[✔️] April 19, 2022 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
Richard at CredoandScreed.com
Tue Apr 19 08:17:21 EDT 2022
/*April 19, 2022*/
/[ So says E&E News - plus $cientific American ] /
*Responses to Rising Hunger Could Threaten Climate Goals*
European policymakers are considering easing environmental protection
measures to allow for increased crop production
By Sara Schonhardt, E&E News on April 18, 2022
The world’s food system was under strain even before Russia invaded
Ukraine. Now—compounded by the war’s effect on trade and a corresponding
spike in global fuel prices—it faces two dangerous and intertwined crises.
In the short term, Russia’s war on Ukraine increases the risk of extreme
hunger for millions more people. The danger is particularly acute for
low-income countries that depend on food imports. And countries such as
Ethiopia and Yemen already are dealing with hunger fueled by conflict...
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/responses-to-rising-hunger-could-threaten-climate-goals/
/[ opinion from the New Yorker ]/
*The Renewable-Energy Revolution Will Need Renewable Storage*
Can gravity, pressure, and other elemental forces save us from becoming
a battery-powered civilization?
By Matthew Hutson
- -
The grid as a whole may never be perfected. We may never be able to get
away from technologies with undesirable by-products; we may always rely
in part on fossil fuels and nuclear power, backed up by Li-ion batteries
and natural-gas “peaker” plants, used at times of high demand. But it’s
equally possible to envision a future in which some of the technology
works out, and the globe is reshaped by a combination of renewable
energy and renewable storage. In such a world, wind turbines and solar
farms will spread over fields and coastlines, while geothermal plants
draw power from below. Meanwhile, in caves and tanks, hydrogen and
compressed air will flow back and forth. In industrial areas, energy
warehouses will thrum with the movement of mass. In rural places, water
will be driven belowground and then will gush back up. When the sun
comes out and the wind rises, the grid will inhale, and electricity will
get saved. During the doldrums, the grid will exhale, driving energy to
factories, homes, offices, and devices. Instead of burning dead things,
in the form of fossil fuels, we’ll create and store energy dynamically,
in a living system.
When I got back from Switzerland, I took a walk. The sun warmed my face,
and I blinked in the breeze. Twenty years ago, it seemed inconceivable
to many people that sunlight and wind could provide enough energy to
meet our needs. Slowly, our intuitions shifted to accommodate renewable
energy. A similar revision could come for renewable storage. Looking up,
I saw clouds hanging in the sky, on the verge of rain; they were a bank
of potential energy. Below my feet, I imagined the ground dipping ever
so slightly under the city’s weight, ready to spring back. Nature can
help us generate power. Maybe it can help us hold on to it, too.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/25/the-renewable-energy-revolution-will-need-renewable-storage
/[ go watch TV - Frontline on PBS -- (news media, heal thyself) ]/
*‘Frontline’ Review: Why the Climate Changed but We Didn’t*
“The Power of Big Oil” examines a dispiriting, well-financed history of
denialism and inaction.
Mike Hale - - April 18, 2022
PBS’s investigative public-affairs program “Frontline” specializes in
reminding us of things we would rather forget. On Tuesday, it begins a
three-part dive into climate change, that potential species-killer that
has taken a back seat recently to more traditional scourges like disease
and war.
Titled “The Power of Big Oil,” the weekly mini-series is focused on
climate change denialism as it was practiced and paid for by the fossil
fuel industry — particularly Exxon Mobil and Koch Industries — along
with its allies in business and, increasingly, politics. By extension,
it’s a history, more depressing than revelatory, of why nothing much has
been done about an existential crisis we’ve been aware of for at least
four decades.
The signposts of our dawning comprehension and alarm are well known,
among them the climatologist James Hansen’s 1988 testimony to Congress,
the Kyoto and Paris agreements, the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”
and increasingly dire United Nations reports. The response that
“Frontline” meticulously charts — a disciplined, coordinated campaign of
disinformation and obfuscation that began in industry and was embraced
by conservative political groups — is less familiar but was always in
plain sight.
Part of the campaign is public, a barrage of talking heads on television
and op-eds and advertorials in prominent publications (including The New
York Times) that do not absolutely deny global warming but portray it as
the night terrors of attention-mongering eggheads. Behind the scenes,
the thinly disguised lobbying groups paid for by Big Oil apply pressure
on key politicians at key moments — whenever it looks as if the United
States might pass legislation affecting their profits.
One lesson the show offers, almost in passing, is the way in which the
refusal to accept the reality of climate change prefigured the wider
attacks on science — and on knowledge in general — that were to
characterize the Trump years and the response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The successful but lonely battle fought by the oil and gas industries is
joined wholeheartedly by Republican politicians when they see how
climate denialism, and the specter of unemployed miners and drillers,
dovetails with their efforts to demonize President Barack Obama and
radicalize conservative voters. At that point, the fig leaf of
scientific debate is dropped and pure emotion takes over.
And the program’s larger lesson is about the shrewd manipulation of
emotion. From the outset, it’s clear that the oil industry’s campaign
was not about convincing us on scientific grounds, but about exploiting
the basic human desire to avoid taking difficult, inconvenient action.
