[TheClimate.Vote] October 23, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Fri Oct 23 11:44:10 EDT 2020

/*October 23, 2020*/

[Axios early coverage]
*Climate change goes mainstream in presidential debate*
Amy Harder, author of Generate
The most notable part of Thursday's presidential debate on climate 
change was the fact it was included as a topic and assumed as a fact.

*The big picture:* This is the first time in U.S. presidential history 
that climate change was a featured issue at a debate. It signals how the 
problem has become part of the fabric of our society. More extreme 
weather, like the wildfires ravaging Colorado, is pushing the topic to 
the front-burner.

*Flashback:* Until now, climate change either was wholly absent from 
presidential general elections or debate was fleetingly focused on 
whether or not it is real -- it is and humans are the driving factor, 
most scientists agree.
*My thought bubble:* It's a (good) sign that politics has finally caught 
up with reality and the debate didn't focus on whether or not climate 
change is real.
But, Trump has largely denied the science and hired people with similar 
views to run the federal government, which is having a major impact on 
policy. So a question about Trump's record of climate change denial 
would have helped put him on the record.
*The intrigue: *
Moderator Kristen Welker of NBC asked how the candidates would create 
jobs while also tackling climate change and how to combat environmental 
justice.
The latter is the concept that communities of color often live closest 
to polluting facilities, a dilemma receiving renewed attention as the 
nation focuses more on system racism in the wake of police brutality 
toward people of color.
*The highlights:*
- Prompted by Trump asking whether he would "close down the oil 
industry," Biden said: "I would transition the oil industry because the 
oil industry pollutes significantly." That incited Trump to remark: 
"That's a big statement." Expect this to come back again in remainder of 
the campaign.- The candidates' sparring over whether Biden opposes 
fracking made another appearance Thursday evening, which cued the 
moderator to ask whether Biden would rule out banning fracking. Biden 
responded: "I do rule out banning fracking." He then said he would ban 
fracking of oil and gas on federal lands. Actually, his plan bans new 
leasing of oil and gas on federal lands (not current production).
- One of the odder parts of the exchange came when Trump indicated Biden 
wants no windows in buildings as part of the Green New Deal.
*Reality check: *
Biden has said he doesn't support the Green New Deal and windows 
actually make buildings more energy efficient.
Trump largely deflected when asked about environmental justice, 
diverting to talk instead about how he helped get oil-producing nations 
like Saudi Arabia and Russia to agree to curb production in the depths 
of the pandemic. "Everybody has very inexpensive gasoline," said Trump.
*My quick take:* When gasoline prices are high, that's pretty much the 
only thing politicians will talk about when it comes to energy policy. 
With low prices, it affords the political room to talk about longer term 
problems like climate change...
https://www.axios.com/climate-change-mainstream-presidential-debate-677cd651-e7c1-44c9-9ce3-f29e4d0a4a6a.html

[Washington Post issue posted before the debate]
*'It's a sea change': How climate went from the back burner to a central 
issue in this year's debates*
The last time there was a substantive discussion at a presidential 
debate about the climate was 20 years ago. And Democrat Al Gore's 
predictions have pretty much come true.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/22/climate-change-biden-trump-debate/

[money is the method]*
**Aggressive push to 100% renewable energy could save Americans billions 
– study*
As much as $321bn could be saved with complete switch to clean energy 
sources, Rewiring America analysis finds
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/22/us-renewable-energy-costs-savings-study-report

[later arrival of winter]
*Alarm as Arctic sea ice not yet freezing at latest date on record*
For the first time since records began, the main nursery of Arctic sea 
ice in Siberia has yet to start freezing in late October.

The delayed annual freeze in the Laptev Sea has been caused by 
freakishly protracted warmth in northern Russia and the intrusion of 
Atlantic waters, say climate scientists who warn of possible knock-on 
effects across the polar region.

Ocean temperatures in the area recently climbed to more than 5C above 
average, following a record breaking heatwave and the unusually early 
decline of last winter's sea ice.

The trapped heat takes a long time to dissipate into the atmosphere, 
even at this time of the year when the sun creeps above the horizon for 
little more than an hour or two each day.

