[✔️] May 18, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*May 18, 2021*/

[IEA is the International Energy Agency]
*IEA’s first 1.5°C-aligned scenario bolsters call for no new fossil fuel 
extraction*
MAY 18, 2021 - BY DAVID TURNBULLBLOG POST
Contact:
Kelly Trout, kelly at priceofoil.org (EDT)
David Tong, david.tong at priceofoil.org (NZST)
David Turnbull, david at priceofoil.org (PDT)
IEA’s first 1.5°C-aligned scenario bolsters call for no new fossil fuel 
extraction
IEA must now make it central to its flagship WEO and fix remaining model 
flaws

Today, the International Energy Agency (IEA) released a special report, 
“Net Zero in 2050: A roadmap for the global energy system,” that 
represents the agency’s first ever effort to model a comprehensive 
energy pathway towards limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius 
(°C). While concerns remain over some of the IEA’s modelling choices, 
campaigners are welcoming the report as a milestone towards IEA reform.

Through the #FixTheWEO campaign, climate advocates, investors, 
businesses, and diplomats have been urging the IEA for years to align 
its influential annual World Energy Outlook (WEO) with the full ambition 
of the Paris Agreement goals. In a key win, IEA director Dr. Fatih Birol 
committed for the first time last week that the new 1.5°C-aligned 
scenario will be “integral” to WEO 2021 and made a permanent fixture of 
future WEOs.

Critically, the 1.5°C-aligned scenario finds “no need for investment in 
new fossil fuel supply.” This represents a break from past IEA reports 
that boosted new oil and gas development by focusing on scenarios that 
steered the world towards catastrophic levels of warming...
https://priceofoil.org/2021/05/18/iea-bolsters-call-no-new-fossil-fuel/



[News release US Dept of Defense]
*DOD Exercise Highlights Need to Address Climate Change, Its Impacts*
MAY 17, 2021 | BY DAVID VERGUN, DOD NEWS
The Defense Department's first climate and environmental security 
"tabletop" exercise, dubbed Elliptic Thunder, highlighted the growing 
security threats posed by climate and environmental change, while 
illustrating that prevention activities today are essential to avoiding 
dire consequences in the future, Annalise Blum, an American Association 
for the Advancement of Science policy fellow in Office of the Secretary 
of Defense for Policy's Office of Stability and Humanitarian Affairs said.

Elliptic Thunder, which was co-sponsored by the Office of Stability and 
Humanitarian Affairs and the Joint Staff J5, took place March 25.  Based 
upon future climate, economic and population forecasts, the exercise was 
set in East Africa in a notional future in which climate change had 
gradually disrupted natural systems, weakening several states in the 
region and increasing the risk of climate-driven extreme events. A 
combination of floods, droughts, and cyclones led to shortages of food, 
water, and energy — causing large-scale instability and migration. This 
instability expanded opportunities for extremist groups and strategic 
rivals to gain influence with consequences for U.S. national security 
and defense objectives.

Adam Mausner, senior policy advisor in SHA, noted that the exercise made 
clear that climate change is a national security issue, and should be 
tackled with the same urgency and resourcing as other major threats to 
our country. "Additionally, high-end conventional combat capabilities 
were of little use in the scenario, as our adversaries instead engaged 
in irregular warfare to gain advantage," he said.

Participants in the exercise included representatives from the Office of 
the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Africa Command; 
Joe Bryan, special assistant to the Secretary of Defense for climate;  
and representatives from the National Security Council, the State 
Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the 
Intelligence Community and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric 
Administration.

*The main takeaways of the Elliptic Thunder exercise included:*

    -- Climate and environmental change will exacerbate existing threats
    and security challenges via increased frequency and severity of
    environmental stressors and extreme events. Compounding and
    cascading events are likely to be particularly disruptive.

    -- Environmental changes have implications across the department
    with respect to great power competition, counterterrorism, our
    alliances and partners, basing, access to ports and landing sites,
    infrastructure investments and more.

