[TheClimate.Vote] October 17, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Sat Oct 17 08:25:25 EDT 2020
/*October 17, 2020*/
[answer is yes]
*Are climate scientists being too cautious when linking extreme weather
to climate change?*
Hannah Hickey
UW News
The public expects to receive advanced warning of hazardous weather,
such as tornadoes and winter storms. This photo shows a tornado in
Prospect Valley, Colorado, on June 19, 2018.Eric Meola -
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/uw-s3-cdn/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2020/10/14142003/TornadoImage_EricMeola.jpg
In this year of extreme weather events -- from devastating West Coast
wildfires to tropical Atlantic storms that have exhausted the alphabet
-- scientists and members of the public are asking when these extreme
events can be scientifically linked to climate change.
Dale Durran, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of
Washington, argues that climate science need to approach this question
in a way similar to how weather forecasters issue warnings for hazardous
weather.
In a new paper, published in the October issue of the Bulletin of the
American Meteorological Society, he draws on the weather forecasting
community's experience in predicting extreme weather events such as
tornadoes, flash floods, high winds and winter storms. If forecasters
send out a mistaken alert too often, people will start to ignore them.
If they don't alert for severe events, people will get hurt. How can the
atmospheric sciences community find the right balance?
Most current approaches to attributing extreme weather events to global
warming, he says, such as the conditions leading to the ongoing Western
wildfires, focus on the likelihood of raising a false alarm. Scientists
do this by using statistics to estimate the increase in the probability
of that event that is attributable to climate change. Those statistical
measures are closely related to the "false alarm ratio," an important
metric used to assess the quality of hazardous weather warnings.
But there is a second key metric used to assess the performance of
weather forecasters, he argues: The probably that the forecast will
correctly warn of events that actually occur, known as the "probability
of detection." The ideal probability of detection score is 100%, while
the ideal false-alarm rate would be zero.
Probability of detection has mostly been ignored when it comes to
linking extreme events to climate change, he says. Yet both weather
forecasting and climate change attribution face a tradeoff between the
two. In both weather forecasting and climate-change attribution,
calculations in the paper show that raising the thresholds to reduce
false alarms produces a much greater drop in the probability of detection.
Drawing on a hypothetical example of a tornado forecaster whose false
alarm ratio is zero, but is accompanied by a low probability of
detection, he writes that such an "overly cautious tornado forecasting
strategy might be argued by some to be smart politics in the context of
attributing extreme events to global warming, but it is inconsistent
with the way meteorologists warn for a wide range of hazardous weather,
and arguably with the way society expects to be warned about threats to
property and human life."
Why does this matter? The paper concludes by noting: "If a forecaster
fails to warn for a tornado there may be serious consequences and loss
of life, but missing the forecast does not make next year's tornadoes
more severe. On the other hand, every failure to alert the public about
those extreme events actually influenced by global warming facilitates
the illusion that mankind has time to delay the actions required to
address the source of that warming. Because the residence time of CO2 in
the atmosphere is many hundreds to thousands of years the cumulative
consequences of such errors can have a very long lifetime."
https://www.washington.edu/news/2020/10/15/are-climate-scientists-being-too-cautious-when-linking-extreme-weather-to-climate-change/
- -
[Source matter]
*Can the Issuance of Hazardous-Weather Warnings Inform the Attribution
of Extreme Events to Climate Change? *
Dale R. Durran
Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc. (2020) 101 (8): E1452-E1463.
https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-20-0026.1
*Abstract*
When extreme weather occurs, the question often arises whether the
event was produced by climate change. Two types of errors are
possible when attempting to answer this question. One type of error
is underestimating the role of climate change, thereby failing to
properly alert the public and appropriately stimulate efforts at
adaptation and mitigation. The second type of error is
overestimating the role of climate change, thereby elevating climate
anxiety and potentially derailing important public discussions with
false alarms. Long before societal concerns about global warming
became widespread, meteorologists were addressing essentially the
same trade-off when faced with a binary decision of whether to issue
a warning for hazardous weather. Here we review
forecast-verification statistics such as the probability of
detection (POD) and the false alarm ratio (FAR) for
hazardous-weather warnings and examine their potential application
to extreme-event attribution in connection with climate change.