Graphs of sea-ice extent in the Laptev Sea, which usually show a healthy 
seasonal pulse, appear to have flat-lined. As a result, there is a 
record amount of open sea in the Arctic...
- -
The warmer air temperature is not the only factor slowing the formation 
of ice. Climate change is also pushing more balmy Atlantic currents into 
the Arctic and breaking up the usual stratification between warm deep 
waters and the cool surface. This also makes it difficult for ice to form.
"This continues a streak of very low extents. The last 14 years, 2007 to 
2020, are the lowest 14 years in the satellite record starting in 1979," 
said Walt Meier, senior research scientist at the US National Snow and 
Ice Data Center. He said much of the old ice in the Arctic is now 
disappearing, leaving thinner seasonal ice. Overall the average 
thickness is half what it was in the 1980s.

The downward trend is likely to continue until the Arctic has its first 
ice-free summer, said Meier. The data and models suggest this will occur 
between 2030 and 2050. "It's a matter of when, not if," he added...
Delayed freeze in Laptev Sea could have knock-on effects across polar 
region, scientists say
more at - 
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/22/alarm-as-arctic-sea-ice-not-yet-freezing-at-latest-date-on-record

[view from above]
*Severe burn damage from California wildfires seen from space*
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/b5tN7KcVqrVbvggwttXuoN-1024-80.jpg.webp
The maps derived from the satellite data show how far two major fires 
spread as well as how badly each region burned. Darker colors represent 
near-complete loss -- charred landscapes with little to no living 
vegetation left. Lighter tan regions represent areas where the fire was 
severe, but some trees and plants still survive.
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/qix9oGJvEoc9ctsWNjGbyT-970-80.jpg
"It is disturbing to see how much of the redwood forest was burned," 
Potter said.

The SCU Complex fire burned grassland and oak woodlands.

"It is rare that we get more than one large lightning-induced fire in a 
year in California; this year, we had 10 lightning complex fires," 
Potter told the Earth Observatory. "Some researchers think these 
lightning storms may be related to climate change. If global warming 
means more lightning storms like this in California, then we are in 
trouble."
more at - https://www.space.com/california-wildfire-damage-2020.html

[not smart to hinder solar]
*Trump pulls tariff exemption for bifacial panels – again*
The U.S. president issued a proclamation on Oct. 10 that cites the 
impact of imported bifacial panels on U.S. solar manufacturing, while 
also raising the scheduled fourth-year tariff rate from 15% to 18%.

 From pv magazine USA OCTOBER 13, 2020

With the U.S. election just weeks away, President Donald Trump has 
issued a proclamation once again imposing trade tariffs on bifacial 
solar panels, effectively rolling back the exemption he originally 
granted in June 2019.

As previously reported, the proclamation is the latest skirmish in the 
president's ongoing battle with the U.S. solar industry over the panels, 
which produce power on both sides and are increasingly used in large 
utility-scale projects. Quietly released on Oct. 10, its main argument 
is that "bifacial modules are likely to account for a greater share of 
the market in the future and can substitute for monofacial products in 
the various market segments, such that exempting imports of bifacial 
modules from the safeguard tariff would apply significant downward 
pressure on prices of domestically produced (bifacial) modules."

Trump also cited the impact of bifacial's growing share of the U.S. 
market as his reason for putting a hold on the fourth year step-down of 
the solar tariffs from 20% to 15%, resetting the rate for all imported 
solar panels instead at 18%. When first imposed in 2018 as part of 
Trump's trade war with China, the tariffs were set at 30%, to be 
decreased 5% each year for four years.

Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries 
Association (SEIA), told Bloomberg that Trump's proclamation "counters 
critical needs of our country right now, jeopardizing jobs, economic 
recovery in the face of a pandemic and a clean environment." SEIA would, 
she said, "evaluate every option to reverse this harmful approach."
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/10/13/trump-pulls-tariff-exemption-for-bifacial-panels-again/?utm_source=Bibblio&utm_campaign=Internal

