[TheClimate.Vote] October 5, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*October 5, 2020*/

[video and text - clips from CBS 60 Minutes]
*The climate science behind this year's wildfires and powerful storms*
Is climate change reversible? Scott Pelley speaks with the "father of 
climate science" and others for an answer.
Oct 04 2020
CORRESPONDENT Scott Pelley
At least 31 have died in the largest wildfires in California history. 
The east is defending itself against twice the usual number of tropical 
cyclones. And what may be the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth 
came in August in the United States. It's a torrid 2020 and it was 
forecast 32 years ago. In the 1980's, a NASA scientist named James 
Hansen discovered that climate change, driven by carbon emissions, was 
upon us. His graphs, of three decades ago, accurately traced the global 
rise in temperature to the year 2020. Last week, we had a lot of 
questions for Hansen. Are these disasters climate change? Do things get 
worse? Is it too late to do anything? But before we get to the causes, 
let us show you the effects...
- -
California smoke blew more than 2,000 miles to the east and drifted over 
the Pennsylvania farm of retired NASA scientist James Hansen. His 1988 
paper on carbon and climate accurately predicted temperatures up to the 
far-off year of 2020.

James Hansen: Yeah, we're seeing exactly what we expected. But I 
expected that governments would be wise enough that they would begin to 
adopt policies to preserve the future for young people. But they haven't 
done that yet.

Hansen is the father of climate change science. For 32 years he was 
director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Today, at 79, he 
runs the program on climate science at Columbia University.

Scott Pelley: What is your forecast for the next 30 years?

James Hansen: Well, if we don't change anything, then we're going to 
continue to see more and more of these extreme regional events because 
the physics is quite simple. As you add more greenhouse gases to the 
atmosphere, you increase the heating of the surface. So, at the times 
and places where it's dry you get more extreme droughts. The fire 
seasons become longer. The fires burn hotter. But at the times and 
places where it's wet, you get more evaporation of the water. And you 
get warmer, moist air, which provides greater rainfall. And it's the 
fuel for storms...
- - -
Michael Mann: People ask, are we dealing with a new normal? And the 
sobering answer is, that's the best-case scenario. A new normal is the 
best-case scenario 'cause that sorta means, well, we've got a new 
situation and we just have to learn how to deal with it. But it's much 
worse than that. So, there are surprises in store and we're seeing some 
of those surprises play out now.

Michael Mann is a geophysicist whose work on past climate showed today's 
rate of warming began with the Industrial Revolution. Mann is a 
lightning rod for deniers, but his research has been verified again and 
again. Mann is director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State 
and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Scott Pelley: But there've always been fires in the west. There've 
always been hurricanes in the east. How do we know that climate change 
is involved in this?...
- -
Michael Mann: Well, there are a number of independent sort of sources of 
information, lines of evidence that tell us that this isn't natural, 
that this is human-caused. Let's look at the big picture, the warming of 
the planet a little less than 2 degrees Fahrenheit warming of the planet 
since pre-industrial time. Now, people ask, well, couldn't that happen 
naturally? Well, it turns out that if you look at the factors that are 
driving natural changes right now -- small but measurable fluctuations 
in the brightness of the sun, Volcanic eruptions -- they tell us that 
earth should've cooled slightly over the past half-century.

Here's what he means. In that yellow line at bottom, NASA has measured a 
steady decline in heat from the sun since the 1950's. But the red line, 
the temperature of the Earth, has only increased.

Michael Mann: We can only explain that warming when we include the human 
factor of increased greenhouse gas concentrations; in particular, carbon 
dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.

Scott Pelley: Well, the president says about climate change, science 
doesn't know.

Michael Mann: The president doesn't know. And he should know better. He 
should know that the world's leading scientific organizations, our own 
U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and national academies of every major 
industrial nation, every scientific society in the United States that's 
weighed in on the matter. This is a scientific consensus. There's about 
as much scientific consensus about human-caused climate change as there 
is about gravity...
- -
Scott Pelley: I did my first climate story more than 20 years ago and I 
remember, at the time, being told that there would be terrible fires and 
terrible hurricanes in 100 years; that this was a problem for our 
great-grandchildren. What changed?

Michael Mann: what we're finding is that many of these changes can 
happen faster than we thought they could. We didn't really expect to see 
substantial loss of ice from the two major continental ice sheets, the 
Greenland Ice Sheet and the Antarctic Ice Sheet. But now, the satellite 
measurements and in situ measurements tell us that they're already 
losing ice. They're already beginning that process of collapse. It's 
already contributing to sea level rise, decades ahead of schedule.

