[TheClimate.Vote] August 18, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*August 18, 2020*/

[Financial Times opinion from UK]
*Biden gambles on placing climate change at heart of US energy policy*
Republicans say the promise to invest $2tn in green energy threatens 
tens of thousands of jobs in oil and gas sector
https://www.ft.com/content/2ac477e7-34a4-4c0e-b9f4-018cef47d67d


[New platform]
*Biden's climate fight is just beginning*
- -
"If Biden had just run with his original climate plan, it still would 
have been more ambitious than any nominee ever," said Hendricks, 
crediting the Biden team with strong outreach that expanded his plan and 
his coalition.

"He didn't get public accolades for that. What he got was a better 
policy and an important champion for how this policy is going to hit the 
ground."

In the plan's top lines, Biden calls for decarbonizing the economy by 
2050, though he advanced that deadline to 2035 for utilities following 
outside recommendations. It includes a strong environmental justice 
component to hold polluters accountable and route funding to communities 
overburdened by them, and it envisions creating jobs by investing in 
clean energy, clean transit and the manufacturing sector behind them.
But there's already been some grumbling from environmental organizations 
that he hasn't done enough to address fracking or hit the fossil fuel 
industry, though one of President Trump's favorite lines of attack on 
Biden is that he wants to ban fracking and would be horrible for the oil 
and gas industry.

If Biden wins, groups such as Greenpeace have called on him to exclude 
oil and gas executives from his transition team
Some of Biden's climate moves, including reentering the Paris climate 
accord, could be done by executive action on day one.

But many would require buy-in from Congress. That prospect that could be 
dead in the water if Republicans hold the Senate, while Biden's plan 
might not go far enough for many in a Democratic-majority House...
more at - 
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/511889-bidens-climate-fight-is-just-beginning 




[Podcast - audio from the Guardian]
*The return of Extinction Rebellion**
*When Extinction Rebellion began holding protests two years ago, the 
movement could not have predicted its rapid growth or the public support 
it received. But missteps and the Covid-19 shutdown meant the group lost 
momentum. Now, it is planning a series of new actions in the autumn
Extinction Rebellion (XR) has grown rapidly since it was set up in the 
UK in 2018. Its early protests had a carnival atmosphere and its demands 
were simple: the government should, above all else, be truthful about 
the extent of the climate crisis.

Daze Aghaji started attending XR meetings while still at university and 
became an influential member of the group's youth wing. She describes 
the participatory structure and how decisions are made without a formal 
leadership – and how XR has grappled with racial equality within its 
movement. The Guardian's Matthew Taylor has been following XR since the 
beginning and is observing it enter a new phase of its evolution. Can it 
recreate the atmosphere of its early protests and avoid some of the 
recent controversies and missteps, while still growing as a mass 
movement?...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/audio/2020/aug/17/covid-19-climate-crisis-and-return-extinction-rebellion-podcast



["Absolutely bonkers"]
*Trump Administration Finalizes Plan to Open Arctic Refuge to Drilling*
The decision sets up a fierce legal battle over the fate of a vast, 
remote area that is home to polar bears, caribou and the promise of oil 
wealth...
"There's no good time to open up America's largest wildlife refuge to 
drilling and fracking, but it's absolutely bonkers to endanger this 
beautiful place during a worldwide oil glut," said Kristen Monsell, a 
senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, an 
environmental group.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/17/climate/alaska-oil-drilling-anwr.html



[A rare type of weather becoming more common]
*Extreme weather just devastated 10m acres in the midwest. Expect more 
of this*
Art Cullen
I know a stiff wind. They call this place Storm Lake, after all. But 
until recently most Iowans had never heard of a "derecho". They have 
now. Last Monday, a derecho tore 770 miles from Nebraska to Indiana and 
left a path of destruction up to 50 miles wide over 10m acres of prime 
cropland. It blew 113 miles per hour at the Quad Cities on the 
Mississippi River.
Grain bins were crumpled like aluminum foil. Three hundred thousand 
people remained without power in Iowa and Illinois on Friday. Cedar 
Rapids and Iowa City were devastated.

