[✔️] May 20, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*May 20, 2021*/

[Video - many 10 year plans]
*Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry on US Climate Policy 
and Yale*
May 17, 2021
YaleUniversity
Join Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry and Yale 
President Peter Salovey as they discuss climate change and US climate 
policy. The conversation focused on the goals for the UN Climate Change 
Conference (COP26) in Glasglow in November 2021, the importance of 
private capital and the momentum of the marketplace, what students and 
young people can do to influence climate policy and the importance of 
student activism for the climate movement, how to bridge political 
divides, and where to focus research at Yale with the recent gift from 
Fedex to fund a new center focused on developing natural solutions for 
reducing atmospheric carbon as part of Yale’s broader Planetary 
Solutions Project.

Climate Day is presented by Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies in 
partnership with Yale Planetary Solutions Project, Yale Program on 
Climate Change Communication, Yale School of the Environment, Yale 
School of Engineering and Applied Science, Yale School of Public Health.
https://youtu.be/wIN4QsQtuqs

- -

[heat and money]
*Central Banks Jump Into Climate-Change Policy Fray*
Some say regulators are going beyond their remits with focus on risks to 
financial systems and economies
By Simon Clark
May 16, 2021

Central banks, the most powerful financial institutions in the world, 
want to become the guardians of the environment as well.

The central banks say climate change is a financial and economic risk. 
They believe rising sea levels, more wildfires and bigger storms could 
cause shortages that spur inflation, the regulators’ traditional nemesis.

The banks that are deepest into the issue are trying to limit climate 
change by steering their financial systems away from fossil fuels. Their 
regulations could hit U.S. companies operating overseas. The Bank of 
England’s remit now explicitly includes environmental sustainability as 
well as maintaining price stability.

The Federal Reserve is proceeding cautiously, worried about financial 
risks but wary of expanding its mandate, which would put it in the 
middle of the partisan debate over climate change.

In December, the Fed joined the Central Banks and Supervisors Network 
for Greening the Financial System. That group, which includes central 
banks and regulators of major European countries as well as China, 
Russia and Japan, started with eight members in 2017...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/central-banks-jump-into-climate-change-policy-fray-11621166402
- -
[message battles]
*Greta Thunberg blasts John Kerry over global warming statement*
The activist took to Twitter to voice her disapproval.
By Christian Spencer | May 18, 2021
Story at a glance:

    -- Greta Thunberg responded on Twitter to comments John Kerry made
    about technology’s role in combating climate change.
    -- Thunberg compared Kerry’s statements to the Marvel Avengers.
    -- Kerry cited scientific advice on how technological advances will
    reduce carbon emissions.

Environmental activist Greta Thunberg is speaking out against John 
Kerry, after an interview in which the U.S. climate envoy expressed 
optimism that technological advances will help reduce emissions and 
people won’t have to change certain behaviors to achieve some climate 
goals.

In a Sunday interview with the BBC, Kerry said technology that has yet 
to be invented will most likely play a large role in combating climate 
change — and people won’t have to "give up a quality of life to achieve 
some of the things we want to achieve."

America is changing faster than ever! Add Changing America to your 
Facebook or Twitter feed to stay on top of the news.

"I am told by scientists, not by anybody in politics but by scientists, 
that 50% of the reductions we have to make to get to net zero by 2050 or 
2045, as soon as we can, 50 percent of those reductions are going to 
come from technologies that we don't yet have," Kerry said.

"That's just a reality," he added. "And people who are realistic about 
this understand that's part of the challenge."

Thunberg took offense to Kerry's implication that people do not have to 
change their lifestyles or consumption habits to help fight climate 
change...
- -
Thunberg has spoken out against world leaders in the past. The 
18-year-old Swedish activist gave an emotional speech at the United 
Nations in 2019, saying “how dare you,” and expressing how leaders’ 
empty words and lack of action have stolen her dreams and childhood.

