so the clean energy transformation leaves nobody behind.

I will be on the Capitol every Friday, rain or shine, inspired and 
emboldened by the incredible movement our youth have created. I can no 
longer stand by and let our elected officials ignore - and even worse - 
empower - the industries that are destroying our planet for profit. We 
can not continue to stand for this.

So please, join me.
-- Jane Fonda
https://firedrillfridays.com


[Calif wildfire]
*Los Angeles wildfire spreads to 4,000 acres, forcing evacuations in San 
Fernando Valley*
California firefighters try to contain spreading wildfires
"That fire, wind got behind it; it was a wind driven fire," a Los 
Angeles fire official said. "We have lost some homes."
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wildfire-calimesa-california-races-through-mobile-home-park-n1064851
- - -
[New uncertainty]
*Tales of Chaos From the California Power Outage*
Thursday: Confusion reigned as PG&E cut power across a broad swath
- - -
"I blame PG&E for causing danger and disruptions because they are too 
cheap and irresponsible to protect the state," he said. "The exclusive 
use of massive and historic poorly maintained transmission lines through 
vast heavily wooded and dry fueled mountains is absurd."
[Read about the latest in PG&E's bankruptcy case.]
His frustration was echoed by residents and elected officials alike.
"Millions without electricity is what a third-world country looks like, 
not a state that is the fifth-largest economy in the world," said Jim 
Nielsen, a state senator who represents the area around Paradise...
- - -
By about 6 p.m., The San Francisco Chronicle (whose continuing live 
updates you can read here) said, power was being restored in some areas. 
According to The Chronicle, though, the outages could cause $1 billion 
-- or, by some estimates, much more -- in economic damages to residents 
and businesses.
And, as The Press Democrat reported, meteorologists warned that winds 
were still on their way.
Southern California Edison was considering preemptively cutting power to 
173,877 customers in a vast area stretching from Kern County through 
Orange County, and from San Bernardino County to the coast, the utility 
said on its website Wednesday evening. San Diego Gas & Electric also 
warned that it may cut off power to about 29,000 customers in San Diego 
County, according to KPBS.
Still, Bobbie Hayes, whose power was cut off in Eureka, said she managed 
to find something of a silver lining in spending time off the grid.
"The lights went out, not at midnight, but at 1:45 a.m. I went outside 
with my dogs and saw the most amazing sky that was dark and filled with 
stars," she said in an email. "The Milky Way was completely visible. It 
was breathtaking."
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/10/us/pge-power-outages-california-sce-sdge-wildfires.html
- - -
*What is a Public Safety Power Shutoff?*
In order to keep communities safe, your local energy company may need to 
turn off power during extreme weather or wildfire conditions. This is 
called a Public Safety Power Shutoff.
PREPARE FOR POWERDOWN.COM
• Sign up for emergency alerts. Customers should make sure that the 
contact information associated with their utility account is up-to-date. 
Alerts can be received via text message, phone or email. Renters, or 
anyone who may not be listed on an account, should follow the company's 
Twitter and Facebook pages, said Jeff Smith, a PG&E spokesman.
• Plan for any medical needs, like medications that need to be 
refrigerated or require power. Build or restock an emergency supply kit, 
including food, water, flashlights, a radio, fresh batteries, first aid 
supplies and cash. Read our story about how to build an emergency kit 
for any disaster.
Editors' Picks
• Identify backup charging methods for phones.
• Learn how to manually open your garage door.
• If you own a backup generator, ensure that it is safe to operate.
For additional resources about public safety power shut-offs, check out 
this fact sheet on prepareforpower.com.
- - -
http://prepareforpowerdown.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Statewide_FactSheet_0503.pdf


[stop the infrastructure]
*Top Climate Expert Says Stop Utility Gas Expansions -- News Release 
 From NC WARN*
An internationally prominent expert on methane's impacts on the climate 
crisis is urging NC Governor Roy Cooper and other U.S. leaders to 
declare a permanent moratorium on the rapid expansion of natural gas 
used for electricity generation.  Dr. Drew Shindell, a long-time 
climatologist at NASA and a coordinating lead author of last year's 
Special Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 
says the climate and public health costs of methane - a potent 
greenhouse gas and the dominant component of natural gas - make gas 
expansions too damaging to continue with.

