[✔️] September 25, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[👀 Richard Pauli]

/*September 25, 2021*/

/[new horizon]/
*World's youth return to the streets to fight climate change*
By Kate Abnett
-- Largest global climate protest planned since pandemic
-- Strike takes place weeks before COP26 summit
-- Hundreds of thousands expected at German events
Climate crisis worse now than before COVID: Thunberg
BRUSSELS, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Young people around the world began taking 
to the streets on Friday to demand urgent action to avert disastrous 
climate change, in their largest protest since the start of the COVID-19 
pandemic.

The strike takes place five weeks before the U.N. COP26 summit, which 
aims to secure more ambitious climate action from world leaders to 
drastically cut the greenhouse gas emissions heating the planet.

"Everyone is talking about making promises, but nobody keeps their 
promise. We want more action," said Farzana Faruk Jhumu, 22, a youth 
climate activist in Dhaka, Bangladesh. "We want the work, not just the 
promises."

Demonstrations kicked off in Asia and were planned in more than 1,500 
locations, according to youth movement Fridays for Future. In Germany 
alone, organisers expected hundreds of thousands to attend more than 400 
protests...
- -
"Last time it was digital and nobody was paying attention to us," he said...
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/worlds-youth-returns-streets-fight-climate-change-2021-09-24/

- -

/[Greta on Friday]/
*Young climate activists join Greta Thunberg for first major Fridays for 
Future strikes of pandemic*
LONDON — Young people around the world spilled into streets, city 
squares and local parks on Friday, following the call of Swedish teen 
Greta Thunberg, for the first big, in-person, coordinated climate 
protests since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

Thunberg, who started the Fridays for Future student movement in 2018, 
was in Berlin, where the turnout was especially high, and where voters 
are gearing up to select a successor to Chancellor Angela Merkel in 
national elections Sunday.

“Yes, we must vote, you must vote, but remember that voting only will 
not be enough. We must keep going into the streets,” she said to a crowd 
outside the Reichstag parliament building.
- -
“The government’s messaging has gotten better, but emissions are still 
going up,” he said. “We want them to go down, and will keep marching 
until they do.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/09/24/fridays-future-greta-climate-protests/



/[prison or fine - no death penalty]/
*PG&E Is Charged With Manslaughter In A California Wildfire That Killed 4*
September 24, 2021
- -
If the utility is convicted of manslaughter, the punishment would be a 
fine for each person killed in the Zogg Fire last year near the city of 
Redding. A corporation "can't go to jail, so we're talking fines, fees, 
the ability for the court to order remedial and corrective measures," 
Bridgett said.

"One of our primary functions here is to hold them responsible and let 
the surviving families know that their loved one did not die in vain," 
she added.

PG&E CEO Patti Poppe said failing to prevent the fire was not a crime....
https://www.npr.org/2021/09/24/1040630538/pacific-gas-electric-manslaughter-charges-california-wildfire-zogg



/[avoiding facing the truth]/
*Opinion: World leaders are not being honest about what it will take to 
fight climate change*
Opinion by Henry Olsen - September 22, 2021 ...
- -
Developing countries often turn to coal because it is a relatively cheap 
fuel to burn for electricity. Coal is plentiful and easy to mine in many 
parts of the world, and electricity from coal-fired plants is available 
all the time, unlike electricity generated from solar or wind power. 
China’s copious coal supply, for example, has fueled its rise to become 
a global economic power. Moving away from that would reduce the 
country’s competitiveness and burden it with high transition costs to 
new power plants. So, seriously fighting climate change now would 
dramatically reduce China’s economic growth and that of other poor 
countries trying to catch up to the West. Predictably, these countries 
are not willing to lock in Western economic dominance...
- -
Moreover, these countries don’t just need aid to battle the effects of 
climate change; they need money enabling them to be economically 
competitive in the carbon-neutral world the West wants to build. That 
will take hundreds of billions annually from public and private sources, 
with many investments hopelessly unable to earn a reasonable rate of 
return. Wealthy climate activists such as billionaire Bill Gates could 
pledge their entire fortunes to the cause and still barely make a dent 
in the problem...
- -
Climate activists have shied away from telling the world the truth. 
Instead of selling sacrifice, they peddle exaggerated claims of job 
growth and economic gains, conveniently omitting the pain that shutting 
down fossil fuel plants and changing energy consumption for billions of 
households will entail. Going green is cool — until you start taking 
away people’s hamburgers and flights to the Bahamas.