Thunberg also retweeted a response to Kerry from climate scientist 
Michael Mann...
https://thehill.com/changing-america/sustainability/climate-change/554168-greta-thunberg-blasts-john-kerry-over-global


[French in a pickle souffle ]
*Going Green, or Greenwashing? A Proposed Climate Law Divides France.*
Emmanuel Macron’s credentials as a leader on climate issues are being 
tested as business and environmental groups spar over changes to the 
French way of life...
By Liz Alderman and Constant Méheut
May 19, 2021
PARIS — Less meat in French cafeterias. Bans on short-distance flights.  
Gas heaters on cafe terraces would be outlawed.

As President Emmanuel Macron moves to make France a global champion in 
the fight against climate change, a wide-ranging environmental bill 
passed by the French National Assembly this month promises to change the 
way the French live, work and consume.

It would require more vegetarian meals at state-funded canteens, block 
expansion of France’s airports and curb wasteful plastics packaging. 
Polluters could be found guilty of “ecocide,” a new offense carrying 
jail terms of up to 10 years for destroying the environment. If Mr. 
Macron gets his way, the fight against climate change would even be 
enshrined in the French constitution through a referendum.

But those lofty ambitions are running into a barrage of resistance.

Environmentalists and politicians from France’s Green party, rather than 
backing the legislation, have accused Mr. Macron’s government of 
watering down ambitious measures and putting corporate interests above 
tough proposals by a 150-person “citizens climate panel,” which Mr. 
Macron himself convened last year to address climate concerns...
- -
France’s influential business federations, meanwhile, have joined forces 
to push back against what they view as overregulation and job-killing 
populism that could threaten their ability to recover from the economic 
blow of the Covid-19 pandemic...
- -
Mr. Macron has sought to burnish his image as a champion of the Paris 
accord ever since former President Donald Trump withdrew the United 
States from the agreement in 2017. The same day, a defiant Mr. Macron 
rebuked the American president, riffing off Mr. Trump’s campaign slogan 
as he declared from the Élysée Palace that he wanted to “make the planet 
great again.”

Since then, European countries have enacted laws to cut greenhouse gas 
emissions at least 40 percent by 2030 compared to 1990 levels. The 
European Union agreed to a new 55 percent reduction target in December...
- -
But Mr. Macron has had to walk a tightrope between addressing climate 
change and economic insecurity since the Yellow Vest movement exploded 
across France in late 2018. Those violent protests began as a grass 
roots rebellion among working class people after the government raised 
taxes on gasoline and diesel to fight global warming.
Mr. Macron attempted to defuse the anger by setting up the Citizens’ 
Climate Convention, a panel of randomly selected people from across 
France tasked with formulating proposals, with the help of experts, for 
ambitious climate legislation balanced with economic fairness.

The climate bill, which now heads to the conservatively-led Senate for 
debate in June, stems largely from those proposals. It prohibits 
domestic flights for journeys that can be made by train in less than 2.5 
hours (unless they connect to an international flight). Outdoor gas 
heaters used to warm cafe patrons would be banned beginning next April.

Supermarkets will have to reduce wasteful plastics packaging, while 
clothing and other goods would carry an “ecoscore” of their 
environmental impact. Landlords won’t be allowed to rent poorly 
insulated properties, and advertising for fossil fuel energy, like 
gasoline, would be phased out.

Business groups have zeroed in on certain measures that they say amount 
to costly overregulation. They have also cast doubt on the wisdom of 
having citizens propose climate change policy.
The main employers lobby, the Movement of the Enterprises of France, or 
Medef, which represents France’s biggest corporations, went through the 
citizens’ group’s proposals line by line, highlighting those considered 
to be the harshest and recommending softened versions of the text, 
according to the Journal du Dimanche, a weekly newspaper.

Medef was especially opposed to making “ecocide,” — defined as 
deliberate and lasting pollution — a crime. Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, 
Medef’s president, told a Senate panel that his members worried that it 
would stigmatize business and penalize economic activity. He said 
lawmakers, not random citizens, should write laws.

