[TheClimate.Vote] January 4, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Sat Jan 4 11:21:34 EST 2020

/*January 4, 2020*/

[dangerously illogical planning]
*Trump Rule Would Exclude Climate Change in Infrastructure Planning*
WASHINGTON -- Federal agencies would no longer have to take climate 
change into account when they assess the environmental impacts of 
highways, pipelines and other major infrastructure projects, according 
to a Trump administration plan that would weaken the nation's benchmark 
environmental law.

The proposed changes to the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy 
Act could sharply reduce obstacles to the Keystone XL oil pipeline and 
other fossil fuel projects that have been stymied when courts ruled that 
the Trump administration did not properly consider climate change when 
analyzing the environmental effects of the projects...
more at - 
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/climate/trump-nepa-climate-change.html

[FOX reports]
*Australia wildfires prompt Navy beach rescues, marking largest 
peacetime evacuations in history*
https://www.foxnews.com/world/australia-wildfires-navy-beach-rescues-peacetime-evacuations
- - -
[Click for resources]
*How to monitor the bushfires raging across Australia*
https://theconversation.com/how-to-monitor-the-bushfires-raging-across-australia-129298
- - -
[Poignant hero - text and video]
*Amid the ruins of the NSW bushfires, this pharmacist is keeping his 
doors open*
Raj Gupta's home went up in flames during this week's NSW South Coast 
bushfires and his town of Malua Bay remains severely damaged, without 
power and mobile service.

But Mr Gupta has no plans to close the small pharmacy he runs there.

"It's my job," he told SBS News on Friday.

Raj Gupta has no plans to close his pharmacy.

The 52-year-old pharmacist is now staying in emergency housing at nearby 
Batemans Bay, but is continuing to travel back to Malua Bay to keep the 
pharmacy open.

"I've had my patients come in and say they've not only lost their house 
and their belongings, but also their medication," he said.

"There's been no power, there's been no communication [so] we can't take 
payments, but that's not much of a concern ... People will come back and 
pay. They are very honourable people."...
more at - 
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/amid-the-ruins-of-the-nsw-bushfires-this-pharmacist-is-keeping-his-doors-open
- - -
[opinion]
*Australia Is Committing Climate Suicide*
As record fires rage, the country's leaders seem intent on sending it to 
its doom.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opinion/australia-fires-climate-change.html 

[new science]
*Climate change is bringing earlier springs, which may trigger drier 
summers*
Longer growing seasons mean more soil moisture is lost through 
evapotranspiration, a study says
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/climate-change-bringing-earlier-springs-may-trigger-drier-summers

[catching up to reality]
*The signal of human-caused climate change has emerged in everyday 
weather, study finds*
By Andrew Freedman - January 2
For the first time, scientists have detected the "fingerprint" of 
human-induced climate change on daily weather patterns at the global 
scale. If verified by subsequent work, the findings, published Thursday 
in Nature Climate Change, would upend the long-established narrative 
that daily weather is distinct from long-term climate change.

The study's results also imply that research aimed at assessing the 
human role in contributing to extreme weather events such as heat waves 
and floods may be underestimating the contribution.

The new study, which was in part motivated by President Trump's tweets 
about how a cold day in one particular location disproves global 
warming, uses statistical techniques and climate model simulations to 
evaluate how daily temperatures and humidity vary around the world. 
Scientists compared the spatial patterns of these variables with what 
physical science shows is expected because of climate change.

The study concludes that the spatial patterns of global temperature and 
humidity are, in fact, distinguishable from natural variability, and 
have a human component to them. Going further, the study concludes that 
the long-term climate trend in global average temperature can be 
predicted if you know a single day's weather information worldwide...
- - -
Sippel said technically the new study does not attribute the climate 
change trends they found completely to human activities but that there 
is most likely no other plausible explanation.

"We know from many other studies that the warming in the last 40 years 
is almost entirely human," he said, adding that this is the subject of 
follow-up work.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/01/02/signal-human-caused-climate-change-has-emerged-every-day-weather-study-finds/

[past is prologue ]
*The 2010s Killed Off the Polite Climate Change Conversation*
The decade that began with the defeat of a relatively moderate climate 
bill is ending amid calls for capitalism to be dismantled.
By Geoff Dembicki - Dec 9 2019
In the past ten years, we lost hope in American politics, realized we 
were being watched on the internet, and finally broke the gender binary 
(kind of). So many of the beliefs we held to be true at the beginning of 
the decade have since been proved to be false--or at least, much more 
complicated than they once seemed. The Decade of Disillusion is a series 
that tracks how the hell we got here.