Finding political cover to keep making huge profits was distressingly
and unsurprisingly easy.
“Frontline” tries to give this sad history some dramatic tension in a
couple of ways. One is prosaic and on the nose: When it needs a
transition, or just an injection of feeling, the program throws in an
I-told-you-so montage of wildfires, hurricanes and floods.
The other is more involved, and also more frustrating. Lobbyists, media
consultants, researchers and politicians who were involved in
questioning climate change testify to their actions and then offer
varying degrees of apology — a series of aha moments whose sincerity is
suspect and also beside the point. “Yeah, I wish I weren’t a part of
that, looking back.” “I would have taken a different path.” “I can
understand people saying to me, ‘You’re a traitor.’” Oh well.
(It will not escape the notice of some viewers that the people in a
position to have these second thoughts are without exception middle-aged
white men.)
While the foot soldiers offer their mea culpas, the program quietly
notes the people and the organizations who declined to appear or
comment, including Koch Industries and Lee Raymond and Rex Tillerson,
the Exxon Mobil chief executives during the “lost decades” when action
could have been taken to limit carbon emissions. Exxon Mobil offers a
statement saying that its public pronouncements had always been
“consistent with the contemporary understanding of mainstream climate
science” — an understanding that it had done as much as anyone to shape.
“The Power of Big Oil” offers no comfort; it ends, in a rush, with the
environmental rollbacks enacted by President Donald Trump and the energy
crunch the Biden administration now faces because of Russia’s war in
Ukraine. The final note is one of predictable pathos: a professor whose
work facilitated the growth of fracking — and thereby extended the life
of the fossil-fuel industry — wonders “what kind of hell” his
grandchildren will have to pay. If they’re watching, it’s doubtful that
they’ll have much sympathy.
Mike Hale is a television critic. He also writes about online video,
film and media. He came to The Times in 1995 and worked as an editor in
Sports, Arts & Leisure and Weekend Arts before becoming a critic in 2009
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/18/arts/television/frontline-review-power-of-big-oil.html
/[ optimize government for human survival ]/
*Jamie Raskin on the climate crisis: ‘We’ve got to save democracy in
order to save our species’*
Ankita Rao - 18 Apr 2022
Progressive congressman from Maryland believes that no other crisis,
even the existential threat of the changing climate, can be solved
without first protecting the fabric of American democracy
When it comes to fighting for democracy and climate change – two of
Jamie Raskin’s top priorities – the whole thing feels a bit like a game
of chicken and egg to the Democratic congressman.
On the one hand there is the planet, heating up quickly past the limit
that is safe and necessary for human survival, while Congress stalls on
a $555bn climate package. On the other, a pernicious movement, spurred
by Donald Trump and other rightwing conspiracy theorists, to upend
voting rights protections and cast doubt on the current election system.
But Raskin, a progressive congressman from Maryland, is clear about
which comes first: he said America can’t fix the planet without fixing
its government...
- -
Raskin was an early adopter of the Green New Deal, and during the
pandemic he sought to block his fellow representatives from using Covid
relief money to further fossil fuel interests. His commitment extends to
his personal life, where – inspired again by Tommy – he is a devout
vegetarian, convinced that new science and technology will render a
meat-centric diet unnecessary.
But the stakes for protecting the Democratic party’s climate agenda are
especially high right now. The climate protections in Joe Biden’s
ambitious “Build Back Better” framework have been drastically whittled
down. With the midterm elections revving up, and Republicans expected to
dominate in state and local races, Democrats face a small window of
opportunity to advance their promise of new jobs and tax credits to
incentivize a shift to cleaner energy.
Those same midterm races are rife with candidates who are following
Trump’s “big lie” – that the 2020 election was not legitimate – and
continue to hack away at voting rights protections, such as mail-in
voting and weekend voting hours.
Raskin remained optimistic about Congress passing climate legislation,
noting last year’s climate-friendly infrastructure bill, but said the
party must always “be realistic” about what that means, even if it
denotes considering alternative energy legislation via Joe Manchin, the
moderate Democrat from West Virginia who has stood in the way of several
progressive bills in the Senate. (Manchin was also a critical roadblock
in Raskin’s wife Sarah Bloom Raskin’s nomination to the Federal Reserve
Board.)
“The democratic governments and democratic parties and movements of the
world have got to confront this reality. Nobody else is going to do it,”
Raskin said.
There isn’t much leeway when it comes to enacting change. Storms are
getting stronger, people are being displaced from their homes, and
anti-science politicians are gaining more ground. But Raskin, armed with
his father’s message to “be the hope” and his children’s sense of
urgency around climate change, is confident his side is going to win.
“We should cut the deals that need to be cut but from a position of
power and strength by mobilizing the commanding majorities of people
across America that believe in climate change and know that we need to act.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/18/jamie-raskin-climate-crisis-democracy
/[ Our military is supposed to be informed about these things ] /
*Climate change damaging US military bases in the Arctic, report warns*
By Ellen Knickmeyer, The Associated Press
Apr 17, 2022
U.S. military bases in the Arctic and sub-Arctic are failing to prepare
their installations for long-term climate change as required, even
though soaring temperatures and melting ice already are cracking base
runways and roads and worsening flood risks up north, the Pentagon’s
watchdog office said Friday.
