[TheClimate.Vote] September 20, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*September 20, 2020*/

[about the history of information battleground]
*How the oil industry made us doubt climate change*
By Phoebe Keane
BBC News
As climate change becomes a focus of the US election, energy companies 
stand accused of trying to downplay their contribution to global 
warming. In June, Minnesota's Attorney General sued ExxonMobil, among 
others, for launching a "campaign of deception" which deliberately tried 
to undermine the science supporting global warming. So what's behind 
these claims? And what links them to how the tobacco industry tried to 
dismiss the harms of smoking decades earlier?
To understand what's happening today, we need to go back nearly 40 years...
- -
Marty Hoffert was one of the first scientists to create a model which 
predicted the effects of man-made climate change. And he did so while 
working for Exxon, one of the world's largest oil companies, which would 
later merge with another, Mobil.
At the time Exxon was spending millions of dollars on ground-breaking 
research. It wanted to lead the charge as scientists grappled with the 
emerging understanding that the warming planet could cause the climate 
to change in ways that could make life pretty difficult for humans.
Hoffert shared his predictions with his managers, showing them what 
might happen if we continued burning fossil fuels in our cars, trucks 
and planes.
But he noticed a clash between Exxon's own findings, and public 
statements made by company bosses, such as the then chief executive Lee 
Raymond, who said that "currently, the scientific evidence is 
inconclusive as to whether human activities are having a significant 
effect on the global climate".
"They were saying things that were contradicting their own world-class 
research groups," said Hoffert.
Angry, he left Exxon, and went on to become a leading academic in the field.
"What they did was immoral. They spread doubt about the dangers of 
climate change when their own researchers were confirming how serious a 
threat it was."...
- -
Kert Davies has scoured through Exxon's archive. He used to work as a 
research director at the environmental pressure group Greenpeace, where 
he looked into corporate opposition to climate change. This inspired him 
to set up The Climate Investigations Centre. He explains why this Exxon 
presentation mattered:
"They are worried the public will take this on, and enact radical 
changes in the way we use energy and affect their business, that's the 
bottom line."
He says this fear can also be seen in another document from the archive 
that sets out the so-called "Exxon position", which was to "emphasise 
the uncertainty" regarding climate change...
- -
Jerry Taylor spent 23 years with the Cato Institute - one of those right 
wing think tanks - latterly as vice president. Before he left in 2014, 
he would regularly appear on TV and radio, insisting that the science of 
climate change was uncertain and there was no need to act. Now, he 
realises his arguments were based on a misinterpretation of the science, 
and he regrets the impact he's had on the debate.
"For 25 years, climate sceptics like me made it a core matter of 
ideological identity that if you believe in climate change, then you are 
by definition a socialist. That is what climate sceptics have done."
The BBC asked the Cato Institute about its work on climate change, but 
it did not respond.
This ideological divide has had far-reaching consequences. Polls 
conducted in May 2020 showed that just 22% of Americans who vote 
Republican believed climate change is man-made, compared with 72% of 
Democrats.
Unfortunately many of the "expert scientists" quoted by journalists to 
try to offer balance in their coverage of climate change were - like 
Jerry Taylor - making arguments based on their beliefs rather than 
relevant research.
"Usually these people have some scientific credentials, but they're not 
actually experts in climate science," says Harvard historian Naomi Oreskes.
She began digging into the background of leading climate sceptics, 
including Fred Seitz, a nuclear physicist and former president of the US 
National Academy of Sciences. She found he was deeply anti-communist, 
believing any government intervention in the marketplace "would put us 
on the slippery slope to socialism".
She also discovered that he had been active in the debates around 
smoking in the 1980s.
"That was a Eureka moment. We realised this was not a scientific debate. 
A person with expertise about climate change would in no way be an 
expert about oncology or public health or cardiovascular disease, or any 
of the key issues associated with tobacco.
"The fact that the same people were arguing in both cases was a clue 
that something fishy was going on. That's what led us to discover this 
pattern of disinformation that gets systemically used again and again."
Naomi Oreskes spent years going through the tobacco archive at the 
University of California at San Francisco. It contains more than 14 
million documents that were made available thanks to litigation against 
US tobacco firms.
A strikingly familiar story emerged. Decades before the energy industry 
tried to undermine the case for climate change, tobacco companies had 
used the same techniques to challenge the emerging links between smoking 
and lung cancer in the 1950s.
- -
As John Hill wrote in the 1953 document, "salesmen in the industry are 
frantically alarmed, and the decline in tobacco stocks on the stock 
exchange market has caused grave concern".
Hill recommended fighting science with science. "We do not believe the 
industry should indulge in any flashy or spectacular ballyhoo. There is 
no public relations [medicine] known to us at least, which will cure the 
ills of the industry."
As a later document by tobacco company Brown and Williamson summarised 
the approach: "Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of 
competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the 
general public."
https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-53640382



