[✔️] December 22, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[👀 Richard Pauli]

/*December 22, 2021*/

/[  These are the top NYTimes climate stories of the past year - with 
data from years ago  ] /
*The Year in Climate News*
A lot happened this year. Jog your memory with stories compiled by The 
New York Times climate desk.
- -
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/22/climate/climate-change-year-in-review-2021.html


/[  clips from  Dr Michael E. Mann  ] /
*Global destruction isn’t funny, but when it comes to the climate 
crisis, it might have to be*
Science isn’t finished until it’s successfully communicated. ‘Don’t Look 
Up’ succeeds not because it’s funny and entertaining, but because it’s 
serious sociopolitical commentary posing as comedy.
By Michael E. Mann - Dec 21, 2021
As a scientist devoted to communicating the dangerous impacts of climate 
change, I don’t want Adam McKay’s new film, “Don’t Look Up,” to one day 
be remembered as prescient and accurate...
- -
So how can climate advocates break through this calcified information 
environment? We have to look for another way in. Humor and satire can 
help. Though a serious scientist at heart, I’m a convert to this way of 
thinking. It’s why I’ve done interviews with Bill Maher and Al Franken. 
And it’s why I’ve partnered with editorial cartoonist Tom Toles to 
communicate the climate crisis. It’s the same reason Charlie Chaplin 
deployed humor as a clarion call against fascism and antisemitism, and 
as a wake-up call for America to eschew neutrality and rescue Europe 
from Hitler’s Germany: Humor and satire are powerful vehicles for 
change. And scientific research supports this.

Recent peer-reviewed studies have demonstrated that humor is a powerful 
tool for engaging the public on climate change. These studies followed a 
March 2017 report of the American Psychological Association that defined 
ecoanxiety as “chronic fear of environmental doom.” The report described 
an increase in depression and anxiety caused by peoples’ “inability to 
feel like they are making a difference in stopping climate change” but 
that “climate-change humor stops people from worrying about their 
politics and lets them take in the information. . . . Scientists don’t 
always understand their audience. Getting someone to laugh is half of 
the work of getting them to understand.”

Which brings me back to “Don’t Look Up.” McKay’s film succeeds not 
because it’s funny and entertaining; it’s serious sociopolitical 
commentary posing as comedy. It’s a cautionary tale about the climate 
crisis stitched together by McKay’s signature biting humor. That’s the 
spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down.

As we look toward the next decade — a critical decade from the 
standpoint of averting truly catastrophic climate change — we need more 
unconventional endeavors like “Don’t Look Up” to communicate the perils 
of climate inaction. Scientific research, on its own, will travel only 
so far (until scientists distill a 900-page report into a 90-second 
TikTok). Science isn’t finished until it’s successfully communicated.

As Beth Osnes, associate professor of theater and environmental studies 
at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said, “Climate change isn’t a 
laughing matter, but sometimes you have to laugh at your pain to get to 
a solution.” So let’s stop to have a laugh or two. And then get on with 
the work at hand.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/12/21/opinion/global-destruction-isnt-funny-when-it-comes-climate-crisis-it-might-have-be/

- -

/[   Michael E. Mann's Hockey Stick Graph is now updated  ] /
*What the Hockey Stick missed about climate change*
Dec 10, 2021
Simon Clark
The infamous hockey stick figure was published in 1999. A new paper just 
blew it out of the water with an INCREDIBLE reconstruction...
You may have already heard of the 1999 hockey stick created by Michael 
Mann, Malcolm Hughes, and Raymond Bradley. It's a frequent skeptic 
talking point, and was involved in a whole scandal called climategate 
that rocked the scientific world. Eventually however it was validated by 
dozens of independent studies, and its conclusions accepted - the world 
is currently undergoing warming the likes of which humans have never 
seen before. Last month however, the hockey stick got an amazing 
upgrade. A new paper by Osman et al reconstructed the past 24,000 years 
of climate using new techniques, and gave us new insights into just how 
unprecedented anthropogenic global warming really is.
https://youtu.be/CqtZdnpfgIc

- -

/[  More info  ]/
*Scientists extend and straighten iconic climate “hockey stick”*
24,000 years of climate history, with our current warming being unique 
in the record.
- -
So what changed?
Osman and colleagues concluded that most of the conundrum’s resolution 
is due to the sophisticated handling of geographic unevenness in their 
data compared to prior work. “Older reconstructions are just binned 
latitudinal averages,” said Tierney. “[That] method has a downside in 
that it doesn’t account for temperature changes in regions that are 
unsampled.”

