[TheClimate.Vote] March 19, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest.

[Richard Pauli]

/*March 19, 2020*/

[text and video]
*Global warming influence on extreme weather events has been frequently 
underestimated*
by Stanford University...
Stanford climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh found that predictions that 
relied only on historical observations underestimated by about half the 
actual number of extremely hot days in Europe and East Asia, and the 
number of extremely wet days in the U.S., Europe and East Asia...
https://phys.org/news/2020-03-global-extreme-weather-events-frequently.html


[two sides of the same coin]
*Where the Virus and Climate Intersect*
Should Airline Bailouts Come With Conditions? And, Climate as a 'Threat 
Multiplier'..
- -
Thus, Dr. Hahyoe said, climate change is a "threat multiplier" that 
makes many of our problems worse.

In closing, she made one more connection between this pandemic and the 
slower-moving catastrophe of climate change. "This crisis really brings 
home what matters to all of us," she told me. "What really matters is 
the same for all of us. It's the health and safety of our friends, our 
family, our loved ones, our communities, our cities and our country. 
That's what the coronavirus pandemic threatens, and that's exactly what 
climate change does, too."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/climate/nyt-climate-newsletter-coronavirus.html


[Opinion from Ben Santer, the great climate scientist]
*How COVID-19 Is like Climate Change*
Both are existential challenges--and a president who belittles and 
neglects science has made them both tougher to address
By Ben Santer on March 17, 2020

I'm listening to the comforting background hum of the old refrigerator 
in my rented apartment. The humming noise stops suddenly; the only sound 
now is the tinnitus in my ears. From my chair, I look out through the 
sliding glass door. Wind and rain animate the bright yellow flannel 
bushes on the hillside. California just had the driest February on 
record. The flowered branches of the flannel bushes seem to stretch like 
fingers to catch the life-giving rainwater. "We want more! We want more!"

I have plenty of time to observe the world outside my windows. I've been 
self-quarantined in my apartment for a week. After returning to the Bay 
Area from a climate change workshop in Washington, D.C., I came down 
with a low-grade fever and a dry, hacking cough. The cough made sleep 
difficult, leaving me fatigued and weak. Rest and over-the-counter flu 
meds didn't help much.

On the third day after the start of my symptoms, I consulted a nurse 
practitioner in my doctor's office. We interacted via Zoom. It seemed 
prudent to minimize possible risk to others. The NP prescribed 
medication for the cough. But after taking the medication, my symptoms 
persisted.

On day five I was tested for the novel coronavirus. I drove to the 
parking lot outside my doctor's office. While still seated in the car, a 
masked and suited nurse practitioner listened to my breathing, measured 
my temperature, blood pressure and blood oxygenation, and took swabs of 
my nasal passages. The exam and test took less than five minutes.

I don't have the results yet. I should get them soon. It will be good to 
know what I am dealing with. Knowing one's adversary is always helpful.

While sequestered in my apartment, I've thought a lot about how complex 
systems respond to big perturbations. That's part of my job. As a 
climate scientist, I study the atmospheric and ocean responses to 
different "forcings"--things like massive volcanic eruptions, large 
changes in the sun's energy output, or a doubling of atmospheric CO2 
levels. I use computer models to analyze how such shocks ripple through 
the climate system. What characteristic patterns of climate response do 
they generate? How long does it take for the climate system to return to 
the pre-shocked state? Are there cases when the system doesn't spring back?

The novel coronavirus is a major perturbation to complex human systems 
of governance. Here are a few personal thoughts on "lessons learned" 
from the U.S. response to this viral perturbation.

*Lesson 1: *Scientific ignorance can be fatal--particularly if ignorance 
starts with the U.S. president and trickles down from there. It was 
scientifically incorrect for President Trump to dismiss the coronavirus 
as no worse than the seasonal flu. It was scientifically incorrect to 
advise U.S. citizens to engage in business as usual in the face of a 
pandemic. Dissemination of such incorrect information by the 
commander-in-chief helped to spread the novel coronavirus in America. 
Ignorance served as a potent disease vector.

*Lesson 2: *The president of the United States failed to accept 
responsibility for the administration's chaotic response to the virus. 
The shortage of reliable tests for the "foreign" virus? Not his fault. 
Shutting down the White House National Security Council Directorate for 
Global Health Security and Biodefense? Not his decision. The quarantined 
passengers on a cruise ship off San Francisco? Not his problem. In the 
Trump administration, the buck never stops at the top.

*Lesson 3*: Our president cannot lead this country. A leader tells hard 
truths in times of crisis. A leader does not assume the mantle of 
expertise in areas where he or she has none. A leader is more concerned 
with the well-being of all citizens than with bad poll numbers or bad 
numbers of confirmed disease cases. A leader accepts responsibility for 
personal and organizational failures (see above). And a leader cares 
more about saving lives than winning reelection.

