[TheClimate.Vote] September 2, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/September 2, 2019/

[Sunday]
*Pope urges politicians to take 'drastic measures' on climate change*
Philip Pullella
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis challenged governments on Sunday 
to take "drastic measures" to combat global warming and reduce the use 
of fossil fuels, saying the world was experiencing a climate 
emergency...[more]
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-environment-pope/pope-urges-politicians-to-take-drastic-measures-on-climate-change-idUSKCN1VM161


[letter]
*Why it's payback time on climate change*
The generation that has benefited most from fossil fuels must start 
paying the price, argues Daniel Scharf
The principle of restorative justice (Glasgow University to pay £20m in 
slavery reparations, 24 August) also applies to the issue of climate 
change. I am of a generation that has profited hugely (knowingly or not) 
from the careless use of fossil fuels. Reports on the Amazon fires just 
serve to emphasise the urgent need to take action to eliminate carbon 
emissions and absorb carbon already in the atmosphere.

Reparations in this case are due to the younger and future generations 
and should start with us "silver rebels" sharply curtailing our 
emissions and joining with Extinction Rebellion in the collective 
(international) efforts to eliminate emissions in the next decade, 
through which many of us elderly hope to live. The "silver rebels" might 
have less to lose if arrested in the cause. The Guardian's daily carbon 
counter will show us how we are all doing.
Daniel Scharf
Abingdon, Oxfordshire
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/29/why-its-payback-time-on-climate-change


[Storms]
*Here's Why the Carolinas Are So Much More Vulnerable to a Hurricane 
Like Dorian Right Now*
Climate denial is in the storm's path, too.
Rebecca Leber - Mother Jones
- - -
...Climate change is part of the problem, with warmer temperatures 
fueling deadlier, wetter storms. Rising sea levels increase the chances 
of coastal flooding. But it's also the blind spots that North Carolina 
politicians have developed on climate change. While seas are rising, 
these lawmakers have encouraged building in low-lying areas, and in some 
cases discouraged state law from reflecting scientific realities.
- - -
Unwise development isn't the only problem. As in Florida, North Carolina 
politicians have also allowed climate change denial to dictate their 
decision-making.

In 2010, a panel of scientists advising the North Carolina Coastal 
Resources Commission, which guides the state's coastal development, 
issued a report projecting 39 inches of sea-level rise by the end of the 
century. The report triggered political backlash from developers and the 
Republican-controlled legislature, which preferred that the commission 
rely only on historical data. The state ended up passing a law requiring 
a broader range of projections to dilute findings that sea level rise 
would accelerate. Newer research has found that the sea level is rising 
even faster along the southeastern coast than global averages. Instead 
of considering the best science out there, the governor-appointed 
commission ultimately limited the science panel's projections to 30 
years into the future.

North Carolina's Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, elected in 2017, has begun 
to loosen these restrictions on how development plans incorporate the 
latest science. Last year, a month after Florence struck, Cooper issued 
an executive order to create an interagency climate change council. In 
late September, the Coastal Resources Commission will look at updating 
the 30-year limit placed on the science advisory panel as it prepares a 
five-year update to its 2015 report, according to The News and Observer.
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/08/heres-why-the-carolinas-are-so-much-more-vulnerable-to-a-hurricane-like-dorian-right-now/


[alternate report]
*Climate Crisis: More Fires Burning Across Central Africa than Amazon as 
Global Deforestation Rates Approach Record High*
Harry Cockburn
September 28, 2019
There are the three great tropical forests. The Amazon, the Congo and 
Indonesia and Borneo. They're all massively important, and in all of 
them over the last 20 years we're seen really destructive forest fires.
see the map 
https://portside.org/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/FiresInCentralAfrica-ic-9-1-2019.jpg
While focus has slowly grown on the fires ravaging the Amazon 
rainforestin Brazil, it has emerged an even greater number of fires are 
currently burning in central Africa.

Data from Nasa's Fire Information for Resource Management System, showed 
at least 6,902 fires in Angola and 3,395 burning in the Democratic 
Republic of the Congo.