The iron law of scarcity applies as much to fighting climate change as 
it does to all other areas of economic endeavor. We cannot have 
limitless supplies of everything we want all the time. Actually fighting 
climate change requires painful tradeoffs. Until leaders such as Biden 
and Xi tell us that, all their words are merely hot air.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/22/world-leaders-are-not-being-honest-about-what-it-will-take-fight-climate-change/



/[Yale talks economics in a video ]/
*Time to Reimagine Sustainable Development?*
Sep 21, 2021
YaleUniversity
Time to reimagine sustainable development? On the eve of the UN General 
Assembly"
Event description: The 76th session of the United Nations General 
Assembly opened on Tuesday, September 14, for leaders from around the 
world to discuss progress on the Sustainable Development Goals. Adopted 
by all United Nations Member States in 2015, the SDGs marked a move away 
from traditional economic measures of development to account for broader 
issues such as just human rights, gender, and the environment. Today 
they serve not only as standards by which to judge progress, but also as 
focal points for new ideas on how to solve the world’s greatest challenges.
  The eighth Yale Development Dialogue focused on how the SDGs hold up 
in today’s world and how some of the best new ideas in global 
development might advance progress on the goals. Panelists: Catherine 
Cheney, Stefan Dercon, Shanta Devarajan, and Rory Stewart
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNRGt4QkVPc



/[video talk -- "What a time to choose to be alive!"] /
*JOANNA MACY: Climate Crisis As Spiritual Path*
August 2021

Old Dog Documentaries
This 20 minute interview with Joanna Macy will help answer an essential 
question:
How we are going to live our lives fully, with inner peace and courage 
(and even joy) as we confront a world that is destroying itself?
Joanna is also featured in our film THE WISDOM TO SURVIVE: Climate 
Change, Capitalism & Community. Watch HERE: 
vimeo.com/ondemand/wisdomtosurvive/
https://vimeo.com/588455489



/[Take a survey please]/
*Climate Research Survey*

Help KU Gain Insight on Community Priorities and Responses to Climate Change

The Department of Psychology at the University of Kansas is hosting a 
public survey to shed light on people’s feelings about the climate 
crisis and how communities are positioned to respond to it.

They aim to include as many participants as possible, regardless of 
whether they have attended any of our True Power for Climate Resilience 
and Recovery or Climate of Community programs.

The survey takes about 10 minutes.

Anyone offering their thoughts will be contributing to a larger 
understanding of the relationship of emotions around climate change and 
community resilience.

This is a continuation of the research study conducted in September 
2020. Please feel free to forward this message to others who might be 
interested in participating.
https://kusurvey.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5uKOhsuyXzwITFY



/[Oh no, Salon reports]/
*Bleak as it seems, geoengineering may be the only way to save Earth 
from climate change*
Could Earth be cooled by reflecting sunlight back into space? NYU's 
Gernot Wagner talks with Salon
By MATTHEW ROZSA
SEPTEMBER 23, 2021
Considering that Gernot Wagner is the founding executive director of 
Harvard University's Solar Geoengineering Research Program, you might 
imagine him as an archetypal detached scientist. Engineers, after all, 
are a notoriously antisocial group, and one would hardly imagine that 
tendency to soften when they hail from an Ivy League school.

This could not be further from the truth. Speaking to Wagner about his 
upcoming book "Geoengineering: The Gamble," it is evident from his tone 
that he is speaking not just as a scholar, but as a passionately 
concerned citizen of Earth. The book reflects the real man's attitude: 
Human beings have passed the point of no return when it comes to climate 
change. We are not going to be able to stave off all of the apocalyptic 
conditions brought on by a warming planet (extreme weather events, 
droughts, heat waves, wildfires) without removing some greenhouse gases 
from the atmosphere.

This is a fact, Wagner argues. As a consequence, we need to look into 
technology that can solve the problem for us — for instance, projects 
which could reflect sunlight back into space. The idea is controversial, 
however, with critics fearing that it is merely a stopgap that doesn't 
solve the real problem of more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and 
thus misleads the public into thinking we can "reverse" climate change. 
They also point out that it wouldn't fix other problems related to 
greenhouse gas emissions, like ocean acidification, and that such a 
large-scale engineering project would require costly regular 
maintenance. Plus, given the complexity of our climate, it is almost 
certain that there would be drastic unforeseen consequences in any solar 
geoengineering project, from which groups of people are most impacted to 
flora and fauna that may suffer due to changes in solar energy levels on 
the ground...
- -
*Basically the thesis of geoengineering is that we may reach a point 
where we have to use this kind of technology, but that there are pros 
and cons. Does that sound about accurate?**
*In the broadest possible terms. I will immediately add a couple more 
bits to this. For carbon removal, we have basically crossed that 
threshold already. We cannot achieve climate goals — like limiting 
global average warming to 1.5 degrees centigrade — without sucking CO2 
back out. For certain technologies we've crossed the threshold.

