[TheClimate.Vote] December 2, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Wed Dec 2 12:36:54 EST 2020
/*December 2, 2020*/
[According to the Atlantic]
*The Weekly Planet: The Best Way to Donate to Fight Climate Change
(Probably)*
These are the most effective carbon offsets and climate-advocacy groups,
according to a new evidence-based group.
ROBINSON MEYER
There are at least 461 nonprofits in the United States devoted to
environmental causes, according to the evaluator Charity Navigator. Not
all of them approach climate change effectively, or even do what they
claim to. The green-nonprofit world is a thicket, contained in a morass,
reachable only by slog...
- -
Giving Green advises people on how to fight climate change with their
donations in the most evidence-based way possible. It emerged from beta
and published new recommendations last month. Because today is Giving
Tuesday--the capstone of America’s ersatz Holy Week and the only square
on the calendar devoted to philanthropy--I wanted to look at those
recommendations.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/12/how-to-donate-to-fight-climate-change-effectively/617248/
- -
[Check for a donation target]*
**How can I fight climate change? *
Giving Green is an evidence-based guide to help donors and volunteers
fight climate change...
Giving Green's mission is to direct donors and volunteers towards
evidence-backed projects that combat the climate crisis.
Knowing that we don’t have a minute or dollar to waste, we provide a
guide to help people identify the highest-impact ways that they can
fight the climate crisis.
https://www.givinggreen.earth/
- -
https://www.givinggreen.earth/recommendations
[Melting permafrost giving up secrets]
*The mystery of Siberia’s exploding craters*
By Richard Gray - 30th November 2020
From the air, the freshly exposed dirt stands out against the green
tundra and dark lakes around it. The layers of earth and rock exposed
further inside the cylindrical hole are almost black and a pool of water
is already forming at the bottom by the time scientists reach it.
https://ychef.files.bbci.co.uk/1600x900/p09017gy.webp
Among them is Evgeny Chuvilin, a geologist at the Skolkovo Institute of
Science and Technology, based in Moscow, Russia, who has flown out to
this remote corner of the Yamal Peninsula in north-west Siberia to take
a look. This 164-foot-deep (50m) hole could hold key parts of a puzzle
that has been bothering him for the past six years since the first of
these mysterious holes was discovered elsewhere on the Yamal Peninsula.
That hole, which was around 66ft (20m) wide and up to 171ft (52m) deep,
was discovered by helicopter pilots passing overhead in 2014, around 26
miles (42km) from the Bovanenkovo gas field on the Yamal Peninsula. The
scientists who visited it - including Mariana Leibman, chief scientist
of the Earth Cryosphere Institute, who has been studying the permafrost
in Siberia for more than 40 years - described it as an entirely new
feature in permafrost. Analysis of satellite images later revealed that
crater - now known as GEC-1 - formed sometime between 9 October and 1
November 2013.
The latest crater was spotted in August this year by a TV crew as they
flew past with a team of scientists from the Russian Academy of Sciences
during an expedition with local authorities in Yamal. It brings the
total number of confirmed craters to have been discovered on Yamal and
the neighbouring Gydan Peninsula to 17.
https://ychef.files.bbci.co.uk/1600x900/p090189d.webp
- -
"Analysis based on satellite imagery shows that a blast makes a giant
hole in the place of a pingo, or mound," says Chuvilin. Pingos are
dome-shaped hills that form when a layer of frozen ground is pushed up
by water that has managed to flow underneath it and started to freeze.
As the water freezes, it expands to create a mound. Also known in Russia
by the local Yakut name "bulgunnyakhs", they tend to rise and fall with
the seasons. Some in Canada have been found to be up to 1,200 years old.
In most parts of the Arctic, however, these mounds tend to eventually
collapse in on themselves rather than explode.
- -
Retracing the evolution of these mounds and how the gas gets there is
now an intense source of study. "It is intriguing that there could be a
new or previously unknown geochemical process happening that we would
never have imagined," says Natali.
Researchers brave enough to abseil down into the craters have found
elevated levels of methane in the water pooling at the bottom,
suggesting the gas may be bubbling up from below. One leading theory is
that these deep deposits of methane gas under the permafrost find their
way up to the unfrozen pocket of ground beneath the icy cap. Another
idea is that high levels of carbon dioxide dissolved in the water in
these unfrozen pockets begins to bubble out as the water starts to
freeze, and the remaining water cannot hold onto the dissolved gas...
- -
Regardless of the source, it is thought that the gas builds up in the
unfrozen pocket of ground, pushing the solid tabular ice cap upwards by
16-19ft (5-6m) until it ruptures like a boil. (While graphic, the
furuncle analogy is not a bad one - much like internet users are
fascinated by videos of pimple popping, so some scientists find
themselves drawn to the Yamal craters. "It was the combination of the
unknown and risk related to these craters that attracted me," admits
Natali.)
When they finally burst, they certainly appear to be spectacular. Mud
and ice above the gas-filled pocket, along with much of the material in
the unfrozen section itself, is flung outwards up to 980ft (300m) away.