In addition, he points out that renewable energy matched with storage is 
now cheaper than gas-fired electricity - even counting only direct costs 
- making gas expansions an unnecessary harm to the climate and to public 
health.  In a letter sent today in response to the governor's new Clean 
Energy Plan, Shindell told Cooper the plan is seriously flawed because 
it would allow the addition of large amounts of fossil fuels...
- - -
"The bulk of methane emissions from natural gas," Shindell said today, 
"occur before the fuel reaches the power plant.  Those upstream 
emissions are significant and dangerous, and states importing gas are in 
part responsible for the methane emissions because they are creating the 
market for the fuel."

Recent analyses indicate that worldwide methane emissions due to human 
activities lead to about 165,000 premature deaths annually, including 
10,000 in the U.S.  Dr. Shindell calculates that together, societal 
damage from CO2 and methane emissions combined raise the true cost of 
electricity generated using gas to more than double the cost of solar or 
onshore wind, based on U.S. Dept. of Energy statistics.

In addition to health impacts and possibly irreparable climate damage, 
Dr. Shindell points out that new natural gas infrastructure poses a 
significant economic risk. The rapid decline in costs means renewable 
energy generation will likely be lower than the cost of 90% of the gas 
plants proposed in the U.S. by the time those plants are built and put 
into service.

Dale Evarts added today, "Any new gas infrastructure utilities build 
will likely become uncompetitive and end up as stranded assets that 
customers or corporate shareholders will have to pay for.  States and 
utilities who want to be genuine climate leaders will accelerate the 
shift away from fracked gas and the dangerous methane that comes with 
it.  And by doing so, they can join those already creating thousands of 
good jobs in the rapidly growing renewable energy sector."
https://www.ncwarn.org/2019/10/top-climate-expert-stop-gas-expansion/


[Elizabeth Warren climate platform]
*Fighting for Justice as we Combat the Climate Crisis*
Team Warren - Oct 9
https://medium.com/@teamwarren/fighting-for-justice-as-we-combat-the-climate-crisis-597727c296bb


[New website from James Hansen]
*Climate Science Awareness and Solutions*
Connecting dots from advancing basic climate science to promoting public 
awareness to advocating policy actions
https://csas.earth.columbia.edu/


[MIT says]
*Experts urge "full speed ahead" on climate action*
Panelists at MIT climate change symposium describe the state of 
knowledge in climate science and stress the urgent need for action.

David L. Chandler | MIT News Office
October 3, 2019
In the first of six symposia planned at MIT this academic year on the 
subject of climate change, panels of specialists on the science of 
global climate described the state of knowledge on the subject today. 
They also discussed the areas where more research is needed to pin down 
exactly how severely and quickly climate change's effects may occur, and 
what kinds of actions are urgently needed to address the enormous 
disruptions climate change will bring.

Keynote speaker Susan Solomon, the Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of 
Environmental Studies and Chemistry, gave an overview of the state of 
climate science today, explaining that the vastness of the timescales 
involved "is one of the things that makes this problem so fascinating." 
However, she added, it also presents a real challenge in communicating 
the urgency of the issue, because carbon dioxide emissions being 
produced now can persist in the air for centuries, with their effects 
building over time.

Even if the world were to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at today's 
level, the temperature would continue to rise, and sea level would 
continue to rise even more, she said. Anywhere from 50 to 100 percent of 
the expected temperature increase from a given amount of carbon dioxide 
"is in the pipeline," she said, because it takes time for the changed 
atmosphere and oceans to reach a new state of equilibrium: "The 
temperature stabilizes after a few hundred years, but the sea level just 
keeps going and going."

She said "it's sobering to take a look at the 25 warmest years that have 
been recorded, and realize that if you're 32, you've been alive for all 
of them. We, this generation of people, are living on the warmest planet 
that has ever been measured in the environmental record." And that 
increase is something we're stuck with, she said. "Even if we go cold 
turkey" and eliminate all greenhouse gas emissions, "temperatures go 
almost constant for 1,000 years. The cumulative carbon dioxide that's 
been emitted is what controls it."

The symposium, which drew a capacity crowd to MIT's Kresge Auditorium, 
was chaired by Kerry Emanuel, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of 
Atmospheric Science, and featured two panels of leading climate 
scientists who described the state of present knowledge about the 
effects and extent of climate change, remaining uncertainties and how to 
address them, and how the physical effects of warming may vary under 
different policy approaches.

MIT President L. Rafael Reif, in introducing the first of the six 
planned symposia, said, "I believe that, as a society, we must find ways 
to invest aggressively in advancing climate science and in making 
climate mitigation and adaptation technologies dramatically less 
expensive: inexpensive enough to win widespread political support, to be 
affordable for every society, and to deploy on a planetary scale."

