[TheClimate.Vote] February 2, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*February 2, 2021*/

[NYT]
*Forecast: Wild Weather in a Warming World*
The polar vortex is experiencing an unusually long disturbance this year 
because of a “sudden stratospheric warming.” Bundle up.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/30/climate/polar-vortex-weather-climate-change.html


[Ongoing ]
*How Climate Change May Affect Your Health*
No matter where you live or how high your socioeconomic status, climate 
change can endanger your health, both physical and mental, now and in 
the future.
Jane E. Brody - Feb. 1, 2021
Melting ice caps, warmer oceans, intense storms, heat waves, droughts, 
floods and wildfires — all these well-documented effects of climate 
change may seem too remote to many people to prompt them to adopt 
behaviors that can slow the warming of the planet. Unless your 
neighborhood was destroyed by a severe hurricane or raging wildfire, you 
might think such disasters happen only to other people.

But what if I told you that no matter where you live or how high your 
socioeconomic status, climate change can endanger your health, both 
physical and mental, now and in the future? Not only your health, but 
also the health of your children and grandchildren? Might you consider 
making changes to help mitigate the threat?

Relatively few Americans associate climate change with possible harms to 
their health, and most have given little thought to this possibility. 
Even though I read widely about medical issues, like most Americans, I 
too was unaware of how many health hazards can accompany climate change.

Studies in the United States and Britain have shown that “people have a 
strong tendency to see climate change as less threatening to their 
health and to their family’s health than to other people’s health,” 
according to Julia Hathaway and Edward W. Maibach at the Center for 
Climate Change Communication at George Mason University.

Two recently published reports set me straight. One, by two public 
health experts, called for the creation within the National Institutes 
of Health of a “National Institute of Climate Change and Health” to 
better inform the medical community, public officials and ordinary 
citizens about ways to stanch looming threats to human health from 
further increases in global warming.

The experts, Dr. Howard Frumkin and Dr. Richard J. Jackson, both former 
directors of the National Center for Environmental Health at the Centers 
for Disease Control and Prevention, warned that recent climate-related 
disasters, including devastating wildfires and a record-breaking 
hurricane season, demonstrate that our failure to take climate change 
seriously is resulting in needless suffering and death.

The second report appeared just as I began investigating the evidence 
supporting their proposal: a full-page article in The New York Times on 
Nov. 29 with the headline “Wildfire Smoke in California Is Poisoning 
Children.” It described lung damage along with lifelong threats to the 
health of youngsters forced to breathe smoke-laden air from wildfires 
that began raging in August and fouled the air throughout the fall.

Children are not the only ones endangered. Anyone with asthma can 
experience life-threatening attacks when pollution levels soar. The 
risks of heart disease and stroke rise. And a recent study in JAMA 
Neurology of more than 18,000 Americans with cognitive impairment found 
a strong link between high levels of air pollution and an increased risk 
of developing dementia.

“While anyone’s health can be harmed by climate change, some people are 
at greatly increased risk, including young children, pregnant women, 
older adults, people with chronic illnesses and disabilities, outdoor 
workers, and people with fewer resources,” Drs. Hathaway and Maibach 
wrote in Current Environmental Health Reports.

Alas, said Dr. Jackson, emeritus professor at the University of 
California, Los Angeles, “Human beings respond only to what is a threat 
to them at the moment. Californians are now much more aware — the fires 
got people’s attention.” The wildfire season is now starting much 
earlier and ending later as a result of a warming climate, an 
international research team reported in The New England Journal of 
Medicine in November.

Dr. Frumkin, emeritus professor at the University of Washington, told 
me, “Lots of people who don’t consider climate change a major problem 
relative to themselves do take it seriously when they realize it’s a 
health concern. Heat waves, for example, not only kill people, they also 
diminish work capacity, sleep quality and academic performance in children.”

“Our changing climate will have much more of an impact on people’s 
health over time,” Dr. Jackson said. People of all ages will develop 
respiratory allergies, and those who already have allergies can expect 
them to get worse, as plants and trees respond to a warmer climate and 
release their allergens in more places and for longer periods.

Infectious diseases carried by ticks, mosquitoes and other vectors also 
rise with a warming climate. Even small increases in temperature in 
temperate zones raise the potential for epidemics of Lyme disease, Rocky 
Mountain spotted fever, encephalitis and other tick-borne infections, as 
well as mosquito-borne West Nile disease, dengue fever and even malaria.