The force is so great that blocks of earth up to 3ft (1m) across are
thrown outwards, leaving a crater with a raised parapet, a wide mouth
and a narrower cylindrical hole - thought to be the unfrozen pocket - is
left behind. Local reindeer herders reported seeing flames and smoke
after one crater explosion in June 2017 along the banks of the
Myudriyakha River. Villagers in nearby Seyakha - a settlement about 20.5
miles (33km) south of the crater - claimed the gas kept burning for
about 90 minutes and the flames reached 13-16ft (4-5m) high.
- -
Unravelling exactly how common these craters are is currently a slow
process. After their violent birth, most seem to disappear into the
landscape almost as quickly - the void left by the explosion near
Seyakha - which measured 70m (230ft) wide in places and more than 50m
(164ft) deep - flooded with water in just four days due to its proximity
to the river. This transition from hole to lake seems to be a rather
innocuous end to a dramatic event.
Other craters take longer to flood, but over a year or two the edges of
the dark, angry wound erode and they fill with water to become almost
indistinguishable from the thousands of other small round lakes - known
as thermokarst lakes - that dot the landscape. Exactly how many of these
lakes are the scars of gas emission craters is still unclear...
- -
Finding out just how common these events are is driven by more than
simple curiosity. There are growing concerns that the appearance of the
craters in north-west Siberia might be related to wider changes taking
place in the Arctic due to climate change.
- -
Trapped inside the Arctic permafrost are huge amounts of carbon - about
twice as much as the amount currently in the atmosphere. It is mostly in
the form of the frozen remains of plants and other organic material,
along with methane that has become trapped inside ice crystals - the gas
hydrates that Chuvilin mentions earlier. As the ground thaws, it allows
microorganisms to break down the organic matter, releasing methane and
carbon dioxide as byproducts, while the methane trapped in the ice also
breaks free.
As a potent greenhouse gas, this methane leaking out of permafrost has
the potential to accelerate global warming and so drive even more melting.
But in Yamal, the craters have raised the prospect of another process
that is adding even more uncertainty to the complex feedback loop
between rising temperatures, permafrost thaw and the release of
greenhouse gases. If it turns out that methane deposits trapped deep
underground by the permafrost are starting to seep upwards through the
normally impenetrable permafrost layers, it could be a sign that the
frozen ice cap over the tundra is becoming more permeable. This could
introduce new levels of uncertainty over how changes in the Arctic are
likely to impact wider global warming on the planet.
"The craters are a very shocking indicator of what is happening in the
Arctic more widely," says Natali. "When you look at changes that are
happening across this landscape, some are occurring gradually and others
abruptly. Very few are occurring explosively, but it brings attention to
how all these changes contribute to the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere."
While the mystery of Yamal’s craters is still to be completely solved,
what has been unravelled so far suggests that perhaps we should be
watching them carefully in the future.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201130-climate-change-the-mystery-of-siberias-explosive-craters
- -
[proper framing]
*Should it be called "natural gas" or "methane"?*
We are pleased to announce a new study of Americans’ perceptions of
natural gas. Natural gas is composed of 70-90% methane, a potent
greenhouse gas and major contributor to global warming. The American
public perceives "natural gas" much more favorably (76% favorable) than
other fossil fuels like oil (51% ) or coal (39%). They also believe
natural gas is much less harmful to human health than is coal or oil.
How much does natural gas benefit from its name, which includes the word
"natural"? To answer this question, we conducted an experiment to
investigate the public’s emotions and associations regarding the terms
"natural gas" and "methane." We randomly assigned respondents to one of
four conditions in which each respondent was asked to rate their
positive and negative feelings (affect) about one of the following four
terms: "natural gas," "natural methane gas," "methane," or "methane gas."
We found that the term "natural gas" evokes much more positive feelings
than do any of the three methane terms. Conversely, the terms "methane"
and "methane gas" evoke much more negative feelings than does "natural
gas."
- -
Finally, the pattern of feelings about the four different terms is
similar for both Democrats and Republicans, although overall, Democrats
have relatively more negative feelings about all four terms.
Next, we asked respondents: "When you think of [natural gas / natural
methane gas / methane / methane gas], what is the first [then second,
then third] word or phrase that comes to your mind?" Each participant
could provide up to three such associations.
Overall, "natural gas" generated the most associations to themes like
energy, clean, fuel, and cooking.
By contrast, "methane," "methane gas," and "natural methane gas"
generated the most associations to themes like gas, cows, greenhouse,
global warming, and climate change.
This experiment found that the American public has very different
feelings about and associations to "natural gas" than they do to
"methane" even though natural gas is composed primarily of methane.
"Methane" and "methane gas" generate much stronger negative feelings and
associations to pollution than does "natural gas" and this effect is
consistent across political parties. These findings indicate that the
terms used to communicate about this fossil fuel can have dramatically
different effects.
https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/should-it-be-called-natural-gas-or-methane/
[radical right social media site]
*Parler is fertile ground for climate denialism, experts worry*
Corbin Hiar, E&E News reporter
Published: Monday, November 30, 2020
Democrats rigged the presidential election, Black Lives Matter
supporters worship violence and rolling lockdowns will continue
indefinitely, according to false and widely read posts on Parler, a
2-year-old social network that has exploded in popularity in recent weeks.