[Time to think bigger]
*Breaking through Big Oil's "regime of obstruction"*
An interview with William Carroll about Canada's fossil fuel power 
elite--its networks, public and private support, and climate 
denialism--as exposed and examined in his important new anthology for 
the Corporate Mapping Project.
OCTOBER 15, 2020
William K. Carroll is a critical sociologist at the University of 
Victoria with research interests in the political economy/ecology of 
corporate capitalism, social movements and social change, and critical 
social theory and method. His current research is focused around the 
relationships between corporate power, fossil capitalism and the climate 
crisis. Carroll co-directs the SSHRC-funded Corporate Mapping Project 
with CCPA-BC Director Shannon Daub in partnership with the CCPA, 
Parkland Institute and several universities. His edited anthology, 
Regime of Obstruction (AU Press, November 2020), is a culmination of 
research from the first three years of the Corporate Mapping Project and 
represents a midway point in its work. The Monitor reached Carroll by 
Skype at his Vancouver Island home this July.
- -
The Monitor: In your introduction to Regime of Obstruction, you write: 
"Corporate control of the production of energy (most of which takes the 
form of fossil fuels), and the reach of corporate power into other 
social fields, pose the greatest obstacles to addressing the ecological 
and economic challenges humanity faces today." Explain why you think 
that is the case.

*William K. Carroll: *Clearly the global ecological crisis is broader 
than just the climate crisis, but I think that that crisis is 
particularly urgent. And it's particularly difficult to address because 
of the way capitalism has developed as a way of life that is really 
fuelled by fossil fuels. Even after relatively half-hearted attempts to 
move away from fossil fuels in the past few years, still more than 80% 
of all the energy in the global economy is generated from carbon.

It's one of these wicked problems. It's intractable because there are so 
many different aspects of corporate power, as we try to develop in the 
book, that are reinforcing this way of life and obstructing the kinds of 
relatively rapid changes that we need to be making in order to avoid the 
worst effects of climate change. The effects are already being felt and 
they're going to get worse. Even if we were to radically reduce carbon 
emissions tomorrow, the inertia in the climate system is such that it's 
going to be a rough ride for humanity in the next number of years.

But to avoid a really bad situation, we would need to shift away from a 
way of life that really inscribes corporate power at its centre and 
provides various kinds of attractions. There are appealing aspects to 
this way of life for many people--if you happen to have money (laughs). 
In my view it's a rather alienating way of life, as our social relations 
are so commercialized and mediated by markets, and the profit motive is 
so corrosive to healthy social relations. But I think individuals who 
are financially secure experience this as a very pleasant way of life.

That in itself is a very difficult problem. It's a kind of first world 
problem, but it's really a global problem. And it gets into the question 
of hegemony that we explore in this book. How is it that people end up 
supporting an ecologically, and in terms of social justice issues, 
deeply problematic way of life? What is it that pulls us into this and 
makes us consent and even often stand as boosters of this way of life?...
- -
*Regime of Obstruction: How Corporate Power Blocks Energy Democracy* 
will be released by AU Press in November.
clip:

    The new denialism doesn't deny the science; it accepts that there is
    a climate crisis, but it offers up solutions that are obviously
    inadequate and that basically provide cover to industry. So that
    rather than making the fairly dramatic changes that need to be made,
    the argument is we can do this at a very, very slow, incremental
    pace that doesn't in any way endanger the profits and the
    investments that Ian Hussey and his co-authors write about in the
    chapter you mentioned. And so it's an attempt to solve the problem
    within the logic of capitalism, that is to say, through the use of
    market mechanisms and by trying to steer market decisions through
    putting a price on carbon, through technological innovations that
    make carbon extraction less intensive in terms of its emissions, and
    so on, but without changing anything about the social relations and
    the logic of endless growth on a finite planet.

    That is, I think, at the heart of the issue--whether this problem,
    which in our view is endemic to the actual social logic of fossil
    capitalism, whether it can actually be solved within the social
    logic of fossil capitalism. Our argument would be that it really
    can't. But of course, industry is entrenched, their interests are in
    maintaining those structures and they do that in various ways. And
    part of it is constructing these new-denialist narratives.

https://policyalternatives.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=50ab80acdbcc30e47a51c061b&id=d20b843649&e=b223f6dbc9

[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - October 23, 2007 *

Dr. Julie Gerberding of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 
addresses a US Senate committee regarding the health risks of climate 
change. Her testimony was extensively edited by the Bush White House to 
dramatically downplay the severity of the risks.

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2007/10/23/17139/gerberding-global-warming/

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/25/science/earth/24cnd-climate.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2008/07/08/174078/burnett-cheney-boiling/

http://www.c-span.org/video/?201698-1/HumanImp

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