The corn lay flat.

Iowa's maize yield may be cut in half. A little napkin ciphering tells 
me the Tall Corn State will lose $6bn from crop damage alone.

We should get used to it. Extreme weather is the new normal. Last year, 
the villages of Hamburg and Pacific Junction, Iowa, were washed down the 
Missouri River from epic floods that scoured tens of thousands of acres. 
This year, the Great Plains are burning up from drought. Western Iowa 
was steeped in severe drought when those straight-line winds barreled 
through the weak stalks.
A multi-decade drought is under way in the Central Plains and the 
south-west. Wildfires are spreading from Arizona to California, and are 
burning ridges north of Los Angeles not licked by flames since 1968. 
Cattle in huge Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma feedlots will drink the 
Ogallala Aquifer dry in 20 years. This drought, which could rival or 
exceed the Medieval Drought that occurred about AD1200, could last 30 to 
50 years, according to research from the Goddard Space Institute. It 
will become difficult to grow corn in southern Iowa, and impossible in 
western Kansas. By mid-century, corn yields could decline by 30%, 
according to the Iowa State University climatologist Dr Gene Takle.

Takle notes that the 20th century was the wettest on record. This could 
be the driest.
"The last century was our Goldilocks period," Takle said. "Just right. 
And that period is coming to an end."

We have cyclone bombs in winter and derechos on top of tornadoes. We 
have 500-year floods every 10 years. And we have a steady increase in 
night-time temperatures and humidity that makes it difficult for the 
corn to breathe even with the latest in genetic engineering. Protein 
content in the kernel is falling. Livestock and plants fall prey to new 
diseases and pests along with extreme heat stress.

It will lead to a reckoning more quickly than most of us realize.

The pandemic exposed the fragility of the food supply when meat 
processing plants teetered last spring for lack of healthy workers. 
Prices shot up 50% at the grocery counter.

Farmers didn't share in that windfall. Corn prices are at a 10-year low 
in a broken industrial system propped up by government design.

When Takle was a teenager, baling hay in 1960, there were 18-20 days a 
year when the temperature would get above 90 degrees. By the end of the 
century, Takle warns, this region could be scorched by temperatures over 
100 degrees 50 to 60 days a year.

Soil that can hold water and defy heat is losing that capacity to 
erosion driven by extreme rains. Poor soil, combined with the extreme 
heat Takle describes, assures crop failures. Takle said corn crops could 
fail every other year if we go on with "business as usual" pumping out 
carbon.

It's already happening in Latin America. Decades of drought are driving 
Guatemalan campesino refugees to Storm Lake to work in meatpacking. 
Similarly, epic migrations were driven by the Medieval Drought. It is 
believed that the Mill Creek people who settled here were driven north 
up the Missouri River to the Dakotas as they were droughted out of Iowa. 
That drought also led to wars in Europe, not unlike the contemporary 
conflicts and migrations in Africa whose roots are in failing 
agricultural and food systems.

The impacts of climate change are real and profound for our most basic 
industry: food. Fortunately, sound science tells us that we can make a 
real impact on climate change by planting less corn and more grass that 
sequesters carbon. Paying farmers to build soil health and retain water 
is a better investment than writing a crop insurance check for drought. 
Farmers on the frontlines of climate change are trying to become more 
resilient to extreme weather by planting permanent grass strips in crop 
fields, and planting cover crops for the winter that suck up nitrogen 
and CO2. The rate of adaptation would be quickened if conservation 
funding programs were not always under attack.

The derecho is yet another destructive reminder that heat leading to 
extreme storms will destroy our very food sources if we don't face the 
climate crisis now.

