[TheClimate.Vote] October 15, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*October 15, 2020*/

[SCOTUS candidate believes global warming is debatable]*
**Watch Kamala Harris corner Amy Coney Barrett into sharing her view on 
climate change*
Amy Graff, SFGATE - Oct. 14, 2020

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett has repeatedly dodged questions 
from Democrats and refrained from revealing her opinion on hot-button 
issues such as abortion in this week's hearing.

But Wednesday Barrett offered a clue into her view on climate change 
after Sen. Kamala Harris, the California Democrat running for vice 
president, cornered her with a series of science-based questions.
Harris called climate change an "existential threat" and noted 
California has had five of the largest fires in state history this year 
with 31 people killed and 9,000 structures destroyed by flames since 
August. She said Barrett has expressed that she doesn't believe her 
views on climate change are related to her work as a judge. Harris 
argued Barrett's views are relevant, especially considering the 
scientific community's warnings about the impacts of climate change on 
the planet.

*video https://twitter.com/blkahn/status/1316490804152602624*

"If a case that comes before you would require you to consider 
scientific evidence, my question is will you defer to scientists and 
those with expertise in the relevant issues before rending a judgement?" 
Harris asked.

Barrett responded that if a case came before her that involved 
environmental regulation she would use applicable law, noting the 
Administrative Procedure Act requires courts to defer to agency 
fact-finding in a case.

Harris followed up by asking Barrett if she believes COVID-19 is 
infectious and smoking causes cancer, and the nominee responded yes to 
both, suggesting these are established facts.*
*
*But when Harris threw out her third question, "Do you believe climate 
change is happening and it's threatening the air we breathe and the 
water we drink?" Barrett responded it is a "very contentious matter of 
public debate."**
**
**"I will not express a view on a matter of public policy, especially 
one that is politically controversial because that is inconsistent with 
the judicial role, as I have explained," she added.**
**
*Harris summed things up: "You've made your point clear that it's a 
debatable point."
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Amy-Coney-Barrett-Harris-climate-change-15648374.php

- -

[Twitter summary for Amy Coney Barrett]
*it's real, it's us, experts agree, it's bad, there's hope.*
https://twitter.com/johnfocook/status/1298733983795154944

- -

[advanced debunking by Skeptical Science]
*Authors of seven climate consensus studies* -- including Naomi Oreskes, 
Peter Doran, William Anderegg, Bart Verheggen, Ed Maibach, J. Stuart 
Carlton, and John Cook -- co-authored a paper that should settle this 
question once and for all. The two key conclusions from the paper are:

    1) Depending on exactly how you measure the expert consensus, it's
    somewhere between 90% and 100% that agree humans are responsible for
    climate change, with most of our studies finding 97% consensus among
    publishing climate scientists.

    2) The greater the climate expertise among those surveyed, the
    higher the consensus on human-caused global warming.

- -
Expert consensus is a powerful thing. People know we don't have the time 
or capacity to learn about everything, and so we frequently defer to the 
conclusions of experts. It's why we visit doctors when we're ill. The 
same is true of climate change: most people defer to the expert 
consensus of climate scientists. Crucially, as we note in our paper:

    Public perception of the scientific consensus has been found to be a
    gateway belief, affecting other climate beliefs and attitudes
    including policy support.

That's why those who oppose taking action to curb climate change have 
engaged in a misinformation campaign to deny the existence of the expert 
consensus. They've been largely successful, as the public badly 
underestimate the expert consensus, in what we call the "consensus gap." 
Only 16% of Americans realize that the consensus is above 90%.
*The Consensus Project*
The 2016 paper was a follow-up on Cook et al. (2013).  This was a survey 
of over 12,000 peer-reviewed climate science papers by our citizen 
science team at Skeptical Science has found a 97% consensus in the 
peer-reviewed literature that humans are causing global warming.
https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus-advanced.htm



[Elizabeth Warren and AOC in video interview]
*Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren on [...global warming]*
The New Yorker
The two progressive members of Congress talk about what it will take to 
defeat Trump.
https://youtu.be/4aMGbvds_sU?t=638



[from now on]
*UN report: Climate change means more weather disasters every year*
Oct 13, 2020 8:49 AM EDT
GENEVA (AP) -- In the wake of heat waves, global warming, forest fires, 
storms, droughts and a rising number of hurricanes, the U.N. weather 
agency is warning that the number of people who need international 
humanitarian help could rise 50% by 2030 compared to the 108 million who 
needed it worldwide in 2018.