[AP and TIME on rapid changes]
*Strong Winds Trigger Southern California Wildfire to Explode in Size, 
Spread to Desert Floor*
https://time.com/5890771/southern-california-wildfire-winds/



[from the Guardian]
*The tipping points at the heart of the climate crisis*
Many parts of the Earth's climate system have been destabilised by 
warming, from ice sheets and ocean currents to the Amazon rainforest - 
and scientists believe that if one collapses others could follow...
- -
A particularly important tipping element is the vast ocean current known 
as the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), which carries 
warm equatorial water north to the Arctic, and cool Arctic water south 
to the equator. The AMOC has collapsed in the past and many scientists 
fear it is close to collapsing again - an event that was depicted (in 
ridiculously exaggerated and accelerated form) in the 2004 film The Day 
After Tomorrow. If the AMOC collapses, it will transform weather 
patterns around the globe - leading to cooler climates in Europe, or at 
least less warming, and changing where and when monsoon rains fall in 
the tropics. For the UK, this could mean the end of most arable farming, 
according to a paper Lenton and others published in January.

Tumbling dominoes
In 2009, a second study took the idea further. What if the tipping 
elements are interconnected? That would mean that setting off one might 
set off another - or even unleash a cascade of dramatic changes, 
spreading around the globe and reshaping the world we live in.

For instance, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet is releasing huge 
volumes of cold, fresh water into the north Atlantic. This weakens the 
AMOC - so it is distinctly possible that if Greenland passes its tipping 
point, the resulting melt will push the AMOC past its own threshold...
- -
"We actually do need the Paris climate accord," says Winkelmann. The 
2016 agreement committed most countries to limit warming to 1.5 to 2C, 
although the US president, Donald Trump, has since chosen to pull the US 
out of it. Winkelmann argues that 1.5C is the right target, because it 
takes into account the existence of the tipping points and gives the 
best chance of avoiding them. "For some of these tipping elements," she 
says, "we're already in that danger zone."

Cutting greenhouse gas emissions is not a surprising or original 
solution. But it is our best chance to stop the warning signs flashing red.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/sep/19/the-tipping-points-at-the-heart-of-the-climate-crisis#img-2
- -
[from Astrophysics Data System]
*Climate Tipping Points: Can they trigger a Global Cascade?*
Armstrong McKay, David; Staal, Arie; Cornell, Sarah; Lenton, Timothy; 
Fetzer, Ingo
*Abstract*

