[TheClimate.Vote] July 30, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Thu Jul 30 10:22:14 EDT 2020
/*July 30, 2020*/
[video - fresh, new notion]
*How energy storage will kill fossil fuel.*
Jul 26, 2020
Just Have a Think
Utility scale batteries have been dismissed by some as no more than a
useful bolt-on to our existing electricity grids to help with a little
bit of demand stabilisation here and there. But dramatic cost
reductions, improved efficiencies, and a plethora of new innovations in
how to store energy that can be delivered into the grid over long
durations have all contributed towards a rapidly changing market that look
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DFKxoD_a3k
[learning how to push change]
*Coronavirus shows how to get people to act on climate change - here's
the psychology*
July 29, 2020
Climate change and COVID-19 are the two most significant crises faced by
the modern world - and widespread behaviour change is essential to cope
with both. This means that official messaging by government and other
authorities is critical. To succeed, leaders need to communicate the
severe threat effectively and elicit high levels of public compliance,
without causing undue panic.
But the extent to which people comply depends on their psychological
filters when receiving the messages - as the coronavirus pandemic has shown.
With COVID-19, the early messaging attempted to circumscribe the nature
of the threat. In March, the WHO announced that: "COVID-19 impacts the
elderly and those with pre-existing health conditions most severely."
Similar statements were made by the UK government.
A reasonable interpretation of this would be that the virus does not
"affect" young people. But as new clinical data came in, this message
was changed to emphasise that the virus could affect people of all ages
and doesn't discriminate.
But human beings are not necessarily entirely rational in terms of
processing information. Experimental psychology has uncovered many
situations where our reasoning is, in fact, limited or biased.
For example, a mental process called the "affect heuristic" allows us to
make decisions and solve problems quickly and (often) efficiently, but
based on our feelings rather than logic. The bias has been shown to
influence both judgements of risk and behaviour. For COVID-19, the
official messaging would have established a less negative reaction in
young people compared to older people. This would have made them more
likely to take more risks - even when new authoritative data about the
actual risks came in. Researchers call this "psychophysical numbing".
Another mental obstacle is confirmation bias. This makes us blind to
data that disagrees with our beliefs, making us overly attentive to
messages that agree with them. It influences (among other things)
automatic visual attention to certain aspects of messages. In other
words, if you are young, you may, without any conscious awareness, pay
little visual attention to the news that the virus is serious for people
of all ages.
The initial positive message for young people also created an "optimism
bias". This bias is very powerful - we know of various brain mechanisms
that can ensure that a positive mood persists. One study found that
people tend to have a reduced level of neural coding of more negative
than anticipated information (in comparison with more positive than
anticipated information) in a critical region of the prefrontal cortex,
which is involved in decision making. This means that we tend to miss
the incoming bad news and, even if we don't, we hardly process it.
All of these biases affect our behaviour, and there is clear evidence
that young people were more likely to fail to comply with the
government's directives about COVID-19. A survey conducted on March 30
by polling firm Ipsos MORI found that nearly twice as many 16-24
year-olds had low or limited concern about COVID-19 compared with adults
who were 55 or older. The younger group was also four times as likely as
older adults to ignore government advice.
Lessons for climate change
Our own research has shown that significant cognitive biases also
operate with messaging about climate change. One is confirmation bias -
those who don't believe that climate change is a real threat simply
don't take in messages saying that it is.
What's more, unlike coronavirus messages, most climate change messages
inadvertently accentuate what we call "temporal" and "spatial" biases.
The UK government campaign "Act on CO2" used images of adults reading
bedtime stories to children, which implied that that the real threat of
climate change will present itself in the future - a temporal bias.
Other campaigns have used the perennial polar bear in the associated
images, which strengthens spatial bias - polar bears are in a different
geographical location (to most of us). These messages therefore allow
for a high degree of optimism bias - with people thinking that climate
change won't affect them and their own lives.
Research using eye-tracking to analyse how they process climate change
messages demonstrates the effects of such biases. For example,
optimistic people tend to fix their gaze on the more "positive" aspects
of climate change messages (especially any mentions of disputes about
the underlying science - there is less to worry about if the science
isn't definitive).
These gaze fixations can also affect what you remember from such
messages and how vulnerable they make you feel. If you don't think that
climate change will affect you personally, the affect heuristic will not
be guiding you directly to appropriate remedial action.
To make climate change messages more effective, we need to target these
cognitive biases. To prevent temporal and spatial biases, for example,
we need a clear message as to why climate change is bad for individuals
in their own lives in the here and now (establishing an appropriate
affect heuristic).
