[TheClimate.Vote] September 25, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*September 25, 2020*/

[NPR report on the new young Republicans]
*'Light Years Ahead' Of Their Elders, Young Republicans Push GOP On 
Climate Change*
September 25, 2020
Think "climate change activist" and a young, liberal student may come to 
mind.

A recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll showed climate change is the top 
issue for Democratic voters. For Republicans, it barely registers 
overall, but there is a growing generational divide.

A recent Pew Research Center survey shows Republicans 18 to 39 years old 
are more concerned about the climate than their elders. By a nearly 
two-to-one margin they are more likely to agree that "human activity 
contributes a great deal to climate change," and "the federal government 
is doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change."

Some of these young conservatives are starting environmental groups and 
becoming climate activists. And now they're pushing their party to do more.

Benji Backer started the American Conservation Coalition in 2017, after 
his freshman year in college, and says his love of nature comes in part 
from his family.

"They were Audubon members, Nature Conservancy members. But they were 
conservative, and I grew up not thinking that the environment should be 
political at all," says Backer.

Yet these days, environmental politics dominates his life. From now 
until the November election Backer is driving an electric car across the 
country, talking about his group's climate agenda and posting videos 
along the way.

Backer is promoting his group's American Climate Contract, which is a 
conservative, market-focused response to the Green New Deal.

He's critical of fellow conservatives who ignore climate change. He 
praised Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg when they both testified 
before Congress last year. And Backer says he wants to work with liberal 
climate activists to pass legislation.

So, how will he vote in November?

"If President Trump wants to get my vote, he's going to have to 
prioritize climate change in a way that he has not done over the past 
four years," says Backer.

While he's undecided so far, Backer says he was disappointed climate 
change wasn't even discussed at the Republican National Convention.

In a statement to NPR the Trump campaign said, "President Trump's record 
on the environment proves you can have energy independence and a clean, 
healthy environment without destroying the economy, overregulating, or 
burdening American taxpayers." The statement never mentions climate change.

"Young Republicans are light years ahead of their elder counterparts on 
this issue," says Kiera O'Brien, founder and president of Young 
Conservatives for Carbon Dividends, which supports a carbon tax proposal 
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

O'Brien grew up in Alaska and says young conservatives are motivated by 
mounting evidence that the climate is changing.

"They're seeing the impacts first-hand, whether it's myself in Alaska 
with algal blooms that are turning the ocean weird colors, or with 
flooding in the Gulf Coast, or hurricanes that are unprecedented at this 
point," says O'Brien. She calls her generation "the climate generation," 
and says effects they were told were far off are happening now.

Some liberal climate activists are encouraged to see young conservatives 
join them.

"It means a real hope for the future because it speaks to our 
generationally shared values: truth, empathy, and patriotism," says 
Nikayla Jefferson, with the Sunrise Movement. "Climate change knows no 
party lines."

Former South Carolina Republican Congressman Bob Inglis says young 
conservative climate activists are being faithful to their age cohort.

"I think it's that they, along with their progressive friends, plan on 
living on the earth longer than, say, their parents or grandparents," 
says Inglis, Executive Director of the conservative climate group 
republicEn.

Inglis says for this generation, addressing climate change is becoming a 
moral issue more than a political one. And that makes him optimistic the 
country will eventually take more action to address the problem.

"The demographics are definitely going to deliver a win for climate 
change. I am absolutely certain we are going to win on climate policy. 
The question is whether we win soon enough to avoid the worst 
consequences," says Inglis.

Scientists say that time line is short, but Inglis believes the country 
is more likely to succeed if both sides of the aisle are focused on the 
challenge.
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/25/916238283/light-years-ahead-of-their-elders-young-republicans-push-gop-on-climate-change
- -
*American Conservation Coalition *
https://www.acc.eco/blog/2020/9/3/electric-election-announcement
- -
*Young Conservatives for Carbon Dividends*
https://www.yccdaction.org/
- -
*republicEn*
https://republicen.org/



[MIT Technology review - report]
*Climate scientists are terrified of a second Trump term*
And climate change is only one of the reasons.
by James Temple - September 24, 2020
Daniel Schrag has spent most of his life working on climate change. He 
studied the planet's ancient warming periods early in his career, served 
as a climate advisor to President Barack Obama, and is now director of 
Harvard's Center for the Environment.

