[✔️] November 23, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

👀 Richard Pauli richard at theclimate.vote
Tue Nov 23 10:21:28 EST 2021 

/*November 23, 2021*/

/[ predictable dangers firefighters prepared ]/
WEATHER
*Red flag warning: Santa Ana winds batter Southern California amid fears 
of increased wildfire risk*
https://abc7.com/wind-red-flag-warning-southern-california/11259792/



/[  clips from a Weather.com opinion ] /
*Phase Out or Phase Down, Just Transition Away From Fossil Fuels Remains 
Critically Lacking in Global Climate Discourse*
By Sanjay Vashist and Victor Minnoti    Nov 23, 2021
This article is a guest column reflecting the author’s opinions and do 
not necessarily represent the official views of The Weather Channel.
- -
India’s initial proposal to include ALL fossil fuels is critical for the 
world to grapple with as we face the climate crisis. There is no 
scientific or legal basis to say that the UN climate talks should focus 
on coal alone. In fact, it is the exact opposite with the IPCC, IEA and 
UNEP all releasing reports this year calling for the end of fossil fuel 
expansion.

Similarly, India’s call for support for the just transition will be 
central if we are actually to succeed in phasing out the fossil fuel 
industry. A new report released in Glasgow by over 200 organisations—CSO 
Equity Review—underscores the complexity of our climate crisis, 
including long-standing structural injustices and inequities aggravated 
by historical pollution and decades of lies and delay tactics by the 
fossil fuel industry.

The reality is that wealthy nations, particularly the US, have long 
dismissed the idea of equity in UN climate negotiations. Many of these 
countries still have very active, influential oil and gas industries 
with little reliance on coal. So the final text does little to upturn 
business as usual for the wealthy countries but has significant impacts 
on nations like India and China that are currently more reliant on coal. 
A large chunk of 3 billion people worldwide still experiencing energy 
poverty belongs to these two countries...
- -
Directly addressing fossil fuels in international climate negotiations 
is much overdue. While their mention in the final text is unprecedented, 
it is merely dipping our toes in the waters of dirty energy.

The needed energy transition away from fossil fuels will undoubtedly 
require an ambitious international cooperation agenda with true climate 
leadership. That leadership must come from wealthy countries, not least 
the US, who continues to produce fossil fuels. The world must phase out 
fossil fuel production swiftly and fairly to keep the dream of 1.5°C alive.

https://weather.com/en-IN/india/climate-change/news/2021-11-23-transition-from-fossil-fuels-lacking-in-global-climate



[  yes, this is geo-engineering ]
*Cloud seeding gains steam as West faces worsening droughts*
A 75-year-old technology is back on the map thanks to new scientific 
discoveries and persistent water shortages
- -
The premise of cloud seeding is simple. Certain clouds contain large 
amounts of “supercooled liquid” water, or water that exists in a liquid 
state below the freezing point. At temperatures below about minus-5 
degrees Celsius (23 Fahrenheit), adding particles of silver iodide to 
that water can promote ice crystal formation, resulting in additional 
snowfall.

But while the basic principles of cloud seeding were worked out in the 
1940s and more than 50 countries were running cloud seeding programs as 
of 2017, scientists have long struggled to quantify how effective cloud 
seeding is — if it even works at all.

A six-year study that Wyoming conducted from 2008 to 2013 — among the 
most ambitious done thus far — estimated that cloud seeding can boost 
precipitation within seedable clouds by about 3.3 percent over the 
winter season. But those findings did not meet key thresholds for 
statistical significance, meaning scientists were unable to say for sure 
that the extra snowfall produced by seeded clouds wasn’t the result of 
chance...
- -
Part of the reason that states out west are embracing cloud seeding, 
despite lingering uncertainties about the benefits, is that it’s cheap. 
Utah, which estimates that its statewide network of 165 silver iodide 
generators boosts snowpack by 5 to 15 percent, says the program cost 
works out to just $2.18 per acre-foot of water produced.

“It’s basically free,” said state cloud seeding coordinator Jake Serago, 
noting that in urban areas out west, water can cost hundreds of dollars 
per acre-foot.

But there is an even more fundamental reason that cloud seeding is 
gaining popularity. “The only way to add water to the system is through 
cloud seeding,” Rickert said. “I do think it’s gaining support because 
of the dire straits we’re in with regards to drought.”...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/11/21/cloud-seeding-drought-west/



[ a bit of history ]

In a two year period 13 to 19 percent of all large sequoias in their 
natural range were killed by fires
Bill Gabbert -- November 22, 2021
If a sequoia is lucky, it can live for up to 3,000 years

Early estimates expect that on two fires in 2021, the KNP Complex and 
the Windy Fire, 2,261 to 3,637 sequoias over four feet in diameter have 
already been killed or will die within the next three to five years. 
These losses make up an estimated additional 3-5% of the entire Sierra 
Nevada sequoia population over four feet in diameter.

https://wildfiretoday.com/2021/11/22/in-a-two-year-period-13-to-19-percent-of-all-large-sequoias-in-their-natural-range-were-killed-by-fires/



/[  Congress hearing, but are they listening? ] /
*U.S. House Hearing on the National Security Implications of Climate 
Change in the Arctic *
By Dr. Marc Kodack
On November 20, the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on 
Europe, Energy, the Environment and Cyber held a virtual hearing 
entitled “National Security Implications of Climate Change in the 
Arctic.” Witnesses providing written statements and answering questions 
included retired Admiral Paul Zukunft, Former Commandant of U.S. Coast 
Guard and an Advisory Board member with the Center for Climate and 
Security; Dr. Susan Natali, Arctic Program Director, Woodwell Climate 
Research Center; Dr. Dalee Sambo Dorough, Chairperson, Inuit Circumpolar 
Council, and Luke Coffey, Director, Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for 
Foreign Policy, The Heritage Foundation.

