[TheClimate.Vote] September 21, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Mon Sep 21 10:44:07 EDT 2020

/*September 21, 2020*/

[video interview with a fire photojournalist]
*Apocalyptic Images from the West Coast Wildfires | Amanpour and Company*
Sep 20, 2020
Amanpour and Company
Images from the West Coast wildfires are truly apocalyptic: buildings in 
ashes, searing red skies cloaked in smoke, and entire communities 
destroyed. Kent Nishimura has risked his life to document all this in 
his role as photojournalist for the Los Angeles Times. He joins the show 
to share his images and experiences from the past few days.
Originally aired on September 14, 2020.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l64hGuVoww

[like tobacco]
*How the oil industry made us doubt climate change*
By Phoebe Keane
BBC News
- -
"By cynically manipulating and distorting scientific evidence, the 
manufacturers of doubt have seeded in much of the public a cynicism 
about science, making it far more difficult to convince people that 
science provides useful - in some cases, vitally important - information.
"There is no question that this distrust of science and scientists is 
making it more difficult to stem the coronavirus pandemic."
It seems the legacy of "the tobacco playbook" lives on.
https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-53640382

[many in line to sue the oil companies]
*Charleston aims to force fossil fuel companies to pay $2bn to combat 
climate crisis*
South Carolina city sues large oil firms, claiming they concealed 
knowledge that their product would cause damage to coastal cities around 
the world...
- -
Flooding was a rare occurrence when Tecklenburg, who is 65, was growing 
up in Charleston but it now blights the city. Each of his five years as 
mayor has seen a major flood, with Hurricane Matthew, in 2016, and 
Hurricane Irma, in 2017, causing vast volumes of water to pour over the 
Battery, a historic seawall and tourist drawcard.

"Our city and harbor became one," he said. "It’s now an annual 
occurrence. People’s homes have been damaged, causing hundreds of 
millions of dollars in insurance claims. It’s a major threat to our 
city."...
- -
These efforts have yet to garner a significant breakthrough, with a 
number of cases dismissed by judges, as the oil companies have argued 
the moves are a frivolous waste of time. "There is no merit to the 
claims," said a Chevron spokesman in response to the Charleston lawsuit. 
"They are not a serious solution to a serious problem. There is no 
evidence Chevron misled the public about climate change. Those claims 
are false."

Climate activists have retained hope, however, that the courts will 
start to swing behind the cases and have been further buoyed by promises 
made by Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee for US president, that his 
administration would pursue fossil fuel companies for climate damages.

The best sign the legal strategy is working is that "these cases are 
proceeding through the court system", according to Ama Francis, a fellow 
at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School.

"The public is ready to hold this corrupt industry accountable for 
causing and lying about climate change, and officials across the country 
are stepping up to take action," said Richard Wiles, executive director 
of the Center for Climate Integrity.

"As climate change floods cities like Charleston, Big Oil is now 
knee-deep in lawsuits seeking justice for decades of the industry’s 
lying about their central role in causing the problem."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/20/charleston-force-fossil-fuel-companies-pay-2bn-combat-climate-crisis

[Euronews video 6 mins]
*Special report: What's really happening in the Arctic and Siberia?*
Aug 17, 2020
euronews (in English)
Draining lakes, advancing forests, and sinking permafrost - we witness 
the reality of climate change in western Siberia and bring you the 
latest Copernicus data on the Arctic region.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tAYdrQadaA

[BBC video]
*The Siberian landscape scarred by climate change*
18 SEPTEMBER 2020|CLIMATE CHANGE
Scientists are warning that, across Siberia, vast swathes of ground - 
normally frozen all year round - are thawing - with potentially 
devastating consequences for the climate. As it thaws, the Earth is 
believed to be releasing huge amounts of greenhouse gases, accentuating 
the problem of global warming.