Misinformation about climate science is also present on the
conservative-dominated social network, although it's not a frequent
topic of discussion.
But climate activists aren't ignoring Parler and the role it could play
in promoting disinformation and radicalization. The Twitter-like site is
growing exponentially and conspiracies that start on niche social media
networks have the potential to spread into the mainstream, experts warned.
"Everyone is preaching to the choir" on Parler, said Bridget Barrett,
who researches online political messaging at the University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill. "Look for when the sermon changes."
Parler can be used "as a bellwether to see if climate denial is picking
up," the UNC academic said.
That's not easy to do. "The free speech social network," as Parler
describes itself, shows its content chronologically and the only search
tools it has for finding new or trending information on topics like
climate change are hashtags such as #climatescam. That's one of only
five climate-related hashtags that had been used more than 1,000 times
as of yesterday afternoon.
By comparison, the election conspiracy hashtag #stopthesteal had been
affixed to over 324,000 parleys, as Parler refers to posts on the site.
The vast majority of the climate-tagged content reviewed by E&E News was
full of misinformation. That's even true for the other popular and less
obviously loaded climate hashtags: #climate, #climatechange,
#globalwarming and #climatecrisis...
- -
"We don't know how big it's going to be five years from now," said Eric
Heinze, a law professor at Queen Mary University of London. "We don't
know how it might start interfacing subtly with Twitter or Facebook.
There are so many unknowns. So I'd be cautious about dismissing it."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2020/11/30/stories/1063719415
[women at Extinction Rebellion in moderate conversation]
*Impossible Human - Episode 1 | Extinction Rebellion UK*
Premiered Dec 1, 2020
Extinction Rebellion
Impossible Human: three conversations exploring change, vision,
surrender, and living with Earth
Impossible Human is a look into visionary cultures and social change.
Delving into the potential of this liminal moment to ask how we might
respond to our times and face into the future together. How can we light
the path for the future and write a new story?
Hosted by Skeena Rathor, Extinction Rebellion Co-Founder Vision and
Co-Liberation Team, and Social Change Journalist Kary Stewart
Cassandra Vieten is a Scholar-in-Residence at the Arthur C. Clarke
Centre for Human Imagination, University of California, and a Senior
Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences.
In this first episode of Impossible Human Cassandra speaks with us about
fear and panic and how it might be sabotaging Extinction Rebellion as a
movement. Could affirming a positive vision be the most sophisticated
action any of us can take right now?
The way that we view the world, what we think is possible, what we
believe is possible, what we intend, what we pay attention to, these all
actually shape our perception of reality and in many ways shape the future.
Streaming on Extinction Rebellion Facebook & Youtube.
#socialchange #skeenarathor #consciouness #evolvinghumans #newparadigms
#consciounessupgrade #xr #xrimpossiblehuman #impossiblehuman
More info: https://www.facebook.com/xrimpossible...
And watch the trailer here: https://fb.watch/1--GlZIPgJ/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rS9a7aUJ00Y
[Two old guys - revered experts fret]
*Arctic Blue Ocean Event - Going, Going Gone*
Dec 1, 2020
Facing Future
Dr. Peter Wadhams, eminent exploratory ice scientist and emeritus
Cambridge professor of Polar Ice Physics, is with us again to discuss
the situation in the polar regions, and the approaching Arctic
#BlueOceanEvent (BOE), and some of its many ramifications. The BOE is
defined as less than 100,000 square km of ice in the Arctic ocean at the
annual low point, usually September. An increasing number of estimates
by scientific bodies places the first BOE since humans have walked the
Earth within the next few years. After that, it's a downhill slide
unless we can figure out how to refreeze the Arctic.
The Arctic may be far from where you and I live, but the disappearance
of Arctic ice will have vastly more far-reaching impacts in space and
time than that. It basically will knock us silly, as it makes it
progressively more difficult for humanity to grow enough food to feed
itself. Once BOE occurs in some not very far away September, it will
gradually spread to other months, and it will constitute
#ClimateFeedback of similarly huge consequences, the flipping of the
reflectance (or 'albeido') of the Arctic from net reflector to net
absorber of the sun's heating rays.
We are, with our daily actions, creating a hell on Earth for our
children. We are aware of it, even those who deny it, but we are locked
into a system that ignores our imminent danger for the sake of
continuing our comfortable lifestyles, and participating in a
socio-economic system engineered to benefit the banks and the wealthy
few at the expense of the rest of us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUzokM-WTZ0
[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - December 2, 1970 *
The United States Environmental Protection Agency is established.
http://www2.epa.gov/aboutepa/epa-history
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/
/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 mailing is text-only. It does not carry
images or attachments which may originate from remote servers. A
text-only message can 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/20201202/afbbf10e/attachment.html>
More information about the TheClimate.Vote
mailing list