Art Cullen is editor of the Storm Lake Times in north-west Iowa, where 
he won the Pulitzer prize for editorials on agriculture and the 
environment. He is a Guardian US columnist and author of the book, Storm 
Lake: Change, Resilience, and Hope in America's Heartland
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/17/extreme-weather-midwest-climate-crisis 




[Prof Katharine Hayhoe]
*Climate denial isn't a stand-alone issue; it's part of a toxic stew 
that, today, includes covid denial.* I review profiles of those who 
attack me here on twitter before I block & most include tweets 
ridiculing masks or claiming that covid isn't serious.
https://twitter.com/KHayhoe/status/1295445770896904195

- -

[follow Fauci's example]
*Why COVID deniers and climate skeptics paint scientists as alarmist*
By Kate Yoder on Aug 13, 2020
In an interview with Fox News last month, President Donald Trump called 
Anthony Fauci, the country's top infectious disease expert, an 
"alarmist," using a pejorative straight from the playbook of those who 
deny the science behind climate change. Fauci rejected the 
characterization, describing himself as a "realist."

For anyone paying attention to arguments about climate change over 
recent decades, Trump's comment sounded awfully familiar: Scientists are 
alarmists, everything's a hoax, and hysteria abounds. Michael Mann, a 
climatologist at Penn State University, wrote an op-ed for Newsweek this 
week drawing parallels between his experience and Fauci's during 
COVID-19. Science deniers have lobbied attacks on the two public 
figures, he explained, sending death threats, calling them names, and 
questioning their expertise.

So what do terms like alarmist and hysteria really mean, where did they 
come from, and how can people respond to such accusations?
The strategies used to dismiss the threats of climate change and 
coronavirus follow a similar pattern, and they're employed by many of 
the same people. It starts with denying the problem exists, as Naomi 
Oreskes, a professor of history at Harvard who studies disinformation, 
has explained. Then, people trying to obstruct action deny the severity 
of the predicament, say it's too hard or too expensive to fix, and 
complain that their freedom is under threat. Denying the science 
requires dismissing what scientists are saying, and the easiest way to 
do that is by questioning their motives, impartiality, and rationality.

"If we don't trust scientists or medical experts because we see them as 
alarmist or hysterical or as contributing overreaction, then we don't 
trust the info they're giving us," said Emma Frances Bloomfield, an 
assistant professor of communication at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Back in the day, alarmism was seen as a virtue. The term traces back to 
the 1790s, around the time that Edmund Burke, the famous philosopher, 
sounded the alarm against the French Revolution. "We must continue to be 
vigorous alarmists," he wrote.

That "sounding the alarm" connotation faded long ago. Now it suggests a 
person who exaggerates and sensationalizes potential dangers, sowing 
needless panic. It's a pejorative that doesn't fit most scientists. 
Research has shown that they're fairly conservative when it comes to the 
climate crisis. A 2012 study found that their projections have actually 
underestimated the effects of our overheating planet, like the potential 
disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet. The authors of that 
study, including Oreskes, wrote that "scientists are biased not toward 
alarmism but rather the reverse: toward cautious estimates." They called 
this tendency "erring on the side of least drama," and suggested that 
the tendency to downplay future changes comes from a pressure to appear 
objective.

The commonly held notion of what a scientist should be was articulated 
by Robert K. Merton, an American sociologist who outlined the "ideal" 
expectations for scientists in the 1940s. Merton called for scientists 
to be unbiased, rational, and to stay clear of conflicts of interest.

Words like overreacting emphasize emotion, detracting from scientific 
credibility. "Being emotional is something that we try to keep away from 
science," Bloomfield said. "When you think about scientists really 
caring about something, it violates those expectations we have that 
scientists are balanced and they only look at facts."

Take hysteria, which comes from the Greek word for uterus. (Plato and 
Hippocrates thought the womb lurched up and down in the body, causing 
erratic behavior, emotional outbursts, and insanity among womankind.) 
The term has a dark and complicated history, but suffice it to say that 
it made an appearance in 17th-century witch trials, and much later on, 
during some pretty frustrating visits to the doctor.

"It's feminizing science as a way to discredit it," Bloomfield said. 
Another word to keep an eye out for is shrill, an adjective describing a 
high-pitched, piercing voice that became a way to stigmatize women 
(think Hillary Clinton) and sometimes scientists, too.

