[TheClimate.Vote] March 6, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*March 6, 2020*/

[Continuing question]
*How can we cope with climate change anxiety?*
Our planet is heading towards a global environmental catastrophe and we 
must stay motivated to make a difference no matter what the future 
holds, says Neil Levy

We are living in a unique moment in history. This isn't like a war or an 
economic recession, where you know things will probably be bad for a few 
years but hopefully will improve. Never before have we known that the 
deterioration of not just our countries, but our entire planet, will 
continue for the foreseeable future - no matter what we do. As David 
Attenborough says, we can (and should) fight to slow the rate at which 
things get worse, even though we can't realistically hope for improvement.

We can't hide from the fact that Attenborough's opinion reflects 
mainstream science. Even if we halted carbon emissions tomorrow, a 
significant degree of future warming is already baked in. Under the most 
likely scenarios, we're set for warming of 1.5C or much more.

The consequences are dire. If we succeed in limiting warming to 1.5C, we 
will still have sea level rises of around half a metre, killer heatwaves 
and drought in many parts of the world - leading to a decrease in 
agricultural productivity. We can expect mass migrations, death and 
destruction as a result, with many parts of the world becoming 
uninhabitable.

So how do you cope with this knowledge? The question is all the more 
difficult when we confront the inevitable guilt: we are all complicit 
with the sclerotic political system that has failed to address the 
crisis, and we all contribute to carbon emissions. Few of us can say 
that we have...


Weirdly, the knowledge of decline may help some people to cope with the 
guilt. If things will get worse no matter what we do, then why do 
anything? This "doomism" may be promoted by fossil fuel interests, to 
limit real action. Given that what we do today can make a difference to 
what happens in 2100 or later, though, we shouldn't give in to this 
temptation.

Another source of resignation might be that many people who try to fight 
climate change have rather selfish reasons for caring. Some may only 
care for their own children, or how the problems will affect their own 
country. But the climate crisis requires true altruism and real 
sacrifices. Are we even capable of that?

It is fashionable in some circles to deny that genuine altruism exists. 
Whether based on the perception that selfless behaviour is selected 
against by evolution, or merely cynicism, many thinkers have argued that 
all our actions are motivated by self-interest. Perhaps we give to 
charity because it makes us feel better about ourselves. Perhaps we 
recycle for social status.
But your question shows the problem with such arguments. Like you, many 
of us feel desolate about the inevitable harms the world will face when 
we are gone - suggesting that we care for future generations for their 
sake and not just for our own.

I have no personal stake in the world after my death. I don't have 
children and I don't have hopes of leaving a legacy. If I'm lucky, I may 
live out my life in middle-class comfort, relatively untouched by the 
upheavals that are guaranteed already to be underway elsewhere. When 
they hit closer to home, I may already be dead. So why should I care? 
But I do, and so do you.

The philosopher Samuel Scheffler has argued that if we were told that 
humanity would become extinct immediately after our own deaths - but 
without affecting the quality or duration of our life - we would be 
devastated and our lives would lose meaning.

For example, imagine living in the world of PD James' dystopian novel, 
The Children of Men. Here, mass infertility means the last children have 
been born and the human race faces extinction as the population 
gradually ages and diminishes. It's a thought experiment, considering 
what society would look like if there were no generations to follow us 
and no future - and it's a vision of despair.

Long-term thinking

Contemplating inevitable decline reveals that we care not only that 
humanity continues to exist long after we are gone, but that we care 
about whether it flourishes - even in the far future.

Consider those behind the construction of the towering cathedrals of the 
medieval age. They were often built over more than a generation, so many 
of those who began work on them never survived to see their project 
completed. But that didn't stop them drawing the plans, laying the 
foundations or labouring over their walls. The cathedrals were for the 
future, not just the now. Dealing with the climate crisis may require 
similar long-term thinking...
So while the knowledge of climate destruction may sap motivation and 
induce anxiety, a long-term perspective could also turn out to be 
motivating. With a firmer grasp of what's at stake, it is possible that 
we will be energised to do what we can to ensure that life a century - 
or more - from now is better than it might otherwise have been.

Because one thing is given. If you are locked in a state of guilt, shame 
and depression, you may be incapable of mustering motivation. Sure, the 
Antarctic ice sheets won't melt any slower because you recycle. But 
consider this: if you can inspire just a few people to lead greener 
lives, they may, in turn, inspire others - and so forth.

People are capable of caring and billions of caring people together can 
make a difference, as we have seen with the huge climate strikes all 
over the world. Together, we can force governments and corporations to 
make the changes needed to slow the rate at which things get worse.

Whether we are going to be able to shed as many selfish desires as 
necessary to even just slow global warming remains to be seen. Perhaps 
it takes a unique moment in history just as this to work out how far 
humans are capable of going for the greater good. The answer may 
surprise us.

Neil Levy is a senior research fellow at the Uehiro Centre for Practical 
Ethics at the University of Oxford. This article first appeared on The 
Conversation
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/climate-change-crisis-anxiety-how-to-cope-tips-david-attenborough-a9374316.html 



[Dallas News]
*Rice University professor pokes Houston's energy elite with climate 
change warnings*
'I'm saying things that other people are not saying,' says 72-year-old 
Jim Blackburn.