    -- DOD will need to develop and/or refine policies, authorities and
    organizations — as well as processes, budget and funding to best
    prepare for and respond to climate threats.

    -- Improved understanding of emerging threats will help prevent and
    prepare for future environmental and climate security challenges.
    Enabling a shift to prevention activities will help avoid simply
    responding to crises.

    -- Building partner capacity and resiliency will be critical to
    manage climate risks. Effective diplomacy and strategic messaging
    will be essential to countering adversaries who will seek to exploit
    climate-related insecurity for strategic advantage.

    -- A whole-of-government approach is needed to address climate and
    environmental security threats across the federal government.
    Partnerships with industry, academia and non-profit organizations
    can improve sharing and coordination of data-collection, modeling,
    disaster response initiatives and early warning best practices.

Blum noted that participants expressed interest in future tabletop 
exercises to address the impacts of climate change and environmental 
security challenges. Future exercises, she said, might include greater 
participation from allies and partners to include experts from NATO, the 
United Nations, the scientific community, the humanitarian and disaster 
recovery community and other relevant experts.

Bryan emphasized the value of the exercise and the need for future 
exercises, assessments and other events to help the department better 
understand the links between climate change and global security.
https://www.defense.gov/Explore/News/Article/Article/2596591/dod-exercise-highlights-need-to-address-climate-change-its-impacts/



[clips from Guardian Opinion]
*How we talk about the climate crisis is increasingly crucial to 
tackling it*
Susanna Rustin - 17 May 2021
Our emotional register – how ‘doomy’ or ‘hopeful’ we are – will 
inevitably shape the policies we put forward

As the climate emergency creeps closer to the top of the political 
agenda, where it belongs, an argument is raging over communication. 
Exactly what to say about the environmental crisis, and how, is an 
important question for all sorts of people and organisations, including 
governments. It is particularly pressing for journalists, authors and 
broadcasters. For us, communication is not an adjunct to other 
activities such as policymaking or campaigning. It is our main job...
- -
This phase of climate communication led to enormously harmful delays. 
But the disagreements did not end when the global warming deniers were 
forced to retreat. Instead, new divisions have either appeared or become 
more obvious: while those on the left back strong action by governments, 
those on the right put more emphasis on markets and individuals.
- -
A more recent spat illustrates similar tensions from a different angle. 
Michael E Mann is a US climate scientist whose latest book, The New 
Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet, takes aim at the 
shape-shifting efforts of climate deniers. He describes the new, 
“softer” tactics adopted by the fossil fuel lobby and its techno-utopian 
enablers. These include downplaying the dangers of global heating and 
trying to delay regulatory action. But along with them, Mann attacks a 
number of writers for engaging in what he calls “doomism” or 
“despair-mongering”.

One of his targets is the journalist David Wallace-Wells, author of an 
influential book called The Uninhabitable Earth. Another is the British 
academic Jem Bendell, who advocates an approach he describes as “deep 
adaptation” to an anticipated “societal collapse”. While Mann praises 
Greta Thunberg, who famously told world leaders “I want you to panic”, 
in general he thinks the word “panic” should be avoided.

While this debate could be seen as a distraction from the more important 
story of what is actually going on and what needs to be done, I think 
the argument about how to talk and think about the climate crisis is 
increasingly central.
Divisions shouldn’t be exaggerated. Mann said in a recent interview that 
he falls victim to “doomism” himself at times. On an emotional level, he 
recognises that fear is a natural reaction to what is going on. And, in 
an important sense, he, Bendell, Wallace-Wells and Thunberg are on the 
same side: they all recognise global heating as an existential threat. 
But the point is, major differences of philosophy and strategy also have 
to be reckoned with, even among those who see themselves as on the same 
side (against heating).

