[TheClimate.Vote] April 7, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*April 7, 2021*/

[Treasury secretary]
*Yellen: 'We lost four important years' in fight against climate change*
- -
Yellen made the remarks in an address during her first meeting with the 
Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action. She reportedly said 
the U.S. is committed to reaching the reduced emissions goal of 2030 set 
by the Obama-era Paris climate agreement.

“Climate, by its very nature, requires strong global cooperation,” 
Yellen said. “We lost four important years, and we recognize that many 
of you around the room have been leading change in your own countries.”...
- -
Yellen has previously said Treasury's approach to climate change will 
“change dramatically” under her leadership. During a meeting of Group of 
Seven (G7) finance ministers and central bankers, Yellen stated that the 
U.S. was prepared to take the lead in the global fight against climate 
change following four years of environmental rollbacks during the Trump 
administration.

“She expressed strong support for G7 efforts to tackle climate change, 
highlighting that her colleagues should expect the Treasury Department’s 
engagement on this issue to change dramatically relative to the last 
four years,” the Treasury Department said in a statement at the time...
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/546758-yellen-we-lost-four-important-years-in-fight-against-climate-change



[From DW]
*Climate scientists, what keeps you up at night?*
Sam Baker - April.6.2021
 From atmospheric physicists to urban climatologists, DW spoke to 
researchers who study the many and varied aspects of climate change 
about what concerns them most as our planet heats up.
What really makes this reporter's stomach churn thinking about climate 
change? Thawing permafrost. A scenario where it all melts, releasing 
copious amounts of CO2 and methane (it holds twice as much carbon as the 
atmosphere holds right now), and there's no going back.

But what's at the top of the list of concerns for those who study how 
climate change is unfolding – on ice sheets and urban street corners, in 
oceans and farm fields – the climate scientists themselves?

DW asked a dozen experts spanning climatology, entomology, oceanography 
and yes, permafrost research, what keeps them up at night when it comes 
to the climate.

*The greatest unknown – people*
Nana Ama Browne Klutse studies changing weather with climate models at 
the University of Ghana. While she says tipping points like permafrost 
thaw worry her, she also worries how individuals will handle changing 
climates.

"What can you do as an individual to avoid the impact of climate 
change?" she asked. "We need government policies for resilience, 
building of community, city resilience. Then we need that global action."
Climate scientist Ruth Mottram studies the Greenland and Antarctic ice 
sheets and sea level rise for the Danish Meteorological Institute, but 
it's not the science that worries her.

"I'm less concerned that there are unknown processes going on that we 
don't understand, and there could potentially be some unforeseen 
catastrophe on the way," she said. "We know what a lot of the impacts 
are going to be. I think what keeps me awake at night in a metaphorical 
sense is really the interaction between the physical system and how 
human societies are going to handle it."

Giving the example of sea level, she says we will see a meter rise this 
century — in our lifetimes or that of our children — and will have to 
make tough decisions about our coastal cities. But she says it won't end 
there.

"I think that human societies have not really grasped what that means 
and that adaptation to sea level rise is going to be a long process and 
we are going to be doing it for hundreds of years," said Mottram, 
suggesting that we start thinking in terms of the lifetimes of cities 
(hundreds of years) rather than just human lifetimes.
*
**Protecting the vulnerable*
Vladimir Romanovsky, a professor of geophysics at the University of 
Alaska Fairbanks' Permafrost Laboratory, said that while he thinks about 
how what happens in the Arctic will affect the rest of the world, his 
concerns are much more local.

"We should remember that there are still some people living in the 
Arctic," he said. Around4 million people in fact who would have to deal 
with the real-life consequences of solid ground thawing beneath their 
feet and houses. "Changes in these local or regional kind of climates 
and environments, they impact these people and some of these impacts 
could be very severe."
Closer to the planet's other pole, Carolina Vera fears that existing 
inequalities will only be exacerbated by climate change.

"Climate change is already impacting the most vulnerable sectors of our 
planet," said Vera, who studies climate variability as a principal 
researcher for the National Council of Science of Argentina, a professor 
at the University of Buenos Aires and chief of staff for Argentina's 
Ministry of Science and Technology. Her work has led her to incorporate 
local knowledge and data collection into studies, involving communities 
that are balancing the problems of deforestation with their need to farm.

*Heat & new extremes*
Perhaps not surprisingly, global heating is a key concern for many 
researchers, like Dim Coumou, who studies extreme weather at Vrije 
Universiteit Amsterdam.