    Climate change is an existential threat to Houston, putting both its
    physical survival and its economic future in real danger.

    In his Texas twang, Blackburn, a 72-year-old native of the Rio
    Grande Valley, warns that the Army Corps' coastal barrier is
    insufficient. The region's flood maps are wrong, making new
    infrastructure, designed to last decades, obsolete the day it's
    finished. Renewable energy is getting cheaper, and climate activists
    are getting louder. Without creative thinking, the fossil fuel
    industry will collapse, and Houston will turn into a warmer, wetter
    rust belt.

    He's backed by hydrologists, weather modelers, engineers, and
    ecologists, at Rice University and elsewhere, who produce a steady
    stream of terrifying research. The main takeaway is that the state's
    politicians and businesses are still operating on data from the past
    century, an era before the weather went berserk...

https://www.dallasnews.com/business/energy/2020/03/05/rice-university-professor-pokes-houstons-energy-elite-with-climate-change-warnings/



[a very big deal]
*The Congo rainforest is losing ability to absorb carbon dioxide. That's 
bad for climate change.*
By Daniel Grossman
March 4, 2020
Scientists have determined that trees in the Congo Basin of central 
Africa are losing their capacity to absorb carbon dioxide, raising 
alarms about the health of the world's second-largest contiguous 
rainforest and its ability to store greenhouse gases linked to climate 
change.

A study published Wednesday in the journal Nature found that some sites 
in the Congo Basin showed signs of weakened carbon uptake as early as 
2010, suggesting that the decline in Africa may have been underway for a 
decade.

Increasing heat and drought is believed to be stifling the growth of the 
trees in the African rainforest, a phenomenon previously noted in the 
Amazon. The new data provides the first large-scale evidence that 
tropical rainforests around the world that have been untouched by 
logging or other human activity are losing their potency to fight 
climate change...
- - -
The findings contradict models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on 
Climate Change and governments around the world, which predicted that 
the Congo rainforest would continue to absorb carbon for many decades to 
come...
- - -
The new Nature paper combines the work of researchers and field 
assistants who studied 135,625 trees at 244 African plots in 11 
countries with data that, in some cases, goes back to the 1960s. It 
concludes that, on average, African trees absorbed the same amount of 
carbon dioxide for two decades through 2014. But a subset of trees began 
to lose their capacity to absorb carbon as early as 2010...
- - -
Researchers have already documented a reduction in carbon uptake in the 
Amazon rainforest. In a 2015 paper also published in Nature, scientists 
found that intact Amazon jungle absorbed 30 percent less carbon in the 
2000s than in the 1990s. The new study finds that Africa is lagging only 
10 or 20 years behind the Amazon. Hubau says central African forests are 
cooler than those in the Amazon, a factor that has delayed the impact of 
rising temperatures.

"This carbon sink is turning off far earlier than even the most 
pessimistic of these climate models," Lewis said.

Now, "we'll have to cut emissions faster than expected," said Betts, of 
the Hadley Centre.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/the-congo-rainforest-is-losing-its-ability-to-absorb-carbon-dioxide-thats-bad-for-climate-change/2020/03/03/3363d218-5ca9-11ea-9055-5fa12981bbbf_story.html
- - -
[Read the source paper in Nature]
*Asynchronous carbon sink saturation in African and Amazonian tropical 
forests*
Structurally intact tropical forests sequestered about half of the 
global terrestrial carbon uptake over the 1990s and early 2000s, 
removing about 15 per cent of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions...
- -
In summary, our results indicate that although intact tropical forests 
remain major stores of carbon and are key centres of biodiversity11, 
their ability to sequester additional carbon in trees is waning...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2035-0.epdf?referrer_access_token=8W0dOph_0mqLfO_dElsGLNRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0NOJ2x2BsrUNZyzCBuuL0UUqQjPW2euF71wbnss7bZVT9v6LL9ozoshuVueGwe1ycUdLQUQBJpGc7F0qT_nWI0LCnR02JSe1dmyOcJorP-zBCRHe9OV4z6vF2iYzqpi9QGGv4KvXLb9ZUf9v2ZbJKFmm2b-Xg2oAW0vaRW3hTd6yl1wADfi7O9ACZgUhIwe50e2tN6B2AjUWn9fBIX-HEUa8KKCt83rJMPBVOWAo1QE9IOxuggTVQjW2K_Y3HDB-j8sCkW5n6Dg8h5-cde24VL17DPHVpI8VPo0Yj2g_CD0o8eTBxrKS9CbqAi-fN6KZvR7V0mHgeTwglruJGqv8eGfvwMGUOxA3IKzQDZMnSjEXY5lUjKcSKKgkzD9YGOTegbvpvTCraMP9kRSRGrG2IWx&tracking_referrer=www.washingtonpost.com


[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming  - March 6 *

March 6, 2001: EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman sends a memo to 
President George W. Bush urging him to demonstrate leadership on climate 
change. The memo is summarily ignored.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/transcripts/whitmanmemo032601.htm

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