[TheClimate.Vote] September 14, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Sat Sep 14 09:58:07 EDT 2019
/September 14, 2019/
[Debate summary - Climate Change - video 9 minutes]
*Democratic candidates debate: Climate change | ABC News*
Published on Sep 12, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLzAq_ADcdY
[NPR audio report]
*Greta Thunberg To U.S.: 'You Have A Moral Responsibility' On Climate
Change*
September 13, 2019
- - -
When asked what her parents think of her activism and the demands on her
time, Thunberg says, "Of course they are concerned that I am doing all
this and and that I am not going to school."
The young activist adds, "I think they also see that I am happier now
than I was before, because I'm doing something meaningful."
She's taking a gap year away from school to focus on her burgeoning
youth movement.
Noting her parents' concerns about living a very public life and being
out of school, Thunberg says, "I think they support me in at least some
way. They know that what I am doing is morally right."
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/13/760538254/greta-thunberg-to-u-s-you-have-a-moral-responsibility-on-climate-change
- - -
[Sensitive interview on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah]
*Greta Thunberg - Inspiring Others to Take a Stand Against Climate
Change - Extended Interview*
9/11/2019
Climate activist Greta Thunberg talks about her decision to no longer
travel by plane and describes how a lack of understanding of climate
change is impacting the planet.
http://www.cc.com/video-clips/ed6ma7/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-greta-thunberg---inspiring-others-to-take-a-stand-against-climate-change---extended-interview
[oops...electric oversight]
*Climate change: Electrical industry's 'dirty secret' boosts warming*
It's the most powerful greenhouse gas known to humanity, and emissions
have risen rapidly in recent years, the BBC has learned.
Sulphur hexafluoride, or SF6, is widely used in the electrical industry
to prevent short circuits and accidents.
But leaks of the little-known gas in the UK and the rest of the EU in
2017 were the equivalent of putting an extra 1.3 million cars on the road.
Levels are rising as an unintended consequence of the green energy boom...
- - -
It is 23,500 times more warming than carbon dioxide (CO2).
Just one kilogram of SF6 warms the Earth to the same extent as 24 people
flying London to New York return...
- - -
The EU will review the use of SF6 next year and will examine whether
alternatives are available. However, even the most optimistic experts
don't think that any ban is likely to be put in place before 2025.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49567197
["responsible for most"]
*The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre*
Our Mission: To provide high-quality data, analysis and expertise on
internal displacement with the aim of informing policy and operational
decisions that can reduce the risk of future displacement and improve
the lives of internally displaced people (IDP) worldwide.
- - -
SUMMARY
There were about 10.8 million new displacements worldwide in the first
half of 2019, seven million triggered by disasters - the highest
mid-year figure IDMC has ever recorded - and 3.8 million by conflict and
violence. Extreme weather events, particularly storms and floods, were
responsible for most of the disaster displacement. Cyclone Fani and
cyclone Idai triggered more than four million displacements between them
and devastating floods in Iran affected 90 per cent of the country.
Fragmented international peace efforts mean that overwhelmingly high
numbers continue to be displaced in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan and Libya.
Persistent instability in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia
and Nigeria has left space for localised violence to take hold. And
displacement has spiked in porous border areas of West Africa where
intercommunal violence has been reignited.
http://www.internal-displacement.org/
[Beckwith talk]
*What’s up (down) with Arctic Sea-Ice: Extent, Thickness, Volume
Dynamics and Thermodynamics*
Published on Sep 12, 2019
Paul Beckwith
In September, 2012 Arctic sea ice extent (regions with at least 15% sea
ice concentration) set a record low extent, far below any previous year
and subsequent year, until now. This year, up until about mid-August,
sea ice extent closely tracked 2012, in fact was even lower than 2012
for long periods of time. Then, quite unexpectedly, 2019 melt
significantly flattened out, stalling to be far behind 2012. In this
first of a series of videos, I discuss possible reasons for this
stalling, in light of the fact that sea-ice volume continued to track
closely to that in 2012, with no sign of stalling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPH5j9Jv9pA
- -
[more on the Arctic]
*New Ice Behaviour Regime for Arctic Sea Ice Melt*
Published on Sep 13, 2019
Paul Beckwith
I continue discussing details of Arctic sea ice melt, including the
puzzling stalling of the extent drop in mid-August; yet continuation of
volume loss to match 2012 (year that set records for both lowest volume
and lowest extent). Physical properties of the sea ice remaining are
different since most of the stronger, purer (less salt content),
thicker, older multi-year ice has melted out, or been exported and
melted, leaving behind only weaker, saltier, thinner, younger first year
and second year ice. We are in a new ice behaviour regime, with
different melt and freeze dynamics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH3oGQt9VUo
[activism -- long video interview at NYC event]
*The Right to a Future, with Naomi Klein and Greta Thunberg*
The Intercept - reStreaming live on Sep 10, 2019
The Intercept invites you to watch a special event in New York City
hosted by Intercept senior correspondent Naomi Klein, author of the
forthcoming book "On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal," and
headlined by trailblazing climate activist Greta Thunberg, author of "No
One Is Too Small to Make a Difference."
