[✔️] July 12, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

👀 Richard Pauli richard at theclimate.vote
Mon Jul 12 08:08:08 EDT 2021 

/*July 12, 2021*/

[heat+drought+wind+spark=fires]
*Firefighters struggle to contain exploding northern California wildfire*
Blaze rushes north-east from the Sierra Nevada forest region after 
doubling in size as heatwave blankets US west
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/11/northern-california-wildfire-heatwave

- -

*Bootleg Fire in Oregon Scorches 143,000 Acres as Heat Wave Continues in 
the West*
With record-breaking temperatures and hard-to-contain wildfires, Western 
states are struggling through a hellish summer.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/11/us/oregon-bootleg-fire.html

- -

*Stark images*
https://static.dw.com/image/58228578_303.jpg
https://static.dw.com/image/58228602_401.jpg
https://static.dw.com/image/58228626_401.jpg
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/07/11/multimedia/11-HEATWAVE/11-HEATWAVE-superJumbo-v2.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp

- -

[video reports from DW]
*California preparing for worst fire season on record*- -
*Canada's Trudeau on wildfires: Climate change plays 'significant role'*
https://www.dw.com/en/us-firefighters-struggle-to-control-wildfires-amid-heat-wave/a-5822846 




[overdue, and they could have done a Zoom meeting anytime]
*Billionaires descend on Sun Valley in private jets to talk about 
climate change*
The private conference was canceled last year because of the pandemic
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/billionaires-descend-on-sun-valley-in-private-jets-to-talk-about-climate-change

- -

[too little, too late]
*G20 ministers endorse carbon pricing to help tackle climate change*
ECB president Christine Lagarde calls for mechanism that reflects ‘true 
cost of carbon’
https://www.ft.com/content/9cd74b8f-4d6c-4cf8-a249-87c0acb1a828

- -

[Infinite risk]
*Yellen: US regulators to assess risk posed by climate change*
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says she will 
lead an effort by top U.S. regulators to assess the potential risk that 
climate change poses to America’s financial system, part of a 
wide-ranging initiative launched by the Biden administration.

Yellen says the regulatory review, which will be done by the Financial 
Stability Oversight Council, will examine whether banks and other 
lending institutions are properly assessing the risks to financial 
stability. She chairs the committee, which includes Treasury, the 
Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission and other 
financial regulators.

“The current financial system is not producing reliable disclosures,” 
Yellen said in remarks prepared for the Venice International Conference 
on Climate and released in Washington...

https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-government-and-politics-climate-climate-change-bc3f5dabe04ca18fc166cb78b6d20825

- -

[government action]
*One of Canada’s top climate officials is trying to save the planet — by 
leaving government*
Catherine McKenna spent the last six years working on climate change in 
Canada’s government.
By Jariel Arvin -- Jul 8, 2021,
- -
Which raises an interesting question: What does it say about the 
politics of climate change that McKenna, who spent the past six years in 
government working on climate change, doesn’t think she was doing enough 
to address climate change?

While McKenna achieved a lot during her time in office, she has also 
faced misogynistic attacks. In 2017, Conservative MP Gerry Ritz called 
her “climate Barbie” on Twitter, which McKenna called “sexist.” (Ritz 
later apologized.) She’s also had to put up with her office being 
defaced with a vulgar slur and men shouting abuse at her office...
- -
I did my part here. I’ve done what I came to do, and that’s just the 
truth. I wanted Canada to be in a much more positive place on climate. I 
wanted to be very practical. Some people think you should be in politics 
forever, but that’s never been my view.
https://www.vox.com/22566673/canada-environment-climate-change-mckenna



[Action figure]
*Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ironic warning over climate change rhetoric*
- -
“If pollution is created by humans, it can be solved by humans,” he 
said, “We can kill it.”
Angels take pitcher Sam Bachman with ninth overall selection in MLB draft

What he was talking about was the importance of volition in 
storytelling, the idea that people can take action to effect changes in 
their situation. It’s the opposite of the gloomier philosophy that we’re 
all just playthings of fate awaiting our doom.