Reif added that one way to foster that would be through a tax on carbon, 
which "will keep pushing prices [of renewables] down and make noncarbon 
alternatives more attractive. That is clearly true. Less clear, however, 
is whether the carbon-cost hammer is enough to drive the nail of global 
societal change." Continued progress with noncarbon or low-carbon 
alternatives is also essential, he said.

While the picture of human-induced global climate change is 
well-established overall, in one of the panel discussions Ray 
Pierrehumbert, a professor of physics at Oxford University, described 
some the remaining sources of uncertainty. The greatest source of 
uncertainty, he said, lies in some of the complex feedback effects that 
may occur, especially involving clouds.

Clouds reflect sunlight and therefore provide some cooling, but also are 
insulating and so help keep the surface warm. Their dynamics are highly 
complex, "involving interactions between things at the scale of 
millimeters up to thousands of kilometers." As a result, "one reason we 
don't know how bad it's going to get is because of clouds," 
Pierrehumbert said.

But that uncertainty is no cause for complacency. "It's extremely 
unlikely that there is some mystical effect that would make things 
better" than present projections, he said. Rather, "it's quite possible 
things would be worse."

Tapio Schneider, a professor of environmental science at Caltech, added 
that the uncertainties about clouds include how they are affected by air 
pollution, which provides nucleation centers for water droplets. These 
interactions are complicated to model, but "it seems that some of these 
aerosol effects are stronger than expected." That may mean that overall 
warming could be greater than expected, he said.

Paul O'Gorman, an MIT professor of atmospheric science, said that it's 
important to look at how the effects of a warming atmosphere will vary 
depending on local conditions. "Some countries will see larger 
monsoons," he said, for example in India, where rainfall could actually 
double in some regions because of changes in atmospheric circulation 
patterns. "There are a lot of outstanding questions" in the details of 
these changes, and the answers could be crucial for regional planning.

Pierrehumbert added that while nations have made commitments to try to 
limit global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius, that is a 
somewhat arbitrary cap. "Even if we don't think we can halt warming at 
two degrees, we need to go full speed ahead" on curbing emissions. 
"Things will be horrible at two degrees, but much more horrible at four 
degrees."

Maria Zuber, MIT's vice president for research, chaired the second panel 
discussion and said this series of symposia is intended as a way "to 
both educate and engage the MIT community" in the issue of climate 
change and "how we dial it up" in efforts to combat the problem.

Sherri Goodman, a senior fellow at the Wilson Center, described the 
impact of climate change on military facilities and overall military 
readiness. "It's a threat multiplier," she said. "It will amplify and 
aggravate in different ways our national security challenges," she said.

For example, the opening of the Arctic ocean because of melting sea ice 
is creating a whole new area of conflicting interests, where both Russia 
and China have been making moves to control the region's potential 
resources, from shipping lanes to petroleum reserves.

Philip Duffy, president of the Woods Hole Research Center, described his 
work in providing corporations with detailed information about the 
specific local impacts they can expect at their facilities as a result 
of climate change. Climate change may be a multiplier of risks in that 
context as well, he added, citing regional conflicts and outmigration 
resulting from droughts and other effects.

John Reilly, co-director of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy 
of Global Change, also stressed that regardless of any remaining 
uncertainties in the details of climate change's effects, "it doesn't 
mean we should wait until the science is resolved. Actually, we need the 
opposite effect." If there is a whole range of possible outcomes, it's 
important to take very seriously "the really extreme and catastrophic 
effects." Among the range of possible outcomes indicated by climate 
models, without concerted action, climate change "could make huge parts 
of the planet uninhabitable. Even if that probability is very small, 
that can dominate the entire cost-benefit calculation," he said.
http://news.mit.edu/2019/first-climate-symposium-gobal-warming-1003



[seeing is believing, but it isn't preparing]
NEWS RELEASE 8-OCT-2019
*Believing in climate change doesn't mean you are preparing for climate 
change, study finds*
UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME
Believing in climate change has no effect on whether or not coastal 
homeowners are protecting their homes from climate change-related 
hazards, according to a new study from the University of Notre Dame.

Funded by Notre Dame's Global Adaptation Initiative (ND-GAIN), the study 
analyzed data from a 2017 Coastal Homeowner Survey of 662 respondents in 
one of the most frequently exposed U.S. coastal communities, New Hanover 
County, North Carolina. Just one year after the survey, the county was 
affected by Hurricane Florence and was nearly missed by Hurricane Dorian 
in September.