The same data put Brazil's fires at 2,127.

The huge surge in fires in the Amazon this year has caused global 
concern. The rainforest stores enormous amounts of carbon in the complex 
ecosystem, it is the most biodiverse land area on earth, and its 
conservation is essential if we are to limit the impacts of global heating.

In Africa however, the extent of the fires affecting forested areas is 
unclear. In agricultural areas purpose-lit fires have been a common part 
of farming techniques for thousands of years.

Farmers set crop fields alight to burn off the leftover grasses and 
scrub plants. This burning helps maintain rich soils good for farming.

But lack of traditional grasslands is driving increased slash and burn 
clearing of forests in parts of Africa, and therefore concerns are growing.

In the Amazon scientists have warned the rapid rate of deforestation 
means the forest is increasingly at risk of reaching a tipping point at 
which huge swathes of the rainforest will degrade into areas of dry 
savannah.

"You'd have extensive parts of the southern and eastern Amazon and parts 
of the central converting to savannah, and maybe to even drier 
conditions," Professor Thomas Lovejoy of George Mason University told 
The Independent.

The forest fires in Brazil have also largely been caused by agricultural 
activity, as landowners burn stubble after harvest, use illegal slash 
and burn clearing techniques to create land for crops or rearing beef, 
or have carried out logging to raise the value of the land.

Despite increasing global awareness of the problem of illegal 
deforestation, greater areas of tropical rainforest are being lost than 
ever. More tree cover was lost across the world in 2016 and 2017 than in 
any other year this century.

In the Brazilian Amazon, the rate of deforestation in July hit 870 
square miles, or about five football pitches every minute of the entire 
month.

Professor Lovejoy's colleague, Carlos Nobre, a senior researcher at the 
University of São Paulo, told The Guardian deforestation was on course 
to rise by 20-30 per cent this year and was "very likely" to pass 10,000 
sq km for the first time in over a decade.

Richard Black, the director of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit 
said it was difficult to assess whether the fires in Africa represented 
similar problems as those currently affecting the Amazon.

He told The Independent: "Clearly both in the Amazon and in the Congo, 
burning by small scale farmers is a way of life, it does happen. What's 
different is the increase in the Amazon this year over last year – 
almost a doubling in the number of fires."

"Bolsonaro seems to be encouraging this, but I haven't seen any evidence 
of this in any of [the African] countries, is a key difference I think."

Emmanuel Macron, who has traded rhetorical blows with Brazilian 
president Jair Bolsonaro, described the Amazon as the "lungs of the 
world", and said "our house is burning" in a tweet last week.

The G7 countries pledged $20m (£16m) towards helping fight the fires, 
following a summit in France.

But on Tuesday Brazil said it was rejecting the offer.

Mr Macron later drew attention to the fires in sub-Saharan Africa and 
said "We are considering the possibility of launching an initiative 
similar to the one we just announced for the Amazon."

Mr Black told The Independent: "I think there's an utter naivety in the 
whole idea.

"With the Bolsonaro situation, it's clear one of the reasons why he's 
keen to see the Amazon exploited is because he doesn't like the 
international attempts [at intervention].

"There has been, for a number of years now, a big operation to put money 
into the Amazon. What Bolsonaro shows is that programmes like this can 
only really endure if there is genuinely political will in the recipient 
country to keep these things going. Because there's no point in paying 
to protect a forest for five years.

"I'm not remotely surprised he rejected [the $20m]. It absolutely could 
have been predicted because his political philosophy is very much: 
'we're going to decide, Brazil's going to decide what happens to this', 
so I'm not surprised he rejected it at all.

"Also the sums of money are piffling if you're talking about serious 
protection efforts."

The Nasa data also shows fires are affecting parts of the Amazon outside 
Brazil, with fires in eight other South American countries including 
Bolivia. Thousands of fires are also burning across Indonesia.

