[TheClimate.Vote] November 3, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Tue Nov 3 10:12:22 EST 2020
/*November 3, 2020*/
[Washington Post]
*The U.S. will leave the Paris climate accord on Nov. 4. But voters will
decide for how long.*
Under Trump, the United States will be the only country to drop out of
the international agreement to cut pollution linked to climate change.
If he wins the White House, Joe Biden has pledged to rejoin the accord.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/10/30/us-paris-climate-agreement-trump-biden/
[NYT & Siena College Poll]
*What Voters in Battleground States Think About Climate Change*
Nov. 1, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/01/climate/polls-what-voters-think-climate-global-warming.html
[rapper Baba Brinkman gives us some history of the science]
*Greenhouse Effect - Baba Brinkman Music Video*
Nov 2, 2020
Baba Brinkman
*A hip-hop history of the past two centuries of climate science
discoveries.*
Lyrics by Baba Brinkman
So how should we talk about climate change?
I asked my friend Bill Nye to give us some advice
the thing to focus on is the last two and a half centuries
since the steam engine was everywhere - ubiquitous.
That's when we put all this carbon dioxide in the air that would
normally not be there.
So what we need is the last 200 years of climate science discoveries
matched up with some hip-hop slang all right?
Try this, let's take it back 200 years to the 1800s up in here when
we only had
290 CO2 parts per million in the atmosphere
We had one billion homo sapiens on the planet trying to get the
groove on
and soon lots of them would thanks to industrial revolution.
Back when the steam engine had just been invented
and nothing was electric except the spirit of the times progress
Driven by the scientific method Joseph Fourier was a Frenchman
a physicist and a mathematician he discovered the fact that the
atmosphere
acts like a blanket for heat retention - the greenhouse effect first
described in 1824
visible light from the sun meets little resistance inbound because
the size of
the wavelengths is held attack but then when it hits the earth it emits
infrared radiation with longer waves and they get trapped and bounce
back
when they try to escape on their way back up into space. Climate
skeptics today
from Ted Cruz to Rand pile to Bobby Jindal
might say bounce back off of what introducing John Tindall
in the 1860s. Tyndall investigated methane and CO2
and water vapor to see whether any of them block infrared radiation
and they all do
But methane and water vapor don't stick around in the atmosphere for
long
it took a Swedish genius to identify carbon dioxide as a regulator
-- Svante Arrhenius
1896 Svante did the math if you cut the CO2 levels in half
you'll end up with the four to five degree temperature dropped
all across the map but if you double it you calculated a temperature
escalation
of five or six degrees cause water vapor increases with
heat radiation and that feeds back to increase the heat.
Of course in 1896 CO2 emissions were pretty moderate.
So they thought it would take a couple thousand years to double the
concentration when they thought of it but you gotta
give it to Svante, he predicted five or six degrees
and that's within the warming range predicted today by the IPCC.
Now in 1927 arenas died a celebrated Swedish civilian.
And three years later the population of planet earth exceeded
2 billion. In 1938 a British engineer by the name of Guy Callendar
discovered a
rise in carbon dioxide and also measured a rise in temperature.
In 1958 Roger Revell demonstrated that the oceans couldn't take care
of it
he said humans are now carrying out a massive geophysical experiment.
In 1960 Charles Keeling did some measurements on Mauna
Loa of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and every year the level
appeared to go up. It was rising at a steady rate the same
rate as emissions from us burning oil and coal.
Also in 1960 the population hit 3 billion souls.
Now we got 7.5 billion individuals in the same globe
All hooked on fossil fuels like a drug and how we're gonna quit
Just saying no there's no easy answers. This is the truth and it's
inconvenience
but the scientific evidence is not recent. Just ask Svante Arrhenius.
Now we got 417 parts per million and that's an increase in CO2
density 40%
in just two centuries so either we set a carbon budget
we set a cap and we stay within the limit or else we can expect a
catastrophic greenhouse effect.
And that's physics.
And on and on
[Music]
And on and on and on.
