[TheClimate.Vote] October 30, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Sat Oct 31 00:35:22 EDT 2020
/*October 30, 2020*/
[time to vote]
*Gen Z, Millennial voters embrace activism and voting, as youth turnout
surges ahead of Election Day*
By Michelle Ye Hee Lee
Oct. 29, 2020
- -
Major social movements driven by young activists around climate change,
gun safety and Black Lives Matter protests have led to an explosion of
civic awareness among younger Americans, who are on track to turn out to
vote in record numbers this election and could play a pivotal role in
some key battleground states.
Data on early voters and recent polling suggest eligible voters under 30
could break their historic 2008 turnout, when it peaked at 48 percent
when Barack Obama was elected as president. New data suggest they may be
on track to sustain their dramatic turnout in the 2018 midterms, when
they more than doubled their rate of voting compared to the prior
midterm election...
- -
Drew Galloway, executive director of the nonpartisan youth voter turnout
group MOVE Texas, said his group is “helping new voters understand that
civic life is a cycle: protest, testify, vote, back out to protest, back
out to testify, back out to vote.”...
- -
“Although your vote might not directly affect you, it might directly
affect somebody else,” she said. “And when those of us who are
marginalized get hit the hardest, we all feel the effects of that,
because we truly are all connected — and that’s why it’s so important to
vote.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/youth-early-vote/2020/10/29/506db1b6-1889-11eb-aeec-b93bcc29a01b_story.html
[well known]
*Climate Change Is Central to California’s Wildfires*
Conservative pundits who tout land management as the main issue fail to
see the big picture
By Rebecca Miller, Katharine Mach, Chris Field on October 29, 2020
As the toll from California’s wildfires grows higher year after year,
the state’s future appears fiery and hazy with smoke. For conservative
columnists like Ben Shapiro, Niall Ferguson and Tyler O’Neil, it’s clear
who is responsible: California Democrats. In recent opinion pieces, they
acknowledge that climate change might play a role in these fires, but
they blame Democratic leadership for exacerbating fuel buildups through
poor land management. As proof, they reference a study from early this
year in Nature Sustainability.
We wrote that study. These columnists are wrong.
Their opinion pieces represent a dangerous form of climate denialism,
one that recognizes the value of climate adaptation—adapting to life
under a changing climate—but purposefully misdirects by refusing to
acknowledge the critical importance of limiting the amount of future
climate change.
The science is clear. Climate change plays an undeniable role in the
unprecedented wildfires of recent years. More than half of the acres
burned each year in the western United States can be attributed to
climate change. The number of dry, warm, and windy autumn days—perfect
wildfire weather—in California has more than doubled since the 1980s.
Without aggressive reduction of greenhouse gasses, forests in Northern
California, Oregon and Washington could experience an increase of more
than 78 percent in area burned by 2050. Governor Gavin Newsom correctly
characterized recent wildfires as a “climate damn emergency.” It’s
almost unfathomable to imagine a situation in which the 2020 wildfire
season becomes a regular occurrence or even a mild year, but that’s
exactly what could happen in our future.
We must dramatically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Otherwise, in
a few decades, we might recall the more than four million acres of
California burned so far this year—that have already shattered the prior
record, set in 2018—as a relatively light wildfire season. That
prospect, rooted in science and devastating to life and property, is
unacceptable.
But we must also prepare for reality with strong measures to reduce our
already heightened and increasing risk. Resilience will require a broad
portfolio of actions, from the household to the federal level, from
emergency preparedness to disaster-resistant building codes. For
wildfires, fuel treatments like prescribed burns have become a salient
example.
Fuel treatments reduce the buildup of vegetation that has resulted from
nearly a century of fire suppression and from the criminalization of
traditional Indigenous controlled burning. Twenty million acres of
forests across California could now benefit from fuel treatments like
prescribed burns, purposely-set fires intended to safely reduce fuel
overgrowth. However, inadequate funding, limited prescribed burn crews,
and dangerous weather conditions remain barriers to conducting
prescribed burns.
As the owner of 57 percent of forests in California, the federal
government has an enormous role to play. The U.S. Forest Service aspires
to treat 500,000 acres per year, but is unlikely to reach that target
given limited funding from Congress. However, new legislation could
help: a new bill from Ron Wyden (D–Ore.) could guarantee $600 million
each year for prescribed burns across federal, state and private lands.
Meanwhile, legislators in Sacramento have passed dozens of bills to
address wildfire risk in the last few years, including six new laws on
prescribed burns. These laws and recent executive actions address
several of the barriers we found in our study, including the need for
liability protection and programs for training and public education.
Last year, Governor Newsom also declared a state of emergency to
fast-track 35 fuel-reduction projects that would protect 200 at-risk
communities.
But fuel treatments alone are not the solution; we cannot disregard that
our contributions to climate change continue to aggravate our risk.