The report from the inspector general of the Department of Defense
provides a rare bit of public stock-taking of the military’s state of
readiness – or lack of readiness – for the worsening weather of a
warming Earth...
One of the bases is in Greenland and the other five in Alaska: Thule Air
Base, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Clear Space Force Station,
Eielson Air Force Base, Fort Wainwright and Fort Greely...
- -
Many of the specific discussions of climate risks at the six bases were
blacked-out in the version of the report made public Friday.
But inspectors photographed and described some. That included cracked
and sunken runways undermined by melting ice, damaged hangers and roads,
and a collapsed rock barrier that had been piled up to hold back
floodwater from a river swollen by glacial melting, at Thule in Greenland.
Leaders at all six bases visited noted that kind of damage, inspectors
said, “however, officials from five of these installations said they had
not begun incorporating future climate risks into their installations’
planning.”
“They stated that their day-to-day focus was on reacting to immediate
problems or reducing risk to existing hazards, rather than planning for
future hazards,” the report noted.
The Arctic is warming two to three times faster than the rest of the
world. A March heat wave that hiked Arctic temperatures 50 degrees (30
Celsius) higher than normal stunned scientists.
Of 79 U.S. military installations overall, the Department of Defense
says two-thirds are vulnerable to worsening flooding as the climate
worsens and half are vulnerable to increasing drought and wildfires.
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2022/04/17/climate-change-damaging-us-military-bases-in-the-arctic-report-warns/
- -
/[ the full report is only 58 pages ]/
*(U) Evaluation of the Department of Defense’s Efforts to Address **the
Climate Resilience of U.S. Military Installations in the Arctic and
Sub-Arctic*
- -
(U) The DoD’s Arctic Strategy and U.S. National Security Prioritize
Climate Resilience
(U) The DoD’s Arctic Strategy recognizes the importance of the Arctic
security
environment to U.S. national security. The strategy states that the
Arctic is
a potential vector for an attack on the U.S. homeland, a region where Russia
and China are operating more freely, and a strategic corridor for DoD forces
between the Indo-Pacific and Europe. With warming temperatures in the
Arctic,
diminishing Arctic sea ice is opening new shipping lanes and increasing
access to
natural resources during the summer months
- -
*(U) Our evaluation examined the climate resiliency of five sub-Arctic
installations**
**in Alaska and one Arctic installation in Greenland:*
• (U) Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER), Alaska15
• (U) Clear Space Force Station, Alaska16
• (U) Eielson Air Force Base (AFB), Alaska
• (U) Fort Wainwright, Alaska
• (U) Fort Greely, Alaska
• (U) Thule Air Base (AB), Greenland
--
*(U) Installation Leaders Did Not Assess and Project Future
Risks****From Climate Change*
(U) Most installation leaders were not familiar with the 10 U.S.C. §
2864 (2020)
requirements to assess and project future risks from climate change.
10 U.S.C. § 2864 (2020) requires major military installations’ master
plans to
address climate and energy resilience. DoDD 4715.21 also requires DoD
military
installations to assess and plan for the effects of climate change on
installation
infrastructure. Additionally, both the FY 2020 National Defense
Authorization
Act and UFC 2-100-01 require installation professionals to consider,
plan for, and
minimize or mitigate severe weather and climate risks in Army
Installation Master
Plans and Air Force IDPs and facility projects.23 Finally, Army
Directive 2020‑08
- -
*(U) and Air Force Instruction 32-1015 require installation commanders
to assess****the impacts of *
*a changing climate on their installations’ constructed and
natural**installation infrastructure. *
In addition to statements from installation leaders that their
installation planners had not begun to
assess and plan for future climate risks, we reviewed and found no
evidence of climate resilience
assessment and planning in the most current Air Force installation
development plans and Army
installation master plans for the installations we visited.
https://media.defense.gov/2022/Apr/15/2002977604/-1/-1/1/DODIG-2022-083.PDF
/[The news archive - looking back - intentional ignorance a serious vice ]/
*April 19, 1990*
The New York Times reports:
"President Bush, responding to criticism that the United States had
delayed taking concrete steps to address the threat of global
warming linked to pollution, said today, 'We have never considered
research a substitute for action.'
"Closing a two-day White House conference on the issue, Mr. Bush
said: 'To those who suggest we're only trying to balance economic
growth and environmental protection, I say they miss the point. We
are calling for an entirely new way of thinking, to achieve both
while compromising neither, by applying the power of the marketplace
in the service of the environment.'
"Mr. Bush also proposed a series of steps for integrating
international responses to the issue of global climate change. They
included an international 'charter' for cooperation in science and
economics related to global change, a statement of principles to
guide such research, the creation of international research
institutes and a communications network to monitor global changes."
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/19/us/bush-denies-putting-off-action-on-averting-global-climate-shift.html
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