In a new report released with partners on Tuesday, the World 
Meteorological Agency says more disasters attributed to weather are 
taking place each year. It said over 11,000 disasters have been 
attributed to weather, climate and phenomena like tsunamis that are 
related to water over the last 50 years -- causing 2 million deaths and 
racking up $3.6 trillion worth of economic costs...
- -
In one hopeful development over that period, the average number of 
deaths from each separate weather disaster per year has dropped by 
one-third, even as the number of such events and the economic costs from 
them have both surged.

The 2020 State of Climate Services report, compiled by 16 international 
agencies and financing institutions, calls on governments to put more 
money into early-warning systems that can improve countries' ability to 
prepare for, respond to and mitigate the impact of such natural disasters...
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/un-report-climate-change-means-more-weather-disasters-every-year
- -
[World Meterological Organization press release]
*State of Climate Services 2020 Report: Move from Early Warnings to 
Early Action*
published 13 October 2020
https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/state-of-climate-services-2020-report-move-from-early-warnings-early-action
- -
[PDF download the free report]
*2020 State of Climate Services *
World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
Published by: WMO ; 2020
Between 1970 and 2019, 79% of disasters worldwide involved weather, 
water, and climate-related hazards. These disasters accounted for 56% of 
deaths and 75% of economic losses from disasters associated with natural 
hazards reported during that period. As climate change continues to 
threaten human lives, ecosystems and economies, risk information and 
early warning systems (EWS) are increasingly seen as key for reducing 
these impacts. The majority of countries, including 88% of least 
developed countries and small island states, that submitted their 
Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to UNFCCC have identified EWS 
as a "top priority".

This latest WMO report highlights progress made in EWS capacity - and 
identifies where and how governments can invest in effective EWS to 
strengthen countries' resilience to multiple weather, water and 
climate-related hazards. Being prepared and able to react at the right 
time, in the right place, can save many lives and protect the 
livelihoods of communities everywhere.
https://library.wmo.int/index.php?lvl=notice_display&id=21777#.X4elaNBKhqu



[Sea level rise and retreat -a matter for the courts - Inside Climate News]
*Maui Has Begun the Process of Managed Retreat. It Wants Big Oil to Pay 
the Cost of Sea Level Rise.*
The county in Hawaii joins a long line of cities, counties and states 
suing the fossil fuel industry for damages related to climate change.
BY DAVID HASEMYER - OCT 14, 2020
With nearly 300 miles of coastline, the Hawaiian islands that make up 
Maui County face the threat of sea level rise from all sides. It's that 
assault that has formed the foundation of a lawsuit Maui filed this week 
against 20 fossil fuel companies seeking compensation for the rising 
costs of climate change.

The lawsuit alleges that the companies, including ExxonMobil, Chevron, 
Shell and ConocoPhillips, knew their products produced warming 
greenhouse gases that threatened the planet but hid those dangers from 
Maui's people and businesses to maximize corporate profits.

"Defendants have known for more than 50 years that greenhouse gas 
pollution from their fossil fuel products would have significant adverse 
impacts on the Earth's climate and sea levels," the lawsuit said. 
"Instead of warning of those known consequences ... defendants concealed 
the dangers, promoted false and misleading information, sought to 
undermine public support for greenhouse gas regulation, and engaged in 
massive campaigns to promote the ever-increasing use of their products 
at ever-greater volumes."...
Roadways, parks, infrastructure and buildings that hug the coastline are 
vulnerable to billions of dollars in damages from sea level rise caused 
by climate change, the lawsuit said.

Some of Maui's most scenic and iconic highways are at risk, including a 
stretch of Honoapiilani Highway from Papalaua State Wayside Park to the 
Pali side of the town of Lahaina.

Maui County, which consists of the islands of Maui, Lanai, most of 
Molokai and two uninhabited islands, already has begun working on a plan 
for managed retreat and new infrastructure to protect communities from 
the impacts of rising sea levels. Fossil fuel companies could have taken 
steps to reduce damage or warn people about the danger from continued 
use of oil and gas products that harm the environment, the lawsuit said.

But now the county wants the industry to take responsibility.

"It might be a David vs. Goliath case, but someone has to take a stand 
and oil companies need to pay for the damage they knowingly caused," 
Maui Mayor Michael Victorino said in a prepared statement. "Our 'rock' 
is science, which clearly shows the impacts of burning fossil fuels have 
led to sea level rise and other environmental impacts that will get 
worse, perhaps much worse, in the years ahead."

Exxon did not respond to a request for comment.

Shell spokesperson Anna Arata said the company supports the transition 
to a lower-carbon future by lowering both the company's emission and 
that of its customers.