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is an essential part of protecting our
communities and ecosystems in the future. By exclusively focusing on
fuel treatments, these conservative columnists ignore the ongoing
influence of climate change and politicize critical action for fuel
treatments that protect our communities and ecosystems.
In the September 29 debate, two years after recommending that
Californians rake the forest, President Trump deflected on commenting on
the role of climate change in recent wildfires. Instead, he told us,
“Every year I get the call: ‘California is burning! California is
burning!” If that was cleaned, if you had good forest management, you
wouldn’t be getting those calls.”
Ignoring climate change won’t prevent climate disasters. From California
wildfires to Gulf Coast floods, we already experience their effects.
Arguments that purposefully misconstrue the impacts of climate change on
our ecosystems and communities increase our peril.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-is-central-to-californias-wildfires/
[cough, cough]
*Soot particles influence global warming more than previously assumed*
by Simone Ulmer, Swiss National Supercomputing Centre
OCTOBER 29, 2020
- -
Burning wood, petroleum products or other organic materials releases
soot particles into the atmosphere that consist mainly of carbon. This
soot is considered the second most important anthropogenic climate
forcing agent after carbon dioxide. In the atmosphere or as deposits on
snow and ice surfaces, soot particles absorb the short-wave radiation of
the sun and thus contribute to global warming.
In the atmosphere, soot particles also have an indirect effect on the
climate by altering the formation, development and properties of clouds.
A research team led by Ulrike Lohmann, professor at the Institute for
Atmosphere and Climate at ETH Zurich, has now for the first time
investigated how two specific types of soot particles influence clouds
and, in turn, the climate: on the one hand, soot aerosols that age due
to ozone and, on the other, those that age due to sulfuric acid...
- -
*Changed cloud formation leads to warming*
Simulations of ozone-aged soot show that when the carbon dioxide content
of the atmosphere doubles compared to the pre-industrial era, fewer low
clouds form. Considerably more cloud droplets are initially formed by
ozone aging of soot. However, their high concentration leads to more
cloud top cooling causing more dry air being mixed in from above. "These
clouds then evaporate more quickly, especially in a warmer climate,"
explains Lohmann. "In a warmer climate, the air mixed in also has a
lower relative humidity". Due to the faster evaporation, less low-lying
clouds remain, and more short-wave radiation reaches the earth and warms it.
graphic https://scx2.b-cdn.net/gfx/news/hires/2020/1-sootparticle.jpg
The soot particles aged by sulfuric acid, on the other hand, cause more
ice crystals to form and make cirrus clouds optically thicker, i.e. they
are less permeable to radiation. They extend as far as the tropopause,
which is located at an altitude of 10 to 18 kilometers, and also linger
longer in higher regions of the atmosphere. As a result, cirrus clouds
absorb more of the long-wave thermal radiation emitted by the Earth and
allow less of it to escape into space. The warming effect of cirrus
clouds increases and exacerbates global warming: When the carbon dioxide
content of the atmosphere doubles compared to pre-industrial times, both
types of soot aging together lead to a 0.4 to 0.5 degrees C increase in
global warming. As a result, the water cycle will further accelerate and
global precipitation will further increase, the researchers write.
https://phys.org/news/2020-10-soot-particles-global-previously-assumed.html
[VICE fashion for the future]
*Designers are Already Making Clothes for an Increasingly Hostile Future*
Fireproof trousers, Mars-proof jackets and clothes made out of copper:
here's what we might be wearing in the decades to come.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/epddxa/designers-making-clothes-for-increasingly-hostile-future
[extreme doom counter argument]
By Eilidh Duffy
Oct 26 2020
*Ok Doomers: Why you don't need to lose faith in fighting the climate
crisis*
Climate doomism helps absolutely no one. Here two experts respond to
common arguments put forward by those with a fatalistic outlook of the
future. Yes you should be outraged, but there's hope too.
Just this year we’ve seen natural disasters of biblical proportions:
fires and floods, swarms of locusts and, to top it off, one whopping
pandemic. But no, this is not the Wrath of God, it’s the climate crisis.
As we live through this ongoing nightmare, depression and anxiety are,
unsurprising, on the rise. So too is climate doomism, a growing outlook
that sees no hope for avoiding climate catastrophe, and so no point in
fighting it.
As Timothy Morton explains in his book Hyperobjects: Philosophy and
Ecology After the End of the World, climate change is something which is
so vast and abstract that it is impossible for the human mind to fully
grasp. Because of this many people see the problem as too large to deal
with on a personal level. Among them is sustainability leadership
professor at the University of Cumbria, Jem Bendell who, in 2018,
published the paper Deep Adaptation. In this, Jem outlines the latest
climate science and finds it so alarming that he sees no hope for
humanity, predicting that by 2028 we will see a complete breakdown of
human society. It’s pretty gloomy stuff: “You won't know whether to stay
or go. You will fear being violently killed before starving to death,”
he has also written.
