[✔️] August 26, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[👀 Richard Pauli]

/*August 26, 2021*/

[too much]
*Fire official says Caldor Fire "has simply outpaced us" as it nears 
Lake Tahoe*
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/caldor-fire-lake-tahoe-california-number-one/
- -
[fire weather]
*‘Fire weather’: dangerous days now far more common in US west, study finds*
Hot, arid and dry conditions that fuel extreme wildfires have grown more 
frequent from Pacific coast to Great Plains
Maanvi Singh in San Francisco -- 25 Aug 2021

The hot, dry and windy weather conditions fueling the huge wildfires 
that have besieged the western US this summer have increased in 
frequency over the past 50 years, a new study has found.

Since 1973, global heating has desiccated the west, driving increases in 
“fire weather” days from the Pacific coast to the Great Plains, 
according to research by the non-profit Climate Central. ..
- -
Although fire is a natural part of the landscape in California and other 
parts of the west, “it’s clear that what we’re seeing now isn’t 
natural”, said Weber.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/25/wildfires-us-west-fire-weather-caldor
- -
[10 page report by Climate Central]
*FIRE WEATHER*
*Heat, dryness, and wind are driving wildfires in the Western U.S.*
Climate change is worsening wildfires across forested land and 
lengthening wildfire seasons in the Western United States.
Warming from heat-trapping pollution is drying out forests, grasslands 
and other landscapes, increasing the likelihood that
destructive fires will erupt and spread. And warming is also affecting 
day-to-day weather in ways that this analysis shows are
increasing the frequency of fire weather days...
https://medialibrary.climatecentral.org/uploads/general/FireWeatherReport2021.pdf

--

[Wildfire video report]
*Update and Forecast for the Caldor Fire, Dixie Fire, South Fire, and 
other California Wildfires*
Aug 25, 2021
Holt Hanley
The Dixie Fire, Caldor Fire, South Fire, Monument Fire, French Fire, 
Westward Fire, River Complex, Antelope Fire, Mcfarland Fire, and a 
number of other wildfires continue to burn in California.
Throughout this video, we'll dive into all the important updates, as 
well as the fire weather forecast to predict how the Dixie Fire, the 
South Fire, the Caldor Fire, and the other California Wildfires may 
change in the coming days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqBuNgsBazo

- -

[Wildfires and premature births]
*Study finds exposure to wildfire smoke can increase premature birth risk*
Bill Gabbert -- August 25, 2021
Smoke from wildfires may have contributed to thousands of additional 
premature births in California between 2007 and 2012...
- -
After accounting for other factors known to influence preterm birth 
risk, such as temperature, baseline pollution exposure and the mother’s 
age, income, race or ethnic background, they looked at how patterns of 
preterm birth within each zip code changed when the number and intensity 
of smoke days rose above normal for that location.

They found every additional day of smoke exposure during pregnancy 
raised the risk of preterm birth, regardless of race, ethnicity or 
income. And a full week of exposure translated to a 3.4 percent greater 
risk relative to a mother exposed to no wildfire smoke. Exposure to 
intense smoke during the second trimester – between 14 and 26 weeks of 
pregnancy – had the strongest impact, especially when smoke contributed 
more than 5 additional micrograms per cubic meter to daily PM 2.5 
concentrations. “If one can avoid smoke exposure by staying indoors or 
wearing an appropriate mask while outdoors, that would be good health 
practice for all,” Shaw said.

The findings build on an established link between particle pollution and 
adverse birth outcomes, including preterm birth, low birth weight and 
infant deaths. But the study is among the first to isolate the effect of 
wildfire smoke on early births and to tease out the importance of 
exposure timing...
https://wildfiretoday.com/2021/08/25/study-finds-exposure-to-wildfire-smoke-can-increase-premature-birth-risk/



[podcasts are popping up everywhere - this is an especially good one]
*It Could Happen Here*
Follow
A jaunty walk through the burning ruins of the old world, the one we all 
live in now, and a guide to avoiding the worst pitfalls along the road 
to a better world. It Could Happen Here season 1 ended with the 
possibility of a second civil war. It Could Happen Here Daily with 
Robert Evans, accepts collapse as a given, and tries to provide a 
roadmap to survival.
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-it-could-happen-here-30717896/
--
[We may be in the "Crumbles"- but should withhold our attack until 
overwhelming victory is assured]
*Refuse Dystopia*
August 19, 2021 - 36 min
If we're going to build a better future, we have to believe things can 
improve.
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-it-could-happen-here-30717896/