However, she said in a statement issued in response to previous 
lawsuits, "We do not believe the courtroom is the right venue to address 
climate change, but that smart policy from government, supported by 
inclusive action from all business sectors, including ours, and from 
civil society, is the appropriate way to reach solutions and drive 
progress."

Chevron spokesperson Sean Comey also restated the company's response to 
previous climate lawsuits, saying the company is "working to find real 
solutions to climate change." The climate lawsuits, he said, seek "to 
punish companies that deliver affordable, reliable energy."

Maui joins a growing list of cities, counties and states that have filed 
lawsuits seeking to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for 
damages and mitigation costs attributable to climate change that could 
severely strain taxpayer-funded budgets.

The lawsuits cite a series of stories published  by InsideClimate News 
in 2015 based on internal Exxon documents that revealed the extent of 
the company's knowledge about the central role of fossil fuels in 
causing climate change going back to the 1970s.

Sea level rise threatens Maui's five commercial harbors and five 
airports, which will become increasingly exposed to chronic flooding 
that will disrupt inter-island and transoceanic shipping and travel, 
impacting the county's economic activities along with its residents and 
visitors, the lawsuit said.

"Since the County is almost entirely dependent upon imported food, fuel, 
and material, the vulnerability of ports and airports to extreme events, 
sea level rise, and increasing wave heights is of serious concern," the 
lawsuit said.

On the island of Maui alone, more than $3.2 billion in assets, including 
more than 3,100 acres of land, 760 structures critical to Maui's 
tourism-based economy, and 11.2 miles of major roads, are at risk of 
inundation and destruction because of sea level rise estimated to occur 
by the year 2100, the lawsuit said.

Native Hawaiian cultural and historical resources, such as burial 
grounds and home sites, and the habitat of native and endangered species 
face destruction by rising seas, wildfires and rising temperatures, the 
lawsuit said.

The county's fire season runs year-round, rather than only a few months 
of the year. In 2019, called the "year of fire" on Maui, nearly 26,000 
acres burned in the County--more than six times the total area burned in 
2018, according to the lawsuit.

Heat continues to pound the islands with 2019 being the warmest year on 
record across the county. Kahului, on the island of Maui, broke or tied 
61 daily record temperatures, leading to threats to human health and the 
water supply, the lawsuit said.

Maui's case comes at a time when nearly two dozen other climate cases 
are wending through the legal system and facing stiff opposition from 
the fossil fuel industry. The U.S. Supreme Court recently agreed to 
consider whether the cases should be heard in state or federal courts.

The first round of cases was filed three years ago when five cities and 
three counties in California sought damages from the industry. Those 
cases were followed in quick succession by lawsuits in Colorado, New 
York City, Baltimore, Kings County in Washington state, the state of 
Rhode Island and the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's 
Associations. Most recently, Connecticut and Delaware have filed climate 
lawsuits, as have Hoboken, New Jersey, and Charleston, South Carolina.

Generally, these cases embrace a range of state law violations that 
include public nuisance, trespass, product liability and consumer 
protection.

Like the Maui case, most of the lawsuits have been filed in state 
courts. But fossil fuel companies are fighting to have them heard in 
federal court, where they have largely been successful in fending off 
earlier climate lawsuits. Consequently, legal battle lines so far have 
been drawn over jurisdictional questions rather than on substantive 
issues addressing the fossil fuel industry's role in climate change.

The municipalities want the cases heard in state courts where they can 
focus on arguments grounded in state laws they believe more precisely 
relate to the cause and consequences of climate change. Having cases 
tried in local courts gives them an advantage because the courts are not 
constrained by prevailing federal laws that sharply constrain 
climate-related claims.

The industry is fighting to have the cases tried in federal court, where 
the law gives them the upper hand to argue climate change remedies are 
policy issues best left to Congress, not the courts, a position that the 
federal courts have embraced in similar cases.
David Hasemyer
InsideClimate News reporter David Hasemyer is co-author of the "Dilbit 
Disaster: Inside the Biggest Oil Spill You've Never Heard Of," which won 
the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, and co-authored the 2016 
Pulitzer Prize finalist series "Exxon: The Road Not Taken."... He can be 
reached at david.hasemyer at insideclimatenews.org.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/13102020/maui-big-oil-lawsuit



[In Vogue]
*What the Climate Movement Can Learn From Indigenous Values*
Tribal attorney and activist Tara Houska writes about the importance of 
diversity of thought on the frontlines of the climate movement.
BY TARA HOUSKA
September 24, 2020
Wild rice makes a tiny exploding sound when it is struck by a cedar 
knocking stick. A burst, followed by the sounds of rice falling into a 
canoe below.

