[✔️] April 2, 2022 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
👀 Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Sat Apr 2 08:11:10 EDT 2022
/*April 2, 2022*/
/[ perhaps the most important question ] /
*With climate change accelerating and despair growing, how far are
activists willing to take their protests?*
By David Abel Globe Staff, April 1, 2022
- -
With few nations responding to the gravity of the mounting crisis,
activists in Boston and beyond are feeling a mix of resignation and
desperation. What else, they ask, can they — or should they — do to call
attention to the urgency of the warming planet? Their answers vary,
ranging from a kind of inertial despair to a determination to take their
protests to another level.
Alison Page, who has spent years helping to organize local protests on
behalf of Extinction Rebellion and similar groups, has been apoplectic
and feeling a growing sense of existential dread, which was compounded
last month when temperatures in Antarctica surged to 70 degrees warmer
than normal...
“I’m going to continue with activism, because I’m not sure what else to
do, but I’m feeling extremely cynical,” said Page, 37, of Andover. “It’s
very frustrating and confusing that governments aren’t doing more.”
It’s worse than we thought: 15 numbers that show we’re not prepared for
climate change
She added: “It seems like climate activism doesn’t make any difference.”
At a recent talk in London, Guterres insisted that decades of efforts to
persuade governments around the world to take action have made a difference.
But they and others are looking for similar opportunities to sound the
alarms and frustrate the distribution of fossil fuels — without
resorting to violence...
- -
“Blowing up pipelines replicates the violence of the fossil fuel
industry,” Phillips said. “We believe there are other ways to stop them.
That’s what I’m focusing on.”
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/04/01/science/with-climate-change-accelerating-despair-growing-how-far-are-activists-willing-take-their-protests/
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/04/01/science/with-climate-change-accelerating-despair-growing-how-far-are-activists-willing-take-their-protests/
/[ Some wisdom from GQ magazine ]/
*The Razor's Edge of A Warming World*
As we hurtle toward an ever-hotter future, GQ spotlights eight places
whose very identities depend on a simple calculation: If we limit
warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, these places
could be saved. In a 2-degree scenario, they would be irredeemably lost.
BY EMILY ATKIN AND CAITLIN LOOBY
March 31, 2022
- -
This reality is one that all of the earth’s inhabitants are now
grappling with: If we want to preserve the places we love, we have to
focus on moving away from fossil fuels immediately. The latest United
Nations climate report, released in February, made it clear that
irreversible destruction can no longer be avoided. The question is no
longer “How can we fix climate change?” It’s “How much irreversible
planetary damage are we willing to accept in order to continue
extracting and burning fossil fuels?”
Since the late 19th century, when, in the aftermath of the Industrial
Revolution, humans started burning fossil fuels on a scale greater than
ever before, the global average temperature has increased by about 1.1
degrees Celsius. Today, the desperate hope of climate scientists is that
we prevent that number from rising to 1.5 degrees. Of course, some say
that task is now impossible and that the best we can wish for is to
limit warming to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels. Those two
thresholds have come to define the discourse around climate change, and
either would represent a stunning reversal of current trends.
- -
Regions are becoming inhospitable for human life. In one future, the
world warms by 2 degrees or more and these trends continue to their
catastrophic ends. In another, we pull the hand brake now and limit
warming to 1.5 degrees. “People don’t realize that every tenth of a
degree matters,” Baum explains. Here are some places where they matter
the most.
- -
Indeed, if current trends continue, people might not have a choice. One
study projects that with 1.5 degrees of warming, 13.8 percent of the
world would regularly be exposed to severe heat waves—a figure that
would nearly triple, to 36.9 percent, with 2 degrees of warming. It
seems that much more of the world might soon see what a Jacobabad summer
feels like. —Emily Atkin
- -
https://www.gq.com/story/eight-places-to-save-climate-change
/[ bringing chaotic politics and force to future ] /
*Stemming The Rise Of Ecofascism with Sam Moore & Alex Roberts*
March 26, 2022Activism, Climate Policy, Human Chaos, Justice & Equity,
Psychology & Philosophy
Nick Breeze
Climate journalist and host of the ClimateGenn podcast.
In this ClimateGenn episode, I am speaking to authors, podcasters, and
activists, Sam Moore and Alex Roberts whose recently published book, The
Rise Of Ecofascism, explores the characteristics of past, present, and
potentially future ‘ecofascism’.
