[TheClimate.Vote] September 16, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*September 16, 2020*/

[Faux stuff ]
*'Nothing to Do With Climate Change': Conservative Media and Trump Align 
on Fires*
Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson dismiss scientists' determination that 
climate change is a key culprit in West Coast wildfires.
By Michael M. Grynbaum and Tiffany Hsu
Sept. 15, 2020

Rush Limbaugh told millions of his radio listeners to set aside any 
suggestion that climate change was the culprit for the frightening spate 
of wildfires ravaging California and the Pacific Northwest.

"Man-made global warming is not a scientific certainty; it cannot be 
proven, nor has it ever been," Mr. Limbaugh declared on his Friday show, 
disregarding the mountains of empirical evidence to the contrary. He 
then pivoted to a popular right-wing talking point: that policies meant 
to curtail climate change are, in fact, an assault on freedom.

"Environmentalist wackos" -- Mr. Limbaugh's phrase -- "want man to be 
responsible for it because they want to control your behavior," the 
conservative host said on the show. He added that they "want to convince 
you that your lifestyle choices are the reason why all these fires are 
firing up out on the Left Coast."

Hours later, that message leapt to prime time on Fox News, where the 
host Tucker Carlson said those who blamed climate change for the fires 
were merely reciting "a partisan talking point."
"In the hands of Democratic politicians, climate change is like systemic 
racism in the sky," Mr. Carlson told viewers. "You can't see it, but 
rest assured, it's everywhere, and it's deadly. And like systemic 
racism, it is your fault."

Mr. Limbaugh and Mr. Carlson are two of the most prominent commentators 
in the right-wing media sphere, where a rich history of climate 
denialism has merged with Trump-era cultural warfare to generate a deep 
skepticism of the notion that climate change is a factor in the fires 
devastating the West Coast...
more at - 
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/business/media/wildfires-conservative-media.html 




[TIME magazine]
*How Climate Change May Be Contributing to Our Political Instability*
https://time.com/5888866/climate-change-wildfires-political-instability/



[cough, cough]
*How breathing in wildfire smoke affects the body*
Experts say the chronic impact of smoke from longer-lasting, more 
frequent wildfires could have serious health impacts.

BY SARAH GIBBENS AND AMY MCKEEVER
SEPTEMBER 15, 2020

For the more than seven million people in California's Bay Area living 
through historic wildfires, it's been hard to breathe for the past 
month. For 29 days the region has been under a "Spare the Air" alert, 
which means inhaling outdoor air presents a health hazard. Air quality 
is even worse in Oregon and Washington, and by this morning smoke had 
stretched all the way to the East Coast and even to Europe.

Wildfire smoke contains a variety of gases and particles from the 
materials that fuel the fire, including ozone, carbon monoxide, 
polycyclic aromatic compounds, nitrogen dioxide, and particulate 
matter--pollutants linked to respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses, 
according to a study in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

When a healthy person breathes in air tinged with smoke from the fires, 
they may feel a sting in their eyes, and when they cough, they may have 
trouble recovering their breath. But what happens to that same 
individual when they breathe smoky air for extended periods every year 
is still unclear.

"People were once exposed once or twice in a lifetime," says Keith Bein, 
an atmospheric scientist at the University of California, Davis. "Now 
it's happening every summer and for longer."
In the United States, air quality is measured on a color-coded scale 
known as the Air Quality Index (AQI), which was established in 1977 as 
part of the Clean Air Act. Stretching from 0 to 500, the AQI is split 
across six categories--from good to hazardous. Its scale measures the 
levels of five major pollutants: ground-level ozone, carbon monoxide, 
sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and particulate matter.

State and local agencies in cities with populations over 350,000 are 
required to report these levels daily. The pollutants are measured both 
by instruments on the ground and satellites that constantly collect 
information about what's in the atmosphere--including the particles from 
wildfires.

Impact on the human body
"We know pretty well it causes eye irritation, cough, wheezing--people 
with asthma are more likely to have an episode," says Irva 
Hertz-Picciotto, director of Environmental Health Sciences Core Center 
at the University of California, Davis.
"Wildfire smoke is a very complex type of air pollution," says Sarah 
Henderson, an environmental health scientist at the University of 
British Columbia. "It has many different gases in it, and the 
composition of those small particles can be highly variable, depending 
on what's burning [and] how hot it's burning."

