[TheClimate.Vote] May 19, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Tue May 19 10:59:35 EDT 2020
/*May 19, 2020*/
[Pipeline news]
*New York Rejects Keystone-Like Pipeline in Fierce Battle Over the
State's Energy Future*
Regulators denied an application for a $1 billion natural gas pipeline
that environmentalists said would set back the fight against climate
change...
- -
"The state has made it clear that dangerous gas pipelines have no place
in New York," Kimberly Ong, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources
Defense Council, said. "We will continue to ensure this reckless project
is shelved forever."
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/nyregion/williams-pipeline-gas-energy.html
[NYTimes says]
*Climate Change Is Making Hurricanes Stronger, Researchers Find*
An analysis of satellite imagery from the past four decades suggests
that global warming has increased the chances of storms reaching
Category 3 or higher...
- -
"From a short time scale, these trends are not going to change the risk
landscape," Dr. Kossin said. But over the long term, he said, "the risk
landscape could change, and in a bad way, not in a good way."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/climate/climate-changes-hurricane-intensity.html
[Australia in crisis - video overview]
*Climate Wars: How brutal politics derailed climate policy in Australia
| Four Corners*
ABC News In-depth - May 18, 2020
For more than 30 years, Australian politics has been grappling with
climate change and the nation's most senior public servants have been
there through it all.
In Canberra's corridors of power, the nation's most senior public
servants have been there through it all. Usually, they keep their
thoughts private, rarely making a foray into public debate, even in
retirement.
Now, after the devastating "black summer" fire season, the former heads
of the Office of Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Department of the
Treasury, along with former chief scientists, have decided they can no
longer stay silent.
They believe there has been a colossal failure by politicians of all
stripes to comprehensively tackle climate change.
Read more: https://ab.co/36aFVi0
Play video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTkRFK46UT0
- - -
[Aussie anger]
*Australia's most senior former public servants and scientists reveal
their anger about climate policy failure*
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-18/four-corners-climate-change-public-servants-reveal-anger/12235180
- - -
[Radio Ecoshock]
*Burning At The End Of The World--Australia catastrophic fires--Greg
Mullins--Radio Ecoshock 2019-10-02*
May 18, 2020
Stop Fossil Fuels
Massive wild fires have appeared on every Continent except Antarctica.
Now it is hitting Australia even at the end of winter there. With
temperatures about 10C--over 20 degrees Fahrenheit above normal--over
130 bush fires were crackling over Australia in early September. A
veteran Australian fire expert warns climate change makes the risk much
worse, and it may break down the country's fire defense system. And now
strangely, a change high above Antarctica makes this year's fire season
even more ominous.
We have reached Greg Mullins, former commissioner of Fire and Rescue for
New South Wales for 13 years until his retirement in 2017. Greg has
represented Australia for groups of Asian Fire Chiefs and the United
Nations. He currently sits on the Climate Council, the publicly-funded
climate watchdog.
Australia has a history of fires going back to aboriginal times. I'm
thinking of the Ash Wednesday fires in February 1983 that killed 47, and
the Black Saturday Bushfires that killed 173 people in Victoria in 2008.
What is changing now? Every year has become super dangerous for
wildfires. Climate has changed the game.
Show by Radio Ecoshock, reposted under CC License. Episode details at
https://www.ecoshock.org/2019/10/burn...
Stop Fossil Fuels researches and disseminates effective strategies and
tactics to halt fossil fuel combustion as fast as possible. Learn more
at https://stopfossilfuels.org
*SHOW NOTES*
Greg warns that Australia's method of sharing fire-fighters and
equipment could break down. There used to be a succession of fire
seasons across that large continent, so each state could share equipment
and fire fighters. Now there can be concurrent fires, meaning there is
less to share.
I see that danger becoming international. We had firefighters from
Australia and New Zealand come here to British Columbia to help fight
our massive wildfires. It was out of season for Australian men and women
who battle these beasts. But now places like California say "fire
season" is all year long. Maybe as the season extends even in Australia,
the international sharing will end too and everybody will be on their own?
Greg says that is already happening. Australia has very few large fire
fighting aircraft, like 737 size planes. They were always able to get
more from California during winter in the Northern Hemisphere. But now
fire season can last all year in California, those planes are no longer
always available. Australia just bought a 737 to fight fires, but still
doesn't have enough if a super fire season erupts in several parts of
the country.
*THE "BIG DRY" IN AUSTRALIA*
Australia is in yet another drought. Some dams in new South Wales have
almost run dry this year. Winter rainfall was dismally low. Towns may
run out of water. Water is in such short supply, in some areas fire
fighters have to let a home burn because that town cannot spare that
much water.
When the Murray Darling river system was hit with low water, it became a
question of water for the City of Adelaide or for farmers upstream. The
change in rainfall is likely due to the Polar Vortex winds tightening
around Antarctica, meaning less rain for Australia.
*SUDDEN STRATOSPHERIC WARMING OVER ANTARCTICA HEATS UP FIRE SEASON IN
AUSTRALIA*
A "sudden stratospheric warming" just popped up over Antarctica. My
basic understanding is this means the very cold stratosphere rapidly
warms up a few degrees. That happens now and then over the North Pole,
but rarely over the South Pole. The only other instance scientists can
confirm happened over Antarctica in 2002. The Australian Bureau of
Meteorology is predicting this will be the strongest warming of
Antarctica on record. Greg discusses the impact on Australian weather.
A "triple-whammy" is hurting Australia right now. Added to changes in
Polar winds, and the stratosphere, there is another cycle over the
Indian Ocean that is also in a phase which tends to reduce rain-bearing
winds over Australia.