But when he imagines the possibilities if President Donald Trump is 
reelected, climate change isn't the issue he's most concerned about.

"I immediately worry about democratic institutions," he says. "I worry 
about profound and deep corruption at all levels, including the Justice 
Department."

"The good news is that four years later, or whenever this ends, there 
are still a lot of things you can do for climate," says Schrag. "But 
that's not true if we have decimated the basic institutions of democracy."

I heard similar responses again and again as I polled climate scientists 
and policy experts on what a Trump reelection would mean. After years of 
watching the administration unravel climate policies, subvert the rule 
of law, stack courts, politicize a pandemic, undermine the election 
process, and hint about third and fourth terms, the people I asked are 
terrified of what the president may do if he remains in office for 
another four years or more.

Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution, said: 
"Well, first of all, there's the question of 'Will the US become a 
dictatorial, totalitarian regime?'"

Danny Cullenward, a lecturer at Stanford's law school, replied: "There's 
no climate policy angle to that story. The United States is then a 
failed state."

Indeed, today's heated academic debates among climate experts over the 
most effective mix of US policies and technologies could soon seem 
quaint, and beside the point.

New policies are effectively off the table. Old ones are very likely 
doomed. And climate change itself will only continue to accelerate as 
the time left to avoid extremely dangerous levels of warming ticks away.

"If he's not elected, it won't make me stop worrying about climate 
change; it will still be horribly hard to address," says Jane Long, a 
former associate director at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. "But if 
he's elected, the human race is not immune from extinction. You could 
make a bunch of really bad decisions and wipe out a whole lot of life."

Still, I asked the experts to think beyond their fears and political 
views, and talk in specifics about what a second Trump term could mean 
for climate change. Several clear themes emerged.

Regulatory rollbacks
Four more years would allow the White House to lock in place many of the 
environmental rollbacks it's already enacted or is pursuing, which cover 
nearly every major federal tool available for cutting climate emissions.

The very long list of policies the administration has tried to weaken or 
reverse include rules requiring oil, gas, and landfill companies to 
prevent leaks of methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas; restrictions 
on hydrofluorocarbons, greenhouse gases used in refrigeration and air 
conditioning; federal vehicle emissions standards; and the ability of 
states like California to set stricter rules of their own.

All these efforts face legal challenges, but a Trump reelection would 
give the administration more time to fight those battles, revise legal 
arguments and strategies, and stack courts in its favor, says Leah 
Stokes, an environmental policy expert at the University of California, 
Santa Barbara.

It's also another four years to force out or muzzle scientists in 
federal agencies and replace them with pro-industry staff.

The death of Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg late last week 
ensures that the president will be able to swing the court further to 
the right. It appears Republican senators are preparing to replace 
Ginsburg with Trump's nominee before the election and have the votes to 
do so.

So even if Biden wins, Democrats secure majorities in both houses of 
Congress, and they manage to enact sweeping climate laws, such 
legislation is now at greater risk of failing to pass Supreme Court 
scrutiny.

Meanwhile, if Trump wins, subsequent Supreme Court or federal court 
rulings could cement any number of the White House's regulatory policies 
and establish precedents in environmental law that could last for decades.

That will have a very real impact on climate progress. The regulatory 
changes cited above alone would send the equivalent of another 1.8 
billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by 2035, according to 
a recent analysis by the Rhodium Group . That's more than the annual 
fossil-fuel emissions from Russia.

Ginsburg's death "was earth-shattering for the course of events for the 
next decades, really," says Ann Weeks, legal director at the Clean Air 
Task Force.

The end of regulation
The administration has already telegraphed where it's headed next, 
attacking not just specific rules but the very underpinnings of 
environmental regulation. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is 
now rewriting the rules of regulatory accounting in ways that undercut 
the ability of government to justify restrictions on industry in service 
of the public good.

EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler has announced plans to skew the 
cost-benefit math done on any proposed regulation, by essentially 
ignoring tens of billions of dollars' worth of indirect benefits for 
public health. Using the new results, he has already argued for rolling 
back rules on mercury emissions from coal plants. Mercury is a 
neurotoxin that pollutes waterways and poisons seafood.

