[TheClimate.Vote] March 28, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*March 28, 2021*/

[sure, for what time zone is the meeting?]
*Joe Biden invites 40 world leaders to virtual summit on climate crisis*
Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin among invitees as US heralds return to 
forefront of climate fight
Agence France-Presse - Fri 26 Mar 2021 22.09 EDT

Joe Biden has invited 40 world leaders to a virtual summit on the 
climate crisis, the White House said in a statement on Friday.

Heads of state, including Xi Jinping of China and Russia’s Vladimir 
Putin, have been asked to attend the two-day meeting meant to mark 
Washington’s return to the front lines of the fight against human-caused 
climate change, after Donald Trump disengaged from the process.

“They know they’re invited,” Biden said of Xi and Putin. “But I haven’t 
spoken to either one of them yet.”

The start of the summit on 22 April coincides with Earth Day, and it 
will come ahead of a major UN meeting on the crisis, scheduled for 
November in Glasgow, Scotland.

Biden’s event is being staged entirely online due to the coronavirus 
pandemic.

The president kept his campaign pledge to rejoin the Paris climate 
agreement on his first day in the White House, after Trump pulled out of 
the deal.

The return of the world’s largest economy and second-largest emitter of 
carbon dioxide became effective on 19 February and means almost all 
countries are now parties to the agreement signed in 2015.

By the time of the summit, the US will have announced “an ambitious 2030 
emissions target”, according to a White House statement, and it will 
encourage others to boost their own goals under the Paris agreement.

“The summit will also highlight examples of how enhanced climate 
ambition will create good-paying jobs, advance innovative technologies, 
and help vulnerable countries adapt to climate impacts,” the White House 
said in a statement.

The US has invited the leaders of the Major Economies Forum on Energy 
and Climate, which includes the 17 countries responsible for about 80% 
of global emissions and GDP, as well as heads of countries that are 
especially vulnerable to climate impacts or are demonstrating strong 
climate leadership.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/26/joe-biden-climate-change-virtual-summit



[Opinion manipulation tactics] *
**Amy Westervelt: Fossil Fuel's Target Audience for Disinformation*
Mar 26, 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLSOtud9ocI


[no transmission in transit]
*Riders Are Abandoning Buses and Trains. That’s a Problem for Climate 
Change.*
Public transit offers a simple way for cities to lower greenhouse gas 
emissions, but the pandemic has pushed ridership, and revenue, off a 
cliff in many big systems.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/climate/buses-trains-ridership-climate-change.html



[Extinction Rebellion video]
*XR DE: Transformations - For People and The Planet | Extinction 
Rebellion UK*
Mar 26, 2021
Extinction Rebellion
 From XR Germany:
It's not enough to resist the systems that destroy our planet. To build 
something new, let's look at the diverse alternatives in theory and 
especially in practice. They give life to systemic change!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ4EJ8a3orE


[Texas power companies ]
*Chris Tomlinson: Why Texans Have Seen Huge Power Bills Following Blackout*
Mar 18, 2021
greenmanbucket
Chris Tomlinson is an energy writer for the Houston Chronicle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwUG4wM0J8Y


[Grand Dame of Global Warming Reporting]
*Under a White Sky by Elizabeth Kolbert review – the path to catastrophe*
Ben Ehrenreich - Fri 26 Mar 2021
A damning survey, drawing on skilful and subtle reporting, that tracks 
the spiralling absurdity of human attempts to control nature with technology

Being alive these days means enduring a strange and perhaps historically 
unique sense of claustrophobia. If you’re paying attention – and if 
you’ve read Elizabeth Kolbert’s previous books on climate and the 
ongoing mass extinction – you know that the Earth, its atmosphere, and 
its oceans are transforming in ways that will mean unimaginable 
hardships for humans and for billions of other living beings. You also 
know that almost everything you might do will belch out carbon emissions 
that will blow us farther down the path to catastrophe. It’s like being 
stuck in a tunnel and, no matter which direction you attempt to dig, 
only going deeper.

Kolbert’s most recent book evokes another disquieting sensation, a novel 
breed of vertigo. In Under a White Sky, she tracks the spiralling 
absurdity of human attempts to control nature with technology. Grand, 
Promethean interventions of the sort of which modernity’s boosters were 
once so proud – a river’s flow reversed to carry waste to a more 
convenient location, an aquifer tapped to grow alfalfa in the desert, 
coal and oil extracted from great depths and burned to move machines – 
spawn unforeseen disasters. Ever grander interventions ensue, which 
bring fresh calamities, which require still cleverer interventions. By 
the end of the book, as the zany twists into the full-on apocalyptic, 
you are left reeling, with little hope to spare.