Together with youth leaders Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, Xiye Bastida, and Vic
Barrett, as well as Indigenous Amazon leader Tuntiak Katan, Thunberg and
Klein helped us envision a just and sustainable future, confront our
climate emergency, and discuss the emerging cross-generational,
transnational movement -- including people of all races, classes, and
backgrounds -- that is our best hope for a sustainable planet.
Both a celebration of youth activism and a reflection on how to break
through the political and economic barriers preventing meaningful
climate action, "The Right to a Future" brought together a singular
group of environmental leaders who are on the forefront of the battle to
secure a thriving future for many generations to come.
"The Right to a Future" kicks off a week of climate coverage, starting
September 15, by Intercept reporters working across our beats. The
effort is part of Covering Climate Now, a project co-founded by The
Nation and Columbia Journalism Review, in partnership with The Guardian,
that "aims to convene and inform a conversation among journalists about
how all news outlets can do justice to the defining story of our time."
This event took place ahead of the Global Climate Strike starting
September 20 and the U.N. Climate Action Summit on September 23.
[Naomi Klein 34 min in]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5_dxzV9MTk
[answer: agriculture]
*What Is Nitrous Oxide and Why Is It a Climate Threat?*
Sabrina Shankman is a reporter for InsideClimate News
Despite its increasing role in global warming and effect on the ozone
layer, little has been done to rein in this climate pollutant. One big
reason: agriculture.
When it comes to the global climate crisis, carbon dioxide emissions
represent a problem that's massive, intractable and running short on
time to solve. But it's not the only problem.
Other pollutants are rapidly warming our climate, too, sending
scientists on a race to understand their implications before it's too
late. For years, experts have warned about the risks from one pollutant
in particular--nitrous oxide--and yet there's been little global action
on it.
The reason: "It is intimately connected to food," said Ravi
Ravishankara, an atmospheric chemist at Colorado State University who
co-chaired a United Nations panel on stratospheric ozone from 2007 to 2015.
Nitrous oxide is 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and it also
depletes the ozone layer. Since it also has a shorter life span,
reducing it could have a faster, significant impact on global warming.
But the largest source of nitrous oxide is agriculture, particularly
fertilized soil and animal waste, and that makes it harder to rein in.
"One could imagine limiting carbon dioxide, less methane, less of lots
of things. But nitrous oxide is so much a food production issue,"
Ravishankara said...
- - -
Compared with carbon dioxide, which can live in the atmosphere for
hundreds of years, nitrous oxide is around a relatively short time. But
it stays in the atmosphere longer than other short-lived climate
pollutants like black carbon (which exists in the atmosphere for days)
or methane (which is around for 12 years)...
Nitrous oxide also poses a second threat: while in the stratosphere,
nitrous oxide is exposed to sunlight and oxygen which converts the gas
into nitrogen oxides. Nitrogen oxides can damage the ozone layer, which
humans rely on to prevent most of the sun's ultraviolet radiation from
reaching earth's surface.
That double-threat effect results in the gas's potency. One pound of N2O
warms the atmosphere about 300 times the amount that one pound of carbon
dioxide does over a 100 year timescale. Its potency and relatively long
life make N2O a dangerous contributor to climate change....