And to prevent optimism bias, we also need to avoid presenting "both
sides of the argument" in the messaging - the science tells us that
there's only one side. There also needs to be a clear argument as to why
recommended, sustainable behaviours will work (establishing a different
sort of confirmation bias).
We also need everyone to get the message, not just some groups - that's
an important lesson from COVID-19. There can be no (apparent) exceptions
when it comes to climate change.
https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-shows-how-to-get-people-to-act-on-climate-change-heres-the-psychology-143300
[vote and climate - video]
*Climate One TV: The 2020 Election and Will Climate Matter*
Jul 29, 2020
Climate One
Racism, police and the pandemic are dominating hearts and headlines, but
will they translate to votes in national and regional elections? One
study found wavering Trump voters rank immigration and climate change as
top reasons for a possible vote change, but it's unclear if that will
materialize. Other studies contend climate doesn't even rank on the
minds of swing voters. Young, liberal Americans are leading the charge
on climate, but Bernie Sanders learned they are more likely to protest
than vote.
What issues are top of mind for Obama-Trump voters in swing states? How
will the Coronavirus and racial justice crises of 2020 impact voters
this cycle? A conversation about power in the elections with Tiffany
Cross, author of Say It Louder! Black Voters, White Narratives, and
Saving Our Democracy, Rick Wilson, Republican political strategist, and
Rich Thau, who is leading focus groups with swing voters in key states.
After a fleeting moment atop the national political agenda last year,
climate change has been eclipsed by the global pandemic. A recent poll
from Yale found that public engagement on climate change is at or near
historic levels. But will that matter when people vote? The
Environmental Voter Project asserts that many people who say they care
about climate and the environment don't actually cast ballots. Further,
when talking to pollsters they lie and say they did vote.
How will mainstream media cover climate in national and regional
elections? Will President Trump's stance on climate hurt Republicans in
down-ballot races? Do Joe Biden's policy positions on climate really matter?
Join us with Vannessa Hauc, journalist and senior correspondent at
Noticias Telemundo, Jeff Nesbit, executive director at Climate Nexus,
and Nathaniel Stinnett, founder and executive director of the
Environmental Voter Project, for a conversation on climate coverage in
the race for the presidency.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PdZTxQrJi0
https://www.youtube.com/user/ClimateOne/videos
#lets*talk*climate
[video lectures on Methane]
*Global Methane Budget: The Devil is Always in the Details*
Jul 28, 2020
Paul Beckwith
For the 2008-2017 decade global methane emissions are estimated from the
Top-Down method to be 576 Tg CH4 per year, 60% from anthropogenic
sources and the rest from natural sources. Bottom-Up methods suggest
numbers 30% higher. Two-thirds of the emissions are from tropical
regions (below latitude 30N), with about one-third from low latitudes
(30N to 60N) with only about 4% being from high northern latitudes
(60-90N). Global emissions have increased by about 10% in the last two
decades, with present levels 2.6x their preindustrial level. It is
thought that the main OH sink has not changed much.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8zXDUY5EvI
- -
[Methane continued]
*Everything you Wanted to Know About Atmospheric Methane Sources and
Sinks and Forcings*
Jul 28, 2020
Paul Beckwith
The "chemical lifetime" of methane in the atmosphere is 9 years; due to
reaction with hydroxide molecules (OH) producing CO2 and water vapour.
OH radicals have a very short atmospheric lifetime (about one second),
so the methane destruction varies with the spatial and altitude
distribution of the OH and methane. Methane is also broken down by
chlorine atoms and oxygen atoms (latter often derived from ozone
breakdown). While 90% of atmospheric methane removal is by these
chemical reactions, about 10% of atmospheric methane is removed by
soils, and subsequent methanotrophic breakdown.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8_NTflddjU
[e-mailing]
*The New Yorker - The Climate Crisis*
Amy Davidson Sorkin s Newsletter
"The pandemic shows us above all, I think, that twenty-first-century
survival depends on an ability to handle chaos: that our political
leaders, and our other institutions, have to devote themselves as never
before to humane competence. And, as this summer's racial reckoning
should remind us, the pain that's coming needs to be distributed far
more fairly. We're fast running out of margin. The ability of political
systems to respond to extreme stress can't be predicted as numerically
as the response of physical systems to extra carbon, but it will be
measured, as with COVID-19, in deaths. Just on a much larger scale."
https://link.newyorker.com/view/5e4f6ed6954fcf61233b06c1cj6eg.c8g/7a425626
https://www.newyorker.com/newsletter/sorkin
[actions today affect tomorrow]
*How hot will it get? Earth's Climate Sensitivity*
Jul 24, 2020
ClimateAdam
How much will global warming warm the globe? And why is this such a
fiddly question to answer? In a new study, a team of 25 researchers have
managed to home in on a temperature. But ultimately Earth's future
depends on our decisions today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tMAkhQCJ48
[Two years ago made history]
*The First Undeniable Climate Change Deaths*
In 2018 in Japan, more than 1,000 people died during an unprecedented
heat wave. In 2019, scientists proved it would have been impossible
without global warming.
