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

Wed Jul 8 10:28:40 EDT 2020

/*July 8, 2020*/

[Washington Post Capital Weather Gang]
*The Atlantic hurricane season is off to a record fast start and is 
likely to get worse*
Unusually warm waters, boosted by climate change, are probably playing a 
role.
Jason Samenow and Jason Samenow -- July 7
The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season is already making history, just over 
a month after it officially began. When Tropical Storm Edouard formed 
Sunday night over the open waters of the northwest Atlantic, it became 
the earliest fifth named storm on record.

Edouard has since morphed into a nontropical storm, but it signals the 
possibility of a long and punishing hurricane season, which has already 
set records linked to abnormally warm ocean waters.

Tropical storms and hurricanes require sea surface temperatures of at 
least 79 degrees to form and sustain themselves, and have expanded 
farther north than usual this summer.

Edouard, for example, formed amid sea surface temperatures near 80 
degrees, about four to five degrees above average...
- -
Also tipping the scales toward an active season: Water temperatures in 
the eastern equatorial Pacific are cooling, hinting that a La Niña 
pattern is in the works. While the pattern may not become fully 
established this season, a fledgling La Niña helps weaken upper-level 
westerly winds in the tropical Atlantic. Weaker winds aloft make it 
easier for clusters of thunderstorms to tower, brewing greater chances 
of tropical storms and hurricanes.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/07/07/atlantic-hurricane-season-is-off-record-fast-start-is-likely-get-worse/

[NYTimes]
*Intense Arctic Wildfires Set a Pollution Record*
High temperatures and dry soil mean ideal conditions for fires. Blazes 
in June produced more carbon emissions than any other fires in almost 
two decades of monitoring.
By Somini Sengupta - July 7, 2020
Intense wildfires in the Arctic in June released more polluting gases 
into the Earth's atmosphere than in any other month in 18 years of data 
collection, European scientists said in a report Tuesday.

These fires offer a stark portrait of planetary warming trends.

The Arctic is warming at least two and a half times faster than the 
global average rate. Soils in the region are drier than before. 
Wildfires are spreading across a large swath. In June, fires released 59 
million metric tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide, greater than all 
the carbon emissions produced by Norway, an oil-producing country, in a 
year.

The last time fires in the Arctic were this intense or released such a 
large volume of emissions was last year, which itself set a record...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/climate/climate-change-arctic-fires.html

[about 40 years says old science]
*Global Temperatures May Take Decades to Respond to Emissions 
Reductions: Study*
- -
"Rigorous detection and attribution of the impacts of even very strong 
mitigation efforts on global mean surface temperature will, for a long 
time, be challenging," the study's authors wrote. "It is therefore 
imperative that the scientific community explores and clearly 
communicates the expectations we have in terms of quantifiable, 
observable impacts."

The most significant contributions to the planet would come from 
reductions in carbon dioxide, methane and black carbon, according to the 
researchers. The coming decades will see change, it is just a matter of 
being patient. Whether or not that means a cooler planet depends on how 
human's answer today...
https://www.courthousenews.com/global-temperatures-may-take-decades-to-respond-to-emissions-reductions-study/

[Pyrrhic victory]
*Supreme Court Won't Block Ruling to Halt Work on Keystone XL Pipeline*
But the justices stayed the rest of a federal trial judge's ruling 
striking down a permit program, allowing construction of other pipelines 
around the nation...
Adam Liptak - July 6, 2020
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a request from the 
Trump administration to allow construction of parts of the Keystone XL 
oil pipeline that had been blocked by a federal judge in Montana. But 
the court temporarily revived a permit program that would let other oil 
and gas pipelines cross waterways after only modest scrutiny from 
regulators.

