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

Tue Oct 15 10:00:57 EDT 2019

/October 15, 2019/

[activism]
*British police issue a city-wide ban on climate change protests in London*
- In a statement issued on Monday evening, the Metropolitan Police said 
that anyone who ignores the ban would be detained and face prosecution.
- Extinction Rebellion’s London branch described the move as an 
“outrage,” before calling on the police to “respect the law.”
- Over the last week, Extinction Rebellion protesters have sought to 
shut down London’s City Airport, sprayed fake blood at the Treasury in 
Westminster and blocked the streets around the Bank of England.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/15/extinction-rebellion-climate-change-protests-banned-in-london-by-police.html 

[US Dept Agriculture]
*'I'm standing here in the middle of climate change': How USDA is 
failing farmer*s
The $144 billion Agriculture Department spends less than 1 percent of 
its budget helping farmers adapt to increasingly extreme weather.
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/15/im-standing-here-in-the-middle-of-climate-change-how-usda-fails-farmers-043615

[Debate tonight - VOX questions]
*We asked 2020 Democratic candidates 6 key questions on climate change*
To this end, here are the questions we put to every candidate:

    1. A president has only 100 days or so in which to pass a few key
    priorities. Where does climate change fall on your list of
    priorities when you step into office?
    2. If Democrats win a narrow majority in the Senate, will you
    advocate reforming or scrapping the filibuster?
    3. If Republicans control one or both houses of Congress and
    legislation stalls, what executive actions are you prepared to take
    to reduce carbon emissions?
    4. Some communities are more vulnerable to climate change than
    others. Some communities depend on fossil fuel industries more than
    others. What will you do to ensure that vulnerable communities are
    protected during the transition to clean energy?
    5. There is a nationwide push to hold fossil fuel companies
    accountable for their contributions to climate change and for their
    campaigns to mislead the public, via lawsuits, shareholder
    resolutions, and divestment. Do you support these efforts? What do
    you see as the government’s role in holding polluters accountable?6
    6. The Pentagon has called climate change a “threat multiplier” in
    international conflict. At the same time, climate change stands to
    have the worst impacts on countries that contributed least to the
    problem. How should the US brace for global climate chaos? And what
    will you do to help other countries prepare for the impending
    disruption?

more at - 
https://www.vox.com/2019/10/14/20880659/2020-democratic-debates-climate-change-six-questions

[Weather politics and sarcasm 16 min video]
*Weather: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)*
Oct 13, 2019
LastWeekTonight
John Oliver discusses the tension between the public and private worlds 
of predicting the weather.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMGn9T37eR8&t=628s

[young girls rising ]
*Students Sing to Save the Planet*
Sep 10, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCC0DIlEQSI&feature=youtu.be
Torquay Girls' Grammar School
Adults are responsible for the climate changes we are experiencing. They 
will also be the ones who make decisions that could improve or worsen 
the situation. Despite under 18s being the ones most affected by these 
decisions, we do not have a vote. We think this is unfair and that the 
government should create a formal process for our voices to be heard.

We've already had an amazing response to our video and petition! We've 
now gone over the 10K signatures we needed to force the government to 
respond to us, we've been on local TV news and all over the local press. 
We've even been mentioned in a parliamentary debate on Climate Change 
and BBC Radio 3 have asked for a copy of the song so they can play it! 
Incredibly, one of our students has had a letter of support from Sir 
David Attenborough! We are overwhelmed, excited and encouraged... Let's 
keep it going!

If we can get over 100,000 hits on the petition above, the government 
will have to consider our petition for debate. As there are over 10 
million school children in the UK, if we all sign up, we have a real 
chance of achieving this target.

Our suggestion is that student representatives from schools should have 
a termly meeting with their local MP to discuss local, national and 
international climate change issues. This way, MPs will be fully aware 
of the strength of feeling amongst under 18s in the UK about protecting 
our planet for the future. We would also like to see a Youth Climate 
Summit much like the one they are having at the United Nations.

Please, please send this video link to all your friends, family, 
relatives and contacts and encourage them to sign the petition.

On Friday 20th we filmed all of our students singing the song live and 
invited every school we could contact to take part and send their 
version to their MP. You can see our live video on our channel.  Why 
don't you ask your teachers if you can do the same, we want as many 
schools as possible to be involved. If you do make your own version 
please let us know and if possible share it with us!

