[TheClimate.Vote] May 25, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*May 25, 2020*/

[learning to count]
*Experts Warn Climate Change Is Already Killing Way More People Than We 
Record*
CARLY CASSELLA25 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...
- -
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
- - -
[source material from The Lancet]
*Heat-related mortality: an urgent need to recognise and record*
National mortality records in Australia suggest substantial 
under-reporting of heat-related mortality. Less than 0·1% of 1·7 million 
deaths between 2006 and 2017 were attributed directly or indirectly to 
excessive natural heat (table). However, recent research indicates that 
official records underestimate the association at least 50-fold...
- -
Understanding the degree to which environmental factors affect human 
health is important if the impact of climate change is to be fully 
appreciated. As severe environmental events become more common, correct 
reporting and attribution is needed for effective evidence-based 
responses and to guide local, national, and global adaptation.
The issue of under-reporting death from heat parallels cases of 
lightning strikes, in which the direct cause (eg, a falling tree branch 
or the collapse of a building on fire) is reported without any reference 
to the indirect cause (ie, the initial lightning strike that triggered 
events culminating in death).
Non-biomedical external factors are often omitted on death certificates, 
contributing to inaccuracies in cause-of-death estimations in many 
countries. Other factors contributing to poor quality data include 
scarcity of resources necessary to maintain or improve the data quality 
and a lack of physician training in death certificate completion. In 
response to such weaknesses, many countries are exploring ways to 
modernise death certification and recording processes.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(20)30100-5/fulltext



[Scientific American - heating mechanisms]
*Because of Rising CO2, Trees Might Be Warming the Arctic*
Less water loss from plants causes the surrounding air to warm, and 
currents can transport that heat poleward
By Chelsea Harvey, E&E News on May 24, 2020
The Arctic is one of the fastest-warming places on the planet --and 
scientists still aren't completely sure why.

Melting snow and ice may be speeding up the warming. Changes in 
atmospheric circulation could be playing a role. Many factors could be 
influencing the region's temperatures, which are rising at least twice 
as fast as the rest of the world.

Now, scientists think they may have discovered an additional piece of 
the puzzle. Plants, it turns out, may have an unexpected influence on 
global warming.
As carbon dioxide levels rise in the atmosphere, plants become more 
efficient at carrying out photosynthesis and other basic life functions. 
And they're often able to save more water in the process.

Water that plants exchange with the air helps cool local temperatures. 
When they lose less water, their surroundings start to warm up.

A study published last month in Nature Communications suggests that this 
process is helping to warm the Arctic...
- -
In fact, the extra warming may actually contribute to other processes 
also speeding up Arctic climate change.
For instance, scientists believe that melting sea ice plays a big role 
in Arctic warming. Sea ice, with its bright, reflective surface, helps 
to beam sunlight away from the planet. As ice disappears, more sunlight 
--and more heat --is able to get through to the surface of the Earth.

The extra heat drifting up from the lower latitudes may be helping to 
melt sea ice at faster rates, the researchers suggest. And this, in 
turn, also contributes to faster Arctic warming.
Overall, the study estimates that the plant effect may account for 
nearly 10% of the Arctic's warming each year. And it could explain as 
much as 28% of the warming across the Northern Hemisphere's lower 
latitudes...
- -
But there's also been some debate among scientists about the exact 
effect of rising CO2 on plants.
Plants take in CO2, and also exchange water with the atmosphere, through 
tiny pores in their leaves called stomata. More CO2 means plants don't 
have to keep their stomata open so wide. They can still get enough 
carbon dioxide through smaller openings, and they can save water in the 
process.

On the other hand, more CO2 can sometimes cause an increase in plant 
growth--and when there are more plants around, there's more water being 
exchanged with the atmosphere.

These two effects--more plant growth, but also smaller stomata 
openings--can have conflicting effects on local temperatures.

For now, recent studies suggest that the stomata effect tends to win.