The survey asked homeowners whether they believed in climate change, in 
human causation of climate change, or in God having a role in 
controlling the weather or climate. Coastal homeowners were also 
questioned about their knowledge of climate-related hazards, their 
knowledge of warming oceans and their perception of the seriousness of 
the impact of climate change.

"We found that climate change attitudes have little to no statistically 
significant effect on coastal homeowners' actions towards home 
protection, homeowner action or homeowner intentions to act in the 
future," said Tracy Kijewski-Correa, the Leo E. and Patti Ruth Linbeck 
Collegiate Chair and associate professor of civil and environmental 
engineering and earth sciences, associate professor of global affairs 
and co-author of the study. "This is despite the fact that with climate 
change, U.S. coastlines have experienced increased frequency and 
intensity of tropical storms and sea level rise, which has further 
heightened their vulnerability to waves, storm surge and high-tide 
flooding."

According to the study published in Climatic Change, 81.5 percent of 
survey respondents believed climate change is "probably happening," with 
varying degrees of confidence. The Notre Dame research team also 
measured for partisanship and ideology with the intention to control for 
questions about climate change that can tap into identity and prior 
political beliefs. However, after controlling for partisanship, the 
findings were unaffected.

"Despite persistent differences between Democrat and Republican 
ideologies in regards to climate change, the behavior of people from 
either party appears relatively similar. Neither has or intends to take 
action to improve the structural vulnerabilities of their homes," said 
Debra Javeline, associate professor of political science at Notre Dame 
and lead author of the study. "Homeowners' knowledge about climate 
change also held no significance, showing that providing more 
information and understanding may not be the main driver of convincing 
homeowners to reduce the vulnerabilities of their coastal homes."

The research team found that although coastal homeowners may perceive a 
worsening of climate change-related hazards, these attitudes are largely 
unrelated to a homeowner's expectations of actual home damage. Javeline 
says this may be a reflection of the limited communication about home 
vulnerabilities from other key stakeholders, like insurance companies, 
government agencies or sellers of home improvement products.

"Although increasing education and awareness of climate change is 
important, our findings suggest that encouraging homeowners to reduce 
the vulnerability of their coastal home may be more effective if 
expressed in regards to structural mitigation and its economic benefits, 
rather than in context of climate change," said Javeline.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-10/uond-bic100819.php


[Siren's song of the Tone Police]
*Is there a right way to talk about climate change?*
By Eve Andrews on Oct 10, 2019
Dear Umbra,
I've heard "tone police" around the internet as a term for somebody 
who's criticizing the mood of a writer or communicator instead of their 
message. I want to approach conversations about climate change with 
accurate climate information -- recognizing how shitty things are and 
will be, how much better or worse they COULD be, and just what is and 
isn't baked into our future at this point -- without making people feel 
like they can't grieve or feel sad for what we've already lost.
So with Jonathan Franzens and Guy McPhersons out there, how do I have 
accurate, constructive climate conversations without joining the "tone 
police"?

-- Policing Averts Learning
Dear PAL,
You've touched on something extremely subtle in the current incarnation 
of the "climate conversation," but I think it's an important thing to 
address. Many wise figures in the climate movement -- Katharine Hayhoe, 
for example -- have repeated over and over again that the greatest power 
that you, as an individual, possess in the offensive against devastating 
climate change is to talk about it. But there's also been a huge amount 
of ink spilled and breath expelled over the proper way to talk about it, 
to the point that it's almost paralyzing.

Don't focus too much on facts, because people don't respond to them. 
Don't be negative, because people lose hope. But don't misrepresent 
anything, either, because people won't trust you. Don't make it about 
the planet, because humans care more about humans than they do about 
trees. Make people aware of the fact that climate change is already 
worsening the lives of many millions of people in other parts of the 
world, but don't make it sound too far away, because then it's hard to 
relate to. If you can, try to tie climate change back to something your 
audience cares about, like, ah, wine or something.

Most of this advice, it should go without saying, assumes that the 
audience for these conversations is wealthier, privileged people who 
have been able to ignore climate change up to this point. And it's easy 
to disparage those people, because their ignorance or delusion or 
whatever you want to call it has played no small role in the urgency of 
the climate situation we have today.