Separately, the EPA is finalizing a rule that would require any 
regulatory analysis to exclude scientific research where the underlying 
raw data isn't available. It's an effort to disregard science involving 
human subjects, where either personal medical data can't be shared or 
such disclosures would require expensive redaction efforts. It would 
require public policy to effectively ignore landmark studies clearly 
demonstrating the devastating health effects and premature deaths 
associated with air pollution.

In both cases, the Trump administration is attempting to shrink or 
eliminate the benefits side of the ledger in regulatory calculations, in 
ways that could be used to justify unraveling all sorts of existing air, 
water, species, or climate protections.

"If you can't do a cost-benefit analysis, then how do you justify any 
environmental regulation?" Weeks says. "It's all very insidious."

International progress
The US directly contributes about 14% of the world's total fossil-fuel 
emissions. But the election could have far wider effects on what the 
world does, or doesn't do, to address climate change as well.

Trump announced plans to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement 
during his early months as president and will be able to officially do 
so in early November. If he's reelected, what may have been excused as 
an aberration in America politics will instead look to the rest of the 
world like the permanent loss of any US leadership on the issue.

Under Trump, one of the world's richest nations is effectively saying 
you're a sucker if you slow economic growth for the sake of global concerns.

"That's going to send a signal to the rest of the world that 'Look, it's 
each nation for themselves, so let's just go for the cheapest 
development trajectory and screw everyone else,'" Caldeira says.

Indeed, the leaders of Brazil and Australia are now openly rejecting 
calls for more aggressive climate efforts, India seems to tightening its 
embrace of coal again, and ultranationalist sentiments are rising across 
major parts of the globe. But other regions, notably the European Union 
and China, are stepping up efforts to cut emissions or boost domestic 
clean-energy manufacturing, spotting geopolitical and market 
opportunities that the US is ceding. This week, at the UN General 
Assembly, China announced a pledge to become carbon neutral by 2060.

The wild cards
There still could be a few constraints on the president's ability to 
halt all US climate progress.

If Trump is reelected but the Democrats take control of the Senate and 
hold onto the House, it could limit the administration's ability to push 
through court appointments and laws. It could also spark fresh 
investigations, and even renew the possibility of impeaching the 
president and removing him from office.

In addition, California, New York, Washington, and other states could 
continue to lead the way on climate, providing regional markets and test 
beds for regulations and technologies to drive down emissions.

The maturing of the clean-tech marketplace means the costs of 
renewables, batteries, and EVs will continue to fall, and demand will 
rise. Regardless of regulations, growing numbers of companies are taking 
greater steps to reduce their corporate carbon footprints and manage the 
climate risks to their businesses. Even oil and gas companies are facing 
rising market and public pressures given softening demand, falling 
prices, and greater difficulty raising capital for projects.

But if these all sounds like thin and desperate reasons to feel a little 
optimistic, it's because they are. The US is on the brink of a calamity. 
It's one short step away from self-inflicted crises from which the 
nation and the climate may well never recover.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/09/24/1008848/climate-scientists-terrified-of-trump-victory-democracy/



[which means CO2 emissions]
*Ocean Heat Waves Are Directly Linked to Climate Change*
The "blob" of hotter ocean water that killed sea lions and other marine 
life in 2014 and 2015 may become permanent.
By Henry Fountain
Sept. 24, 2020
Six years ago, a huge part of the Pacific Ocean near North America 
quickly warmed, reaching temperatures more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit 
above normal. Nicknamed "the blob," it persisted for two years, with 
devastating impacts on marine life, including sea lions and salmon.

The blob was a marine heat wave, the oceanic equivalent of a deadly 
summer atmospheric one. It was far from a solitary event: Tens of 
thousands have occurred in the past four decades, although most are far 
smaller and last for days rather than years. The largest and longest 
ones have occurred with increasing frequency over time.

On Thursday, scientists revealed the culprit. Climate change, they said, 
is making severe marine heat waves much more likely.

The study, published in the journal Science, looked at the blob and six 
other large events around the world, including one in the Northwest 
Atlantic in 2012. Human-caused global warming made these events at least 
20 times more likely, the researchers found.
"Some of these couldn't even have occurred without climate change," said 
Charlotte Laufkotter, a marine scientist at the University of Bern in 
Switzerland and the lead author of the study.