That’s not to say Jem believes in total apocalypse. The academic
believes that this abrupt point, the cliff edge of the climate crisis,
will be the start of real action. But when Jem published Deep
Adaptation, he unwittingly ushered in the newest cult of the climate
crisis, the ‘climate doomers’.
Climate doomers see no hope for the future. They see no alternative but
climate disaster bringing war, famine and disease. They have totally
given up. And now, it seems, doomism is becoming more mainstream.
A call out on Instagram to see who among my own circle of acquaintances
were indulging in doomism showed that a surprising number of people
were, or had, or were beginning to consider it.
But two people who don’t think despair is the answer are author and
activist Alastair McIntosh and scholar and educator Elin Kelsey.
Alastair’s latest book Riders on the Storm: The Climate Crisis and the
Survival of Being interrogates the latest climate science and, by
weaving together science, politics, psychology and spirituality,
discusses alternative ways of dealing with climate change. Elin’s new
book Hope Matters: Why Changing the Way We Think Is Critical to Solving
the Environmental Crisis highlights the importance of retaining and
harnessing hope in tackling the climate crisis.
Both were kind enough to respond to some common statements made by
climate doomers. While doomism is an understandable reaction to the
crisis we’re faced with, both Alastair and Elin don’t think it’s
particularly useful to humankind.
“Any hope concerning the future of the climate is delusional.”
Alastair McIntosh: Hope about the climate is not delusional. The science
does not support the view that human beings are likely to go extinct
anytime soon. The science does say that if we act quickly we can start
to reduce impact on the planet and adapt to what is coming.
Elin Kelsey: Feelings of hopelessness are caused not only by the
seriousness of this crisis but by the way climate change issues are
covered in the media. Climate change news is almost exclusively reported
as bad news and we are exposed to more of this than at any other time in
human history.
To counter this feeling, psychologists say it’s important to see how our
individual actions make a collective positive impact. Research
demonstrates that when the news focuses on success stories about actions
ordinary
people are taking in local contexts we can relate to, we feel more
enthusiastic and optimistic about our capacity to tackle climate change.
“Because we're already past multiple tipping points and positive
feedback loops have begun, soon there will be shortages of resources and
large areas of the world will become uninhabitable. We’ll have more and
more extreme weather scenarios, which will then lead to mass migration.
Countries will begin to enforce borders in more extreme ways that will
look like some form of zombie apocalypse.”
AM: This is partly true [in terms of being past multiple tipping points]
but such speculation exceeds the science of the IPCC (The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). There is a danger in
exceeding the science and claiming, for example, that migration or
conflict is caused by climate change when in fact this is only one
factor. By allowing a single issue such as climate change to colour the
multiple other issues that drive migration and conflict leads us into
unreality.
What is needed in such situations – where multiple factors, of which
climate change is one, are driving these threats to our humanity – is a
deepening of that humanity. The greatest priority is that as a society
we learn compassion for one another so we can support each other in
whatever is to come.
EK: Framing climate change as an impending catastrophe stokes the fires
of “climate doomism”. Acceptance of what is, is not the same as fatalism
about what comes next. Fatalistic forecasts are being co-opted and used
for ulterior motives. Climate doom, according to Michael Mann, is the
new climate war – and it’s just as dangerous as the old one, which
focused on the denial of the science. In a 2019 interview for the
Guardian, Mann says that propagating frightening environmental
narratives “leads people down a path of despair and hopelessness and
finally inaction, which actually leads us to the same place as outright
climate-change denialism.”
“People are indoctrinated into a system of capitalism, particularly in
the West, which plays on people's greed. Most people don't think about
community and the greater good of humanity, only themselves.”
AM: I see capitalism as a system that is imposed upon us but also as an
emergent property of our own greed and lack of connection. You cannot
blame only the system without looking at the components of the system.
We all contribute to capitalism whenever we invest in a pension, have
savings in the bank or shop around for the best deal.
We must look at the wider system in which we are held and start to
create space for alternatives. This brings us back to our humanity. We
must be willing to behave in ways (and adjust our buying behaviour in
ways) that ceases to give capitalism what it needs to survive.
We can envisage a world that is different but in order to bring it into
being, we must take action. So where do you start? You start by taking
action from where you stand. You start by going down and helping out
your local food bank. You start by getting involved in your local nature
reserve. If in doubt in what to do with your life, feed the hungry –
literally, or metaphorically.