Still, geophysicist Michael Mann told us warming can be stopped. Oceans 
and forests would begin to absorb excess carbon in a matter of years if 
emissions, principally from coal-fired power plants, are reduced close 
to zero. Former NASA scientist James Hansen believes the way to do that 
is for governments to tax cheap fossil fuels to make them more expensive 
than clean alternatives...
- - -
Scott Pelley: At what point does it become too late?

James Hansen: It becomes too late if you get to the point that you 
cannot stop the ice sheet disintegration. That's the biggest point of no 
return. We can get to a point where we're going to get several meters of 
sea level rise out of our control. That's too late. We would lose our 
coastal cities. And more than half of the large cities in the world are 
on coastlines.

Scott Pelley: If we don't start to reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere, 50 
years from now, someone doing research on this time might look at this 
interview and I wonder what you would like to say to them.

Michael Mann: That-- that's a tough question. I would say we did 
everything we could and we're sorry. We're sorry that we failed. But I 
don't think that's our future. I don't want that to be our future. 
That's a possible future. We have to recognize that. The worst visions 
that Hollywood has given us of dystopian futures are real possible 
futures if we don't act on this problem; the greatest crisis that we 
face as a civilization.

Produced by Maria Gavrilovic and Alex Ortiz. Broadcast associate, Ian 
Flickinger. Edited by April Wilson.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/western-wilfires-record-temperatures-california-60-minutes-2020-10-04/



[6-minute listen on NPR]
*Washington Gov. Jay Inslee On How To Stay Optimistic On Fighting 
Climate Change*
October 4, 2020
- -
On maintaining optimistic

There is progress going on in the United States. We just need to make it 
national. That's No. 1.

No. 2, the technology, the rapidity of the technological progress is 
incredible. I actually wrote a book about this a decade ago, and I had a 
vision that we were going to have technological changes to make electric 
cars productive, which they now are becoming cost effective and [have] 
huge range. That solar would become cheaper — and wind — than coal that 
has happened.

So the technology, the curve of technology is as rapid in clean energy 
as it was in computing. And if you see how far we've come since the 
first laptop, we're doing the same thing in clean energy.

And the third reason that we need to be optimistic is that it's just the 
only effective tool. I think maybe it was Churchill who said, "when 
you're going through hell, keep going." And that's what we need to do in 
this matter.

Robert Baldwin III and Tinbete Ermyas produced and edited the audio 
version of this story.
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/04/920164724/washington-gov-jay-inslee-on-how-to-stay-optimistic-on-fighting-climate-change



[Breakthrough invention for electric power]
*Physicists build circuit that generates clean, limitless power from 
graphene*
Researchers harnessed the atomic motion of graphene to generate an 
electrical current that could lead to a chip to replace batteries.
October 2, 2020
University of Arkansas
Summary: Physicists have successfully generated an electrical current 
from the atomic motion of graphene, discovering a new source of clean, 
limitless power...
- -
A team of University of Arkansas physicists has successfully developed a 
circuit capable of capturing graphene's thermal motion and converting it 
into an electrical current.

"An energy-harvesting circuit based on graphene could be incorporated 
into a chip to provide clean, limitless, low-voltage power for small 
devices or sensors," said Paul Thibado, professor of physics and lead 
researcher in the discovery.

The findings, published in the journal Physical Review E, are proof of a 
theory the physicists developed at the U of A three years ago that 
freestanding graphene -- a single layer of carbon atoms -- ripples and 
buckles in a way that holds promise for energy harvesting.

The idea of harvesting energy from graphene is controversial because it 
refutes physicist Richard Feynman's well-known assertion that the 
thermal motion of atoms, known as Brownian motion, cannot do work. 
Thibado's team found that at room temperature the thermal motion of 
graphene does in fact induce an alternating current (AC) in a circuit, 
an achievement thought to be impossible.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201002091029.htm
- -
*Physicists build circuit that generates clean, limitless power from 
graphene*
In the 1950s, physicist Leon Brillouin published a landmark paper 
refuting the idea that adding a single diode, a one-way electrical gate, 
to a circuit is the solution to harvesting energy from Brownian motion. 
Knowing this, Thibado's group built their circuit with two diodes for 
converting AC into a direct current (DC). With the diodes in opposition 
allowing the current to flow both ways, they provide separate paths 
through the circuit, producing a pulsing DC current that performs work 
on a load resistor.