In a world with no human-caused warming, a large marine heat wave would 
have had about a one-tenth of 1 percent chance of occurring in any given 
year -- what is called a thousand-year event. But with the current rate 
of global warming, an ocean heat wave like that could soon have as much 
as a 10 percent chance of occurring, the study found.

Dr. Laufkotter said the likelihood of these large events would continue 
to increase as the world keeps warming. And if emissions of greenhouse 
gases continue at a high level for decades and average global 
temperatures reach about 5 degrees above preindustrial levels, some 
parts of the oceans may be in a continuous state of extreme heat.

In effect, the blob may become permanent. Already, a marine heat wave 
resembling the blob has emerged in the past year off northwestern North 
America.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/24/climate/ocean-heat-waves-blob.html



[heat helps combustion]
*California wildfire trend 'driven by climate'*
By Matt McGrath
Environment correspondent
Climate change is driving the scale and impact of recent wildfires that 
have raged in California, say scientists.

Their analysis finds an "unequivocal and pervasive" role for global 
heating in boosting the conditions for fire.

California now has greater exposure to fire risks than before humans 
started altering the climate, the authors say.

Land management issues, touted by President Donald Trump as a key cause, 
can't by themselves explain the recent infernos.
The worst wildfires in 18 years have raged across California since August.

They have been responsible for more than 30 deaths and driven thousands 
of people from their homes.

The cause of the fires have become a political football, with California 
Governor Gavin Newsom blaming climate change for the conflagrations.

President Trump, on the other hand, has dismissed this argument, instead 
pointing to land management practices as the key driver.
Now, a review of scientific research into the reasons for these fires 
suggests rising temperatures are playing a major role.

Earlier this year, the same research team published a review of the 
origins of Australia's dramatic fires that raged in the 2019-2020 season.

That study showed that climate change was behind an increase in the 
frequency and severity of fire weather - defined as periods of time with 
a higher risk of fire due to a combination of high temperatures, low 
humidity, low rainfall and high winds.

The new review covers more than 100 studies published since 2013, and 
shows that extreme fires occur when natural variability in the climate 
is superimposed on increasingly warm and dry background conditions 
resulting from global warming.

"In terms of the trends we're seeing, in terms of the extent of 
wildfires, and which have increased eight to ten-fold in the past four 
decades, that trend is driven by climate change," said Dr Matthew Jones 
from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, who led the review.
"Climate change ultimately means that those forests, whatever state 
they're in, are becoming warmer and drier more frequently," he told BBC 
News.

"And that's what's really driving the kind of scale and impact of the 
fires that we're seeing today."

In the 40 years from 1979 to 2019, fire weather conditions have 
increased by a total of eight days on average across the world.

However, in California the number of autumn days with extreme wildfire 
conditions has doubled in that period.

The authors of the review conclude that "climate change is bringing 
hotter, drier weather to the western US and the region is fundamentally 
more exposed to fire risks than it was before humans began to alter the 
global climate".

The researchers acknowledge that fire management practices in the US 
have also contributed to the build-up of fuel.

Normally, fire authorities carry out controlled burnings in some areas 
to reduce the amount of fuel available when a wildfire strikes - but 
these have also suffered as a result of rising temperatures.
"When you do prescribed burns, you can only do it when the conditions 
aren't too hot and dry, because you need to be able to control the 
fire," said Prof Richard Betts from the UK Met Office in Exeter, who was 
part of the review team.

"But once you've passed the point where you've got hot, dry conditions 
for much of the year, you've lost your opportunity to do lots of 
prescribed burnings. So that makes matters worse and makes the land 
management challenge even greater."

Another factor in California has been the encroachment of human 
settlements into forested areas. This has put many more homes at risk of 
these blazes.

Between 1940 and 2010, there was around a 100-fold increase in the 
number of houses built in dangerous fire zones in the western US.

"It's like building on floodplains as well, you know, people are putting 
themselves in harm's way, based on past statistics, which are no longer 
true," said Prof Betts.

"The past is no longer a guide to the future, for flooding and for fire 
and lots of other ways in which climate change is played out."

