[TheClimate.Vote] September 2, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*September 2, 2020*/

[today Western US an orange full moon rises]
*Wildfire smoke forecast for September 2, 2020*
Bill Gabbert - posted 9-1-2020
https://wildfiretoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Screen-Shot-2020-09-01-at-7.52.13-PM.jpg
https://wildfiretoday.com/2020/09/01/wildfire-smoke-forecast-for-september-2-2020/
- -
[smoke map]
*NOAA HRRR-Smoke*
https://hwp-viz.gsd.esrl.noaa.gov/smoke/index.html#


[AXIOS gives us seven systemic changes]
*How climate change feeds off itself and gets even worse*
Amy Harder, author of Generate
August 31, 2020
Climate change is like a snowball effect, except, well, hot.

*Why it matters:* Like a snowball begins small and grows larger by 
building upon itself, numerous feedback loops embedded in our atmosphere 
and society are exacerbating climate change.

*Driving the news:* Scientists are well acquainted with feedback loops, 
but the often wonky topic doesn't break through into the mainstream 
despite its importance to how much the world warms and how much we 
respond to that warming.
As we soak up the last of these hot summer days, and extreme weather 
hits parts of the country, today seems a fitting time to break this down 
for those of us without a Ph.D. Here are seven feedback loops in science 
and beyond.
*Air conditioning*
*How it works: *Climate change is making our summers hotter, so we use 
more air conditioners, which emit greenhouse gases, which heats up our 
planet more, so we use even more AC, which heats up our planet even more 
... You get the cycle.

This is an easy-to-understand feedback loop, but it's not going to have 
a big impact on our emissions, says Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist 
at the research group Breakthrough Institute.

The bigger impact is likely to be population growth in developing 
countries in hot parts of the world, like India, getting AC to survive 
their ever-hotter weather.
*Water evaporation*
This one's more technical but far more consequential for Earth's 
temperature than the AC example.

*How it works:* The atmosphere heats up as we emit heat-trapping 
greenhouse gases.

This warmer air leads to more water evaporation from water and land.
This evaporation results in water vapor, which itself is a greenhouse 
gas and traps heat.

The increased amount of water vapor in the atmosphere retains ever more 
heat, which leads to more water evaporation, which results in more water 
vapor, which...
*Between the lines:* This type of feedback loop more than doubles the 
amount of global warming, says Hausfather.

*Permafrost*
This is a type of feedback that has only recently begun to be included 
in climate models, says Philip Duffy, climate scientist and president of 
the nonprofit Woodwell Climate Research Center.

*How it works:* It's like a massive freezer thawing atop the world, 
Duffy says. Nearly a quarter of Northern hemisphere land has permafrost 
underneath it.

As the world warms, organic matter -- plants and dead animals frozen for 
tens of thousands of years -- starts to decompose. "Those decomposition 
processes emit greenhouse gases," Duffy said.

Scientists estimate that there's twice as much carbon locked up in 
permafrost as is already in the atmosphere, Duffy says. "The potential 
to amplify warming is huge."
*Albedo feedback*
This is similar to permafrost. It's why you feel hotter in black clothes 
compared to white clothes.

*How it works: *Lighter surfaces reflect heat more, so as ice and other 
cold places get warmer (i.e., the Arctic and other permafrost), their 
ability to reflect heat diminishes and they soak up more heat.

    - "As the world warms, expect a lot of ice and snow to melt, which
    uncovers darker surfaces, which will result in more warming," said
    Hausfather.

Between the lines: This phenomenon, combined with the permafrost one, 
helps explain why the planet's poles warm faster than the rest of the world.

*Wildfires*
*How it works: *Trees, by definition, embody carbon. So when wildfires 
burn them down, carbon dioxide is emitted.

As the world warms, temperatures get hotter and places get drier, 
creating tinderboxes for when wildfires do start.

The hotter the world gets, the bigger wildfires will be (in some places 
like California), the more CO2 emitted into the atmosphere, which heats 
up the world more, which will exacerbate wildfires more ...
*Policy and economic paralysis*
Unlike most policy challenges, climate change gets worse the longer we 
take to address it.

*How it works:* The longer we wait to address climate change with major 
government action, the bigger the policy needed and the bigger economic 
impact that policy will have.

    - But the bigger the policy and economic hit get, the harder the
    politics get.
    - So we wait longer still, making the required policy and economic
    impact ever bigger, which makes the politics even more difficult.


*Yes, but:* Plausible future scenarios also exist where the impacts of a 
warming world grow so intense and/or clean-energy technologies become so 
cheap that eventually these aforementioned feedback loops are broken.
*Geopolitics*
*How it works:* It takes global cooperation to address climate change, 
given its global nature. But climate change impacts different countries 
differently, so they're more likely to act on their own, and in their 
own self-interest.

    - But if there's no global cooperation, climate change continues to
    get worse -- prolonging the adverse impacts on different countries,
    and giving them even less incentive to cooperate with other
    countries and more incentive to act on their own.

*The bottom line:*

    "The possible scenario that is a real nightmare is if we don't
    control human emissions, nature takes over and we lose control of
    the warming, because of these emissions from natural systems."
    -- Philip Duffy, climate scientist

https://www.axios.com/climate-change-feedback-loops-e6cfd8d6-56fe-449b-a856-e8f97717c44c.html


[try citizens assembly]
*If democracy looks doomed, Extinction Rebellion may have an answer*
John Harris
At the heart of a new climate emergency bill lies a simple idea to cut 
through Westminster groupthink: a citizens' assembly
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/30/extinction-rebellion-democracy-climate-emergency-bill-citizens-assembly



[Snappy 30min video lesson-suitable for sharp young minds]
*Climate Change Is An Absolute Nightmare - This Is Why*
Jul 9, 2020
UpIsNotJump

So. What is Climate Change? Do you know the facts? No?