[here's a movie]
*Opinion: ‘Reminiscence’ is another pessimistic climate change movie. 
Filmmakers should get more creative.*
Alyssa Rosenberg - Aug 25, 2021
Reminiscence,” a recent science fiction movie starring Hugh Jackman, 
takes place in a future Miami that has been transformed by rising sea 
levels into a new Venice. And yet, “Reminiscence” isn’t really about 
climate change or the response to it. Instead, the movie fixates on an 
addictive machine that lets users travel back into their memories. It’s 
about escape — not adaptation.

As such, “Reminiscence” is a great illustration of how strangely passive 
and defeatist an industry full of Prius early adopters has been about 
the biggest challenge of our time.

Hollywood’s reliance on big-budget action movies plays a role in its 
inability to address climate change effectively. In an industry reliant 
on chases, special effects and disasters, even ostensible “issue movies” 
get wedged into the same template.
- -
The end of “Reminiscence” handwaves at the possibility of an uprising 
against the elites who have tried to buy their way out of the deluge. “A 
trickle became a flood,” Jackman’s character says in some of the movie’s 
typically overheated dialogue. “Maybe this time it would wash the world 
clean.” Sure. But once you’ve got a clean slate, you’ve got to put 
something new on it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/25/reminiscence-climate-change-movies-hollywood/
- -
[video makes it looks like trope tripe]
*REMINISCENCE Trailer (2021)*
A private investigator of the mind navigates the darkly alluring world 
of the past by helping his clients access lost memories. His life is 
forever changed as he uncovers a violent conspiracy while trying to 
solve the mystery behind a missing client.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW-H1u7b1HU



[information warfare battle analysis]
*Our Changing Climate*
*Why do TV comedies always get climate change wrong? *
Help NCSE build their climate change in scripted media database: 
https://ncse.ngo/understanding-climat...

In this Our Changing Climate climate change video essay, we look at how 
and why TV comedies get climate change so wrong. We look at the last 30 
years of television comedies that address climate change from The 
Simpsons to South Park to The Good Place to Modern Family to It's Always 
Sunny in Philadelphia in order to understand why TV comedies get climate 
change so wrong. TV comedies use a number of character archetypes that 
turn environmentalists into obnoxious pariahs, directly deny the 
existence of climate change in the case of South Park, or build jokes 
and comedic elements on how hopeless climate action can be. TV comedies 
ultimately have undermined needed progress on climate change and climate 
action by approaching the issue of climate change in an unproductive 
way. To conclude we offer a number of avenues through which TV comedies 
like The Simpsons, The Politician, and The Good Place might be able to 
actually spur climate action through jokes and comedy.

Big thanks to Kate Carter and the NCSE graduate student outreach 
fellows! They researched and wrote the script for this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFQJ1sxCNd8

- -

[New expressions of old thinking]
*Why Capitalism is Killing Us (And The Planet)*
May 7, 2021
*Our Changing Climate*
Why does Capitalism cause climate change? Support this channel directly 
by becoming a Patreon backer: https://www.patreon.com/OurChangingCl...

    In this Our Changing Climate climate change video essay, I look at
    why capitalism is killing us (and the planet) by causing climate
    change. Specifically, I look at how capitalism's multinationals like
    ExxonMobil and BP are responsible for increased emissions and
    ultimately the climate crisis we are living through today.
    Capitalism's growth-at-all-costs paradigm runs counter to the
    material realities of the Earth we live on. In addition to causing
    climate change, capitalists have found insidious ways to profit off
    of and engrain free market, neoliberal ideas into the global economy
    in the wake of climate change-fueled disasters. This is called
    disaster capitalism and will only get worse as the climate crisis
    causes more and more chaos. Flying in the face of this capitalist
    destruction are countless revolutionary movements and ideas that are
    working to dismantle the profit and growth economy and lift up the
    people instead. Eco-socialism moving into communism, degrowth, buen
    vivir, and food sovereignty are just a few philosophical tactics
    that are being championed by the masses as a means of countering the
    destructive tendencies of capitalism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qxP2TzYcNw


