[✔️] June 7, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[👀 Richard Pauli]

/*June 7, 2021*/

[TV waking up]
*Sir David Attenborough to 60 Minutes on climate change: "A crime has 
been committed"*
Nearly two decades after declining to take a hard stance in his first 
profile on 60 Minutes, Sir David Attenborough warns about the dangers of 
climate change.

    "We're both in broadcasting, if you're going be telling something as
    though it's true, you better be sure it's true," Attenborough said
    to Cooper. "So I didn't say anything much about the world being in
    ecological peril until I was absolutely sure that what I was talking
    about was correct."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sir-david-attenborough-60-minutes-2021-06-06/


[Classic analysis of disinformation]
*Why your 'Carbon Footprint' Is A Lie | Climate Town*
Aug 12, 2020
Climate Town
Hello and welcome to the description section of the Carbon Footprint is 
a Lie video.

We've got a big ol' task ahead of us and it's important to start our 
collective engines (figurative, not literal) on reducing our 
government's fossil fuel use. It's going to take an effort on the scale 
of the new deal (but like a ... I dunno, green one or something) and 
we'll need to keep climate change front of mind for the foreseeable 
future if we want to have a shot of pressuring corporations and 
government into doing the right thing.

Also here: https://www.instagram.com/climatetown/
Here is a commentable google doc of the sources. Please check it out:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1A...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J9LOqiXdpE



[Video essay]
*Why Billionaires Won't Save Us*
May 21, 2021
Our Changing Climate
Why billionaires won't save us from climate change.

In this Our Changing Climate climate change video essay, I look at why 
billionaires won't save us from climate change. Specifically, I look at 
how the elite philanthropy of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk 
function as more of a billionaire preservation of wealth and self than 
as an act of altruism. Elite philanthropy from Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos 
in particular seem to solidify their political and social power even 
more. Bill Gates and his foundation have steered the realm of global 
health for quite some time (especially during the pandemic) and it seems 
as if he is using his billionaire wealth to do the same for climate 
action. Jeff Bezos' $10 billion Earth Fund seems to be functioning in a 
similar way while also whitewashing the destructive nature of Amazon, 
aka how Jeff Bezos made his money. Elon Musk is also jumping on the 
billionaire philanthropy train with a carbon capture prize that is 
measly compared to his massive wealth. At the end of the day 
billionaires and billionaire money are not solutions to climate change 
and the climate crisis, we are.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_634hXz32pY


[noticing change in ocean flow]
*A slowing current system in the Atlantic Ocean spells trouble for Earth*
The potential disruption of an Atlantic current system marks a "big 
gamble at planetary scale"
By MATTHEW ROZSA -- JUNE 5, 2021
It was a seamless synthesis of science and art, expanding the frontiers 
of human knowledge while being eerily beautiful at the same time. That 
was the response when, in the 1960s, professor Henry Stommel, a 
pioneering oceanographer, introduced a model to his colleagues that 
explained the motions of ocean waters. Decades later, Dr. Michael E. 
Mann, a distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State 
University, still marvels at what he describes as the "elegant" nature 
of Stommel's model.

"It consisted of two boxes, a cold fresh box at high latitudes and a 
warm salty box at low latitudes, to represent the North Atlantic ocean," 
Mann told Salon by email. "He showed that this simple model predicted an 
overturning 'thermohaline' circulation — a circulation driven by 
contrasts in ocean water density due to both temperature and salinity, 
each of which influence water density."

Thus, armed with a model so simple that it can be solved with algebra, 
scientists now understood the ocean currents in the Atlantic.

This is how scientists figured out what is called the Atlantic 
meridional overturning circulation, or "AMOC" for short. When it comes 
to the motion of the ocean, AMOC is essentially a complex system of 
conveyor belts. The first belt contains warm water that flows north, 
where it cools, evaporates and increases the salinity of the ocean 
water. That water then cools, sinks and flows south, creating a second 
major belt. These currents are connected to each other by regions in the 
Nordic Sea, Labrador Sea and Southern Ocean, keeping sea levels down on 
the United States' eastern seaboard and warming up the weather in Europe.