As we lurched into the 2010s, you wouldn't have been crazy for thinking 
that a solution for the climate emergency was within reach. It seemed it 
could even be accomplished without profound economic change. All we had 
to do, the prevailing early Obama-era political logic went, was bring 
together people of opposing viewpoints (Democrats and Republicans, 
environmentalists and oil companies), hash out a plan to apply the 
appropriate tweaks on our economy, and voila, watch as capitalism took 
care of the rest.

But a decade of GOP climate denial, fossil fuel industry obstruction, 
mounting climate disasters, and the cataclysmic election of Donald Trump 
pushed the climate fight into a much more radical and confrontational 
mode, so much so that the optimism of 2010 now seems bizarre, if not 
delusional. The young leaders demanding an economy-transforming Green 
New Deal, people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Sunrise 
Movement's Varshini Prakash, along with social movements they help 
represent, take it as a given that capitalism is not the solution to 
impending climate doom, it's what's feeding the crisis. The policies 
held up as solutions in 2010 are today regarded by many as insufficient 
half-measures, and more people think drastic, society-altering moves are 
the only way forward. Here's how we arrived at this point.
July 22, 2010: "We don't have the votes." the Waxman-Markey climate bill 
collapses and companies avoid shouldering the burden of their emissions...
Autumn, 2011: The Keystone XL pipeline battle becomes an emblem of the 
fight against the fossil fuel industry...
July 19, 2012: Fossil fuel divestment arrives...
December 4, 2013: We wake up to the reality of a looming $674 billion 
loss in the form of abandoned energy projects...
September 2014: Naomi Klein's blockbuster 'This Changes Everything' pins 
the blame for the climate emergency on capitalism...
December 12, 2015: World leaders negotiate the Paris climate treaty...
April, 2016: Indigenous people put their bodies on the line to stop the 
Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock...
June 1, 2017: Trump pulls the U.S. out of the Paris climate treaty...
November 13, 2018: Activists and AOC launch the Green New Deal from 
Nancy Pelosi's office...
September 23, 2019: "How dare you?" Greta Thunberg addresses the United 
Nations after millions of teens skip school for climate...
https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fvideo.vice.com%2Fen_us%2Fvideo%2Fthe-hidden-impacts-of-climate-change%2F5655fe0389f746f234dff454
more at - 
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wjwwyb/the-2010s-killed-off-the-polite-climate-change-conversation

[Amazon Primed for criticism]
*Amazon threatens to fire critics who are outspoken on its environmental 
policies*
The e-commerce giant warned workers who participated in protests that 
future comments regarding company business practices could lead to 
termination
By  Jay Greene - Jan. 2, 2020
SEATTLE -- Amazon has warned at least two employees who publicly 
criticized the company's environmental policies that they could be fired 
for future violations of its communications policy.

A lawyer in the e-commerce giant's employee-relations group sent a 
letter to two workers quoted in an October Washington Post report, 
accusing them of violating the company's external communications policy. 
An email sent to Maren Costa, a principal user-experience designer at 
the company, and reviewed by The Post warned that future infractions 
could "result in formal corrective action, up to and including 
termination of your employment with Amazon."

The lawyer in the human resources group, Eric Sjoding, advised Costa in 
the Nov. 22 email to "review the policy again and in the future anytime 
you may consider speaking about Amazon's business in a public forum."

(Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

Costa and Jamie Kowalski, an Amazon software development engineer, told 
The Post in a joint statement in October that the company is 
contributing to climate change as its cloud computing business aids oil- 
and gas-company exploration. Costa also met with Amazon's human 
resources department to discuss the matter in October.

"It was scary to be called into a meeting like that, and then to be 
given a follow-up email saying that if I continued to speak up, I could 
be fired," Costa said via email, referring to Amazon's warnings to her. 
"But I spoke up because I'm terrified by the harm the climate crisis is 
already causing, and I fear for my children's future."