Climate change endangers the safety of foods and water supplies by 
fostering organisms that cause food poisoning and microbial 
contamination of drinking water. Extreme flooding and hurricanes can 
spawn epidemics of leptospirosis; just walking through floodwaters can 
increase the risk of this bacterial blood infection 15-fold.

These are just a smattering of the health risks linked to global 
warming. They are extensive and require both societal and individual 
efforts to minimize. Yes, society is changing, albeit slowly. The Biden 
administration has rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement. General Motors, 
the nation’s largest car manufacturer, announced it would dedicate 
itself to electric vehicles and other green energy initiatives, and 
Ford, Volkswagen and others are doing the same.

Lest you feel you can’t make a difference, let me suggest some steps 
many of us can take to help assure a healthier future for everyone.
I assume you’ve already changed your light bulbs to more efficient LEDs. 
But have you checked the source of your electricity to see that it 
relies primarily on nonpolluting renewable energy sources? Can you 
install solar panels where you live? If you can afford to, replace old 
energy-guzzling appliances with new efficient ones. And don’t waste 
electricity or water.

Now tackle transportation. Drive less and use people power more. 
Wherever possible, commute and run errands by cycling, walking or 
scootering, which can also directly enhance your health. Or take public 
transportation. If you must drive, consider getting an electric car, 
which can save fuel costs as well as protect the environment.

How about a dietary inventory, one that can enhance your health both 
directly and indirectly? Cutting back on or cutting out red meat to 
reduce greenhouse gases, relying instead on plant-based foods, is the 
perfect start to a healthier planet and its human inhabitants.

Reduce waste. Currently, Dr. Jackson said, 30 percent of our food is 
wasted. Buy only what you need and use it before it spoils. Support 
organizations like City Harvest, which distributes unsold food from 
stores and unused food from restaurants to those in need.

Reuse or recycle materials instead of throwing out everything you no 
longer want nor need.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/01/well/eat/climate-change-health.html



[watch out]
*Wildfire smoke may carry ‘mind-bending’ amounts of fungi and bacteria, 
scientists say*
JOSEPH SERNA - FEB. 1, 2021
When wildfires roar through a forest and bulldozers dig into the earth 
to stop advancing flames, they may be churning more into the air than 
just clouds of dust and smoke, scientists say.

Those dark, billowing plumes of smoke that rise on waves of heat during 
the day and sink into valleys as the night air cools may be transporting 
countless living microbes that can seep into our lungs or cling to our 
skin and clothing, according to research published recently in Science. 
In some cases, researchers fear that airborne pathogens could sicken 
firefighters or downwind residents.

“We were inspired to write this because we recognize that there are many 
trillions of microbes in smoke that haven’t really been incorporated in 
an understanding ... of human health,” said Leda Kobziar, the University 
of Idaho’s wildland fire science director. “At this point, it’s really 
unknown. The diversity of microbes that we’ve found are really 
mind-bending.”

As this recent fire seasons suggests, the need to understand what’s in 
the wildfire smoke we can’t help but breathe and how it may affect us 
has never been more pronounced, but scientists say we are seriously 
behind the curve.

Wildfires burned across more than 10.2 million acres of the United 
States in 2020, federal statistics show, including some 4.2 million 
acres in California, where a greater number of residents were exposed to 
smoke for a longer period of time than ever before.

Wildfire smoke now accounts for up to half of all fine-particle 
pollution in the Western U.S., according to researchers. Although there 
are many studies on the long-term impacts to human health from urban air 
pollution and short-term impacts from wildfire smoke, there’s little 
known about the multitude of ways the latter can hurt us over a lifetime.

“Frankly, we don’t really know about the long-term effects of wildfire 
smoke because community exposures haven’t been long-term before,” said 
Dr. John Balmes, a professor of medicine at UC San Francisco and a 
member of the California Air Resources Board.

But humans — and Californians in particular — should expect to inhale 
more wildfire smoke in the future.

Scientists say the planet will continue warming for decades to come, 
even if humans suddenly collectively act to stop climate change. This 
warming, and other factors, are contributing to ever more destructive 
wildfires. The state’s forests, meanwhile, are struggling to adapt and 
native plants are being displaced by faster-burning invasive species.