*Lesson 4:* "America First" is a singularly poor survival strategy in 
the middle of a global pandemic. No nation is an impregnable fortress 
against a microscopic agent that can hitch a ride on any plane, ship, 
train or car. Building effective international organizations and 
alliances is a far better way of surviving a global health crisis than 
"going it alone."

The phrase "in an abundance of caution" has become commonplace in the 
last few days. Prominent politicians and celebrities use this phrase to 
explain their decision to self-quarantine. In the U.S., an abundance of 
caution should have been exercised at the beginning of the novel 
coronavirus pandemic. Detailed plans for scientifically accurate 
messaging should have been ready, along with strategies for national and 
international coordination of response efforts.

They were not ready. The capability to test tens of thousands of 
citizens a day should have been in place. It was not in place. And in an 
abundance of concern for public health, members of the Trump 
administration should have corrected the President's misstatements on 
the seriousness of the coronavirus. Instead, they largely remained silent.

After years of belittling and neglecting science, Donald J. Trump is 
suddenly discovering that science is imperative to human survival, and 
perhaps even to his own political survival. Through science, a vaccine 
will be developed for the novel coronavirus. If this country invests in 
science now--and if we invest in maintaining strong global health 
systems--we will be better prepared for the next novel virus waiting out 
there.

Pandemics are not the only existential problem we face. Climate change 
endangers every present and future citizen of this planet. If we truly 
care about the health of our communities, countries and global commons, 
we must find ways of powering the planet without relying on fossil 
fuels. It would be a tragedy to survive the coronavirus but succumb to 
human-caused climate disruption. An abundance of caution demands that we 
address both problems.
Ben Santer is an atmospheric scientist and member of the U.S. National 
Academy of Sciences.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/how-covid-19-is-like-climate-change/



[should be obvious by now]
*'Tip of the iceberg': is our destruction of nature responsible for 
Covid-19?*
As habitat and biodiversity loss increase globally, the coronavirus 
outbreak may be just the beginning of mass pandemics...
- -
*Amplification effect*
In 2008, Jones and a team of researchers identified 335 diseases that 
emerged between 1960 and 2004, at least 60% of which came from animals.

Increasingly, says Jones, these zoonotic diseases are linked to 
environmental change and human behaviour. The disruption of pristine 
forests driven by logging, mining, road building through remote places, 
rapid urbanisation and population growth is bringing people into closer 
contact with animal species they may never have been near before, she says.

The resulting transmission of disease from wildlife to humans, she says, 
is now "a hidden cost of human economic development. There are just so 
many more of us, in every environment. We are going into largely 
undisturbed places and being exposed more and more. We are creating 
habitats where viruses are transmitted more easily, and then we are 
surprised that we have new ones."

Jones studies how changes in land use contribute to the risk. "We are 
researching how species in degraded habitats are likely to carry more 
viruses which can infect humans," she says. "Simpler systems get an 
amplification effect. Destroy landscapes, and the species you are left 
with are the ones humans get the diseases from."

"There are countless pathogens out there continuing to evolve which at 
some point could pose a threat to humans," says Eric Fevre, chair of 
veterinary infectious diseases at the University of Liverpool's 
Institute of Infection and Global Health. "The risk [of pathogens 
jumping from animals to humans] has always been there."

The difference between now and a few decades ago, Fevre says, is that 
diseases are likely to spring up in both urban and natural environments. 
"We have created densely packed populations where alongside us are bats 
and rodents and birds, pets and other living things. That creates 
intense interaction and opportunities for things to move from species to 
species," he says.

*Tip of the iceberg*
"Pathogens do not respect species boundaries," says disease ecologist 
Thomas Gillespie, an associate professor in Emory University's 
department of environmental sciences, who studies how shrinking natural 
habitats and changing behaviour add to the risk of diseases spilling 
over from animals to humans.

"I am not at all surprised about the coronavirus outbreak," he says. 
"The majority of pathogens are still to be discovered. We are at the 
very tip of the iceberg."

Humans, says Gillespie, are creating the conditions for the spread of 
diseases by reducing the natural barriers between host animals - in 
which the virus is naturally circulating - and themselves. "We fully 
expect the arrival of pandemic influenza; we can expect large-scale 
human mortalities; we can expect other pathogens with other impacts. A 
disease like Ebola is not easily spread. But something with a mortality 
rate of Ebola spread by something like measles would be catastrophic," 
Gillespie says.

Wildlife everywhere is being put under more stress, he says. "Major 
landscape changes are causing animals to lose habitats, which means 
species become crowded together and also come into greater contact with 
humans. Species that survive change are now moving and mixing with 
different animals and with humans."

