[✔️] May 19, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*May 19, 2021*/

[Not a paid advert]
*2022 F-150 Lightning*
https://www.ford.com/f150-lightning/
- -
[nice product design]
*This is Ford’s electric F-150 pickup truck*
Revealed early during a speech from President Biden
May 18, 2021
https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/18/22442415/ford-f150-lightning-electric-pickup-truck-first-images
- -
[video nearly 2 years ago]
*All-Electric F-150 Prototype: Tows 1M+ Pounds | F-150 | Ford*
Jul 23, 2019
Ford Motor Company
We’ve confirmed we are bringing an all-electric F-150 to market. Now, 
we’re showing you the capability you asked for by having it tow more 
than 1 million pounds.* This is Built Ford Tough.

*The F-150 battery-electric prototype is towing far beyond any 
production truck’s published capacity in a one-time short event 
demonstration. Never tow beyond a vehicle’s towing capacities. Always 
consult the Owner’s Manual.

Learn more about the All-Electric Ford F-150 Prototype here: 
https://ford.to/32L24kS

Discover more 2019 Ford F-150 videos here: https://ford.to/2VfE8Wd
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXFHgoon7lg



[Mother Jones]
*Cities Are Woefully Unprepared for the Havoc of Climate Change*
More than 40 percent have no adaptation plan, a global survey suggests.
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2021/05/cities-woefully-unprepared-climate-change-adaptation-global-warming/
- -
https://www.cdp.net/en


[watch the clouds]
*Scientists aren’t sure what will happen to clouds as the planet warms*
Why clouds are one of the greatest sources of uncertainty for climate 
change.

By Umair Irfan  May 19, 2021
This chaos is why clouds are so difficult to predict. But the 
consequences of this inability to see through clouds go beyond sunshine 
and shade; it’s also obscuring our understanding of climate change.
- -
And the effects aren’t uniform across the world; some places may see far 
more reflective clouds while others may experience more warming clouds, 
and others still may see more, or less, of both. How these effects align 
will change how the planet warms in the coming decades and the practical 
consequences thereof.

“If we overestimate the degree to which clouds cool the planet in 
response to greenhouse gas forcing, then we’ll underestimate how warm it 
gets in response to certain amounts of greenhouse gases,” Pendergrass 
said...
Figuring this out is difficult because scientists have only recently 
been able to sharpen their picture of clouds. Ground-based radar and 
satellite images have helped researchers gain insight into the broad 
patterns of clouds across the planet, while weather balloons and 
aircraft have yielded narrow but detailed pictures of their inner workings.

But many of these techniques have only been deployed in the past 
half-century. Prior to that, observations of clouds were far more 
coarse. And unlike historical changes in temperature and rainfall, which 
can leave behind clues in sediment, ice cores, tree rings, and rocks 
dating back millenia, clouds have a light footprint. There are no cloud 
fossils.

So if scientists want to understand what clouds were like before the 
industrial revolution — before humans started pumping greenhouse gases 
and pollution into the sky in gargantuan quantities — they have to 
examine historical observations: weather logs, nautical records, and 
even art and literature. However, with such a blurry picture of the 
past, it’s harder to see into the future.

Clouds can be too complicated for computers
Observations of clouds are then fed into climate models. But computer 
models also struggle to understand clouds. “The big question for climate 
models is, what are the combinations going to be going forward?” Collis 
said.

There are two general approaches to clouds in climate models: top-down 
and bottom-up. Top-down simulations can model the whole planet and apply 
forcings, like different concentrations of carbon dioxide, and seeing 
what happens over time, zooming into different regions.

Other simulations start at the microscopic level of droplets and 
aerosols and then scale up. The problem is that clouds lie right in 
between these two approaches — too small and ephemeral to be captured in 
most global climate simulations and too complicated for computers to 
assemble from their constituent parts. So clouds tend to be represented 
in an oversimplified way in computer models.

“We have to understand what’s happening on these tiny, tiny scales that 
you need a microscope to see, all the way to the scale of the entire 
planet,” said Pendergrass. “All of those things are relevant to the 
problem. So trying to make a computer model that does that is not 
computationally feasible to do in any kind of direct way.”

Despite the challenges, scientists are making progress and filling in 
uncertainties about the future of the planet.

For instance, researchers last year published a new estimate for 
boundaries of climate sensitivity for the first time in decades. Climate 
sensitivity refers to how much the planet is expected to warm in 
response to a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations in the 
atmosphere compared to pre-industrial levels. It’s a critical metric 
used to refine models of climate change. A better understanding of 
clouds and their feedback into the climate system was a big reason why 
they were able to narrow their predictions.

But scientists don’t have decades to come up with their next round of 
refinements, and the current pace of advances in the field is 
excruciatingly slow. “We’re going to see a substantial amount of global 
warming before we can model the clouds scaled globally,” Pendergrass said.

