[TheClimate.Vote] August 29, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Sat Aug 29 10:06:08 EDT 2020
/*August 29, 2020*/
[3 min audio NPR]
*Everything Is Unprecedented. Welcome To Your Hotter Earth*
August 28, 2020
REBECCA HERSHER, NATHAN ROTT, LAUREN SOMMER
The upshot of climate change is that everyone alive is destined to
experience unprecedented disasters. The most powerful hurricanes, the
most intense wildfires, the most prolonged heat waves and the most
frequent outbreaks of new diseases are all in our future. Records will
be broken, again and again.
But the predicted destruction is still shocking when it unfolds at the
same time.
This week, Americans are living through concurrent disasters. In
California, more than 200,000 people were under evacuation orders
because of wildfires, and millions are breathing smoky air. On the Gulf
Coast, people weathered a tropical storm at the beginning of the week.
Two days later, about half a million were ordered to evacuate ahead of
Hurricane Laura. We're six months into a global pandemic, and the Earth
is on track to have one of its hottest years on record.
Climate scientist Camilo Mora of the University of Hawaii says if our
collective future were a movie, this week would be the trailer.
"There is not a single ending that is good," he says. "There's not going
to be a happy ending to this movie."
Mora was an author of a study examining all the effects of climate
change. The researchers concluded that concurrent disasters will get
more and more common as the Earth gets hotter. That means we will live
through more weeks like this one -- when fires, floods, heat waves and
disease outbreaks layer on top of one another.
"Keep in mind that all these things are related," Mora explains. "CO2 is
increasing the temperature. As a result, the temperature is accelerating
the evaporation of water. The evaporation of water leads to drought that
in turn leads to heat waves and wildfires. In places that are humid,
that evaporation -- the same evaporation -- leads to massive
precipitation that is then commonly followed by floods."
Disease outbreaks are also more likely. The most recent U.S. National
Climate Assessment warns that changing weather patterns make it more
likely that insect-borne illnesses will affect the U.S. Climate change
is also causing people and animals to move and come in contact with one
another in new and dangerous ways.
If humans dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions immediately,
scientists say it will help avoid the most catastrophic global warming
scenarios. Worldwide emissions are still rising, and the United States
is the planet's second-largest emitter.
Mora says helping people connect the dots between the current disasters
and greenhouse gas emissions should be every scientist's priority.
"That's the million-dollar question," he says. "How do we speak to
people in a way that we get them to appreciate the significance of these
problems?"
*Hurricanes and climate change*
Climate change is making the air and water hotter, and that means more
power for hurricanes.
"Whenever you get ocean temperatures that are much above average, you're
asking for trouble," meteorologist Jeff Masters explains. "And we've
seen some of the warmest ocean temperatures on record for the Atlantic
basin this year."
Hot water is like a battery charger for hurricanes. As a storm moves
over hot water, like Hurricane Laura did this week, it captures moisture
and energy very quickly. In recent years, scientists have seen evidence
that global warming is already making storms more likely to grow large
and powerful and more likely to intensify quickly.
That's an alarming trend. "We're not very good at forecasting rapid
intensification," Masters says. "That's critical because that gives you
less time to prepare if there's a storm rapidly intensifying right
before landfall."
Scientists have also found that hurricanes are dropping more rain, which
means more flooding. Flooding is consistently the most deadly and
damaging effect of a hurricane. Studies show many people underestimate
the flood risks from hurricanes. Just a few inches of moving water can
make it impossible to stay on your feet or control your car.
Add all that to the current pandemic, and you get a dangerous situation,
especially for people living in the path of the storm. As NPR has
reported, safe options for people who evacuate this year could be
limited because group shelters might accept fewer people in order to
maintain social distancing.
Concurrent disasters are hitting the country as more people struggle to
keep their homes during the economic crash. Andreanecia Morris, the
executive director of the nonprofit HousingNOLA, says this week's
hurricanes are especially risky to the many people in Louisiana who
don't have secure places to live because they were evicted.
"People are becoming more vulnerable as this COVID crisis goes on,"
Morris says, as more people get laid off or run out of savings. "We have
frankly been failing to serve the most vulnerable, and the people who
have been made vulnerable by these cascading catastrophes."
*Wildfires and Climate Change*
The fingerprints of climate change are all over the Western wildfires, too.
There are nearly 100 large uncontained fires burning across the U.S.
More than a million acres have burned in California alone -- almost all
in the last few weeks. The smoke has blanketed cities and cast a haze
from coast to coast.
Wildfires, like hurricanes, are a natural occurrence. They existed long
before humans started rapidly changing the climate and are a necessary
process for many Western landscapes. But a growing body of scientific
evidence shows that a warming climate has changed the status quo.