- -
Agriculture isn't the only culprit, though. Nitrous oxide is also
emitted when fuels are burned, though how much depends on what type of
fuel, and which combustion technology is used. It's also generated as a
byproduct of the production of chemicals like nitric acid (used for
fertilizer) or adipic acid (used to make nylon and other synthetic
products). The treatment of domestic wastewater can also generate
nitrous oxide...
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11092019/nitrous-oxide-climate-pollutant-explainer-greenhouse-gas-agriculture-livestock
[a book review about the moral, philosophical, and criminal]
*The Criminal Dimension of Climate Change*
by Andrew Glikson
- - -
*Unprecedented Crime: Climate Science Denial and Game Changers for
Survival*, a book by Peter Carter and Elizabeth Woodworth, with a
foreword by leading climate scientist James Hansen, outlines the
criminality of those who actively promote the continuing emission of
carbon gases into the atmosphere despite having full knowledge of the
consequences. These consequences include the breakdown of large ice
sheets, rising sea levels, and the intensification of extreme weather
events around the world, such as hurricanes, floods, and fires.
The book highlights the collusion of large parts of the mainstream media
with climate change denial and its cover up, stating that
there is no benign explanation for a full media blackout of a
significant global development that was heralded by the United Nations
Secretary-General. This blackout goes far beyond ignorance or
negligence. It is a willful obstruction of public knowledge of the
extraordinary extent of global efforts to combat the greatest
existential threat of all time by changing business-as-usual. We define
this willful, methodical blocking of vital survival information as an
unprecedented crime against life on the planet.
The book cites Tom Engelhardt, author of *Terracide and the Terrarists:
Destroying the Planet for Record Profits*:
The fossil-fuel companies are guilty of the ultimate crime, because
they are earning their profits directly off melting the planet,
knowing that their extremely profitable acts are destroying the very
habitat, the very temperature range that for so long made life
comfortable for humanity.… However, Big Carbon could never have been
able to continue its polluting ways--long after the scientific
community had reached consensus about the connection between
fossil-fuel emissions, global warming, and climate change--without
the assistance of the media.
According to James Hansen, the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration’s former chief climate scientist,
burning all fossil fuels would create a different planet than the
one that humanity knows. The paleoclimate record and ongoing climate
change make it clear that the climate system would be pushed beyond
tipping points, setting in motion irreversible changes, including
ice sheet disintegration with a continually adjusting shoreline,
extermination of a substantial fraction of species on the planet,
and increasingly devastating regional climate extremes.
Following the presentation of definitive evidence of anthropogenic
climate change, a plethora of websites have emerged reporting the
views of nonscientists as well as scientists known to receive
funding from the fossil fuel industry. These views, in breach of the
basic laws of physics and of direct observations, ignore
peer-reviewed, published climate and paleoclimate science,
misrepresent observed atmospheric and oceanic processes and trends,
fabricate evidence, and conduct personal attacks against climate
scientists.
*Examples of this abound:*
Climate change deniers claim carbon dioxide is not a factor driving
global warming, contrary to the rise of carbon dioxide by more than 40
percent since the onset of the industrial age and the laws of black-body
radiation--Stefan-Boltzmann law, Planck’s law, and Kirchhoff’s law.
Whereas the average global temperature has been rising sharply since
about 1975, there was a relative lull during 2000-14, with high warming
rates resuming in 2015. This was mainly due to (1) albedo increase from
heavy sulfur-aerosol emission, and (2) fewer sunspots. Climate-change
deniers claim this transient period represents a cessation of global
warming.
Whereas the large Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets have been
melting at a rate of more than 500 billion metric tons per year, the
ice-melt water flowing off these glaciers cooled adjacent ocean regions,
resulting in transient extension of circum-Antarctic sea ice, which
climate-change deniers claim to represent global cooling.
Virulent attacks on climate scientists followed. To use one example from
the book, a climate change denier "argued that the ‘demonization of
carbon dioxide really differs little from the Nazi persecution of the
Jews, the Soviet extermination of class enemies or ISIL slaughter of
infidels.'"
Large parts of the conservative press have taken strong exception to the
evidence of anthropogenic global warming, as reported in Robert Manne’s
essays "Diabolical" and "Bad News."
