[✔️] June 25, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[👀 Richard Pauli]

/*June 25, 2021*/

[PBS news discovers global warming - stark video]
*A leaked UN report warns 'worst is yet to come' on climate change. 
Here's how you can help*
Jun 23, 2021
PBS NewsHour
2.65M subscribers
A leaked draft report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel 
on Climate Change paints the starkest picture yet of the accelerating 
danger caused by human use of coal, oil, and gas. It warns of coming 
unlivable heat waves, widespread hunger and drought, rising sea levels 
and extinction. To understand the report's warnings, William Brangham 
turns to atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayoe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcoyIjreBDg



[Heatwave!]
*Dangerous Heat Risk! National Weather Service*
A dangerous heatwave with record breaking and triple digit temperatures 
is expected this weekend into next week over the Northwest U.S. 
Excessive Heat Watches and Warnings have been issued.
https://www.weather.gov/pdt/
https://www.weather.gov/

- -

[prepared but not ready]
*Weather Service warns of ‘dangerous’ and ‘historic’ heat wave in 
Pacific Northwest*
Seattle, Portland and Spokane could see temperatures near and above 100 
degrees Sunday into early next week.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/06/22/heat-wave-pacific-northwest-historic/



[Heatwave Russia]
*120-year record in jeopardy as Moscow sizzles under rare, historic heat 
wave*
By Maura Kelly, AccuWeather meteorologist...
- -
On Tuesday, parts of Moscow reached 94.5 degrees F (34.7 degrees C), 
according to an official reading by the Russian weather service 
Roshydromet, which ties the all-time June record set in 1901.

Preliminary temperature reports show the Russian capital reached 95 F 
(35 C) on Wednesday, which may break the record high temperature for June.

"The rare heat wave is forecast to continue through Sunday," said 
AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Tyler Roys, adding that on average 
Moscow records about only one 90 degree F (32 degree C) or above reading 
every four years, with no days above 95 F (35 C)...
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-forecasts/historic-heat-wave-bakes-moscow-russia-eastern-europe/967573



[Dr James Hansen]
*Global Problems Require a Global Solution*
James Hansen - 24 June 2021
Fareed Zakaria attracts high level guests to his program because of its 
reach and objectivity.  He lets his guests have the last word on their 
topic.  Yet Zakaria’s interpretations of issues of the day – which he 
labels as “his take” – stand out as especially penetrating and insightful.

On Sunday this week Zakaria ended his program with a concise description 
of an effective approach to address climate change – in just a few 
minutes he described how carbon fee-and-dividend could be made 
near-global.  I won’t try to summarize his take – it’s impossible to 
match his clarity and brevity, which includes great illustrations.

In contrast to carbon fee-and-dividend, most governments prefer the 
“red-tape” approach: increased government regulations with the 
government picking technology winners and losers.

Governments have followed the red tape approach for three decades, ever 
since the Framework Convention on Climate Change was approved by almost 
all nations in 1992.  The 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the 2015 Paris 
Agreement are designed to allow all nations to follow the red tape 
approach within their countries.  As a result, global carbon emissions 
have continued to rise.

The red tape approach cannot work because it ignores economics.  It lets 
the fossil fuel industry continue to use the atmosphere – somewhere – as 
a free dumping ground for carbon waste.  Fossil fuels might be regulated 
away in some nations, but the fuels will be burned elsewhere.

Fossil fuels are amazingly effective in raising living standards; one 
gallon (3.7 liters) of gasoline (petrol) contains the work equivalent of 
400 hours of labor by a healthy adult.  That beneficial property of 
fossil fuels – we now realize – carries with it an existential threat.

Continued carbon emissions will make low latitudes of Earth 
uncomfortable if not uninhabitable­.  Coastal cities worldwide will 
begin to go underwater during the lifetime of today’s young people. 
Emigration pressures from low latitudes and coastal regions may make the 
planet ungovernable, and autocratic governments will be more likely to 
gain and retain power.

For a time, I thought governments did not understand the climate and 
energy problem.  But when I visited a dozen countries in 2007-2009 – as 
discussed in Storms of My Grandchildren – I saw the power of special 
interests.  The fossil fuel industry liked the red-tape approach.  They 
were happy to see governments set long-term emission targets and adopt 
emission trading schemes, which reduce some national emissions but allow 
global emissions to remain high or even rise.

Barack Obama’s election in 2008 was promising; he spoke of a “planet in 
peril” in the campaign. – but his team concluded that they “could not 
get one vote” is the U.S. Senate for carbon fee-and-dividend. They went 
with the red-tape approach, as described in the drafts of chapters  42 
and 44 of Sophie’s Planet, and global emissions continued to rise.

The story may yet have a happy ending, thanks largely to the insight and 
dedication of Marshall Saunders, as described in those two chapters.  
Saunders formed Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL) to advocate for carbon 
fee-and-dividend.  CCL now has several hundred thousand members in the 
United States and it has spread to other nations (Fig. 2).

This year we should learn whether governments are at last serious about 
addressing global warming.  President Biden has the authority to collect 
a carbon fee from the small number of ultimate sources (domestic mines 
and ports of entry): the Supreme Court ruled, in Massachusetts versus 
EPA, that CO2 is a pollutant.  EPA can impose a fee on pollutants, as my 
attorney Dan Galpern and I described in a recent op-ed. Please consider 
joining and signing our petition.

The danger is that President Biden will cave in to pressure from his 
left flank and instead push for a “green new deal” that advocates 
estimate would cost trillions of dollars.   The proposal seems to be a 
red-tape approach, with government picking winners and losers.

Realism implies that the green new deal is not going to happen as 
proposed.  It will be tragic if advocates for climate justice insist on 
that approach.  The alternative – carbon fee-and-dividend – in fact 
promotes social justice, as Dan Miller and I explained in an op-ed and 
testimony to Congress.  Fee-and-dividend is anti-regressive (i.e., 
progressive): wealthy people lose money because of their large carbon 
footprint, but most low-income and middle-income people come out ahead, 
with their dividend exceeding increased costs caused by the carbon fee.

A global problem requires a global solution.  China and the U.S. are the 
two biggest economies and the biggest polluters.  If they agree on a 
rising carbon fee, the climate problem can be solved.

I am optimistic that cooperation is possible.  Friends, colleagues and 
former students in China assure us that the Chinese government realizes 
that we are all in the same boat and need to cooperate. The question is 
whether that cooperation will be achieved soon enough.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2020/20200731_StudentLeadership.pdf
https://csas.earth.columbia.edu/




[The news archive - looking back]
*On this day in the history of global warming June 25, 2008*

The New York Times reports: "The [George W. Bush] White House in 
December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s 
conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, 
telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document 
would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/washington/25epa.html

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2008/06/26/174068/epa-email-denial/


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