You can download the lyrics here: https://www.tggsacademy.org/sites/all...

In the words of the song:
'We didn't start the fire, no we didn't light it but we're trying to 
fight it.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCC0DIlEQSI&feature=youtu.be
- - -
[UK government]
Please will you sign our petition asking for the Government to: Consult 
with focus groups of young people when creating climate change policy - *
**Petition Consult with focus groups of young people when creating 
climate change policy*

    Adults are responsible for the climate change we are experiencing.
    They can also make the decisions that will improve or worsen the
    situation.
    Under 18s cannot vote, but will be the ones most affected by these
    changes so their opinions should be taken into account before such
    decisions are made.
    More details

    We propose the government create a mechanism by which the views of
    the under 18s can be canvassed by politicians in relation to climate
    issues.
    This could be through consultation with focus groups made up of
    school eco-representatives rr through the creation of youth climate
    summit like they have at the UN. Under 18s should be given the
    opportunity to express their views on local national and
    international climate policies with a view to influencing
    legislation through MP's.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/272167

[Never debate a statistician- especially Tamino]
*Sea Level Acceleration Denial*
Posted on October 14, 2019
Dave Burton, you still don't understand.
You finally commented on this post, showing a graph of San Diego data 
and saying:

As you can see, there've been >112 years of continuous measurements, and 
still no detectable acceleration.

Not true. I detected acceleration. You don't believe it. Then you gave 
us this:

To the eye the trend looks straight as an arrow. As any engineer could 
tell you, that means there's been no practically significant acceleration.

"To the eye"? How many times do I have to repeat that "the eye" is a 
great tool for getting ideas and clues (one of the best there is) but 
cannot be relied on for significant conclusions? For that, we use math. 
It's hard to believe you would say something so foolish, but it's 
finally starting to dawn on me: this really is how you think. You think 
your eye is better evidence than my math. As for "any engineer" 
concluding there's "no practically significant acceleration" -- you just 
made that up. It's bullshit.

Let's get to the heart of the matter:
Linear regression finds a linear trend of 2.176 +/- 0.184 mm/yr, and 
quadratic regression finds an acceleration of 0.00879 ±0.01259 mm/yr[2], 
which is neither statistically nor practically significant.

This is the only evidence you have. The rest of your arguments are 
nonsense or irrelevant or both. I guess this is why you are so convinced 
there is no acceleration in this series. The only statistical test you 
have reported, apparently the only one you are able to apply, is to fit 
a quadratic. Not all trends with acceleration resemble a parabola, 
especially in sea level time series. For many a quadratic fit is a weak 
test. Many.

I've already told you that. I've said it often. How many times do I have 
to repeat this? How often must I repeat it before you even acknowledges 
its existence? I've said this often enough that you have no excuse for 
not being aware of it. Yet here, again, you don't seem able to do 
anything else, but talk about it as though it gives the "final answer."

I didn't conclude "acceleration" based on fitting a parabola. I didn't 
do so based on the lowest smooth (but it's a great way to show what's 
really going on). Conclusions were based on changepoint analysis of a 
piecewise linear model: two straight lines joined at their endpoints. 
This is a more realistic model for sea level trends than a parabola. 
When I applied it to the data from San Diego since 1950, the p-value was 
0.017. That's statistically significant.

You don't seem to like my starting at 1950, so I ran the same test using 
the whole time span of data from San Diego. Now the p-value is < 0.004. 
That's even more statistically significant...
- - -
https://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/ensoadj.jpg?w=768&h=511
https://sealevel.info/9410170_San_Diego_SL_vs_CO2_thru_2018-08_3mo_smoothed_vs_Tamino_annot6.png
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2019/10/14/sea-level-acceleration-denial/

[Cover your cough]
The Plague Years
*How the rise of right-wing nationalism is jeopardizing the world's health*
By MARYN MCKENNA
  - - -
And thus an ominous dynamic lurches into gear: The more any part of the 
public distrusts the country's health care system and is discouraged 
from participating in it, the more vulnerable the health of the entire 
public becomes. The 2017-2018 flu season killed 80,000 Americans, 
according to the CDC, making it the deadliest flu outbreak in decades. 
"Imagine if there were an event in the future where smallpox was 
released, or if there were a severe influenza," Inglesby said. "We don't 
want a group of ostracized folks on the margins who can't get access to 
vaccines, or to whatever the countermeasures are for whatever the threat 
of the future might be."