BBC Moscow correspondent Steve Rosenberg has been to the remote Yakutia 
region to look at the thawing permafrost.
https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p08rswtc/the-siberian-landscape-scarred-by-climate-change

[lecture]
*Complexities of Jet Streams: Storms Near Japan Caused Wild Weather 
Whiplashing in USA: Part 3 of 3*
Sep 19, 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=hWH4UJy7GV8

[An InsideClimate News Project - video]
*AMERICAN CLIMATE*
The animating idea behind American Climate, a documentary series of 
short video portraits and essays we published last year, was that 
intensifying extreme weather events caused by climate change had already 
become a frightening new normal for thousands of Americans in ways that 
would affect millions, even tens of millions, in the years ahead.
Rising temperatures are strengthening the destructive force of 
wildfires, hurricanes and floods, putting tens of millions of Americans 
at risk.
Tens of thousands of Americans are already paying a high price, their 
lives shattered by climate calamities.
Here are twenty-one of their stories, and more.
https://insideclimatenews.org/american-climate

[message design]
*Six ways to make your science sticky*
Sep 18, 2020
John Cook
This Critical Thinking About Climate video is an in-depth explainer on 
how to communicate science in a way that grabs attention, gets shared, 
and sticks in people's memory. The six traits of sticky messages are 
Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotion, and 
Story ( SUCCES). Effective messages share some of these six traits. In 
this video, I offer a range of  techniques to make your science more 
sticky, providing a number of science communication examples.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gXD0-n7pms

[Classic history from 1966]
*Mining Congress Journal, August 1966 – Air Pollution and the Coal Industry*
This is an August 1965 article titled "Air Pollution and the Coal 
Industry" in the Mining Congress Journal, by James Garvey, then 
President of Bitumous Coal Research Inc. Garvey’s company developed 
pollution control equipment. He outlines the growing push to regulate 
pollution from coal fired power plants.

The abstract reads:
"Growing demands for cleaner air have serious implications for the coal 
industry since more than half of the coal used today goes for generation 
of electricity and the coal-burning electric utilities are most likely 
to be affected by any air pollution restrictions. Garvey reviews the 
pollution in coal and discusses ordinances that have been passed to 
restrict use of fuels containing in excess of one percent sulfur."

In the midst of an article focusing mainly on sulfur and particulates, 
Garvey diverges under the subheading, "Emission of CO2 Under Serious 
Study" and writes:

"Among the gaseous materials discharged from the stack is carbon 
dioxide. This is not generally considered to be a pollutant inasmuch as 
it has never been demonstrated to have any adverse effects on plants or 
animals. However, to illustrate the far-reaching aspects of the air 
pollution problem, it should be noted that serious studies are underway 
to determine whether more restrictions should be placed on the emission 
of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. There is evidence that the amount 
of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere is increasing rapidly as a 
result of the combustion of fossil fuels. If the future rate of increase 
continues as it is at the present, it has been predicted that, because 
the CO2 envelope reduces radiation, the temperature of the earth’s 
atmosphere will increase and that vast changes in the climates of the 
earth will result. Such changes in temperature will cause melting of the 
polar icecaps, which, in turn, would result in the inundation of many 
coastal cities, including New York and London."...
- -
He concludes in a somewhat conciliatory tone, writing under the 
subheading, "Situation is Urgent", "There is a matter of urgency being 
placed on this subject of air pollution control. We are in favor of 
cleaning up our air. Everyone can point to examples in his own comment 
where something should be done. Our aim, however, is to have control 
that does not precede the technical knowledge for compliance. We are, in 
effect, "buying time". Removal of sulfur from coal and SO2 from flue 
gases are just two of these."
http://www.climatefiles.com/coal/mining-congress-journal-august-1965-air-pollution-and-the-coal-industry/

[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - September 21, 1998
*
In an anecdote that explains the mainstream media's skittishness about 
covering climate change, TIME's international editor, Charles Alexander, 
is asked by the Wall Street Journal if TIME's "Heroes for the Planet" 
series, which is sponsored by Ford, will cover environmentalists 
critical of the automobile industry's role in furthering climate change. 
Alexander responds that those environmentalists won't be covered, 
noting, "We don't run airline ads next to stories about airline crashes."

http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/fear-amp-favor-2000-the-first-annual-report/

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