The researchers say that the conditions for wildfire are likely to 
continue to grow into the future, and according to Dr Jones, the 
resulting fires will likely get worse.

"It's pointing towards increases in fire weather that become 
increasingly intense, widespread and dramatic in the future," he said.

"And the more that we can do to limit the degree to which temperatures 
rise, is fundamental to how frequently we see dangerous fire weather in 
the future."
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54278988



[know the exponential function - audio interview]
*Climate Change Podcast: Peter Wadhams | Climate Vaccines, Carbon 
Removal & COVID 19 Go Exponential*
Premiered Sept 24, 2020
Nick Breeze
Climate Change Podcast Series: https://climateseries.com/climate-cha...
Welcome to Shaping The Future - this interview is with author and 
Cambridge polar ice scientist Professor Peter Wadhams.
We discuss the common exponential factors that exist between the 
COVID-19 pandemic and in the positive feedbacks of the changing climate 
system.

WE also discuss the urgent need for carbon drawdown or greenhouse gas 
removal as it also known, to tackle the excess burden of 1 trillion 
tonnes of pollution that humanity has pumped into the biosphere.

Professor Wadhams is a leading authority on polar ice climate and is 
currently guest lecturing in Turin Polytechnic in Italy. This interview 
was recorded in May 2020 during the lockdown but has relevant input from 
Peter about how we must consider action to shape a better future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfH9zHxiyRg


[Yale Program on Climate Change Communication]
Map · Sep 2, 2020
*Yale Climate Opinion Maps 2020*
These maps show how Americans' climate change beliefs, risk perceptions, 
and policy support vary at the state, congressional district, metro 
area, and county levels.*
**Estimated % of adults who think global warming is happening (72%), 2020*
https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/ycom-us/



[the new Lockdown]
*Bay Area officials have a plan to combat climate change: force people 
to work from home*
https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Bay-Area-planning-agency-advances-60-work-from-15592276.php
- -
[with your cat]
https://i1.wp.com/sf.streetsblog.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/09/motleyworkfromhome.jpg?w=800&ssl=1
https://sf.streetsblog.org/2020/09/23/make-60-work-from-home-permanently/



[important misinformation video]
*How to spot and tag misinformation*
Sep 24, 2020
John Cook
How do you tell the difference between facts and misinformation? This 
Critical Thinking About Climate video explains how to deconstruct 
arguments so you can spot if it's misinformation and tag any misleading 
fallacies. This is a skill we all need these days as misinformation is 
everywhere!

This video is based on a paper coauthored by John Cook, Peter Ellerton 
and David Kinkead, outlining a step-by-step method to deconstruct 
denialist claims about climate change and identify reasoning fallacies. 
The paper is freely available at http://sks.to/criticalclimate

Thanks also to the UQx crew who filmed our original critical thinking 
cafe video. You can watch the original video via 
https://youtu.be/XAp1Foj7BzY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH9V98mHMB8



[break the fake]*
* *Fake news is killing us. How can we stop it?*
By Kate Yoder on Jul 1, 2020
Salmon Arm is a little town of 17,000 in central British Columbia, not 
far from busy ski slopes in the Canadian Rockies. It's home to stunning 
blue lakes, tree-covered mountains, and a worrying number of signs 
claiming that COVID-19 is a hoax.

But maybe less than there used to be. Tim Walters, a professor of 
English at Okanagan College, has been tearing down the signs one by one 
since they started appearing a few months ago. The signs demand B.C. 
"wake up" and sport a hashtag tied to QAnon, a far-right conspiracy 
movement. By June, Walters was walking three or four hours a day, 
wandering in ever-widening circles, yanking down the signs wherever he went.

It's become a "low-level obsession," he said. "Because of how crazy they 
are, people don't take these conspiracy theories seriously enough."

The conspiracy theorists responded by putting their signs higher, 8 or 9 
feet off the ground. But Walters is 6 feet 6 inches tall with long arms 
to match. People have been sending him directions to new signs in their 
neighborhoods that they can't reach.

The reality is that fake news is killing people. Research shows that 
wearing masks could reduce the spread of COVID-19 by half, yet 
misleading claims about the safety of mask-wearing have proliferated. If 
everyone wore face masks in public, according to a model from the 
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of 
Washington, it could save an estimated 33,000 American lives by October.