This current system connects many different pieces of life on Earth: 
tides, hurricanes, sea levels, ocean life, salinity, fisheries, water 
pollution, temperatures, weather — all are affected by this current 
system. A sudden shift in how the Atlantic current system works would 
drastically change life on Earth.

Yet the more we learn about ocean currents, the more we have cause for 
alarm. A February study published in the journal Nature Geoscience 
reconstructed the history of the current going back 1,600 years and 
found that circulation is weaker now than at any other point in that 
span. They identified the most likely culprit as global warming. With 
the Greenland Ice Sheet and Arctic ice melting as the planet heats up, 
and rain and snow levels increasing, the water flowing north loses much 
of its salinity and density. This causes the water to flow south more 
slowly and weakens AMOC overall.

More recently, another study in the journal Nature Geoscience that 
identified the important role played by winds in causing changes in 
ocean circulation. As lead author Dr. Yavor Kostov of the University of 
Exeter said in a press release, scientists have struggled to understand 
the variability in AMOC because there are so many variables that have an 
effect on it. He noted that after learning that winds influenced 
circulation in both sub-tropical and sub-polar locations, scientists 
concluded that "as the climate continues to change, more efforts should 
be concentrated on monitoring those winds — especially in key regions on 
continental boundaries and the eastern coast of Greenland — and 
understanding what drives changes in them."

The obvious question, then, is: what will happen if climate change 
continues to weaken AMOC?

"This won't lead to another ice age (like 'The Day After Tomorrow,' 
which is a caricature of the science), but it may well threaten fish 
populations and lead to accelerated sea level rise along the U.S. east 
coast," Mann told Salon. "This is furthermore a reminder that there are 
surprises in the greenhouse, and often they are unwelcome ones. If we 
want to avoid more and more of these unwelcome surprises, we need to 
bring carbon emissions down dramatically in the years ahead."

Kevin Trenberth, a distinguished senior scientist at the University 
Corporation for Atmospheric Research, told Salon by email that if AMOC 
stopped moving heat northwards, the topical Atlantic would get much 
warmer. That in turn would lead to more frequent and devastating 
hurricanes, even as Iceland and parts of Europe cool immensely.

"AMOC acts as a relief valve for the Atlantic heat buildup in the 
tropics," Trenberth explained. "In the Pacific there is no equivalent 
and the relief valve is ENSO," which stands for "El Niño and the 
Southern Oscillation."

Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist at the Carnegie Institution for 
Science's Department of Global Ecology, said that it is ultimately 
impossible to predict with certainty what will happen if AMOC slows down 
— but that it is very unlikely to be good.

"For me, it is not so much about the direct impacts of this particular 
change, which I think are highly uncertain, but rather if we are 
impacting major parts of planetary-scale processes and knocking them out 
of the range that they operated in (and we adapted to) over the entirety 
of human history, it is a pretty safe bet that we can anticipate some 
fairly nasty unknown unknowns," Caldeira wrote to Salon. "That may be 
just indefensible bias that cannot be rigorously supported, but I for 
one am not up for big gambles at planetary scale."
https://www.salon.com/2021/06/05/atlantic-meridional-overturning-circulation-slowing-global-warming/



[Paul Beckwith - video lectures - ]
*Cascading Climate System Domino Feedback Effects; NOT Good: Part 1 of 3*
Jun 4, 2021
Paul Beckwith
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGj7HsdBDa0

- -

[part 2]
*Welcome to the Climate Casino; Climate System Domino Effects from 
Cascading Feedbacks: Part 2 of 3*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTvc2wUp_Ww
Paul Beckwith- Jun 5, 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTvc2wUp_Ww

- -

[third - most important]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpMMWPPvg2c
*Abrupt Climate System Destabilization: Cascading Chain Reaction of 
Amplifying Feedbacks: Part Jun 6, 2021*
A new peer-reviewed scientific paper published June 3rd discusses the 
risks of climate domino effects from cascading feedbacks. Essentially, 
the risk is rapidly increasing to cross critical thresholds for one or 
more tipping elements in the climate system.