*Highlights of the Hearing *

    · The Arctic will see both competition and collaboration between the
    U.S., Russia and China as climate change continues to affect both
    maritime and land resources, such as loss of sea ice, increased land
    erosion, rising sea levels, wildfires, and permafrost melting, all
    of which have implications for U.S. national security.

    · Local indigenous communities will continue to be adversely
    affected by climate change including effects on fisheries and
    existing infrastructure which also includes ice.

    · The U.S. needs to work with its NATO partners, other allies, and
    indigenous communities to address mutual Arctic challenges including
    those that are directly security-related and those that are
    environmental.

    · The U.S. needs to invest resources into the Arctic including
    building a deep-water port, field additional ice breakers, and
    launch satellites that can improve awareness and increase
    communication bandwidth for the military, but also for indigenous
    communities. There also needs to be top-down support for knowledge
    sharing among indigenous communities, scientists, and others. There
    is currently no strategic plan on how all these groups can work
    together.

https://climateandsecurity.org/2021/11/u-s-house-hearing-on-the-national-security-implications-of-climate-change-in-the-arctic/

- -

[ Hearings text and video archive is online ]
*National Security Implications of Climate Change in the Arctic*
November 16, 2021 10:00 AM
Location: Virtually via Cisco WebEx
Subcommittee: Europe, Energy, the Environment and Cyber

    https://youtu.be/y9r85KiwQMo?t=1643
    National Security Implications of Climate Change in the Arctic
    460 viewsStreamed live on Nov 16, 2021
    House Foreign Affairs Committee
    Subcommittee: Europe, Energy, the Environment and Cyber
    Chair William R. Keating

https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/2021/11/national-security-implications-of-climate-change-in-the-arctic


/
//[ It is a difficult quest to find amusing discussion, or witty, or 
talkative.   audio & transcript ]/
*Comedians Conquering Climate Change*
#03: Clean energy jobs and sick beats (feat. Antony Del Rio)
NOVEMBER 18, 2021
Esteban offends (and then apologizes too) an entire nation, Antony has a 
crush on teacher, and we start our road to rock stardom — album drops 
next month on Def Jam.
https://generation180.org/comedians-conquering-climate-change/
/[ not much is funny here.  More like clever or cute. ]/



/[  a little bit of science  ]/
//*How Drought Could Make Sea-Level Rise Worse*
Take southern California, for instance.
By: Sierra Garcia  November 1, 2021
n the first decade of the Cold War, California was in a drought. The 
coastline north of Los Angeles retreated inland by several hundred feet. 
Less water flowing to the ocean meant less sediment swept down rivers to 
replenish the beaches that the waves, left to their own devices, would 
eat away over time.

The ocean’s rapid encroachment wasn’t too unusual in the longer view of 
history, according to research published last year by earth scientists 
Julie Zurbuchen, Alexander Simms, and Sebastien Huot. They mapped the 
historical waterline over most of the last millenium near Ventura, 
California, with a blend of ground-penetrating radar, radiocarbon 
dating, and dosimetry (a measure of how long ago sand was last exposed 
to sunlight), among other methods, which helped pinpoint precisely where 
the beach edge used to be. Their analysis revealed that on timescales of 
decades, the southern California coastline often grew and shrank with 
natural cycles of drier and wetter periods in the Pacific that always 
seemed to balance one another out over the course of a century or so.
That balance is now likely at an end. California and the western United 
States face drier futures with climate change, and although there is 
already significant concern about how drought will continue to interact 
with agriculture, wildfires, and habitats, sea-level rise and coastal 
erosion tend to be part of an entirely separate climate conversation. 
Because drought is so strongly linked with natural shoreline retreat in 
southern California, it could further imperil attempts to shore up the 
coastline against sea-level rise.

Sea-level rise today is mainly linked to two related climate-change 
effects: meltwater from land-based ice, like glaciers, and seawater 
physically expanding to take up more space as it warms. Scientists have 
long known that sea-level rise is not uniform everywhere, thanks to both 
natural processes—like tectonic activity in a region, the gravitational 
influences on an area, and leftover rebound effects from the last ice 
age—as well as influences like excess groundwater pumping. The poorly 
recognized reality of sea-level rise is that despite the global scope of 
the issue, planning for the impacts must happen at a smaller scale—in 
part because researchers may unearth more unintuitive interactions in 
other coastal areas that complicate their own sea-level-rise prognoses.
As California emerges from its driest summer on record, the harsh 
reality of drier times ahead may be settling in on the Golden State’s 40 
million residents. It remains to be seen whether a connection between 
drought and accelerated coastline loss inspires beachfront constituents 
to grow more proactive in addressing the ocean-sized elephant of sea 
level rise in the climate-adaptation room.
https://daily.jstor.org/how-drought-could-accelerate-sea-level-rise/



[The news archive - looking back]
*On this day in the history of global warming November 23, 2014*

November 23, 2014: The New York Times reports:

    "A warming climate is melting [Glacier National Park's] glaciers, an
    icy retreat that promises to change not just tourists’ vistas, but
    also the mountains and everything around them.

    "Streams fed by snowmelt are reaching peak spring flows weeks
    earlier than in the past, and low summer flows weeks before they
    used to. Some farmers who depend on irrigation in the parched days
    of late summer are no longer sure that enough water will be there.
    Bull trout, once pan-fried over anglers’ campfires, are now caught
    and released to protect a population that is shrinking as water
    temperatures rise."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/us/climate-change-threatens-to-strip-the-identity-of-glacier-national-park.html?mwrsm=Email


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