The risks posed to society from extreme politics on the right and the
left has been rising in recent years. Even in the last week or so, a
cache of information was leaked via the Anonymous hacking group linking
Putin’s regime to the financing of far right-wing groups across Europe.
More evidence of the rise in far-right and fascist groups is seen in
places like the UK, France, Italy, or Hungary, where political ground
can become an objective.
Sam and Alex’s work aims to be a pragmatic guide to identify these
tendencies and emerging ideas in order to be able to stop them from
rising into dominant movements, which as they evidence in the book,
never deliver on the grand promises they make.
They also provide a long history of how the far-right has developed
relationships to nature that recur in history and are also echoed today
in political narratives around climate denialism and delays in ridding
ourselves of the fossil fuel era that is destroying the world as we know it.
Thank you for listening to the ClimateGenn series. In the next episode I
am speaking with Dr Paul Behrens on the risks of food system shocks
arising from the Ukraine crisis and how this is a signal of how
vulnerable our overall food system is in a worsening climate and
ecological crisis.
We also had our first Cambridge Climate Series event last week with
Professor Lord Martin Rees and Professor David Keith discussing the
complexity and major issues surrounding the deployment of
geoengineering. The session was moderated by students from Cambridge and
covered a lot of ground, so if you are interested in geoengineering then
it is worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeytTkICcDI
https://genn.cc/blog/stemming-the-rise-of-ecofascism-with-sam-moore-alex-roberts/
- -
/[ fundamental video discussion of Geo-engineering -- (the G word)
start video 4:45 in ]/
*CCLS: The G Word, do we have time to ignore it?*
Mar 25, 2022
Cambridge Climate Lecture Series
Recording from session March 24th, 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeytTkICcDI
- -
/[ a quick summary of Geo-engineering from Anthropocene magazine ] /
*Sooner or later someone is going to flip the shades*
Is solar geoengineering inevitable or can we still fix the climate
without it?
By Mark Harris
Few concepts have gone from science fiction to science news as swiftly
as solar geoengineering (aka solar radiation management, or SRM). The
reason is terrifyingly simple. On the one hand, humanity seems incapable
of reducing the amount of carbon dioxide it is releasing into the
atmosphere. On the other, controlling incoming radiation from the sun
appears to be feasible and fast. It also promises to be orders of
magnitude less expensive than rolling back emissions, or capturing
carbon directly from the atmosphere.
In fact, SRM’s price tag is estimated to be low enough that a single
country—or even a super wealthy individual—could launch a climate
intervention that would drag us all into a massive global experiment.
Some experts argue that this alone should prompt heavy investment in
understanding the wider impacts and potential unintended consequences of
SRM. Others fear that SRM could become our Plan A for addressing climate
change, skirting the emissions cuts and carbon mitigations that are far
less controversial. To them, SRM embodies precisely the careless,
technology-driven hubris that got us where we are today, with the added
drawback of committing us to an expensive, risky activity for
potentially centuries to come.
*The Case for More Research*
1. The science is still up in the air. The eruption of Mount Pinatubo
in the Philippines in 1991 reduced the global average air temperatures
by as much as 0.5C in the year following, so the underlying science
seems sound. But much more research needs to be carried out to quantify
the positive—and negative—impacts of deliberately introducing massive
amounts of sulfate or chalk aerosols into the atmosphere.
2. Balancing the books. Highly developed nations have historically been
responsible for the vast majority of carbon emissions from fossil fuel
use. SRM research gives polluters the opportunity – perhaps even the
responsibility – to address climate injustice, by funding research
around the world, focused on local concerns and impacts
3. We’re already conducting a vast global climate experiment. To worry
about meddling with the weather might seem rich when we are already
altering the chemistry of the earth’s air and water system in an almost
completely uncontrolled manner, through the combustion of fossil fuels.
In In this viewpoint, understanding how to mitigate the worst effects of
climate change should be encouraged, not obstructed.
*The Slope Is Too Slippery*
1. Unpredictable and ungovernable. In January, a group of 60 scientists
called for a moratorium on SRM technologies, including no outdoor
experiments, no public funding, no patents, no support from
international institutions, and certainly no deployments. They worry
that the impacts of SRM are difficult to predict, and would be
impossible to govern fairly and effectively in the existing
international political system.