But empathy is a virtue, so let's give it a shot. If you are in a 
position where you've been able to avoid climate change news until very 
recently, it's a lot of very alarming information at a very late hour. 
Millions of people have been slammed with the understanding that the 
planet that's held us for eons is essentially threatening the entire 
human race with an eviction notice in the form of floods, heat waves, 
and murderous storms. It's like you fucked up the whole house and now 
you have to fix it or get out. And you kind of knew you had fucked up 
the house, you were peripherally aware that you hadn't been taking good 
care of it, but you had no idea how bad it was. Apparently your 
grandfather broke a water main in the basement that's never been fixed? 
The oven has been actively on fire for 25 years? There's black mold 
everywhere?

There's a whole segment of the climate-aware that's in a frothy panic 
over how to best capitalize on this new awareness. The rules of how to 
talk about climate change are unfurled and everyone hems and haws and 
yells at the people who are doing it wrong because, God forbid, you 
might scare this new audience away! You might not get them to "act" on 
climate change as soon as possible!

But there is a lot to be scared about, and "act" is an infuriatingly 
vague directive. With each passing week, there is a new warning about 
sea level rise or disappearing species or unsurvivable heat waves. There 
are many saddening developments that (reasonably!) feel overwhelming and 
out of our control, and I completely agree with your instinct to give 
people room to mourn. The thing about rules for talking about climate 
change is that while humans certainly share some common traits, there 
are wild differences in how individuals process and act on information. 
This is why the entire industry of couples' counseling exists!

I understand the desire for ground rules, and I've certainly written in 
favor of them, but at this point I think that the best way to have a 
conversation about climate change is to listen to the person you're 
talking to. You're not doing a stand-up routine. If someone shuts down 
in a conversation about climate change, that's because climate change is 
a deeply upsetting existential threat! If you're chatting about the 
demise of the planet as we know it and your conversational counterpart 
says, "Wow, I am absolutely devastated by this," it would be bizarre to 
respond, "Don't be sad -- DO SOMETHING!" That's not how a human exchange 
of feelings and ideas normally goes.

I know exactly what you're referring to with "the tone police" and 
Jonathan Franzen, but many may not. For those unfamiliar with this 
relative nonevent, the novelist and essayist Jonathan Franzen wrote a 
long essay for the New Yorker last month encouraging his audience to 
adopt an approach of climate despair, to embrace the worst-case scenario 
and prepare for it, rather than make any futile attempt to avoid it.

For my part, I criticized Franzen's essay not for its tone, but for its 
shallowness; it just seemed to be a completely surface-level engagement 
with climate calamity, like he had learned about it at a cocktail party 
and decided in the cab home that everything is doomed, so why not write 
a few thousand words about it? I don't believe that Jonathan Franzen is 
stupid, and he probably knows a good deal about climate change because 
he has been writing about it on and off for a decade, so this particular 
work just seemed lazy. The essay struck me as irresponsible, but not 
because of its tone.

I believe that the "tone police" phenomenon you're describing applies to 
a very, very small segment of a particular choir that has been embedded 
in climate issues for years and years. They're the ones I mentioned 
earlier, who are astounded that a seemingly critical mass of people are 
aware of climate issues, and are desperate to hold their attention. I 
understand the instinct.

But I don't think that "the tone police" exists outside of internet 
commentary; that is to say, in real conversations. If Jonathan Franzen 
approached you at a bar and started to share the insights of his essay 
as a conversation, would you start screaming at the rest of the bar that 
he was being too much of a downer, or would you ask him why he felt that 
way and try to understand him better? Now that I'm writing this advice 
to you, I certainly regret not having the opportunity to do that instead 
of publishing a cheeky listicle. But that is the difference between 
interacting on the internet and interacting in real life.

I also don't believe that the current state of climate awareness will 
ebb away if we don't attend to it, like abdominal muscle definition. 
Once you know what is expected on a warming planet, you notice signs of 
it more and more: out-of-season heat waves, seas bubbling up into the 
streets, hurricanes that ruin entire islands. Climate change, once you 
see it, is a very hard thing to unsee.

And sure enough, 57 percent of the country now believes that climate 
change poses a major threat to the United States, which is an increase 
of 17 percentage points from 2013. That poll, if you click through to 
read more of it, points out that that awareness is rising more among 
Democrats than among Republicans. However, more and more young 
Republicans support pro-climate legislation, and the majority of 
Millennials and Gen Z-ers report being deeply concerned about climate 
change. Outright climate denial is something that this country 
increasingly sees as antiquated and restrictive, like a corset.