Kolbert’s reporting is, as always, skilful and subtle. She plays a wry 
and melancholy Virgil touring varied sterile hells, savouring ironies 
even when they hurt. She jets across continents, visiting laboratories 
and warehouse-sized scale models of damaged ecosystems through which 
scientists traipse like giants. In Chicago, more than a century after 
the dredging of a canal – “the biggest public works project of its time” 
– accidentally “upended the hydrology of roughly two-thirds of the 
United States”, engineers struggle to contain the spread of voracious 
species of carp introduced to gobble propeller-tangling weeds. Their 
solution: to electrify the water.

In Louisiana, Kolbert visits Plaquemines Parish, one of “the fastest 
disappearing places on earth”, a distinction won thanks to flood-control 
efforts that channel Mississippi river sediment straight into the Gulf 
of Mexico, preventing coastal lands from renewing themselves. Government 
engineers now pump mud through miles of pipeline to craft artificial 
marshlands that will be almost immediately washed away. In Australia, 
she interviews biologists engaged in a desperate effort at “assisted 
evolution”, attempting to genetically engineer corals that will survive 
warmer, more acidic seas as the Greater Barrier Reef dies around them.
Most disturbingly, she explores the “negative emissions technologies” 
designed to stave off global warming. The most ambitious schemes aim to 
deflect solar heat by spraying reflective particles into the 
stratosphere, which may damage the ozone layer, cause drought and acid 
rain, and bleach all blue from the sky. It also might not work. Even if 
it does, it will be subject to alarmingly diminishing returns: if 
100,000 tons of sulfites will have to be dispersed in the programme’s 
first year, 10 years in it would take a million tons to produce the same 
effect. Should the effort ever be interrupted, all the deferred warming 
would “suddenly manifest itself”, Kolbert writes, “like opening a 
globe-sized oven door”. This, she suggests with deep ambivalence, may be 
our only hope.

The vortex in which humankind appears to be caught acquires here a 
tragic inevitability. The cascading crises we face are “byproducts of 
our species’ success”. Wisdom might suggest a different path, but “we 
are stepped in so far, return seems impracticable”. As horrific as all 
this may be, Kolbert’s poise is reassuring. Her objective distance never 
cracks; her ability to pull pained amusement from yet “another 
Anthropocene irony” seldom falters. This composure, though, is only 
sustainable because she avoids asking certain glaring questions. Who 
profited from the technologies that created these crises? Who profits 
now? And who is losing? Is it meaningful to speak of “our species’ 
success” when so many millions experienced modernity’s spread as 
something more like devastating loss?

The answers are here if you look for them. The first river-taming levees 
in New Orleans, Kolbert notes in passing, were built on the orders of 
French colonists by enslaved African labourers. The massive 
extermination of wildlife that swept North America in the 19th century 
unfolded thanks to “the advent of technologies like the railroad and the 
repeating rifle”, which were not value-neutral innovations but tools of 
finance capital and colonial expansion. Kolbert visits Isle de Jean 
Charles, Louisiana, the few remaining inhabitants of which are 
descendants of exiled indigenous tribes who lived in peaceful isolation 
until their land began literally to disappear. They “had no say in the 
dredging of the oil channels” that ate away at their homes, Kolbert 
writes. “They’d been excluded from the efforts to control the 
Mississippi, and now that new forms of control were being imposed to 
counter the old, they were being excluded from those too.”

Kolbert draws no conclusions from this unfortunate episode. Under a 
White Sky remains a story about technology in which power and violence 
barely figure. But the moment you take pains to acknowledge the social 
web from which technological questions can never be separated, the 
claustrophobia and vertigo shift to horror, and to rage. What you see is 
not a tragicomic, inexorable process in which humankind is regrettably 
trapped, but an asymmetrical network of exploitation that has overtaken 
the planet like an ecocidal virus, extending out from Europe over three 
centuries and ensnaring every continent so that a few can profit while 
most are left to sink.

Little wonder then that when Kolbert asks what alternative there is to 
this vortex of disaster, she, like her subjects, can imagine only 
additional technological fixes. The possibility of social change has 
been excluded from the start.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/26/under-a-white-sky-by-elizabeth-kolbert-review-the-path-to-catastrophe

- -

[time to regulate cloud seeding?]
*The Science of Making Rain*
Feb 20, 2021
Sabine Hossenfelder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDxaDmjGVGY&t=18s

- -

[called ENMOD]
*Environmental Modification Convention*
The Environmental Modification Convention (ENMOD), formally the 
Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of 
Environmental Modification Techniques is an international treaty 
prohibiting the military or other hostile use of environmental 
modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe 
effects. It opened for signature on 18 May 1977 in Geneva and entered 
into force on 5 October 1978.