Although there are numerous tipping points in the climate system, this 
paper used Monte Carlo computer simulations to examine the physical 
interactions between only 4 tipping elements: namely 1) Greenland Ice 
Sheet (GIS) collapse, 2) West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) collapse, 3) 
Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) shutdown, and 4) 
Amazon Rainforest collapse.

This paper is a great start to examining cascading tipping points, but 
in my opinion it needs to incorporate many other tipping points to be 
really useful, most notably the paper egregiously ignores Arctic Sea Ice 
collapse to the dreaded Blue Ocean Event (BOE), and Methane Outbursts 
from both the Arctic terrestrial permafrost (riskiest being the Siberian 
Yedoma regions) and the subsea permafrost (riskiest being the Eastern 
Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) regions and the methane bound in hydrates 
(methane clathrates)).

For each of the tipping elements examined, the paper considers the 
essential factors of critical temperature thresholds, tipping element 
interaction mechanisms and strengths, and tipping timescales.

The most significant and worrying result of this new paper is the following:

For global warming up to 2.0C above pre-industrial, tipping occurs in 
61% of all the simulations. This 61% is further broken down to: one 
individual element tips in 22% of all of the simulations; cascading 
effects cause tipping in two elements in 21% of the cases; cascading 
tips three elements in 15% of the simulations; and all four elements tip 
via cascading in 3% of all the simulations.

For global warming of 1.0C (already passed) the GIS has already likely 
tipped.

Meanwhile, for global warming of 3.0C cascades are less frequent since 
the four elements all tip independently with temperature thresholds 
already exceeded.

Overall, a fascinating paper, but it is imperative that future work 
examine the entire gamut of tipping elements, including the four 
examined thus far.*
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF523HIy7SI

- -

[Source material]
*Interacting tipping elements increase risk of climate domino effects 
under global warming*

    *Abstract*
    With progressing global warming, there is an increased risk that one
    or several tipping elements in the climate system might cross a
    critical threshold, resulting in severe consequences for the global
    climate, ecosystems and human societies. While the underlying
    processes are fairly well-understood, it is unclear how their
    interactions might impact the overall stability of the Earth's
    climate system. As of yet, this cannot be fully analysed with
    state-of-the-art Earth system models due to computational
    constraints as well as some missing and uncertain process
    representations of certain tipping elements. Here, we explicitly
    study the effects of known physical interactions among the Greenland
    and West Antarctic ice sheets, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning
    Circulation (AMOC) and the Amazon rainforest using a conceptual
    network approach. We analyse the risk of domino effects being
    triggered by each of the individual tipping elements under global
    warming in equilibrium experiments. In these experiments, we
    propagate the uncertainties in critical temperature thresholds,
    interaction strengths and interaction structure via large ensembles
    of simulations in a Monte Carlo approach. Overall, we find that the
    interactions tend to destabilise the network of tipping elements.
    Furthermore, our analysis reveals the qualitative role of each of
    the four tipping elements within the network, showing that the polar
    ice sheets on Greenland and West Antarctica are oftentimes the
    initiators of tipping cascades, while the AMOC acts as a mediator
    transmitting cascades. This indicates that the ice sheets, which are
    already at risk of transgressing their temperature thresholds within
    the Paris range of 1.5 to 2 ∘C, are of particular importance for the
    stability of the climate system as a whole.

https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/12/601/2021/

graphic - https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/12/601/2021/#&gid=1&pid=1



[clips from Harpers magazine]
*Prayer for a Just War*
By Greg Jackson
Finding meaning in the climate fight
https://harpers.org/archive/2021/06/prayer-for-a-just-war-finding-meaning-in-the-climate-fight/
- -
If we fail to mobilize now, we may never have another chance. The notion 
of a single ungodly disaster that finally spurs us to action and compels 
the government to respond is a fantasy. If it comes, it will be too 
late. We will not be individually prepared, and we will expect the 
government to take charge. We will find ourselves helpless and subject 
to larger forces, natural and human, on all sides. We will, in short, 
let the crisis go to waste.