Gillespie sees this in the US, where suburbs fragment forests and raise 
the risk of humans contracting Lyme disease. "Altering the ecosystem 
affects the complex cycle of the Lyme pathogen. People living close by 
are more likely to get bitten by a tick carrying Lyme bacteria," he says.

Yet human health research seldom considers the surrounding natural 
ecosystems, says Richard Ostfeld, distinguished senior scientist at the 
Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York. He and 
others are developing the emerging discipline of planetary health, which 
looks at the links between human and ecosystem health.

"There's misapprehension among scientists and the public that natural 
ecosystems are the source of threats to ourselves. It's a mistake. 
Nature poses threats, it is true, but it's human activities that do the 
real damage. The health risks in a natural environment can be made much 
worse when we interfere with it," he says.

Ostfeld points to rats and bats, which are strongly linked with the 
direct and indirect spread of zoonotic diseases. "Rodents and some bats 
thrive when we disrupt natural habitats. They are the most likely to 
promote transmissions [of pathogens]. The more we disturb the forests 
and habitats the more danger we are in," he says.

Felicia Keesing, professor of biology at Bard College, New York, studies 
how environmental changes influence the probability that humans will be 
exposed to infectious diseases. "When we erode biodiversity, we see a 
proliferation of the species most likely to transmit new diseases to us, 
but there's also good evidence that those same species are the best 
hosts for existing diseases," she wrote in an email to Ensia, the 
nonprofit media outlet that reports on our changing planet...
- - -
*The market connection*
Disease ecologists argue that viruses and other pathogens are also 
likely to move from animals to humans in the many informal markets that 
have sprung up to provide fresh meat to fast-growing urban populations 
around the world. Here, animals are slaughtered, cut up and sold on the 
spot.

The "wet market" (one that sells fresh produce and meat) in Wuhan, 
thought by the Chinese government to be the starting point of the 
current Covid-19 pandemic, was known to sell numerous wild animals, 
including live wolf pups, salamanders, crocodiles, scorpions, rats, 
squirrels, foxes, civets and turtles.
- - -
"The risks are greater now. They were always present and have been there 
for generations. It is our interactions with that risk which must be 
changed," says Brian Bird, a research virologist at the University of 
California, Davis School of Veterinary Medicine One Health Institute, 
where he leads Ebola-related surveillance activities in Sierra Leone and 
elsewhere.

"We are in an era now of chronic emergency," Bird says. "Diseases are 
more likely to travel further and faster than before, which means we 
must be faster in our responses. It needs investments, change in human 
behaviour, and it means we must listen to people at community levels."

Getting the message about pathogens and disease to hunters, loggers, 
market traders and consumers is key, Bird says. "These spillovers start 
with one or two people. The solutions start with education and 
awareness. We must make people aware things are different now. I have 
learned from working in Sierra Leone with Ebola-affected people that 
local communities have the hunger and desire to have information," he 
says. "They want to know what to do. They want to learn."

Fevre and Tacoli advocate rethinking urban infrastructure, particularly 
within low-income and informal settlements. "Short-term efforts are 
focused on containing the spread of infection," they write. "The longer 
term - given that new infectious diseases will likely continue to spread 
rapidly into and within cities - calls for an overhaul of current 
approaches to urban planning and development."

The bottom line, Bird says, is to be prepared. "We can't predict where 
the next pandemic will come from, so we need mitigation plans to take 
into account the worst possible scenarios," he says. "The only certain 
thing is that the next one will certainly come."
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/18/tip-of-the-iceberg-is-our-destruction-of-nature-responsible-for-covid-19-aoe


[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming  - March 19, 1989*

Senator Al Gore (D-TN), writing in the New York Times, observes, "In 
1987, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere began to surge with record 
annual increases. Global temperatures are also climbing: 1987 was the 
second hottest year on record; 1988 was the hottest. Scientists now 
predict our current course will raise world temperatures five degrees 
Celsius in our lifetimes. The last time there was such a shift, it was 
five degrees colder; New York City was under one kilometer of ice. If 
five degrees colder over thousands of years produces an ice age, what 
could five degrees warmer produce in a lifetime? In a classic 
experiment, a frog dropped in boiling water jumps out. The same frog, 
put in the water before it is slowly boiled, remains in the pot. Our 
environment is at the boiling point. Will we react?"

    Opinion
    *An Ecological Kristallnacht. Listen.*
    By Albert Gore
    March 19, 1989

    *Humankind has suddenly entered into a brand new relationship with
    our planet.*

    Unless we quickly and profoundly change the course of our
    civilization, we face an immediate and grave danger of destroying
    the worldwide ecological system that sustains life as we know it.

    It is time to confront this danger.