Add to those trends a global pandemic that attacks the respiratory 
system, and microbe-filled fire smoke every year could be considered a 
growing health risk, researchers say. They wonder whether microbes in 
wildfire smoke could make cancer patients more vulnerable to infections 
or make children with asthma more prone to developing pneumonia.

Scientists believe some microbes survive and even proliferate in 
wildfire, where heat scorches the ground and leaves behind a layer of 
carbon that shields microbes within the earth from intense heat. Others 
survive in the air because wildfire particulates can absorb the sun’s 
otherwise lethal ultraviolet radiation, the scientists said. And still 
other spores are likely spread on wind currents caused by fire.

Kobziar and study co-author George Thompson III, an associate professor 
of medicine at UC Davis, said that up until now, the connection between 
microbes and wildfires has been anecdotal — such as the tendency for 
wildland firefighters to get sick with Valley fever after working on an 
incident. The illness is contracted by inhaling spores of the fungi 
genus Coccidioides.

“We have more questions than answers at this point,” Thompson said. “Our 
lungs are exposed to pathogens every day we don’t think much of. But 
[what] if we increase the number of microbes in there with fire?”

In 2018, for example, the Kern County Fire Department sought a $100,000 
grant to get assistance in cutting fuel breaks — which disturb the soil 
— because their firefighters would get sick after doing the work. Data 
show that Valley fever cases spike on the county’s valley floor every 
fall, just as fire season is underway in the surrounding hills.

“Aerosolized, microbes, spores, or fungal conidia … have the potential 
to travel hundreds of miles, depending on fire behavior and atmospheric 
conditions, and are eventually deposited or inhaled downwind of a fire,” 
Kobziar and Thompson wrote in their paper.

Yet, determining what pathogens exist in wildfire smoke has been difficult.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and team of 
chemists, physicists, biologists and forest and fire ecologists from a 
number of universities have been collaborating for years to study 
wildfire smoke around the country, under the assumption that nobody will 
be immune to its effects in the future.

“As the climate changes, as the temperature warms up, as we build houses 
in places that are surrounded by human populations and housing 
development expand into regions susceptible to fires, it’s a matter of 
time,” said Berry Lefero, manager of NASA’s Tropospheric Composition 
Program, which includes a DC-8 jetliner that circles the globe studying 
wildfire smoke, ozone and aerosols in the atmosphere’s lower layer.

Through the combined work of these researchers, scientists hope, the 
public and healthcare workers will one day be able to receive timely, 
accurate forecasts on where wildfire smoke will go, what specific health 
hazards it poses, and what people in its path should do to prepare 
beyond the boilerplate advice to stay indoors.

To solve the riddle of what microbes are in the smoke and why, Kobziar 
and Thompson need to understand what type of fuel is burning, like a 
grass, shrub, or tree; how much of it there was initially; how severely 
it was burned (was it just scorched black or completely reduced to ash 
or something in between?); and where the smoke originated.

Once those variables are determined, there’s the complicated task of 
actually capturing the smoke, which is by no means uniform, Kobziar said.

In September, Kobziar, a former firefighter, used a drone to capture 
samples of the air over Idaho when it was inundated with smoke from 
fires in Eastern Washington and Oregon. She then placed the samples in a 
petri dish, added some food that microbes like to eat and waited to see 
what would happen.

“Even a couple hundred miles away from the source of the smoke, it was 
still significant,” Kobziar said. “We’re still trying to isolate all the 
things we found.”

Tim Edwards, president of the firefighters union Local 2881, which 
represents thousands in the California Department of Forestry and Fire 
Protection, hope the scientists’ work can boost his own efforts to get 
wildland firefighters respirators, since they typically just rely on 
face masks or bandanas — unlike their urban firefighting counterparts.

It’s not only the dust kicked up in a fire that gets crews sick, Edwards 
said.

“Now, in a wildland conflagration, you have 1,000 homes burning,” he 
said. “You burn the house, you don’t know what chemicals they have in 
that house, all that is on fire and that’s going in your lungs.”
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-02-01/wildfire-smoke-microbes-in-the-air 




[maybe a cultural/ethical/transformation]*
*February 8, 2021 Issue
*How a Young Activist Is Helping Pope Francis Battle Climate Change*
Molly Burhans wants the Catholic Church to put its assets—which include 
farms, forests, oil wells, and millions of acres of land—to better use. 
But, first, she has to map them.