Featuring Bill Nye (filmed at NECSS 2016, New York, NY)
Original Backing Video by Olivia Sebesky
Edited by Buck Bowen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FTD2DDwSMw
[an opinion from The Verge]
*WHAT WE'RE VOTING FOR: INFRASTRUCTURE*
Let's build the cities we want to see in 100 years
By Andrew J. Hawkins Nov 2, 2020
Some of the most important parts of our country are literally falling
apart. Our airports are crumbling. Our buses and rail networks are
hemorrhaging riders and falling into disrepair. Many of our bridges are
so old they're eligible for Medicare. And with the global pandemic
crisis driving cities into an unprecedented budget crisis, things are
likely to get worse before they get better.
Every four years, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)
releases its "Infrastructure Report Card," which assesses everything
from ports and dams to transit, schools, and hazardous waste management.
In 2017, the group gave the country a D+, the same grade it delivered in
2013. The US is on track to receive the same grade (or worse) in 2021...
- -
At this point, a standard bundle of infrastructure money from Congress
is no longer enough. We're facing an array of distinct, interconnected
crises -- the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, rampant income
inequality, a national protest movement against white supremacy and
police violence -- that require enormous changes in our politics as well
as our infrastructure. And with technology accelerating a shift in
energy generation, transportation, automation, and the nature of work
itself, it's fair to assume that any old infrastructure plan isn't going
to cut it.
In short, we need an infrastructure revolution -- and soon.
When we spend that money, we should do it with an eye toward the future
-- not just the next election, but the next generation. More than almost
anything else the government does, infrastructure is about building for
the future. Power plants and bridges and waste treatment facilities need
to last for decades, up to and beyond 100 years sometimes. It forces us
to answer a hard question: what do we think the country will look like
in 2100? What do we want it to look like?...
- -
In practical terms, that may look less like skyports for flying Ubers
and more like bike lanes, pedestrian bridges, and high-speed rails.
Facing the grim reality of climate change, infrastructure can help us
shift to more sustainable, less polluting means of transportation. That
means walking and biking in cities, alongside commuter rail and public
transportation in suburban and rural areas.
We also need to focus on not losing the transit systems we already have.
Transit agencies in the US are facing historic budget shortfalls as a
result of the pandemic. Without at least $32 billion in additional
emergency funding, many public transit agencies will soon be forced to
cut services and routes for essential workers as well as furlough
frontline workers, leaving our communities without service and jobs
during an unparalleled pandemic.
This doesn't mean abandoning highways and other auto infrastructure, but
it does mean treating it differently. We can require states to "fix it
first" before expanding highways -- or even replace most
highway-widening projects with bus rapid transit systems. We can renew
the electric vehicle tax credit but also give tax breaks for other,
lighter weight EVs, like e-bikes and scooters. The tax credit for
electrics will go even further if it's paired with a higher gas tax, as
a kind of a one-two punch against gas-powered cars.
Infrastructure won't save us from climate change or future disruptions
to our economy and public health. But how our infrastructure evolves
over the next 50 years will be a major determinant of the impact that
climate change will have on civilization. By ignoring that
infrastructure, we've dug ourselves into a hole. It's time to support
leaders who can dig us out.
https://www.theverge.com/21530294/election-day-2020-infrastructure-bridge-roads-climate-transportation
[take note]
*Trump's Attacks on Climate Science Are Coming to Fruition*
A long-gestating idea to limit the use of climate modeling at the US
Geological Survey is about to be realized
ADAM FEDERMAN - 11.02.2020
"IF YOU VOTE for Biden, he'll listen to the scientists," Donald Trump
told a crowd of thousands at a recent campaign rally in Carson City,
Nevada. The current president, on the other hand, has routinely taken
pride in dismissing the recommendations of federal scientists, whether
on the handling of the pandemic or the risks of climate change. On both
topics, his contention is the same: that the sorts of policies they
might recommend--from measures to control the spread of Covid to
participation in international climate accords--would only hamper
economic growth. "If I listened to scientists," Trump said at the rally,
"we'd have a country in a massive depression instead of--we're like a
rocket ship."
Now, in the final days of his first term, there are signs that the
Administration's disregard for scientific expertise may be morphing into
outright meddling. On climate change, in particular, the White House
seems to be taking increasingly aggressive steps to undermine government
research as Election Day draws near. Last month, the acting chief
scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was
removed from his position after asking political appointees to
acknowledge the agency's scientific integrity policy, according to the
New York Times. That news comes in the context of a recent, broader
effort to fill out top positions at NOAA, the government's leading
climate research agency, with hard-line climate skeptics. And just last
week, WIRED learned that a Trump appointee's long-standing plan to
distort the use of climate models at the US Geological Survey may at
last be coming to fruition.