Instead, we must act now, renewing civic vigor and restoring the social 
institutions that enfranchise us and build community. More concretely, 
we should establish a national jobs program focused on the climate 
fight, pulling back from a volunteer (and increasingly privatized) 
military, and deepen our global outreach. The nation building we have 
asked the military to perform belongs more properly to noncombat 
missions such as the Peace Corps. As the conservationist Joe Walston has 
noted, significant battles in the climate fight will play out in places 
like sub-Saharan Africa, and the results will depend in part on whether 
countries in the region urbanize effectively and succeed in educating girls.

Other endeavors should include everything from computer modeling to 
ocean farming. Overhauling the world’s industrial and energy systems 
will demand a massive amount of labor. The climate fight will draw on 
the tangible skills of builders, ecologists, technologists, electrical 
engineers, agriculturalists, nurses, emergency medical personnel, 
firefighters, pilots, conservationists, urban planners, and countless 
others. Whether it is learning to grow our food, fortify our houses, 
treat injuries, or build communities of mutual support, we may find that 
the challenges of a world remade by climate change are sources of 
profound meaning and fulfillment.

But how we move from admiring the problem to organizing around it is not 
a trivial issue; it is the central challenge in this battle. We need the 
leadership of those who have experience building and directing 
coalitions, from union organizers and military veterans to activists and 
campaign managers. The research of the political scientist Erica 
Chenoweth shows that nonviolent protests involving just 3.5 percent of a 
population have reliably brought down recalcitrant regimes. It doesn’t 
take much for popular will to overwhelm the apparent, but secretly 
precarious, authority of political, military, and business elites. To 
this end, we must consider civil disobedience and strikes. Students 
should walk out of class, and we must pressure companies from within (as 
employees) and without (as consumers) to act as responsible stewards of 
the future. There are endless points of leverage because everything and 
everyone is relevant.

The tide could turn more quickly than people think. In World War II, it 
took only eighteen months to retool American industry into an 
unprecedented arsenal. The U.S. military today, unlike so much of the 
government that funds it, recognizes climate change for the existential 
threat it is, and the tight margins that make corporations so resistant 
to change also make them profoundly susceptible to pressure. But we have 
scarcely begun to mobilize. We are simply not acting as though we are at 
war...
- -
A thesis that informs my argument is the belief that the certainty of 
death, and our efforts to resist and postpone it, are what permit 
meaning in life. It follows from this thesis that obscuring our relation 
to this certainty obscures the true stakes and significance of living. 
The parents who believe that it should not be their child who fights in 
a war, or their child who forgoes some special advantage, or their child 
who opts out of today’s careerism at the call of conscience, is no 
different from the politician or pundit who tells us we cannot “afford” 
to act on climate change. Generalized and applied to society at large, 
these self-exempting principles make us weaker, poorer, and more likely 
to die. For fear of death, they teach us, we cannot afford to protect life.