Climate activists have succeeded in persuading many people that we’re on 
our way to human extinction and picking up speed. Schwarzenegger warned 
that this has created “constant alarm which cannot be sustained.”
- -
https://www.pasadenastarnews.com/2021/07/11/arnold-schwarzeneggers-ironic-warning-over-climate-change-rhetoric/



[new term: thermosyphons]
*Thawing Permafrost has Damaged the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and Poses an 
Ongoing Threat*
The pipeline operator is repairing damage to its supports caused by a 
sliding slope of permafrost, and installing chillers to keep the ground 
around it frozen.
By David Hasemyer - - July 11, 2021
- -
The slope of permafrost where an 810-foot section of pipeline is secured 
has started to shift as it thaws, causing several of the braces holding 
up the pipeline to tilt and bend, according to an analysis by the Alaska 
Department of Natural Resources. The department has permitted 
construction of a cooling system designed to keep the permafrost 
surrounding the vulnerable section of pipeline just north of Fairbanks 
frozen, as well as to replace the damaged portions of the support structure.

This appears to be the first instance that the pipeline supports have 
been damaged by “slope creep” caused by thawing permafrost, records and 
interviews with officials involved with managing the pipeline show...
- -
The installation of the heat pipes builds on an obvious irony. The state 
is heating up twice as fast as the global average, which is driving the 
thawing of permafrost that the oil industry must keep frozen to maintain 
the infrastructure that allows it to extract more of the fossil fuels 
that cause the warming.

Any spill from the 48-inch diameter pipeline that flows with an average 
of 20 million gallons of oil a day, and the resulting clean-up activity, 
could accelerate the thawing of the permafrost even more, environmental 
experts said.
- -
Alyeska is installing approximately 100 free-standing thermosyphons 40 
to 60 feet into the ground. Construction is expected to take 120 days 
and will also include a three-foot layer of insulating wood chips atop 
the permafrost...
- -
“Permafrost changes were anticipated during the original design,” she 
said. “The construction mode and method of pipe support are designed to 
maintain the integrity of the pipeline and minimize impacts to the 
environment.”

To avoid problems with the permafrost, 420 miles of the Trans-Alaska 
Pipeline were built on an elevated support system that keeps the pipe 
about six feet above the ground. The frames that hold the pipeline, 
called vertical support members, look like a capital H with the pipeline 
resting on the cross stroke. Many of them have thermosyphons 
incorporated into the structure to keep the permafrost frozen.

There are about 124,000 thermosyphons arrayed along the path of the 
pipeline—a nod from its engineers to the importance of keeping the 
ground below it frozen. The tubes are bored from 15 to 70 feet into the 
permafrost in areas where warming might cause it to thaw. But those 
chillers only cool the permafrost directly below the pipeline, which 
holds the supports. As the wider slope of permafrost surrounding the 
pipeline has warmed, the new thermosyphon project was required to keep 
it from collapsing or sliding and damaging the supports...
- -
Permafrost is ground that has remained completely frozen for at least 
two years straight and is found beneath nearly 85 percent of Alaska. 
Some permafrost, which is composed of a combination of soil, rocks and 
sand that are held together by ice, has been frozen for thousands of years.

But, in the last few decades, permafrost temperatures in Alaska have 
warmed as much as 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit, and the state’s average 
temperature is projected to increase by 2 to 4 degrees more by the 
middle of the century. A study published in the journal Nature Climate 
Change projects that with every 2 degree increase in temperature, 1.5 
million square miles of permafrost could be lost to thawing. ...
- -
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11072021/thawing-permafrost-trans-alaska-pipeline/



[Heroic climate warrior in the Information war]
*Why Trust Science?*
by Naomi Oreskes
July 11th 2021
There is now broad agreement among historians, philosophers, 
sociologists, and anthropologists of science that there is no (singular) 
scientific method, and that scientific practice consists of communities 
of people, making decisions for reasons that are both empirical and 
social, using diverse methods. But this leaves us with the question: If 
scientists are just people doing work, like plumbers or nurses or 
electricians, and if our scientific theories are fallible and subject to 
change, then what is the basis for trust in science?

