[✔️] July 31, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Sat Jul 31 10:35:55 EDT 2021

/*July 31, 2021*/

[new opinion]
*Our biggest enemy is no longer climate denial but climate delay*
Ed Miliband
Nothing is more dangerous than the illusion of action – which is all 
that the British government is offering
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/30/climate-denial-delay-inaction-british-government

[That's me ]
*Pacific Northwest in the grips of another heat wave amid worsening drought*
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/I2ZLWZ7K3BEOPMGLEOV3ISBJU4.png&w=916
Temperatures are skyrocketing yet again in the Pacific Northwest as the 
second major heat wave of the summer overtakes the region. This heat 
wave is not nearly as intense as the “unprecedented” event in late June, 
but is still bringing temperatures up to 15 to 25 degrees above normal.

The excessive heat comes as the region’s drought situation becomes more 
severe. Drought conditions blanket over 93 percent of the Pacific 
Northwest, a 38 percent leap from just three months ago, according to 
the U.S. Drought Monitor.

What you need to know about how wildfires spread

The combination of heat and drought have created tinderbox conditions 
away from the coast. The National Interagency Fire Center lists 37 
active large blazes in Oregon, Washington and Idaho, including the 
Bootleg Fire, which has charred more than 413,000 acres in south central 
Oregon...
- -
Looking ahead, prolonged hot and dry weather is expected into the autumn 
in the West, around the same time that offshore wind events increase in 
frequency and intensity. That will bolster wildfire risk even more, and 
it’s likely that devastating wildfires, extreme fire behavior and 
suffocating pollution will be pervasive in the months ahead.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/07/30/pacific-northwest-heat-wave-drought/

- -

[CBS]
*Portland city council bans homeless encampments in "high risk" wildfire 
areas*
People experiencing homelessness in Portland, Oregon, will no longer be 
able to camp in certain "high risk" areas of the city after the Portland 
City Council approved new fire safety protocols on Wednesday. The ban 
aims to lower the risk of accidental fires ignited at homeless 
encampments amid a devastating wildfire season, local commissioners said...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/portland-bans-homeless-encampments-wildfires/

[Sweat and melt]
*Greenland: enough ice melted on single day to cover Florida in two 
inches of water*
Data shows ice sheet lost 8.5bn tons of surface mass on Tuesday
All-time record temperature of 19.8C in region on Wednesday
- -
“The alarming thing to me is the political response, or lack of it. 
Sea-level rise is like a slow-moving train, but once it gets rolling you 
can’t stop it. It’s not great news.”

If all the ice in Greenland melted, the global sea level would jump by 
about 6 meters (20ft), and although this is unlikely to happen on any 
sort of foreseeable timescale, scientists have warned that the world’s 
largest island is reaching a tipping point due to the pressures exerted 
upon it by global heating.
Greenland’s ice is melting faster than any time in the past 12,000 
years, scientists have calculated, with the ice loss running at a rate 
of around one million tons a minute in 2019. Greenland and the earth’s 
other polar region of Antarctica have together lost 6.3tn tons of ice 
since 1994.

This rate of ice loss, which is accelerating as temperatures continue to 
increase, is changing ocean currents, altering marine ecosystems and 
posing a direct threat to the world’s low-lying coastal cities, which 
risk being inundated by flooding. A 2019 research paper found the 
Greenland ice sheet could add anything between 5cm and 33cm to global 
sea levels by the end of the century. The world is on track for “the mid 
to upper end of that”, Lipovsky said.

“It’s very worrisome,” said Tedesco. “The action is clear – we need to 
get to net zero emissions but also we need to protect exposed 
populations along the coast. This is going to be a huge problem for our 
coastal cities.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/30/greenland-ice-sheet-florida-water-climate-crisis

[complex $ simplified with audio or text]
*Subsidies really do matter to the US oil & gas industry -- one in 
particular*
A subsidy that pads company profits & make new projects profitable.
David Roberts -- July 30, 2010
Fossil fuel subsidies are a vexed and peculiar topic. On one hand, 
everyone seems to agree they’re bad and should be eliminated (it’s in 
Biden’s jobs bill, for instance). On the other hand, they never go 
anywhere...
- -
  In 2017, the International Monetary Fund tried to tally up implicit 
subsidies across the globe and came up with an eye-popping $5.2 trillion...
- -
*Like much climate policy, removing fossil fuel subsidies requires 
directly confronting fossil fuels*
I take three things from this research. One, fossil fuel subsidies 
really do strengthen the economics of US oil and gas companies and 
accelerate investment and exploration. That’s what they’re designed to 
do, and they do it. Two, the oil and gas industry really does materially 
benefit from being allowed to offload its environmental risks onto the 
public.

And three, the deduction for intangible drilling costs is the main 
fight. It is the big subsidy, the one that’s actually pushing new oil 
and gas projects over the line into profitability, and it is a much more 
specific target than “fossil fuel subsidies.” It seems like something 
some clever group ought to be able to build a campaign around...
- -
The problem is that the benefits of fossil fuel exploration and 
production are concentrated in a few regions and communities and the 
members of Congress who represent those communities are hyper-motivated 
to preserve existing advantages. In contrast, the benefits of ramping 
down fossil fuel production are spread out, geographically and 
temporally, so few members of Congress will champion it with the same vigor.

That’s how climate policy runs aground in the US — in the translation 
from high-flown rhetoric to policies that will materially affect the 
bottom lines of fossil fuel companies.