Tougher rules could also hobble companies weakened by the pandemic, 
François Asselin, president of the Confederation of Small and 
Medium-Sized Enterprises, told the panel. “So be careful not to bring 
them to their knees with too-restrictive measures,” he said...
- -
In response, the government said that the modified measures, combined 
with other climate change regulations passed since 2017, would allow it 
to meet the goals. But another independent study commissioned by the 
government, by the Boston Consulting Group, concluded that France would 
fall short even in the best-case scenario.
And last week, the French Senate, dominated by opposition conservatives, 
replaced language that would have the constitution “guarantee” the fight 
against climate change with wording stating that France would “protect” 
the climate.

Daniel Boy, a political scientist at Sciences Po university in Paris, 
said that environmentalism “was not really part of Macron’s DNA.” But he 
added that Mr. Macron had favored a “pragmatic ecology” made of small 
steps and concrete measures, reflecting a liberal electorate sensitive 
to economic interests, and had opposed “a more radical ecology” with 
wide-ranging changes.

That cautious approach is what has drawn the ire of many climate 
activists — and pulled protesters back into the streets.

Ms. Étienne, the activist, said the climate bill in its current form 
amounted to a “betrayal” of the citizens’ convention’s proposals and a 
wasted opportunity for Mr. Macron.
“They had the science, the people, the political moment,” she said.

“To deliberately lack the will and fall for industry lobbies now — I 
can’t think of any other word than betrayal.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/19/business/macron-france-climate-bill.html



[closer look at 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

What is a cloud? At the smallest scale, it’s simple: just moisture 
condensed onto a tiny particle — a speck of dust, a grain of pollen, 
salt spray from the ocean, or a mote of soot.

But as soon as more than one of these cloud droplets get together, 
things get chaotic, quickly. Scientists describe clouds as an emergent 
phenomenon, where smaller constituent parts give rise to sophisticated, 
self-organized patterns, like a school of fish swimming together or a 
murmuration of starlings.

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.

“How clouds change determines how warm it gets in response to a certain 
amount of greenhouse gas forcing,” said Angeline Pendergrass, an 
assistant professor of atmospheric science at Cornell University. And 
the stakes of how this relationship plays out are high.

Whether a given area sees more rainfall, drought, heating, or cooling in 
the coming years hinges on what kinds of clouds are present. And right 
now, scientists are still struggling to understand how this will unfold. 
Part of this is due to a lack of data about the myriad cloud varieties 
that are out there, part is due to a lack of computing power, and part 
is due to a spotty historical record...
- -
Why clouds are clouding our picture of climate change
The largest source of uncertainty in our understanding of the future 
under climate change is what humans will do.

After that, it’s clouds.

The basic mechanism of climate change is pretty simple: Heat-trapping 
gases such as carbon dioxide are emitted into the atmosphere as humans 
burn fossil fuels and damage natural stores of carbon. The more 
greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere, the more the planet heats up.

So, how much people actually work to curb fossil fuels and reduce 
greenhouse gas emissions will radically shape how much Earth warms up in 
the coming century.

Of course, there’s more to climate change than the planet heating up by 
a couple degrees. Not every part of the world is warming at the same 
rate, and a shift in the average temperature has important knock-on 
effects, like melting ice, rising sea levels, and weather events pushed 
to greater extremes.

These effects are what end up being the most consequential aspects of 
climate change for humans, altering where we can live, how much food we 
can grow, and whether we can continue to afford our lifestyles.

Clouds are critical to all of these impacts, but how they factor in can 
be complicated and confusing.

They behave as distinct units with unique properties, spreading out into 
thin layers or piling up into heaps, rising or falling in the sky. And 
when it comes to the climate, one of the most significant attributes of 
clouds is they can either cool an area or trap heat...
- -
“The way in which they behave depends on where they sit in the 
atmosphere,” said Scott Collis, an atmospheric scientist at Argonne 
National Laboratory. The puffy cumulus clouds at low altitudes, for 
instance, tend to bounce sunlight back into space, increasing the 
albedo, or reflectiveness, of the Earth. That has a cooling effect. 
Wispy, high-altitude cirrus clouds, on the other hand, bounce back 
infrared radiation coming up from the ground, warming the surface. And 
many clouds can do both, to varying degrees.