Of particular concern, she says, is particulate matter 2.5 microns in 
diameter--also referred to as PM 2.5. Those small particles, and ones 
even smaller, are capable of penetrating deep into a person's lungs. 
Henderson says the body responds by releasing the same immune cells it 
would deploy to attack a virus. Unlike a virus, however, particulate 
matter isn't broken down by that immune response and results in 
long-lasting inflammation.

"That inflammation affects your lungs, kidneys, liver, and probably your 
brain," says Henderson.
Wildfires are a growing health threat--15 of California's 20 worst fires 
have occurred in the past 20 years, and Henderson says more evidence is 
needed to show exactly how wildfire smoke affects organs after long-term 
exposure.

"We don't have a clear understanding of what the health effects are on 
an unborn fetus, but systemic inflammation in a woman who is pregnant 
may affect her unborn baby," adds Henderson.

When wildfire smoke enters the airway, the tiny particles that it 
contains--which are about 30 times smaller than a human hair--can get 
lodged deep in the lungs and injure the lining. The body kicks into gear 
to dispel the foreign invaders, triggering spontaneous reflexes like 
coughing that helps cilia, the little hairs lining the cells of the 
airway, tbeat the particles out.

But the immune cells can't break down the particulate matter--which only 
makes them work harder to try to defeat it, resulting in even more 
inflammation, says Stephanie Christenson, assistant professor of 
pulmonology at University of California, San Francisco.

Inflammation can be a good thing for fighting off invaders. But 
Christenson says it's especially dangerous for anyone with underlying 
conditions such as asthma or COPD, both characterized by inflammation. 
Additional inflammation can exacerbate those diseases. "It's a really 
delicate balance before you can go overboard," she says.

With those diseases, it can be harder to get much-needed oxygen to the 
rest of the body. As oxygen enters the lungs it heads to the 
alveoli--tiny air sacs that form a thin barrier between the air and 
blood--and passes into the blood in the capillaries. When the body is 
fighting off a threat, those air sacs can fill up with mucus so that air 
cannot pass through, Christenson says. This also makes it more difficult 
for the body to eliminate the carbon dioxide, which can also cause 
respiratory distress.

There's some evidence that the particles themselves can break through 
that barrier in the capillaries, getting into the bloodstream and 
causing an inflammatory response throughout the body.

While respiratory problems may be the most overt response to smoke 
inhalation, others are less obvious. In 2018, a study in the Journal of 
the American Heart Association found that smoke from the 2015 wildfires 
that scorched more than 893,000 acres of California was associated with 
cardiovascular issues and problems with blood flow to the brain in 
361,087 emergency department visits between May 1 and September 30.

Karol Watson, professor of medicine/cardiology at the David Geffen 
School of Medicine at UCLA, links that to the proximity of the heart and 
coronary arteries to the lungs. Watson was part of a team that conducted 
a 2016 study published in The Lancet that looked at the effects of a 
variety of pollutants in six U.S. cities and discovered a link between 
high levels of air pollution and coronary disease.

Underlying conditions again are particularly worrisome when it comes to 
the damage wildfire smoke can inflict on the heart, Watson says. Heart 
attacks happen when the plaque building up in the arteries ruptures, and 
while Watson says researchers don't believe the particulate matter 
causes this buildup, it can destabilize existing plaque, causing it to 
rupture.
There's also some evidence that air pollution can trigger irregular 
heart rhythms, Watson says, although there's less known about why this 
might happen. It's especially difficult to study air pollution, she 
says, noting that her team's 2016 study required them to place monitors 
in households across the U.S.

"The trauma people go through may also affect their immune systems," 
says Hertz-Picciotto. "When you're driving with flames on both sides of 
your car, and your tires are melting and you're not sure you're going to 
make it out--definitely when you lose your entire home--the stress of 
rebuilding…I can see that playing a role in the massive amounts of 
stress on top of COVID."