By David Owen - February 1, 2021*
*- -
She enrolled at Mercyhurst University, in Pennsylvania, in 2007, 
intending to major in dance, but she withdrew in the fall of her 
sophomore year, among other reasons because she had suffered a 
debilitating foot injury, and because she had walked in on a student who 
was trying to kill herself. She returned to her parents’ house, in 
Buffalo, and, after a period of dejection, became involved in the city’s 
arts community. She took advantage of a policy at Canisius that allowed 
the children of faculty members to study tuition-free. She eventually 
majored in philosophy, but she also studied science, mathematics, and 
art. She told me that in high school she’d been so focussed on ballet 
that she was never much of a student; now she devoted herself to 
academics with the same intensity that she’d once devoted to dance. She 
spent six months travelling, by herself, in Guatemala, where she 
volunteered with several N.G.O.s. “What I learned there is that land is 
a critical vehicle not only for food security and ecosystem support but 
also for helping people in rural poverty get out of poverty,” she said. 
She was surprised by some of the friends she made. “They were 
Christians, but not like the Christians you see on TV—none of the 
prosperity gospel crap,” she said. “In fact, exactly the opposite. I 
began to think, Maybe I’m a Christian.”..
- -*
*Burhans is still in contact with officials at the Vatican, and she has 
faith that the Pope will eventually return to her proposal. “If the 
Vatican suddenly says yes, I’ll drop everything and go,” she told me. In 
the meantime, though, GoodLands plans to expand its mission to include 
lay clients, both for-profit and nonprofit: real-estate companies, 
asset-management firms, universities, land trusts, and similar 
organizations. She has turned away such clients in the past, but will do 
so no longer. “The same approach that we’ve used for Catholic properties 
can be used for other landholders,” she said. “What we do has value for 
any large property owner who cares about the environment, and in order 
to scale this work we need to serve everyone.” She isn’t certain, yet, 
how to make all that happen. But she has ideas.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/02/08/how-a-young-activist-is-helping-pope-francis-battle-climate-change*
*

*
*

*
*

[Latest battle]*
**Texas governor threatens to sue Joe Biden because of his ‘hostile’ 
agenda to tackle climate crisis
*Abbott calls on every state agency to challenge federal action that 
threatens oil and gas industry/*
*/
Texas governor Greg Abbott pledged to fight climate crisis executive 
orders signed by Joe Biden that he claims will undercut his state’s oil 
and gas production.

Through his own executive order, the governor authorised state agencies 
to bring legal challenges to policies implemented by the new president 
and his administration.

“When it comes to threats to your jobs, you have a governor who has your 
back,” Mr Abbott told workers at an oilfield service firm where he 
signed his order. “Texas is going to protect the oil and gas industry 
from any type of hostile attack from Washington.”

On Wednesday Mr Biden unveiled a series of orders designed to combat 
climate change that energy producing states see as a threat to their 
core businesses./*
*/
The president made climate change a national security concern, ordered a 
pause in new oil and gas leases on federal land, and cut subsidies as 
part of his drive to transition away from fossil fuels.

He also directed federal agencies to “procure carbon pollution-free 
electricity and clean, zero-emission vehicles to create good-paying, 
union jobs and stimulate clean energy industries.”

Mr Biden hopes to set the country on a path to decarbonise the power 
sector by 2035, and reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

When Mr Abbott was the state's attorney general during the Obama 
administration he sued the federal government 31 times — mostly over 
environmental legislation and regulation.

Ken Paxton, the current attorney general of Texas, has already 
challenged the new administration by asking a federal judge to 
temporarily block enforcement of a Department of Homeland Security 
directive establishing a 100-day halt to most deportations.
"This is a homework assignment for every state agency in Texas," he added.

The governor also plans to prohibit cities in Texas from banning natural 
gas appliances under a state bill he intends to file.

Texas produces more than 40 per cent of the nation's crude oil, and just 
under a quarter of its natural gas. The oil and gas industry makes up 
approximately one third of the gross state product.