So in the meantime, scientists are painstakingly piecing together 
records from the past, observations from the present, and models of the 
future to get a sharper picture of the cloudy skies.
https://www.vox.com/22430792/cloud-science-mystery-unexplainable-podcast-climate-change



[Personal history]
*Yesterday was May 18th - anniversary of the Mt St Helens eruption.*.. 
it happened on a Sunday at 8:32 Am.  But the Saturday before at the same 
time, I was in a helicopter directly over the mountain - my first time 
chopper video shooting with the door off, held in with straps and 
freezing in the open winds.. able the smell the fumes of the enlarging 
volcanic pits smoking and steaming below me.   Yet today, in 2021 I 
heard one woman telling me the history of her brother and husband - who 
went fishing on the Columbia river near Yakima... at 8:32 am Yakima was 
hit with roiling dark clouds that fully darkened the morning sky. The 
hot ash-fall generated lightning - starting hundreds of wildfires.  The 
volcanic ash snuffed them out.  It came down so thick and strong and 
fast that it filled their small fishing boat and choked off the outboard 
motor.  They rowed toward the river bank, one manning the oars and the 
other bailing the ash from the boat.  These parts of Washington State 
got ash-falls that were a sizable fraction of that deposited on 
Pompeii.   The men landed on the shore and hiked in the darkness until 
they found a river bank cabin and holed up there for 3 days.  No phone, 
no radio, and no way to verify the disaster.

I like to think the men knew that for weeks the volcano had been s 
steaming and threatening to erupt.  The news had been talking about it 
for weeks.  So they might have felt, or intuited, or known this was 
coming.  It was not a total surprise.  The foreknowledge may have 
tempered their terror.  Allowed energy to flow into action rather than 
panic.

Now it is nice to see the physicists debate free will... arguing that we 
have no free will.  None.  Even down to the micro-decisions.  [Not sure 
about that, but a worthy discussion]. And as we face the inevitable 
global warming dooms, the only thing humans can control is the timing of 
destabilization.  For a few decades now, we have been inviting the tiger 
to dine inside the tent.  .   The latest notion is that things must get 
much worse before we can notice how they can get better.   Well, 
population crash is inevitable.  And humans will continue to push that 
forward - Israel/Palestine is locked into the drama of decimations. Who 
has free will there?  Same with elitism of vaccines and other diseases - 
the invitation to die in order to make room for survivors.  Emptying out 
the lifeboats.

Either we will be informed by trauma, or we will die in our ignorance.  
Our free-will may only extend to knowing what is happening to us.  With 
no free will, the outcome might be the same as our heroic struggles 
(which also could be defined as physically compelled action ). 
Intelligent life confers the right to know our condition.  That trait 
may even define life somehow -- such that any being should be free to be 
curious.  Intelligent only for how we can seek refuge.

Everything is a metaphor for global warming.
Richard Pauli - May 18, 2021



[information battle injury similar to personal injury]
https://twitter.com/peedq/status/1394828311402991616?s=20
*The "On The Media" radio show yesterday  fired Bob Garfield* - I 
suspect it may be about global warming since he was vocal about news 
judgement. On the Media (OTM) is renowned for failing to cover the 
story.  Fairly recently, when Brooke Went on vacation, Bob snuck in some 
coverage.   The best they could manage was some on-air discussion why it 
should not, or should be covered - Brook gave a rambling, confusing 
argument about ignoring the story of the biggest threat to 
civilization.  About once a year, for decades now, I would write them an 
email, pleading for more coverage of this enormously important media story.

Why does OTM hide from the story?   I can only suspect it is NY Wall 
Street fossil fuel support for WNYC studios.  It would have been a cheap 
influence... it is plausible that a few large donations could have 
completely suppressed the story.   Much like the Sunday TV news shows 
used to run so many commercials from fossil fuel industries and API that 
it was embarrassingly obvious - and so recently will allow a few 
pop-science pieces to air.   What news editor would DARE touch the media 
third rail of pissing off a major advertiser-- or a major funder?.

Bob Garfield sounds like a hero to me.  (I also was fired from a local 
TV news show because I argued with the weather forecaster about 
recognizing global warming... I was gone in 1987. )

How many journalists have been driven out of their profession by this 
one, persistent, universal story?
https://twitter.com/peedq/status/1394828311402991616?s=20



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming  May 19, 2008 *
The Guardian reports:

    "A shareholder revolt at ExxonMobil led by the billionaire
    Rockefeller family has won the support of four significant British
    institutional investors who will call on Monday for a shakeup in the
    governance of the world's biggest oil company.

    "Guardian.co.uk has learned that F&C Asset Management, Morley Fund
    Management, the Co-Operative Insurance Society and the West Midlands
    Pension Fund are throwing their weight behind a resolution demanding
    that ExxonMobil appoints an independent chairman to stimulate debate
    on the company's board.

    "Exxon is facing a rebellion from its investors over its hardline
    approach to global warming. The firm has refused to follow rival oil
    companies in committing large-scale capital investment to
    environmentally friendly technology such as wind and solar power.

    "The Rockefeller dynasty, whose ancestor John D. Rockefeller founded
    the original oil business at the core of ExxonMobil, have sponsored
    four shareholder resolutions demanding changes at Exxon. One of
    these calls on Exxon's chief executive Rex Tillerson, to relinquish
    his role as chairman in favour of an outsider to bring in an
    alternative point of view."

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/may/19/exxonmobil.oil


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