    In 1939, as clouds of war gathered over Europe, many refused to
    recognize what was about to happen. No one could imagine a
    Holocaust, even after shattered glass had filled the streets on
    Kristallnacht. World leaders waffled and waited, hoping that Hitler
    was not what he seemed, that world war could be avoided. Later, when
    aerial photographs revealed death camps, many pretended not to see.
    Even now, many fail to acknowledge that our victory was not only
    over Nazism but also over dark forces deep within us.

    In 1989, clouds of a different sort signal an environmental
    holocaust without precedent. Once again, world leaders waffle,
    hoping the danger will dissipate. Yet today the evidence is as clear
    as the sounds of glass shattering in Berlin.

    Listen:

    * The earth's forests are being destroyed at the rate of one
    football field's worth every second, one Tennessee's worth every year.

    * An enormous hole is opening in the ozone layer, reducing the
    earth's ability to protect life from deadly ultraviolet radiation.

    * Living species die at such an unprecedented rate that more than
    half may disappear within our lifetimes.

    * Chemical wastes, in growing volumes, seep downward to poison
    ground water and upward to destroy the atmosphere's delicate balance.

    * Huge quantities of carbon dioxide, methane and chlorofluorocarbons
    dumped in the atmosphere have trapped heat and raised global
    temperatures.

    * Every day, 37,000 children under the age of 5 die of starvation or
    preventable diseases made worse by failures of crops and politics.

    Why are these dramatic changes taking place? Because the human
    population is surging. (It took a million years to reach two billion
    people. In the last 40 years, world population has doubled. And in
    the next 40 years, the number of people could double again.) Because
    the industrial, scientific and technological revolutions magnify the
    environmental impact of these increases, and because we tolerate
    self-destructive behavior and environmental vandalism on a global scale.

    Why, once again, do we fail to rally our forces? Much of the world
    closed its eyes as Hitler marched because the only adequate response
    was a horrible war many hoped to avoid. Do we now shrink from the
    unimaginably difficult response demanded by the global environmental
    crisis, and hope against hope that it will yet prove unnecessary?
    This crisis is so different from anything before that it is hard to
    believe it is real. We seize scientific uncertainties, however
    small, as excuses for inaction. Some, like Prime Minister Neville
    Chamberlain in Munich, would rather adapt to the threat than
    confront it. This time, they are protected not by an umbrella but by
    floppy hats and sunglasses.

    Our complacency stems in part from a standard of living dependent on
    rapid consumption of the earth's resources. Our generation has
    inherited the idea that we have the right to appropriate for
    ourselves the earth's accumulated treasures as quickly as we can
    consume them. We reach back through millions of years for the
    deposits that fuel our industrial civilization.

    Just as a drug addict needs increasing doses to produce the same
    effect, our global appetite for the earth's abundance grows each
    year. We transform the resources of the past into the pollution of
    the future, telescoping time for self-indulgence in the present.

    In 1987, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere began to surge with
    record annual increases. Global temperatures are also climbing: 1987
    was the second hottest year on record; 1988 was the hottest.
    Scientists now predect our current course will raise world
    temperatures five degrees Celsius in our lifetimes. The last time
    there was such a shift, it was five degrees colder; New York City
    was under one kilometer of ice. If five degrees colder over
    thousands of years produces an ice age, what could five degrees
    warmer produce in a lifetime? In a classic experiment, a frog
    dropped in boiling water jumps out. The same frog, put in the water
    before it is slowly boiled, remains in the pot. Our environment is
    at the boiling point. Will we react?

    The 1990's are the decade of decision. Profound changes are
    required. We must create a new global compact for sustainable
    development -for example, trading debts for shared environmental
    stewardship. Our agenda must include the following:

    * A worldwide ban in five years on chlorofluorocarbons, which
    simultaneously destroy the protective ozone layer and cause up to 20
    percent of global warming.

    * Rapid reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, through increased
    vehicle mileage standards, increased energy efficiency and
    development of alternative energy sources.

    * A global halt to destruction of forests and swift implementation
    of worldwide reforestation programs.

    * A ban within five years on packaging that is neither recyclable
    nor naturally degradable, a comprehensive waste minimization program
    and aggressive efforts to control emissions of methane from
    landfills and other sources.

    * A series of global summit meetings to seek the unprecedented
    international cooperation the environmental crisis will demand.

    In the 1940's, as victory neared over the dark forces unleashed on
    Kristallnacht, Gen. Omar Bradley offered advice that is once again
    relevant to the challenge that confronts humanity: ''It is time we
    steered by the stars, not by the lights of each passing ship.''

    Albert Gore Jr., a Democrat, is Senator from Tennessee.

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/19/opinion/an-ecological-kristallnacht-listen.html

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