"It's the sound the universe made when it began," I was told by my 
long-time teacher. It's the sound of life beginning, life continuing. 
Wild rice, what we know as manoomin, is the food that grows on water, 
the staple that lies at the heart of my people's culture. It's what I've 
given my heart, mind, and body to protect against yet another proposed 
tar sands pipeline, this time Enbridge's Line 3, set to cut through 
Ojibwe territory in northern Minnesota.

It's what sits in my heart as I push through room after room of 
decision-makers, legislators, financiers, corporate representatives, 
fellow advocates, climate scientists, climate deniers, and the rest of 
the cast of characters in the so-called environmental movement. Here, 
our sacred manoomin becomes a number, a statistical data point. The land 
that sustains every life on earth becomes a sum of degrees Celsius, 
carbon emissions, forest acreage, and economic impacts. Water is reduced 
from our literal lifeblood to a policy concern, a partisan issue up for 
debate.

The language of climate is part of the distancing we've broadly 
internalized, as far as I can tell. It's a piece of the world full of 
invisible barriers and entrenched pathologies. The story of our 
self-destruction and what to do has been mostly told in cold, 
statistical analysis recited by a handful of mostly male, mostly 
non-POC, almost entirely non-Indigenous voices. The language of land is 
largely absent or relegated to the category of pitiable platitudes...
When Dr. Katharine Wilkinson and Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson approached 
me about an anthology of women from many walks of life grappling with 
the crisis unfolding all around us, I was immediately drawn to being 
part of a less-familiar story, a narrative curated by women thinking in 
non-square shapes. Surely a crisis at the scale of eradicating all life 
requires diversity of thought, but I've heard nuclear, renewables, 
carbon offsetting and electoral politics presented as solutions more 
times than I can count. All We Can Save is something different.

Everything from climate grief to self-care to risking personal safety 
for those to come exists in its pages. Women discuss making new life 
during crisis; they imagine economies steeped in empathy and life in 
balance with the natural world. "The world is on fire" is right next to 
coping with trauma and taking action...
I've lived on frontlines for years at this point. My days in a D.C. 
office have morphed back into the forests I grew up with and an off-grid 
existence that challenges and shapes my perspective every day. I've 
faced down the banking industry behind Line 3 in their board rooms, I've 
trained young people about how to exercise their rights and challenge 
the system. All We Can Save offered space to question the efficacy of 
comfortable, well-worn advocacy routes and suggest we collectively 
assess our values lest we mimic the same structures that are killing all 
life.

Here in the wild rice, life's truths are clear. We will knock, parch, 
roast, jig, and winnow to reach the place we can eat this delicate, 
nourishing plant. It's hard work made easier by more hands.

Humans are not a plague on nature but integrated into manoomin cycles. 
Poling canoes through a floating field of rice so thick you cannot see a 
shoreline is carefully done, so as not to break the stalks for the next 
canoes, the next generation. We reseed as we go, by the falling rice 
that misses the canoe and by rice chiefs who will drop mud balls packed 
with rice seeds in the lakes at harvest end. Rice is weighed and 
tracked, to prevent over-consumption. Here, balance as a value is in 
practice.

Still, like for so many of the world's inhabitants, life here is 
fragile. Disruption of water quality can wipe out an entire lake's crop. 
Earlier this week, I looked up through the rice at the hazy red sky, 
praying for all the beings burning and fleeing out west. I thought of 
the piles of pipeline stacked a few miles north of this lake, 
desperately clawing at a chance to expand the tar sands. I wondered 
where we will go, whether human beings will pull it together to put 
survival ahead of personal comfort. I listened to the softly rustling 
rice and lifted up my cedar knockers, as my ancestors have for 
millennia. There's work to be done.

Tara Houska--Zhaabowekwe, JD, is Couchiching First Nation Ojibwe, an 
attorney, environmental and indigenous rights advocate, and founder of 
Giniw Collective. She lives in a pipeline resistance camp in Minnesota.
https://www.vogue.com/article/what-the-climate-movement-can-learn-from-indigenous-values