This study offers us a marker of serious commitment: repealing the 
deduction for IDCs. When Congress actually gets around to addressing 
that age-old subsidy, we’ll know we’re finally getting somewhere.
https://www.volts.wtf/p/subsidies-really-do-matter-to-the?[Very NPR 
dialog all positive no politics, no philosophy

[last 15 minuets are best]*
**How do we adapt: climate change on the west coast with Marketplace's 
Molly Wood*
July 29, 2021
KUOW
Climate change is the mother of all disruptions. As the West Coast 
grapples with its impacts — from drought-igniting wildfires to sea level 
rise inundating coastal areas — how are communities and businesses 
adapting?

Molly Wood, host of Marketplace’s How We Survive, moderates a 
conversation with journalists from public radio stations in Seattle, 
Portland, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Southern California about 
where the boldest and most thoughtful solutions are coming from in their 
regions. What policies and emerging technologies may help us stem rising 
global temperatures and their most severe outcomes? What green solutions 
will serve community needs equitably? Which climate projects are 
enticing investors and poised to create industry giants in the next 
decade? How are communities, industry and the public sector working 
together — or at odds — to turn things around? The panel will address 
these regional concerns, along with audience questions, as they explore 
the future of climate adaptation.
Guests:
Molly Wood, Marketplace’s ‘How We Survive’ (moderator)
Tom Banse, KUOW
Jes Burns, OPB
Sharon McNary, KPCC
Ezra David Romero, KQED
Co-Presented by KPCC, KQED, KUOW, OPB, and American Public Media.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5t4Z6W_UnpU

[DeSmog]
*Scientists who Issued ‘Climate Emergency’ Declaration in 2019 Now say 
Earth’s Vital Signs are Worsening*
A rapid and urgent phaseout of fossil fuels is needed, scientists warn, 
in order to avoid crossing dangerous climate tipping points.
Scientists who Issued ‘Climate Emergency’ Declaration in 2019 Now say 
Earth’s Vital Signs are Worsening
Nick Cunningham - -Jul 27, 2021
https://www.desmog.com/2021/07/27/scientists-warn-earth-vital-signs-are-worsening-tipping-point-climate-emergency/

[NYTimes magazine]
*He Wrote a Gardening Column. He Ended Up Documenting Climate Change.*
Over 45 years, his advice to Alaskans has changed with the 
transformation of the planet.
By Zach St. George
July 28, 2021
In the summer of 2019, Jeff Lowenfels told me, one of his friends 
successfully grew okra in Anchorage. Lowenfels could not believe it. The 
crop was shorthand for all the change he has witnessed since he moved to 
the city in the 1970s, a distance between past and present that he has 
measured in vegetables and fruits — from cabbage, snow peas and potatoes 
to tomatoes, pumpkins and now, incredibly, okra. “Holy crow!” he said. 
“We can grow anything!...
- -
In 2002, Lowenfels was converted. The epiphany came from an image, 
captured by an electron microscope, of fungal hyphae strangling a 
nematode that was attacking a tomato root. A fellow garden writer had 
sent it to him. He was stunned, suddenly realizing his ignorance. He 
read everything he could about the soil food web. “I didn’t sleep for 
24, 48 hours,” he told an Anchorage Daily News reporter in 2006. Was 
that true? It doesn’t matter. He was changed. For decades, he had 
encouraged readers to douse their yards with pesticides, herbicides, 
fertilizers. “No longer,” he wrote. “Not here.”...
- -
Climate change is a perceptual puzzle, says Brian Brettschneider, a 
research scientist with the National Weather Service in Anchorage. The 
zigzag of year-to-year variation tends to obscure trend lines. Extreme 
weather, meanwhile, becomes more extreme in the retelling, the colds 
colder, the hots hotter. Which details are normal, which are abnormal 
and which are wholly new? The only way to anchor ourselves in reality, 
Brettschneider says, is via long-term record. “It’s important to be able 
to put things in context,” he says. “You have to be able to look back.”...
- -
The next week was devoted to zinnias. The week after that, he urged 
readers to prepare their garden for the first frost, admitting that he 
had “no idea” when it would arrive. In the months that followed, he 
reminded them not to rake their lawns, urged them to leash their cats 
outdoors and suggested they try growing luffa and pawpaws. Why not? Just 
see that they don’t escape. The pandemic arrived in March. He answered 
questions about tomatoes, about repelling hares (try human urine) and 
about eating slugs (cook them first). November marked the beginning of 
his 45th year as a columnist. He asked readers not to sterilize their 
soil, advised them on ornamental kale, offered tips on the care of 
poinsettias and Christmas cactuses. On and on he continued, week after 
week, as spring stretched into summer.

May 14, 2021: “Spruce bark beetles are still the No. 1 subject of 
questions I get, and I get lots.”

June 25, 2021: “A reader wants to know what I have against radishes. My 
mild aversion to rhubarb she can understand, but radishes?”

July 16, 2021: “Tomatoes like buzzing insects to pollinate, so the 
latest advice is to put an electric toothbrush on stems to vibrate the 
pollen out of the flowers.”

The columns were written for the mundane reasons of the present. 
Considered one by one, they didn’t look like much of anything at all.
Zach St. George is a freelance reporter focused on climate change and 
conservation. He is the author of “The Journeys of Trees,” an 
investigation into the future of forests.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/28/magazine/gardening-column-climate-change.html

[The news archive - looking back]
*On this day in the history of global warming July 31, 2013*
On MSNBC's "All In with Chris Hayes," climate scientist Michael Mann 
discusses what it was like to be targeted and harassed by Virginia 
Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II.

http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/right-wing-gubernatorial-candidate-waged-war-on-science-39494723774

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