The manifest paralysis of the political and media classes in the face of
the climate impasse, evidenced by the failure of a succession of United
Nations Framework Conventions on Climate Change to undertake meaningful
steps to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions--since 2009: Copenhagen,
Cancun, Doha, Durban, Warsaw, Paris--requires alternative avenues to
limit the deleterious consequences of continuing carbon emissions on the
biosphere. These consequences have been reported by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group II (Climate
Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability) and Working Group
III (WGIII - Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of climate change).
Traditionally, political and economic negotiations aim to compromise.
Unfortunately, no negotiation is possible with the basic laws of physics
and chemistry, or with processes in the atmosphere-ocean-cryosphere system.
Is there anything in international and national law that can avert
ongoing carbon emissions? Do global and national legal systems offer any
possibilities in this regard? In exploring potential restrictions on
carbon emissions, the following international and national laws and
conventions are relevant:
Crimes against humanity, as defined by the Rome Statute of the
International Criminal Court Explanatory Memorandum. Such crimes are
particularly odious offenses that constitute a serious attack on human
dignity, or grave humiliation or degradation of one or more human
beings. Crimes against humanity are not isolated or sporadic events, but
are part of either government policy (although perpetrators need not
identify themselves with policy) or a wide practice of atrocities
tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto authority.
United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,
Part III, Article 6, which states that "every human being has the
inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one
shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life. When deprivation of life
constitutes the crime of genocide, it is understood that nothing in this
article shall authorize any State Party to the present Covenant to
derogate in any way from any obligation assumed under the provisions of
the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide."
Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, July 17, 1998, Article
7, Crimes Against Humanity, extermination. Extermination includes the
intentional infliction of conditions of life, inter alia the deprivation
of access to food and medicine, calculated to bring about the
destruction of part of a population. Australian Commonwealth and State
laws regarding air quality standards and the prohibition of pollution.
Recently, a successful legal challenge has been raised in the United
States in this regard, as evidenced in the statement by Professor James
Hansen.
*Some of the consequences of the above include:*
Since the onset of the industrial age and particularly since the Second
World War, an abrupt rise in atmospheric temperature levels has been
driven by an increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases due to
the release of more than 600 billion metric tons of carbon (gigatons of
carbon, or GtC) into the atmosphere. This is leading to a dramatic shift
in the state of the atmosphere-ocean system, unprecedented in recorded
geological history with the exception of events that led to mass
extinctions, such as massive volcanism, extraterrestrial impacts, and
large-scale releases of methane.
As a direct consequence of the above, mean global temperatures have
risen by about 1.3C and, had it not been for emitted sulfur, aerosol
temperatures have risen by nearly 2.0C, reaching levels similar to those
of the Pliocene period roughly 2.6-5.3 million years ago. This shift is
occurring at the fastest rate recorded by paleoclimate studies. Whereas
many species can adapt to gradual environmental changes, the current
temperature-rise rate, resulting from ~2-3 ppm carbon dioxide/year,
cannot be sustained.15 The current change is manifested by an increase
in the melting rate of the major ice sheets, the accelerating rise in
sea levels, and the greater frequency and intensity of extreme weather
events, reflecting elevated energy levels of the atmosphere-ocean system.
Continuing carbon emissions and the consequent rise of mean global
temperatures will render large parts of Earth’s land surfaces
uninhabitable due to extreme temperatures, droughts, storms, and
flooding of coastal deltas and lower river regions due to the rise in
sea levels. The rise in sea levels is estimated to be about 25 ± 12
meters--Pliocene-like conditions--constituting an existential calamity
for civilization and nature.17 Leaving aside the injection of transient,
short-residence time sulfur aerosols, the arrest of current climate
trends would require (1) a meaningful reduction in the current rate of
carbon emissions (~9 GtC/year), and (2) the application of carbon
dioxide drawdown technologies, such as large-scale sea grass farming,
biochar, and carbon dioxide capture by air streaming through basalt and
serpentine, aimed at reducing atmospheric greenhouse gases by at least
50 ppm. There are enough reserves of conventional and unconventional
(oil shale, tar sands, coal seam gas) fossil fuels whose combustion
would raise atmospheric and oceanic temperatures to the levels of the
early Eocene and the Cretaceous periods, excluding most current forms of
advanced life on Earth.