[commentary from 2019 - pre-pandemic]
*The end times are here, and I am at Target*
On the strange experience of living through the only accurate doomsday 
prediction.
Hayes Brown -- AUG—07—2019
It’s a theory of mine that life in most societies involves being keenly 
aware that the end is coming. Your own individual end, yes, but also the 
end of this, the entire experience that is life as you’ve known it. The 
mass of our collective canon is littered with stories about the world’s 
end, where the death of mankind and the death of the universe can be 
seen as linked or interchangeable. It’s almost as if the second humans 
evolved enough to contemplate that we each must someday die, those early 
people immediately assumed that when we go, we all go, the entire world 
coming along for the ride, an unwritten murder-suicide pact between 
species and planet.

There’s a certain similarity in the way across the years that people 
have resigned themselves to meeting the end, often to the to the point 
of welcoming it with open arms. The exact beliefs of a new age group 
awaiting our planet’s collision with another in 2012 or a sect devoted 
to the numerology contained in the book of Eli or whatever don’t 
ultimately matter. Each of them decided that whatever doctrine was their 
truth, they felt it with every fiber of their being, they were 
convinced: “This is it, this is the time, the signs are all aligned for 
us, the universe, the whole mess of reality to call it quits. Make what 
preparations you can, cast off your worldly goods, the next awaits us! 
And it will be even more beautiful and peaceful than you’ve ever dreamed 
and the ills and suffering of this mortal plane shall trouble you no 
longer.” Death in the end is just a big temporary road bump before the 
next version of the world or humanity or both can come to pass.

I find myself thinking about doomsday cults fairly often as I wander the 
aisles inside the Target near the apartment I share with my girlfriend 
and our dog. This happened most recently during New York’s first 
heatwave of the year, the air doing its best to convince you it’s 
nearing 110 degrees, a preview of what’s to come. It’s impossible to 
tell from the inside, an almost pathological level of self-deception. 
Every minute spent inside that artificial oasis is another ticked away 
before our contract with the Earth runs out. The plentiful “Live, Laugh, 
Love” decor shapeshifts from a directive for your kooky aunt into a taunt.

It feels intensely unfair that after all the false starts and failed 
predictions that have stacked up throughout humanity’s run of things, 
each doled out with the utmost confidence, there’s finally honest proof 
that our finale is fast approaching. Maybe it’s a case of too many 
disappointments causing us to become more cynical. But while The 
Seekers’ UFO never came to transport them to another planet, Christ 
didn’t actually return in 1844, and Y2K preppers found themselves with a 
surplus of canned goods, climate change’s increasing impact on our lives 
can be felt daily and are only slated to get worse...
- -
We have a preponderance of evidence at this point and yet the very 
existence of anthropogenic climate change is still considered something 
to debate. Meanwhile, we — you, me, the other New Yorkers shuffling 
through the Target around me, your neighbors wherever you’re reading 
this — are somehow not stockpiling non-perishables and fleeing the 
coasts in search of high ground ahead of the looming end like you’d 
expect in a proper End Times. Instead, we’re just trying to get through 
the next day or week as we suffer through the early throes of our 
collective demise, hoping that we might be wrong about the whole thing.

We don’t have to wait long for the worst to arrive. Come 2050, 
civilization as we know it will start to tap out thanks to climate 
change, if a report from earlier this year is to be believed. Drawing on 
existing research and modeling, authors David Spratt and Ian Dunlop make 
a case that more than a billion people will be displaced as melting ice 
caps and glaciers raises the sea levels and the increased heat becomes 
lethal for huge swathes of the population for multiple days out of the 
year. It’s not conclusive — but it’s convincing.

Compare the works informing Spratt and Dunlop — including last year’s 
United Nations-backed report that warned of severe changes coming even 
sooner, in 2040 — to those at the fingertips of the men two thousand-odd 
years ago who foretold of the impending Second Kingdom. They had no 
precise models for when these crude forms would melt away, but their 
zeal, their conviction that it was just around the corner, helped win 
them their first converts. Many others since, most lost to history, have 
spent thir lives trying to predict Judgement Day’s arrival. Countless 
other people in turn followed them and their message. It was hard times 
for most of those years with even the privileged classes living in what 
would be considered squalor by modern standards. You could see why the 
promise of better days just around the corner, even if it meant the 
destruction of all that ever was, sounded appealing to the masses.