The Convention bans weather warfare, which is the use of weather 
modification techniques for the purposes of inducing damage or 
destruction. The Convention on Biological Diversity of 2010 would also 
ban some forms of weather modification or geoengineering.[2]

Many states do not regard this as a complete ban on the use of 
herbicides in warfare, such as Agent Orange, but it does require 
case-by-case consideration.[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_Modification_Convention
- -
https://www.un.org/disarmament/publications/library/enmod
- -
https://s3.amazonaws.com/unoda-web/documents/library/conf/ENMOD-CONF-11-1.pdf
- -
https://2009-2017.state.gov/t/isn/4783.htm

- -

[Not sure I agree. Why?]
*Report: It’s time for the U.S. to research solar geoengineering*
We might never do solar geoengineering. But government science advisers 
say studying it is better than flying blind.
- -
But even if global leaders acted to cut emissions at that breakneck pace 
— which none currently has — many of those catastrophic outcomes could 
still occur. The science of human-caused climate change is unequivocal, 
but the science of projecting how bad things will get, how quickly, is 
soaked in uncertainty...
- -
It’s possible that the dangers will reach a critical juncture where the 
world may want to consider another tool with the potential to save 
millions of lives: solar geoengineering, also described by scientists 
with the more careful and lengthy phrase “climate intervention 
strategies that reflect sunlight to cool the earth.”

Deliberately changing the atmosphere to try to cool down the planet is 
deeply uncomfortable to think about, and many would prefer that no one 
did. But for the past two years, a committee of 16 people with various 
expertise in the physical sciences, economics, policy, law, and ethics 
have been sitting with that discomfort as they met regularly to develop 
an American research agenda for this nascent and highly controversial 
field of science.

The result of those many hours of discussion and debate is a more than 
300-page guide for the U.S. government to spend at least $100 million on 
a new solar geoengineering research program. It was released on Thursday 
by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, a 
nonprofit that acts as an independent advisor to the federal government...
https://grist.org/article/report-its-time-for-the-u-s-to-research-solar-geoengineering/

- -

[oh sure, more study is OK]
*Reflecting Sunlight: Recommendations for Solar Geoengineering Research 
and Research Governance (2021)*
https://www.nap.edu/read/25762/chapter/1

- -

[Rainforest collapse to grasslands]
*The Climate System Tipping Points Race: Risk of Amazon Rainforest 
Collapse Takes the Lead: 1 of 3*
Mar 26, 2021
Paul Beckwith
In my last few videos I chatted about how our terrestrial biosphere sink 
is failing. Presently, land vegetation absorbs about 30% of 
anthropogenic carbon emissions, but with BAU (Business-as-Usual) this 
number is expected to halve by 2040. The terrestrial biosphere will tip 
over from a net carbon source to a net carbon sink. CO2 concentrations 
in the atmosphere will skyrocket as we head there within a mere two 
decades. The reason is that further warming increases plant respiration 
while decreasing plant photosynthesis. Sources dominate sinks.

Of course the Amazon Rainforest is the largest swath of tropical 
rainforest on the planet. This forest drives a partially self-sustaining 
regional climate and hydrological system, whereby falling rainwater is 
taken up by rainforest, a lot of the water is put back into the 
atmosphere by evapotranspiration, and the cycle repeats over and over 
again. Thus, water is distributed over the entire rainforest, but if the 
cycle is cut off at the start then the entire rainforest can suffer 
severe drought. Thus, with slightly more warming from climate system 
change, we are at great risk of the sudden complete collapse of the 
entire rainforest.

In this video series (3 parts) I focus on the Amazon Rainforest. I chat 
about a new scientific review paper called “Carbon and Beyond: The 
Biogeochemistry of Climate in a Rapidly Changing Amazon”. Most 
discussions of the Amazon Rainforest focus solely on carbon cycles and 
storage. This is incomplete; they need to consider the overall Amazon 
system, and also examine CH4, N2O, black carbon, biogenic volatile 
organic compounds, aerosols, evapotranspiration, and albedo changes. The 
dynamic responses of all of the above to localized stresses (fires, 
land-use changes, extreme weather events) and to global stresses 
(warming, drying, El Niño Southern Oscillation) must be examined to get 
a more complete understanding of the Amazon System.