If 43 percent of the country doesn't think climate change is a big deal 
or outright denies it, I just don't really care, because their way of 
thinking will soon be obsolete. Bless their hearts, as they say. What 
matters to me is that the 57 percent, once they've processed what they 
need to process, makes climate change a part of their living and voting 
decisions. And when they're ready to make those decisions, those are the 
conversations that you really need to be prepared for. They're not best 
had on the internet.
Empathetically,
Umbra
https://grist.org/article/is-there-a-right-way-to-talk-about-climate-change/



[Deep Fakes from Samantha Bay - a lesson in media awareness]
*Full Frontal Rewind: The Best of Big Tech At Its Worst | Full Frontal 
on TBS*
Oct 9, 2019
Full Frontal with Samantha Bee
Do you love the website you're currently on and think it's never done 
anything wrong? Huh. Okay then. Maybe you should watch this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8AxAvh3-ck


[Arctic Methane]

BY MEAGHAN WRAY GLOBAL NEWS
Posted October 10, 2019

A group of Siberian scientists have discovered a “methane fountain” — an 
area of the sea where water is bubbling over with the powerful 
greenhouse gas.

According to the team that travelled to the East Siberian Sea, the 
discovery is unlike anything they've seen before.

The crew, lead by a Tomsk Polytechnic University researcher Igor 
Semiletov, was studying the environmental effects of thawing permafrost. 
Turns out, it's a lot worse than they imagined.

Permafrost refers to ground that is permanently frozen for at least two 
years in a row. Sometimes, Newsweek points out, it can be frozen for 
tens of thousands of years.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center reports that 8.7 million square 
miles of the Northern Hemisphere is permanently frozen.

According to a journal article by Nature Communications, when permafrost 
begins to melt, trapped organic material begins to break down, causing 
the release of “massive emissions of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide 
and methane to the atmosphere.”

The release of methane causes water to bubble and lead to even more warming.

This melting process has been happening in Siberia. Video footage taken 
by hunters that circulated in 2016 shows grass bobbing “like jelly” due 
to the instability of the melting permafrost underneath.
Tomsk Polytechnic University released a statement regarding the 
findings, which, translated from Russian, reads that the increase in 
concentration of atmospheric methane was six to seven times higher than 
the average.
The statement adds that researchers found an area of water four to five 
square meters in size that was “boiling with methane bubbles.”
The methane levels of these bubbles, collected with buckets, tested at 
nine times higher than average global levels.

“This is the most powerful gas foundation I've ever seen, Semiletov said 
in the statement, according to The Moscow Times. “No one has ever 
recorded anything like this before.”
meaghan.wray at globalnews.ca
https://globalnews.ca/news/6015543/siberia-boiling-methane-sea/


*This Day in Climate History - October 11, 2000 - from D.R. Tucker*
In the second Presidential debate between Vice President Al Gore and 
Texas Governor George W. Bush, Gore says the US needs to take the lead 
in confronting the climate crisis and embracing clean energy. Bush 
claims that his environmental record as governor of Texas is not as bad 
as has been alleged; Bush also attacks the concept of a carbon tax and 
endorses "clean coal" and natural gas as energy solutions. Gore denies 
that he supports a carbon tax, but endorses clean-energy tax incentives. 
Bush tries to suggest that there's still a dispute in the scientific 
community about the causes and severity of climate change, and denounces 
the Kyoto Protocol. Gore defends the scientific consensus on climate, 
and points out that we need to do right by future generations; in 
response, Bush again suggests that there isn't a real consensus.
(65:00-85:25)
https://www.c-span.org/video/?159296-1/presidential-candidates-debate 
(65:00-85:25)

/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/

/Archive of Daily Global Warming News 
<https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/2017-October/date.html> 
/
https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote

/To receive daily mailings - click to Subscribe 
<mailto:subscribe at theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request> 
to news digest./

*** Privacy and Security:*This is a text-only mailing that carries no 
images which may originate from remote servers. Text-only messages 
provide greater privacy to the receiver and sender.
By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain must be used for democratic 
and election purposes and cannot be used for commercial purposes.
To subscribe, email: contact at theclimate.vote 
<mailto:contact at theclimate.vote> with subject subscribe, To Unsubscribe, 
subject: unsubscribe
Also you may subscribe/unsubscribe at 
https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote
Links and headlines assembled and curated by Richard Pauli for 
http://TheClimate.Vote <http://TheClimate.Vote/> delivering succinct 
information for citizens and responsible governments of all levels. List 
membership is confidential and records are scrupulously restricted to 
this mailing list.