[TheClimate.Vote] January 29, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest.

Wed Jan 29 07:49:03 EST 2020

/*January 29, 2020*/

[Climate politics - simple display - current]
*WHERE'S YOUR 2020 CANDIDATE ON CLIMATE?*
Greenpeace asked the 2020 candidates how they'll act on the climate 
crisis if they become president. Here's what they said…or didn't say.
https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/climate2020/

[BBC does some excellent cryo science reporting]
*Antarctica melting: Climate change and the journey to the 'doomsday 
glacier'*
Why is Thwaites important?
West Antarctica is the stormiest part of the world's stormiest continent.

And Thwaites is remote even by Antarctic standards, more than 1,000 
miles (1,600km) from the nearest research station.

Only four people have ever been on the front of the glacier before and 
they were the advance party for this year's work.

But understanding what is happening here is essential for scientists to 
be able to predict future sea level rise accurately.

The ice in Antarctica holds 90% of the world's fresh water, and 80% of 
that ice is in the eastern part of the continent...
- - -
It is a bit like cutting slices from the sharp end of a wedge of cheese.

The surface area of each one gets bigger and bigger - providing ever 
more ice for the water to melt.

And that is not the only effect.

Gravity means ice wants to be flat. As the front of the glacier melts, 
the weight of the vast reservoir of ice behind it pushes forward.

It wants to "smoosh out," explains Dr Riverman. The higher the ice 
cliff, she says, the more "smooshing" the glacier wants to do.

So, the more the glacier melts, the more quickly the ice in it is likely 
to flow.

"The fear is these processes will just accelerate," she says. "It is a 
feedback loop, a vicious cycle."...
more at - https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51097309
- - -
[Geophysical Research Letters]
Research Letter
*Glacial Earthquakes and Precursory Seismicity Associated with 
Thwaites‐Glacier Calving*
Plain Language Summary
Thwaites Glacier is one of the largest sources of Antarctic ice‐mass 
loss, however, the physics of the processes that control its discharge 
into the ocean remains incomplete. The long‐term stability of glaciers, 
such as Thwaites, that discharge directly into the ocean is linked to 
the rate of calving, the process of iceberg production. Spaceborne 
observations are crucial to understanding the calving processes, 
however, the typical repeat time of a satellite imagery is much longer 
than the typical duration of a calving event (minutes to hours). 
Increasingly, the seismic signals generated during calving are being 
used to complement other observations. For larger calving events, 
seismic energy can be recorded by remote seismic observation (100s to 
1000s of km away from a glacier). While these glacier earthquakes are 
now regularly used to study calving in Greenland, only a limited number 
of glacial earthquakes have been observed in Antarctica. We show that 
Thwaites Glacier has now begun generating glacial earthquakes similar to 
those observed in Greenland. Additionally, we show that enhanced rates 
of fracturing can be seismically observed before the event. Our 
observations open a new avenue for understanding the behavior of 
Antarctica's leading source of mass loss.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2019GL086178

[video talk - the realism of doomerism]
*Could climate change make Earth uninhabitable for humans?*
Dec 18, 2019
Centre for Effective Altruism
How likely is human extinction due to climate change? Neil Bowerman, a 
former climate physicist who is now at 80,000 Hours, addresses one 
component of this question -- the future physical habitability of Earth 
-- by surveying possible routes to extreme levels of warming and ways in 
which extreme warming could lead to uninhabitability.

This talk was filmed at EA Global 2019: London. Find out how to attend a 
future EA Global conference: https://www.eaglobal.org/.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsQgDwXmsyg

[Hidden Brain - the psychology of warnings - audio podcast]
*The Cassandra Curse*
published Jan 20, 2020
Show notes
After a disaster happens, we want to know whether something could have 
been done to avoid it. Did anyone see this coming? Many times, the 
answer is yes. So why didn't the warnings lead to action? This week, we 
revisit a favorite 2018 episode about the psychology of warnings. We 
visit a smelly Alaskan tunnel, hear about a gory (and fictional) murder 
plot, and even listen to some ABBA.
https://podbay.fm/podcast/1028908750/e/1579554059

[From Tamino - a very simple graph]
*This is NOT natural*
Posted on January 28, 2020
This graph should be on every billboard in the U.S.
https://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/pages2k.jpg?w=768&h=511
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2020/01/28/this-is-not-natural/

[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming  - January 29, 2006 *
The New York Times reports on the extensive effort by the George W. Bush 
administration to muzzle NASA scientist James Hansen. (The controversy 
would also be covered by Air America's "EcoTalk with Betsy Rosenberg" 
and the CBS program "60 Minutes.")
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/science/earth/29climate.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&
http://blogsofbainbridge.typepad.com/ecotalkblog/2006/02/ecotalk_82.html
http://youtu.be/x0i4Sx1edJE
http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/nasa-scientist-muzzled/

/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/

/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 is a text-only mailing that carries no 
images which may originate from remote servers. Text-only messages 
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.
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.