[TheClimate.Vote] September 14 , 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Mon Sep 14 11:45:41 EDT 2020

/*September 14, 2020*/

[NYT news]
*In Visiting a Charred California, Trump Confronts a Scientific Reality 
He Denies*
A president who has mocked climate change and pushed policies that 
accelerate it is set to be briefed on the scorched earth and ash-filled 
skies that experts say are the predictable result...
- -
If Mr. Biden is elected, he has vowed to rejoin the Paris agreement and 
reinstate those rules, while pushing to enact even stronger policies, 
spending up to $2 trillion to promote the development of renewable 
energy sources such as wind and solar.

But experts said it may take far more than that to rebuild the American 
climate change legacy -- or its ability to persuade other governments to 
take similar action. That is a profound consequence, the experts said, 
because climate change is a global problem and cannot be meaningfully 
mitigated unless the world's largest polluters all work in concert.
"The really big effect of what Trump has done is to send a message to 
the rest of the world that the United States is not credible on climate 
change," said Mr. Victor of the University of California, San Diego. 
"The rest of the world is not going to know if we're serious because we 
keep swinging back and forth."

"Over the past 50 years, the effectiveness in creating international 
deals came from U.S. leadership," he added. "And now nobody knows if 
we're going to do that anymore."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/13/us/politics/california-fires-trump-climate-change.html 

[winds of change]
*As Wildfires Burn Out of Control, the West Coast Faces the Unimaginable*
Firefighters across California and Oregon are bracing for stronger winds 
that could partly clear the air -- but also fan the flames of 
uncontrolled blazes...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/13/us/Wildfires-Oregon-California-Washington.html

[MediaMatters]
*Cable news largely failed to mention the connection between climate 
change and wildfires in its coverage*
Only 13% of segments on the wildfires mentioned climate change
- -
Prime-time coverage of the wildfires was abysmal across all three 
networks. Out of 12 hours of programming, MSNBC dedicated 12 minutes of 
coverage to the fires in prime time, while CNN dedicated just three 
minutes of coverage over the four-day period. Fox News dedicated nearly 
six minutes; but it was largely in one segment from Carlson focused on 
denying the connection between the wildfires and climate change, despite 
overwhelming evidence that our overheated climate is playing a role in 
intensifying the fires in California and across the West.

Notably, the cable coverage mirrors broadcast TV news' failure to 
connect the dots between climate change and the devastation unfolding in 
the West Coast. Over a four-day period from September 5 through 8, only 
15% of broadcast coverage of the wildfires mentioned climate change, 
meaning almost all television news programs have largely reported these 
historic fires as an isolated phenomenon instead of part of the climate 
crisis we are in.
more at - 
https://www.mediamatters.org/cable-news/cable-news-largely-failed-mention-connection-between-climate-change-and-wildfires-its

[E&E News]
*Earth Hasn't Warmed This Fast in Tens of Millions of Years*
Chemical analyses of ancient sediments allowed scientists to put 
together one of the most comprehensive climate histories of the planet...
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-hasnt-warmed-this-fast-in-tens-of-millions-of-years/

[cough, cough]
*The Fires May be in California, but the Smoke, and its Health Effects, 
Travel Across the Country*
Fine particulate matter and ozone from wildfire smoke are associated 
with heart and lung diseases, compromised immune systems and even 
vulnerability to Covid-19...
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26082020/california-fire-smoke-health-effects

[trends]
ENVIRONMENT
*Heatwaves are becoming more deadly as nights warm faster than days*

    - The U.S. this summer has experienced stifling hot temperatures
    that have set all-time records and put millions of people under
    excessive heat warnings.
    - Lower nighttime temperatures that typically provide critical
    relief from the hot days are disappearing as the climate changes.
    - Temperature extremes are a result of global climate change as well
    as a so-called urban heat island, which occurs when heat from the
    daytime is taken in by heat-absorbing asphalt or concrete, driving
    hotter nights and early mornings.
    - Dry and hot conditions exacerbate wildfires, which are currently
    tearing through California, Oregon and Washington state.

Climate change is making heatwaves and droughts more common, intense and 
widespread. Dry and hot conditions exacerbate wildfires, which have 
grown more destructive in recent years. Dozens of major fires are 
currently burning through the U.S. West Coast, destroying hundreds of 
homes and wiping out entire neighborhoods in Oregon.

Climate change is also causing more humid heatwaves. Hot and saturated 
air doesn't allow sweat to evaporate as quickly and causes the body to 
heat up even more, which can be deadly.

"The trend in California that we have seen since the heat wave in 2006 
is heat waves are also more humid, and Californians are generally not 
acclimated to high levels of humidity and high temperatures -- it's this 
combo that is most deadly," said Rupa Basu, chief of air and climate 
epidemiology for the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard 
Assessment...
- -
Across the world, every decade over the last 60 years has been hotter 
than the last. It's virtually certain that 2020 will be among the top 
hottest years in recorded history.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/12/climate-change-why-heatwaves-are-more-deadly-as-nights-warm-faster.html

[Writer speaks his opinion on Extinction Rebellion]
*George Monbiot reacts to UK Gov 'organised crime' reclassification 
attempt | Extinction Rebellion UK*
Sep 13, 2020
Extinction Rebellion
George Monbiot talks about authoritarian creep from the UK government 
and why attempts to reclassify Extinction Rebellion as 'organised 
criminals' is a sign of Extinction Rebellion's success so far.

