[TheClimate.Vote] September 22, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*September 22, 2020*/

[destabilizations]
*Swells from Hurricane Teddy drive major king tide coastal flooding*
By Jeff Masters, Ph.D., and Bob Henson | Monday, September 21, 2020
Big swells from the storm are exacerbating "nuisance" flooding along the 
Southeast and mid-Atlantic coasts.By Jeff Masters, Ph.D., and Bob Henson 
| Monday, September 21, 2020
Significant coastal flooding has been affecting much of the Southeast 
and mid-Atlantic U.S. coast since September 15, during the high "king 
tide" period associated with the New Moon of September 17. The king 
tides have been exacerbated by big swells from Hurricane Teddy, high 
runoff from the heavy rains from Hurricane Sally the previous week, and 
powerful northeast winds associated with a strong area of high-pressure 
positioned over New England...
- -
Though it's often called "nuisance" flooding because it poses little 
threat to life or limb, high-tide flooding is a fast-growing threat to 
the economies and the built environment of coastal areas, especially 
along the Gulf and Atlantic shores. In South Florida alone, hundreds of 
millions of dollars are being spent to combat both long-term sea level 
rise and also routine "king tides" that are getting worse. High tide 
flooding is now accelerating at 75 percent of NOAA tide gauge locations 
along the East and Gulf Coasts, with nearly all other locations rising, 
but not yet accelerating. Already, the U.S. annual high tide flooding 
frequency is more than twice that in the year 2000 as a result of rising 
relative sea levels.
High-tide flooding is distinct from extreme storm surges related to 
tropical cyclones and nor'easters, although they can overlap. By 
definition, high-tide floods happen at predictable points in the tidal 
cycle, such as the period from late summer into autumn when astronomical 
tides are at their highest. They can be enhanced by seemingly innocuous 
weather features, such as strong high pressure offshore that pushes high 
water toward the coast under sunny skies.
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/09/swells-from-hurricane-teddy-drive-major-king-tide-coastal-flooding/
- -
[NOAA Source materials]
*PATTERNS AND PROJECTIONS OF HIGH TIDE FLOODING ALONG THE U.S.*
*COASTLINE USING A COMMON IMPACT THRESHOLD*
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/publications/techrpt86_PaP_of_HTFlooding.pdf
- -
[NOAA 2017]
*GLOBAL AND REGIONAL SEA LEVEL RISE SCENARIOS FOR THE **UNITED STATES*
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/publications/techrpt83_Global_and_Regional_SLR_Scenarios_for_the_US_final.pdf



[What time is it?]
*A New York Clock That Told Time Now Tells the Time Remaining*
Metronome's digital clock in Manhattan, has been reprogrammed to 
illustrate a critical window for action to prevent the effects of global 
warming from becoming irreversible.
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/09/21/arts/20clock1/merlin_177307434_11868169-c1d4-48c3-b80f-3ddabdd8962a-superJumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp
By Colin Moynihan
Sept. 20, 2020

For more than 20 years, Metronome, which includes a 62-foot-wide 
15-digit electronic clock that faces Union Square in Manhattan, has been 
one of the city's most prominent and baffling public art projects.

Its digital display once told the time in its own unique way, counting 
the hours, minutes and seconds (and fractions thereof) to and from 
midnight. But for years observers who did not understand how it worked 
suggested that it was measuring the acres of rainforest destroyed each 
year, tracking the world population or even that it had something to do 
with pi.

On Saturday Metronome adopted a new ecologically sensitive mission. Now, 
instead of measuring 24-hour cycles, it is measuring what two artists, 
Gan Golan and Andrew Boyd, present as a critical window for action to 
prevent the effects of global warming from becoming irreversible...
- -
On Saturday at 3:20 p.m., messages including "The Earth has a deadline" 
began to appear on the display. Then numbers -- 7:103:15:40:07 -- showed 
up, representing the years, days, hours, minutes and seconds until that 
deadline...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/20/arts/design/climate-clock-metronome-nyc.html
- - -
[telling the new time]
To describe the project, Mr. Golan and Mr. Boyd have created a website, 
climateclock.world. It includes an explanation for the Climate Clock 
numbers, including a link to a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on 
Climate Change, the United Nations body that assesses the science 
related to climate change.
*PUT THE MOST IMPORTANT NUMBER IN THE WORLD UP EVERYWHERE*
ClimateClock.world is powered by climate scientists, artists, educators, 
and activists across the world with support from ["Beautiful Trouble" 
and "March for Science"]
*KNOW THE NUMBERS*
The ClimateClock shows two numbers. The first, in red, is a timer, 
counting down how long it will take, at current rates of emissions, to 
burn through our "carbon budget" -- the amount of CO2 that can still be 
released into the atmosphere while limiting global warming to 1.5C above 
pre-industrial levels. This is our deadline, the time we have left to 
take decisive action to keep warming under the 1.5C threshold. The 
second number, in green, is tracking the growing % of the world's energy 
currently supplied from renewable sources. This is our lifeline. Simply 
put, we need to get our lifeline to 100% before our deadline reaches 0.
https://climateclock.world/
*See the science*
The ClimateClock shows two numbers. The first, in red, is a timer, 
counting down how long it will take, at current rates of emissions, to 
burn through our "carbon budget" -- the amount of CO2 that can still be 
released into the atmosphere while limiting global warming to 1.5C above 
pre-industrial levels. This is our deadline, the time we have left to 
take decisive action to keep warming under the 1.5C threshold. The 
second number, in green, is tracking the growing % of the world's energy 
currently supplied from renewable sources. This is our lifeline. Simply 
put, we need to get our lifeline to 100% before our deadline reaches 0.