"There are the three great tropical forests. The Amazon, the Congo and 
Indonesia and Borneo. They're all massively important, and in all of 
them over the last 20 years we're seen really destructive forest fires."

Harry Cockburn writes news, features and opinion pieces. He has also 
worked as one of The Independent's newsdesk editors since October 2016. 
His work frequently focuses on the environment and global climate change.
https://portside.org/2019-09-01/climate-crisis-more-fires-burning-across-central-africa-amazon-global-deforestation



[Tamino is unofficial statistician of global warming destabilization]
*Methane Acceleration*
Posted on September 1, 2019
A recent paper by Nisbet et al. notes that methane (CH4) in the 
atmosphere isn't just increasing, it's accelerating; the increase has 
gotten faster recently.
There was a time -- from about 1999 until 2007 -- when atmospheric 
methane wasn't increasing at all. It had been, before 2000, but it 
remained steady for that 8-year period. But in 2007 it started rising 
again, as is plain to see in the following graph. What is not plain to 
see is that around 2014 it started rising even faster; the years 2014 
through 2018 saw very rapid increase in CH4 levels.
- - - see the graph 
https://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/ch4.jpg?w=768&h=511
Nisbet et al. identify the increased rate of rise in those four years, 
and consider the implication for the Paris climate agreement. The stated 
goal is to keep global temperature rise "well below 2C." So far, all our 
plans, our computer models, our strategies that have a decent chance of 
accomplishing that goal have relied on no increase in CH4, some even 
rely on decreasing CH4 in the air. The fact that it's going the wrong 
way, at increasing speed, is a genuine threat to our chances of success.

I took the CH4 data from Cape Grim (shown above) and first removed the 
annual cycle, yielding de-seasonalized data. Then I fit two models. One 
is a lowess smooth, shown here in red (deseasonalized data in black):
the graph https://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/ch4_mod1.jpg

The other is a piecewise-linear model in blue (deseasonalized data in 
black, the thin red lines show when the slope changes occur):
- - - - Graph: https://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/ch4_mod2.jpg
The slope change times were chosen to give the best fit. According to 
this model, the most recent slope change happened right around 2014. 
Especially useful is the fact that both models enable me to estimate how 
fast CH4 is changing. In fact the piecewise-linear model estimates the 
average rate of increase during each linear "piece."

What do these models say about the rate of increase? This:
- - - graph https://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/ch4_rate.jpg
Red shows the estimated growth rate of CH4 from the lowess-smooth model, 
blue the estimate from the piecewise-linear model. Both make clear the 
increase in the growth rate that happened about 2014.

What's the source of the increase? One clue is the 13C/12C isotopic 
ratio, which has been decreasing lately. Fossil-fuel CH4 is usually 
"heavier" (i.e. higher in 13C than other sources) while microbial CH4 
(from biological sources) is lighter. But we don't have enough 
geographical coverage of 13C/12C isotopic ratio to nail down the source 
of that change. Nonetheless, Nisbet et al. speculate on several possible 
causes of the acceleration of atmospheric methane.

One possibility is an increase in microbial CH4, from wetlands and 
cattle, which would account for the atmosphere's decreasing 13C/12C 
ratio. Another possibility is a change of the fossil-fuel mix toward 
natural gas, which has a lighter 13C/12C ratio than coal. Yet another 
possibility is a decrease in the atmosphere's ability to break down CH4, 
which would likewise account for both the increased amount, and the 
decreasing 13C/12C ratio. The most worrisome possibility -- although not 
yet a likelihood thank goodness -- is a dramatic increase in microbial 
CH4 from permafrost melt or other feedback sources.

