[TheClimate.Vote] January 8, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Wed Jan 8 09:29:59 EST 2020

/*January 8, 2020*/

[Sorry Joe]
*Up to 10,000 thirsty camels will be shot and killed during major 
Australian drought*
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/10000-thirsty-camels-will-be-shot-and-killed-during-major-australian-drought/

- -

[embers]
*Australian Fires Prompt Questions About Protecting Houses From Embers*
January 7, 20203 - Heard on All Things Considered
"What we're seeing in Australia right now we're covering a lot of area 
with a lot of flame," Gorham says. "These fires are most definitely 
generating their own weather, and that weather picks up the embers and 
the firebrands, lofts them up and casts them way outside the fire 
perimeter," threatening homes far from the center of the blaze.

Fire scientists have known for decades that fires -- especially large 
fires -- could disperse potentially dangerous embers, but it's only in 
more recent years that the role of embers has begun to influence 
building regulations in Australia.

A 2010 paper published by Australia's national research agency, the 
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, suggested 
that the vast majority of homes that burn during bushfires are ignited 
by embers.

In the last decade, "we've shifted toward a recognition that ember 
attack on the house, and on things around the house, is the process 
that's most dominant in causing houses to ignite, and therefore [we're] 
focusing on building design and landscaping design that's more resistant 
to embers," says Justin Leonard, a research leader in bushfire urban 
design at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.

Australia's national building standards are updated every decade on 
average. The most recent standards were adopted in May 2019...
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/07/793991736/australian-fires-prompt-questions-about-protecting-houses-from-embers 

[Spend money to breath]
*Atmos Faceware makes clean air an expensive accessory*
Climate change is a new target for personal technology

Wearing Atmos Faceware is also being pushed as a design choice, as well 
as a health one: "Our transparent design rests on the bridge of your 
nose, allowing others to see your face including your smile," wrote Ao 
Air in their press release.

It's also an expensive choice: the mask, along with four extra filters, 
will eventually retail for $350, according to a spokesperson. Only a 
"limited number" of the masks are currently available for presale during 
CES. For comparison, a N95 mask, the most common NIOSH-certified mask, 
goes for around $15...

https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/7/21050763/atmos-faceware-climate-change-technology-disaster-capitalism-price

[calling it extinction illness]
*Jane Fonda Gives Advice About Getting Arrested At Peaceful Climate 
Change Protests*
Jan 7, 2020
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
Jane Fonda started "Fire Drill Fridays" as a way to raise awareness 
about climate change by joining young people to practice civil 
disobedience, and she gives Stephen a few helpful tips about getting 
arrested for protesting. #Colbert #JaneFonda #ClimateChange
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG1T_z3uxjM

[DW video documentary]
*Climate change in the Antarctic | DW Documentary*
Jan 7, 2020
DW Documentary
Few places on Earth are as remote as the German research facility 
Neumayer Station III. The scientists who work at this outpost in 
Antarctica are studying the effects of climate change -- under extreme 
conditions.

Journalist Matthias Ebert traveled to the station to find out more about 
their research. The scientists are particularly concerned about the 
speed at which Antarctic ice is melting - and its impact on global sea 
levels.

The researchers have also been studying a large colony of emperor 
penguins that lives near their facility -- to find out more about how 
these birds are adapting to climate change.

Ebert reports on the daily lives of the scientists who work at the 
Neumayer Station, and how they cope with the extreme weather conditions, 
isolation, and cramped quarters. They've even managed to grow some of 
their own food in a greenhouse at the facility.

Ebert documents the damaging effect that global warming is having on the 
Antarctic, and the risk that this poses for the rest of the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLGgILUqbcc

[audio CPR News, "Huh", with climate psychologist Benjamin White]
*'The Climate Change Variety Hour' Focuses On Hope And Solutions Over 
Doom And Gloom*
COLORADO MATTERS
By Ryan Warner - April 22, 2019
Colorado Matters recorded "The Climate Change Variety Hour" in front of 
a live audience at DU's Newman Center. The event showcased real-world 
solutions, including a conversation with a climate change therapist, 
perspective from Hunter Lovins on business' bottom lines, the hip hop 
band Flobots, a climate comedian, and the Dr. Frankenstein of coral reefs.
https://www.cpr.org/show-episode/the-climate-change-variety-hour-focuses-on-hope-and-solutions-over-doom-and-gloom/