Tierney’s team also found the conundrum could not be explained by 
seasonal growth of the plankton and algae used to reconstruct 
temperatures. “Even after accounting for seasonal bias, we still could 
not reconcile the [results] with reconstructions based on proxies 
alone,” said Tierney. “This led us to conclude that spatial 
representation was the most important factor.”

Dr. Shaun Marcott of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who led a 
proxy reconstruction of Holocene climate in 2013, told Ars that the new 
work is a significant step forward. "The full field surface temperature 
reanalysis… is well beyond prior papers and has taken this team of 
scientists close to a decade to build," he said, adding, "It is a 
triumph, and what this group has been doing is spectacular!"

For Mann, who had to go all the way to the US Supreme Court to defend 
his work and reputation, this work represents yet another vindication. 
“It’s become clear that the hockey stick ‘handle’ is much longer, and 
the ‘blade’ is sharper as we’ve warmed substantially since 1998 when we 
first published the ‘Hockey Stick,’” he told Ars.

Nature, 2021. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03984-4
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/11/scientists-extend-and-straighten-iconic-climate-hockey-stick/



/[  good idea, tell others, get one, keep the batteries fresh ... ]/
*Watching for Extreme Weather? Try a Radio*
There are many ways to stay informed. A weather radio is one of the most 
reliable
When you live in Tornado Alley, you get used to the school drills, the 
periodic testing of the sirens, and storms that knock over trees and 
flood roadways. A face you know above all others is the broadcast 
meteorologist, who tells you routinely about tornado watches, and 
occasionally tornado warnings. When tornadoes materialize, this feature 
of our everyday existence becomes horribly, surprisingly real.

As I followed the news recently in Kentucky and Tennessee, I was 
dumbstruck. Severe storms are becoming more frequent, and more 
destructive. And even though, as a journalist, and a Texan, I’ve 
witnessed tornado destruction many times in my life, it’s still hard to 
wrap your head around the images of rubble, the overturned cars, and 
trees, and buildings torn to shreds next to ones barely touched. It’s 
been hard to fathom the number of lives lost in one weekend, in part 
because these storms came in the night, in December, when tornadoes are 
rare, and many people were asleep...
/[get a radio]/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/watching-for-extreme-weather-try-a-radio/



/[The news archive - looking back to  climate scientist Charles David 
Keeling.] /*
**On this day in the history of global warming December 22, 2010*
December 22, 2010: The New York Times reports on the legacy of the late 
climate scientist Charles David Keeling.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/science/earth/22carbon.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

December 22, 2011: In Commentary magazine, former George W. Bush 
administration official Peter Wehner writes:

    "Our task is to win the debate on the merits, to employ, as best we
    can, honest and credible arguments in order to ascertain the reality
    of things. And if the science shows that Earth is warming and that
    humans have played a role in that, then we need to accept it, even
    if that puts us on the same side with some individuals we don’t find
    particularly appealing. What matters is where the truth lies, not
    the company we find ourselves in...

    "In 2006, the Climate Science Program, a federal program under the
    direction of the Bush White House and sponsored by agencies
    including NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
    Administration, found 'clear evidence of human influences on the
    climate system.' There are several others I could cite.

    "The point is that these reports are sober, measured and serious.
    They make a scientific, not a polemical, case for AGW. It’s possible
    they are wrong. But their case has been made in a persuasive and
    empirical manner...it matters that all the world’s major science
    academies have said that AGW is occurring, and they have supplied
    the empirical case for their findings. The challenge for
    conservatives is to engage the most serious and honest arguments of
    those who believe in AGW, not simply lock in on the global
    alarmists. And the temptation conservatives need to resist is to
    portray the entire climate change movement as consisting of
    individuals who are more interested in ideology than science...for
    some on the right...to insist that AGW is a hoax, the product (more
    or less) of a massive conspiracy, is, I believe, damaging to
    conservatism. That is something I do care about. And more than that,
    it is, from what I can tell, a position at odds with where the
    evidence leads. Contemporary liberalism can do as it will. But for
    conservatism, facts–those stubborn facts–need to be our guiding star."

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/12/22/conservatives-climate-change-facts/


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