Potential to worsen COVID-19
According to the Centers for Disease Control, exposure to wildfire smoke 
can prevent a person from fighting off respiratory diseases like COVID-19.
"Higher air pollution is associated with respiratory effects and people 
being more prone to having respiratory illnesses," says Hertz-Picciotto. 
"To the extent that the immune system is compromised and cannot fight 
off viruses, air pollution exacerbates that."

One study recently published in the journal Environmental International 
found exposure to wildfire smoke in the summer correlated with three to 
five times more flu cases later in the year.

Tarik Benmarhia, an environmental health scientist from the University 
of California, San Diego, notes that the same populations of people who 
were more vulnerable to COVID-19--those with low incomes, pre existing 
conditions, and poor access to health care--may also be vulnerable to 
the impacts of wildfires.

A 2017 study in the American Journal of Epidemiology found that elderly 
Black people who are more likely to live in urban areas, where there is 
persistent air pollution, were more likely to be hospitalized from 
exposure to wildfire smoke.

Emerging threats in the suburbs
In addition to the health impacts, discovering exactly what people are 
breathing in is also an emerging concern among scientists.

Wildfire smoke was once primarily made of the earthy remains of fallen 
twigs, brush, and trees, but as wildfires increasingly blaze through 
suburbs, they're burning up the synthetic paints, carpets, and consumer 
goods that fill homes. In California's historic 2018 fires, 19,000 homes 
burned, compared to this year's 4,000 so far.
Bein says samples of wildfire smoke over the past five years show that 
for as many compounds in the smoke they can identify, there are even 
more that they can't.

"I don't think we've had resolution on the exposure side to see what all 
those chemicals are and what happens when they combust at very high 
temperatures," says Hertz-Picciotto, "nor do we understand how those 
health impacts might differ."

How to protect yourself
The CDC recommends staying indoors to avoid wildfire smoke.

HVAC systems can help purify air inside a home, as can air purifiers for 
a single room.

"If you have a room you can keep cool, close the windows, doors, then 
run a portable air cleaner with a HEPA filter," says Henderson.

It's important to not add to indoor pollution by cooking with gas, 
frying food, smoking, or even vacuuming, says the CDC. If forced to 
venture outside, the CDC also recommends wearing an N95 respirator 
tightly fitted to your face: COVID-19 surgical masks and other homemade 
face coverings won't protect you from the smoke.

"At the end of the day there's only so much you can do," says Bein, 
emphasizing that long-term planning must attempt to mitigate the kinds 
of fires currently plaguing Californians. New policies around prescribed 
burns as well as where homes can be built, and what sort of features 
those homes should come with are solutions stakeholders need to tackle, 
Bein says.

"I think that's going to be one of humanity's greatest challenges," he 
says. "Not just wildfires but all the extreme events resulting from 
climate change. We are entering a new phase of reality we just can't 
reverse."
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/09/how-breathing-wildfire-smoke-affects-the-body/



[record setting]
*Northern hemisphere breaks record for hottest ever summer*
Past three months were 1.17C above 20th-century average
2020 on track to be one of five warmest years, Noaa finds
This summer was the hottest ever recorded in the northern hemisphere, 
according to US government scientists.
June, July and August were 1.17C (2.11F) above the 20th-century average, 
according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).

The new record surpassed the summers of 2016 and 2019. Last month was 
also the second-hottest August ever recorded for the globe. The numbers 
put 2020 on track to be one of the five warmest years, according to NOAA...
more at - 
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/sep/14/northern-hemisphere-record-hottest-summer-noaa



[ProPublica Climate Migration]
*New Climate Maps Show a Transformed United States*
by Al Shaw, Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica, and Jeremy W. Goldsmith, 
Special to ProPublica, September 15, 2020.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. 
Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published.

According to new data from the Rhodium Group analyzed by ProPublica and 
The New York Times Magazine, warming temperatures and changing rainfall 
will drive agriculture and temperate climates northward, while sea level 
rise will consume coastlines and dangerous levels of humidity will swamp 
the Mississippi River valley.