    Over the past 15 years climate tipping points have emerged as both
    an important research topic and source of public concern. Some
    articles have suggested that some tipping points could begin within
    the 1.5-2oC Paris climate target range, with many more potentially
    starting by the ~3-4oC of warming that current policy is projected
    to be committed to. Recent work has also proposed that these tipping
    points could interact and potentially 'cascade' - with the impacts
    of passing one tipping point being sufficient to trigger the next
    and so on - resulting in an emergent global tipping point for a
    long-term commitment to a 'Hothouse Earth' trajectory of 4+oC
    (Steffen et al., 2018). However, much of the recent discussion
    relies largely on a decade-old characterisation of climate tipping
    points, based on a literature review and expert elicitation
    exercise. An updated characterisation would fully utilise more
    recent results from coupled and offline models, model
    inter-comparisons, and palaeoclimate studies. The 'tipping cascade'
    hypothesis has also not yet been tested, with the suggestion of 2oC
    as the global tipping point remaining speculative. Furthermore, the
    definition of what counts as a climate tipping point is often
    inconsistent, with some purported tipping points represented more
    accurately as threshold-free positive feedbacks. Here we perform an
    updated systematic review of climate tipping points, cataloguing the
    current evidence for each suggested element with reference to
    rigorously-applied tipping point definitions. Based on this we test
    the potential for a global tipping cascade using a stylised model,
    from which we will present preliminary results. ReferencesSteffen,
    W., et al.: Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene,
    Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 115(33), 8252-8259,
    doi:10.1073/pnas.1810141115, 2018.

Publication: 22nd EGU General Assembly, held online 4-8 May, 2020, id.17889
Pub Date: May 2020 Bibcode: 2020EGUGA..2217889A
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020EGUGA..2217889A/abstract
- -
[See also]
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020EGUGA..2217889A/similar



[One task]
*'Too late to stop it': California's future hinges on managing megafires*
Oliver Milman - 19 Sep 2020 ...
The record scale of the flames, which have consumed an area larger than 
the state of Connecticut, is bringing scientists' expectations of the 
climate crisis into reality. Rather than merely entering a new but 
stable era, the US west is on a moving escalator to further extremes. 
"In 20 years from now, the current circumstances will feel more normal," 
said Waleed Abdalati, former chief scientist of Nasa. "It's not that we 
are all screwed, but it's too late to put a stop to it. We can slow it, 
but we can't stop it now."...
- -
It will get worse as the planet heats up further; the only question is 
the degree. Scientists predict the area scorched by wildfire will 
increase by 77% by the end of the century, with the number of extreme 
fire days jumping 20% in just the next 15 years - a scenario that raises 
profound questions over the way life is conducted in the US west in an 
evolving era of megafire.

The crushing expense of major cities across California has caused a 
housing crisis that has collided with the state's wildfire problem. 
People seeking an affordable, or more bucolic and spacious, life have 
moved a rash of newly built houses carved into the scrublands and pine 
forests of what's known as the wildland-urban interface. As a result, it 
is estimated that one in four Californians now live in a high-risk fire 
zone.

While there are some localized rules around clearing potentially 
flammable vegetation from near dwellings, there are no universally 
applied building codes to make houses more fire resistant, nor any state 
plan to steer development away from fire-prone areas. Insurers, facing 
mounting losses, have started to retreat, although California has 
imposed a temporary ban on cancelling insurance for about 800,000 homes 
situated in riskier parts of the state.

As a result, homes continue to be built featuring classic wood shingle 
roofs and deckings that allow burning embers to leap from building to 
building. "People often have an idea of aesthetic beauty that makes 
things more risky," said Paige Fischer, an environmental scientist at 
the University of Michigan.
- -
The crisis is playing across different states and ecosystems. In Oregon, 
more than 500,000 people - a tenth of the population - have faced orders 
to flee. "Apocalyptic is about the right word," said Doug Franzke, a 
pastor who was covered in falling ash as fire crackled around the town 
of Molalla. "The Bible talks of the Earth being desolate and it was 
about that."