In the same way, by paying rhetorical homage only to the suffering that 
climate violence is sure to bring, and neglecting, as perhaps in bad 
taste, the potential promise in a fight we can’t avoid, we perpetuate a 
form of the dishonesty that got us here. This is the belief that how we 
talk about something—whether guided by ideological or moralistic 
convictions—affects its underlying reality: that by insistence we can 
freight the unconscious world with our moral schemas. But nature is 
dispassionate, and we are not being punished. No amount of atonement or 
misgiving makes any difference. We have a practical crisis on our hands, 
and it is the first truly universal project in which all of us—all 
living things—are on the same side...
- -
The most profound costs of addressing climate change will not be 
financial or physical, but personal and social. If we can summon the 
courage to act, we will discover that these costs are also our most 
profound rewards. They mark an end to our isolation, alienation, and 
division. But they ask something of us, something that is difficult 
because it takes place in private, unrewarded instants: an inner giving, 
denominated in openness and restraint. We must learn not to covet our 
power, but mistrust it. Not to lord victory over others, but to show 
solicitude and modesty in triumph. We must see fortune and success as a 
responsibility, not a boundless permission to do whatever we please. We 
must hold fast to conscience while repulsing moralism. We must extend 
tolerance beyond the narrow confines of advocacy and favor, and see 
humor—good humor—as the handmaiden of humility.

When the stakes of failing to collaborate are not tangibly before us, it 
is difficult to value working together. But now the floodwaters are 
rising, the fires are drawing near. Waiting is its own risk. Take the 
small leap of opening your mind, your ears, your heart. Do what is hard 
because what is hard creates the parts of you that are strong. Speak 
truth and listen. Listen for the storm approaching. Listen for what 
people do not say or do not know how to say, but which recalls your own 
longing, fear, graciousness, and hope. You do not have to believe 
anything to join this fight—just know that underneath the protective 
layers of personality every person is authentic. Every human being is 
real. Every body can be burned by fire, choked by ash, drowned by rising 
waters, as well as cherished, loved, and kept safe by the will to fight, 
protect, and survive.
https://harpers.org/archive/2021/06/prayer-for-a-just-war-finding-meaning-in-the-climate-fight/



[The news archive - looking back]
*On this day in the history of global warming June 7, 2010*
Washington Post writer Ezra Klein condemns Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) 
for her proposal to strip the EPA of its authority to regulate carbon 
emissions.

*          With friends like Lisa Murkowski, the climate doesn't need 
enemies*

    If you were to zoom out on the BP oil spill and try to draw some
    lessons about prevention, you'd probably come up with these:
    Continued reliance on fossil fuels carries costs that travel far
    beyond what we pay at the pump. Things that will eventually go wrong
    do go wrong, and lack of planning makes the eventual catastrophe
    much harder to solve. When regulators can't, or don't, do their
    jobs, bad things happen. And finally, prevention is better, safer
    and cheaper than cleanup.

    But that's not what Sen. Lisa Murkowski has taken away.

    Murkowski plans to offer a resolution barring the Environmental
    Protection Agency from regulating carbon emissions. In other words,
    Murkowski plans to offer a resolution making it less likely we move
    away from fossil fuels, making it less likely we act to prevent a
    foreseeable catastrophe (in this case, global warming) from
    occurring, blocking regulators from doing their jobs, and disrupting
    one of our best opportunities to prevent climate change rather than
    scramble to respond after its incalculable effects rip through our
    atmosphere.

    Murkowski says that her effort is much simpler than all that. “My
    decision to introduce this measure is rooted in a desire to see
    Congress – not unelected bureaucrats – lead the way in addressing
    climate change," she wrote. But Murkowski has not led the way in
    addressing climate change. She has not joined with Lindsey Graham,
    Joe Lieberman and John Kerry in their efforts to negotiate a
    bipartisan climate bill. And as everyone involved in climate-change
    politics knows, congressional action is much likelier if backed by
    the threat of EPA action. As Graham told me, preempting the EPA is
    one of the major deliverables to get both Republicans and business
    groups on board.

    Bar the EPA from acting and you make it less likely that Congress
    will act. The calculus is as simple and straightforward as that.
    Murkowski, a crucial Republican vote in a closely divided Senate,
    could usher climate-change legislation to completion. Instead, she
    is working to delay action on our addiction to fossil fuels and the
    terrible and foreseeable consequences. Just ask the residents of the
    gulf how well that tends to work out.

    By Ezra Klein  |  June 7, 2010

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/06/with_friends_like_lisa_murkows.html


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