That plan, which I've previously described in detail, would reframe the
way the agency uses climate models in its research, in many cases
narrowing its time horizon to just 10 or 20 years while leaving out the
catastrophic outcomes that might follow in the decades after. This
effort has been led by Trump's USGS director, Jim Reilly, a former
astronaut and petroleum geologist who assumed the role in mid-2018. For
two years, though, Reilly's ideas on modeling, viewed as marginal by his
agency's own scientists, have only lived in memos and proposals. They
were never made into formal policy.
That may be about to change. On October 19, Reilly's office sent around
a draft of a new chapter for the US Geological Survey Manual called,
"Application of Climate Change Models to Scientific Investigation and
Policy." The Survey Manual serves as an operational handbook for agency
employees, and includes bureau directives and policies on everything
from budgeting and contracting to the agency's Fundamental Science
Practices, which govern its publishing and peer review process. Survey
Manual chapters, according to the USGS website, "establish long-standing
policies, standards, instructions, and general procedures with
Bureauwide applicability."
The draft chapter, which was obtained by WIRED after it was circulated
to senior USGS employees as part of what's called a "fatal flaw review,"
hews closely to a memo Reilly had prepared in 2018 for Ryan Zinke, then
the Secretary of the Interior. It defines a set of controversial
assumptions and best-practices for climate-modeling work that includes
an "initial assessment range" of potential climate impacts that stops at
2045, and prescribed "best case" and "worst case" scenarios for the
climate that some scientists consider pollyannaish. Top scientists and
advisors at the agency were given five days to respond to the draft.
Some of their responses were scathing. A three-page letter from the
agency's chief scientist and other top advisors , also obtained by
WIRED, argued that the new chapter would "cause substantial harm to both
the USGS ability to carry out sound, peer-reviewed, impartial science,
and to the USGS reputation." The letter also suggested that the drafting
of the chapter--which it said had not been peer-reviewed and lacked
sufficient citations and attributions--did not meet agency standards and
that it likely violated the USGS scientific integrity policy. (Their
"fatal-flaw review" of the document, carried out over just a handful of
days, was not equivalent to the more rigorous and deliberative process
of formal peer review, according to a senior USGS employee.) The same
respondents also noted numerous scientific flaws in the proposed
chapter, and recommended that it be subject to a "professional copy
edit" for clarity.
The agency did not respond to requests for comment.
Reilly is under no obligation to heed any of this criticism. As the USGS
director, he is authorized to sign and approve Survey Manual chapters.
If that happens, Reilly's proposed restrictions on the use of climate
modeling would finally be made to stick. "The Survey Manual has the
force of policy," the senior USGS employee told me. "Not following it
could be considered misconduct."
Changes to the Survey Manual are easier to undo than secretarial orders;
and if Trump loses the election, a Biden Administration could have the
potential chapter withdrawn in short order. If Trump prevails, however,
USGS employees might be obligated to follow its guidelines over the long
term.
Reilly has recently come under fire for interfering with science
elsewhere at the agency. In September, the Washington Post revealed that
he'd stalled publication of a research paper on polar bear population
dynamics on Alaska's North Slope. (After the story came out, Reilly
reversed course.) The USGS director has also blocked agency research
into how Covid interacts with wildlife.
Yet Reilly's effort to push through his chapter on climate modeling,
while circumventing formal peer review, could be taken as an escalation.
"I've never seen anything like this before," said one long-serving
scientist who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal. "We're
being asked to follow bad science."
https://www.wired.com/story/trumps-attacks-on-climate-science-are-coming-to-fruition/
[Noam Chomsky has an opinion and a new book]
*Trump's denial of climate change represents worse threat to humanity
than Hitler, says activist Noam Chomsky*
Exclusive: Veteran intellectual tells The Independent there is barely a
decade to avert environmental catastrophe
- -
Chomsky also makes a highly controversial comparison between Trump and
Adolf Hitler - one that was strongly rebutted by experts on the
Holocaust who told The Independent such a suggestion was wrong and
offensive.
The public intellectual and activist, whose many celebrated works
include Manufacturing Consent, is now aged 91. He is adamant the threat
represented by the heating planet is unprecedented...