When the overall system is studied, it becomes quite clear that the CH4 
and N2O changes are large enough to offset, and even actually exceed the 
carbon sink of the Amazon Rainforest. This is actually terrible news for 
the vitality of our planetary ecosystems and human societies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGeNcoqQlIw



[complexity needs closer examination]
MARCH 25, 2021
*Revealing complex behavior of a turbulent plume at the calving front of 
a Greenlandic glacier*
by Hokkaido University

The model of the study site in July 2017, showing the positions of the 
sensors at different locations and depths. Credit: Evgeny A. Podolskiy
For the first time, scientists have succeeded in continuous monitoring 
of a subglacial discharge plume, providing a deeper understanding of the 
glacier-fjord environment.

As marine-terminating glaciers melt, the fresh water from the glacier 
interacts with the seawater to form subglacial discharge plumes, or 
convective water flows. These turbulent plumes are known to accelerate 
the melting and breakup (calving) of glaciers, drive fjord-scale 
circulation and mixing, and create foraging hotspots for birds. 
Currently, the scientific understanding of the dynamics of subglacial 
plumes based on direct measurements is limited to isolated instances.

A team of scientists consisting of Hokkaido University's Assistant 
Professor Evgeny A. Podolskiy and Professor Shin Sugiyama, and the 
University of Tokyo's JSPS postdoctoral scholar Dr. Naoya Kanna have 
pioneered a method for direct and continuous monitoring of plume 
dynamics. Their findings were published by Springer-Nature in the 
journal Communications Earth & Environment.

Freshwater and marine water have very different densities due to the 
salts dissolved in marine water. As a result of this density contrast, 
when the meltwater—originating from the glacier surface—flows down the 
cracks and emerges at the base of the glacier, it starts upwelling 
causing the formation of subglacial plumes. The rising plume entrains 
nutrient-rich, warmer water from the deep that further melts the glacier 
ice. In light of the effects of global warming and climate change, which 
have caused a massive loss in the volume of glaciers, understanding how 
plumes behave and evolve is crucial for predicting both glacier retreat 
and fjord response.

Helicopter flight over the studied subglacial discharge plume at the 
calving front of Bowdoin Glacier in Greenland in July 2017. Credit: 
Evgeny A. Podolskiy
The scientists conducted the most comprehensive plume monitoring 
campaign to date at Bowdoin Glacier (Kangerluarsuup Sermia), Greenland. 
It involved a chain of subsurface sensors recording oceanographic data 
directly at the calving front at different depths. Additional 
observations were made by time-lapse cameras, a seismometer, unmanned 
aerial vehicles, and etc. This high-temporal-resolution dataset was then 
subjected to a thorough analysis to identify connections, patterns, and 
trends.

The study reveals that the dynamics of the plume and glacier-fjord are 
far more complex than previously thought. It is intermittent in nature 
and influenced by a diversity of factors, such as sudden stratification 
changes and drainage of marginal lakes. For example, the scientists 
observed the abrupt subglacial drainage of an ice-dammed lake via the 
plume which had a pronounced impact on its dynamics and was accompanied 
by a seismic tremor several hours long. They also show that tides may 
influence the plumes, which have not been accounted for in previous 
studies of Greenlandic glaciers. Additionally, they suggest that the 
wind needs more attention as it may also affect the structure of the 
subglacial plumes.

 From their results, the scientists conclude that their work is the 
first step enabling researchers to transition from a snapshot view of a 
plume to a continuously updated image. The identified processes and 
their role in the glacier environments will have to be refined in future 
studies via modelling and new observations.
https://phys.org/news/2021-03-revealing-complex-behavior-turbulent-plume.html
- -
[Source mater]
Evgeny A. Podolskiy et al,
*Co-seismic eruption and intermittent turbulence of a subglacial 
discharge plume revealed by continuous subsurface observations in 
Greenland, *
Communications Earth & Environment (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s43247-021-00132-8
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-021-00132-8



[Monbiot rants: consumerism is the stifling of our imagination - video]
*How Smoked Salmon Is Destroying Our minds *| George Monbiot
Mar 25, 2021
Double Down News
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-021-00132-8



[darn]
*Deadly Heat Waves Will Soon Be Common in South Asia, Even at 1.5 
Degrees of Global Warming...*
By AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION - MARCH 26, 2021
With almost one quarter of the world’s population living in South Asia, 
the new study underlines the urgency of addressing climate change.

“The future looks bad for South Asia, but the worst can be avoided by 
containing warming to as low as possible,” said Moetasim Ashfaq, a 
computational climate scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and 
corresponding author of the new study. “The need for adaptation over 
South Asia is today, not in the future. It’s not a choice anymore.”