Fires are burning more frequently and intensely in places where they've
always occurred, and they're creeping into places where they were
previously rare.
Wildfires thrive on high heat, low humidity, strong winds and dry
vegetation, all of which are more likely to occur in a warming climate,
says Noah Diffenbaugh, a professor of earth system sciences at Stanford
University.
Diffenbaugh was a co-author of a recent study that found climate change
has doubled the number of days when conditions would support extreme
fire in California. "And it's particularly increased the odds that those
conditions occur broadly, simultaneously," Diffenbaugh says.
Take the fires currently burning across the West.
Two of the fire clusters in California are among the five largest
wildfires in state history. The Pine Gulch Fire, chewing across the
Western slope of the Colorado Rockies, is now largest fire in that
state's history.
All occurred during a heat wave that broke temperature records from
Texas to Washington state. Death Valley, Calif., reached 130 degrees
Fahrenheit, a temperature, if verified, that would rank as one of the
hottest ever reliably recorded on the planet. At the same time,
scientists are warning that Colorado and much of the Western U.S. may be
in the early stages of a climate-fueled megadrought, the likes of which
haven't been seen in the last 1,200 years.
"When you have warmer temperatures and you're lengthening the warm
season, you're also lengthening the time when wildfires have a chance to
start and grow," says Becky Bolinger, Colorado's assistant state
climatologist.
The fire season is growing at a time when more people are in harm's way.
Millions of houses in the Western U.S. have been built in fire-prone
areas, many before building codes required fire-resistant roofs and
siding. Many landscapes are also primed to burn because of overgrown
brush and trees. For much of the last century, the U.S. Forest Service
and other fire agencies extinguished wildfires, allowing vegetation to
build up.
Experts say that living with both destructive wildfires and hurricanes
will take more planning and preparation. Communities will have to
strengthen existing homes and infrastructure, as well as improve
evacuation and emergency plans. Some neighborhoods could prove too
unsafe for residents at all.
How bad it eventually gets depends on how quickly the world can reduce
carbon emissions. But the past weeks should make clear: "Climate change
and its impacts are not the future," says Crystal Kolden, a fire
scientist at the University of California, Merced. "They are now."
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/28/905622947/everything-is-unprecedented-welcome-to-your-hotter-earth
- -
[night video footage]
*Extreme Hurricane Laura Footage - 4K UHD*
Tornado Trackers
Aug 28, 2020
Category 4 Hurricane Laura as seen from Lake Charles, LA on August
26-27, 2020. Winds of over 140+mph ripped the city apart in the middle
of the night as our team hunkered down in a parking garage during the
worst of the storm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEAp85tMdAM
- -
[unique satellite image from way above]
*Hurricane Laura churning over the Gulf of Mexico overnight as lightning
strikes.*
Gif: Dakota Smith/CIRA/NOAA
https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/urxsba9cnkrqusgi1dv9.webm
- -
[7 min video documentary news report]
*Hurricane Laura causes widespread destruction in Louisiana and Texas |
DW News*
Aug 28, 2020
DW News
Recovery efforts are underway in the southern US after one of the most
powerful storms in years. Hurricane Laura left at least six people dead
after smashing into Louisiana with winds of 240 kilometers an hour.
Meteorologists have downgraded it to a tropical storm that threatens to
bring strong winds, rain and tornadoes as it moves northeast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0ZPA2DO0e0
- -
[Yale and Jeff Masters]
*Climate change is causing more rapid intensification of Atlantic
hurricanes *
Rapidly intensifying storms like Hurricanes Laura, Michael, and Harvey
are dangerous because they can catch forecasters and the public off
guard.By Jeff Masters, Ph.D. | Thursday, August 27, 2020
Hurricane Laura put on a phenomenal show of rapid intensification prior
to landfall, increasing in strength by 65 mph in just 24 hours on August
26, 2020. That ties Hurricane Karl of 2010 for fastest intensification
rate in the Gulf of Mexico on record. In the 24 hours prior to landfall,
Laura's winds increased by 45 mph, and the mighty hurricane made
landfall in western Louisiana as a category 4 storm with 150 mph winds -
the strongest landfalling hurricane in Louisiana history, and the
fifth-strongest hurricane on record to make a continental U.S. landfall.
Laura's rapid intensification was a disturbing déjà vu of what had
happened just two years earlier.