*video graphene animation* https://youtu.be/KiLTEjm8zLw

Additionally, they discovered that their design increased the amount of 
power delivered. "We also found that the on-off, switch-like behavior of 
the diodes actually amplifies the power delivered, rather than reducing 
it, as previously thought," said Thibado. "The rate of change in 
resistance provided by the diodes adds an extra factor to the power."

The team used a relatively new field of physics to prove the diodes 
increased the circuit's power. "In proving this power enhancement, we 
drew from the emergent field of stochastic thermodynamics and extended 
the nearly century-old, celebrated theory of Nyquist," said coauthor 
Pradeep Kumar, associate professor of physics and coauthor.
https://phys.org/news/2020-10-physicists-circuit-limitless-power-graphene.html 




[Hot ground]
*Geothermal ground source heat pumps. Heating your home from your own 
back yard!*
Oct 4, 2020
Just Have a Think
Geothermal energy could be potentially transformational for our power 
grids, as we saw in our last video. But you and I can also get in on the 
act by drawing our own domestic heating from beneath our gardens (or 
communal gardens if you live in an apartment block). The technology is 
called a Ground Source Heat Pump. They've been around for a while but 
they are growing very quickly in popularity and may prove to be one of 
the lynch pins in helping us get to carbon neutrality by 2050.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jCHYUuEDZ8



[about proxy data]
*How Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity is WORSE than Expected; Dependent 
on Initial Temperature: 1 of 3*
Oct 4, 2020
Paul Beckwith
Part 1: I chat in detail in a three video series on how today’s climate 
and rate of change of climate related to the Eocene and PETM 
(Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum). Despite recent advances, the link 
between evolution of atmospheric CO2 and climate during the Eocene 
greenhouse period remains unclear. Modelling studies suggest that to 
achieve the global warmth that characterised the early Eocene, warmer 
climates must be more sensitive to CO2 forcing than colder climates. In 
other words, climate sensitivity (temperature vs CO2 level) depends on 
the starting conditions. In the new peer-reviewed paper that I discuss, 
they test this assertion in the geological record by combining a new 
high-resolution boron isotope-based CO2 record with novel estimates of 
Global Mean Temperature. They find that Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity 
(ECS) was indeed higher during the warmest intervals of the Eocene, 
agreeing well with recent model simulations, and declined through the 
Eocene as global climate cooled. These observations indicate that the 
canonical IPCC range of ECS (1.5 to 4.5 C per doubling) is unlikely to 
be appropriate for high-CO2 warm climates of the past, and the state 
dependency of ECS may play an increasingly important role in determining 
the state of future climate as the Earth continues to warm. In other 
words, we are fucked.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReSapwEn9eA



[emergency responses - article and audio]
*Global demand for U.S. military assistance increasing as weather grows 
more extreme*
The military often provides aid when a weather disaster or humanitarian 
crisis strikes.
When a natural disaster or humanitarian crisis strikes, the U.S. 
military often helps provide critical aid. And as weather becomes more 
extreme, the need for that assistance is growing.

“The demand for American military resources to help out in humanitarian 
disasters is increasing year by year,” says Lee Gunn, a retired Navy 
vice admiral and vice chair of the CNA Military Advisory Board, which 
assesses potential national security threats.

He says storms are not the only threat. Slow-moving disasters can also 
lead to major crises.

In southeast Asia, warming oceans are affecting fish habitats, making 
fishing more difficult. And rising seas are pushing more saltwater 
inland, which can disrupt rice agriculture. Gunn says these impacts 
threaten the region’s economy and food security.

“These stresses are going to lead far more often to humanitarian 
disasters,” he says.

And that could become a concern for the U.S. military.
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/09/global-demand-for-u-s-military-assistance-growing-as-weather-grows-more-extreme/
“Because we care about the people around the world and we care about the 
stability that we’re able to provide that facilitates international 
trade … and these thriving communities everywhere,” he says.



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - October 5, 1988 *

Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen (D) and Indiana Senator Dan Quayle (R) 
discuss global warming in the Vice Presidential debate, with both men 
agreeing that the problem must be addressed during the next four years; 
Bentsen suggests that natural gas and ethanol might be alternatives to 
oil dependence.

http://youtu.be/99-v2Farbjs - (49:33-52:45)

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