[TheClimate.Vote] January 18, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Sat Jan 18 10:13:47 EST 2020
/*January 18, 2020*/
[disappointing setback]
***Court Quashes Youth Climate Change Case Against Government*
By John Schwartz - Jan. 17, 2020
Mr. Schwartz, a climate reporter, holds a law degree from the University
of Texas.
A federal appeals court has thrown out the landmark climate change
lawsuit brought on behalf of young people against the federal government.
While the young plaintiffs "have made a compelling case that action is
needed," wrote Judge Andrew D. Hurwitz in a 32-page opinion, climate
change is not an issue for the courts. "Reluctantly, we conclude that
such relief is beyond our constitutional power. Rather, the plaintiffs'
impressive case for redress must be presented to the political branches
of government."
The two members in the majority of the three-judge panel thus agreed
with the Trump administration that the issues brought up in the case,
Juliana v. United States did not belong before the courts.
The appeals court decision reverses an earlier ruling by a district
court judge, Ann Aiken, that would have let the case go forward.
Instead, the appeals court gave instructions to the lower court to
dismiss the case.
In a lengthy and impassioned dissent, Judge Josephine L. Staton wrote
that "the government accepts as fact that the United States has reached
a tipping point crying out for a concerted response -- yet presses ahead
toward calamity. It is as if an asteroid were barreling toward Earth and
the government decided to shut down our only defenses."
- - -
In an interview, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, Julia Olson, said
she would appeal the ruling. The next step sends the case to the full
Ninth Circuit for reconsideration and what is known as an en banc
hearing. The case, she said, is "far from over."
- - -
For her plaintiffs, she said, "the idea that their only recourse is to
go to the very branches of government that are violating their rights
when half of them can't even vote is a preposterous notion."
Michael B. Gerrard, the director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change
Law at Columbia University, called the decision "a disappointment but
not a surprise." He said that "Many U.S. judges have vigorously enforced
the environmental laws written by Congress but won't go beyond that."
"They want to leave the key decisions to the ballot box," he said. "So
for now, all three branches of the federal government are sitting on
their hands as the planet burns."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/17/climate/juliana-climate-case.html
[National Geographic says]
*Weather shows evidence of climate change every single day since 2012*
Children born in 2012 haven't lived a single day unaffected by climate
change.
BY ALEJANDRA BORUNDA - Jan 16, 2020
Climate change has altered global weather for almost the entire life of
anyone 18 years old or younger (people born after 2002).
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/interactive-assets/nggraphics/ngenvironment-20-days-affected-by-climate-change/build-2020-01-16_13-01-25/ngm-assets/img/ngenvironment-20-days-affected-by-climate-change_ai2html-desktop-medium.jpg
Climate change has dug in its claws so thoroughly into the planet that
its marks can be seen in any single day of global weather since 2012. A
6-year-old child, therefore, has never lived a day without feeling
climate change's influence.
A climate scientist "could sit on the space station and look down at
Earth and actually see the fingerprint of climate change on any given
day" just by watching the global weather pattern, says Reto Knutti at
the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science at ETH Zurich and an
author of the research, published in January in Nature Climate Change.
"We're so far into uncharted territory in terms of climate change that
we can see things clearly now."...
- - -
"The last decade was warmer than any decade ever. The signal is so
strong now that without doing super complicated work, we can actually
detect these patterns," she says. "The signal has emerged and evolved so
much in such a short time frame."
And climate scientists have, in some senses, been working toward seeing
these exact results for 40 years. In 1979 a landmark scientific study
posited that eventually, with enough data and enough warming, scientists
would be able to identify the human signal in the messy climate slop of
weather data.
That same year, the National Research Council published a working paper
called "Carbon dioxide and climate: A scientific assessment," one of the
first assessments to estimate just how responsive Earth's atmosphere
would be to vast additions of excess carbon dioxide. And also that same
year, NOAA and NASA launched a series of weather satellites that have
been recording continuously since then, building an invaluable,
uninterrupted record of the atmosphere and oceans as Earth's fever has
risen.
"Because we've had so much global warming, our whole climate has shifted
substantially away from where it should be," Peter Stott, a climate
scientist at the U.K.'s Met Office. "So even on a daily basis the global
average temperatures have changed significantly. That's a thing we
thought we'd see eventually, and it turns out it's here already."
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/01/weather-shows-evidence-of-climate-change-every-single-day-since-2012/
[DeSmog: Climate Deniers on YouTube]
*YouTube Still Monetizing, Promoting Climate Science Denial, Report Finds*
By Dana Drugmand - January 16, 2020
You don't have to look far to find misinformation about climate science
continuing to spread online through prominent social media channels like
YouTube. That's despite the overwhelming scientific consensus that
humans are driving the climate crisis.
A new report by the global activist NGO Avaaz reveals that, despite
YouTube's pledge to combat misinformation, the popular video site owned
by Google has failed to crack down on this problem when it comes to
climate change. Videos containing false or misleading information on
climate change continue to reach millions of users through YouTube's
recommendation algorithm. Furthermore, ads -- including those from major
brands and environmental groups -- displayed on these videos provide a
monetary incentive, not only to YouTube, but to the videos' creators to
keep promoting fringe theories contrary to scientific reality.