For solar geoengineering — which in many ways is the most controversial, 
but also the most interesting and potentially most impactful 
geoengineering technology — no, we haven't crossed that threshold yet. I 
would go a step further and say that certain properties of solar 
geoengineering — that it's fast and cheap, but imperfect — all of them 
push us in the direction of: it's not a question of if, it's a question 
of when...
- -
*What are the implications of this inevitability in terms of what we as 
a society need to do? How do we need to prepare?*
If you want the sort of highfalutin version, the sort of "ideally we 
ought to," the best possible way to put this is we need to get ready — 
and by "we" I mean the global climate-focused community — ought to be 
ready to put governance provisions in place, or for that matter to 
simply have the governance conversation.

"Governance" is one of these loaded terms that means a lot of things to 
different people. I would say governance in this case simply means 
having the right people at the table to have these conversations in the 
first place. Most people don't know what solar geoengineering is. Some 
of the most tuned-in and most astute climate policy leaders, or sort of 
political leaders writ large... they don't know what it is. They really 
don't, most of them. So baby steps toward having the conversations, or 
educating ourselves to be able to have the conversations, at every 
possible level. The UN security council, the general assembly, the UN 
environment assembly, whatever it might be. And then of course at the 
national level, state level and wherever else to have semi-rational 
conversations about what potential future scenarios could happen around 
a potential, I would say inevitable, but still potential deployment of 
solar geoengineering technologies...
- -
*My last question — and it's a bleak one, but I think it's also 
important to ask — is what kind of future are we looking at if we stay 
on the current path that we have embarked on as a species?*
I think you said it. That's a bleak one, right? I guess I'm naturally an 
optimist. You sort of have to be when you work on climate.

I'm a journalist, which means I have to be a pessimist.

Fair enough. I'll tell you that it's too late to put pessimism on the 
climate front. It is so late in the game that in some sense, if you 
don't think that there is some Elon Musk/Jeff Bezos/Bill Gates or 
whatever invention, some sort of some miracle thing, unless you believe 
in that miracle essentially, then it's very, very hard to see how we can 
turn this around...

What we know is bad enough. What we don't is potentially much, much 
worse. There are lots of unknowns. There are lots of unquantified costs 
here and the vast, vast majority — I might even go as far as to say 
every one of these matters — points in one and only one direction. And 
that means, s**t is hitting the fan...
https://www.salon.com/2021/09/23/bleak-as-it-seems-geoengineering-may-now-be-the-only-way-to-save-earth-from-climate-change/ 


- -

/[The book is $19 due out Oct 25th]/
*Geoengineering: The Gamble 1st Edition*
by Gernot Wagner  (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Geoengineering-Gamble-Gernot-Wagner/dp/1509543066



/[Personal commentary//*Methane is gonna be horrific*//. I predict that 
we will be forced to launch sparker drones in order to burn off the 
methane.  Over the Arctic waters, expect to see low flying drones that 
detect and then spit out sparks to ignite the methane.   Combusted 
methane is far less harmful -- and it seems relatively safe to ignite it 
in the Arctic waters.  Plus, it would look amazing to see vast flames on 
the water.   Probably the only form of geoengineering I could get 
behind. (while it is small enough to handle) - RP]/
*Esteemed climate blogger Tenney Naumer writes:*
Shakhova and her husband Igor have written extensively on the various 
types of frozen methane in the Arctic.  Her papers are dense and 
information rich.  She describes both biogenic and thermogenic sources 
in the shelf of the coast of eastern Siberia.  The sea is very shallow 
there, which is why it pisses me off when they bring out this old canard:

As well as methane from thawing soils and fossil gas, there is a very 
large reservoir of methane frozen with water in some parts of the 
world’s oceans. However, scientists believe it will take a long time for 
global heating to warm up these deeper waters. Even if this happened, 
they expect much of the released methane to be dissolved into sea water 
and broken down into CO2 by ocean bacteria before it reaches the atmosphere.

No, it will not be dissolved in the sea water when the sea is shallow 
nor will it be in the water long enough to be broken down by bacteria.  
This is simply not happening in the region where she has done most of 
her research.

Gavin continues to downplay the situation.  Igor made it clear that the 
biogenic methane was created by the fine plants that grew on the losse 
(damnit!  I cannot remember how to spell that word - it means the very 
fine powder that was laid down over the millennia)

Anyway, here is a seminal paper:
http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/2019/06/natalia-shakhova-igor-semiletov-evgeny.html

More here:
http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/search/label/Natalia%20Shakhova


/[The news archive - looking back] /*
**On this day in the history of global warming September 25, 2005*
  September 25, 2005: TIME Magazine releases the October 3, 2005
cover-dated issue, with the cover story: *"Are We Making Hurricanes Worse?"*

http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20051003,00.html
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1109318,00.html


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