*Analysis*
As Hurricane Michael sped northwards on October 9, 2018, towards a
catastrophic landfall on Florida's Panhandle, the mighty hurricane made
an exceptionally rapid intensification. Michael's winds increased by 45
mph in the final 24 hours before landfall, taking it from a low-end
category 3 hurricane with 115 mph winds to catastrophic category 5 storm
with 160 mph winds. And Michael's performance echoed what had happened
in 2017, when Hurricane Harvey rapidly intensified by 40 mph in the 24
hours before landfall, from a Category 1 storm with 90 mph winds to a
Category 4 storm with 130 mph winds.
*Human-caused climate change causing more rapidly intensifying Atlantic
hurricanes*
Unfortunately, not only is human-caused climate change making the
strongest hurricanes stronger, it is also making dangerous rapidly
intensifying hurricanes like Laura and Michael and Harvey more common.
According to research published in 2019 in Nature Communications,
Atlantic hurricanes showed "highly unusual" upward trends in rapid
intensification during the period 1982 - 2009, trends that can be
explained only by including human-caused climate change as a
contributing cause. The largest change occurred in the strongest 5% of
storms: for those, 24-hour intensification rates increased by about 3 -
4 mph per decade between 1982 - 2009.
Led by hurricane scientist Kieran Bhatia of NOAA's Geophysical Fluid
Dynamics Laboratory - and titled "Recent increases in tropical cyclone
intensification rates" - the study used the HiFLOR model to simulate
intense hurricanes. HiFLOR is widely accepted as the best
high-resolution global climate model for simulating intense hurricanes.
*Dangerous scenario - rapidly intensifying hurricane making landfall*
Rapidly intensifying hurricanes like Michael and Harvey that strengthen
just before landfall are among the most dangerous storms, as they can
catch forecasters and populations off guard, risking inadequate
evacuation efforts and large casualties. A particular concern is that
intensification rate increases are not linear as the intensity of a
storm increases - they increase by the square power of the intensity.
Lack of warning and rapid intensification just before landfall were key
reasons for the high death toll from the 1935 Labor Day hurricane in the
Florida Keys, the most intense hurricane on record to hit the U.S. That
storm intensified by 80 mph in the 24 hours before landfall, and it
topped out as a Category 5 hurricane with 185 mph winds and an 892 mb
pressure at landfall. At least 408 people were killed, making it the
eighth-deadliest hurricane in U.S. history.
Another rapidly intensifying hurricane at landfall, Hurricane Audrey in
June 1957, tracked on nearly the same course as Hurricane Laura. Audrey
was the seventh deadliest U.S. hurricane, killing at least 416. Its
winds increased by 35 mph in the 24 hours before landfall near the
Texas/Louisiana border as a Category 3 hurricane with 125 mph winds.
Lack of warning and an unexpectedly intense landfall were cited as key
reasons for the high death toll.
With today's satellites, radar, regular hurricane hunter flights, and
advanced computer forecast models, the danger that another Audrey or
1935 Labor Day hurricane could take us by surprise is lower.
But all of that sophisticated technology didn't help much for 2007's
Hurricane Humberto, which hit Texas as a Category 1 storm with 90 mph
winds. Humberto had the most rapid increase in intensity, 65 mph, in the
24 hours before landfall of any Atlantic hurricane since 1950. A mere 18
hours before landfall, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in 2007 had
predicted a landfall intensity of just 45 mph, increasing its forecast
estimate to 65 mph six hours later. It's fortunate that Humberto was not
a stronger system, as the lack of adequate warning could have led to
serious losses of life.
Historical records show that since 1950, the eight storms have
intensified by at least 40 mph in the 24 hours before landfall. It is
sobering to see three of those storms, below in bold face, occurred in
the past four years:
Humberto, 2007 (65 mph increase);
King 1950 (60 mph increase);
Eloise 1975 (60 mph increase);
Danny 1997 (50 mph increase);
*Laura 2020 (45 mph increase);**
**Michael 2018 (45 mph increase);**
**Harvey 2017 (40 mph increase);* and
Cindy 2005 (40 mph increase).
*Extreme rapid intensification rates just before landfall to become more
common*
In a 2016 study - "Will Global Warming Make Hurricane Forecasting More
Difficult?" from the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society -
MIT hurricane scientist Kerry Emanuel used a computer model that
generated a set of 22,000 landfalling U.S. hurricanes between 1979 and
2005. Emanuel then compared their intensification rates to a similar set
of hurricanes generated in the climate expected at the end of the 21st
century.
For the future climate, he assumed a business-as-usual approach to
climate change - the path we are currently on. Emanuel found that the
odds of a hurricane intensifying by 70 mph or more in the 24 hours just
before landfall were about once every 100 years in the climate of the
late 20th century. But in the climate of the year 2100, these odds
increased to once every 5 - 10 years.