To counter these attacks, Bloomfield said that one effective strategy is 
to follow Fauci's example: Reject the characterization and substitute 
your own word, like realist instead of alarmist.

Another strategy is to ask questions that challenge assumptions. 
Bloomfield suggests asking something like, "How many people would have 
to die for you to be alarmed?" With 164,000 deaths and climbing, more 
Americans have died from COVID-19 than were killed in World War I. The 
question forces people to think for themselves and draw their own 
conclusions.
https://grist.org/politics/dont-like-what-scientists-are-saying-try-insulting-them/

- - -

[Moral breakdown]
*What Mask-Backlash Teaches Us About Climate Denialism*
The intellectual and moral breakdown of society is making it impossible 
to solve problems
Jesse Harris
- -
COVID-19 has been a difficult problem to solve as a society, but it is 
nothing compared to the challenge of climate change. Masks should have 
been easy. The science of masks is intuitive, the public opinion is 
overwhelming in favor, they are only a minor inconvenience, they are 
cheap, and they primarily help those closest to you. Despite all this, 
mask-skeptics have instigated a drawn-out fight that will likely 
continue for months if not years.
Mask and climate skepticism are built on both a failure of our shared 
epistemology and empathy. To think masks are dangerous requires one to 
abandon science and reason. Believing that mask mandates are unethical 
implies a strictly individualistic moral framework. These systems of 
knowledge and morality are essential to a functional society. Without 
them, there is no argument or logic to bridge the gaps within our 
community. It may seem hyperbolic to claim that a few kooks yelling 
about masks causing CO2 poisoning is indicative of a societal breakdown, 
but it is a sign of intellectual rot. If this decay spreads, it will be 
impossible to solve any large challenge.
This article isn't about offering solutions, but it is also not about 
wallowing in despair. We must acknowledge the scope of the problems that 
face us, which includes recognizing the social unity we must achieve. 
COVID was a practice test, and we failed. Badly.
Environmentalists need to take the potential for climate backlash 
seriously. Current models have us on track for disastrous levels of 
warming. How will we create a sustainable economy when ~20% of the 
population takes a hard-line opposition? How do you build political will 
when the science is confusing? How do you explain that everyone should 
care about other people? To have any hope of solving the climate crisis 
we must find answers to these questions.
https://medium.com/climate-conscious/what-mask-backlash-teaches-us-about-climate-denialism-6fef99b73e35


[next storm will be named Laura]
*Two Areas to Watch in the Atlantic For Tropical Development as 
Hurricane Season Heads Toward Peak*
https://weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/2020-08-16-atlantic-hurricane-season-what-to-watch-late-august



[hot mess widespread]
*California plagued by scorching heat (130 degrees!), lightning, 
blackouts and even fire tornadoes*
Published: Aug. 16, 2020
By Mike Murphy
Warning of rolling blackouts through Wednesday, as wildfires rage and 
much of the state sizzles
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/california-plagued-by-scorching-heat-130-degrees-lightning-blackouts-and-even-fire-tornadoes-2020-08-16



[Lots of factors]
*Melting ice is a gift to the fossil fuel tankers navigating the Arctic*
By Maria Gallucci - Aug 17, 2020
A stocky blue 980-foot-long tanker named Christophe de Margerie sailed 
from Russia's far-north Yamal Peninsula to the Bering Strait near Alaska 
in May, two months before such ships usually pass through a major Arctic 
sea route. The vessel carried and ran on liquefied natural gas, 
accompanied by the icebreaker Yamal on the 12-day journey. Record-low 
ice levels along the route allowed its Russian owner, Sovcomflot, to 
ship the fossil fuel to China, completing the earliest voyage of its 
kind yet.

If the milestone signals big opportunity for oil and gas producers, it 
also embodies two troubling trends for the rest of the planet.

More large ships Like the Christophe de Margerie are running on 
liquefied natural gas, or LNG. That switch is resulting in higher 
emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, according to a new report 
by international shipping experts. The vessel's voyage also comes as 
Arctic ship traffic is rising, a development made increasingly possible 
by above-average temperatures and disappearing sea ice—particularly 
along the Christophe de Margerie's Northern Sea Route. A recent study 
raised the possibility that Arctic summers could be completely free of 
sea ice by 2035.

