[TheClimate.Vote] August 13, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Thu Aug 13 09:27:54 EDT 2020
/*August 13, 2020*/
[Election]
*VP nominee Kamala Harris has a particular climate-change agenda:
environmental justice*
Published: Aug. 12, 2020
The former California AG, with proposed Climate Equity Act, has already
indicated she'll address air quality in poorer zip codes and punish
those who pollute...
- -
Her addition to the top of the Democrats' ticket for November comes just
days after she released new legislation, the Climate Equity Act. In it,
she and co-sponsors aim to ensure that any environmental regulation or
legislation would be rated based on its impact on low-income
communities, similar to a Congressional Budget Office score...
- -
"Harris's strength in messaging climate issues and selling the Biden
climate agenda is her ability to tie climate to social justice and
public health issues," wrote Our Daily Planet editors Miro Korenha and
Monica Medina. "She approaches climate justice from a prosecutorial lens
and much of her own presidential climate plan focused on holding
polluters accountable for the damage they've inflicted on vulnerable
communities as well as strengthening laws to prevent these actions going
forward."...
more at -
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/vp-nominee-kamala-harris-has-a-particular-climate-change-agenda-environmental-justice-2020-08-12
[Carbon combustion]
*Air pollution is much worse than we thought*
Ditching fossil fuels would pay for itself through clean air alone.....
By David Roberts - Aug 12, 2020
- -
For example, scientists now know that exposure to smog (tiny,
microscopic particulates) hurts prenatal and young brains. Even though
they don't yet fully understand the biological mechanism, they know it
reduces impulse control and degrades academic performance. Similarly,
they know it hurts the kidneys, the spleen, even the nervous system.
"The well-understood pathways, things like strokes, lower respiratory
infections, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, only seem to
capture about half the total," Shindell says. "When you look at the
[new] studies, you find that air pollution seems to affect almost every
organ in the human body."...
- -
The air quality benefits arrive much sooner than the climate benefits.
They are, at least for the next several decades, much larger. They can
be secured without the cooperation of other countries. And, by
generating an average of $700 billion a year in avoided health and labor
costs, they will more than pay for the energy transition on their own.
Climate change or no climate change, it's worth ditching fossil fuels.
And if this is true in the US -- which, after all, has comparatively
clean air -- it is true tenfold for countries like China and India,
where air quality remains abysmal. A Lancet Commission study in 2017
found that in 2015, air pollution killed 1.81 million people in India
and 1.58 million in China...
- -
*Air pollution ought to be seen as a global civil rights crisis*
The extraordinary level of suffering humanity is currently experiencing
from air pollution is not necessary for modernity; it could be reduced,
at a cost well below the net social benefits, with clean energy
technologies on hand.
If they are not necessary, then the millions of lives ended or degraded
by fossil fuels every year are a choice. And when suffering on this
scale, that is this brutally inequitable, becomes a choice, it enters
the same ethical terrain as war, slavery, and genocide. The effects are
more distributed over time and geography, as are the decision-making and
the moral culpability, but the cumulative impact on human well-being --
on our longevity, health, learning, and happiness -- is comparable, and
every bit as much worth fighting.
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/8/12/21361498/climate-change-air-pollution-us-india-china-deaths
[Middle East dry heat]
*Baghdad's record heat offers glimpse of world's climate change future*
Door handles blistering to the touch. Leaves yellowed and brittle. And a
yawning divide between AC haves and have-nots.
By Louisa Loveluck, Chris Mooney
AUGUST 12, 2020
- -
Baghdad hit 125.2 degrees on July 28, blowing past the previous record
of 123.8 degrees -- which was set here five years ago -- and topping 120
degrees for four days in a row. Sitting in one of the fastest warming
parts of the globe, the city offers a troubling snapshot of the future
that climate change might one day bring other parts of the world.
Experts say temperature records like the one seen in Baghdad will
continue to fall as climate change advances.
"It's getting hotter every year," said Jos Lelieveld, an expert on the
climate of the Middle East and Mediterranean at the Max Planck Institute
in Germany. "And when you are starting to get above 50 degrees Celsius
[122 degrees Fahrenheit] it becomes life threatening."...