Amazon policy manifesto responds to environmental, workplace and 
data-privacy critics

Costa said she will not be silenced.

"It's our moral responsibility to speak up -- regardless of Amazon's 
attempt to censor us -- especially when climate poses such an 
unprecedented threat to humanity," Costa wrote.

Kowalski acknowledged receiving a similar letter from Sjoding but 
declined to comment on it. A third worker, Emily Cunningham, said that 
she was informed in a separate meeting that she had violated the 
company's policies after speaking out on social media and to news 
organizations about Amazon's climate impact.

Amazon's external communications policy "is not new and we believe is 
similar to other large companies," company spokeswoman Jaci Anderson 
said in a statement. In response to whether Amazon was trying to stifle 
workers, Anderson said employees are "encouraged to work within their 
teams," including by "suggesting improvements to how we operate through 
those internal channels."

Tech workers have recently become more outspoken about concerns over 
their employers' policies. During a Sept. 20 protest, thousands of 
Amazon employees walked out and criticized the company's climate 
policies and practices. In November 2018, thousands of Google employees 
walked off the job to protest of the company's handling of sexual 
harassment claims. Workers at Google, Amazon and Microsoft have spoken 
out in criticism of facial-recognition technology from their companies, 
fearing misuse by law enforcement and other government agencies.

As a result, some of those companies are attempting to crack down. Some 
Google employees have alleged they were recently fired in retaliation 
for their public criticism of the company's policies and their attempts 
to organize. Google said the firings were a result of violations of its 
policies around accessing and sharing internal documents and calendars 
and has denied they were retaliatory.

On Sept. 5, a day after an employee climate group emailed colleagues 
about the Sept. 20 walkout, Amazon updated its communications policy to 
create "a more streamlined and user-friendly way to request PR approval 
to participate in external activities," according to a notification on 
the company's internal website viewed by The Post. The policy requires a 
"business justification" for any communications and notes that approval 
could take up to two weeks.

The earlier version of the policy, which had not been routinely enforced 
with activist employees, required workers to request approval via email 
from senior vice presidents to comment publicly. The update requires 
permission from lower-level executives and can be sought via an intranet 
page, a change Amazon's Anderson said makes its easier for employees to 
give speeches and grant media interviews.

"As with any company policy, employees may receive a notification from 
our HR team if we learn of an instance where a policy is not being 
followed," Anderson said.

The day before the walkout, Bezos held a news conference agreeing to 
measure and report Amazon's emissions on a regular basis and meet the 
goals of the Paris climate agreement 10 years early. Critics said at the 
time that the commitments lack accountability and transparency.

Three weeks after, Amazon released a new policy statement outlining its 
positions on a variety of hot-button issues for which it has faced 
criticism, including an acknowledgment that it would continue to work 
with the energy industry.

"While our positions are carefully considered and deeply held, there is 
much room for healthy debate and differing opinions," the company wrote 
at the time.

Costas and Kowalski's initial comments to The Post addressed that new 
policy statement.

All three employees are members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, 
a group that has called on the company to commit to being carbon neutral 
by 2030, to end cloud computing contracts that help energy companies 
accelerate oil and gas extraction, and to stop funding politicians and 
lobbyists who deny climate change.

Amazon also has a social media policy that allows workers to post 
missives as long as they do not disclose confidential business 
information. Workers also are supposed to note that they are expressing 
their own opinions, not the company's. Anderson said that policy is part 
of its overall communications rules, not separate from them.

Cunningham, a user-experience designer, said she was informed in an 
October meeting with a human resources executive that she had violated 
the company's recently updated policy. Cunningham criticized Amazon's 
environmental policy at the company's shareholder meeting in May, and on 
social media and in news reports she has condemned Amazon's work with 
oil and gas companies.

In an email, Cunningham wrote that the human resources meeting was 
frightening, adding that it also made her sad and angry, given the 
threat of climate change.

"It was a clear attempt to silence me and other workers who have been 
speaking out about the climate crisis," Cunningham said.

Costa wrote that she understands that she cannot discuss confidential 
business information but that she believes she has an obligation to 
speak out about the causes of climate change and how to address them. 
Amazon's efforts to silence employees' criticism of its practices are 
damaging morale, she said.