Of most concern to him are heat and humidity extremes in the tropics – 
especially highly populated parts like West Africa, Pakistan and India – 
which will make it unbearable to be outside. When cooling down by 
sweating is no longer possible, people can't work outside and therefore 
can't grow food. The likely result being mass migration.

But it's not just the tropics.

Closely related to heat is the increase in extreme weather brought on by 
a warming climate. Coumou and his colleagues' research shows how changes 
to the jet stream will lead to more extreme weather in Europe, including 
floods and droughts.
"A warmer atmosphere can hold more water in it and when it rains, it 
rains heavily leading to floods. A warmer ocean can lead to stronger 
tropical cyclones," said Babiker, who works for the East African Climate 
Center ICPAC in Nairobi. He explained that cyclones gain more energy 
from warmer water.

"We have seen evidence of all these events," he said. "The strongest 
tropical cyclones to impact the Arabian Peninsula, Somalia, and 
Mozambique occurred in the past 20 years!"

And extreme weather events can bring further ecological disasters along 
with them, like swarms of locusts, as Babiker and his colleagues have 
found in their research.
*Science for solutions*
Pests, drought and flooding are on Esther Ngumbi's mind too.

An entomologist and professor of African American studies at the 
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she said that what keeps her 
up at night is the thought: "How can my science truly help?"

Ngumbi's work on pest and drought-resistant crops is driven by her 
concerns for vulnerable farmers who live in countries lacking social 
safety nets, where one season of crop devastation due to insects can 
mean going hungry and being unable to pay for their children's education.

"That truly makes me wake up every day and go to the lab to understand 
how my research can contribute to solutions that we need," she said.

Natasha Picone – an urban climatologist at the National University of 
Central Buenos Aires – says it's the solutions that occupy her thoughts too.

"With the pandemic, I realized that we are not doing enough for changing 
our cities to be more livable," she said. Her research informs urban 
planners about phenomena such as the urban heat island effect, air 
pollution and urban run-off that can lead to flooding. "If we don't 
change the path now, it will be really difficult to go back."
Weighing on the mind of oceanographer Renata Hanae Nagai at the 
University of Parana in Brazil is her four-year-old nephew and what his 
life will look like in a warmer world, but he also gives her hope. 
During a recent trip to the beach to watch nesting turtles, he warned 
others to leave the turtles alone.

She sees this same care in her students – learning about problems and 
coming up with solutions.

"People are the solution," she said. "We try, even under the hardest 
conditions."

'Scientists are humans' too
Levke Caesar, whose research recently made headlines, said the most 
concerning thing for her is the people and organizations who deny 
climate change.

"For me, that's like morally totally unacceptable what they do – they 
lie," said the climate physicist from Maynooth University in Ireland, 
reflecting on encountering such people at public talks. "I mean, you 
can't argue with climate."

But this only pushes Caesar to better communicate what the science shows.

*They worry about us*
A common thread of this (rather unscientific) survey is that while we 
laypeople might be worrying about what the science says, climate 
scientists are often worrying about us.

"Scientists always think about what are the results of their studies, 
how are they important for, you know, for usual people, for normal 
people," the permafrost scientist told me. While doing his research, 
Romanovsky said he's always thinking about "how this could be used to 
make life of people easier or more predictable."
https://www.dw.com/en/solutions-climate-change-global-warming-permafrost-locusts-sea-level-extreme-weather-heat/a-57071503



[The Hill seems a bit embarrassed by this article]
*How to combat climate change misinformation*
BY KAREN CONOVER, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR —04/06/21
- -
It’s time to have a serious debate on how to address climate change 
without complicating the issue with further deceit or delay.

The seeds of climate change misinformation were planted almost 40 years 
ago by the fossil fuel industry which likely understood the negative 
impacts that a changing climate could have on their business profits. 
The Union of Concerned Scientists and others have documented efforts by 
the oil and coal industries in the 1980s to sow doubt about climate 
science and develop messaging that we’d now call “alternative facts.” 
Special interest groups were formed and funded by fossil fuel interests 
to cultivate and spread misinformation that would shut down efforts to 
address climate change through legislative or regulatory means.
Political candidates and lawmakers at all levels of government continue 
the spread of doubt and dispel any urgency to address the climate 
crisis, propelled by political donations and their claims at times 
promoted by conservative media outlets. It’s been a brilliantly executed 
strategy and the web of deception has secured years of inaction. It’s 
also led to immeasurable environmental and human damage — some of which 
may now be irreversible.

