[TheClimate.Vote] June 4, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*June 4, 2020*/

[opinion on distractionism]
*I'm a black climate expert. Racism derails our efforts to save the planet.*
Stopping climate change is hard enough, but racism only makes it harder
- - -
So, to white people who care about maintaining a habitable planet, I 
need you to become actively anti-racist. I need you to understand that 
our racial inequality crisis is intertwined with our climate crisis. If 
we don't work on both, we will succeed at neither. I need you to step 
up. Please. Because I am exhausted.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/06/03/im-black-climate-scientist-racism-derails-our-efforts-save-planet/

- -

[NYTimes]
*Black Environmentalists Talk About Climate and Anti-Racism*
It's impossible to live sustainably without tackling inequality, 
activists say...
- -
"Police violence is an aspect of a broader pattern of structural 
violence, which the climate crisis is a manifestation of," he said. 
"Healing structural violence is actually in the best interest of all 
human beings."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/climate/black-environmentalists-talk-about-climate-and-anti-racism.html



[Changes]
*New study found climate change is likely fueling stronger hurricanes*
  A joint study found in every region in the world where hurricanes form 
showed that the maximum sustained winds are getting stronger and they 
believe climate change is to blame.

Researchers analyzed 40 years of satellite data and said the findings 
are in line with what they'd expect from a warming climate, which is 
quickly rising ocean temperatures. This is because warm water acts as 
fuel to the fire that is a hurricane or tropical storm.

The joint study was from NOAA's National Center for Environmental 
Information and the University of Wisconsin-Madison...
https://www.wwlp.com/weather/weather-news/new-study-found-climate-change-is-likely-fueling-stronger-storms/
- - -
[check weather]
*New Study Shows Global Warming Intensifying Extreme Rainstorms Over 
North America*
The current warming trajectory could bring 100-year rainstorms as often 
as every 2.5 years by 2100, driving calls for improved infrastructure 
and planning.
BY BOB BERWYN, INSIDECLIMATE NEWS
New research showing how global warming intensifies extreme rainfall at 
the regional level could help communities better prepare for storms that 
in the decades ahead threaten to swamp cities and farms.

The likelihood of intense storms is rising rapidly in North America, and 
the study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy 
of Sciences, projects big increases in such deluges.

"The longer you have the warming, the stronger the signal gets, and the 
more you can separate it from random natural variability," said 
co-author Megan Kirchmeier-Young, a climate scientist with Environment 
Canada.
- -
"We're finding that extreme precipitation has increased over North 
America, and we're finding that's consistent with what the models are 
showing about the influence of human-caused warming," she said. "We have 
very high confidence of extreme precipitation in the future."
- -
"You can't just look at the water, at the heavier rain, and how fast 
it's running down the rivers," she said. "It's about how humans and 
water interact at all levels, and how politics controls where the water 
is. It's about who is at risk of flooding and whether those people have 
any agency to reduce the risk."

New research like the PNAS study that shows the regional fingerprint of 
global warming on extreme rainfall can help reduce the risk, she said, 
because it enables better short-term forecasts.

"We have a lot of the right science in place but we still can't predict 
the exact locations and amounts," she said. "We don't quite understand 
the development of the water cycle and we often underestimate rainfall 
for those reasons. But we shouldn't be surprised that these rains are 
happening. We're going to see entire cities at a standstill."
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/01062020/extreme-rain-study-climate-change



[connections]
*Your guide to comparing climate change and coronavirus*
Amy Harder, author of Generate
Climate change and the coronavirus have a lot more in common than the 
letter C, but their differences explain society's divergent responses to 
each.

Why it matters: The Internet is full of comparisons, some from biased 
perspectives. I'm going to try to cut through the noise to help 
discerning readers looking for objective information.

Here are some of the more common comparisons made on climate change and 
the coronavirus over the last few months and corresponding reality checks.

Comparison: Pandemics and climate change are both massive risks that 
much of the world is ignoring or downplaying.
Reality check: True.

They're both gray rhino risks. As I wrote in this column early in the 
pandemic, a gray rhino is a metaphor coined by risk expert Michele 
Wucker to describe "highly obvious, highly probable, but still 
neglected" dangers, as opposed to unforeseeable or highly improbable 
risks -- the kind in the black swan metaphor.

Comparison: They're both existential crises of our time.
Reality check: Partially true.

The pandemic will define our generation uniquely, while climate change 
will wear on for many.

The word "crisis" implies a finite beginning and end, which certainly 
fits the bill of the pandemic. At some point, just like past pandemics, 
this coronavirus will likely recede, become normalized or be resolved 
with a vaccine.

I don't use the word crisis to describe climate change because humanity 
is going to be living with impacts of a warming world indefinitely even 
if we do drastically reduce heat-trapping emissions. It doesn't have 
finite parameters that typically define crises.

Comparison: The coronavirus is climate change on warp speed.
Reality check: False.

This characterization, made by environmentalists and other experts, 
fails to appreciate the inherent differences in these types of risks.

It's like saying a cheetah is a turtle, only faster. Yes, they're both 
animals, but otherwise they have inherent differences that means the 
turtle will never be faster than the cheetah.
Climate change is, by definition, a slow-moving, centuries-long problem 
whose impact on the world is uneven and secondary. A pandemic is 
fast-moving and relatively equal in how it affects different parts of 
the world.

Comparison: They both threaten our public health.
Reality check: True.

But the coronavirus could kill someone within two weeks, while climate 
change does it more slowly and in a more indirect fashion.