I suggest that our answer should be two-fold: 1) its sustained 
engagement with the world and 2) its social character.

The first point is crucial but easily overlooked: Natural scientists 
study the natural world. Social scientists study the social world. That 
is what they do. Consider a related question: Why trust a plumber? Or an 
electrician? Or a dentist or a nurse? One answer is that we trust a 
plumber to do our plumbing because she is trained and licensed to do 
plumbing. We would not trust a plumber to do our nursing, nor a nurse to 
do our plumbing. Of course, plumbers can make mistakes, and so we get 
recommendations from friends to ensure that any particular plumber has a 
good track record. A plumber with a bad track record may find herself 
out of business. But it is in the nature of expertise that we trust 
experts to do jobs for which they are trained and we are not. Without 
this trust in experts, society would come to a standstill. Scientists 
are our designated experts for studying the world. Therefore, to the 
extent that we should trust anyone to tell us about the world, we should 
trust scientists.

This is not the same as faith: We do (or should) check the references of 
our plumbers and we should do the same for our scientists. If a 
scientist has a track record of error, underestimation, or exaggeration, 
this might be grounds for viewing his or her claims skeptically (or at 
least judging their results with this information in mind.) If a 
scientist is receiving financial support -- directly or indirectly -- 
from an interested party, this may be grounds for applying a higher 
level of scrutiny than we might otherwise demand. (For example, an 
editor might send the paper for additional review, or a reviewer might 
pay extra attention to study design, where subconscious bias may slip in.)

No doubt individual scientists, like individual plumbers, may be stupid, 
venal, corrupt, or incompetent. But consider this: the profession of 
plumbing exists because in general plumbers do a job we need them to do, 
and in general they do it successfully. When we evaluate the track 
record of science, we find a substantial record of success -- in 
explanation, in prediction, in providing the basis for successful action 
and innovation. We have a world of medicines, technologies, and 
conceptual understandings derived from science that have enabled people 
to do things they have wanted to do.

This consideration -- that scientists are in our society the experts who 
study the world -- is a reminder to scientists of the importance of 
foregrounding the empirical character of their work -- their engagement 
with nature and society and the empirical basis it provides for their 
conclusions. As I have stressed elsewhere, scientists need to explain 
not just what they know, but how they know it. Expertise as a concept 
also carries with it the embedded idea of specialization, and therefore 
the limits to expertise, reminding us why it is important for scientists 
to exercise restraint with respect to subjects on which they lack expertise.

However, reliance on empirical evidence alone is insufficient for 
understanding the basis of scientific conclusions and therefore 
insufficient for establishing trust in science. We must also take to 
heart -- and explain -- the social character of science and the role it 
plays in vetting claims. Here it is worth reiterating my point that 
scientists who were offended by the “social” turn in science studies got 
it wrong: much of what we identify as “science” are social practices and 
procedures of adjudication designed to ensure -- or at least to attempt 
to increase the odds -- that the process of review and correction are 
sufficiently robust as to lead to empirically reliable results.

Peer review is one example of such a practice: it is through peer review 
that scientific claims are subjected to critical interrogation. (This is 
why, in my own work, I have stressed the importance of evaluating 
scientific consensus through analysis of the peer-reviewed literature 
and not the popular press or social media, and why my book was subject 
to peer review.) This includes not only the formal review that papers go 
through when submitted to academic journals, but also the informal 
processes of judgment and evaluation that research findings undergo when 
scientists discuss their preliminary results in conferences and workshop 
and solicit comments from colleagues prior to submitting them for 
publication, as well as the continued process of evaluation that 
published claims endure as fellow scientists attempt to use and build on 
those claims.