"The facts are pretty straight; there is almost universal consensus
among serious scientists that we are racing towards the cataclysm, if
current tendencies persist," he says.
"By the end of this century, you might have reached the level three,
maybe four degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. And every
analysis concludes that's a total cataclysm. Organised human societies -
nothing survives."
He adds: "We are moving towards cataclysm. There is one country in the
world, the United States, that wants to put its foot on the accelerator."
Asked about the specific role played by the president, and the
Republican Party, he says the global coronavirus pandemic, which has so
far killed more than 1 million people and infected more than 43 million,
can be tackled, but not with "malignant cancer in charge of the policies
- someone who moves to destroy anything that doesn't improve his
electoral chances"...
- -
The president has repeatedly dismissed the climate crisis and spent much
of his term overturning environmental standards imposed by Barack Obama.
He also withdrew the US from the 2015 Paris Accord.
This autumn, as wildfires ravaged much of the US west with a scale and
intensity not seen for a century, the president sought to blame bad
forest management.
In September, Trump visited California and spoke with government
officials. One of them, Wade Crowfoot, California’s secretary for
natural resources, said to the president: "If we ignore the science and
put our head in the sand and think it’s all about vegetation management,
we’re not going to succeed together protecting Californians." Mr Trump
replied: "It’ll start getting cooler. You just watch."
By contrast, a 2018 assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) warned policy makers of the necessity of seeking to limit
warming to 1.5C to avoid even more catastrophe. One of its authors
wrote: "Every extra bit of warming matters, especially since warming of
1.5C or higher increases the risk associated with long-lasting or
irreversible changes, such as the loss of some ecosystems."
Nevertheless, some will be likely be troubled by Chomsky’s terms of
reference and the comparison of Trump to Hitler...
- -
Others were more directly critical. Deborah Lipstadt, a celebrated US
historian specialising in the Holocaust, and whose court battle against
Holocaust denier David Irving was featured in the 2015 movie Denial,
says Chomsky’s comments were counterproductive.
"Look, I think climate change is a tremendous problem, [a] potential
catastrophe for many parts of this world. We see it repeatedly. It's not
a theory. It's not an unproven fact. I know of no serious scientist who
denies it," says Lipstadt, Professor of Modern Jewish History and
Holocaust Studies at Atlanta’s Emory University.
"But to compare it to an attempt to annihilate a people, from one end of
the European continent to the other, and off the European continent, and
to annihilate a good proportion of the Roma population of Europe … it
serves no purpose. It's an unnecessary comparison."
She adds: "Could this be Chomsky once again saying the outrageous in
order possibly to get attention?"...
more at -
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election-2020/trump-climate-change-noam-chomsky-book-interview-hitler-robert-pollin-b1374789.html
[Weather computer data displays from METOFFICE]
for US -
https://www.wxcharts.com/?panel=default&model=nam_3km,nam_3km,nam_3km,nam_3km®ion=usa&chart=overview,winteroverview,convective_overview,radarref&run=18&step=050&plottype=10&lat=51.500&lon=-0.250&skewtstep=0
[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - November 3, 2010*
In a post-midterm election press conference, President Obama states:
"With respect to the EPA, I think the smartest thing for us to do is to
see if we can get Democrats and Republicans in a room who are serious
about energy independence and are serious about keeping our air clean
and our water clean and dealing with the issue of greenhouse gases --
and seeing are there ways that we can make progress in the short term
and invest in technologies in the long term that start giving us the
tools to reduce greenhouse gases and solve this problem.
"The EPA is under a court order that says greenhouse gases are a
pollutant that fall under their jurisdiction. And I think one of the
things that's very important for me is not to have us ignore the
science, but rather to find ways that we can solve these problems that
don't hurt the economy, that encourage the development of clean energy
in this country, that, in fact, may give us opportunities to create
entire new industries and create jobs that -- and that put us in a
competitive posture around the world.
"So I think it's too early to say whether or not we can make some
progress on that front. I think we can. Cap and trade was just one way
of skinning the cat; it was not the only way. It was a means, not an
end. And I'm going to be looking for other means to address this problem.
"And I think EPA wants help from the legislature on this. I don't think
that the desire is to somehow be protective of their powers here. I
think what they want to do is make sure that the issue is being dealt with."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4F8e2Cye08 - (35:15-38:48)
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