"Misinformation about COVID is spreading faster than the virus itself," 
said Gale Sinatra, a professor of education at the University of 
Southern California who's writing a book about fake news and the 
public's understanding of science. Epidemiological experts say that a 
pandemic is as much of a communications crisis as it is a public health 
emergency. It's reminiscent of climate change -- despite a mountain of 
evidence showing the devastating effects on our overheating planet, only 
two-thirds of Americans say they're worried about it. That's a sign that 
these messages aren't reaching people, or perhaps that fake news 
resonated with them more.

As an added challenge, the climate crisis and COVID-19 have both gotten 
sucked into the vortex of polarization in America. And as the pandemic 
has stretched on, becoming the background of our lives, it's activating 
many of the same psychological barriers that people face when confronted 
with climate change. "Everyone's got COVID fatigue now," Sinatra said.

Coronavirus denial shares many similarities to climate denial, the 
dismissal of the scientific consensus around global warming. It's spread 
by many of the same people, and the arguments for these bonkers theories 
often sound a lot alike: a rejection of mainstream science, a story of 
governments plotting to manufacture a crisis, and a message that the 
best thing to do is just continue business as usual. So why should I 
wear a face mask?

Studies have shown that fake news spreads faster on social media than 
real news does. People on Twitter are 70 percent more likely to share 
false news than the real stuff. And it's difficult to shut down. 
"Misinformation is unfortunately a bit more compelling than regular 
information," Sinatra said. Conspiracists spin tales that are surprising 
and dramatic, like a plot twist in a movie -- a contrast to the drumbeat 
of "COVID-19 cases are rising!" seen on the news every day. So short of 
tearing down posters, what can people do to shut down the spread of 
misinformation?

Taking misconceptions head-on is one option, Sinatra said. But it has to 
be done carefully, or it can backfire, because repeating wrongheaded 
claims in the course of refuting them risks spreading them even further. 
Repeating things makes them stick. As the linguist George Lakoff pointed 
out, when you tell people "Don't think of an elephant" they can't help 
but picture an elephant.

"Just saying 'You're wrong'" -- that does not work," Sinatra said. You 
have to explain why something is incorrect and offer a good explanation 
for a convincing counterpoint.

"My thing is, you always have to confront them head-on," said Walters, 
who incorporates rebuttals into his English classes. He recently taught 
a college course about the climate crisis and found that many of his 
students were on the fence about the science at first, unsure of what 
was true, before reading assignments like David Wallace-Wells' The 
Uninhabitable Earth, which educated (and terrified) them. Walters 
equipped his students with the facts about climate change and encouraged 
them to discuss what they learned with their friends and family.

One resource that could help them is the new Conspiracy Theory Handbook, 
written by two cognitive scientists, Stephan Lewandowsky and John Cook. 
It's a free online source that offers tips on how to debunk conspiracy 
theories and talk to people who believe in them.

Even so, the best way to counter fake news might be to equip people with 
the tools to evaluate what's fake and what's real from the get-go. "It's 
better to inoculate people preemptively against conspiracy theories 
rather than trying to go in afterward and undo the damage," said Cook, a 
professor at George Mason University, in a recent interview with The Verge.

The problem, of course, is that those under the sway of misinformation 
aren't willing to take the vaccine.

One nonprofit, the News Literacy Project, aims to help students across 
the country get savvy when it comes to identifying fake news and think 
critically about what they come across online. There's evidence that 
this approach helps for people of all ages. One study from the 
University of Michigan found that people are less likely to trust, 
"like," or share fake climate change news on Facebook if they read a few 
questions beforehand such as "Do I recognize the news organization that 
posted the story?" and "Does the information in the post seem believable?"