Environmentalists argue that the governor’s order is misguided given the 
severity of climate change’s impacts on the state from hurricanes, 
storms, flooding, and extreme heat waves./*
*/https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/texas-sue-biden-climate-crisis-b1795752.html/*
*/

/*
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/*
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[information battleground]
*How to spot the tricks Big Oil uses to subvert action on climate change*
Three ways fossil fuel companies try to trick the public.
  By Jariel Arvin -  Feb 1, 2021
In his first week in office, President Joe Biden committed to an 
all-of-government approach to tackle climate change, signing executive 
orders recommitting the US to the Paris climate agreement, pausing new 
leases for oil and gas companies on federal land, and stating his 
intention to conserve 30 percent of federal lands by 2030.

Yet while Biden’s climate actions have been lauded by many, there are 
some, often with connections to the fossil fuel industry, who strongly 
oppose taking stronger action on climate.

Many such detractors use common oil-industry talking points in their 
arguments — talking points that have been developed in collaboration 
with PR firms and lobbyists to undercut clean energy policies and 
prolong dependence on fossil fuels.

A 2019 report by researchers at George Mason, Harvard University, and 
the University of Bristol describes how the fossil fuel industry 
deliberately misled the public by funding climate denial research and 
campaigns all while knowing for decades that human-induced climate 
change exists.

Aware of the science but afraid of the impacts it might have on their 
returns, oil executives funded opposition research that “attacked 
consensus and exaggerated the uncertainties” on the science of climate 
change for many years with the goal of undermining support for climate 
action.

Their messaging has worked for so long because Big Oil has become really 
good at stretching the truth.

“What’s really important to keep in mind is that part of the reason that 
oil and gas propaganda is so effective is that there is always a grain 
of truth to it,” said Genevieve Guenther, the founder of End Climate 
Silence, an organization that works to promote accurate media coverage 
of the climate crisis.

“I call it ‘sort of true,’ where there’s something about the messaging 
that’s true, but that grain of truth gets developed into a whole tangle 
of lies that obscure the real story,” Guenther said.

Guenther, originally a professor of Renaissance literature, is also 
working on a book titled The Language of Climate Change. I spoke with 
her to get a better understanding of how to recognize — and counter — 
Big Oil propaganda.

As the Biden administration takes important steps to address the climate 
emergency, the fossil fuel industry and its allies in the media will be 
ramping up the misinformation campaign to skew public opinion and get in 
the way of climate policy. Fox News has already started.

Which is why it’s more important than ever to be aware of the tools oil 
and gas companies use to cloud the issue.

My conversation with Guenther, edited for length and clarity, is below.

*Jariel Arvin*
I’d like to start with your thoughts on how the Biden administration is 
handling climate change so far.

*Genevieve Guenther*
I think that the Biden administration has come a really long way since 
the beginning of the [2020] primaries. I think that the Sunrise Movement 
and Evergreen Action folks, and other activists connected to Alexandria 
Ocasio-Cortez and Jay Inslee, have done an amazing job, basically 
schooling Biden on climate.

So far, Biden’s the best president on climate that we have had. But I’m 
not quite ready to do a backflip and wave my pom-poms yet, though, 
because I know that his major plan, which is to decarbonize the power 
grid by 2035, will need to be routed in some way through Congress.

I am anticipating that’s not going to be easy and expect a massive PR 
blitz [from the fossil fuel industry], which is going to be timed for 
the attempt to pass this plan, whether directly or through budget 
reconciliation. And I worry that the Biden administration, and the 
climate movement more broadly, might not be ready,

*Jariel Arvin*
So what are the talking points the oil industry uses to try to convince 
the public in these PR blitzes?

*Genevieve Guenther*
People can recognize fossil fuel industry talking points by thinking 
about what they’re designed to do. In general, fossil fuel talking 
points are designed to do three things: make people believe that climate 
action will hurt them, and hurt their pocketbooks in particular; make 
people think we need fossil fuels; and try to convince us that climate 
change isn’t such a big deal.

*Jariel Arvin*
How do they make people believe that taking climate action is going to 
hurt them financially?

*Genevieve Guenther*
Right now, they’re really hammering the point that climate action is 
going to hurt jobs and the economy. So, for instance, Sen. Ted Cruz 
released a press statement saying that by rejoining the Paris climate 
accords, Biden is showing that “he’s more interested in the views of the 
citizens of Paris than in the jobs of the citizens of Pittsburgh.”