Taken with other recent research showing that the most habitable climate 
in North America will shift northward and the incidence of large fires 
will increase across the country, this suggests that the climate crisis 
will profoundly interrupt the way we live and farm in the United States. 
See how the North American places where humans have lived for thousands 
of years will shift and what changes are in store for your county...
more at - https://projects.propublica.org/climate-migration/



[is this]
*Facebook and Google announce plans to become carbon neutral*
Firms join Apple and Microsoft in committing to put no excess carbon 
into the atmosphere
Alex Hern
15 Sep 2020
Facebook and Google are becoming carbon neutral businesses, joining 
competitors Apple and Microsoft in committing to put no excess carbon 
into the atmosphere, both companies have independently announced.
- -
"Over the next decade, Facebook will work to reduce carbon emissions 
from our operations and value chain," the company said in a blogpost, 
"including by working with suppliers on their own goals, helping the 
development of new carbon removal technologies and making our facilities 
as efficient as possible."
Both companies' claims follow similar announcements from Apple and 
Microsoft. In January, Microsoft led the way, announcing a plan to 
become carbon negative by 2030, and to remove all of its historical 
emissions by 2050 – the goal Google says it has achieved today, although 
Microsoft was already 23 years old when Google was founded in 1998.

And in July, Apple announced its own plans to become carbon neutral by 
2030. For Apple, that meant not only its entire supply chain, but also 
the lifecycle of all its products, including the electricity consumed in 
their use. The company will plant trees equal to the estimated lifetime 
carbon emissions of the electricity used to charge iPhones, for instance.

"The innovations powering our environmental journey are not only good 
for the planet, they've helped us make our products more energy 
efficient and bring new sources of clean energy online around the 
world," Apple's chief executive, Tim Cook, said alongside the announcement.

The latest announcements place Amazon at the distant back of the pack. 
In 2019, the company revealed a then-ambitious plan to achieve net-zero 
carbon emissions by 2040, and to use 100% renewable electricity by 2030. 
But the company's vast logistics network is a significant hurdle not 
faced by its competitors: the company has purchased 100,000 electric 
delivery vehicles, but deploying them to the road will not be complete 
by 2030.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/15/facebook-and-google-announce-plans-become-carbon-neutral

- -

[Finally, a first baby step]
*Facebook gives in to pressure on climate-change myths -- including that 
antifa started deadly wildfires in western states -- with new 
'science-based' hub*
Published: Sept. 15, 2020 at 10:09 a.m. ET
By Rachel Koning Beals
Urged by lawmakers and others, Facebook's steps on climate change follow 
similar moves for information sharing on COVID-19 and voting

Facebook, long targeted by critics for allowing misinformation on global 
warming and other environmental developments to populate users' 
social-media feeds unchecked, announced it will launch a new information 
hub to provide "science-based information" about climate change.

"Climate change is real. The science is unambiguous and the need to act 
grows more urgent by the day," the company FB, +2.35%  said in a release 
announcing the hub's rollout Tuesday after months of increased 
questioning of the climate-change denial posts it allows on the site 
under the cover of allowing editorials.

Now when users search for information related to climate change on 
Facebook or when certain posts related to the subject pop up, so, too, 
will a link to the Climate Science Information Center. On it, users will 
find data and commentary from sources including the Intergovernmental 
Panel on Climate Change, the U.N. Environment Programme, the National 
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the World Meteorological 
Organization and the Met Office, among others.

The announcement comes just days after emergency responders in the 
Pacific Northwest had to fight misinformation on Facebook running 
counter to efforts to evacuate citizens in the line of the deadly 
wildfires. Wildfires are sparked by a variety of factors, but scientists 
increasingly point to climate change in contributing to the intensity 
and frequency of these events. The Facebook hub's launch -- in the U.S., 
U.K., France and Germany to start -- also comes ahead of the 
high-profile Climate Week, a conference to be run virtually next week by 
the United Nations and New York City.

It's a position shift from a social-media giant that as recently as 
August offered push-back to mostly Democratic lawmakers seeking more 
action on behalf of truthful information.
- -
In addition to the information hub, Facebook said it will continue to 
reduce the distribution of posts containing false information on its 
News Feed feature and will label such posts as false. Facebook, however, 
says it will not remove the posts, and it was also not immediately clear 
how the company will deal with posts within private groups believed to 
contain information contradictory to what increasingly is mainstream 
adoption of the still-evolving science around man-made acceleration of 
climate change.
Facebook has set its own goal, similar to those of many tech giants, to 
achieve net-zero carbon emissions and be supported fully by renewable 
energy in its own operations.