*IGNITION*
But even ideal burning conditions don't necessarily add up to a
catastrophic fire year. An ignition source is needed. Yes there are
cases of arson in Australia torching the bush, as there are in Canada
and most countries. But farmers are also to blame, being slow to adapt
to a changed climate. Where it was fine for their forefathers to burn
off fields or scrub bush at certain times of year, that is no longer
safe because the fire season has extended. Some agricultural fires get
away into the bush with terrible results.
Greg Mullins also tells us that the amount of lightning has increased as
well. That is what set ancient rainforests in the Australian island of
Tasmania ablaze in recent years. Those forests had not burned for more
than thousand years. Those trees are not adapted to fire as some forests
are in other parts of Australia. When they burn they are gone for a long
time. Even fire-adapted tree species can be wiped out if the fires keep
coming back too soon--as they are!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJAON1Gen6Q
- - -
[Classic data display from Australia]
*See how global warming has changed the world since your childhood*
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-06/how-climate-change-has-impacted-your-life/11766018?nw=0
[US Military thinking]
*Climate Change Didn't Pause for COVID-19: Implications for Military
Readiness*
As COVID-19 continues to hammer the nation, approximately 61,900
Department of Defense (DoD) personnel (45,600 of which are made up of
National Guard) have been called on to support the national response.
"With COVID-19, it's like we have 54 different hurricanes hitting every
state, every territory, and the District of Columbia -- some are
Category 5, some are Category 3, and some are Category 1," Gen. Joseph
Lengyel, Chief of the National Guard Bureau, said in a recent statement.
But its more than that – not only is DoD supporting the response to the
"54 different hurricanes," but they are fighting the pandemic internally
as it begins to degrade readiness from impacts on the pipeline for new
recruits to delays in deployments, pauses in training, and cancelation
of major exercises.
And so the perfect storm begins to brew as COVID 19 collides with the
existing readiness impacts on the Department of Defense (DoD) from the
bruising impact of severe weather events, sea level rise, flooding, and
wildfires fueled by climate change...
- -
The entrance of COVID 19 onto the stage has compounded and accelerated
the existing impacts on readiness from climate change. In and of itself,
COVID-19 has brought challenges to deployments and training throughout
DoD. The Marines have been especially hard hit from the cascading
disasters brought about by this collision that is accelerating existing
and future readiness vulnerabilities. Already forced to make difficult
funding decisions between "near-term readiness and long-term
modernization efforts" of their installations, which serve as their
warfighting platforms for combat readiness, Hurricane Florence plummeted
Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in 2018, which houses a third of the
Corps' combat operating power, which caused $3.6 billion in damages from
massive flooding and beach erosion damaging 913 military structures to
include training facilities and significantly impacting training and
deployments. "When you are not able to train as hard and as long…to
maintain a substantial training level …that's a risk" said General
Robert Neller, former Commandant of the Marine Corps in his testimony
before Congress in December 2018. Only $400 million was received from
Congress in 2019 and the Marines are still trying to recover while
staring into the face of a severe 2020 hurricane season by the predicted
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration similar to that
which gave rise to Superstorm Sandy.
At the same time, the Marines, along with their sister Services, have
experiencing readiness challenges from COVID-19 as the pandemic impacts
the new recruit pipeline and large scale exercises in Europe, the Artic,
and the Pacific while the Chinese are using this as an opportunity for
more aggressive behavior in the South China Sea...
https://climateandsecurity.org/2020/05/18/climate-change-didnt-pause-for-covid-19-implications-for-military-readiness/
[Just have a think - video]
*Is Germany sustainable?*
May 17, 2020
Just Have a Think
Wind power now dominates Germany's electricity sector, but the country
also still burns millions of tonnes of coal every year. So what is
Chancellor Merkel's plan for a genuinely sustainable future at the heart
of Europe?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhPSSjI9jJU
[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - May 19, 2008 *
The Guardian reports:
"A shareholder revolt at ExxonMobil led by the billionaire
Rockefeller family has won the support of four significant British
institutional investors who will call on Monday for a shakeup in the
governance of the world's biggest oil company.
"Guardian.co.uk has learned that F&C Asset Management, Morley Fund
Management, the Co-Operative Insurance Society and the West Midlands
Pension Fund are throwing their weight behind a resolution demanding
that ExxonMobil appoints an independent chairman to stimulate debate
on the company's board.
"Exxon is facing a rebellion from its investors over its hardline
approach to global warming. The firm has refused to follow rival oil
companies in committing large-scale capital investment to
environmentally friendly technology such as wind and solar power.
"The Rockefeller dynasty, whose ancestor John D. Rockefeller founded
the original oil business at the core of ExxonMobil, have sponsored
four shareholder resolutions demanding changes at Exxon. One of
these calls on Exxon's chief executive Rex Tillerson, to relinquish
his role as chairman in favour of an outsider to bring in an
alternative point of view."
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/may/19/exxonmobil.oil
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/
/Archive of Daily Global Warming News
<https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/2017-October/date.html>
/
https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote
/To receive daily mailings - click to Subscribe
<mailto:subscribe at theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request>
to news digest./
*** Privacy and Security:*This is a text-only mailing that carries no
images which may originate from remote servers. Text-only messages
provide greater privacy to the receiver and sender.
By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain must be used for democratic
and election purposes and cannot be used for commercial purposes.
To subscribe, email: contact at theclimate.vote
<mailto:contact at theclimate.vote> with subject subscribe, To Unsubscribe,
subject: unsubscribe
Also you may subscribe/unsubscribe at
https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote
Links and headlines assembled and curated by Richard Pauli for
http://TheClimate.Vote <http://TheClimate.Vote/> delivering succinct
information for citizens and responsible governments of all levels. List
membership is confidential and records are scrupulously restricted to
this mailing list.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/attachments/20200519/bc0307d9/attachment.html>
More information about the TheClimate.Vote
mailing list