EK: This statement simply isn’t true. In response to mounting anger and
frustration with social injustice, inequality, economic disparity and
inaction on the climate emergency, ordinary people are coming together
in unprecedented numbers and are actively changing global political
cultures. Many of them are young. Almost 42% of the world’s population
is 25 or under. In Asia and Latin America (where 65% of the world’s
people live) a quarter of the population is under 15, and in Africa,
that figure rises to 41%. Young people are rising up against extreme
social and political inequalities to fight together for justice and
equality in numbers never before seen. 2019 will be remembered as the
year youth-driven climate justice marches spread around the world. Those
marches sparked so many climate emergency declarations that by the end
of that same year, one in ten people on the entire planet were living in
a place that had committed to decreasing greenhouse gas emissions.
Feeling furious and upset at deforestation, coal-fired power plants and
politicians who fail to lead urgently needed climate reforms, or angry
that you’ve inherited a screwed-up situation from previous generations,
is justified. Outrage shows you know what’s going on and you know what
absolutely must change. Reaching the point of ‘enough is enough’ spurs
us to stand up for the things we believe in.
“To switch over to any energy consuming system that is more
environmentally friendly would cause so much pollution that it is
pointless to even try.”
AM: Here’s an example which counters this narrative: We live in a
Victorian terraced house in Govan, Glasgow and our domestic carbon
footprint used to be 5.4 tonnes per year. In 2013 we installed solar
panels on the roof and
an air source heat pump to heat the house and consequently our carbon
footprint has fallen by 63% over those seven years. We did all of that
at a cost of £7,000, the cost of a good secondhand car. That is the kind
of thing that is possible if the will and means are there. So no, even
on a small scale switching to a more environmentally friendly system is
possible and is not going to make the environment less well-off.
EK: This statement lacks specificity and context and without these vital
criteria it only serves to make us think the situation is hopeless. It
creates the daunting sense that all of the hard work lies ahead. It’s
important to focus on specific contexts, time-stamped content and
emerging evidence-based trends. We are in the midst of a global energy
transition. For example, on 7 October, 2020 Bloomberg Green reported:
“NextEra Energy Inc., the world’s biggest provider of wind and solar
energy, is now more valuable than oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp., once the
largest public company on Earth.”
https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/epdgwk/climate-doomism-is-on-the-rise-but-heres-why-to-still-hope
- -
[author Elin Kelsey]
*Hope Matters: Why Changing the Way We Think Is Critical to Solving the
Environmental Crisis*
Hope Matters boldly breaks through the narrative of doom and gloom to
show why evidence-based hope, not fear, is our most powerful tool for
change. Kelsey shares real-life examples of positive climate news that
reveal the power of our mindsets to shape reality, the resilience of
nature, and the transformative possibilities of individual and
collective action. And she demonstrates how we can build on positive
trends to work toward a sustainable and just future, before it’s too late.
https://www.amazon.com/Hope-Matters-Changing-Critical-Environmental/dp/1771647779/ref=sr_1_1
- -
[Author Alastair McIntosh]
*Riders on the Storm: The Climate Crisis and the Survival of Being*
Writer, scholar and broadcaster Alastair McIntosh sums up the present
knowledge and shows that conventional solutions are not enough. In
rejecting the blind alleys of climate change denial, exaggeration and
false optimism, he offers a scintillating discussion of ways forward.
Weaving together science, politics, psychology and spirituality, this
guide examines what it takes to make us riders on the storm.
https://www.amazon.com/Riders-Storm-Climate-Crisis-Survival/dp/1780276397/ref=sr_1_1
[Military in the Arctic]
*Can Climate Change Undermine Nuclear Deterrence*
Oct 28, 2020
Council on Strategic Risks (CSR)
As part of a new series of explainer videos, the Council on Strategic
Risks (CSR) posed a series of questions about the Arctic region to four
leading national security experts with different perspectives in a
recent video interview. Together, their diverse answers may help us to
better understand the complex linkages across climate change, Arctic sea
melt and new sea routes, prospects for conflict, competition, and
cooperation within the global order, and new risks associated with
nuclear weapons. This is the full version of the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsq7lEz7kU8&feature=emb_logo
[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - October 30, 2003 *
The US Senate rejects the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act of
2003 in a 55-43 vote. The bill failed after an all-out assault on the
legislation aided by ExxonMobil-funded "researcher" Willie Soon.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/31/us/senate-defeats-climate-bill-but-proponents-see-silver-lining.html
http://youtu.be/eJFZ88EH6i4
- -
[who is Willie Soon?]
*Soon is a prominent climate change skeptic who has received much of his
research funding from the oil and gas industry.*
"I have received scientific research grants from Exxon-Mobil
Foundation, Southern Company and the Charles G. Koch Foundation for
my work on various topics, including scientific research on the
Sun-climate connection.”
https://www.desmogblog.com/willie-soon
- -
[See also video of Soon]
*The Climate Change Hoax, with Professor Willie Soon at Camp
Constitution 7-3-17*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YMttEhtgpk&feature=emb_logo
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