In the 21st century, we have raised the bar in terms of comfort. Under 
Target’s glaring fluorescent lights, assorted goods line the gleaming 
shelves, each full to bursting as if mocking the very idea of want. Ten 
varieties and scents of what’s basically the same laundry detergent 
which may or may not linger in the water supply fill my line of sight. 
In the grocery section, produce is picked over and left to spoil at the 
hint of a bruise. Life for the few — the massively wealthy on a global 
scale, the powerless compared to the truly rich in this world, the 
average human in the United States of America — is more convenient than 
it has ever been in human history. Small wonder that we aren’t exactly 
keen on imagining it all going away, either by choice or at the whims of 
a planet that feels as vengeful as an ancient god, and justifiably so.

Of course, unlike proponents of the Mayan calendar’s supposed prophecies 
or Nostradamus’s writings, the augurs of the climate movement come armed 
with science — repeatable and verifiable and very sure we’re on the edge 
of disaster. "This scenario provides a glimpse into a world of 'outright 
chaos' on a path to the end of human civilization and modern society as 
we have known it," Spratt and Dunlop wrote in exceedingly clear terms, 
"in which the challenges to global security are simply overwhelming and 
political panic becomes the norm." One of the authors of the UN’s report 
told the New York Times the evidence is “telling us we need to reverse 
emissions trends and turn the world economy on a dime.”...
- -
Climate scientists have a body of evidence that no other sibyl has ever 
produced and yet it’s still falling on deaf ears. And in the U.S. and in 
growing numbers abroad, powerful people have used a small fraction of 
their resources to stifle that message further. They deliver sermons of 
their own, telling the gathered throngs that the prophets are liars and 
the stars are being read wrong and Cassandra is a woman and a fool. It’s 
a scheme, a plot, a drive to take away your rights and their taxes and 
profits. The “political will” to avert Ragnarok just isn’t there.

Even without their efforts, the Church of Climate Change’s weakness is 
clear in its followers. Once you’re convinced that the Earth is rapidly 
heating and there’s only a little time left to stop it, then you’re in, 
you believe. You’re Paul on the road from Damascus, ready to spread the 
Word and call out the sinners who dare doubt the Newest Testament. But 
what kind of devotee secretly hopes that their principles of faith are 
wrong? What true believer wishes deep down inside that things will 
actually be fine in the end, so let’s just go back to not worrying about 
it and enjoying things exactly as they are now. “Here’s hoping what 
we’re predicting doesn’t come true after all” isn’t exactly a religion 
likely to retain members, let alone gain apostles.

After the recession placed a new cap on what milestones we can ever hope 
to achieve — owning a home, starting a family, planning our retirement, 
all former givens that now feel impossible to many of us — people in 
their thirties today are unlikely to see it that get much easier. Not 
given the trajectory of everything, not absent massive changes across 
the board societally — the kind of changes on a scale that manage to 
trouble both the fabulously wealthy and the merely comfortable. Even the 
most unshakeable in their worship of the dogma that climate change is 
our certain doom, the most committed vegans and environmentalists and 
ecologists and politicians living in the U.S. and Europe, are left 
hoping that surely it can’t be all that bad, can it? How much sacrifice 
will actually be necessary to keep us all alive? Isn’t not living 
through the Mad Max series worth the ignomimity that comes with being wrong?

We’re left wondering what we could possibly do as we turn up the air 
conditioning. Corporations continue to avoid paying additional taxes to 
help reverse the harm they’ve caused all while individuals are left to 
fret about whether their plastic straw is to blame for the ocean’s 
collapse and billionaires race to send people to space. Meanwhile, 
Anchorage, Alaska hit 90 degrees for the first time ever last month. 
Part of the Arctic is apparently on fire, spilling even more captured 
carbon into the air, a striking example of how self-reinforcing this is 
going to become, a perpetual motion machine but for environmental decay. 
Greenland’s ice is melting at a rate we weren’t supposed to see for 
another few decades, reading the waters to push higher than we’ve come 
to expect.