Today George has along with Stephen Fry, Sir Anthony Gormley, Andrea 
Arnold OBE, Massive Attack, Stewart Lee, Sir Mark Rylance, Baroness 
Helena Kennedy QC, Dr Rowan Williams and more than a hundred other 
public figures have responded to those government and press assertions 
in an open letter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6H0EfOFDTY

[feedback problem]
*Arctic disintegration is worse than we thought.*
Sep 13, 2020
Just Have a Think
Arctic sea ice is disappearing faster than we thought! That's a phrase 
we've seen so often in the news recently that it's become quite easy to 
just tune it out. But a raft of research published in the Summer of 2020 
finds that it's not just the sea ice but ALL of the feedbacks loops in 
the region that are gaining pace at an alarming rate, including the 
atmospheric temperature, the heat stored in the oceans, the release of 
methane from thawing permafrost and the melting of the Greenland ice 
sheet, all of which directly contribute to the catastrophic climate 
change we're witnessing everywhere on the planet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz6WxTH-p3o

[cough, cough, it's solistalgia]
*Column: There's actually a word for the climate change-induced despair 
you've been feeling*
Sitting at the dinner table with his wife, the philosopher struggled to 
characterize the specific nature of their pain -- a pain "experienced 
when there is recognition that the place where one resides and that one 
loves is under immediate assault."

Glenn Albrecht, the philosopher in question, and his wife, Jill, first 
thought of the concept of nostalgia -- because, as Albrecht writes, the 
term was once linked to "a diagnosable illness associated with the 
melancholia of homesickness for people who were distant from their home."
- -
According to a 2017 American Psychological Assn. report Clayton 
coauthored, the acute impacts will probably include more trauma and 
post-traumatic stress disorder in the wake of climate change-induced 
extreme weather and other major destabilizing events. Chronic impacts 
could manifest as a heightened sense of helplessness, hopelessness or 
fatalism as people reckon with profound changes to their environment or 
what they see as their lack of control over what's happening.

But Clayton says some of the more incremental impacts of climate change 
could damage our psychological well-being.

"There is very good evidence that, for example, hot weather actually is 
bad for our mental health," she explained. "You see increases in suicide 
rates, increases in aggression and increases in psychiatric 
hospitalization."...
- -
So what is the middle ground between sticking our heads in the sand and 
becoming psychologically overwhelmed by what we know? Say you are lucky 
enough to be outside the path of acute danger, at least for today. How 
can we lead a meaningful life with these threats looming, knowing so 
much is beyond our control?

"For all of us, we need to find this way of thinking -- There is 
something I can do," Clayton said. Maybe you can't save the world, but 
you can exert some small sense of control over your corner of it, even 
with something as simple as readying your own evacuation plans. She also 
mentioned pressing local officials on certain issues, or voting to 
address the matter at hand.

I worry that invoking these small steps might sound glib or 
Pollyanna-ish, particularly in the face of such flagrant destruction, 
made possible by so many years of greed and ineptitude. We obviously 
need large-scale, sustained action from every level of leadership. But 
if you are feeling profound grief and despair, personal action can at 
least help repair your own sense of powerlessness.

Writing recently about his own reckoning with climate despair, my 
colleague Sammy Roth, an energy reporter at The Times, quoted a line 
from the rabbinic teachings of Pirkei Avot that I have thought about 
often in the weeks since: "It is not your responsibility to finish the 
work of perfecting the world, but you are not free to desist from it 
either."
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-09-13/solastalgia-climate-change-induced-despair
- -
[important from last month]
***California is broiling and burning. Here are ideas for dealing with 
climate despair*
https://www.latimes.com/environment/newsletter/2020-08-20/boiling-point-california-broiling-burning-boiling-point---

[Sunday was a nice day for a spiritual message]
*a course by bayo akomolafe*

    I am quite confident that even as the oceans boil, and the
    hurricanes beat violently against our once safe shores, and the air
    sweats with the heat of impending doom, and our fists protest the
    denial of climate justice, that there is a path to take that has
    nothing to do with victory or defeat: a place we do not yet know the
    coordinates to; a question we do not yet know how to ask. The point
    of the departed arrow is not merely to pierce the bullseye and carry
    the trophy: the point of the arrow is to sing the wind and remake
    the world in the brevity of flight. There are things we must do,
    sayings we must say, thoughts we must think, that look nothing like
    the images of success that have so thoroughly possessed our visions
    of justice.

    May this new decade be remembered as the decade of the strange path,
    of the third way, of the broken binary, of the traversal disruption,
    the kairotic moment, the posthuman movement for emancipation, the
    gift of disorientation that opened up new places of power, and of
    slow limbs. May this decade bring more than just solutions, more
    than just a future - may it bring words we don't know yet, and
    temporalities we have not yet inhabited. May we be slower than speed
    could calculate, and swifter than the pull of the gravity of words
    can incarcerate. And may we be visited so thoroughly, and met in
    wild places so overwhelmingly, that we are left undone. Ready for
    composting. Ready for the impossible. - Bayo Akomolafe (PhD),
    Teacher/Host

https://course.bayoakomolafe.net/

[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - September 14, 2004 *

British Prime Minister Tony Blair declares that climate change is "...a 
challenge so far-reaching in its impact and irreversible in its 
destructive power, that it alters radically human existence." He further 
notes:

"The problem...is that the challenge is complicated politically by two 
factors. First, its likely effect will not be felt to its full extent 
until after the time for the political decisions that need to be taken, 
has passed. In other words, there is a mismatch in timing between the 
environmental and electoral impact. Secondly, no one nation alone can 
resolve it. It has no definable boundaries. Short of international 
action commonly agreed and commonly followed through, it is hard even 
for a large country to make a difference on its own.

"But there is no doubt that the time to act is now. It is now that 
timely action can avert disaster. It is now that with foresight and will 
such action can be taken without disturbing the essence of our way of 
life, by adjusting behaviour not altering it entirely."
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/sep/15/greenpolitics.uk

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