This clock follows the methodology of the carbon clock made by the 
Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) 
which uses data from the recent IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 
1.5C. The report states that starting from 2018, a carbon dioxide budget 
of 420 Gt of CO2 gives us a 67% chance to stay under 1.5C of warming.

"The concept of the carbon budget is based on a nearly linear 
relationship between the cumulative emissions and the temperature rise. 
Nevertheless, this does not mean that the earth would necessarily be 
1.5⁰C warmer at the very point in time when the remaining carbon budget 
for staying below the 1.5⁰C threshold was used up. This is due to, among 
others, the fact that there is a time lag between the concentration of 
emissions in the atmosphere and the impact thereof on the temperature".¹
https://climateclock.world/science



[A new one]
*Bright Future – Baba Brinkman Music Video*
Sep 21, 2020
Baba Brinkman
Nuclear power is an essential resource in combatting climate change. 
Where does your electricity come from? Clean energy means everything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EO9iPj9SZs



[Techno Hubris opinion]
*Geoengineering Is the Only Solution to Our Climate Calamities*
Altering Earth's geophysical environment is a moon shot--and it will be 
the only way to reverse the damage done. It's time to take it more 
seriously...
- -
Governments and environmental advocates are right to demand that all 
organizations involved in geoengineering transparently disclose their 
funding, objectives, and results on sites such as Geoengineering 
Monitor. But right now, it is more important for such projects to be 
scaled in the first place. Given the infant state of geoengineering 
techniques and the cowardly state of global regulation, moral hazard is 
hardly our biggest concern. Governments and activists can continue to 
push for strong emissions reductions while blunting the consequences of 
those already choking us at the same time.

At this point, we no longer have any choice but to rely on scientific 
cost-benefit calculations to drive the climate agenda. But there is 
still a vital need for national efforts to shorten global supply chains 
for food and energy. The silver lining to climate disruptions, Covid 
border closures, and trade wars could be encouraging more countries to 
invest in local agriculture, whether organic or hydroponic greenhouses, 
plant-based proteins, and converting food waste into energy. Local 
self-sufficiency is a sensible step towards collective resilience. In 
the so-called circular economy, everyone can be part of the 
geoengineering solution.

Not all geoengineering is the stuff of Hollywood fantasy. Planting 
billions of trees from Canada and Russia to Brazil and China is an 
obvious example of building carbon sinks and refortifying habitats at 
the same time. Cloud seeding has been used since the 1970s and could 
help ameliorate today's droughts. Coating fresh ice with white sand to 
reflect more light so it can strengthen rather than melt is another less 
invasive treatment for the wounded Earth. Of course, each of these 
approaches has its own challenges and limitations, ones that will 
require us to commit resources other than simply flying diplomats to 
summits to sign empty promises. Let us not pretend there is any other 
way to reduce the widening climate injustice.
https://www.wired.com/story/geoengineering-is-the-only-solution-to-our-climate-calamities/



[some data]
*WORLDHEALTHRANKINGS**
**LIVE LONGER LIVE BETTER**
*https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/fires/by-country/



["a return to denial is not helpful"]
*Trump's plan for managing forests won't save us in a more flammable 
world, experts say*
The president proposes "forest management." Scientists say no amount of 
managing will stop a new breed of wildfires.
By Sarah Kaplan and Juliet Eilperin
September 16, 2020
In California, smoke plumes spun into twisters made out of soot and 
flame, prompting the first-ever "fire tornado" warning. In Oregon, 
blazes advanced on towns so rapidly that even fire crews had to flee. 
Never in memory have so many fires burned so much land in so many places 
over such a short span of time. The smoke has enveloped the whole 
continent, dimming the sun in cities 2,000 miles away.

"Science knows very well what is going on here," said Monica Turner, 
fire ecologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Extreme climate 
change has arrived in America, and it burns.

Fire experts say the nation needs new strategies to cope with the 
escalating threat.