Tenure is another example: we evaluate scholars’ work in order to judge 
whether they are worthy of joining the community of scholars in their 
fields, in effect to be certified as experts. Tenure is effectively the 
academic version of licensing. The crucial element of these practices is 
their social and institutional character, which work to ensure that the 
judgments and opinions of no one person dominate and therefore that the 
value preferences and biases of no one person are controlling. Of 
course, within any community there will be dominant groups and 
individuals, but the social processes of collective interrogation offer 
a means for the less dominant to be heard so that, to the maximum degree 
possible, the conclusions arrived at are non-partisan and 
non-idiosyncratic. The social character of science forms the basis of 
its approach to objectivity and therefore the grounds on which we may 
trust it.

In recent years, this insight has been implicitly incorporated into 
scientific practices, particularly in just those domains where 
scientific claims are likely to be viewed as controversial. The US 
National Academy of Sciences works to ensure that the panelists who 
perform its reviews are diverse and represent a range of viewpoints. 
Scholars have called this approach the “balancing of bias.” The 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- now one of the world’s 
largest aggregations of scientists -- makes a particular point of 
seeking geographical, national, racial, and gender diversity in its 
chapter-writing teams. While the motivations for inclusivity may be in 
part political, the widespread character of practices of inclusion 
suggest that many scientific communities now recognize that diversity 
serves epistemic goals.

    About Naomi Oreskes
    Naomi Oreskes is a world-renowned geologist, historian and public
    speaker. She is a leading voice on the role of science in society
    and the reality of anthropogenic climate change. Oreskes is
    Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of
    Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. She has written
    over 150 articles, essays, and opinion pieces, and authored or
    co-authored seven books, including Merchants of Doubt (Bloomsbury,
    2010). Written with Erik Conway, the book was the subject of a
    documentary film by the same name.

    Among numerous awards and prizes, Oreskes was named a Guggenheim
    Fellow in 2018 for a new book project with Erik Conway, The Magic of
    the Marketplace: The True History of a False Idea, which will be
    published by Bloomsbury Press upon completion.

https://worldwarzero.com/magazine/2021/07/why-trust-science-naomi-oreskes/


[Great old philosopher speaks ]
*A Conversation with Noam Chomsky*
Jul 8, 2021
Facing Future
Stuart Scott and #NoamChomsky discuss their views about death and the 
afterlife, as well as the critical need for activism to produce change. 
Co-hosted by Dale Walkonen, FacingFuture is honored to present Professor 
Chomsky’s ideas about politics, economics, OPEC, nuclear proliferation, 
and disinformation, all of which have moved the hands of the 
#DoomsdayClock to 100 seconds before midnight.

He fears that if climate deniers hold the reins of power, the clock may 
well reach midnight. But
Noam finds hope in young activists like Greta Thunberg, Alexandria 
Ocasio-Cortez, and in the #SunriseMovement. He notes that the New Deal 
happened because there was overwhelming public pressure on FDR to act 
decisively. The #GreenNewDeal will require no less effort. Stuart 
advocates going to the offices of our leaders to demand action.
Noam tells us that although we’re living in a world of total illusion 
and fantasy, we have to dedicate ourselves with energy and commitment to 
using the opportunities that we have. Then, there is a chance that we 
will survive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8gXe6fejew




[The news archive - looking back]
*On this day in the history of global warming July 12, 2013*

July 12, 2013: USA Today reports:

"U.S. energy supplies will likely face more severe disruptions because 
of climate change and extreme weather, which have already caused 
blackouts and lowered production at power plants, a government report 
warned Thursday.

"What's driving these vulnerabilities? Rising temperatures, up 1.5 
degrees Fahrenheit in the last century, and the resulting sea level 
rise, which are accompanied by drought, heat waves, storms and 
wildfires, according to the U.S. Department of Energy."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/07/11/climate-change-energy-disruptions/2508789/


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