The deals struck by governments at the Cop26 talks in November will 
determine what progress on climate the world is able to make over the 
next decade. Compared with this, the question of how cheerful or 
miserable you or I or anyone else feels about the situation, and how we 
encourage others to feel about it, might seem trivial. But I think this 
emotional register is important, particularly for progressives with 
their ideological commitment to the idea that things should improve. The 
socialist critic Raymond Williams used the term “structure of feeling” 
to describe the way that the cultural life of a democracy could be 
shaped, from the bottom up.

So what is the “structure of feeling” about the climate at the moment? A 
recent poll of 1.2 million people by the UN found that two-thirds 
believe global heating is an “emergency”; in the UK the figure was 81%. 
What lies beneath such headlines is hard to know. Do most people think 
things will work out in the end; that the warnings of disaster will turn 
out to have been exaggerated? Or are millions, even billions of us, 
living in terror that they won’t?

Mann is far from alone in his hostility to gloominess. Others, too, see 
it as a gateway to nihilism; and fear that those who anticipate a grim 
spiral of chaos and scarcity will push reactionary policies focused on 
controlling borders and resources.

Others, including me, think that while it’s right to be hopeful about 
the post-carbon future, to embrace the prospect of green jobs and 
cleaner air, too much optimism also carries risks. The situation is sad 
and very dangerous. Like a person with a serious illness, we need first 
to admit this; and then do every single thing we can to preserve life.

Susanna Rustin is a Guardian columnist and leader writer
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/17/talk-about-climate-crisis-tackling


[everyone should know by now]
*California Is Headed Toward Another Brutal Wildfire Season*
Last year’s blazes set state records. This year, the drought’s even worse.
Dan Spinelli - May 16-2021
A wildfire in Southern California grew to 1,325 acres on Sunday as 
roughly 1,000 Topanga Canyon residents had to be evacuated from their 
homes. Just like that, fire season has started again in California. As 
an extreme drought worsens across much of the state, 2021 is shaping up 
to be potentially another deadly year.

The state’s warm climate and lack of rainfall makes it especially prone 
to wildfires, but nature is not the only reason large parts of 
California are regularly set ablaze every summer. As Jeffrey Ball wrote 
for Mother Jones in 2019:

Today’s monster fires result largely from three human forces: 
taxpayer-funded fire suppression that has made the forest a tinderbox; 
policies that encourage construction in places that are clearly prone to 
burning; and climate change, which has worsened everything.

That last point has become especially crucial as scientists have 
searched for ways to explain why the area covered by California’s summer 
wildfires are eight times larger than they were in 1972. “This 
climate-change connection is straightforward,” Park Williams, a 
bioclimatologist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth 
Observatory, told the New York Times last year. “Warmer temperatures dry 
out fuels. In areas with abundant and very dry fuels, all you need is a 
spark.”

The problem is only getting more dire. After a record year last year in 
which California fires burned an area “larger than the state of 
Connecticut,” scientists are expecting an even worse season this summer, 
continuing a trend of earlier starts to fire season.

As Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist, explained to CNN last week: 
“A combination of factors—including short-term severe to extreme drought 
and long-term climate change—are in alignment for yet another year of 
exceptionally high risk across much of California’s potentially 
flammable landscapes.”
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2021/05/california-is-headed-toward-another-brutal-wildfire-season/


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[space is collapsing upon us]
*Climate emissions shrinking the stratosphere, scientists reveal*
Exclusive: Thinning indicates profound impact of humans and could affect 
satellites and GPS
Damian Carrington Environment editor

Wed 12 May 2021

Humanity’s enormous emissions of greenhouse gases are shrinking the 
stratosphere, a new study has revealed.

The thickness of the atmospheric layer has contracted by 400 meters 
since the 1980s, the researchers found and will thin by about another 
kilometer by 2080 without major cuts in emissions. The changes have the 
potential to affect satellite operations, the GPS navigation system and 
radio communications.