[Recent defeat]
*Fossil fuel knocks the wind out of renewable energy movement in Ohio*
Ohio has become a hotbed for corporate-driven attacks on wind energy
SHARON ZHANG - December 27, 2019
With no shortage of wide-open land, Ohio is ripe for a transition to 
renewable energy, but instead the state has become a hotbed for 
corporate-driven attacks on wind energy. As a result of increasingly 
restrictive laws on renewables, the state was recently ranked second to 
last among U.S. states in its renewable energy generation, with only 2.3 
percent of its energy generated through renewable sources.

A closer look at the workings of the anti-wind-energy movement in Ohio 
offers a glimpse of the dynamics that are also at work to suppress wind 
energy generation elsewhere throughout the country.

One of the most recent attacks on wind energy in Ohio came in July, when 
the Ohio state legislature passed a bill that essentially neutralized 
renewable energy standards and bailed out dying coal plants, all under 
the guise of maintaining a free market and helping ratepayers. The bill, 
HB 6, was called the "worst energy bill of the 21st century" by Vox and 
the worst clean energy rollback in the nation by Leah Stokes, writing 
for The Guardian. It sets a low renewable energy standard that most 
utilities have already met, and will end up costing ratepayers more in 
the long run.

"Ohio is a hotbed of attacks on renewable energy and has been for quite 
a few years," says Dave Anderson, policy and communications manager at 
the Energy and Policy Institute. Following a bipartisan clean energy 
standard passed in the state legislature in 2008, fossil fuel producers, 
utilities like FirstEnergy and outside groups like ALEC lobbied to push 
back against renewables, according to Anderson; in the ensuing years, 
Republicans continually tried to repeal and succeeded in stalling the 
clean energy mandate...
- - -
These issues don't just exist in Ohio -- the fossil fuel industry and 
local residents also converged to cancel an offshore wind project in 
Cape Cod, and people have stood up against projects in Minnesota. 
Republicans in North Carolina and Oklahoma have begun waging similar 
wars against wind energy, and President Donald Trump has painted wind 
energy as a symbol of what he describes as an elitist environmental 
movement.

The truth is that wind energy can bring significant financial benefits 
to often struggling rural communities. "It's a nice way for the farmers 
and farming communities that are supportive to have stable incomes," 
says Firestone. "[Wind energy] makes it easier to maintain family 
farms." Just in Ohio, wind farms contribute millions of dollars to 
landowners each year, according to the American Wind Energy Association.

But misinformation, especially misinformation that's spread online, is 
easily spread and difficult to challenge. Fortunately, in places like 
the Great Plains, wind energy is on the rise. Maybe such momentum will 
be contagious.
https://truthout.org/articles/fossil-fuel-knocks-the-wind-out-of-renewable-energy-movement-in-ohio/?key=45760604

["we are entirely screwed" video, gloom and doom from 3 years ago - 
simple presentation]
*Why everything will collapse*
Dec 25, 2017
The 4th monkey
If you sense that the future looks bleak, that there is little chance 
that this whole mess will end in joy and good humor, that there is a 
tiny chance that we will escape a systemic collapse of the 
thermo-industrial civilization, you are not far from reality. In this 
video, based on the available data, we try to explain why we think the 
situation is inextricable and that a systemic collapse is now inevitable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsA3PK8bQd8

[video commentary - so what changed recently?]
*Waking up to climate change | Australia's Bushfires*
Jan 7, 2020
ClimateAdam
As we usher in a new decade, two climate change questions need to be 
answered: what caused people to finally take action in 2019; and what 
will it take to start reducing global CO2 emissions?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kJvKgOqWrc

[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming  - January 8, 2013*
Media Matters releases an analysis showing that "...news coverage of 
climate change on ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX remained low in 2012 despite 
record temperatures and a series of extreme weather events in the U.S. 
When the Sunday shows did discuss climate change, scientists were shut 
out of the debate while Republican politicians were given a platform to 
question the science."

http://mediamatters.org/research/2013/01/08/study-warmest-year-on-record-received-cool-clim/192079

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