The court's brief, unsigned order gave no reasons, which is typical when 
the justices rule on emergency applications, and it said it would last 
while appeals moved forward. There were no noted dissents...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/us/politics/supreme-court-keystone-xl-pipeline.html

[common PR tactic]
*Revealed: legislators' pro-pipeline letters ghostwritten by fossil fuel 
company*
Letters by key legislators including North Dakota's governor written by 
officials of MDU Resources, a subsidiary of WBI Energy
Will Parrish
  @willparrishca
Thu 2 Jul 2020
The records, obtained by the watchdog group the Energy Policy Institute 
and provided to the Guardian, show that three North Dakota state 
legislators and a Williams county commissioner signed and mailed letters 
to Ferc and the US army corps of engineers.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/02/us-legislators-pro-pipeline-letters-ghostwritten

[land makes our food -- and there are producers and consumers]
*IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land (#SRCCL) Lead Author 
Marta Rivera-Ferre*
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

Marta Rivera-Ferre, Lead Author Chapter 5 - Food Security talks about 
how sustainable land use and our dietary habits can help to mitigate 
climate change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXfRk6a12qM

[BBC section for FUTURE PLANET | CLIMATE CHANGE reports how making a 
local step to global movement]
*The law that could make climate change illegal*
One of the most robust laws on climate change yet has been created in 
Denmark. Can legislation really make failing to act on climate change 
illegal?...
- -
Every year, the government will need to find a majority parliamentary 
approval of its global and national climate strategies. "The government 
will be held to account every year by the parliament," says Dan 
Jørgensen, Denmark's climate and energy minister. "If you're not on 
track, the parliament can say, 'Well, sorry, you're not on track so you 
don't get a majority.' In theory, that will lead to a government having 
to step down."..
- -
Global emissions will need to halve in the next 10 years to keep the 
world on track to limit temperature rise to 1.5C - a key aspirational 
goal of the Paris Agreement, which nearly all countries have signed up 
to. The goals behind climate laws claiming to be in line with the Paris 
Agreement must therefore be based on the science of what needs to be 
done, not what is deemed "possible" to do given current technologies...
- -
Denmark's law also has a safeguard to make sure positive climate efforts 
in one part of its government aren't undermined by those in another...
- -
Denmark itself also has a movement trying to get climate change into its 
constitution, says Qvist-Sørensen, which has only been changed twice in 
the past 100 years. This could open up the door for a parallel process 
to hold it to account alongside its climate law.

What the Urgenda case proved, says Khan, is that the impacts of climate 
change, whether already here or forecast to arrive, are illegal because 
governments have an obligation to protect their residents from harm to 
their livelihoods, health and housing.

So could climate change ever be made illegal? Protections could 
certainly always be strengthened, but in many ways we already have the 
commitments and tools needed to hold governments accountable.
As Khan puts it: "There are already a lot of laws that we could be using 
to address the climate crisis, that we just aren't."
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200706-the-law-that-could-make-climate-change-illegal
- - -
[BBC reports CO2 emissions on some news products ]
*Why and how does Future Planet count carbon?*

On all Future Planet stories, you'll see an estimate of the carbon it 
took to report and publish that article. How do we get that figure and 
why do we calculate i t?
- -
Sometimes local or regional travel is essential when there is no 
lower-carbon way to tell the story. And, in what may come as a surprise 
to some, digital publishing releases carbon emissions too: as a whole, 
the internet would be the sixth greatest emitter of greenhouse gases if 
it were a country...
- -
The calculations involved are complex, the assumptions made are many and 
varied, but at the heart of Future Planet is a simple ethos: we want to 
be open about our carbon footprint and we want to make it smaller, using 
whatever tools currently available. These tools may not yet be perfect. 
Our efforts may not be, either. But we believe that heading in the right 
direction is better than taking no steps at all.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200131-why-and-how-does-future-planet-count-carbon

[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - July 8, 1991 *

Speaking at the Sunday Times Environmental Conference in London, British 
Prime Minister John Major states:

"Personally, I have always thought it wrong to call it the greenhouse 
effect. I dislike the term, I dislike it because the image is too cosy, 
too domestic and far too complacent. Begonias and petunias it most 
certainly is not. The threat of global warming is real: the spread of 
deserts, changed weather patterns with potentially more storms and 
hurricanes, perhaps more flooding of low lying areas and possibly even 
the disappearance of some island states."

http://www.johnmajor.co.uk/page2093.html

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