Fossil fuel companies seem like the obvious villains of this story, but 
sometimes the cause of misinformation is not quite so nefarious. In my 
work in the renewable energy industry, many of the misconceptions I hear 
are simply due to the difficulty in keeping up with the pace of change. 
The cost of the clean energy is a good example. The good news is that 
wind and solar costs have fallen 70 percent and 90 percent respectively 
over the last decade, making them the most affordable new electricity 
sources in most of the U.S.

The bad news is that there is a wealth of reports, datasets and news 
stories — some just a couple years old — that are outdated and 
misrepresent the reality of the technology today. Many people still 
don’t realize that reliable and cost-effective technologies to address 
climate change are already widely deployed with great success around the 
world.

While climate change skeptics will always use whatever information best 
suits their purpose, some of the problems of misinformation can be 
addressed by launching a widespread education campaign to get accurate 
and up to date information into the hands of the public, government 
officials, and business leaders who play a role in directing the U.S. 
response to climate change.

Unfortunately, petty partisan politics is driving a new round of 
deception as a pushback against President Biden’s climate agenda. It may 
seem laughable to blame California wildfires on space lasers or the 
Texas power outage on wind energy but when a Republican congresswoman 
and Republican governor do just that, they are blatantly misleading 
those to whom they have sworn to serve. At this point, it’s hard to 
imagine who Republican climate change naysayers think they are 
representing.
And the oft-cited claim that addressing climate is bad for business or 
will hurt the economy? The business community has already left the 
politicians behind. It’s not just California tech companies buying 
renewable energy and social media giants speaking out against climate 
change misinformation. It’s Midwest auto manufacturers committing to 
electric vehicles, financial firms incorporating climate risk into their 
investment decisions, and big box stores in rural communities installing 
solar panels on their rooftops. With mounting evidence and global 
consensus, the Republican stance against climate action is growing 
increasingly untenable. Eventually, the lies they’ve told will catch up 
to them.

Politicians, media outlets and others that mislead, distract and lie 
about the reality of climate change need to be held accountable. It’s 
notable that the business community have sued conservative media 
networks for spreading false claims about the election or acted to 
withhold political donations from lawmakers who voted against the 
certification of the presidential election. Why not extend those actions 
to include those who mislead the public about climate change?

Americans of all political parties must use their votes and their voices 
to insist on dealing with the truth and coming together to address 
problems. Rest assured, there are still plenty of opportunities to fight 
about the policy mechanisms, prioritization and the spending needed to 
address climate change. But there are also a lot of ideas related to 
climate action that could unite the left and right — creating jobs, 
expanding infrastructure, leading the world in technical innovation, for 
instance.

If we ignore the facts, we lose the ability to develop solutions or 
negotiate good policy. It’s time to shut down the climate deniers and 
the misinformation campaigns and adhere to the evidence and analysis 
from the scientific community. It’s time to embrace the truth.

Karen Conover is a vice president and senior technical advisor at DNV, 
former board member of the American Wind Energy Association and an 
ambassador for the Clean Energy, Education and Empowerment Program. She 
is also a Public Voices Fellow of the OpEd Project and the Yale Program 
on Climate Change Communication.
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/546667-how-to-combat-climate-change-misinformation



[Movie star]
*The Last Word: Robert Redford on Activism, Fighting Climate Change, and 
the Importance of Truth*
The acting legend talks founding Sundance, the moment he became an 
environmentalist, and what ‘All the President’s Men’ was really about
By DAVID FEAR - APRIL 6, 2021
- -
*You’ve said that as a longtime environmental activist, you’ve become 
more radicalized over time. Was there a moment when you began to 
understand that what was happening to our planet was more serious than 
you’d realized?*
I was attending a conference in Denver, in 1989, where there was a 
presentation by two scientists who explained Earth’s temperatures were 
rising — they called it global warming. They explained what would happen 
if we ignored this threat. That moment was my wake-up call. I knew they 
were speaking the truth. Because one thing we’ve learned is that time 
waits for no one. I realized that when there’s something you have to do, 
you better act, and act quickly...
- -
*You helped bring All the President’s Men to the screen as a producer, 
as well as starring in it. What do you think that film can tell us about 
what the nation went through over the past few years?*
That history has a tendency to repeat itself. I was attracted to the 
story about two journalists who were searching for the truth. And that 
was the story I wanted to tell. It wasn’t about Watergate, really. It 
was about journalism and truth...
https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-features/robert-redford-climate-change-interview-1151217/



[fires now]
*Wisconsin Governor Declares State of Emergency Over Wildfire Conditions*
More than 300 wildfires have destroyed nearly 1,500 acres since the 
start of the year, and fire officials warn this could be a 
longer-than-average season.
By Derrick Bryson Taylor -
April 6, 2021
- -
In the past week, there have been 149 wildfires across Wisconsin, 
according to a map on the department’s website, and there have been at 
least 340 fires since the start of the year.