"I've had colleagues, many of them very senior and tenured, say how 
disappointed they are -- that this isn't the company they thought they 
were working for," Costa wrote.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/02/amazon-threatens-fire-outspoken-employee-critics-its-environmental-policies/

[Global warming in the courts]
*Climate Liability News*
What to Watch:
-- Feb. 5: Oral arguments scheduled in the Ninth Circuit Court of 
Appeals for the decision on whether California climate lawsuits should 
be heard in state or federal court.
-- Awaiting: The Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision on New York 
City's appeal of the dismissal of its climate liability suit against 
five oil companies.
-- Awaiting: Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on pre-trial appeal 
of Juliana v. United States.
-- Awaiting: Ruling by the Second Appeals Court in Texas on whether 
Exxon can proceed with a lawsuit against California cities suing the 
company for climate damages.
https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/

[Harvard blames]
*Who's Really Responsible for Climate Change?*
By Elliott Hyman | January 2, 2020
- - -
The Debate over Holding Industry Accountable
The fossil fuel industry's disproportionate responsibility for historic 
GHG emissions, with the top 20 firms contributing 33 percent of historic 
emissions, coupled with efforts to cast doubt upon meaningful climate 
action, show how the industry has played a massive role in the climate 
crisis. Lobbying by fossil fuel companies for regulatory preferences and 
subsidies has also given the leading emitters a hegemony over the 
industry "to the exclusion of the rational development of renewable 
energies that the oil and gas companies should have invested in 
themselves decades ago," according to Heede. In order to progress 
towards a renewable energy future, Heede believes, the fossil fuel 
industry must be held accountable for its damaging behavior...
https://harvardpolitics.com/united-states/climate-change-responsibility/

[Tamino --  the Master Statistician, offers an opinion]
*Zero Hour in Oz: THIS IS CLIMATE CHANGE*
January 2, 2020
The bushfire season in Australia has been horrific. More horrific than 
any before. Axios offers a glimpse of what people are going through, 
while Metro reports that it has affected wildlife too -- wildfires 
killing almost half a billion animals. Yes, I said billion.  image: 
https://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/kangaroo.jpg?w=768&h=511

This year brought Australians their least average rainfall:
Graph: https://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/ozrr.jpg?w=768&h=511

It certainly has made the bushfire problem worse. But Australia has had 
dry years before, and will again. Although 2019 was the driest on 
record, there's no trend detectable in rainfall amounts, at least not 
yet; it looks like an unfortunate but random occurrence. This isn't 
climate change, it's bad luck.

This year was the hottest on record for Australia, especially their 
daily high temperatures:
Graph: https://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/oztx.jpg?w=768&h=511

This too has made the bushfire problem worse -- much worse. Australia 
has had hot years before, but nothing even close to this year. Without 
climate change this would have been impossible. THIS IS CLIMATE CHANGE.

Australia's prime minister, Scott Morrison, is one of the worst climate 
denier politicians in the world. What a pity that he's not the one who 
has to pay for the mess he's helped make oh so much worse.

Australians: if you think this season is bad, just wait …
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2020/01/02/zero-hour-in-oz-this-is-climate-change/

[carbon footprint, consider your connections to social media]
*'Completely unsustainable': How streaming and other data demands take a 
toll on the environment*
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/data-centres-energy-consumption-1.5391269

[Book revews]
THE TIMELESS AXIS
*Fire and Falter*
Tony Cartwright
Naomi Klein, ON FIRE: The Burning Case for a GREEN NEW DEAL, Penguin, 
Allen Lane, 2019.

Bill McKibben, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?, 
Wildfire, 2019.

Klein and McKibben are two of the most prominent and passionate climate 
warriors today. They have both published books this year. Klein's On 
Fire is both an urgent warning and a call to act. McKibben's Falter is a 
call to act but also an elegiac warning that we may not achieve the 
goal. But he also insists this is no time for either simple hope or 
hopeless despair but for out-and-out engagement.

Klein and McKibben are two of the most prominent and passionate climate 
warriors
today. They have both published books this year. Klein's On Fire is both 
an urgent
warning and a call to act. McKibben's Falter is a call to act but also 
an elegiac warning
that we may not achieve the goal. But he also insists this is no time 
for either simple hope

or hopeless despair but for out-and-out engagement.