"We found that YouTube is driving millions of people to watch climate
misinformation videos every day," Avaaz writes in its report, titled
"Why is YouTube Broadcasting Climate Misinformation to Millions?"
"YouTube's recommendation algorithm is giving these videos free
promotion and showing misinformation to millions who wouldn't have been
exposed to it otherwise."
*Monetizing Misinformation*
Examples of videos identified as containing climate misinformation
include titles such as "ACTUAL SCIENTIST: Climate Change is a Hoax" and
"CIA Whistleblower Speaks Out About Climate Engineering Vaccination
Dangers and 911." Other videos feature interviews with climate science
deniers, such as Patrick Moore, and promote false claims that there is
no evidence that CO2 emissions are the dominant cause of climate change
(there is and they are)...
- - -
DeSmog also reached out to Google, parent company of YouTube, and a
company spokesperson defended YouTube's policies, saying that false
information does not necessarily violate the site's community
guidelines. YouTube indicated that it is not inclined to adopt the
recommendations in the Avaaz report, due to concerns on limiting free
speech.
"We can't speak to Avaaz's methodology or results, and our
recommendations systems are not designed to filter or demote videos or
channels based on specific perspectives. YouTube has strict ad policies
that govern where ads are allowed to appear and we give advertisers
tools to opt out of content that doesn't align with their brand," a
YouTube spokesperson said in a statement responding to the report.
"We've also significantly invested in reducing recommendations of
borderline content and harmful misinformation, and raising up
authoritative voices on YouTube. In 2019 alone, the consumption on
authoritative news publishers' channels grew by 60 percent. As our
systems appear to have done in the majority of cases in this report, we
prioritize authoritative voices for millions of news and information
queries, and surface information panels on topics prone to
misinformation -- including climate change -- to provide users with
context alongside their content. We continue to expand these efforts to
more topics and countries."
Avaaz said it stands by its findings, and criticized YouTube for
knowingly promoting false information on climate change.
"YouTube is the largest broadcasting channel in the world, and it is
driving millions of people to climate misinformation videos," said
Avaaz's Deruy. "This is not about free speech, this is about the free
advertising YouTube is giving to factually inaccurate videos that risk
confusing people about one of the biggest crises of our time. The bottom
line is that YouTube should not feature, suggest, promote, advertise, or
lead users to misinformation."
https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/01/16/youtube-monetizing-climate-science-denial-videos-avaaz
[If continued much longer, Google/YouTube will be landing on the wrong
side of science - a bad blunder for an industry based on logic. Now that
such a major flaw in their product is revealed, the Stupidity Clock has
started, and this one to has a severe deadline. Survival is the
universal intelligence test.]
[Another federal agency disappoints]
*FEMA's 2019 Preparedness Report Fails to Prepare the Nation for Climate
Change*
By Marc Kodack
The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recently issued its
2019 National Preparedness Report, and it's conspicuously missing a key
threat to security - climate change. The report provides an overview of
FEMA's 2018 efforts to address the National Preparedness Goal. The goal
is sub-divided into five mission areas; prevention, protection,
mitigation, response, and recovery that together address "the threats,
hazards and incidents that pose the greatest risk to the Nation." Spread
across the five mission areas are 32 activities or core capabilities.
Despite the unprecedented risks associated with it, climate change and
its' effects--e.g., sea level rise, coastal or inland storm intensity
and flooding, increases in temperature, drought, wildfire--are not
mentioned anywhere in the report. None of the 32 activities and core
capabilities acknowledge this growing risk factor for the US homeland.
The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recently issued its
2019 National Preparedness Report, and it's conspicuously missing a key
threat to security - climate change. The report provides an overview of
FEMA's 2018 efforts to address the National Preparedness Goal. The goal
is sub-divided into five mission areas; prevention, protection,
mitigation, response, and recovery that together address "the threats,
hazards and incidents that pose the greatest risk to the Nation." Spread
across the five mission areas are 32 activities or core capabilities.
Despite the unprecedented risks associated with it, climate change and
its' effects--e.g., sea level rise, coastal or inland storm intensity
and flooding, increases in temperature, drought, wildfire--are not
mentioned anywhere in the report. None of the 32 activities and core
capabilities acknowledge this growing risk factor for the US homeland.
Information for the report was compiled from federal, community/regional
and non-governmental sources. In fiscal year 2018, FEMA was the largest
provider of preparedness funding grants ($2 billion), augmented by
funding from other federal agencies, such as Housing and Urban
Development. Grants are used by states, tribes, local governments,
businesses and organizations for "risk assessments, disaster mitigations
actions, plan development, equipment purchases, training and exercises."
For FEMA, these preparedness grants support capabilities within the five
preparedness mission areas. For example, within the mitigation mission
area, grants were awarded to support/enhance community resilience,
long-term vulnerability reduction, threats and hazards identification,
and risk/disaster resilience assessment capabilities. FEMA worked with
communities to assess their core capabilities, focusing on response and
recovery, determine what level of capability the community wanted to
achieve and how far they were from their targets, and rated the accuracy
of their capability assessments.