Over the weekend, the majority of Wisconsin was under a very high risk 
for fire danger, including counties along the Illinois state border and 
counties along Lake Michigan. Wildfire conditions across the state will 
persist as long as there is a mix of dry vegetation, unseasonably warm 
temperatures, low humidity and increasing winds, the department said...
- -
While wildfires can occur at anytime of the year, the department said, 
the majority of fires happen between March and May, making spring the 
most critical fire season in Wisconsin.

Because of how early the snow melted around the state, fire officials 
anticipate a longer-than-average fire season this year.

Wisconsin has seen its share of destructive wildfires in the past 20 
years. In 2013, a logging crew unintentionally started a fire that 
destroyed nearly 7,500 acres, including 23 residences, the department 
said. In 2005, a fire burned 3,410 acres and destroyed at least 30 
residences.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/04/06/us/wisconsin-wildfire



[starting to keep score - 1500 in three years]
*A list of some of the fires attributed to PG&E powerline equipment*
Author Bill Gabbert -- April 6, 2021
Charges were recently filed against the company for their role in 
starting the Kincade Fire in Northern California

In light of the charges recently filed against Pacific Gas and Electric 
for the role their equipment played in starting the 2019 Kincade Fire in 
Northern California, we dug through some records showing the significant 
part the company has played in starting numerous wildfires over the last 
decade.

The Wall Street Journal (subscription) reported that investigators 
attributed more than 1,500 fires to PG&E power lines and hardware 
between June 2014 and December 2017.

CAL FIRE attributed 12 fires that started in Northern California on 
October 8 and 9, 2017 to PG&E power equipment.

Below are some of the fires attributed to PG&E between 1999 and 2020. It 
is not a complete or comprehensive list.

    Zogg Fire, September, 2020, 56,338 acres, destroyed 204 structures,
    and caused the deaths of four people.
    Kincade Fire, October, 2019, 77,000 acres, and destroyed 374 structures.
    Camp Fire, November , 2018, 154,000 acres, destroyed 18,000
    structures, and caused the deaths of 84 people. The company pleaded
    guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter.
    Cascade Fire, October 2017, 9,989 acres, destroyed 250 structures,
    and caused the deaths of five people, including one firefighter.
    Redwood Valley Fire, October, 2017, 36,523 acres, destroyed 543
    structures, and caused the deaths of 9 people.
    Sulphur Fire, October, 2017, 2,207 acres, destroyed 162 structures.
    Cherokee Fire, October, 2017, 8,417 acres, destroyed 6 structures.
    37 Fire, October, 2017, 1,660 acres, destroyed 3 structures.
    Blue Fire, October, 2017, 20 acres.
    Norrbom, Adobe, Partrick, Pythian and Nuns Fires burned together,
    56,556 acres, destroyed 1,255 structures, and caused the deaths of 3
    people.
    Pocket Fire, October, 2017, 17,357 acres, destroyed 783 structures.
    Atlas Fire, October, 2017, 51,624 acres, destroyed 783 structures,
    and caused the deaths of 6 people.
    Butte Fire, September 2015, 70,868 acres, destroyed a total of 921
    structures, including 549 homes, 368 outbuildings, and 4 commercial
    properties, and caused the deaths of two people.
    Pendola Fire, October, 1999, 11,725 acres.

https://wildfiretoday.com/2021/04/06/a-list-of-some-of-the-fires-attributed-to-pge-powerline-equipment/


[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - April 7, 2009 *

April 7, 2009: In a story entitled "New Data Show Rapid Arctic Ice 
Decline," the Washington Post observes: "The new evidence -- including 
satellite data showing that the average multiyear wintertime sea ice 
cover in the Arctic in 2005 and 2006 was nine feet thick, a significant 
decline from the 1980s -- contradicts data cited in widely circulated 
reports by Washington Post columnist George F. Will that sea ice in the 
Arctic has not significantly declined since 1979."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/06/AR2009040601634.html


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