Well I personally had no idea. One day it just hit me, I knew very 
little about climate change. Even with a useless degree in chemistry, 
climate change is a confusing mess of strange and difficult to 
understand information.

I made this video to gather all the facts I could find about climate 
change, in a fun way, and without any bias on my part. I wanted anyone 
who watched this video (and myself too!) to understand all the important 
facts relating to climate change. Non-scientists welcome.

Science is exciting! It's just school and most of our education systems 
aren't…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqwvf6R1_QY


[complexity below]
*Everything Is Extremely Normal and Totally Fine*
Brian Kahn - Sept 1. 2020
The tundra is exploding in Siberia. Again.
A 165-foot-deep (50-meter) crater has ripped open in the northwest 
region of what's normally one of the coldest places on Earth. The past 
year, though, it's been anything but, and the crater is just the latest 
sign of Siberia's summer of hot discontent.

Journalists on assignment to cover something else entirely on the Yamal 
Peninsula in northwest Siberia happened upon the perfectly concentric 
wound in the Earth. The footage showing the uninterrupted tundra marred 
by a pit to hell was shot in July but released over the weekend.

It looks like a bomb crater, but the reason for the hole isn't an 
explosive dropped from above but rather what's happening beneath the 
surface. The tundra of Siberia and in other parts of the world is 
undergird by permafrost, a frozen soil rich in the greenhouse gas 
methane. Unfortunately, the climate crisis is causing that soil to thaw, 
releasing methane into the atmosphere. Bad news for the planet, to be 
sure, since methane is a greenhouse gas roughly 30 times more potent 
than carbon dioxide (permafrost can also release that, too, because of 
course it can). But changes in permafrost can also cause Earth to 
occasionally yeet a hunk of tundra into the sky.

Methane is also the main ingredient in natural gas, which, as you may 
happen to know, can catch fire or explode under pressure. Sue Natali, 
Arctic program director at Woodwell Climate Research Center, said in an 
email that the gas can build up in pockets of unfrozen soil in the 
permafrost known as cryopegs.

The Yamal Peninsula has seen a spate of these craters since 2014. Natali 
said there haven't been enough to peg them to any specific feature 
there, but the structure of the permafrost with a thick icy layer and 
widespread presence of cryopegs and methane-rich natural gas deposits 
could be one possible explanation for why it's the crater capital of the 
Arctic.

Conditions aboveground this year certainly have increased the odds of 
blowouts. Across Siberia, things have been extremely hot and on fire. 
Temperatures raced to 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees Celsius) in 
June, an exclamation point in what has been the hottest year on record 
for Russia so far. Wildfires have torn across the landscape since April, 
with some of them raging back to life after overwintering in carbon-rich 
peat soil. Temperatures in Russia averaged 7.2 to 12.4 degrees 
Fahrenheit (6 to 8 degrees Celsius) above normal this winter, with 
hotter pockets over Siberia. The heat likely weakened permafrost, 
priming it for all sorts of weird behavior this summer. In addition to 
the explosion, permafrost collapse contributed to a huge diesel spill 
that contaminated a pristine Siberian lake.

And honestly, while the crater is certainly worthy of staring at in 
slack-jawed wonder, it's the other permafrost impacts that are the most 
scary. Scientists have found millions of methane hot spots dotting the 
landscape, and the Arctic has become a net carbon dioxide emitter for 
the first time on record. That's bad news for the climate. The less 
explosive forms of permafrost destruction are also wreaking havoc for 
those who call the Arctic home. As permafrost thaws, it can slump, 
erode, or simply flood the landscape by creating marshy formations known 
as thermokarst. That wrecks infrastructure from apartment buildings to 
traditional ice cellars, upending life there. As many as 4 million 
people could see their lives directly altered by midcentury if 
permafrost continues its more liquid and sometimes explosive 
transformation. And those changes will be permanent unless we act to cut 
emissions and slow the planet from warming ASAP.

"I think it is very likely that heat waves can and are triggering abrupt 
events in the Arctic," Natali said. "This is pretty important, because 
these events (craters, thermokarsts) are largely irreversible."
https://earther.gizmodo.com/everything-is-extremely-normal-and-totally-fine-1844909673



[Book review in the New Yorker]
*Why Hurricane Katrina Was Not a Natural Disaster*
Fifteen years ago, New Orleans was nearly destroyed. A new book suggests 
that the cause was decades of bad policy--and that nothing has changed.
By Nicholas Lemann
August 26, 2020
- -
It is not possible to make New Orleans completely hurricane- and 
flood-proof, but if one wanted to try there would be two over-all 
approaches. One would be to depopulate the city and deindustrialize 
southern Louisiana, creating a small-footprint eco-paradise--the New 
Orleans that nature seems to want. That violates the strong preferences 
of the residents and a poor area's hunger for money. The other option 
would be to invest in a protective infrastructure so mighty that, at 
least plausibly, New Orleans could survive anything. After Katrina, as 
after Betsy, such plans were drawn up, but nobody wanted to pay for 
them. New Orleans had to settle for levee enhancements that fell far 
short of providing invulnerability to a Category 5 hurricane, and wound 
up returning to something not too different from its pre-Katrina state. 
The city is an irresistibly alluring place that does far better by its 
white citizens than its Black ones. Life is sweet when it isn't tragic. 
Lodged somewhere in everyone's consciousness is the knowledge that what 
happened in 2005 is going to happen again.
https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/why-hurricane-katrina-was-not-a-natural-disaster



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - September 2, 2005 *
Climate scientist Stephen Schneider appears on "Real Time with Bill 
Maher" to discuss climate change's role in Hurricane Katrina.
http://youtu.be/H9mWZZ2U6EQ

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