[From Nature]
*Prioritizing where to restore Earth's ecosystems*
Targets for ecosystem restoration are usually specified in terms of the 
total area to be restored. A global analysis reveals that the benefits 
and costs of achieving such targets depend greatly on where this 
restoration occurs.
- -
However, until now, the science of prioritizing where best to invest in 
ecosystem restoration at global and national scales has lagged behind 
the many notable scientific advances made in prioritizing additions to 
protected areas...
- -
One of the biggest challenges in prioritizing areas for restoration 
(Fig. 1) is balancing the benefits for biodiversity conservation against 
those for climate-change mitigation. Forests are usually the biomes with 
the highest potential to sequester carbon. However, all biomes, 
including non-forest biomes such as natural grasslands and shrublands, 
can contain ecosystems in urgent need of restoration to prevent the 
extinction of species found only in those ecosystems. Even areas 
offering similar potential for carbon sequestration within the same 
biome (for example, in tropical rainforests) can vary greatly in terms 
of potential restoration benefits for biodiversity conservation. This is 
because such benefits depend on the number and uniqueness of the species 
associated with a given area of that biome, and the extent to which 
these species have lost habitat elsewhere across their range.
- -
Strassburg et al. show that the benefits and costs of restoring a given 
total area of land depend very much on where this restoration is 
undertaken. Prioritizing the spatial distribution of restoration using a 
single criterion of benefit or cost generally performs poorly in 
achieving desirable outcomes for the other criteria. For example, 
restoring 15% of the world's converted lands by focusing solely on 
maximizing benefits for climate-change mitigation would achieve only 65% 
of the gains potentially achievable for biodiversity (assessed as the 
resulting reduction in risk of species extinctions) if the restoration 
focused instead on maximizing biodiversity benefits. Restoration focused 
solely on minimizing costs would achieve only 34% of the maximum 
potential gain for biodiversity and 39% of the potential gain for 
climate-change mitigation. Encouragingly, however, optimizing for all 
three criteria simultaneously yields a solution that would achieve 91% 
and 82% of potential gains for biodiversity and climate-change 
mitigation, respectively, while maximizing cost-effectiveness.

These findings have major implications for the setting and 
implementation of global targets for ecosystem restoration. A key 
discovery by Strassburg and colleagues is that the total area restored 
is a relatively weak metric of how restoration might help in reaching 
fundamental goals for biodiversity conservation and climate-change 
mitigation. This is conveyed most compellingly by the finding that the 
reduction in risk of species extinctions that is achieved by different 
spatial allocations of the same total area of restoration can vary by a 
factor of up to six. Thus, any high-level goal for ecosystem 
restoration, and associated indicators for assessing progress, should 
ideally be specified in a way that ensures actions are directed towards 
areas that will contribute most effectively to achieving fundamental 
biodiversity and climate goals.
Strassburg and co-workers' study is particularly laudable for linking 
perspectives on ecosystem restoration to bridge the domains of 
biodiversity conservation and climate-change mitigation. However, 
challenges remain in further linking such prioritization to other key 
drivers and pressures, and other types of action beyond restoration. 
Multiple interactions between these factors will together determine 
overall global outcomes for biodiversity and climate. Consider, for 
example, the scope of such interactions just in relation to the goal of 
preventing species extinctions. Strassburg and colleagues' 
extinction-risk modelling assumes that the distribution of potentially 
suitable environments for species will remain fixed, despite growing 
evidence that many of these distributions are already shifting, or are 
likely to shift over time, owing to climate change5. Research assessing 
the combined effects of land use and climate change on biodiversity 
suggests that not considering climate-change effects might lead to a 
severe underestimation of extinction risk6.

The authors' modelling also assumes that all habitat currently provided 
by intact ecosystems will remain intact. But, given current trends in 
ecosystem degradation worldwide7, it seems probable that the area of 
habitat available for species will ultimately be determined not only by 
gains made through restoration, but also by the interplay of such gains 
with losses occurring elsewhere in the extent and integrity of 
ecosystems8. The magnitude and spatial configuration of future losses 
will, in turn, be determined by ongoing interactions between 
socio-economic drivers of demand for converted lands, and actions aimed 
at either reducing the demand itself, or ameliorating the effect of this 
demand by protecting key areas of intact habitat from conversion9.

The role of such interactions in shaping ultimate outcomes underscores 
the need to take these interactions into account when defining, 
implementing and assessing progress in achieving global targets10. The 
post-2020 global biodiversity framework (see go.nature.com/36fqq44), 
currently being developed for adoption by the parties to the Convention 
on Biological Diversity, offers a timely opportunity to address this 
need by explicitly defining interlinkages between any agreed ecosystem 
protection and restoration targets and the framework's over-arching 
biodiversity goals.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02750-2



[Record set]
*September was world's 'hottest on record'*
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54442782



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - October 15, 2007 *

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman ridicules right-wing outrage over 
Al Gore's Nobel Prize win.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/opinion/15krugman.html?_r=0

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