[TheClimate.Vote] September 24, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*September 24, 2020*/

[Yale's Leiserowitz]
*Voters want climate questions at the debates*
One week before the first presidential debate of the U.S. general 
election, our new national poll finds strong voter support for climate 
action and for moderators asking Joe Biden and Donald Trump questions 
about climate change during the presidential debates.

About three-quarters (74%) of registered voters say they want climate 
questions asked during the three presidential debates, according to our 
new poll conducted on behalf of The Guardian, VICE Media Group and 
Covering Climate Now with Climate Nexus, and the George Mason University 
Center on Climate Change Communication.

Nearly two-thirds (65%) of registered voters say they are more likely to 
vote for a candidate who supports 100% clean electricity by 2035, and 
seven out of 10 (70%) support the United States’ participation in the 
Paris Agreement. Almost two-thirds (65%) of voters say comprehensive 
climate legislation should be a priority for the next Congress and the 
president in 2021, including about a third (34%) who say it should be a 
top priority.

A partisan divide between Republicans and Democrats around climate 
change persists, but a majority (72%) of American voters across the 
political spectrum support climate action, including majorities of 
Democrats (85%), Independents (71%), and Republicans (56%)...
https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/



[why not 2025?]
*Newsom calls for California ban on new gas-fueled cars by 2035*
By COLBY BERMEL 09/23/2020

SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Gavin Newsom is calling for California to ban new 
gasoline-fueled vehicles within 15 years in a bid to combat climate 
change and make the state the first in the nation to stop sales of cars 
with internal combustion engines.

The Democratic governor on Wednesday signed an executive order that 
directs the California Air Resources Board to establish regulations 
requiring that all new cars and passenger trucks sold in California in 
2035 be zero-emission vehicles...
- -
Kassie Siegel, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate 
Law Institute, called it "rhetoric rather than real action."

"Newsom can’t claim climate leadership while handing out permits to oil 
companies to drill and frack," she said in a statement. "He has the 
power to protect Californians from oil industry pollution, and he needs 
to use it, not pass the buck."
https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/09/23/newsom-calls-for-california-ban-on-new-gas-fueled-cars-by-2035-1317947



[1 million]
*As wildfires, flooding, and hurricanes grow more frequent, climate 
migration begins*
More than 1 million disaster-related displacements have occurred each 
year on average in the U.S. since 2016. Some people never return home.By 
Samantha Harrington | Tuesday, September 22, 2020
- -
Although it’s difficult to predict the number of people who may be 
displaced by disasters like hurricanes and wildfires in the future, six 
feet of sea level rise alone could force 13.1 million Americans to move 
by 2100.

In September 2020, more than 10% of the population of Oregon evacuated 
from encroaching wildfires. Some may choose not to return.

After the Valley Fire, an estimated 3,000 people were rendered homeless. 
In the aftermath, Waldon and her husband lived for a time in a trailer 
with their four cats and three dogs. "It was a nightmare," she recalled...

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/09/as-wildfires-flooding-and-hurricanes-grow-more-frequent-climate-migration-begins/



[uh oh, salt water in the well]
Nature Climate Change
*Increasing threat of coastal groundwater hazards from sea-level rise in 
California*
Published: 17 August 2020
*Abstract*

    Projected sea-level rise will raise coastal water tables, resulting
    in groundwater hazards that threaten shallow infrastructure and
    coastal ecosystem resilience. Here we model a range of sea-level
    rise scenarios to assess the responses of water tables across the
    diverse topography and climates of the California coast. With 1 m of
    sea-level rise, areas flooded from below are predicted to expand
    ~50–130 m inland, and low-lying coastal communities such as those
    around San Francisco Bay are most at risk. Coastal topography is a
    controlling factor; long-term rising water tables will intercept
    low-elevation drainage features, allowing for groundwater discharge
    that damps the extent of shoaling in ~70% (68.9–82.2%) of
    California’s coastal water tables. Ignoring these topography-limited
    responses increases flooded-area forecasts by ~20% and substantially
    underestimates saltwater intrusion. All scenarios estimate that
    areas with shallow coastal water tables will shrink as they are
    inundated by overland flooding or are topographically limited from
    rising inland.

*Main*
Over the next century, rising sea levels are predicted to cause 
widespread inundation of coastal terrestrial areas, wetland loss and 
more severe nuisance flooding. Relative sea levels are projected to 
increase for much of Earth’s coastlines6, presenting a wide range of 
coastal hazards for the ~1 billion people living in low-elevation 
coastal areas by 2050... Along with the increasing exposure of coastal 
communities to overland flood risk, rising sea levels will cause 
unconfined coastal groundwater levels (that is, water tables) to rise, 
leading to inland flooding hazards via subsurface connections to the 
sea10. An improved understanding of the physical controls on the 
severity of the groundwater hazards caused by sea-level rise (as opposed 
to human-induced controls, such as pumping causing saltwater intrusion) 
is therefore urgently needed.
- -
Graphical definition of the saline groundwater wedge footprint and 
saltwater intrusion.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0874-1/figures/8
- -
This gives a relative measure of the saltwater intrusion that can be 
expected as the footprint migrates inland. With 1 m of sea-level rise, 
saltwater intrusion in the flux-controlled models will expand the wedge 
footprint inland to underlie ~50 km2 of new areas on average...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0874-1


[Column]
*Putting the Existential Threat of Climate Change Front and Center*
Until recently, the US mainstream media featured more climate silence 
than climate science.
By Katrina vanden Heuvel - Sept 22, 2020

When President Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden meet on the debate 
stage next week, many West Coast wildfires will almost certainly still 
be raging. Moderator Chris Wallace should ask the candidates about 
climate change, an issue on which they are starkly divided.