2. Beware the quick fix. If you think something is keeping you safe,
you are more likely to act in a risky way. This “moral hazard” has been
proven time and again – not least in road deaths that continue to rise
despite cars that are physically safer than ever. Research from the UK
suggests that deploying SRM would deter some people from reducing their
personal carbon footprint. Some nations (yes, I’m looking at you
America) could embrace SRM as a technological Band-Aid to perpetuate a
society based on profligate energy use.
3. Long term commitments aren’t humanity’s strength. Aerosols in the
atmosphere only remain effective at reflective incoming sunlight for a
few months. So once you start doing SRM, you need to keep it up
indefinitely or risk a potentially disastrous termination shock, where
temperatures could shoot up over a very short period. Looking at our
experience managing nuclear waste, a similarly long-term endeavor,
provides a sobering perspective.
*What to Keep An Eye on*
1. The weather. An uptick in catastrophic heat waves, floods, and other
extreme weather events might increase demand for solutions that promise
results in seasons rather than decades.
2. Fence-sitters. Degrees is an UK-based non-profit funded by
scientists and environmentalists. It aims to fund large-scale modeling
efforts around SRM, including voices from the Global South, but remains
firmly neutral on whether the technologies should be deployed. How the
positions of such organizations evolve in the years ahead could indicate
whether SRM will become part of the mainstream carbon effort.
3. The funding. Will the $100 to $200 million that the National
Academies of Science recommended for SRM research materialize? If the
funding faucet is opened, some proposed SRM techniques do seem
inherently less dangerous than others, including a marine cloud
brightening project that would use little but sprays of seawater to make
clouds more reflective.
https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2022/03/is-solar-geoengineering-inevitable-or-can-we-still-fix-the-climate-without-it/
/[ emotional, masspersonal social engineering -- explained in video book
review ]/
*Robert W. Gehl and Sean T. Lawson: Propaganda, Deception, and the
Manipulation of Information*
Mar 25, 2022
Town Hall Seattle
The United States is awash in manipulated information about everything
from election results to the effectiveness of medical treatments.
Corporate social media is a particularly effective channel for
manipulative communication — Facebook being a particularly willing
vehicle for it, as evidenced by the increased use of warning labels on
false or misleading posts. Not to mention the inconsistent, confusing,
and controversy-stirring ways that comments and posts are moderated in
social media spaces.
While the methods of distributing misinformation have shifted with
technological advancement, the principles of manipulative communication
are nothing new. In Social Engineering, authors Robert Gehl and Sean
Lawson explore how online misinformation is rooted in earlier
techniques: mass social engineering of the early twentieth century and
interpersonal hacker social engineering of the 1970s. The two methods
converge today into what they call “masspersonal social engineering.”
Through a mix of information gathering, deception, and truth-indifferent
statements, the practice has one goal: to get people to take the actions
desired by the social engineer.
Are there better ways to understand the manipulation methods at play
instead of reducing all information to a true/false binary? Together,
Gehl and Lawson discuss manipulative communication of the past and
present and how we might improve the ways that information is shared and
consumed in the future.
Robert W. Gehl is F. Jay Taylor Endowed Research Chair of Communication
at Louisiana Tech University and the author of Weaving the Dark Web.
Sean T. Lawson is Associate Professor of Communication at the University
of Utah, Non-Resident Fellow at the Brute Krulak Center for Innovation &
Future Warfare at the Marine Corps University, and author of
Cybersecurity Discourse in the United States.
Presented by Town Hall Seattle./
/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d872rc4kSNE
/[The news archive - looking back at a moment of deliberate disinformation]/
*April 2, 2002*
The New York Times reports:
"After a year of urging from energy industry lobbyists, the Bush
administration is seeking the ouster of an American scientist who
for nearly six years has directed an international panel of hundreds
of experts assessing global warming, several government officials
have said.
"The specialist, Dr. Robert T. Watson, chief scientist of the World
Bank, is highly regarded as an atmospheric chemist by many climate
experts. He has held the unpaid position of chairman of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since the fall of 1996.
Now his term is expiring and the State Department has chosen not to
renominate him to head the panel, which is run under the auspices of
the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization.
"Dr. Watson is an outspoken advocate of the idea that human actions
— mainly burning oil and coal — are contributing to global warming
and must be changed to avert environmental upheavals.
"Last night, a State Department official said the administration was
leaning toward endorsing a scientist from India, which along with
other developing countries has been eager for a stronger role in the
climate assessments.
"But many influential climate experts say they have written to the
department supporting Dr. Watson."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/02/science/02CLIM.html
http://youtu.be/6NcSOUJUBfY
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