[TheClimate.Vote] October 21, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest.

[Richard Pauli]

/*October 21, 2020*/

[Headline issues in the 2020 elections]
*Inside Climate News - Election 2020*
Our newsroom has closely followed the 2020 election and published an 
informative series about key Senate races that will shape the future of 
climate policy in the U.S...
- -
Senate 2020: In Mississippi, a Surprisingly Close Race For a Trump-Tied 
Promoter of Fossil Fuels...
- -
Senate 2020: In Alaska, a Controversy Over an Embattled Mine Has 
Tightened the Race...
- -
Climate Change Makes a (Very) Brief Appearance in Dueling Town Halls 
Held by Trump and Biden...
- -
The Pence-Harris Showdown Came up Well Short of an Actual 'Debate' on 
Climate Change...
- -
Anxiety Mounts Abroad About Climate Leadership and the Volatile U.S. 
Election...
- -
Trump’s Pick for the Supreme Court Could Deepen the Risk for Its Most 
Crucial Climate Change Ruling...
more at - https://insideclimatenews.org/tags/election-2020


[Sacramento Bee follows the insurance money]
*Insurance companies abandoning California at a faster rate, as 
wildfires wreak havoc*
BY DALE KASLER - OCTOBER 19, 2020
. . .
Carriers sent non-renewal notices to 42,088 homeowners in the foothill 
counties in 2019, compared to 23,925 the year before, Deputy Insurance 
Commissioner Bryant Henley announced Monday. Almost every one of these 
homeowners had to buy replacement coverage from the state's "insurer of 
last resort," the FAIR Plan, often at prices double or triple what they 
were paying before...
- -
Insurers began dropping thousands of mostly rural Californians after 
swallowing losses of $25 billion during the 2017 and 2018 wildfire 
seasons, capped by the near-total destruction of Paradise in the Camp 
Fire. Insurers did get compensated for about $11 billion in losses by 
PG&E Corp., which has been held responsible for most of the worst 
wildfires...
- -
Home hardening has emerged as an increasingly viable tool for reducing 
wildfire risk. After the 2018 Camp Fire destroyed more than 12,000 homes 
in Paradise, a McClatchy investigation revealed that homes were more 
likely to survive if they'd been built according to a strict building 
code requiring fire-resilient roofing and siding and other protective 
features.
"Home hardening works," Henley said, as a chart outlining some of 
McClatchy's findings flashed on the Zoom screen.

Gov. Gavin Newsom's proposed state budget for this year originally 
contained $100 million to help communities retrofit homes for wildfire 
safety. But the funding was dropped after the COVID-19 pandemic and 
economic shutdown left the state with a $50 billion deficit.

Insurance companies say they'll work with Lara on home-hardening 
standards -- but also argue that they must be allowed greater 
flexibility to charge rates that match with the risks involved in 
selling coverage in fire-prone communities.

"We absolutely must retain financial strength to pay these claims," 
State Farm vice president Nicole Forziati said at Monday's hearing.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/fires/article246561448.html

- -

[Insurance Journal]
*California Pledges to Protect Homeowners from Insurer Withdrawals Due 
to Wildfires*
California's insurance commissioner on Monday pledged to step up efforts 
to protect the state's residents from wildfires and address a pullback 
of private insurers from the state's riskiest areas.

Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara convened a "virtual investigatory 
hearing" on Monday to initiate a series of regulatory actions that will 
protect residents from the increasing risk of wildfires.
https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/west/2020/10/19/587154.htm



[CBS news gets it]
*Colorado's record-breaking wildfires show "climate change is here and now"*
BY JEFF BERARDELLI
OCTOBER 20, 2020
The Cameron Peak fire, a few miles west of Fort Collins, Colorado, has 
engulfed over 200,000 acres and it's still growing. It has now become 
the biggest wildlife in Colorado history.