Climate change is like diabetes for the planet: It makes existing 
weather events and patterns worse. Its exacerbating impact can increase 
the likelihood over many decades that crises like heat waves and other 
extreme weather events could kill people.
Again, it comes down to the time difference, which explains society's 
immediate response to the coronavirus and its slow and uneven response 
to climate change.

Comparison: Scientists have been sounding the alarm for years -- even 
decades -- that a pandemic like the coronavirus could devastate 
humanity, and also that unabated climate change would wreak havoc on the 
planet.
Reality check: True.

Putting politics aside (an impossible task), our experience with the 
pandemic should instill more faith in scientists. Yet our 
hyper-polarized world has fixed a blue and red lens onto the pandemic, 
just like it has with climate change, Axios-Ipsos Coronavirus Index and 
Pew Research Polling data shows.

Comparison: The fact that the predictions from scientific modeling about 
the coronavirus didn't bear out weeks later shows why climate change 
models predicting vast ecological harm over decades should not be trusted.
Reality check: False.

This argument, perpetuated by those who question the scientific 
consensus of climate change, are either purposefully or ignorantly 
misunderstanding how modeling works.

Modeling exists to show what happens if you don't change behavior. At 
least with the coronavirus, we are able to view change -- flattening of 
the curve -- in a rapid timeline.
With climate change, the change happens over generations, making it far 
more difficult to see and react to in real time.
Whether the subject is climate change, pandemics or anything else, 
modelers aren't trying to predict exactly what will happen, but instead 
possibilities of what could happen -- as inconvenient as that may be for 
our polarizing debates.

The bottom line: Coronavirus and climate change are both complex, 
terrible risks the world is facing today. Making them out to be more or 
less than what they are does a disservice to anyone looking for solutions.
https://www.axios.com/climate-change-coronavirus-comparison-5fc7dd94-b303-4de6-98c2-6f4e517fce4b.html


[fantasy and experimentation]
*The Fast, Cheap and Scary Way to Cool the Planet*
Read more at: 
https://www.bloombergquint.com/onweb/solar-geoengineering-cooling-the-planet-can-be-fast-and-cheap



[Need for clear data]
*Experts Warn Climate Change Is Already Killing Way More People Than We 
Record*
CARLY CASSELLA - 25 MAY 2020
People around the world are already dying from the climate crisis, and 
yet all too often, official death records do not reflect the impact of 
these large-scale environmental catastrophes.

According to a team of Australian health experts, heat is the most 
dominant risk posed by climate change in the country. If the world's 
emissions remain the same, by 2080 Australian cities could see at least 
four times the number of deaths from increasing temperatures alone.

"Climate change is a killer, but we don't acknowledge it on death 
certificates," says physician Arnagretta Hunter from the Australian 
National University.

That's a potentially serious oversight. In a newly-published 
correspondence, Hunter and four other public health experts estimate 
Australia's mortality records have substantially underreported 
heat-related deaths - at least 50-fold.

While death certificates in Australia do actually have a section for 
pre-existing conditions and other factors, external climate conditions 
are rarely taken into account.

Between 2006 and 2017, the analysis found less than 0.1 percent of 1.7 
million deaths were attributed directly or indirectly to excessive 
natural heat. But this new analysis suggests the nation's heat-related 
mortality is around 2 percent.

"We know the summer bushfires were a consequence of extraordinary heat 
and drought and people who died during the bushfires were not just those 
fighting fires - many Australians had early deaths due to smoke 
exposure," says Hunter.

"If you have an asthma attack and die during heavy smoke exposure from 
bushfires, the death certificate should include that information," she adds.

Without those data, we'll never truly know the scale of what we are 
dealing with. But while it's possible to diagnose someone with a heart 
attack or cancer, it's much harder to draw links between climate events 
and human mortality.

The authors of the correspondence compare it to a lightning strike, 
which might cause a branch to fall on a person and kill them. The thing 
is, the resulting death certificate might not make any reference to the 
lightning at all, only the branch.

"Climate change is a concern to many people. But if the effect of 
extreme temperatures is not recorded, its full impact can never be 
understood," the authors argue.

"Death certification needs to be modernised, indirect causes should be 
reported, with all death certification prompting for external factors 
contributing to death, and these death data must be coupled with 
large-scale environmental datasets so that impact assessments can be done."

Such action, they say, is imperative. Not only for Australia but many 
other countries in the world. The United Kingdom has documented some 
problems with accurately filling out death certificates, and cities in 
several parts of the world are on track for similar heat-related 
mortality rates as Australia.

But there are some places that will need to do more than just update 
their current system. In the tropics, there's little valid mortality 
data on the more than 2 billion people who live in this heat-vulnerable 
region. And that makes predicting what will happen to these communities 
in the future much trickier.

"Climate change is the single greatest health threat that we face 
globally even after we recover from coronavirus," says Hunter.

"We are successfully tracking deaths from coronavirus, but we also need 
healthcare workers and systems to acknowledge the relationship between 
our health and our environment."

In an unpredictable world, if we want to know where we're going, we have 
to know where we've been. Figuring out how many of us have already died 
from climate change will be key to that process. We can't ignore it any 
longer.

The correspondence was published in The Lancet Planetary Health.
https://www.sciencealert.com/official-death-records-are-terrible-at-showing-how-many-people-are-dying-from-the-climate-crisis



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - June 4, 2002 *

President George W. Bush dismisses an EPA report on the threat of 
human-caused climate change, deriding what he called "the report put out 
by the bureaucracy."

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/05/us/president-distances-himself-from-global-warming-report.html 



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