Empirical and theoretical evidence suggests that adjusting
tornado-warning thresholds in an attempt to reduce FAR produces even
larger reductions in POD. Similar tradeoffs between improving FAR
and degrading POD are shown to apply using a rubric for the
attribution of extreme high temperatures to climate change. Although
there are obviously significant differences between the issuance of
hazardous-weather warnings and the attribution of extreme events to
global warming, the experiences of the weather forecasting community
can provide qualitative guidance for those attempting to set
practical thresholds for extreme-event attribution in a changing
climate.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view-large/figure/12890097/bamsD200026-f2.tif
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view-large/figure/12890100/bamsD200026-f3.tif
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view-large/figure/12890103/bamsD200026-f4.tif
- -
There is one important additional factor to consider when comparing
decision making in tornado forecasting to that in attributing extreme
events to global warming. If a forecaster fails to warn for a tornado
there may be serious consequences and loss of life, but missing the
forecast does not make next year's tornadoes more severe. On the other
hand, every failure to alert the public about those extreme events
actually influenced by global warming facilitates the illusion that
mankind has time to delay the actions required to address the source of
that warming. Because the residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere is
many hundreds to thousands of years (National Research Council 2011, p.
75), the cumulative consequences of such type II errors can have a very
long lifetime...
https://journals.ametsoc.org/bams/article/101/8/E1452/345616/Can-the-Issuance-of-Hazardous-Weather-Warnings
[5 great ideas from Quartz]
*Five things individuals can do to fight climate change*
By Tim McDonnell - Climate reporter
October 14, 2020
Can individual actions solve a global problem?
The pandemic has offered the world a test of that question. On one hand,
the choice to wear a mask and stay socially distant can have huge
repercussions in spreading or containing the virus. At the same time,
it's clear that some problems--PPE shortages, the pace of vaccine
development, understaffed hospitals--are beyond the ability of any one
person to fix.
Climate change faces a similar dilemma. In a recent Yale poll,
two-thirds of Americans said they felt a personal responsibility to
reduce global warming. Yet while there are things everyday people can do
to reduce their carbon emissions, it's clear that "solving" climate
change will require an unprecedented overhaul of the global energy
system. And social systems will need to adapt to the climate impacts
that are already locked in, including sweeping reforms of urban design,
housing, and healthcare.
In fact, the pandemic offered perhaps the best proof of this yet.
Although global carbon dioxide emissions fell dramatically during the
peak of lockdown--essentially a simulation of what the world would be
like if everyone did their personal best to cut their carbon
footprint--it was far from enough. Greenhouse gases are already surging
back to pre-pandemic levels, and the dip did nothing to bolster climate
adaptation.
Still, I wouldn't last long as a climate journalist if I felt totally
powerless. There are still things ordinary people can do to fight
climate change--but reducing your greenhouse gas emissions is only the
first step.
*Reduce your fossil fuel diet*
In the US, the average person's annual carbon emissions footprint is 16
tons, about four times that of a typical car, and also about four times
higher than the global average. To stave off catastrophic global
warming, the global average per person needs to come closer to two tons.
So whether or not it can add up enough to stop climate change, it can't
hurt to find ways to reduce your consumption of fossil fuels.
You can eat less meat, waste less food and water overall, and drive
less. If you have to fly, try to avoid flights with connections; the
bulk of airline emissions happen during takeoff and landing, so two
flights have a much bigger impact than one of the same distance. Those
are the biggies.
When it comes to day-to-day consumption, the choices get more nuanced.
Recycling is fine, but the reality is that only 5% to 10% of recycled
plastic actually gets recycled, so it's best to use as little
plastic--which the oil industry sees as perhaps its only remaining
opportunity for growth--as you can. Buy paper products from companies
that have committed to limiting deforestation. Know how to call BS on
corporate climate pledges and only buy from companies that take the
issue seriously.
You can decarbonize your assets, too. If you can afford it, consider
buying an electric vehicle or installing solar panels on your home,
business, or land. Weatherize your house to make it more energy
efficient. And check your retirement plan, mutual fund, or other
personal investments to see if you may unknowingly have a financial
stake in carbon-polluting companies. If so, consider divesting from
them--and putting the money instead in clean energy stocks, which have
outperformed their fossil peers through the pandemic.
*Lead by example*
Ultimately, there's a reason to do these things that may be even more
important than the sum of their individual carbon footprints, per se: It
will likely encourage your friends and family to follow suit.
Social scientists have long understood that peer pressure is a powerful
tool, and it works the same on climate action. Researchers in California
have found that the presence of solar panels on a house dramatically
increases the likelihood that more houses in the neighborhood will
install them as well, especially if the panels are visible from the street.
Yet, according to the Yale poll, fewer than half of Americans feel any
kind of social pressure from their peers on climate. Modeling
climate-savvy behavior is one way to reverse that.
