[TheClimate.Vote] December 16, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Wed Dec 16 09:36:04 EST 2020

/*December 16, 2020*/

[Experienced choice]
*Biden to Name Gina McCarthy, Former E.P.A. Chief, as White House 
Climate Coordinator*
Ms. McCarthy will serve as a senior adviser to President-elect Joseph R. 
Biden Jr., coordinating climate change policy throughout the government.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/15/climate/gina-mccarthy-biden-climate.html

[NPR]
*U.N. Report: In The Age Of Humans, 'The Dominant Risk To Our Survival 
Is Ourselves'*
December 15, 2020
"Warning lights — for our societies and the planet — are flashing red." 
That's according to a new report from the United Nations Development 
Programme.

The report notes that COVID-19 has thrived "in the cracks in societies, 
exploiting and exacerbating myriad inequalities in human development."

While the pandemic has dominated much of the world's attention in 2020, 
the report notes that existing crises continue: a historically intense 
Atlantic hurricane season, raging wildfires on different continents, 
animal species dying off in what some experts believe is a mass species 
extinction event....
- -
"We are not the last generation of the Anthropocene; we are the first to 
recognize it," he writes. "We are the explorers, the innovators who get 
to decide what this — the first generation of the Anthropocene — will be 
remembered for."
https://www.npr.org/2020/12/15/946765066/un-report-in-the-age-of-humans-the-dominant-risk-to-our-survival-is-ourselves

- -

[source: UN DP report]
*The Next Frontier*
*Human development and the Anthropocene*
Overview 
http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/hdr_2020_overview_english.pdf
Full Report http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/hdr2020.pdf

[follow the money in corporate governance]
*Climate crisis: FTSE giants fail to disclose their carbon footprint*
BP, Glencore, Rolls-Royce, Just Eat and B&M among last eight firms yet 
to provide investors with information
BP, Glencore and Rolls-Royce are among eight FTSE 100 companies who have 
refused to comply with investor demands to disclose their carbon dioxide 
emissions, as the UK government prepares to compel firms to report their 
climate impact.

Companies are coming under increasing pressure from shareholders, 
campaigners and governments to report climate data, and show how they 
intend to reduce emissions to help tackle the climate crisis.

Ninety-two of the UK’s blue-chip companies have so far provided data to 
CDP, the non-governmental group that requests data on behalf of 
investors. The other laggards who have not reported data included 
Melrose, the engineering company, and B&M, the fast-growing discount 
retailer...
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/dec/13/climate-crisis-ftse-giants-fail-to-disclose-their-carbon-footprint

[article in Barons]
*GE Released a Manifesto for Climate Change. It Involves Hydrogen.*
By Al Root
Dec. 15, 2020
General Electric released a kind of manifesto for climate change 
Tuesday. It lays out a plan to help the world dramatically cut its 
carbon emissions while meeting its growing demand for power. Renewable 
technology plays a big role, but so does natural gas and eventually even 
hydrogen gas.

Manifesto is a charged word. And there are some big ideas in General 
Electric’s (ticker: GE) white paper even though the title is somewhat 
benign: “Renewables and Gas Power Can Rapidly Change the Trajectory on 
Climate Change.”...
https://www.barrons.com/articles/ge-climate-plan-focuses-on-renewables-gas-power-51608034500

[Future]
*6 Arizona counties may be uninhabitable in next 30 years due to climate 
change, study shows*
"All of the problems that we're confronting today are also environmental 
problems," Prof. Kathy Jacobs, Director of the Center for Climate 
Adaptation Science, said.
ARIZONA, USA — Six of Arizona's counties are at risk of being 
uninhabitable in the near future due to climate change, a ProPublica and 
Rhodium Group study found.

The study predicted which counties in the U.S. would face climate change 
issues to the point of having an uninhabitable climate for humans in the 
next 20 to 40 years by combining multiple metrics.

The Arizona counties listed, which included Pinal, Graham, Cochise, 
Mohave, Yuma and Maricopa, were among the top 100 most at-risk counties 
in the United States. For context, there are 3,700 counties in the nation.

The study's findings listed Pinal County in Arizona as the second most 
at-risk county in the United States of being uninhabitable.

Why are Arizona counties so at risk?
Arizona faces specific challenges in the near future when it comes to 
climate change, according to the study.

The study created multiple climate maps showing the changes in rising 
temperatures, rainfall, wildfire frequency, humidity, sea level rises, 
agriculture yields and economic damages in the United States' counties.

Pinal County faces major challenges when it comes to heat, farm crop 
yields, wildfires and economic damages due to climate change, which gave 
it a No. 2 spot on the list. ..
https://www.12news.com/article/weather/heat/six-arizona-counties-at-high-risk-of-being-uninhabitable-by-2040-due-to-climate-change-rhodium-group-study-shows-pinal-graham-cochise-maricopa-yuma/75-24d65d75-00fc-4007-ae4c-2aa4e15c1550

[Mental health for youth and parents - some information, not advice]
*Eco distress: for young people*
This webpage is aimed at young people and is about eco distress – it 
explains how understanding the distress and having some tools to cope 
with it can help people feel better and take action at the same time.
https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mental-health/parents-and-young-people/young-people/eco-distress---for-young-people
- -
*Eco distress: for parents and carers *[caregivers]
This webpage is for parents and carers, as well as teachers and others 
who support children and young people, to help you understand what eco 
distress is, how to recognise if your child is experiencing eco 
distress, and provide some suggestions to help them cope with their 
feelings.
https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mental-health/parents-and-young-people/information-for-parents-and-carers/eco-distress---for-parents-and-carers

[come again?]
*New climate models suggest faster melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet*
15 December 2020
Modelling the Greenland ice sheet
To capture the full range of possibilities for the Greenland ice sheet 
over the coming century, the study explores a range of warming scenarios 
known as representative concentration pathways (RCPs).