What's more astounding is that the Cameron Peak fire is the second fire 
in 2020 to hold the title of largest wildfire in Colorado history. The 
Pine Gulch fire near Grand Junction briefly held that title, but for 
only 7 weeks, having burned 139,000 acres in late summer.

Looking at this in a vacuum, you might think of it as mere coincidence. 
But zooming out, you need only look two states away in California to 
find evidence of more unprecedented fires. Six of the 7 largest 
wildfires in California history have all burned in 2020, and the 
largest, the August Complex fire, became the state's first ever gigafire 
-- meaning it burned over 1 million acres, scorching more acreage than 
the state of Rhode Island...
This year Mother Nature has supplied us with smoking-gun evidence to 
prove what climate scientists have been warning about for decades. The 
scorched-earth impacts of climate change have arrived.

In a letter the editor published in the journal Global Change Biology, 
two of the world's foremost experts on wildfires conclude that the 
"[r]ecord-setting climate enabled the extraordinary 2020 fire season in 
the western United States."
"Our 2020 wildfire season is showing us that climate change is here and 
now in Colorado. Warming is setting the stage for a lot of burning 
across an extended fire season," says Dr. Jennifer Balch, professor of 
fire ecology and director of Earth Lab at the University of Colorado 
Boulder.

According to Balch, Colorado in the 2010s saw a tripling of average 
burned area in the month of October, compared to the prior three decades 
of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. "We do see fall fire events in Colorado, 
related to fast, downslope winds. But to see multiple events start this 
late, in the middle of October, is very, very rare."
Perhaps it's rare, but as of Monday 10 notable fires are burning across 
the state. The Cameron Peak fire's eastern extent is just 5 miles from 
Fort Collins and Loveland.
Two of the most concerning new fires are burning in Boulder County and 
forcing evacuations. The CalWood fire -- the largest fire ever in 
Boulder County -- and the Lefthand fire have both exhibited extreme fire 
behavior, shocking even seasoned climate scientists.

"Even as a scientist studying extreme weather & wildfire in a warming 
climate, I was shocked by how fast #CalwoodFire roared down the Colorado 
Front Range foothills," Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA, wrote 
on Twitter, posting video of a swirling vortex of smoke.

Examining all the evidence, it's clear why conditions are 
extraordinarily flammable this fall. It's a compound issue of short-term 
natural climate variability layered on top of fundamental changes to the 
long-term climate from global warming.
"This year was shocking"
While you can't completely separate short-term variability from 
longer-term climate trends, as they are intertwined, a region's most 
recent weather conditions are a big factor in how extreme a fire season is.

According to the Colorado Climate Center at Colorado State University, 
for the first time since 2013 all of Colorado is experiencing drought. 
This is no run-of-the-mill dry spell -- 97% of the state is in the 
"exceptional," "extreme," or "severe" drought categories. And it's not 
just Colorado; much of the Southwest is bone dry.
https://cbsnews1.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2020/10/19/8782f592-871a-4be5-81a4-a2b426b73469/thumbnail/620x502/727d30e3e6603dbbdddebb68041f07a2/current-drought-west.jpg
Brad Udall, the senior water and climate research scientist at the 
Colorado Water Institute at Colorado State University, said 2020 started 
out promising.

"This year was shocking because we had a decent winter and on April 1 we 
had 100% of snowpack," he said. But things quickly turned disappointing. 
"With 100% of snowpack, you'd expect a decent runoff year. Instead, we 
ended up with 52% of what is normal."

The amount of water that runs off from snow cover, and the pace at which 
it melts, is important because it determines water availability for soil 
and vegetation in summer.

Udall says much of the poor runoff is a result of increased evaporation 
due to a very warm and dry spring and summer. Over the past few months 
there have been a number of significant heat waves in the West, two of 
which were of historic proportions. The extra added heat energy 
vaporizes spring snow cover, and the lack of new moisture provides 
nothing to buffer the loss.

