[✔️] December 15, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
👀 Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Wed Dec 15 08:56:09 EST 2021
/*December 15, 2021*/
/[ now is the best time to change ] /
*Despite His Promises, Biden Is Still Serving Fossil Fuel Interests*
William Rivers Pitt, Truthout
December 14, 2021...
- -
November’s COP 26 international environmental summit in Glasgow was an
unsurprising disappointment on pretty much every level: A bunch of world
leaders beholden to the global energy industry came together in the rain
to pretend they were making progress on the existential threat hovering
over us all, but the act wore thin in a hurry. An environmental summit
whose participants cannot summon the will to admit that burning coal is
bad for the air and water is an environmental summit that should have
stayed in bed.
Adding insult to injury, the Biden administration held a massive lease
sale for oil and gas drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico scant days
after the conclusion of the summit. Some 80 million acres of sea floor —
which could contain more than a billion barrels of oil and more than 4
trillion cubic feet of natural gas — were up for grabs. According to an
analysis by The Center for American Progress, “[T]he offshore lease sale
alone has the potential to emit 723 million metric tons of CO2 into the
atmosphere over its lifetime, equivalent to operating more than 70
percent of the United States’ coal-fired power plants for a year.”...
- -
President Biden campaigned hard on salvaging the climate fight before it
is too late. While he is no Donald Trump, Biden has been revealed in
this oil lease fiasco as yet another lying politician willing to eat
dirt for the fossil fuel industry. Trump would have done these things
and then claimed he didn’t, but would’ve said that even if he had done
them, which he didn’t, they were the right things to do. Biden just does
them, and moves on down the line.
The president has broken the First Rule of Birds. The trouble is, this
nest belongs to all of us, and we are well and truly screwed without it.
https://truthout.org/articles/biden-campaigned-on-climate-wheres-the-bold-action/
/
/
/[ important short video talk about the power of misinformation - from
John Cook ]/
*The Science of Cranky Uncle Part 1: Why We Can't Ignore Misinformation*
Dec 14, 2021
John Cook
Part 1 of the Science of Cranky Uncle looks at research into the
damaging impact of climate misinformation and why we can't afford to
ignore it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS7LroDUf-s
/[ James Hansen is the grandfather scientist and activist of American
global warming ]/
*“Don’t Look Up,” the American Dream, and An Appeal*
14 December 2021
James Hansen
“Imagine a giant asteroid on a direct collision course with Earth..
That’s the equivalent of what we face now.”
That’s what I said in my TED talk on global warming a decade ago. Don’t
Look Up, to be released December
24 on Netflix, uses the same idea to telescope time by two orders of
magnitude – from half a century needed to
change global energy systems down to half a year to divert an asteroid.
Six months is an action timescale that
can engage the public. (I took the photo above of the stellar cast1
of Don’t Look Up at its world premiere.)
Scientists are frustrated as they try to communicate the emergency in
both the asteroid story and the real-world
climate story. Villains in the asteroid story include greedy
industrialists, incompetent and corrupt government,
media that abdicate responsible reporting in favor of ratings, and a
public focused on tabloid entertainment.
With all that headwind, can the asteroid story have a happy ending? I
won’t spoil that, but the film achieves a
degree of satisfaction on Earth and on a far-away planet with the help
of colorful, carnivorous animals.
The real climate story faces those headwinds and more. The long
timescale brings intergenerational conflict:
today’s adult leaders fail to take needed actions, but today’s young
people and offspring bear the consequences.
The story is complex because the villain is a hero. Fossil fuels are
remarkable condensed energy that has raised
living standards in most of the world. The world won’t turn its back on
fossil fuels without better alternatives.
The climate story could have a happy ending – but young people must play
a leading role to achieve that.
They have incentive and tools to fight with, but winning requires
understanding the big picture. Perhaps we old
people can provide information, so I address my comments to young people.
It is helpful to look first at the global picture. China and the United
States together are responsible for almost
half of global fossil fuel carbon emissions today, with China’s
emissions more than double those of the U.S.