Another is to have the right kinds of conversations. Threatening your
recalcitrant uncle with visions of climate apocalypse doesn't work.
Instead, communication experts recommend that you connect climate to an
issue your interlocutor already cares about, whether that's jobs,
religion, a personal experience of loss, or something else. It helps to
use humor.
*Form a daily reading habit*
One reliable way to gain a greater feeling of control over the climate
crisis is to learn more about it.
The last few years have seen an explosion of climate podcasts and
newsletters. Being bombarded with climate news might seem depressing,
but as someone who does it for a living, I can say that although the
doomsday stories are certainly there, they are increasingly outnumbered
by stories about meaningful climate action by individuals, companies,
and some governments. Hearing those stories is a way to feel less
defeated and more motivated to take action.
Start with "What We Know About Climate Change" by MIT scientist Kerry
Emanuel, the best short, super-simple guide to climate science. Then
check out "All We Can Save," a new collection of essays about climate by
the world's smartest female journalists, activists, and researchers that
manages to articulate reasons for hope without pulling any punches.
Then you can build solutions-oriented climate reading into your habits.
In addition to following Quartz's Climate Economy obsession, you can get
a daily dose of inspiration from The Daily Climate, Bloomberg, HEATED,
Climate Fwd, Boiling Point, or Carbon Brief, and give a listen to How to
Save a Planet or Hot Take.
*Get involved in politics, especially locally*
Is there much an individual person can do to shut down the world's
coal-fired power plants? Unless you're Michael Bloomberg, probably not.
But there are plenty of local issues that are essential for climate
adaptation where individual voices or small-scale community organizing
can make a big difference.
Local zoning rules can make it harder to build homes back after
disasters, or they can permit development in risky areas. As some
climate-risky areas become unlivable, better protected cities and
neighborhoods will need to increase the availability of affordable
housing and social services; is your city preparing for this future? Is
your school district using textbooks that downplay climate science, or
not providing air conditioning in schools with a high portion of
minority students?
State and national politics are obviously critical as well, since the
energy system won't change fast enough to prevent catastrophic climate
change without new policies to support renewable energy and crack down
on carbon emissions, and adaptation won't be possible without massive
investment in infrastructure, better weather satellites and flood
projection maps, support for disaster insurance and affordable housing,
and other interventions.
In other words, perhaps the single most important contribution you can
make to alter the trajectory of climate change is to vote. Research the
climate and energy views of candidates at every level and support those
with the most ambitious policies. Then use whatever means of activism
you're most comfortable with--join a march, write a letter, donate money
to activist groups--to agitate for even greater ambition.
*Practice compassion, listen, and check your privilege*
Climate change is ultimately a story about inequality. People of color
are disproportionately affected by climate impacts, more vulnerable to
air pollution from legacy fossil fuel infrastructure, and discriminated
against in disaster aid. Particularly in the global south, the impacts
of disasters and failing agricultural systems fall hardest on women. The
energy transition will disadvantage many low- and middle-income workers
who have dedicated their careers to the fossil economy and shouldn't be
left behind.
It's essential to recognize that climate change is at the heart of many
of the key social issues of our time--including Black Lives Matter, Me
Too, and xenophobia and nationalism. No number of solar panels or
avoided hamburgers can negate the need to treat everyone with dignity
and respect.
Learning to live on a planet that is already irreparably altered by
climate change will require everyone to get better at listening to
people with different viewpoints and life experiences, and practice
compassion toward them. It will likely require us to re-evaluate how
capitalism should work, and to reckon with the deep-seated aversion many
people feel toward big, expensive government interventions.
You may need to be open to bold new ideas, like climate reparations. You
may want to donate to climate research and humanitarian groups.
Ultimately, you will need to get comfortable with the idea that "fixing"
the global climate probably isn't possible, in the sense of returning to
some gilded pre-carbon paradise. Instead, we have to help each other
live on the planet we've created--and that's something everyone has the
power to choose, every day.
https://qz.com/1915134/five-things-individuals-can-do-to-fight-climate-change/
[WAPO]
*The number of global methane hot spots has soared this year despite the
economic slowdown*
European Union announces plans to clamp down on releases of the
greenhouse gas.
- -
Comparing the first eight months of 2019 to the same period in 2020, the
Paris-based firm Kayrros said methane leaks from oil and gas industry
hot spots climbed even higher in Algeria, Russia and Turkmenistan,
growing by more than 40 percent. The largest contributors to rising
methane releases were the United States, Russia, Algeria, Turkmenistan,
Iran and Iraq, Kayrros said.