California and Oregon will increasingly have to wrestle the trade-offs 
between a lifestyle that remains idyllic for many people and the 
multiplying risks of fire. The need for those hard decisions is perhaps 
now clearer than ever - the front page headline of the Los Angeles Times 
screamed "California's climate apocalypse" on Sunday...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/18/california-fires-wildfires-future-housing



[opinion in the Guardian]
*America is at war with deadly wildfires. Yet Trump is on the side of 
the inferno*
David Sirota - Sept 19, 2020
Trump long ago made clear that in the with-us-or-against-us climate war, 
he is against us and has enthusiastically joined the side of the inferno

This wasn't how it was supposed to go. When Donald Trump became 
president, the expectation was that he would follow in the footsteps of 
George W Bush and Barack Obama, and merely allow emissions, fossil fuel 
subsidies and oil exports to continue to rise. That kind of 
run-of-the-mill villainy is so bipartisan and has been so normalized 
that it's barely considered news when even Democratic governors publicly 
lament climate change, while continuing to approve fossil fuel development.

But normal villainy wasn't enough for Trump. He and the Republican party 
wanted to be supervillains for their fossil fuel industry donors, and so 
they have not merely enacted policies encouraging more carbon emissions 
and tacked on fossil fuel subsidies to pandemic response bills. They 
have also overseen an effort to change the rules of environmental 
politics and disempower climate activism for the long haul.
In other words: they haven't just waived the white flag, they have used 
federal and state governments to undermine the opponents of the climate 
disaster now lighting the country on fire.

This attitude shift from passive surrender to active complicity is most 
evident in Trump and the Republican party's behavior the past six 
months. The same president who was quick to send in federal police to 
crush Portland protests hasn't lifted a finger to try to help extinguish 
the wildfires now bearing down on the same city - and that federal 
inaction happened only months after Trump's fellow Republicans shut down 
the Oregon state legislature in order to block climate change legislation.

But that's hardly a surprise, because Trump long ago made clear that in 
the with-us-or-against-us climate war, he is against us and has 
enthusiastically joined the side of the inferno...
- -
"The amazing thing they're saying is human activities are going to lead 
to this rise of carbon dioxide that is disastrous for the environment 
and society. And then they're saying they're not going to do anything 
about it," one scientist told the Post.

That's an understatement - in truth, Trump and his party have taken 
proactive steps to prevent anyone else from doing anything about it 
either...
- -
It is not enough to win the election, appoint a few people who are 
slightly less bad than Trump's rogues gallery and then call it a day. It 
isn't even enough to just roll back Trump's worst policies. The 
underlying rules of the political game must change to give more power to 
those trying to fix the problem - and less power to industries that are 
actively, knowingly creating the crisis to pad their own bottom line.

That is the only way that we will reorient the government to stop 
fighting for climate change and instead start defending our planet 
against climate change.

In this binary war, you are either with humanity in the fight against 
the crisis, or you are against us - there is no middle ground.
David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist. He is also an editor at large 
at Jacobin, and the publisher of the newsletter Too Much Information. He 
served as Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign speechwriter
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/19/america-deadly-wildfires-trump-inferno



[heat brings more fire]
*The science connecting wildfires to climate change*
A heating-up planet has driven huge increases in wildfire area burned 
over the past few decades.
BY ALEJANDRA BORUNDA
SEPTEMBER 17, 2020

CLIMATE CHANGE HAS inexorably stacked the deck in favor of bigger and 
more intense fires across the American West over the past few decades, 
science has incontrovertibly shown. Increasing heat, changing rain and 
snow patterns, shifts in plant communities, and other climate-related 
changes have vastly increased the likelihood that fires will start more 
often and burn more intensely and widely than they have in the past.

The scale and intensity of the wildfires burning across the western U.S. 
right now is "staggering," says Philip Higuera, a wildfire scientist and 
paleoecologist at the University of Montana. More than five million 
acres have already burned this year--and much more may be yet to come...
- -
Noah Diffenbaugh, a climate scientist at Stanford University, makes a 
baseball analogy to describe increase in risk. "If there's a three-run 
home run in baseball, it's the home run that definitely caused the 
runners to round the bases and score. The home run is the proximal cause 
of the event. But people being on base matters," he says, and global 
warming is putting people on base...
- -
*Heat like a thirsty sponge*
In some ways, fire is simple. It takes three components: the right 
weather and climate conditions, plenty of burnable fuel, and a spark.