Now the entire planet is warming up, and for every degree Celsius the 
air warms, it can absorb about 7 percent more water. More water in the 
air could lead to more clouds, but which ones? Another effect to 
consider are feedbacks. The heat-trapping clouds could amplify the 
warming caused by greenhouse gases, leading to more water evaporation 
and creating even more of these clouds.

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



[Goes around, went around]
*How wildfires affect climate change — and vice versa*
May 18, 2021
Carly Phillips
Researcher in Residence
As the 2021 wildfire season begins to unfold, the memories of past 
seasons linger — in the lungs of people, in the communities and 
landscapes that burned and in the atmosphere, where greenhouse gases 
from wildfires continue to warm our planet.
- -
As the consequences from 20th-century forest management play out, people 
keep modifying fire regimes by unintentionally igniting fires and 
developing previously wild areas. By continuing to burn fossil fuels, 
humans further exacerbate climate change and fire risk, independent of 
forest management.

How do wildfires alter the carbon sink?
Further complicating the grim picture of wildfires is the growing 
expectation among governments and policy-makers that forests and trees 
will counterbalance and offset our continued fossil fuel use. 
Increasingly severe and large wildfires could derail that plan.

Most forests are carbon sinks, meaning they take up more carbon than 
they release, with the amount of carbon taken up varying with age. As 
plants photosynthesize, they take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere 
and integrate it into their leaves, roots and biomass. Over time, this 
leads to large carbon stocks in forests, stored in vegetation and 
importantly, soils. In cold, high-latitude environments, even more 
carbon is stored in permafrost soils.

Fires, along with other disturbances, release this carbon into the 
atmosphere, reducing the carbon stocks that have built up over time. 
Wildfires can also initially reduce a forest’s capacity to pull carbon 
out of the atmosphere, also called “sink strength.” Severe fires can 
inhibit forest regrowth and can change the species composition of the 
forest. Altogether, wildfires increase the amount of carbon leaving 
forests and can decrease the amount coming in.

The wildfire season forecast
While predicting the intensity of fire seasons isn’t foolproof and has 
its own limitations, many regions in Canada and the U.S. face a greater 
than average risk for fires this summer, according to predictions. 
Extreme drought is occurring across the western U.S. and the Canadian 
Prairie provinces, the effects of which are reflected in the elevated 
fire risk predicted for those same coastal and southwestern areas.
- -
Despite these projections, wildfires aren’t an anomaly, and for many 
landscapes, they’re a critical process that maintains ecosystem health. 
But the wildfires of the past burn differently than the wildfires of the 
present, and now humans and wildlife are at great risk.

Humans, however, can also intervene to interrupt this cycle, with 
practices like prescribed burning and forest thinning that can increase 
forest resilience. This is an active area of research and many 
scientists, including a team from Canada and the U.S., are working to 
develop scientifically sound interventions.

Climate change doesn’t operate like an on/off switch, meaning wildfires 
aren’t part of a “new normal.” We are experiencing the effects of 
climate change, but they will neither be consistent nor uniform. Rather, 
climate change is like a slide and, when it comes to wildfires, we are 
quickly spiralling downward.
https://theconversation.com/how-wildfires-affect-climate-change-and-vice-versa-158688



[The National Review is down the hall, on the right]
*Army Prioritizes Climate Change as ‘Serious Threat’ to National Security*
By CAROLINE DOWNEY
May 17, 2021 9:24 PM
In a memo released Friday, the U.S. Army announced that it now 
classifies climate change as a “serious threat to U.S. national security 
interests and defense objectives.” The statement subsequently signaled 
the military’s intention to prioritize combatting climate change with 
new risk analyses, threat projections, installation and natural-resource 
planning, supply-chain procurement considerations, and general strategy.
The statement added that the effects of climate change can induce 
“humanitarian disasters, undermine weak governments and contribute to 
long-term social and economic disruptions.”