Methane, the main ingredient of natural gas, is a greenhouse gas more
than 80 times as potent as carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.
- -
"It is clearly time to reduce these emissions," Rostand said Wednesday.
"They are easy to fix. We have the technology to fix them." Otherwise,
he said, "gas that leaks methane is as bad as coal."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/10/14/number-global-methane-hot-spots-has-soared-this-year-despite-economic-slowdown/
[Excellent video on Geo-Engineering]
*Fine-tuning the climate | DW Documentary*
Oct 14, 2020
DW Documentary
Engineers and scientists are trying to intervene in the Earth's
geochemical cycles. Because it appears efforts to cut CO2 won't suffice
to avoid irreversible climate change. But does geoengineering offer a
real solution? Or is it just human hubris?
Some scientists believe that we need to explore radical, and perhaps
dangerous, technologies in order to be able to lower the earth's
temperature through geoengineering in the near future.
Science journalist Ingolf Baur explores the feasibility and risks of
leading geoengineering projects. His journey takes him to meet
scientists in Switzerland, Iceland, the US and Peru. Along the way, he
encounters two very different strategies: One is to fish
climate-damaging CO2 from the atmosphere and sink it underground or in
the deep sea. The other, and this is the far more controversial
strategy, seeks to develop techniques that dim sunlight.
Global warming is causing entire mountain ridges like the Moosfluh above
Switzerland's Aletsch Glacier to break off. Such dramatic changes could
increase the pressure to try geoengineering.
Its most prominent proponent is David Keith from Harvard University in
the US. He's devised experiments to to sound out the possibilities of
"solar geoengineering." His idea is for fleets of aircraft to dump
millions of tons of sulfur into the stratosphere every year, where it
should reflect part of the incoming sunlight back into space. As
audacious as this method seems, it's actually no different to what
happens during volcanic eruptions.
Or could we still manage to get greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere
again? In Iceland, a group of researchers is using a special process to
filter carbon dioxide from the air and pump it 2,000 meters deep into
basalt rock. The surprise: after a few months, the CO2 is already
reacting chemically and turning to stone, which renders it harmless -
permanently. The quantities are still far too small, but it shows that
as controversial and risky as some geoengineering methods may be, in the
end we may need technology to avert or at least mitigate the effects of
climate collapse.
https://youtu.be/b1Enrzgrl1w
[worth hearing a few words on fear and panic]
*How To PANIC Less! | Russell Brand*
Oct 15, 2020
Russell Brand
I often suffer from anxiety and have felt on the precipice of panic and
panic attacks. Here are some of the techniques and help I've learned
over the years to help with these feelings, and ways to look after my
mental health in this relation to anxiety and panic.
Here is another video that focuses more on anxiety:
https://youtu.be/TfX4dNo4Khw
Instagram: http://instagram.com/russellbrand/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/rustyrockets
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91Xed0C5TEs
[IBEW Union interest in Green New Deal]
*"They may not know our names, but they will know our power." *
IBEW local leader makes a powerful case for labor to be at the table in
creating a Green New Deal.
Mike Siegel
@SiegelForTexas
US House candidate, TX-10
There is so much at stake: climate, jobs, health, justice, democracy.
We need an unstoppable coalition--workers, environmentalists,
everyone--to build solutions to meet the scale of these crises.
https://twitter.com/MarcNWeiss/status/1316190620910841857?s=20
[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - October 17, 2007 *
The New York Times reports:
*Global Warming Starts to Divide G.O.P. Contenders*
By Marc Santora
Oct. 17, 2007
While many conservative commentators and editorialists have mocked
concerns about climate change, a different reality is emerging among
Republican presidential contenders. It is a near-unanimous recognition
among the leaders of the threat posed by global warming.
Within that camp, however, sharp divisions are developing. Senator John
McCain of Arizona is calling for capping gas emissions linked to warming
and higher fuel economy standards. Others, including Rudolph W. Giuliani
and Mitt Romney, are refraining from advocating such limits and are
instead emphasizing a push toward clean coal and other alternative
energy sources.
All agree that nuclear power should be greatly expanded.
The debate has taken an intriguing twist. Two candidates appealing to
religious conservatives, former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas and
Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, call for strong actions to ease the
effects of people on the climate, at times casting the effort in
spiritual terms just as some evangelical groups have taken up the cause.