As Robert Manne writes: "Unless by some miracle almost every climate
scientist is wrong, future generations will look upon ours with
puzzlement and anger--as the people who might have prevented Earth from
becoming a habitat unfriendly to humans and other species but
nonetheless failed to act.… Our conscious destruction of a planet
friendly to humans and other species is the most significant development
in history."
The carbon-oxygen cycle of the atmosphere-ocean-land constitutes the
lungs of the biosphere. Burning the vast carbon reserves buried in
sediments can only result in a demise rivaling the five great mass
extinctions in Earth’s history. Survivors of the sixth mass extinction
may hold responsible those who promoted carbon emissions and turned a
blind eye to the unfolding tragedy: the fossil fuel barons, the
political classes, and their media mouthpieces.
See more and footnotes:
https://monthlyreview.org/2019/03/01/the-criminal-dimension-of-climate-change/
- - -
[In the Journal Nature - deliberate misinformation studies]
*False statements about climate change trip people up*
Respondents in survey couldn’t always tell climate facts from falsehoods
-- even when they were sure they were right.
- - -
*Confident decisions*
People’s confidence in their knowledge of the facts is important when it
comes to decision-making, says Helen Fischer at Stockholm University,
who led the study. "People who trust in the solidity of their
understanding of climate change, and that of their informants, are more
likely to change their behaviour than citizens ignorant of the science
or relying on mere guesswork," she says. Researchers have extensively
studied people’s attitudes towards climate change and how this relates
to their education, personal values and political leanings, she adds.
But the research doesn't usually focus on how confident people are in
their knowledge.
The team was keen to base its study in Germany, where the policies aimed
at curbing climate change -- such as pricing carbon emissions from cars
and buildings -- has generated heated debate.
The work shows how important it is that the government’s climate policy
is accompanied by a clear communication strategy, says Brigitte Knopf,
secretary-general of the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons
and Climate Change in Berlin. "If, for example, it combines carbon
pricing with revenue-neutral refund for households, it can avoid a
burden on lower income groups in particular," she says. "But it is
important that it makes people aware of this in a catchy way."
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02637-x
[I hope this is humor]
*Trump Signs Executive Order Giving Him Control of Weather*
A beaming Trump pronounced "total victory" over the weather, which he
called "the enemy of the people."
September 13, 2019 Andy Borowitz
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In what some congressional Democrats
are calling a flagrant example of Presidential overreach, Donald Trump
on Tuesday signed an executive order giving him total control of the
weather.
Under the terms of the order, Trump would assume the unilateral power to
create all meteorological conditions, including but not limited to
hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, hail, sleet, and wintry mix.
After signing the order, a beaming Trump pronounced "total victory" over
the weather, which he called "the enemy of the people."
"I have been treated very unfairly by the weather," Trump said. "The
weather is a horrible person."
On Fox News, Sean Hannity praised Trump's decision to seize control of
the weather and compared it favorably to former President Barack Obama’s
weather policy, which he called "a trainwreck."
"Obama just let the weather run wild," Hannity said.
Although Trump’s executive order is certain to face legal challenges,
White House sources indicated that the President was ready to press
forward with an additional order giving him dominion over all living
things, the planets, and the stars.
https://portside.org/2019-09-13/trump-signs-executive-order-giving-him-control-weather
*This Day in Climate History - September 14, 2004 - from D.R. Tucker*
September 14, 2004: British Prime Minister Tony Blair declares that
climate change is "...a challenge so far-reaching in its impact and
irreversible in its destructive power, that it alters radically human
existence." He further notes:
"The problem...is that the challenge is complicated politically by
two factors. First, its likely effect will not be felt to its full
extent until after the time for the political decisions that need to
be taken, has passed. In other words, there is a mismatch in timing
between the environmental and electoral impact. Secondly, no one
nation alone can resolve it. It has no definable boundaries. Short
of international action commonly agreed and commonly followed
through, it is hard even for a large country to make a difference on
its own.
"But there is no doubt that the time to act is now. It is now that
timely action can avert disaster. It is now that with foresight and
will such action can be taken without disturbing the essence of our
way of life, by adjusting behaviour not altering it entirely."
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/sep/15/greenpolitics.uk
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