"I think it's pretty clear that in many ecosystems, we actually don't 
see as much plant growth as we sort of naively think we should by 
bumping up the CO2," said Leander Anderegg, a postdoctoral researcher at 
the University of California, Berkeley, and the Carnegie Institution for 
Science who commented on the new research for E&E News. "And there, the 
increase in these plants using water more efficiently and closing 
stomata definitely offsets the growth aspect."
But, he added, the exact size of these effects is still uncertain and 
can vary from place to place.

"I think that it's something that is pretty well-established that it's 
sort of like an important unknown," he said.

So scientists are still working to understand exactly how much influence 
plants have on the global climate. But other studies also suggest they 
may play an important role.

Previous research published in 2010 in the Proceedings of the National 
Academy of Sciences has found that the plant effect will increase global 
warming beyond what scientists would otherwise expect, based on climate 
change projections. Other studies, such as a 2018 analysis in Nature 
Communications, have suggested that the same effect will amplify extreme 
heat events, causing more frequent and more intense heat waves.

And still other studies have linked the plant effect to regional climate 
patterns in places outside the Arctic. For instance, one study published 
in Geophysical Research Letters in 2018 found that reduced water loss 
from plants may contribute to a drying pattern in the Amazon.

This is all an emerging area of research, with the exact magnitude of 
the effects still unclear. As a result, the effect is not 
well-represented --if at all --in most climate models.

According to Kim, that means there's a chance that some model 
projections could be underestimating future climate change, particularly 
in the Arctic. More research may clarify whether that's actually the 
case and exactly how much plants are contributing to the warming that's 
happening all over the globe.

For now, the fact that many studies with many models all seem to be 
converging on the same basic idea gives scientists more confidence that 
they're on the right track, Anderegg said.

"And even if we have some amazing breakthroughs in how we model plants 
... I think what's absolutely durable about the paper is how plants 
respond to CO2 isn't gonna save us," he added.
Climatewire and E&E provides daily coverage of essential energy and 
environmental news at www.eenews.net.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/because-of-rising-co2-trees-might-be-warming-the-arctic/



[Two combine]
*What a Week's Disasters Tell Us About Climate and the Pandemic*
Extreme weather presents an even bigger threat when economies are 
crashing and ordinary people are stretched to their limits.
By Somini Sengupta
May 23, 2020
- -
Climate change makes extreme weather events more frequent and more 
intense. Now, because of the pandemic, they come at a time when national 
economies are crashing and ordinary people are stretched to their limits.

Relief organizations working in eastern India and Bangladesh, for 
instance, say the lockdown had already forced people to rely on food aid 
by the time the storm, Cyclone Amphan, hit. Then, the high winds and 
heavy rains ruined newly sown crops that were meant to feed communities 
through next season. "People have nothing to fall back on," Pankaj 
Anand, a director at Oxfam India, said in a statement Thursday.
The worst may be yet to come.

Several other climate hazards are looming, as the coronavirus unspools 
its long tail around the world. They include the prospect of heat waves 
in Europe and South Asia, wildfires from the western United States to 
Europe to Australia, and water scarcity in South America and Southern 
Africa, where a persistent drought is already deepening hunger.

And then there's the locusts. Locusts.

Abnormally heavy rains last year, which scientists say were made more 
likely by the long-term warming of the Indian Ocean, a hallmark of 
climate change, have exacerbated a locust infestation across eastern 
Africa. Higher temperatures make it more inviting for locusts to spread 
to places where the climate wasn't as suitable before -- and in turn, 
destroy vast swaths of farmland and pasture for some of the poorest 
people on the planet.