The emergence of climate change as an issue dividing Republicans shows
just how far the discussion has shifted since 1997, when the Senate
voted, 95 to 0, to oppose any international climate treaty that could
hurt the American economy or excused China from responsibilities.
The debate among Republicans is largely not about whether people are
warming the planet, but about how to deal with it.
The issue inserted itself into the presidential campaign on Friday with
the announcement that Al Gore had won the Nobel Peace Prize for work
highlighting the threat posed by climate change.
The leading Democratic candidates rushed to praise Mr. Gore, underlying
how that party has sought to seize the issue with proposals like higher
standards for fuel mileage and taxing emissions of carbon dioxide.
The issue had been gradually bubbling up among leading Republicans as
top corporations, including some in petroleum, have been pushing to
address it.
Mr. McCain, who acknowledges that he knew little about the climate
problem when he sought his party's presidential nomination eight years
ago, held a Senate hearing on climate change in 2001 and quickly became
a convert to the notion that carbon emissions were warming the planet.
In recent years, he has fought to introduce measures for caps on
dangerous emissions. Last week, Mr. McCain promised to demand sharply
higher fuel standards from the automobile industry.
He also promised to have the United States join the international
climate treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, although only on the condition that
India and China join, too. Many experts say that condition is unlikely
to be met at the moment.
"I don't know what it is going to be like the rest of my life on this
planet," Mr. McCain said at the Global Warming and Energy Solutions
Conference on Saturday in Manchester, N.H. "But I can tell you this. I
have had enough experience and enough knowledge to believe that unless
we reverse what is happening on this planet, my dear friends, we are
going to hand our children a planet that is badly damaged."
Mr. Romney and Mr. Giuliani say little about the potential dangers of
climate change and almost nothing about curbing emissions of
heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide. They talk almost exclusively
about the need for independence from foreign oil as a necessity for
national security.
Fred D. Thompson, after mocking the threat in April, said more recently
that "climate change is real" and suggested a measured approach until
more was known about it.
In the tangled Republican race, Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Romney have been
much more hesitant to criticize policies of President Bush, who in his
two presidential campaigns said that more study of climate change was
needed before imposing restrictions on heat-trapping gases.
On the campaign trail, Mr. Giuliani has said, "I do believe there's
global warming," but in a speech on energy in the summer in Waterloo,
Iowa, he had hardly a word about the environment. Instead, he focused on
tapping domestic sources of energy, including coal, which is considered
a major contributor to global warming.
"Ethanol, biodiesel, clean coal, nuclear power, more refineries,
conservation," Mr. Giuliani said. "There's no one single solution. But
each one of these has to be expanded 10 percent, 15 percent, 20 percent.
"America has more coal reserves than Saudi Arabia has oil reserves.
Aren't we safer and better off relying on our own coal reserves than on
a part of the world that is a threat to us?"
Mr. Romney has voiced an almost identical theme, with the two candidates
saying they will lead an effort to make the United States energy
independent that will be on the scale of putting a man on the Moon or
the race to build an atomic bomb.
To illustrate the commitment to new fuel sources, a clip of Mr. Romney's
forum in April in Derry, N.H., has been posted on his campaign's Web site.
"That is much broader than one form of fuel like ethanol," Mr. Romney
said. "I believe we have to be developing more energy sources ourselves,
which would include offshore drilling and drilling in ANWR, nuclear
power, biodiesel, biofuel, ethanol, cellulosic ethanol, probably
liquefied coal. We have enormous supplies of coal."
Mr. McCain said in his speech on Saturday that he wanted to push for
alternative fuels, but he implied that more needed to be done to protect
the environment.
One priority, he said, would be to establish "cap and trade," a system
in which corporations are essentially rewarded for deep cuts in harmful
emissions.
Mr. McCain has written a bill on that and forced two votes, losing both.
In addition to calling for improved fuel efficiency, which he repeated
last week in a speech in Detroit, Mr. McCain said he supported an effort
to develop an automobile battery that can travel 150 to 200 miles
without a charge and would finance the research and development for that.
The senator opposes a measure that many environmentalists desire, a
carbon tax, most likely as another gasoline tax. He told the warming and
energy conference that he generally opposed new taxes but that he also
believed that poor workers who tended to commute to work longer
distances would be disproportionately affected.
Mr. McCain said it took a few months of hearings as a member of the
Senate Commerce Committee after the 2000 election for him to realize the
threat from climate change. Asked about Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Romney's
commitment to energy independence, he said voters should look at their
records.
"What were they doing in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006?" Mr. McCain
asked.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/17/us/politics/17climate.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print
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