*Jariel Arvin*
Yeah, and we also saw Rep. Lauren Boebert make a similar statement 
saying she works for “the people of Pueblo, not the people of Paris” and 
that the Paris agreement would put “blue-collar jobs at risk.”

*Genevieve Guenther*
Yeah, exactly. So Cruz is arguing that Democrats plan to destroy the 
jobs they don’t like, including thousands of manufacturing jobs. This is 
completely false, because building out clean energy infrastructure is 
going to create millions of manufacturing jobs in this country which 
can’t be outsourced.

And whatever fossil fuel jobs have been lost in the past year happened 
a) on Trump’s watch, and b) due to market forces that have absolutely 
nothing to do with any explicit climate policy passed by any administration.

*Jariel Arvin*
So if the claim is untrue, how has the idea that taking action on 
climate change will cause millions of job losses become so pervasive?

*Genevieve Guenther*
There’s a mythology in this country of the coal miner and the oil and 
gas worker, as the kind of exemplary masculine figure who acts as the 
backbone of America.

*Jariel Arvin*
Do you think there’s any truth to that?

*Genevieve Guenther*
It is true that if we phase out the fossil fuel industry there are going 
to be people, and indeed whole communities, that will need to find their 
livelihood in different industries. That is absolutely true.

But two things about that: Number one, you can design policies so that 
those people don’t suffer, and number two, you can put incentives in 
place so that the new jobs are created in the geographical regions that 
are already depopulated and suffering economically, because the fossil 
fuel industry is not actually prosperous enough anymore to sustain a 
vibrant economy in those regions to begin with.

So, you can set up both: policies to ease the transition and policies to 
incentivize new investment so that the economy ends up more vibrant in 
these locations than it was before. Nothing is inevitable. The 
transition can be managed.

*Jariel Arvin*
Okay, so what’s the second talking point oil and gas uses?

*Genevieve Guenther*
The second thing oil and gas companies will do is try to make people 
believe that we need fossil fuels, and that oil and gas companies should 
stay in business.

One I’ve seen a lot lately raises people’s national security fears with 
the message that we need to extract oil to maintain our “energy 
independence,” as if domestically produced fossil energy alone were 
powering America’s homes and businesses.

The truth is that, according to the US Energy Information Agency, in 
2019 (the latest year for which full data is available) the US imported 
9.14 million barrels of petroleum a day — half a million more than we 
exported. It’s clean, safe energy sources like wind and solar that are 
sure to be domestically produced, not oil and methane gas.
*
**Jariel Arvin*
So they act as if US independence will be lost without fossil fuels, 
while in reality America still depends on other countries to get its oil 
and gas. Got it. What else?

*Genevieve Guenther*
Another talking point designed to make us believe that we need fossil 
fuels is the message that we cannot halt global warming without 
“innovation.” This is a tricky one, because you’ll often hear energy 
researchers talk about the innovations we’ll want to develop in order to 
enable continued aviation and industrial shipping.

But saying that new technologies will help us is different from saying 
that we need them, which implies that the world cannot stop using fossil 
fuels now. So politicians in the pockets of the oil and gas producers 
will proclaim that they support “innovation,” and fossil fuel companies 
will place ads touting the money they’re spending on research and 
development— but the money they actually do spend is orders of magnitude 
smaller than their PR budgets, not to mention their budgets for 
exploring and developing new fossil fuel reserves.

*Jariel Arvin*
What’s the third big talking point?

*Genevieve Guenther*
The third thing Big Oil will try to do is to make people believe that 
climate change is not such a big deal. Either they call people trying to 
communicate the dangers of global warming “alarmists,” or they simply 
don’t talk about the climate crisis at all.

In their campaign of silence they’re aided by the vast majority of the 
broadcast news media, which mostly proceeds as if the crisis didn’t 
exist and won’t even mention the words “climate change” when they report 
on floods, fires, and hurricanes in which there are scientifically 
established links to global warming.

It’s weird to think of silence as messaging, but sometimes what you 
don’t say is as important as what you do.