Two mission areas that should address climate change are protection and
mitigation.
The protection mission area "encompasses the capabilities necessary to
secure the homeland against acts of terrorism and manmade or natural
disasters." However, as summarized in the report, the protection mission
is almost exclusively focused on cyber security. While FEMA identifies
critical infrastructure as "both public and private sector systems that
are vital to national security," it seems to interpret "vital to
national security" in a very narrow way. Critical infrastructure, for
example, should include many types of systems, including those related
to transportation. Parts of the U.S. transportation system, such as the
Interstate Highway System (HIS), for example, are vital to the
Department of Defense's ability to respond and deploy to domestic and
international events. Within the IHS, bridges are being adversely
affected by climate change. In contrast to FEMA, who's ignoring this
clear problem, the Department of Defense's installations are
incorporating climate change into their planning activities because of
the deleterious implications it has for their ability to continue to
execute their missions. Clearly, the Department of Defense views
critical infrastructure quite differently than FEMA does.
The mitigation mission area "centers on mitigating the impacts of
disasters." Mitigation is defined as "the effort to reduce loss of life
and property by lessening the impact of disasters." While this section
of the report mentions that the "number of disasters each year is
increasing [and] the Nation can expect to suffer around $54 billion in
annual economic losses that result from damage inflicted by hurricane
wind and storm-related flooding" it downplays this dangerous trend by
simply recommending stricter building codes as a catch-all solution -
with no mention of how infrastructure can keep up with rapidly-rising
climate risks. And while the authors note that individuals and
businesses need to better align their insurance with local threats and
hazards (e.g., flood insurance), the authors do nothing to prepare the
public for the threats and hazards that are projected in the wake of a
changing climate. Again, climate change and adaptation actions that
communities can take in the near term to increase community resilience
to future events is not considered at all. In contrast, with support
from Congress, the Department of Defense will be required to incorporate
into all installation master plans, threats to installation resilience
from "extreme weather events, mean sea level fluctuation, wildfires,
flooding, and other changes in environmental conditions."
While the report states that in 2018 "the Nation continued to strengthen
preparedness across all five mission areas and promote cohesion across
all levels of government," FEMA fails to include any consideration of
climate change in its' own preparedness activities. In the absence of
FEMA's leadership in the face of rising climate risks to security, many
local governments are forced to go it alone. FEMA's preparedness program
would be significantly enhanced if it incorporated climate change
information readily available from many federal and state sources,
including in the most recent National Climate Assessment, and used that
information to inform robust actions to prevent and prepare for
climate-related risks. There is no excuse for a homeland security
organization to completely ignore a major risk.
https://climateandsecurity.org/2020/01/17/femas-2019-preparedness-report-fails-to-prepare-the-nation-for-climate-change/
- -
[Read the FEMA report for yourself]
*2019 National Preparedness Report*
The National Preparedness Report is an annual requirement of
Presidential Policy Directive 8: National Preparedness. The report
evaluates and measures gains individuals and communities, private and
nonprofit sectors, faith-based organizations, and all levels of
governments have made in preparedness and identifies where challenges
remain. The 2019 National Preparedness Report presents an overview of
the five preparedness mission areas--Prevention, Protection, Mitigation,
Response, and Recovery--and describes major findings identified through
community-wide research and engagement.
https://www.fema.gov/media-library/assets/documents/184950
- - -
[FEMA is under Dept of Homeland Security - I checked, there's not much
there about global warming or climate change
https://www.fema.gov/media-library-data/1575309879997-d19134cec727cfa75c17f4051c4f88aa/2019_NPR_Final_508c_20191119.pdf]
[Experiential journalism by Shannon Hall]
*The Voyage to the End of Ice*
Arctic ice is disappearing -- the question is how fast. Summer sea ice
could endure 100 more years, or it could vanish later this decade, with
disastrous consequences for the rest of the planet. To nail down the
answer, an expedition to the top of the world has to untangle the knotty
physics of ice...
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-voyage-to-the-end-of-ice-20200116/
[We'll see about that - by 2030]
*Microsoft Pledges To Remove From The Atmosphere All The Carbon It Has
Ever Emitted*
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/16/796758230/microsoft-pledges-to-remove-from-the-atmosphere-all-the-carbon-its-ever-emitted
[sarcastic headline from the Onion]
*Jeff Bezos Donates $690,000 Directly Into Australian Fire*
[click for the faked image -
https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_1600/uznitabrous9zhzx8svo.jpg]
https://www.theonion.com/jeff-bezos-donates-690-000-directly-into-australian-fi-1841047383
[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - January 18, 2017 *
In a New York Times op-ed, former EPA official Eric Schaeffer observes:
"The president-elect's pick to run the Environmental Protection
Agency is the antithesis of what the nation should expect in the
next administrator of the agency responsible for protecting human
health and the environment.
"Attorney General Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma has built his career
suing the agency he would oversee to roll back its protection of the
nation's air and water, and challenging the very idea of federal
action to control pollution."
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/opinion/reject-scott-pruitt-for-the-epa.html?ref=opinion
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