The steps on climate change follow similar moves for the company 
surrounding information sharing on COVID-19 and voting in a 
presidential-election year. So far, Facebook says that over 2 billion 
people have been directed to resources from health authorities by its 
COVID-19 response...
more at - 
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/facebook-gives-in-to-pressure-on-climate-change-myths-including-that-antifa-started-deadly-wildfires-with-new-science-based-hub-2020-09-15


[State Senator, a notorious climate change denier, lost his home to 
wildfire ]
*A Wildfire Destroyed His House. This Climate Denier Blames 
Environmentalists.*
The mere mention of climate science triggers him.
Sep. 15, 2020
Among the thousands who have lost their homes to unprecedented West 
Coast wildfires in recent days is one of the notorious Oregon 11--the 
Republican state senators who twice staged a walkout to stop a 
Democratic majority from passing a climate change bill.

But despite an overwhelming scientific majority that ties the extent and 
ferocity of the wildfires at least in part to climate change, State Sen. 
Fred Girod's personal encounter with the result has left him only more 
set in his views.

The 69-year-old dentist-turned-politician blames the loss of the house 
he called "my forever home" not on climate change, but on 
environmentalists...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/michael-scheuer-hunted-bin-laden-for-cia-now-he-wants-americans-dead
- -
*How Did the Oregon Republican Party Get So Crazy?*
Without legislative power, Oregon Republicans have palled around with 
militias and opposed mandatory vaccination
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-did-the-oregon-republican-party-get-so-crazy


[Digging back into the YouTube archive of Rachel Maddow]
*On this day in the history of global warming - September 16, 2009 *

On MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show," former fundamentalist Christian 
Frank Schaeffer explains right-wing science denial:

"…[T]he mainstream--not just media, but culture--doesn't sufficiently 
take stock of the fact that within our culture we have a subculture 
which is literally a fifth column of insanity that is bred from birth, 
through home school, Christian school, evangelical college, whatever, to 
reject facts as a matter of faith… [W]hat we're really talking about is 
a group of people that are resentful because they've been left behind by 
modernity, by science, by education, by art, by literature.  The rest of 
us are getting on with our lives.  These people are standing on the 
hilltop waiting for the end."

Further, Schaeffer noted:
"You don't work to move them off this position.  You move past them.  
Look, a village cannot reorganize village life to suit the village 
idiot.  It's as simple as that.  And we have to understand, we have a 
village idiot in this country, it's called 'Fundamentalist Christianity.'

"And until we move past these people--and let me add, as a former 
lifelong Republican, until the Republican leadership has the guts to 
stand up and say it would be better not to have a Republican Party than 
have a party that caters to the village idiot--there's going to be no 
end in sight…

"There is no end to this stuff.  Why?  Because this subculture has as 
its fundamentalist faith that they distrust facts per se.  They believe 
in a young Earth, 6,000 years old, with dinosaurs cavorting with human 
beings.  They think that whether it's economic news or news from the 
Middle East, it all has to do with the end of time and Christ's return.  
This is la-la land.

"And the Republican Party is totally enthralled to this subculture to 
the extent that there is no Republican Party.  There is a fundamentalist 
subculture which has become a cult.  It's fed red meat by buffoons like 
Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and other people who are just not terribly 
bright themselves and they are talking to even stupider people.  That's 
where we're at.  That's where all of this is coming from.

"And it's becoming circular.  It's becoming a joke. Unfortunately, a 
dangerous joke because once in a while, one of these 'looney tunes,' as 
we see, brings guns to public meetings. Who knows what they do next.  
It's a serious thing we all have to face, but the Democrats and sane 
Americans just have to move past these people, say, 'Go wait on the 
hilltop until the end, the rest of us are going to get on with 
rebuilding our country.'"

He concluded:
"Look, in the year 2000 I worked for John McCain, to try to get him 
elected in the primaries instead of George Bush.  But John McCain sold 
out by nominating Sarah Palin who comes directly from the heart of this 
movement and carries with her all that baggage. So, he sold out.  I 
don't see anybody on the Republican side of things these days who has 
the moral standing to provide real leadership, or who will risk their 
position to do so."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IaAsBjoaj8


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