However, climate change is driven by cumulative historical emissions,
for which the U.S. is most responsible.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2021/DontLookUp.14December2021.pdf
- -
/[ -- one of the key TED talks of all time, and the essential science
by Hansen ]/
*James Hansen: Why I must speak out about climate change*
Mar 7, 2012
TED
http://www.ted.com Top climate scientist James Hansen tells the story of
his involvement in the science of and debate over global climate change.
In doing so he outlines the overwhelming evidence that change is
happening and why that makes him deeply worried about the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWInyaMWBY8
/[ More every year ]/
*Killer heatwaves and floods: Climate change worsened 2021 weather extremes*
By Lisa Shumaker and Andrea Januta
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/killer-heatwaves-floods-climate-change-worsened-weather-extremes-2021-2021-12-13/
- -
/[ Our globe must go with the flow ]/
*The Atlantic’s vital currents could collapse. Scientists are racing to
understand the dangers.*
So far, the efforts to observe the currents directly show they're
weirder and more unpredictable than expected.
- -
The Atlantic circulation is, effectively, one leg of the world’s
mightiest river. It runs tens of thousands of miles from the Southern
Ocean to Greenland and back, ping-ponging between the southwestern coast
of Africa, the southeastern US, and Western Europe.
The system carries warm, shallow, salty water northward, transporting
about 1.2 million gigawatts of heat energy across RAPID’s array of
moorings at any moment. That’s equivalent to about 160 times the energy
capacity of the entire world’s electricity system. The currents, which
heat up the surrounding air as they travel northward, are a major factor
(though not the only one) in why Western Europe is warmer than eastern
Canada even though they lie at roughly the same latitude.
The waters become cooler and denser as they reach the high latitudes,
forcing the currents to dive miles below the surface, spread outward,
and bend back southward. That sinking of the water deep into the ocean
helps propel the system.
The problem is the Atlantic circulation seems to be weakening,
transporting less water and heat. Because of climate change, melting ice
sheets are pouring fresh water into the ocean at the higher latitudes,
and the surface waters are retaining more of their heat. Warmer and
fresher waters are less dense and thus not as prone to sink, which may
be undermining one of the currents’ core driving forces...
- -
The Atlantic circulation is, effectively, one leg of the world’s
mightiest river. It runs tens of thousands of miles from the Southern
Ocean to Greenland and back, ping-ponging between the southwestern coast
of Africa, the southeastern US, and Western Europe.
The system carries warm, shallow, salty water northward, transporting
about 1.2 million gigawatts of heat energy across RAPID’s array of
moorings at any moment. That’s equivalent to about 160 times the energy
capacity of the entire world’s electricity system. The currents, which
heat up the surrounding air as they travel northward, are a major factor
(though not the only one) in why Western Europe is warmer than eastern
Canada even though they lie at roughly the same latitude.
The waters become cooler and denser as they reach the high latitudes,
forcing the currents to dive miles below the surface, spread outward,
and bend back southward. That sinking of the water deep into the ocean
helps propel the system.
The problem is the Atlantic circulation seems to be weakening,
transporting less water and heat. Because of climate change, melting ice
sheets are pouring fresh water into the ocean at the higher latitudes,
and the surface waters are retaining more of their heat. Warmer and
fresher waters are less dense and thus not as prone to sink, which may
be undermining one of the currents’ core driving forces...
- -
So far, what the monitoring programs have largely found is that the
Atlantic circulation is more variable than previously believed, she says.
Its strength and speed fluctuate dramatically from month to month, year
to year, and region to region. Most of the deep-water sinking in the
North Atlantic seems to be occurring not in the Labrador Sea, as long
believed, but rather in the basins to the east of Greenland. The
northward- and southward-flowing limbs operate more independently than
previously understood. Local wind patterns seem to exercise a more
influential role than expected. And some findings are just befuddling.
It’s very likely that the Atlantic circulation has weakened. Studies by
Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute and others have concluded it’s about
15% slower than during the mid-20th century and may be at its weakest in
more than 1,000 years. Both findings are based, in part, on long-term
reconstructions of its behavior using records like Atlantic Ocean
temperatures and the size of grains on the ocean floor, which can
reflect changes in deep-sea currents.
There’s also “strong agreement” in models that the currents will
continue to weaken this century if greenhouse-gas emissions continue.