Last year, Inglesby's group at Johns Hopkins ran a daylong simulation of 
the world's likely response to the outbreak of a fictional previously 
unknown pathogen, one for which there would be no diagnostic test and no 
vaccine. In a finding that grimly foreshadows the risk of repudiating 
the protection of public health, Inglesby's team recorded a worldwide 
death toll of 150 million, including 15 million deaths in the United 
States.

Maryn McKenna is a journalist; the author of Big Chicken, Superbug, and 
Beating Back the Devil; and a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute 
for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. @marynmck
https://newrepublic.com/article/153264/rise-right-wing-nationalism-jeopardizing-world-health

[Methane, problem with, in a video, explained]
*Chasing Methane : Big Brother is watching!*
Oct 13, 2019
Just Have a Think
Methane bubbling out of the arctic, accelerating the amplification of 
temperature rises in that region, plus a billion or so belching cows 
around the world spewing out millions of tons of CH4 every year. Are 
these the only culprits for increased methane in our atmosphere? Two 
companies have recently launched satellites specifically designed to 
establish exactly that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62VXwjT-csQ

[Certainty]
OCTOBER 14, 2019
*Stanford research shows how uncertainty in scientific predictions can 
help and harm credibility*
The ways climate scientists explain their predictions about the impact 
of global warming can either promote or limit their persuasiveness.
BY MELISSA DE WITTE
The more specific climate scientists are about the uncertainties of 
global warming, the more the American public trusts their predictions, 
according to new research by Stanford scholars.
But scientists may want to tread carefully when talking about their 
predictions, the researchers say, because that trust falters when 
scientists acknowledge that other unknown factors could come into play.

In a new study publishing Oct. 14 in Nature Climate Change, researchers 
examined how Americans respond to climate scientists' predictions about 
sea level rise. They found that when climate scientists include 
best-case and worst-case case scenarios in their statements, the 
American public is more trusting and accepting of their statements. But 
those messages may backfire when scientists also acknowledge they do not 
know exactly how climate change will unfold.
"Scientists who acknowledge that their predictions of the future cannot 
be exactly precise and instead acknowledge a likely range of possible 
futures may bolster their credibility and increase acceptance of their 
findings by non-experts," said Jon Krosnick, a Stanford professor of 
communication and of political science and a co-author on the paper. 
"But these gains may be nullified when scientists acknowledge that no 
matter how confidently they can make predictions about some specific 
change in the future, the full extent of the consequences of those 
predictions cannot be quantified."..
- - -
Changes in environmental policies, human activities, new technologies 
and natural disasters make it difficult for climate scientists to 
quantify the long-term impact of a specific change - which scientists 
often acknowledge in their predictions, the researchers said. They 
wanted to know if providing such well-intended, additional context and 
acknowledging complete uncertainty would help or hurt public confidence 
in scientific findings.

To find out, the researchers asked half of their respondents to read a 
second statement acknowledging that the full extent of likely future 
damage of sea level rise cannot be measured because of other forces, 
such as storm surge: "Storm surge could make the impacts of sea level 
rise worse in unpredictable ways."

The researchers found that this statement eliminated the persuasive 
power of the scientists' messages. When scientists acknowledged that 
storm surge makes the impact of sea level rise unpredictable, it 
decreased the number of participants who reported high trust in 
scientists by 4.9 percentage points compared with the participants who 
only read a most likely estimate of sea level rise.

The findings held true regardless of education levels and political 
party affiliation.

Not all expressions of uncertainty are equal, Howe said: "Scientists may 
want to carefully weigh which forms of uncertainty they discuss with the 
public. For example, scientists could highlight uncertainty that has 
predictable bounds without overwhelming the public with the discussion 
of factors involving uncertainty that can't be quantified."
https://news.stanford.edu/2019/10/14/uncertainty-scientific-predictions-can-help-harm-credibility/
- - -
*Climate experts' views on geoengineering depend on their beliefs about 
climate change impacts*
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0587-5

*This Day in Climate History - October 15, 2007 - from D.R. Tucker*
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman ridicules right-wing outrage over 
Al Gore's Nobel Prize win.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/opinion/15krugman.html?_r=0
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