The discovery is the latest to show the profound impact of humans on the 
planet. In April, scientists showed that the climate crisis had shifted 
the Earth’s axis as the massive melting of glaciers redistributes weight 
around the globe.
The stratosphere extends from about 20 kilometers to 60 kilometers above 
the Earth’s surface. Below is the troposphere, in which humans live, and 
here carbon dioxide heats and expands the air. This pushes up the lower 
boundary of the stratosphere. But, in addition, when CO2 enters the 
stratosphere it actually cools the air, causing it to contract.

The shrinking stratosphere is a stark signal of the climate emergency 
and the planetary-scale influence that humanity now exerts, according to 
Juan Añel, at the University of Vigo, Ourense in Spain and part of the 
research team. “It is shocking,” he said. “This proves we are messing 
with the atmosphere up to 60 kilometers.”

“It makes me wonder what other changes our emissions are inflicting on 
the atmosphere that we haven’t discovered yet.”
Scientists already knew the troposphere was growing in height as carbon 
emissions rose and had hypothesized that the stratosphere was shrinking. 
But the new study is the first to demonstrate this and shows it has been 
contracting around the globe since at least the 1980s, when satellite 
data was first gathered.

The ozone layer that absorbs UV rays from the sun is in the stratosphere 
and researchers had thought ozone losses in recent decades could be to 
blame for the shrinking. Less ozone means less heating in the 
stratosphere. But the new research shows it is the rise of CO2 that is 
behind the steady contraction of the stratosphere, not ozone levels, 
which started to rebound after the 1989 Montreal treaty banned CFCs.

The study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, 
reached its conclusions using the small set of satellite observations 
taken since the 1980s in combination with multiple climate models, which 
included the complex chemical interactions that occur in the atmosphere.

Prof Paul Williams, at the University of Reading in the UK, who was not 
involved in the new research, said: “This study finds the first 
observational evidence of stratosphere contraction and shows that the 
cause is in fact our greenhouse gas emissions rather than ozone.”

“Some scientists have started calling the upper atmosphere the 
‘ignorosphere’ because it is so poorly studied,” he said. “This new 
paper will strengthen the case for better observations of this distant 
but critically important part of the atmosphere.”

“It is remarkable that we are still discovering new aspects of climate 
change after decades of research,” said Williams, whose own research has 
shown that the climate crisis could triple the amount of severe 
turbulence experienced by air travellers. “It makes me wonder what other 
changes our emissions are inflicting on the atmosphere that we haven’t 
discovered yet.”

The dominance of humanity activities on the planet has led scientists to 
recommend the declaration of a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene.

Among the suggested markers of the Anthropocene are the radioactive 
elements scattered by nuclear weapons tests in the 1950s and domestic 
chicken bones, thanks to the surge in poultry production after the 
second world war. Other scientists have suggested widespread plastic 
pollution as a marker of a plastic age, to follow the bronze and iron ages.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/12/emissions-shrinking-the-stratosphere-scientists-find



[lost to a compromised database -- a recovered classic talk from 6 years 
ago.]
*Renee Lertzman: The Myth of Climate Change Apathy*
Sep 25, 2015
Ed Mays
Do personal anxieties and emotional responses to ecological problems 
hinder our ability to act effectively? According to Royal Roads 
University’s Renee Lertzman, tackling climate change takes more than 
behavioral changes–it also requires an underlying shift in human emotions.
https://youtu.be/XFOxk95QV-4



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming  May 18, 2013 *

  Brad Plumer of the Washington Post points to the cultural factors that 
fuel climate-change denial:

"[P]eople tend to arrive at these debates with their own pre-existing 
cultural values. If you're not already inclined to accept the values 
that typically accompany belief in climate change -- and if you're not 
predisposed to agree with all the people who like to talk about climate 
change -- then you're probably not going to change your mind just 
because the media says there's an expert consensus."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/18/scientists-agree-on-climate-change-so-why-doesnt-everyone-else/


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