But there’s uncertainty about what state the system is in at the moment,
and whether the direct observations are aligning with the models...
- -
The general conception of a tipping point is that there’s some fixed
physical threshold beyond which the system trips into a different state.
But they found that a lesser-known phenomenon known as a rate-induced
tipping point, triggered by a sudden increase in the system’s rate of
change, might halt the currents as well. In other words, too much change
occurring too fast could cause the system to break down.
The Atlantic circulation could be susceptible to this if the water
flowing from ice sheets increases rapidly enough, according to the
study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences in March.
It’s just one model and one study, but it suggests that the climate
system could be more fragile than previously appreciated...
- -
“The only thing we can say is that in the course of the last century the
AMOC has moved toward its critical point (which on its own had not been
expected by many),” he wrote in an email. “And that with every
additional ton of emitted greenhouse gases, we’ll likely push it further.”
So what happens if the Atlantic circulation collapses?...
- -
A certain amount of weakening may act as a counterforce against climate
change, mitigating to some degree the warming that would otherwise take
place. But how these competing forces balance out overall and over time
would depend on multiple, overlapping layers of uncertainty: how much
the system weakens; whether it shuts down entirely; how much less carbon
dioxide the oceans, forests, and farms pull down; and how much warmer
the planet gets...
- -
“The ocean matters. The ocean carries a huge amount of heat. It
sequesters carbon. It moves nutrients around. If we didn’t have the
ocean circulation or upwelling, you wouldn’t have fish. The whole ocean
matters, and the AMOC, that large circulation, is a big part of what the
ocean is doing.”
But that is also arguably the biggest reason to worry about how human
actions could alter one of the planet’s most complex—and
exquisite—natural systems. There are, as Lozier and Baringer note, more
imminent climate risks to worry about. But in the long term, perturbing
this immensely powerful network of ocean currents could be the biggest
climate risk the world is taking.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/12/14/1041321/climate-change-ocean-atlantic-circulation/
/[ Weathercasters as super-heros ] /
*Not just the weather: How TV meteorologists influence the public’s
views on climate*
By John Morales | December 13, 2021
- -
The climate crisis is, indeed, a wicked problem that requires a
herculean effort. But the known solutions to mitigate climate change are
not fantastical—they are real and actionable. The momentum towards
collective local, national, and international climate action is stronger
than it’s ever been. And thanks to broadcast meteorologists, a more
engaged American public can demand those in power act on climate now, or
face the consequences.
https://thebulletin.org/2021/12/not-just-the-weather-how-tv-meteorologists-influence-the-publics-views-on-climate/
/[ Academic paper ]/
Climatic Change
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-021-03244-4
*The role of public relations firms in climate change politics*
Robert J. Brulle · Carter Werthman
Abstract
Climate change policy has long been subject to influence by a wide
variety of organizations. Despite their importance, the key role of
public relations (PR) firms has long been
overlooked in the climate political space. This paper provides an
exploratory overview of
the extent and nature of involvement of PR firms in climate political
action by organizations in five sectors: Coal/Steel/Rail, Oil & Gas,
Utilities, Renewable Energy, and the Environmental Movement. The
analysis shows that the engagement of public relations firms by
organizations in all of these sectors is widespread. In absolute terms,
the Utility and Gas &
Oil sectors engage the most PR firms, and the Environmental Movement
engages the fewest. Organizations in the Utilities Sector show a
statistically significant higher use of PR
firms than the other sectors. Within each sector, engagement of PR firms
is concentrated in
a few firms, and the major oil companies and electrical-supply
manufactures are the heaviest employers of such firms. PR firms
generally specialize in representing specific sectors,
and a few larger PR firms are widely engaged in climate and energy
political activity. PR
firms developed campaigns that frequently relied on third-party groups
to engage with the
public, criticize opponents, and serve as the face of an advertising
campaign. Our analysis
shows that PR firms are a key organizational actor in climate politics.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-021-03244-4
/[ comparison to another great movie ]
/*“DON’T LOOK UP” IS AS FUNNY AND TERRIFYING ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING AS
“DR. STRANGELOVE” WAS ABOUT NUCLEAR WAR*
Adam McKay’s new movie may be the first film in 57 years to equal the
comedy and horror of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece.