Klein documents what any half-awake person already knows: the Earth is 
burning. What
she also points to is a fire growing in the hearts and minds of more and 
more people -
from school-striking children - and their teachers - to the growing 
awareness of the
climate and ecological emergency in the general populace, evidenced in 
the social action
of groups such as ER and the Sunrise Movement.
As would be expected, she accompanies her narrative with some analysis 
of the historical
factors which have brought us here. This book is a collection of 
"long-form reporting,
think pieces and public talks" over the past decade, which explore "the 
deep stories
about the right of certain people to dominate the land and people living 
closest to it,
stories that underpin Western culture".
So urgent is the apocalyptic danger our Western culture has caused, 
Klein argues that
only a Green New Deal will make any difference. It would not only call a 
halt to our
wasteful and catastrophic carbon-dependent economy but could transform 
our economy
and society at the same time. She lists how it would do that and 
describes the demand
for a New Green Deal that many are now making. Many critics think it 
unrealistic but she
urges that "we were born for this moment".
Bill McKibben strikes a slightly different note. He warns that we may be 
faltering - that we
may have "played out the human game". His original book, The End of 
Nature, published
thirty years ago in 1989 painted a gloomy picture, which has been more 
or less
vindicated. Falter is, in some ways, bleaker and gloomier because the 
picture is now
even worse. McKibben describes how the new technologies of artificial 
intelligence and
robotics has threatened to drain the soul out of our world and civilisation.
He also provides a narrative account of the origins and growth of 
neoliberalism - its
ideology and practice - from the end of the second world war, through 
the propaganda
novels of Ayn Rand and the espousal of possessive individualist theory 
and gross material
capitalism by Western governments, up until the extreme deregulatory 
economics and
absence of ethics of today's administrations. It's a shocking story and 
McKibben doesn't
hold back on the detail or the documentary evidence.
The bleak message of Falter is qualified, however, in a number of ways. 
McKibben offers
us honesty rather than simple hope but, as we would expect, neither does 
he give in to
despair. From his experience in building up 350.org he urges committed 
engagement. In
his epilogue he also provides two reasons we shouldn't give up. The 
first is "we do live
on an unbearably beautiful planet" - something neoliberals have little 
sense of. Apart
from the reality that there is no other planet to go to - anyone who 
thinks otherwise is
fatally deluded - Mother Earth is worth all our energy in fighting for.
The second reason we should not despair, and something we should not 
forget, is to do
with human nature. It is "because we can destroy, but also because we 
can choose not to
destroy". If all species, all animals have their special gifts, "ours is 
the possibility of
restraint". We can do incredible things, but we can also choose not to 
do them.
McKibben devotes a whole section to the power of "leverage". By this he 
is referring to
the power the neoliberal establishment wield in terms of wealth and 
ideology. A point he
could emphasise more is the leverage the Green movement has, in terms of 
truth and
wealth of ideas. The scientific fact of climate change and our awareness 
of ecological
wisdom is a powerful lever to use against the poverty of the neoliberal 
view. Any
movement that has truth and imagination on its side is potentially very 
empowered. Both
Klein and McKibben sense that the world is waking up. Now, more than 
ever we need to
use and direct that power.
November, 2019
https://www.thetimelessaxis.com/book-reviews/fire-and-falter

[Digging back into D.R. Tucker's internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - January 4, 1995 *
In his weekly radio address, President Clinton declares:

    "Because we believe that what God created we must not destroy, each
    of us has a sacred obligation to pass on a clean planet to future
    generations.

    "For nearly three decades, all Americans have agreed we must do what
    we have to protect our environment. And America is cleaner and
    healthier because of it.

    "Since our environmental laws were put in place, toxic emissions by
    factories have been cut in half; lead levels in children's blood
    have dropped 70 percent; Lake Erie, for example, once declared dead,
    is now teeming with fish.

    "But all this progress is now at risk. In the last few months, a
    small army of lobbyists for polluters has descended on Capitol Hill,
    mounting a full-scale assault on our environmental and public health
    protections. And this Congress has actually allowed these lobbyists
    to sit down and rewrite important environmental laws to weaken our
    safeguards."

http://www.cnn.com/US/9511/clinton_radio/11-05/c_script.html

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