*Jariel Arvin*
Okay, so we now have the three points the fossil fuel industry often 
uses: Convince people climate action will hurt their pocketbooks, 
suggest that we need fossil fuels, and downplay the climate emergency. 
How do climate scientists, activists, and the media counter that narrative?
*
**Genevieve Guenther*
We’ve got to keep climate change in the foreground of people’s 
attention. We’ve got to be clear about why we’re making this energy 
transition — it’s not just because it’s a new way to create jobs, and 
it’s not just because we like clean air and water.

It’s because if we don’t do it, we might actually destroy civilization.

We’re not going to change up everything unless we have to, and guess 
what? We have to. This is what an existential threat means.

I worry that the Biden administration isn’t bringing that message to the 
foreground, because you need that to be part of the understanding of why 
we’re doing this work.

The motivation here is that we’re trying to save our world. We’re trying 
to save the lives of our children. I think activists do a pretty good 
job of keeping that messaging in the foreground, but I really wish that 
politicians would do it too. I think they’re still running scared, and I 
don’t think they have to be.
https://www.vox.com/22260311/oil-gas-fossil-fuel-companies-climate-change




[maybe sooner, by the middle of the century]
*Why Phoenix may be uninhabitable by the end of this century*
Factors like climate change and the destruction of urban foliage are 
causing cities like Phoenix to overheat
By MATTHEW ROZSA
FEBRUARY 1, 2021

"There will come a day when the temperature won't fall below 100 degrees 
in Phoenix during the nighttime," Dr. Andrew Ross, a professor of social 
and cultural analysis at New York University who wrote "Bird on Fire: 
Lessons from the World's Least Sustainable City," told Salon. "That will 
be a threshold of some kind."

The American Southwest has long been a refuge for those seeking the 
health benefits of warm, dry air and sunny days. But too much of a good 
thing is not a good thing — for human health or for the natural 
ecosystem. Now, the Southwest is facing a reckoning: decades of human 
development, coupled with rising global temperatures as a result of 
carbon emissions, means that many major cities in the Southwest may 
become uninhabitable for humans this century.

The reason has to do with something called the Heat Island Effect, a 
concept that describes the effect in which the densely-populated, 
central parts of a city with lots of concrete and asphalt will have 
higher temperatures compared to the less populous areas, as Dr. Juan 
Declet-Barreto, senior social scientist at the Union of Concerned 
Scientists, explained to Salon. The term "island" is not a metaphor 
here, Declet-Barreto said, because when you look at a thermal map of 
many cities, "the temperatures inside the central parts of a city 
resemble an island, surrounded by a cooler ocean in the surrounding more 
rural areas." Obviously, the effect is apt to be more dire in desert 
cities like Phoenix.

Sarah Mincey, associate professor at Indiana University's O'Neill School 
of Public and Environmental Affairs, added that the Heat Island Effect 
is caused by urban centers gradually losing their tree canopies, meaning 
that sunlight is absorbed and held in by materials like roads and 
rooftops, which are typically darker in color. When they finally do 
release that heat back into the air, it increases the temperature 
experienced by the people in those urban environments.

"Tree canopies mitigate this as they can shade these surfaces, avoiding 
the absorption of heat in the first place and through the cooling 
effects of transpiration – releasing of moisture into their surrounding 
environments," Mincey explained. "In general, western US cities have 
less urban tree canopy cover than eastern US cities, so mitigation of 
UHI [Urban Heat Islands] there is likely more difficult."

Declet-Barreto offered the following metaphor to understand how it works.

"If you think about how hot it would be, imagine yourself standing on a 
downtown area where there is little, maybe no shade, no trees, and in 
the middle of the summer," Declet-Barreto told Salon. "And then you 
think about standing in that same spot, but imagine that that spot was 
to be replaced by turf grass under your feet and some three canopy above 
you. Then intuitively you can imagine that it will be a lot cooler when 
you're standing underneath the tree, as compared to being standing out 
in the bare sun."

As Dr. B.D. Wortham-Galvin, associate professor in the School of 
Architecture at Clemson University, explained to Salon by email, the 
Heat Island Effect is worsened by climate change.

"Over the coming decades, climate change will increase extreme weather 
events, raise temperatures while cities simultaneously increase in 
population density," Wortham-Galvin explained. "This confluence of 
events means that all cities, but US Southern cities in particular, will 
begin to experience the Heat Island Effect more frequently and within 
more intra-urban locales. Without a Heat Equity and Resiliency plan, 
more urban residents will suffer negative health and economic impacts."