“The Army has a lot to be proud of, yet there is a lot of work to 
continue to operate efficiently across extreme weather and climate 
conditions,” the memo read.

To prepare for and mitigate the fallout from the Earth’s warming, the 
Army plans to conduct “in-depth assessments of likely climate change 
effects on the Army’s worldwide missions,” while also working to “lead 
the way in technology development for tactical vehicles that balances 
increased capability with decreased climate impacts.”

The Army’s policy change comes after the Biden administration signaled 
its commitment to fighting the climate crisis as a national-security 
threat. In April, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III called 
climate change an “existential threat.”

“From coast to coast and across the world, the climate crisis has caused 
substantial damage and put people in danger, making it more difficult 
for us to carry out our mission of defending the United States and our 
allies,” Austin commented at the Leaders Summit on Climate.

At the conference, the secretary shared that Biden had charged the 
United States’ 18 intelligence organizations with drafting a National 
Intelligence Estimate detailing the national-security implications of 
climate change.

“We in the Department of Defense are committed to doing our part, from 
increasing the energy efficiency of our platforms and installations, to 
deploying clean distributed generation and energy storage, to 
electrifying our own vehicle fleets,” he said.

Austin emphasized the need to forge a new economic sector and global 
infrastructure for clean energy that is sustainable and renewable. He 
confirmed that other allies and strategic partners are collaborating 
with the United States in meeting the challenge.

“We’re not alone,” he said.
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/army-prioritizes-climate-change-as-serious-threat-to-national-security/



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming  May 20, 2001 *
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd summarizes the anti-conservation 
mentality of the George W. Bush administration:

    "We'll bake the earth. We'll brown & serve it, sauté it, simmer it,
    sear it, fondue it, George-Foreman-grill it. (We invented the
    Foreman grill.) We might one day bring the earth to a boil and pull
    it like taffy. (We invented taffy.)

    "If rising seas obliterate the coasts, our marine geologists will
    sculpt new ones and Hollywood will get bright new ideas for disaster
    movies. If we get charred by the sun, our dermatologists will
    replace our skin.

    "If the globe gets warmer, we'll turn up the air-conditioning. (We
    invented air-conditioning.) We'll drive faster in our gigantic,
    air-conditioned cars to the new beaches that our marine geologists
    create.

    "We will let our power plants spew any chemicals we deem necessary
    to fire up our Interplaks, our Krups, our Black & Deckers and our
    Fujitsu Plasmavisions.

    "We will drill for oil whenever and wherever we please. If tourists
    don't like rigs off the coast of Florida, they can go fly fishing in
    Wyoming. We won't be deterred by a few Arctic terns. We don't care
    about caribou. We don't care for cardigans. Give us our 69 degrees,
    winter and summer. Let there be light -- no timers, no freaky-shaped
    long-life bulbs. (We invented the light bulb.)

    "We want our refrigerators cold and our freezers colder. Bring on
    the freon. Banish those irritating toilets that restrict flow. When
    we flush, we flush all the way.

    "We will perfect the dream of nuclear power. We will put our toxic
    waste wherever we want, whenever we waste it. We have whole states
    with nothing better to do than serve as ancestral burial grounds for
    our effluvium. It can fester in those wide open spaces for thousands
    of years."

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/opinion/liberties-drill-grill-and-chill.html?pagewanted=print 


=================  also from 2013 =======================
May 20, 2013: The US Supreme Court refuses to hear an appeal of the 9th 
US Circuit Court of Appeals' decision in the Kivalina v. ExxonMobil 
case, effectively ending one effort to hold fossil fuel companies 
legally accountable for carbon pollution.

http://environblog.jenner.com/corporate_environmental_l/2013/05/high-court-refuses-to-take-up-kivalina-climate-suit.html 


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