And of course we cannot rule out the possibility of "all of the above."
It's imperative that we cease the increase of atmospheric methane, if at 
all possible.
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2019/09/01/methane-acceleration/



[2 new videos ]
*Water. Soil. Carbon... Sponge! Part 1*
Just Have a Think
Published on Sep 1, 2019
Carbon Dioxide levels in our atmosphere continue to climb, as does our 
global atmospheric temperature. Despite greater awareness of the issues, 
and huge strides forward by the renewable energy industry, we are not 
having any effect on the overall problem. But some people think we're 
looking in the wrong place for the solution and that all we need to do 
is take some lessons from the way nature has always used it's resources 
to regulate heat across our blue planet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBngaoG_-6A
- - -
*Water Soil Carbon Sponge Part 2 Regenerative Agriculture*
Just Have a Think
Published on Sep 1, 2019
Regenerative Agriculture has been around for a very long time. The 
trouble is it's just not the way most modern farming techniques are 
taught or practiced. Walter Jehne is an Australian microbiologist who 
argues that with a few very simple changes to the way we manage our 
land, all of which are just taking a lead from nature, the answer to 
reducing our global atmospheric temperature could be as easy as A-B-C...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMFNqaBXBwo


[let me DNA 'Splain - humans had better change]
*Caring about tomorrow*
Why haven't we stopped climate change? We're not wired to empathize with 
our descendants.
- -
One answer lies in the nature of empathy: our ability to share, 
understand and care about others' experiences. Deeply empathic people 
tend to be environmentally responsible, but our caring instincts are 
shortsighted and dissolve across space and time, making it harder for us 
to deal with things that haven't happened yet...
- -
We must try to evolve our emotional lives: away from the past and toward 
a future that needs us desperately. Doing so might help us to finally 
become the ancestors our descendants deserve.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/08/22/caring-about-tomorrow/?noredirect=on



[Opinion]
*Technology won't save us from climate change*
It's not hard to save the planet. But not if we insist on enriching 
entrepreneurs on the way
...our civilization has been collectively hypnotized by the tech 
industry into believing that everything can be solved by more gadgetry 
and more money thrown at the tech sector...
https://www.salon.com/2019/08/31/technology-wont-save-us-from-climate-change/


[from the Washington Post]
*A free online course reveals the scary reality and health dangers of 
climate change. But it also gets you involved in solutions.*
By Erin Blakemore August 31
Scientists warned for years about the ramifications of human-caused 
climate change. Now, those predictions are coming to pass as glaciers 
melt, wildfires rage and the global surface temperature continues to rise.

But the polar ice caps and the Amazon rainforests aren't the only things 
at risk. Climate change is expected to have a big influence on our health.

The predictions are many -- and dire. As Earth warms, severe weather is 
expected to increase injuries and harm mental health. Gathering 
greenhouse gases will probably affect our lungs. Vector-borne diseases 
-- illnesses spread by ticks and insects -- will increase. A free, 
self-paced, ­massive-open-online course called Climate Change and Health 
lays out the scary reality, and gets participants involved in solutions.

The course was developed by Rainer Sauerborn, a public health expert who 
is a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the 
United Nations' group of climate experts, along with educational 
engineer Sophie-Hélène Goulet.

Videos, quizzes and interactive exercises help you understand how 
climate change affects health, how humans might adapt to physical 
changes on Earth, and how you can take care of your own health while 
helping to sustain the planet. It includes commentary and research from 
IPCC authors and experts from 10 countries.

Climate Change and Health is user-friendly and self-paced. It encourages 
students to reflect on their own surroundings and advocate for better 
health for themselves and others. And though there is the option to buy 
a certificate of completion from Springer Nature, the educational 
publisher that hosts the course, its evidence-based lessons are free to all.

Ready to learn? Visit bit.ly/climatemooc to get started.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/a-free-online-course-reveals-the-scary-reality-and-health-dangers-of-climate-change-but-it-also-gets-you-involved-in-solutions/2019/08/30/a00128da-c992-11e9-a1fe-ca46e8d573c0_story.html


[Dr Stephen Schneider 1945-2010]
*This Day in Climate History - September 2, 2005 - from D.R. Tucker*
September 2, 2005: Climate scientist Stephen Schneider appears on "Real 
Time with Bill Maher" to discuss climate change's role in Hurricane 
Katrina. -- video.
http://youtu.be/H9mWZZ2U6EQ
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/

/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.