Earth has warmed by 1 degree Celsius since the start of the Industrial 
Revolution, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 
On the current climate trajectory, it may reach 1.5 degrees Celsius of 
warming in 2040. This deadline leaves little time for South Asian 
countries to adapt. “Only half a degree increase from today is going to 
cause a widespread increase in these events,” Ashfaq said.

A hot region getting hotter
People living in South Asia are especially vulnerable to deadly heat 
waves because the area already experiences very hot, humid summers. Much 
of the population live in densely populated cities without regular 
access to air conditioning, and about 60% perform agricultural work and 
can’t escape the heat by staying indoors.

Labor Heat Comparison India
With 2 degrees Celsius of warming, the population of South Asia will 
experience more than double the exposure to unsafe labor temperatures 
(left) and will have almost three times the exposure to temperatures 
that cause lethal heat stress (right). Credit: Saeed et. al/ Geophysical 
Research Letters/AGU

In the new study, the researchers used climate simulations and 
projections of future population growth to estimate the number of people 
who will experience dangerous levels of heat stress in South Asia at 
warming levels of 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius. They estimated the wet bulb 
temperature residents will experience, which is similar to the heat 
index, as it takes into account humidity as well as temperature. A wet 
bulb temperature of 32 degrees Celsius (89.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is 
considered to be the point when labor becomes unsafe, and 35 degrees 
Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) is the limit to human survivability – 
when the body can no longer cool itself.

Their analysis suggests at 2 degrees of warming, the population’s 
exposure to unsafe labor temperatures will rise more than two-fold, and 
exposure to lethal temperatures rises 2.7 times, as compared to recent 
years.

Curbing warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius will likely cut that exposure in 
half, but large numbers of people across South Asia will still 
experience extreme temperatures. An increase in heat events that create 
unsafe labor conditions are likely to occur in major crop producing 
regions in India, such as West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh, and in Pakistan 
in Punjab and Sindh. Coastal regions and urban centers such as Karachi, 
Kolkata, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Peshawar are also likely to be heavily 
affected, according to the study.

“Even at 1.5 degrees, South Asia will have serious consequences in terms 
of heat stress,” Ashfaq said. “That’s why there is a need to radically 
alter the current trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions.”

The results differ from a similar study conducted in 2017, which 
predicted that heat waves of lethal temperatures will occur in South 
Asia toward the end of the 21st century. The researchers suspect the 
earlier study is too conservative, as deadly heat waves have already hit 
the region in the past. In 2015, large parts of Pakistan and India 
experienced the fifth deadliest heat wave in the recorded history, which 
caused about 3,500 heat-related deaths.

“A policy framework is very much needed to fight against heat stress and 
heat wave-related problems,” said T.V. Lakshmi Kumar, an atmospheric 
scientist at India’s SRM Institute of Science and Technology who was not 
involved in the work. “India has already committed to reduce emissions 
to combat climate change issues.”

Reference: “Deadly heat stress to become commonplace across South Asia 
already at 1.5°C of global warming” by Fahad Saeed, Carl‐Friedrich 
Schleussner and Moetasim Ashfaq, 10 March 2021, Geophysical Research 
Letters.
DOI: 10.1029/2020GL091191
https://scitechdaily.com/deadly-heat-waves-will-soon-be-common-in-south-asia-even-at-1-5-degrees-of-global-warming/



[psychological awareness of nature - video]
*Forgetting Nature*
Ross Harrison - Mar 16, 2021
‘Forgetting Nature’: Peter Kahn offers warning in short documentary film
The documentary film is brief but its message is powerful: We humans are 
losing our connection to the natural world, at our great peril.

“In some sense, we think we are the most advanced culture — we take such 
pride in technology and advancement,” says Peter Kahn, University of 
Washington professor in the Department of Psychology and the School of 
Environmental and Forest Sciences.

“But in some other ways, we are more distant from the natural world than 
any culture has been. Potentially also more distant from the human spirit.”

Kahn’s words are featured in “Forgetting Nature,” a new short 
documentary by British-based filmmaker Ross Harrison that will begin 
streaming for free on March 17.

The film, production notes say, is “an urgent call to examine the 
effects of technology on our experiences, and the way wild nature is 
being squeezed out of our lives.”
http://www.forgettingnature.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEKrTa_z-zk
https://environment.uw.edu/news/2021/03/forgetting-nature-peter-kahn-offers-warning-in-short-documentary-film/



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - March 28, 2001 *

March 28, 2001: President George W. Bush says his administration will 
not honor the Kyoto Protocol.

http://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12/flatview?cuecard=238


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