In the Southwestern states, June through August rainfall was the lowest 
since 1895 and temperatures were the highest since 1895, according to 
NOAA. In Colorado so far, this year is the eighth warmest and second 
driest on record. Denver has experienced more 90-degree days than any 
year in its history.

"We've had next to no moisture over the last 3 months which is highly 
unusual. The Arizona monsoon often carries moisture to Colorado but this 
year it was a complete bust," said Udall.

The below map illustrates just how "off the charts" the atmosphere's 
demand for evaporation is. The more the atmosphere pulls moisture from 
the land, the drier and more flammable the trees, grass and brush become.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EkeObqvVcAEodj4?format=jpg&name=small
Udall says that while most of the droughts of the 20th century were 
caused by lack of rainfall, today's droughts are mainly caused by 
increased evaporation due to warmer weather. But drought is usually 
referred to as a short-term issue, and what's happening in Colorado is 
not temporary. He prefers the term aridification, because climate 
change, due to the burning of fossil fuels and the buildup of a 
heat-trapping carbon pollution blanket overhead, is systematically 
drying out the landscape.

To be sure, climate is not the only factor driving the explosion in 
burned area. Excess fuel buildup due to increased fire suppression in 
recent decades as well as increasing ignitions due to more human 
activity in forested areas do play a role. But experts say the marked 
increase can not be explained without longer-term warming and drying.

*Climate change and "the recipe for large forest fires"*
If you look back over the past century, parts of Colorado have been 
warming faster than anywhere else in the nation. According to data from 
NOAA and an analysis by the Washington Post, western and northern 
Colorado are warming at twice the average rate of the globe, having 
warmed about 3 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1895.

A study published in September found that the frequency of combined heat 
waves and droughts -- which are more impactful when they occur in unison 
-- has increased significantly, especially in the western U.S. For 
example, the type of hot-dry event that would have been expected once 
every 25 years in 1950, now occurs five to 10 times every 25 years.

"Episodes of extreme dryness and heat are the recipe for large forest 
fires," said Mojtaba Sadegh, the senior author of the study. "These 
extremes are intensifying and extending at unprecedented spatial scales, 
allowing current wildfires to burn across the entire U.S. West Coast."
Colorado's state climatologist Russ Schumacher agrees, telling Colorado 
Public Radio this is pretty well in line with climate predictions, "What 
we're seeing here is indicative of the fact that when the hot, dry years 
come around, they're hotter... I think the frequency of these kinds of 
summers where we get in these hot, dry conditions is probably going to 
increase."

Udall agrees, and warns we should get used to what he calls "the new 
abnormal." "The climate system has a really good memory and the cycle of 
heat and dryness is hard to break," he said.

Since 2000, the drought in the Western states has become so monumental 
that scientists are using the term "megadrought" to describe it. This 
spring climate scientists released a groundbreaking study saying that 
this is the beginning of the second worst drought in the past 1,200 
years, with a "large contribution from human-caused climate change."

The graph below from drought.gov shows that over the past 20 years 
drought has become a regular and potentially permanent part of 
Colorado's climate. Darker shades mean drier conditions, with D2 
representing "severe drought, D3 "extreme drought" and D4 "exceptional 
drought."

https://cbsnews3.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2020/10/19/e9f4dd9d-c616-4d88-a43e-e43ec766ccb9/thumbnail/620x346/5e08a1e44a8f95fbe546f1e817720c1c/co-drought-since-2000.jpg
The effects on the Colorado environment are apparent. Since the 1930s 
the water available from Colorado snowpack has decreased by 30%. As a 
result streamflow in the Colorado River has decreased markedly. In a 
2018 study, Udall and co-authors found that 50% of the river runoff 
decline was due to higher temperatures.