Scientists and public health experts are having a tough time in the 
COVID-19 pandemic, because they're learning basic facts about the virus 
and how it spreads from week to week. They're trying to communicate new 
findings to the public in real time, and evolving recommendations are 
bound to sow confusion. That's one big difference between the two 
crises: Climate scientists got the basic story nailed down ages ago. 
"The science around climate change has been developing for decades," 
Sinatra said. "COVID's only been on the planet for the last six months."
https://grist.org/climate/fake-news-is-killing-us-how-can-we-stop-it/
- -
*News Literacy Project*
NLP, a nonpartisan national education nonprofit, provides programs and 
resources for educators and the public to teach, learn and share the 
abilities needed to be smart, active consumers of news and information 
and equal and engaged participants in a democracy.
https://newslit.org/


[Climate Ethics]
*7 issues about climate change that citizens and the media need to know 
to evaluate any nation's response*

Seven Features of Climate Change That Citizens and the Media Need to 
Understand To Critically Evaluate a Government's Response to This 
Existential Threat and the Arguments of Opponents of Climate Policies.

ethicsandclimate.org

*The seven issues discussed in this article are:*

1. Because of certain features of climate change, many policy-making 
issues raise ethical/fairness questions that are practically significant 
for global prospects of preventing catastrophic climate harms.

2. Issues that arise in four steps that the setting of a national GHG 
emissions reduction target Implicitly takes a position on.

3. Because all CO2e emissions are diminishing the carbon budget that 
must constrain world emissions to achieve any warming limit goal, the 
speed of reducing GHG emissions as well as the magnitude of emissions 
reductions are crucial for achieving any warming limit goal.

4. Although the consensus scientific position on climate change is 
extraordinarily strong, no nation may fail to comply with its 
obligations under the 1992 UNFCCC on the basis of scientific uncertainty 
because all nations expressly agreed under the 1992 treaty to be bound 
by the precautionary principle.

5. No developed nation may fail to comply with Its obligations to reduce 
Its GHG emissions to Its fair share of safe global emissions under the 
UNFCCC on the basis of cost to the nation.

6. Cost-benefit analysis is not an ethically acceptable tool for 
limiting a government's climate change responsibilities.

7. Developed nations under the 1992 UNFCCC acknowledged a duty to assist 
developing nations with financing their adaptation and mitigation costs 
and have a moral/legal responsibility to help compensate developing 
nations for their climate change caused losses and damages.
See - 
https://ethicsandclimate.org/2020/08/19/why-getting-nations-to-comply-with-ethical/https://ethicsandclimate.org/2020/08/19/why-getting-nations-to-comply-with-ethical/




[In Maine, so goes]*
**Maine company looks to tidal power as renewable energy's next generation*
After years of development, tidal and river energy supporters say the 
technology is on the cusp of wider commercial deployment, especially if 
it can win federal support.
With much of New England's attention on offshore wind, a Maine company 
hopes to put itself on the map with tidal energy.

Portland, Maine-based Ocean Renewable Power Company recently signed a 
memorandum of understanding with the city of Eastport on a five-year 
plan to develop a $10 million microgrid primarily powered by tidal 
generation...
- -
Now that other resources are more established, "we're sort of next in 
line," Ferland said. "And the industry needs the same public sector 
policy and funding support that enabled those sectors to begin to grow 
and thrive."
https://energynews.us/2020/09/23/northeast/maine-company-looks-to-tidal-power-as-renewable-energys-next-generation/



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - September 25, 2005 *

TIME Magazine releases the October 3, 2005 cover-dated issue, with the 
cover story: "Are We Making Hurricanes Worse?"
http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20051003,00.html
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1109318,00.html



/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/

/Archive of Daily Global Warming News 
<https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/2017-October/date.html> 
/
https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote

/To receive daily mailings - click to Subscribe 
<mailto:subscribe at theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request> 
to news digest./

*** Privacy and Security:*This mailing is text-only.  It does not carry 
images or attachments which may originate from remote servers.  A 
text-only message can provide greater privacy to the receiver and sender.
By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain must be used for democratic 
and election purposes and cannot be used for commercial purposes. 
Messages have no tracking software.
To subscribe, email: contact at theclimate.vote 
<mailto:contact at theclimate.vote> with subject subscribe, To Unsubscribe, 
subject: unsubscribe
Also you may subscribe/unsubscribe at 
https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote
Links and headlines assembled and curated by Richard Pauli for 
http://TheClimate.Vote <http://TheClimate.Vote/> delivering succinct 
information for citizens and responsible governments of all levels. List 
membership is confidential and records are scrupulously restricted to 
this mailing list.


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/attachments/20200925/3c7ca5a2/attachment.html>