By DANIEL MERINO - July 23, 2020
July 23, 2018, was a day unlike any seen before in Japan. It was the
peak of a weekslong heat wave that smashed previous temperature records
across the historically temperate nation. The heat started on July 9, on
farms and in cities that only days earlier were fighting deadly rains,
mudslides, and floods. As the waters receded, temperatures climbed. By
July 15, 200 of the 927 weather stations in Japan recorded temperatures
of 35 degrees Celsius, about 95 degrees Fahrenheit, or higher. Food and
electricity prices hit multiyear highs as the power grid and water
resources were pushed to their limits. Tens of thousands of people were
hospitalized due to heat exhaustion and heatstroke. On Monday, July 23,
the heat wave reached its zenith. The large Tokyo suburb of Kumagaya was
the epicenter, and around 3 p.m., the Kumagaya Meteorological
Observatory measured a temperature of 41.1 degrees Celsius, or 106 F. It
was the hottest temperature ever recorded in Japan, but the record was
more than a statistic. It was a tragedy: Over the course of those few
weeks, more than a thousand people died from heat-related illnesses.
On July 24, the day after the peak of the heat wave, the Japan
Meteorological Agency declared it a natural disaster. A disaster it was.
But a natural one? Not so much.
In early 2019, researchers at the Japan Meteorological Agency started
looking into the circumstances that had caused the unprecedented, deadly
heat wave. They wanted to consider it through a relatively new
lens—through the young branch of meteorology called attribution science,
which allows researchers to directly measure the impact of climate
change on individual extreme weather events. Attribution science, at its
most basic, calculates how likely an extreme weather event is in today's
climate-changed world and compares that with how likely a similar event
would be in a world without anthropogenic warming. Any difference
between those two probabilities can be attributed to climate change.
Attribution science was first conceived in the early 2000s, and since
then, researchers have used it as a lens to understand the influence of
climate change on everything from droughts to rainfall to coral
bleaching. As scientists have long predicted, the vast majority of
extreme weather events studied to date have been made more likely
because of climate change. But the 2018 Japan heat wave is different. As
people who lived in Japan knew at the time, the oppressive temperatures
were more than unusual. They were unprecedented. In fact, without
climate change, they would have been impossible.
"We would never have experienced such an event without global warming,"
says Yukiko Imada of the Japan Meteorological Agency...
- -
In many small ways, Japan is shifting to accommodate a warming future.
But if these changes don't seem like huge strides in the fight for a
greener future, it's because they aren't. These are adaptations to a
warmer world. They are not actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
and prevent an even hotter one.
The Japanese government has a less-than-stellar plan to meet the
challenges of climate change. There are, of course, some people doing
what they can to fight climate change. Groups of young activists are
hosting workshops and talks, organizations like Climate Action 100+ are
trying to convince businesses to adopt more sustainable practices, and
there are individuals, in modest ways, making changes to their personal
lives in an attempt to help. But there isn't a sustained, centralized,
government-endorsed move to take the necessary amount of action. More
than once I was told that change would happen if the government asked
for it, but the government hasn't asked. In the wake of the Fukushima
disaster, there has been a switch away from nuclear energy in Japan. The
government created a subsidy program for solar energy but is
simultaneously investing in coal power plants. Regardless of where the
blame falls, the end result is the same as in so many places: Japan is
not prioritizing actions to counter the underlying cause of climate change.
Attribution science is giving us the ability to watch, in real time, the
consequences of our actions. The future that the heat wave of 2018
represents is one we knew was coming. It is here, today, and attribution
science gives scientists and the world the ability to say so with
conviction.
There's another way in which the new field might prove useful. At the
end of our conversation, Watanabe paused to reflect on the work he has
done. Attribution science compares the world of today with a world
without climate change. In some ways, he's started to see his work as a
signpost in history, reminding us of a world that used to exist, but no
longer does. Someday, it's the other simulation, the world without
climate change, that will be the curiosity, he thinks. That computer
simulation will be the one that tells people something they never got to
experience—an image of what the world once was, but will never be again.
https://slate.com/technology/2020/07/climate-change-deaths-japan-2018-heat-wave.html
[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - July 30, 2010 *
On MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show," fill-in host Chris Hayes and Mother
Jones reporter Kate Sheppard discuss the coal industry's role in killing
climate-change legislation.
http://youtu.be/sWlwmzgLzVc
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