But the country's top fire science budget has been slashed - cuts that 
began in the last year of the Obama administration and have only 
accelerated under President Trump, who has twice tried unsuccessfully to 
eliminate it altogether. States, which are struggling under the 
coronavirus-induced economic crisis, have run short of funds for the 
scientific work.
President Trump has repeatedly said "forest management" - harvesting 
trees to reduce fuel for fires - is the key to preventing wildfires. But 
scientists agree no amount of "forest management" can stop disasters in 
an ever-more-flammable world.

"There are no climate change denialists on the fire lines," said Tim 
Ingalsbee, a veteran wildland firefighter who serves as executive 
director of the group Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and 
Ecology. "Now we really need science to play a role in the solutions."...
- -
The link between fires and climate is basic physics: Human greenhouse 
gas emissions have warmed the planet. Higher temperatures trap more 
water in the atmosphere, drying out vegetation and making it more likely 
to ignite. In the American West -- where temperatures are already as 
much as 4 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than in the preindustrial era -- 
landscapes are burning in fundamentally different and more destructive 
ways...
- -
This was predicted. The first National Climate Assessment, published in 
2000, forecast that the West would experience increased risk of fire as 
a result of global warming and called on states to prepare. A study in 
the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that 
human-caused climate change doubled the amount of forest burned between 
1984 and 2015. California's own climate assessment in 2018 predicted 
that higher temperatures would cause 2.5 million acres to burn annually 
-- the models just did not expect it to happen until 2050.

The scale of this year's fires have horrified even those who saw them 
coming. As of Tuesday, 3.2 million acres in California have been 
incinerated -- almost double the previous record of 1.9 million, set in 
2018. In Oregon, blazes have erupted in parts of the wet Western 
Cascades that have not burned in years. On a single day last week, 
red-flag warnings on fire weather stretched along the entire West Coast 
from the U.S. border with Mexico to Canada.

"It really is a shocking escalation," said Daniel Swain, a climate 
scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles. 
"Characterizing it as a phase change, a new era of megafire -- as 
dramatic as that sounds, ultimately I think it's accurate."...
--
But as the toll of wildfire increases, the federal government is 
supporting less research into the issue. The budget for the Joint Fire 
Science Program, which is funded through the Interior and Agriculture 
departments and produces research on the best practices for fire 
prevention and management, has steadily declined since the mid-2000s. In 
a 2017 budget deal approved before the current administration, the 
program's funding was reduced from $12.9 million to $8.9 million. In 
2018 and 2019, the White House sought to eliminate it entirely. The 
program now receives $6 million a year.

"It is very much a mismatch between the increased scale, scope and 
urgency of the problem and the amount of resources we're putting into 
understanding what's coming, what it means and how to adapt," Turner said...
- -
There is one other way all Americans can help reduce risk of wildfire, 
Turner said: by stopping greenhouse gas emissions. Last winter, United 
Nations scientists reported that the world would need to start cutting 
emissions 7.6 percent annually to limit warming to a "tolerable" 1.5 
degrees Celsius. At that point, fires would likely be even worse than 
they are now -- but not nearly as bad as they might otherwise become.

Emissions were rising about 1.5 percent a year before the coronavirus 
pandemic. This year, even after massive societal shutdowns and a global 
economic crisis, the world is unlikely to meet the 7.6 percent target.

"We have to get it under control," Turner said. "If we continue to raise 
the planet's temperature, this is going to be our tragic reality."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/09/16/fires-climate-change/



[Andy Revkin jam session music show- video]
*Sunday Song Swap With Oxford Climate Prof and Accordionist Ray 
Pierrehumbert*
Streamed live on Sep 20, 2020
Andrew Revkin
The regular Sunday Earth Institute song and story swap aims to revive 
spirits and build community even as the world struggles to overcome a 
pandemic.

A special guest this week is Raymond Pierrehumbert, Halley Professor of 
Physics at Oxford and one of the world's leading planetary and climate 
scientists. Of course, he's not on the show to talk physics. He'll be 
playing accordion and ukulele. (He' contributed the accordion on Andy 
Revkin's 2013 recording of Between the River and the Rails: 
http://j.mp/riverandrails

Contact the host, Andy Revkin of the Earth Institute, if you have a song 
or story to share. @revkin on Twitter or andrew.revkin at columbia.edu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm8JUXBxKjI


[Ooops, this was from last year, still applies]
*1 Billion Acres At Risk For Catastrophic Wildfires, U.S. Forest Service 
Warns*
Written by Kirk Siegler Jun. 05, 2019
The chief of the U.S. Forest Service is warning that a billion acres of 
land across America are at risk of catastrophic wildfires like last 
fall's deadly Camp Fire that destroyed most of Paradise, Calif...
https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/npr/npr-story/729720938



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - September 22, 2009 *

President Obama addresses the UN on climate change.
http://youtu.be/QvDg4BMTGE8


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