In Phoenix specifically, the negative aspects of the Heat Island Effect 
will also be exacerbated by ongoing infrastructure projects that 
exacerbate resource scarcity issues. Water infrastructure in Arizona is 
already tenuous, as human habitation in both Phoenix and Tucson is 
dependent on the Central Arizona River Project, a massive infrastructure 
project that diverts water from the Colorado River to central and 
southern Arizona.

"That's how Phoenix and Tucson and large metro areas get their water... 
It doesn't have a direct impact on the heat, but obviously in a region 
that is drying out and has always had water scarcity, then every drop of 
water is a cause for concern — where the next bucket is coming from, how 
much it costs," Ross said.

Ross also noted that, because water levels in Lake Powell (located in 
Utah and Arizona) and Lake Mead (located in Nevada and Arizona) are 
dropping, "there are sort of crisis-type responses are being proposed. 
One of which I think is called demand management, which is basically 
states paying farmers not to use the water that they're entitled to so 
that it can service cities instead."

Ross also pointed to the problem with the materials used to construct 
houses in the southwestern states. "We're not talking about adobe 
traditional structures, which are very climate appropriate for the 
Southwest," he said. "Builders don't build adobe houses anymore." He 
described a lot of the houses that are built as "energy pigs" which are 
"not designed to be climate appropriate."

The Heat Island Effect, like so many other ecological issues, also has a 
disproportionate impact on people from more marginalized backgrounds.

"The elevated air and structure temperatures from Urban Heat Island 
Effects not only increase energy consumption, but also air pollution and 
greenhouse gas emission and, therefore, have a negative effect on urban 
ecosystems," Wortham-Galvin wrote to Salon. "Heat Islands in cities 
disproportionately impact the most vulnerable populations, to include: 
the elderly, children, and those with pre-existing health conditions. 
The development of policies and practices that ameliorate the Heat 
Island Effect is also, thus, an equity issue. Certain neighborhoods 
within cities can often be hotter than others; particularly those 
without an existing significant number of green spaces, trees, and roof 
gardens. Those same neighborhoods may have a disproportionate number of 
residents without access to cooling and at greater risk."

Mincey echoed this observation, writing to Salon that recent research 
has found "tree canopy cover is lowest in low-income and minority 
communities" and that, within 100 American cities, "formerly redlined 
neighborhoods – more likely low-income and minority communities – are 
today five degrees hotter in summer, on average, than areas once favored 
for housing loans with a couple western cities – Portland and Denver – 
seeing greater than 12 degrees hotter in summer in the parts of these 
cities haunted by redlining legacies."

While America's western cities are obviously going to be heavily 
impacted by this, the problem is an international one.

"It's not just a desert city," Declet-Barreto told Salon. "Every single 
place where there is a built environment, where there are cities and 
roadways and glass and pavement and buildings and highways and cars and 
air conditioning and so on, are going to be hotter than the surrounding 
areas where it's a little more rural or less." As a result "we see 
cities not just like the ones you mentioned, — Phoenix, Las Vegas, 
Tucson — but many in India, many in the Persian Gulf, that, as climate 
change continues unabated, are facing significant threats to the 
population."

Declet-Barreto said that "extreme heat episodes" are going to "increase 
in frequency and magnitude and length." Indeed, scientists predict that 
by 2060, Phoenix will have 132 days — over a third of the year — with 
100 degree temperatures. Extreme heat limits the ability of airlines to 
take off and causes heat deaths: 172 people died of heat in 2017, which 
will undoubtedly be cooler than 2060. One wonders if anyone will want to 
live there by then.

MATTHEW ROZSA
Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer for Salon. He holds an MA in History 
from Rutgers University-Newark and is ABD in his PhD program in History 
at Lehigh University. His work has appeared in Mic, Quartz and MSNBC.
https://www.salon.com/2021/01/31/why-phoenix-may-be-uninhabitable-by-the-end-of-this-century/



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - February 2, 2007 *

The 4th IPCC report is released.

http://youtu.be/rBHjVN0dn6A

http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/conference-on-global-warming/

http://abcnews.go.com/International/video/global-warming-fault-2843769

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/bleak-assessment-global-warming-2845826


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