And yet when people actually have rushed into the streets with signs — 
begging that something, anything be done to stop this — they’ve been 
told sorry, it would be quite expensive and your plans would never work 
anyway. This from the same trustworthy visionaries who launched a 
Forever War and tanked the global economy. We won’t even touch on the 
sixth great extinction occurring all around us or the rapid depletion of 
non-renewable resources, we only have the capacity to consider one facet 
of our annihilation at a time.

Generation Z, bless them, seems to be determined to not go down without 
a fight as they’ve shown in the climate marches taking place around the 
globe. Even their more conservative members are pushing for climate 
change to be taken seriously. And who knows? Maybe the Green New Deal or 
the Paris Climate Accord or Extinction Rebellion or some other Proper 
Noun Yet To Come is the thing that saves us all. I still want to hope 
that someone or something big swoops in last second, a secular messiah, 
some deus ex machina of world-altering proportions. But it’s getting 
harder to see that happening as the days tick away.

Maybe it’s the whole rebirth thing that this particular looming doomsday 
is missing. There’s no better place awaiting us in the gospel according 
to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Only struggle and 
suffering and the seven seals opening make an appearance in their 
Revelation. That could be why it’s so difficult to convert true zealots 
from the casual climate believer, let alone the entirely unconvinced — 
what’s the point of an apocalypse without a Rapture? The IPCC should 
consider adding one, shifting focus to the new utopia that could arise 
if only we repent from our sinful ways...
- -
We’re about due for a new major religion in any case, historically 
speaking. Maybe the scientists of today will wind up becoming the 
oracles of the post-apocalypse tomorrow, seen as warning against the 
wrath of the new gods that have taken root during whatever comes next. 
Neo-priests could someday be poring over the documents that have 
survived as they attempt to piece together how the last era ended and 
the gods of the water and the sun chose to punish us our hubris. I 
reflect on this as I grab another plastic box of fruit imported from 
Latin America and grown using a massive amount of resources that I may 
or may not get around to actually eating.

The weight of knowing, this time really knowing, our future is taking 
its toll. It can’t not — the crush of bad news is unavoidable lately and 
the climate going haywire manages to be just one of another dozen issues 
that demands our attention at any given moment, even as it towers over 
them in terms of potential long-term impact. We’re clearly not the first 
generation to be sure ours is the last, but we’re definitely the first 
to have overburdened the field of psychology with our rising dread. 
Still, it’s amazing how much the human mind can compartmentalize when 
faced with something as vast as extinction. The headlines and news 
alerts and marches and panels get filed in the mental Pocket folder 
marked “for later” that you have absolutely intention of ever going back 
to but gives you the satisfaction of having been interested in the 
article in the first place. We do our best to go about our days, filling 
them with a constant stream of distractions...
- -
https://theoutline.com/post/7754/climate-change-doomsday-cults-prophecy




[The news archive - looking back]
*On this day in the history of global warming August 26, 2001*
August 26, 2001: The Los Angeles Times reports:

"Throughout February and March, executives representing electricity, 
coal, natural gas and nuclear interests paraded quietly in small groups 
to a building in the White House compound, where the new 
administration's energy policy was being written.

"Some firms sent emissaries more than once. Enron Corp., which trades 
electricity and natural gas, once got three top officials into a private 
session with Vice President Dick Cheney, who headed the energy task 
force. Cheney did 'a lot of listening,' according to a company spokesman.

"Many of the executives at the White House meetings were generous donors 
to the Republican Party, and some of their key lobbyists were freshly 
hired from the Bush presidential campaign. They found a receptive task 
force. Among its ranks were three former energy industry executives and 
consultants. The task force also included a Bush agency head who was 
involved in the sensitive discussions while his wife took in thousands 
of dollars in fees from three electricity producers.

"The final report, issued May 16, boosted the nation's energy 
industries. It called for additional coal production, and five days 
later the world's largest coal company, Peabody Energy, issued a public 
stock offering, raising about $60 million more than expected. While 
Peabody was preparing to go public, its chief executive and vice 
president participated in a March 1 meeting with Cheney."

http://articles.latimes.com/2001/aug/26/news/mn-38530

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


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