"Because the climate is warming, it's opening up more and more," Mark 
Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said of the 
3,000-mile-long passage.

Ice in the Laptev and East Siberian Seas began melting earlier than 
usual this year, fueled by a Siberian heat wave that also triggered 
massive wildfires. The Christophe de Margerie still had to forge through 
treacherous ice, but by mid-July, the route appeared to be ice-free, the 
earliest that's been known to happen.

Sea ice conditions are still "highly variable" from year to year and 
depend on the seasonal wind and weather patterns, Serreze said. But the 
route's early opening "is part of a trend," he added. "Overall, we're 
losing ice cover over the Arctic Ocean. We are decidedly downward."

No group is better poised to capitalize on the warming Arctic than 
Russia's oil and gas giants. Gazprom and Rosneft have recently expanded 
offshore Arctic drilling, while Novatek and other partners built a 
massive LNG production facility in Sabetta, which switched on in late 
2017. Ships have since moved tens of millions of tons of the gas to 
European markets and, taking the Northern Sea Route, to major ports in Asia.
- -
As countries and global regulators work to curb pollution from ships, 
more companies are using LNG not only for specialized Arctic tankers, 
but also for passenger cruise liners and behemoth container ships. When 
burned, LNG produces little nitrogen oxide and virtually no sulfur 
dioxide, two harmful pollutants linked to asthma, heart failure, and 
other health problems. It's also estimated to reduce a ship's onboard 
carbon dioxide emissions by about 20 percent, compared to conventional 
marine fuels.

At least 750 cargo ships, tankers, tugboats, ferries, and other vessels 
today can run on LNG, or double the amount available in 2012.

Yet burning LNG means they're emitting more of the supercharged 
greenhouse gas, methane. The gas traps much more heat in the atmosphere 
than carbon dioxide, further accelerating climate change. Environmental 
groups have raised concerns that switching to LNG will ultimately 
hinder—not help—the shipping industry's broader effort to reduce emissions.

As more vessels have switched to using LNG, the industry's methane 
emissions rose by 150 percent from 2012 to 2018, according to a recent 
study commissioned by the International Maritime Organization, the U.N. 
body that regulates shippers. That's even though vessels burned roughly 
28 percent more LNG over the six-year stretch.
https://grist.org/energy/climate-change-is-a-gift-to-the-fossil-fuel-tankers-navigating-the-arctic/



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - August 18, 2015 *

August 18, 2015: The New York Times reports:

"The Obama administration is expected to propose as soon as Tuesday the 
first-ever federal regulation to cut emissions of methane, a powerful 
greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming, by the nation's oil 
and natural-gas industry, officials familiar with the plan said on Monday.

"The proposed rule would call for the reduction of methane emissions by 
40 to 45 percent over the next decade from 2012 levels, the officials 
said. The proposal was widely expected, after the Environmental 
Protection Agency said in January that it was working on such a plan.

"The new rules are part of Mr. Obama's broad push for regulations meant 
to cut emissions of planet-warming gases from different sectors of the 
economy. This month, Mr. Obama unveiled the centerpiece of that plan, a 
regulation meant to cut emissions of carbon dioxide by 32 percent from 
2005 levels by 2030, a move that could transform the way the nation 
produces and consumes electric power.

"The new rules on methane could create a tougher regulatory scheme on 
the nation's fossil fuel production, particularly on the way that 
companies extract, move and store natural gas.

"Environmental advocates have long urged the Obama administration to 
crack down on methane emissions. Most of the greenhouse gas pollution in 
the United States comes from carbon dioxide, which is produced by 
burning coal, oil and natural gas. Methane, which leaks from oil and gas 
wells, accounts for just 9 percent of the nation's greenhouse gas 
pollution — but it is over 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, so 
even small amounts of it can have a big impact on global warming."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/18/business/us-is-set-to-propose-regulation-to-cut-methane-emissions.html 



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