While the risks are different from region to region, taken together, 
"they should be seen as a sobering signal of what lies ahead for 
countries all over the world," a group of scientists and economists 
warned this month in an opinion piece in Nature Climate Change.
The impacts will not be equal, though, they added. They stand to 
exacerbate longstanding inequities, the experts said, and "put specific 
populations at heightened risk and compromise recovery."...
- -
The impact of the accumulated warming is already felt by those who were 
in the eye of Cyclone Amphan this week: those who live in the delta 
regions of eastern India and Bangladesh, and who are at the mercy of 
intensifying heat waves, sea level rise, storm surges and super cyclones 
like this one.
- -
Traditional ways of coping during storms are now more dangerous, too. 
Evacuating people to cyclone shelters has saved hundreds of thousands of 
lives in past storms, but aid workers now worry that the virus could 
spread quickly in shelters...
- -
"Reconstruction post Covid-19 should be shaped in a way that reduces our 
vulnerability," she said. "That means both to prepare for extreme 
climatic risks, and to reduce emissions that underpin the climatic risks."
- Somini Sengupta is an international climate correspondent.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/23/climate/climate-change-coronavirus.html



[Hydrogen in Australia]
*Green Hydrogen : Can Australia lead the world?*
May 24, 2020
Just Have a Think
Green hydrogen, or renewable hydrogen, is now a very real commercial 
prospect thanks to the plummeting prices of wind and solar power. 
Australia's vast land mass, almost constant sun and wind, and access to 
an array of minerals and resources really does make it the ideal 
location for large scale hydrogen production powered by renewable 
technologies. So can Australia move quickly enough to seize this 
opportunity?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkuVE0SA1B8



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - May 25, 1992 *
The New York Times editorial page calls for a price on carbon, stating:

    The threat of global warming raises two salient questions: What's
    the economic cost of inaction? And what's the cost of action --
    taking steps to stop further warming?

    The models for studying these questions are primitive, yielding
    little more than educated guesses. In the face of such numbing
    uncertainty, the sensible course is a policy of "no regrets." The
    U.S. would take measures -- including a tax on carbon-based fuels --
    to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases as part of an overall
    strategy to reduce pollution to desirable levels.

    Reducing pollution makes sense whether or not global warming occurs.
    And at the end of the decade, with the benefit of more information
    and new technologies, the U.S. could decide whether more aggressive
    actions were warranted.

    If global temperatures rise 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit by late next
    century, as expected, the cost to the U.S., mainly in lower
    agriculture yields, would probably be 1 to 2 percent of total
    output, or less than $120 billion.

    This large, though not staggering, number would almost certainly
    balloon over time. And countries less geographically fortunate could
    suffer losses many times those of the U.S.

    Estimates of the costs of countering greenhouse emissions vary
    widely. Studies based solely on technological fixes say the cost is
    negligible. But the conclusions are unconvincing because the studies
    overlook the problem of putting new technologies to use.

    Economic models tell a grimmer story. Lowering emissions by 20
    percent from 1990 levels -- by, for example, switching to cleaner
    but more expensive fuels -- might cost the U.S. between $120 billion
    and $300 billion.

    But the true cost of stabilizing global emissions will be
    substantially higher because the West will have to cut emissions by
    far more than 20 percent. Otherwise poor countries like China and
    India will have too little room to grow. Rather than assaulting
    global warming, many countries might decide to spend the money
    instead on more pressing problems like feeding the hungry.

    The prudent course for the West is to impose taxes that help the
    environment, and incidentally combat global warming. The best choice
    would be a modest tax on carbon-based fuels.

    A carbon tax equivalent to, say, 25 cents per gallon of gasoline
    would help reduce pollution. Incidentally, it might be enough to
    help cut back greenhouse emissions in the West to 1990 levels by
    2000 -- the policy environmentalists fought, unsuccessfully, to have
    adopted at next month's Earth Summit in Brazil. The problem with
    pledging to hit that target is that a modest tax might not be
    enough, requiring the West to renege or impose cripplingly higher taxes.

    That's why the U.S. is better off committing itself to a fixed tax
    than a fixed timetable for emissions. A carbon tax would help the
    environment but, by letting the timetable slip if necessary, risk
    doing little harm.

    A carbon tax would show U.S. resolve -- the bite that George Bush's
    no-regrets policy now lacks.."

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/25/opinion/on-global-warming-why-no-carbon-tax.html?gwt=regi

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