"People are changing all three of those," says Jennifer Balch, a fire 
ecologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "Climate change is not 
the only thing going on, but it is a big and important part of the 
story." (Human-caused ignitions are clearly a major part of the risk: A 
study published in September, on which Balch was a co-author, found that 
humans were responsible for 97 percent of the ignitions that caused 
fires that then threatened homes in the wildland-urban interface, 
between 1992 and 2015).

Climate change has affected the first two components (and in some cases, 
the third) in clear, measurable ways that have become increasingly 
obvious over the past few decades.

The clearest connection is with warming air temperatures. The planet has 
heated up nearly continuously since the start of the Industrial 
Revolution in the late 1800s, when humans started burning massive 
quantities of fossil fuels, releasing carbon dioxide that traps excess 
heat in the atmosphere. Since then, global average temperatures have 
ticked up roughly 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius); 
California's change is closer to 3 degrees Fahrenheit. Warming has 
accelerated since the 1980s to just under 0.2 degrees Celsius (0.3 
degrees F) per decade, and it's likely to accelerate further in the future.

That might not seem like very much warming, but just a little can go a 
long way. Hot air, if it's not at 100 percent humidity, is like a 
thirsty sponge: It soaks up water from whatever it touches--plants 
(living or dead) and soil, lakes and rivers. The hotter and drier the 
air, the more it sucks up, and the amount of water it can hold increases 
exponentially as the temperature rises; small increases in the air's 
heat can mean big increases in the intensity with which it pulls out 
water. Scientists can measure this "vapor pressure deficit"--the 
difference between how much water the air holds and how much it could 
hold. If that deficit is cranked up for a long time, soils and 
vegetation will parch.

A brief heat spell will dry out the smallish stuff or the already dead 
stuff--and maybe even some of the bigger tinder. Intense, 
record-breaking heat waves like the ones that encompassed the West 
during August and early September likely caused major crisping of 
burnable material, as the regional vapor pressure deficit and associated 
drought climbed to record levels.

"In a lot of places, you have a lot of 'flashy' fuel on the ground," 
says Balch. "This stuff that's as thin as paper--(like) grasses. 
Short-term drought events or heat waves are really impactful for drying 
those out." That small stuff ignites so easily that it can often help 
speed along a fire's spread.

When excess heat stays in place for months or longer, the wildfire risk 
rises even further.

An early, warm spring can jump-start a summer drought by extending the 
season of heat and growth, increasing the amount of water vapor that is 
shed by plant leaves or that evaporates directly from soil. Lower soil 
moisture, in turn, can feed back into the local warming cycle and 
intensify it, since evaporating moisture usually takes up a lot of the 
energy the sun beams down. When there's no moisture left to evaporate, 
the soil or vegetation, dead and alive, absorbs that heat 
instead--feeding back into the drying-out process that increases fire risk.

This year, the snow melted early; across the West, snow cover in 
February and March was well below its long-term average.

Then, the heat kicked in and stayed. Many western states had their 
hottest summers on record; the average temperature across the U.S. was 
2.6 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average.

But even before that, a longer, deeper aridity had California and much 
of the West in its grips from 2011 until a brief period of reprieve last 
year. Not coincidentally, five of the state's hottest years on record 
occurred in the past decade.

A particularly severe phase of that persistent drought, fueled by 
climate change and of an intensity not seen for the preceding 1,200 
years, set in between 2012 to 2016. It stressed out the region's trees 
more and more as the water deficit dragged on. In the grand conifer 
forests of the Sierra Nevada, as in many other forests across the state, 
the damage accumulated.