Jon Schwarz -- Dec 12 2021,
https://theintercept.com/2021/12/12/dont-look-up-review-adam-mckay-dr-strangelove/
/[ disturbing, elegant coffee-table book ] /
*"The Atlas of Disappearing Places"*
ABOUT THE BOOK:
A beautiful and engaging guide to global warming’s impacts around the world.
Our planet is in peril. Seas are rising, oceans are acidifying, ice is
melting, coasts are flooding, species are dying, and communities are
faltering. Despite these dire circumstances, most of us don’t have a
clear sense of how the interconnected crises in our ocean are affecting
the climate system, food webs, coastal cities, and biodiversity, and
which solutions can help us co-create a better future.
Through a rich combination of place-based storytelling, clear
explanations of climate science and policy, and beautifully rendered
maps that use a unique ink-on-dried-seaweed technique, "The Atlas of
Disappearing Places" depicts twenty locations across the globe, from
Shanghai and Antarctica to Houston and the Cook Islands. The authors
describe four climate change impacts—changing chemistry, warming waters,
strengthening storms, and rising seas—using the metaphor of the ocean as
a body to draw parallels between natural systems and human systems.
Each chapter paints a portrait of an existential threat in a particular
place, detailing what will be lost if we do not take bold action now.
Weaving together contemporary stories and speculative “future histories”
for each place, this work considers both the serious consequences if we
continue to pursue business as usual, and what we can do—from government
policies to grassroots activism—to write a different, more hopeful story.
A beautiful work of art and an indispensable resource to learn more
about the devastating consequences of the climate crisis—as well as
possibilities for individual and collective action—"The Atlas of
Disappearing Places" will engage and inspire readers on the most
pressing issue of our time.
https://www.king5.com/article/entertainment/television/programs/new-day-northwest/climate-change-global-warming-extreme-weather-rising-seas-world-atlas/281-c8c4eabf-9311-45cc-a4ce-23b8f7074c1d
https://www.king5.com/video/entertainment/television/programs/new-day-northwest/the-atlas-of-disappearing-places-shows-the-effects-of-our-changing-climate-new-day-nw/281-e567e66e-58eb-480c-9d28-dd3dcd6e3e72?jwsource=em
/
/
/[ News release - green is the essence, not the color ]/
*Green concrete to help fight global warming*
These days, topics related to alternative cements and geopolymers are
considered as advanced and up-to-date research areas in the fields of
civil engineering and construction materials.
December 14, 2021
- -
Though geopolymer concrete technology has been employed in limited
projects in different countries such as China, Australia, France, and
the USA, there are some issues regarding the complexity of this
technology that need to be solved before its extensive application in
the industry. It may take some time before this ‘new’ concrete will be
used more regularly in the construction industry.
https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/12/14/2351452/0/en/Green-concrete-to-help-fight-global-warming.html
/[The news archive - looking back only a decade ago ]/
*On this day in the history of global warming December 15, 2010*
Media Matters reports on a leaked memo that reveals the Fox News
Channel's unfairness and imbalance with regard to climate science:
"In the midst of global climate change talks last December, a top
Fox News official sent an email questioning the 'veracity of climate
change data' and ordering the network's journalists to 'refrain from
asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period
without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon
data that critics have called into question.'
"The directive, sent by Fox News Washington managing editor Bill
Sammon, was issued less than 15 minutes after Fox correspondent
Wendell Goler accurately reported on-air that the United Nations'
World Meteorological Organization announced that 2000-2009 was 'on
track to be the warmest [decade] on record.'
"This latest revelation comes after Media Matters uncovered an email
sent by Sammon to Fox journalists at the peak of the health care
reform debate, ordering them to avoid using the term 'public option'
and instead use variations of 'government option.' That email echoed
advice from a prominent Republican pollster on how to help turn
public opinion against health care reform.
"Sources familiar with the situation in Fox's Washington bureau have
expressed concern about Sammon using his position to 'slant' Fox's
supposedly neutral news coverage to the right."
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2010/12/15/foxleaks-fox-boss-ordered-staff-to-cast-doubt-o/174317
http://youtu.be/Kh0AmjHke1M
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