more at -
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/08/12/baghdad-iraq-heat-climate-change/?arc404=true
[audio and text]
*Environmentalist Bill McKibben on national security implications of
climate change*
In this episode of Intelligence Matters, host Michael Morell interviews
author and environmentalist Bill McKibben about the national security
implications of climate change, including how current trends, if
unchecked, could lead to future catastrophes. McKibben explains why
taking certain actions immediately and for the next ten years is crucial
in order to forestall mass migrations, crop shortages and deadly
droughts. He shares his views on the troubling parallels between climate
change and certain accelerating technologies like genetic modification.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/environmentalist-bill-mckibben-on-national-security-implications-of-climate-change/
- -
[Web site devoted to climate and security]
*THE CENTER FOR CLIMATE & SECURITY**
**EXPLORING THE SECURITY RISKS OF CLIMATE CHANGE*
Washington, DC, August 12, 2020 - As ASEAN convenes the 13th Meeting of
its Joint Task Force on Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief, the
Expert Group of the International Military Council on Climate and
Security (IMCCS) released a new report urging leaders to make climate
change a "security priority" in the Indo-Asia Pacific. The IMCCS is a
group of senior military leaders, security experts, and security
institutions across the globe - currently hailing from 38 countries in
every hemisphere - dedicated to anticipating, analyzing, and addressing
the security risks of a changing climate.
The emergence and ongoing consequences of COVID-19 have exposed serious
societal vulnerabilities, even in wealthy nations, and demonstrated that
foreseeable crises can have severe social, economic, political and
security consequences. Furthermore, the COVID-19 crisis is a wake-up
call for using science as a basis for risk management. Likewise, climate
science should be incorporated into security policy and planning to
avoid worst outcomes. This is according to the new report by the Expert
Group of the International Military Council on Climate and Security
(IMCCS), titled "Climate and Security in the Indo-Asia Pacific."...
- -
The report, which is part of the World Climate and Security Report 2020
Briefer Series, articulates six main points.
*- Addressing the root causes of climate change should be a security
priority for the region*. Addressing the root causes of
climate-related security threats, including by considering the full
scope of implications of fossil fuel energy investments on national
interests and national security, can support regional stability in a
changing world. Significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions in
the region should therefore be a security priority for the region.
*- Climate change should be higher on the regional security agenda*.
Though the Indo-Asia Pacific is one of the regions most vulnerable
to climate impacts, the security dimensions of climate change are
not high on the agenda in policy circles. It is the most
disaster-prone part of the world; food and water security are
vulnerable to climate impacts; its population and economic
infrastructure are concentrated on the coasts and vulnerable to
storms and sea level rise.
*- Climate change is worsening underlying security tensions in the
region.* In a region where geostrategic competition, inter- and
intra-state tensions and violent unrest have increased, the report
finds that climate change-related stressors including changing river
flows, migrating fish stocks, extreme weather and sea level rise
could erode coping capacities, increase grievances, worsen
underlying tensions and fragilities, overwhelm state capacities and
degrade the security environment, if not managed effectively.
*- Many security dynamics in the region are highly sensitive to
climate change.* Some of the region's security dynamics are
particularly sensitive to climate impacts, e.g. sea level rise and
military buildup on contested features in the South China Sea;
interstate tensions expressed through (and exacerbated by)
transboundary water management disputes; confrontations over fishing
driven by declining yields (due to overfishing and pollution as well
as climate-driven ocean warming and acidification); and eroding
livelihoods potentially driving more piracy and serious organized crime.
*- Foreseeable security challenges related to climate change underly
a regional Responsibility to Prepare and Prevent.* Security
communities in the Indo-Asia Pacific have a responsibility to
prepare for and prevent these foreseeable security challenges,
alongside development and diplomatic actors, the authors find. This
includes supporting climate resilience by strengthening military
capacities for Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief
operations, and improving responses to climate threats by supporting
long-range planning within government.
*- Better coordination between security communities is critical for
combating climate-related security threats.* Better coordination and
networking among the international security community working to
address climate-related threats, such as through the International
Military Council on Climate and Security, can facilitate information
exchange and sharing lessons learned. This includes sharing the
world-leading expertise of Indo-Asia Pacific militaries in
responding to climate-driven disasters.