By 2014, millions of trees had died, pushed beyond repair by the 
record-breaking temperatures and dryness, which reached so far into the 
soil that even the deep-rooted trees could find no moisture. By 2015, 
mass die-off was obviously underway; by 2016, the mortality count soared 
to about 100 million. At high elevations, nearly 80 percent of the trees 
died. And across the state, some 150 million trees have died since the 
drought's onset. Many of those trees are still there, drying out, a 
major fuel source ready to burn hot and bright when a fire arrives.

Since the 1970s, a recent study found, human-caused climate change 
caused more than half of the drying-out of burnable materials and 
consequent fire risk.

"These most recent heat waves are coming on top of an already hotter 
period, and it's all coming together and sucking moisture out of dead 
and live fuels, into the atmosphere," says Matthew Hurteau, a climate 
scientist at the University of New Mexico.

*Changing rains, changing snows*
Climate change is messing with the seasonal rain and snow patterns 
across the Western U.S., too--one of the other factors that controls 
fire risk.

Springtime is often coming earlier. Snowpack, which usually provides 
about 30 percent of the state's summer water needs, is melting earlier 
in year, giving the plants and soils longer to dry out. A 2016 study 
found that over 70 percent of the area burned in forest fires between 
1970 and 2012 occurred in years where the winter snows disappeared early.

The hot drying-out season is stretching on the tail end, too, according 
to research published in August. Higher autumn temperatures and less 
precipitation--in particular, a growing delay in the onset of winter 
rains, which usually puts an end to the fire season in California--have 
led to a 20 percent increase in the number of autumn days ripe for burning.

In all, the western fire season has extended by at least 84 days since 
the 1970s. Cal Fire, California's fire protection service, has said 
publicly that it no longer considers there to be a wildfire "season," 
because the season is now the entire year.

The very character of the fires has also changed, growing larger and 
more intense, and that in turn can accelerate future fire risk. Even 
plants that need fire to propagate, like many high-elevation conifers, 
are now often finding themselves in fires more intense and powerful than 
they're adapted for, says Scott Stephens, a forest ecologist and fire 
expert at the University of California, Berkeley.

"One of the very alarming trends we're starting to see is that these 
fires are killing very large patches of conifers: 200, 300, 500, 
1,000-acre patches, and some even larger," he says. In contrast, 
research from his group and others found that in the Sierra Nevada 
forests, before European colonizers arrived and started changing the 
landscape, the patches burned were small: less than an acre in many 
cases, or sometimes a bit bigger. And, Stephens says, the increase in 
fire size has accelerated in the climate-changed present, particularly 
since the 1990s.

That's a problem because when vast swaths of forest burn, we can no 
longer count on them to self-regenerate. The seed sources and gentle 
shade that may have been normal in the past are gone, and the conditions 
become ripe for highly flammable species, like non-native grasses and 
shrubs, to move in. Similar plant transitions are also occurring across 
other fire-prone habitat, like Southern California's chaparral and 
Colorado's forests.

*The bottom line*
So climate change has increased fire risk in both direct and indirect 
ways. When an ignition happens, even if it's natural-- like the unusual 
and dramatic lightning swarm that hit the Bay Area in August--the 
chances of it spawning a big fire are much higher than they would be, 
absent climate change. Overall, over the past few decades in California, 
the annual average area burned increased fivefold.

Today's fires are both shocking and wholly expected, say many 
researchers. "That's the tricky thing about fires--it isn't any one 
thing that's causing them, it's multiple puzzle pieces fitting 
together," says Balch. Climate change. Forest management. Human 
behavior. Learning to adapt to the new reality and mitigate risks 
requires swift, decisive action from many different angles, she says.

"What this year is showing me is the nature of fires here is changing, 
and changing really fast," says Higuera. "We need to be doing like five 
things at once: patting our heads, rubbing our belly, chewing gum, and 
more, but for fire."
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/09/climate-change-increases-risk-fires-western-us/


[Listed faith documents - links found at Interfaith Power & Light]
*Religious Statements on Climate Change*
Most religious communities have released statements on Climate Change 
and the need to care for Creation. The following list (organized 
alphabetically first by religion, then by denomination) demonstrates the 
unity within the religious community on these important issues.