What's more, 24-hour pre-landfall intensifications of 115 mph or more,
essentially nonexistent in the late 20th-century climate, would occur as
often as once every 100 years by the year 2100. Emanuel found that major
metropolitan areas most at risk for extreme intensification rates just
before landfall included Houston, New Orleans, Tampa/St. Petersburg, and
Miami.
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/0820_Fig1_haiyan_7nov13_1616Z_Iband5.png
Figure 1. VIIRS image of Super Typhoon Haiyan at 1619 UTC November 7,
2013. Haiyan at that point was about to make landfall near Tacloban in
the Philippines with 190 mph winds, the strongest land-falling tropical
cyclone in recorded history. (Image credit: NOAA/CIRA)
*Eight-fold increase in ultra-intense hurricanes predicted*
The same HiFLOR high-resolution global climate model for simulating
intense hurricanes referenced above produced some rather startling
findings detailed in a 2018 paper, Projected Response of Tropical
Cyclone Intensity and Intensification in a Global Climate Model.
The scientists who authored that paper forecast a dramatic increase in
the global incidence of rapid intensification as a result of global
warming, and a 20% increase in the number of major hurricanes globally.
For the Atlantic, the model projected an increase from three major
hurricanes per year in the climate of the late 20th century, to five
major hurricanes per year in the climate of the late 21st century.
The HiFLOR model also predicted a highly concerning increase in
ultra-intense Category 5 tropical cyclones with winds of at least 190
mph - from an average of about one of these Super Typhoon Haiyan-like
storms occurring once every eight years globally in the climate of the
late 20th century, to one such megastorm per year between 2081 to 2100 -
a factor of eight increase.
Even more concerning was that the results of the study were for a
middle-of-the road global warming scenario (called RCP 4.5), which
civilization will have to work very hard to achieve. Under the current
business-as-usual track, the model would be expected to predict an even
higher increase in ultra-intense tropical cyclones.
One technique for computing hurricane damage uses ICAT's damage
estimator to review all contiguous land-falling U.S. hurricanes between
1900 - 2017. That technique computes the amount of damage they would do
currently and corrects for changes in wealth and population. It finds
that while Category 4 and 5 hurricanes made up only 13% of all U.S.
hurricane landfalls during that period, they caused 52% of all the
hurricane damage.
Given that assessment, it's very concerning that the HiFLOR model, the
best model for simulating current and future behavior of Category 4 and
5 hurricanes, is predicting a large increase in the number of these
destructive storms. Even more concerning is the model's prediction of a
global factor of eight increase in catastrophic Category 5 storms with
winds of at least 190 mph by the end of the century - and that under a
moderate global warming scenario.
All of which leads to the regrettable conclusion that the prospects for
quickly intensifying storms as they approach landfall are likely to
increase in a warming world.
Website visitors can comment on "Eye on the Storm" posts (see below).
Please read our Comments Policy prior to posting. (See all EOTS posts
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Posted August 27, 2020, at 3:56 p.m. EDT.
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/08/climate-change-is-causing-more-rapid-intensification-of-atlantic-hurricanes/
[The Trouble - ]
*The Strategic Case for Animal Liberation*
Ecosocialists view animal rights as the third rail of climate politics.
The opposite is true...
Dayton Martindale - August 28, 2020
For many on the left, even those sympathetic, animal advocacy simply
isn't a high priority. But if the climate left does not start engaging
seriously with animal politics, we will be caught flat-footed in some of
the most important debates of the coming decades, . Two dilemmas will
inevitably arise: first, in confronting the meat question, and second,
in wildlife conservation: the potential conflicts between climate action
and endangered species, climate impacts on biodiversity, and the role of
protecting and restoring habitat in sequestering carbon.
The pandemic illustrates the consequences of sidelining these issues.
Most infectious diseases, COVID-19 among them, first reach humans
through contact with other animals; habitat disruption and animal
farming thus play key roles in the spread and mutation of disease.
- -
This narrative may be better for humans, too. Scholars of feminism,
critical race theory and disability studies have all explored how the
material and ideological infrastructure of human supremacy also
reinforces other social hierarchies; all of our liberation, they argue,
may be intertwined.
Of course, not everyone will agree. Some indigenous groups, for
instance, offer worldviews that reject both human supremacy and
veganism, and these views must be taken seriously. (Though as vegan
Mi'kmaq scholar Margaret Robinson observes, "There is no view on animals
that is shared by all Aboriginal people." ) And many, for health or
other reasons, cannot immediately stop eating animals, though much of
this could be addressed through structural changes to the food system.