And this more arid climate has huge impacts, with larger wildfires and a 
longer fire season. In fact, wildfire season in the West is now two to 
three months longer than it was in the 1970s. And since 1984, 
human-caused climate change has led to a doubling of the area burned in 
the Western states, with about 50%of the increase being attributed to 
increases in the dryness of fuel.
https://cbsnews3.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2020/10/19/054132fa-1e3c-4982-a691-f2c5bfffea71/thumbnail/620x349/5aaac938d2a34d56dd5eff5f15d34d0a/acres-burned-new.png
A 2015 study on wildfires in the Colorado Front Range Corridor found 
that the expansion of the wildland-urban Interface -- more people living 
on the edge of forests -- and climate change were both to blame in 
explaining the changing fire trends, but that climate change had a 
"stronger influence."

Balch says that our inability to square the needs of our modern society 
with a rapidly changing climate is a dangerous proposition.

"Ignoring the link between warming and wildfires only puts lives and 
homes at risk," she said. "In the contiguous U.S. 1 million homes sat 
within the boundaries of wildfires in the last 24 years. Nearly 59 
million more homes in the wildland-urban interface lay within a 
kilometer of fires."

The unprecedented wildfires of the past few years have certainly 
illuminated just how vulnerable we are to a climate which no longer 
plays by the rules our parents and grandparents took for granted. And 
considering the warming and drying projected in the coming decades, 
scientists say the rules will just keep on changing, making it "unlikely 
that the records from 2020 will stand for long."
Jeff Berardelli is CBS News meteorologist and climate specialist.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-wildfires-record-breaking-colorado/
- -
[Drought.gov data]
*Advancing Drought Science and Preparedness across the Nation*
https://www.drought.gov/drought/


[proving what we suspect]
*Climate activism and its effects*
WIREs Climate Change
A new "focus article" aims to understand the outcomes of climate 
activism and the climate movement. The study provides "an overview of 
climate-related activism as a form of civic engagement" and pays 
"particular attention to the targets of this activism and its 
environmental outcomes in terms of greenhouse gas emissions reductions". 
The paper also focuses on school strikes and discusses "how the 
coronavirus pandemic has changed the climate movement with much activism 
moving online".

    Abstract
    As activism including climate strikes have become a common
    occurrence around the world, it is important to consider the growth
    in climate change‐focused activism and participation in social
    movements as a specific type of civic engagement. Although studies
    have analyzed climate activism and the climate movement, there is
    limited research that integrates it into the broader literature on
    civic engagement and which considers how these forms of engagement
    are related to specific climate outcomes. Here, we take a first step
    in understanding the material outcomes of these efforts.
    Specifically, we provide an overview of climate‐related activism as
    a form of civic engagement, paying particular attention to the
    targets of this activism and its environmental outcomes in terms of
    greenhouse gas emissions reductions. Then, we focus on one of the
    most common tactics to gain momentum in recent years: the school
    strike, which has mobilized a growing number of participants around
    the world. We discuss how the Coronavirus pandemic has changed the
    climate movement with much activism moving online. We conclude by
    discussing the overall state of the knowledge about the outcomes of
    climate activism, as well as highlighting the need for careful
    research to measure its effects across scale.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/wcc.683


[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - October 21, 1984 *

In the second presidential debate between President Ronald Reagan and 
Democratic challenger Walter Mondale, Reagan is asked by panelist Marvin 
Kalb:

"Mr. President, perhaps the other side of the coin, a related question, 
sir. Since World War II, the vital interests of the United States have 
always been defined by treaty commitments and by Presidential 
proclamations. Aside from what is obvious, such as NATO, for example, 
which countries, which regions in the world do you regard as vital 
national interests of this country, meaning that you would send American 
troops to fight there if they were in danger?"

Reagan responds:

"Ah, well, now you've added a hypothetical there at the end, Mr. Kalb, 
about where we would send troops in to fight. I am not going to make the 
decision as to what the tactics could be, but obviously there are a 
number of areas in the world that are of importance to us. One is the 
Middle East, and that is of interest to the whole Western World and the 
industrialized nations, because of the great supply of energy upon which 
so many depend there."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF73k5-Hiqg - (15:00-15:52)


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