Please let us know if there are any additional statements you would like 
to see included.

Baha'i
Seizing the Opportunity: Redefining the Challenge of Climate Change

A statement of the Baha'i International Community to the United Nations 
Climate Change Conference in Paris, France

The Time to Act is Now - A Buddhist Declaration on Climate Change

A Western Soto Zen Buddhist Statement on the Climate Crisis

Christian
Joint Statement on Environment by Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch 
Bartholomew Sept 1, 2017

17 Anglican Bishops across six continents issue urgent call for climate 
justice

Anglican Church of Canada, The Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran 
Church in America, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada - A Pastoral 
Message on Climate Change

Baptist - A Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate 
Change

Catholic - U.S. Catholic Bishops' Statement on Climate Change

Catholic - Vatican on Climate Change

Catholic - Pope Mass: Protecting Creation a Christian responsibility

Catholic - Frequently Asked Questions on the Papal Encyclical

Church of the Brethren - Statement on Global Climate Change

Eastern Orthod0x - Statement on the Environment

Episcopal Church - Sustaining Hope in the Face of Climate Change

Evangelical Climate Initiative - Call to Action

Evangelical Lutheran Church of America - Caring for Creation: Vision, 
Hope, and Justice

Evangelical Lutheran Church of America - Issue Paper: Global Warming and 
Climate Change

Mennonite - Creation Care Network

Presbyterian Church USA - U.S. Energy Policy and Global Warming

Quaker - Earthcare Mission Program

United Church of Christ - A Resolution on Climate Change

United Methodist Church - Church Statement on Climate Change

Hindu Declaration on Climate Change

Interfaith Declaration on Climate Change (IDCC)

The (Yale) Forum on Religion and Ecology - Judaism and Climate Change

Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change

Sikh Statement on Climate Change

Unitarian Universalist - Threat of Global Warming/Climate Change

Additional Statements
The (Yale) Forum on Religion and Ecology

Faith Traditions Creation Care Statements, a variety of statements on a 
visually appealing one-page handout compiled by IPL intern Rachel Clyde
https://www.interfaithpowerandlight.org/religious-statements-on-climate-change/ 




[lecture]
*Jet Stream Strength and Waviness Modified by Interaction with Cyclones 
like Hurricanes: Part 2 of 3*
Sep 18, 2020
Paul Beckwith
My main intention in this 3 part video series is to show you how large 
cyclones (hurricanes, tropical cyclones, typhoons, even medicanes) 
interact with the jet streams, and can either add energy to them 
(amplify them) or take energy from them, depending on their size, 
extent, rotation direction, and proximity to ridges and/or troughs. The 
modified jet stream (faster or slower; wavier or less wavy; streakier or 
more uniform)) that results from this interaction then propagates 
thousands of miles downstream and changes weather there. Specifically, I 
show how the strong tropical cyclones that hit the Japan, South Korea 
region amplified the ridges and troughs of the jet stream, which then 
propagated downstream over many days and then caused a record breaking 
weather whiplashing from record warm temperatures in parts of Colorado 
to freezing temperatures and even snowfall. It is clear that the jet 
stream, which guides storms, can have high amplitude ridges and troughs 
that can break off the jet stream (cutoff lows, for example) generating 
cyclones, and now it should be clear that cyclones can themselves modify 
the jet streams by interacting with them.
Yes, the dog wags it's tail, but clearly the moving tail can also wag 
the dog!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HfOSwTjH28



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - September 20, 2013 *

The Obama administration proposes new EPA regulations intended to reduce 
carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants in the US.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/13/epa-to-announce-carbonlimitsonnewpowerplants.html

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