Policy, ideology, and personal consumption, can work in a positive
feedback loop, each reinforcing transformations in the others.
Climate organizations need Zoom book clubs to discuss ideas, working
groups to develop policies, principles, and strategies on justice for
nonhuman animals. Groups can invite local animal rights organizations to
actions and meetings to generate good will and begin the
cross-pollination of ideas, broadening our coalition.
We can fight harder for the political changes we already agree on--an
end to factory farming, stronger protection of endangered species,
funding to make healthy, sustainably grown produce more widespread and
accessible to all. We can organize with slaughterhouse workers and
animal farmers against their abusive corporate bosses, for a just
transition and green jobs guarantee. And we can try to start consciously
thinking of the nonhuman animals in our lives--from the dogs in our
homes to the pigeons on the street to the deer in the woods--not as
objects but subjects, fellow travelers through an uncertain era whose
desires for food, shelter, companionship, and freedom may not be that
different from our own.
Dayton Martindale is a writer and founding member of the Democratic
Socialists of America Animal Liberation Working Group. His work has
appeared in In These Times, Earth Island Journal, Boston Review,
Harbinger and The Next System Project. Follow him on Twitter:
@DaytonRMartind.
https://www.the-trouble.com/content/2020/8/28/the-strategic-case-for-animal-liberation
[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - August 29, 2005 *
In a Huffington Post piece, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. notes the irony of
Hurricane Katrina assaulting the Gulf Coast just a few years after the
Bush administration decided to give preferential treatment to the fossil
fuel industry with regard to energy policy.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - Contributor
President, Waterkeeper Alliance; Senior Attorney, NRDC
*"For They That Sow the Wind Shall Reap the Whirlwind"*
As Hurricane Katrina dismantles Mississippi's Gulf Coast, it's worth
recalling the central role that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour
played in derailing the Kyoto Protocol and kiboshing President
Bush's iron-clad campaign promise to regulate CO2.
In March of 2001, just two days after EPA Administrator Christie
Todd Whitman's strong statement affirming Bush's CO2 promise former
RNC Chief Barbour responded with an urgent memo to the White House.
Barbour, who had served as RNC Chair and Bush campaign strategist,
was now representing the president's major donors from the fossil
fuel industry who had enlisted him to map a Bush energy policy that
would be friendly to their interests. His credentials ensured the
new administration's attention.
The document, titled "Bush-Cheney Energy Policy & CO2," was
addressed to Vice President Cheney, whose energy task force was then
gearing up, and to several high-ranking officials with strong
connections to energy and automotive concerns keenly interested in
the carbon dioxide issue, including Energy Secretary Spencer
Abraham, Interior Secretary Gale Norton, Commerce Secretary Don
Evans, White House chief of staff Andy Card and legislative liaison
Nick Calio. Barbour pointedly omitted the names of Whitman and
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, both of whom were on record
supporting CO2 caps. Barbour's memo chided these administration
insiders for trying to address global warming which Barbour
dismissed as a radical fringe issue.
"A moment of truth is arriving," Barbour wrote, "in the form of a
decision whether this Administration's policy will be to regulate
and/or tax CO2 as a pollutant. The question is whether environmental
policy still prevails over energy policy with Bush-Cheney, as it did
with Clinton-Gore." He derided the idea of regulating CO2 as
"eco-extremism," and chided them for allowing environmental concerns
to "trump good energy policy, which the country has lacked for eight
years."
The memo had impact. "It was terse and highly effective, written for
people without much time by a person who controls the purse strings
for the Republican Party," said John Walke, a high-ranking air
quality official in the Clinton administration.
On March 13, Bush reversed his previous position, announcing he
would not back a CO2 restriction using the language and rationale
provided by Barbour. Echoing Barbour's memo, Bush said he opposed
mandatory CO2 caps, due to "the incomplete state of scientific
knowledge" about global climate change.
Well, the science is clear. This month, a study published in the
journal Nature by a renowned MIT climatologist linked the increasing
prevalence of destructive hurricanes to human-induced global warming.
Now we are all learning what it's like to reap the whirlwind of
fossil fuel dependence which Barbour and his cronies have
encouraged. Our destructive addiction has given us a catastrophic
war in the Middle East and--now--Katrina is giving our nation a
glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children.
In 1998, Republican icon Pat Robertson warned that hurricanes were
likely to hit communities that offended God. Perhaps it was
Barbour's memo that caused Katrina, at the last moment, to spare New
Orleans and save its worst flailings for the Mississippi coast.
[UPDATE: Alas, the reprieve for New Orleans was only temporary.
But Haley Barbour still has much to answer for.]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/for-they-that-sow-the-win_b_6396.html
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