Each RCP scenario details a different climate “forcing” – the extra 
amount of energy in the Earth’s system as a result of human activity. A 
higher forcing results in a greater rise in global temperature.

The study focuses on three of these scenarios: RCP8.5, RCP4.5 and 
RCP2.6. They describe, respectively, a baseline scenario of very high 
emissions, an intermediate scenario that broadly matches the trajectory 
the world is likely to follow in the coming decades, and a stringent 
mitigation scenario that limits warming to 2C.

The researchers use two sets of climate models from the Coupled Model 
Intercomparison Project (CMIP), a global modelling effort. These are 
taken from the latest CMIP6 suite of models and the older CMIP5 suite.

One key difference in CMIP6 is that it uses five “shared socioeconomic 
pathways” (SSPs), which are socioeconomic narratives that go alongside 
the RCPs...
- -
Furthermore, the melt season – the days in which melting is greater than 
accumulation and surface mass balance is decreasing – starts seven days 
earlier and extends 15 days longer in CMIP6 than in CMIP5, the paper says.

Most of this change is due to a greater melting intensity, the authors 
note, with little difference in accumulation noticed between CMIP5 and 
CMIP6. This suggests that the increased temperatures and Arctic 
amplification are the main factors driving the increased melting from 
the Greenland ice sheet, they conclude...
https://www.carbonbrief.org/new-climate-models-suggest-faster-melting-of-the-greenland-ice-sheet

- -

[source matter]
*Greater Greenland Ice Sheet contribution to global sea level rise in CMIP6*
Stefan Hofer, Charlotte Lang, Charles Amory, Christoph Kittel, Alison 
Delhasse, Andrew Tedstone & Xavier Fettweis
Nature Communications volume 11, Article number: 6289
Abstract
Future climate projections show a marked increase in Greenland Ice Sheet 
(GrIS) runoff during the 21st century, a direct consequence of the Polar 
Amplification signal. Regional climate models (RCMs) are a widely used 
tool to downscale ensembles of projections from global climate models 
(GCMs) to assess the impact of global warming on GrIS melt and sea level 
rise contribution. Initial results of the CMIP6 GCM model 
intercomparison project have revealed a greater 21st century temperature 
rise than in CMIP5 models. However, so far very little is known about 
the subsequent impacts on the future GrIS surface melt and therefore sea 
level rise contribution. Here, we show that the total GrIS sea level 
rise contribution from surface mass loss in our high-resolution (15 km) 
regional climate projections is 17.8  ±  7.8 cm in SSP585, 7.9 cm more 
than in our RCP8.5 simulations using CMIP5 input. We identify a +1.3 °C 
greater Arctic Amplification and associated cloud and sea ice feedbacks 
in the CMIP6 SSP585 scenario as the main drivers. Additionally, an 
assessment of the GrIS sea level contribution across all emission 
scenarios highlights, that the GrIS mass loss in CMIP6 is equivalent to 
a CMIP5 scenario with twice the global radiative forcing.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20011-8

[NYT makes an grand conjecture - text and audio]
*HOW RUSSIA WINS THE CLIMATE CRISIS*
Climate change and its enormous human migrations will transform 
agriculture and remake the world order — and no country stands to gain 
more than Russia.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/16/magazine/russia-climate-migration-crisis.html

[Heated.World in Georgia politics]
*Six corporations that talk green and spend dirty*
They just called on Congress to pass climate action. They're also 
donating to keep the Senate red...
Companies that signed C2ES climate letter are backing Republicans in 
Georgia Senate run-off...
- Microsoft defends its $5,000 campaign contribution to Perdue as 
“engagement”...
- Bank of America's corporate PAC donated $5,000 to Perdue...
- Goldman Sachs' corporate PAC donated $5,000 to support Perdue...
- Ford's corporate PAC donated $5,000 to Loeffler. On November 17, it 
donated $1,000 to Perdue...
- Dominion Energy's corporate PAC donated $5,000 to Perdue...
- On November 16, General Motors' corporate PAC also donated $5,000 to 
Perdue...
Perdue and Loeffler have no record of supporting bipartisan action
The climate-friendly corporations donating to Perdue and Loeffler aren’t 
just supporting a Republican-led Senate. They’re supporting two 
candidates with no record of supporting the type bipartisan climate 
policy they claim is an urgent priority.
https://heated.world/p/six-corporations-that-talk-green

[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - December 16, 2008 *
On MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show," Francesca Grifo of the Union of 
Concerned Scientists discusses the Bush Administration's environmental 
track record.
http://youtu.be/EaIe9c_UxU4

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