Biden believes that climate change is an "existential threat" that 
demands immediate, far-reaching action--what scientists the world over 
have been saying for decades. Given Trump’s recent remarks to California 
officials, we shouldn’t expect much science from his 
administration--more of Trump’s Earth-is-flat promises that temperatures 
will magically "start getting cooler, you just watch."

In good news, the eerie orange sky over San Francisco is returning to 
blue, and firefighters are making progress against several of the most 
significant wildfires. But, critically, that doesn’t mean the larger 
issue is going away...

Until recently, the U.S. mainstream media featured more climate silence 
than climate science. (Many foreign outlets have more regularly covered 
the climate story, and its impact, for years.) No questions were asked 
about climate change in the 2016 general election debates. When a 
landmark U.N. report warned in 2018 of calamitous consequences absent 
action in the next decade, only 22 of the 50 largest U.S. newspapers 
featured the story on their home pages.

More recently, when flames engulfed more than 44,400 square miles of 
Australia and drove thousands of people from their homes, news outlets 
filled with images of charred and displaced kangaroos, koalas and other 
wildlife. By one estimate, nearly 3 billion animals were killed. Many 
reports linked the fires to climate change. But the fires faded from 
news coverage -- and public consciousness.

New catastrophes lead to spikes in coverage. But sometimes media outlets 
appear to have climate amnesia: Journalists forget to link the latest 
incidents to the overall threats, and in the periods between coverage 
spikes, the story goes largely unmentioned.

To be sure, some newsrooms have significantly ramped up climate 
coverage, partly because Greta Thunberg and other young people drew 
millions into the streets last year and forced media outlets to pay 
attention. Separately, a critical mass of news organizations, including 
the Nation -- of which I am editorial director -- and the Columbia 
Journalism Review, collaborated to form Covering Climate Now (CCNow) to 
encourage the media as a whole to do a better job of covering the 
defining story of our time. The initiative features some of the biggest 
news outlets, including the Guardian, NBC, CBS, Reuters, Bloomberg and 
Agence France-Presse. An example of it working: A year ago, CCNow 
partners published 3,640 climate stories in a single week, making 
"climate change" the most-searched term on Google. This week, CCNow 
outlets are collaborating on seven days of coverage, with a focus on the 
coming U.S. elections.

Even in our digital era, television remains the leading news source for 
Americans. This means that corporate behemoths and their numerous local 
affiliate stations are the arbiters of what most Americans learn about 
climate change. Underlying climate issues are often absent from 
quick-hit broadcast segments. For instance, in 50 stories on ABC, CBS 
and NBC about Hurricane Laura late last month, not one mentioned climate 
change, according to Media Matters, an outlet that studies journalism 
coverage and trends. It found that only 4 percent of broadcast news 
reports on the wildfires in August mentioned climate change.

Meanwhile, Fox News and other right-wing media continue to live in an 
alternate ecosystem, with Rush Limbaugh and others disputing a 
connection between the California fires and climate change.

Unlike business or political stories that media outlets may play up or 
down, climate change poses an existential threat to civilization as we 
know it. If those who control what the public consumes online, on 
television or in print fail to place the climate crisis in the center of 
our national conversation, it verges on media malpractice. Most news 
accounts shun terms such as "climate emergency" as unacceptably 
activist, but "emergency" is the word that more than 11,000 scientists 
have used to describe our collective predicament.

Several emergencies will drive voters this year: the pandemic, the 
economic downturn, racial inequity and the long-awaited reckoning. The 
climate emergency will not wait. Scientists say that we have a scant 10 
years to cut heat-trapping emissions in half by transforming energy, 
agriculture, construction and other practices -- or face indescribable 
catastrophe. This campaign season presents an opportunity for the media 
to do better at explaining this existential threat to the public and ask 
candidates at every level of government what they plan to do.

As Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan put it: "This subject must be 
kept front and center, with the pressure on and the stakes made 
abundantly clear at every turn."

If a climate question isn’t asked at next week’s presidential debate, 
journalists should follow up. Candidates must be asked again, and again 
and again, how they will approach climate issues. Our lives, and those 
of our children, depend on it.
https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/climate-change-media-trump/
- -
[April 2019 indictment]
*The media are complacent while the world burns*
https://www.cjr.org/special_report/climate-change-media.php
- -
[classic AOC video]
*AOC explains why the Green New Deal is about more than climate*
AOC sits down with Chris Hayes at a town hall in the Bronx to talk about 
how we need to "save ourselves and the planet." And she how didn’t 
expect Republicans to "make total fools of themselves."
https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-explains-why-the-green-new-deal-is-about-more-than-climate-1468164675990 




[Arctic update 5 min by NASA]
*NASA Sees High Temperatures, Wildfires, Sea Ice Minimum Extent in 
Warming Arctic*
Sep 21, 2020
NASA Goddard
On Sept. 15, 2020, Arctic sea ice reached its annual minimum extent -- 
the second-lowest on record. This summer, temperatures soared in the 
Siberian Arctic, and intense fires burned through peatland. The Arctic 
region is warming three times faster than the rest of the planet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtM9KTVGFVw


[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - September 24, 2007 *

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger addresses the United Nations 
on his state's efforts to reduce carbon pollution.

http://www.climate-debate.com/arnold-schwarzenegger-address-to-the-united-nations-on-global-climate-change-r6.php

http://youtu.be/LnPNvIHqaRo


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