https://climateandsecurity.org/2020/08/12/release-as-asean-meets-to-talk-disaster-relief-new-report-from-military-analysts-urges-indo-asia-pacific-leaders-to-make-climate-change-a-security-priority/#more-19809
[one excellent presentation]
Prof John P. Holdren environmental policy from John F. Kennedy School of
Government - Harvard University - video from the master of understatement
*Science Session: Thawing Arctic Permafrost--Regional and Global Impacts*
May 11, 2020
*National Academy of Sciences*
Temperatures across the Arctic are increasing two to four times faster
than the global average. The dramatic consequences that are already
apparent include reduction of sea-ice cover, accelerating loss of land
ice from glaciers and the Greenland Ice Sheet, proliferating wildfires,
and--the topic of this panel--ongoing heating and thawing of the
permafrost that underlies most of the land area of the Arctic and
sub-Arctic regions across the globe. Permafrost thaw is a direct threat
to buildings, roads, and pipelines, and it can greatly accelerate
erosion along rivers and coastlines with severe consequences for
communities located there. But an impact with much wider consequences is
the release of carbon dioxide and methane by the decomposition of
previously frozen organic matter, affecting the rate of growth of global
warming and all of its impacts everywhere. (There is estimated to be
something like 2.5 times as much carbon in the as in the entire global
atmosphere; the key question is how fast it will come out.) The
panelists, leading Arctic experts all, explain the complex science of
thawing permafrost and elucidate the implications both regionally and
globally.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nGECF2qSO4
AUGUST 12, 2020
*Freakish Arctic Fires Alarmingly Intensify*
by ROBERT HUNZIKER
NASA satellite images of fires in eastern Siberia depict an inferno of
monstrous proportions, nothing in modern history compares. And, as of
July, it's intensifying. Should people be concerned? Answer: Yes, and
double yes.
According to Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at the Copernicus
Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) of the European Centre for
Medium-Range Weather Forecasts: "What has been surprising is the rapid
increase in the scale and intensity of the fires through July, largely
driven by a large cluster of active fires in the northern Sakha
Republic." (Source: Kasha Patel, NASA/NOAA Satellites Observe
Surprisingly Rapid Increase in Scale and Intensity of Fires in Siberia,
SciTechDaily, August 9, 2020)
The problem: "Abnormally warm temperatures have spawned an intense fire
season in the eastern Siberian this summer," Ibid.
Is this global warming on steroids?...
- -
Here's more about this mind-blowing threat to the well-being of the world:
(1) Arctic fires in Russia in June and July alone released "more CO2
than any complete fire season" since records have been kept and more CO2
than all of Scandinavia, happening in only two months time. That's
beyond shocking, and it represents country-wide-scale CO2 emissions
emitted by nature itself now competing head-on with every aspect of
Paris '15.
(2) The fires are double trouble as one half of the fires are on
peatlands, which, once started, can burn almost forever if the heat is
intense enough (which it is) emitting both CO2 and CH4 in unheralded
competition with the dictates of Paris '15.
"Peat fires can burn longer than forest fires and release vast amounts
of carbon into the atmosphere." (Source: Kasha Patel, NASA/NOAA
Satellites Observe Surprisingly Rapid Increase in Scale and Intensity of
Fires in Siberia, SciTechDaily, August 9, 2020)
"The destruction of peat by fire is troubling for so many reasons,' said
Dorothy Peteet of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. 'As the
fires burn off the top layers of peat, the permafrost depth may deepen,
further oxidizing the underlying peat," Ibid.
Oh by the way, only recently it was reported that the amount of carbon
stored in northern peatlands is double previous estimates. (Source:
Jonathan Nichols, et al, Holocene Ecohydrological Variability on the
East Coast of Kamchtka, Frontiers in Earth Science, May 15, 2019)
It goes without saying that raging firestorms in a heat-induced global
warming environment that releases more greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere than several countries combined darkens the epithet "Black
Swan" almost beyond recognition.
But, is it really a Black Swan? Well, no, it is not a Black Swan because
human-generated (anthropogenic) carbon emissions, like exhaust from
fossil-fueled SUV engines, have been on a tear, especially since the
turn of the new century (doubling on a per annum basis) blanketing the
atmosphere (holding in heat), thus causing extraordinary readings of
heat in the upper latitudes. So, yes, more fires were expected, no Black
Swan.
But, the intensity of the fires hands down, no doubt about it, easily
meets that criterion. Therefore, yes, it is a Black Swan, as the
intensity is so overwhelmingly powerful that nobody could have possibly
expected it to happen this way, and therein lies the risk to the "great
hope" of cutting greenhouse gas emissions to minimize global
temperatures to 2C above baseline, or all hell breaks loose.
Get serious! It's already breaking loose!
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/08/12/freakish-arctic-fires-alarmingly-intensify/
[Digging back into the internet news archive - 6 years ago]
*On this day in the history of global warming - August 13, 2014 *
On MSNBC's "The Ed Show," Jane Kleeb of Bold Nebraska discusses the
recent onslaught of poisoned weather in the US.
Summer across the United States has been marked by dangerous weather,
causing floods, heat waves and other unusual severe storms. Michael Eric
Dyson, Jane Klebb, and Don Anderson discuss.
http://www.msnbc.com/the-ed-show/watch/damaging-impact-of-severe-weather-317880899851#
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/
/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.
Messages have no tracking software.
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.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/attachments/20200813/88fd3653/attachment.html>
More information about the TheClimate.Vote
mailing list