[✔️] August 3, 2022 - Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*August 3, 2022*/

/[  AP news Klamath River  ] /
*Rural California town nearly wiped out by wildfire*
Aug 2, 2022  A wildfire tore through the town of Klamath River, CA near 
the Oregon border, population 200, destroying most of the homes and 
businesses in the community. (Aug. 2) (Video by Haven Daley/AP)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YbpKfeQpas

- -

[ time to reconsider ]
*The Case Against Commercial Logging in Wildfire-Prone Forests*
BY CHAD HANSON – MICHAEL DORSEY
AUGUST 1, 2022..
- -
In fact, a large and growing body of scientific research and evidence 
shows that these logging practices are making things worse. Last fall 
over 200 scientists and ecologists, including us, warned the Biden 
administration and Congress that logging activities such as commercial 
thinning reduce the cooling shade of the forest canopy and change a 
forest’s microclimate in ways that tend to increase wildfire intensity.

Logging emits three times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere per 
acre as wildfire alone. Most of the tree parts unusable for lumber — the 
branches, tops, bark and sawdust from milling — are burned for energy, 
sending large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. In contrast, 
wildfire releases a surprisingly small amount of the carbon in trees, 
less than 2 percent. Logging in U.S. forests is now responsible for as 
much annual greenhouse gas emissions as burning coal.

Worryingly, the Biden administration announced in January a proposal to 
spend $50 billion of taxpayer money to log as much as 50 million acres 
of U.S. forests over the next decade, again using the wildfire 
management narrative as a justification. Under this plan, which 
congressional backers are attempting to enact in piecemeal fashion in 
different legislative packages — including a wildfire and drought 
package passed by the House on Friday and the new climate and tax deal 
in the Senate — most of the logging would occur on public forests, 
including national forests and national parks...

https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/08/01/the-case-against-commercial-logging-in-wildfire-prone-forests/



/[  Look at the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP_FLGgTNTg ]/
*Subglacial stream*
 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Subglacial streams are conduits of glacial meltwater that flow at the 
base of glaciers and ice caps.[1] Meltwater from the glacial surface 
travels downward throughout the glacier, forming an englacial drainage 
system consisting of a network of passages that eventually reach the 
bedrock below, where they form subglacial streams.[1] Subglacial streams 
form a system of tunnels and interlinked cavities and conduits, with 
water flowing under extreme pressures from the ice above; as a result, 
flow direction is determined by the pressure gradient from the ice and 
the topography of the bed rather than gravity.[1] Subglacial streams 
form a dynamic system that is responsive to changing conditions, and the 
system can change significantly in response to seasonal variation in 
meltwater and temperature.[2] Water from subglacial streams is routed 
towards the glacial terminus, where it exits the glacier.[2] Discharge 
from subglacial streams can have a significant impact on local, and in 
some cases global, environmental and geological conditions.[3] 
Sediments, nutrients, and organic matter contained in the meltwater can 
all influence downstream and marine conditions.[4] Climate change may 
have a significant impact on subglacial stream systems, increasing the 
volume of meltwater entering subglacial drainage systems and influencing 
their hydrology.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subglacial_stream

- -

/[ Incredible video of a subglacial stream from Peter Sinclair of 
Greenmanbucket   ]/
*Isunnguata Sermia: A Glacier in Greenland*
4 views  Aug 1, 2022  Having just returned from Greenland in recent 
weeks, I'll be sorting out the video I gathered for a long time. In 
coming months there will be a Yale Climate Connections video covering 
the research I followed.
For now, here is small slice of what we saw.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP_FLGgTNTg



/[ Just have a think -- weekly video ideas]/
*How to capture 2 billion tonnes of CO2 AND fix our oceans.*
Jul 31, 2022  Carbon Dioxide removal from our atmosphere is now an 
unavoidable and essential aspect of our climate mitigation challenge in 
the 21st Century. We've left it so late that just reducing our emissions 
is no longer enough. Now a UK based company called Brilliant Planet has 
perfected a method that, at full scale, can drawdown 2 billion tonnes of 
carbon dioxide from our atmosphere every year while also restoring 
alkalinity levels to our ocean ecosystems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr6CYS9ie5E



/[ Yale tells us how birth control is like climate control ]/
*How Preventing Unwanted Pregnancies Can Help on Climate*
Voluntary family planning is too often ignored as a means to lower 
carbon emissions. But by making reproductive technologies more freely 
available, we can reduce global population — and human-caused emissions 
— in a manner that is consistent with personal liberties.
BY ​ROBERT N. PROCTOR AND LONDA SCHIEBINGER - JULY 21, 2022

Every year, some 36 billion tons of anthropogenic carbon enter the 
atmosphere, mainly as a result of burning fossil fuels. With 8 billion 
people on Earth, this means that each human adds an average of 4.5 tons 
of carbon into the air annually. And wealthy people have a far bigger 
footprint than the poor — by a couple orders of magnitude.

Too often ignored in devising solutions to slow global warming is the 
fact that a sizeable number of pregnancies are unintended, and many of 
the resulting births are unwanted. According to the Guttmacher 
Institute, as many as 121 million pregnancies each year are unintended, 
and an estimated 10 percent of all births are “unwanted,” a consequence 
of either sexual assault or some other form of coercive conception, 
including the unavailability of effective birth control or abortion.

By one recent estimate, some 270 million women of childbearing age have 
an unmet need for modern contraception. Avoiding unwanted births — by 
making contraception and abortion freely available globally — would 
significantly reduce births and therefore (over the long term) 
human-generated carbon emissions. If the world’s total population were 
eventually reduced by 10 percent, this would reduce carbon emissions by 
3.6 billion tons per year, which is more than the total combined 
emissions of Germany, Japan, Brazil, Turkey, Mexico, and Australia.

In report after report, the IPCC makes little or no mention of 
contraception, abortion, or family planning.
What is remarkable, however, is how little this has been considered by 
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s 
leading body of scholars assessing the science of global warming and 
possible solutions. In report after report — from the 1992 Framework 
Convention on Climate Change to the latest working groups findings — the 
IPCC makes little or no mention of contraception, abortion, or family 
planning.

The IPCC’s latest latest report on “Impacts, Adaptation and 
Vulnerability” (3,675 pages) does not mention contraception or abortion, 
and it refers to “reproductive health and family planning” only in the 
context of improving the health and well-being of women and their 
children. Voluntary family planning was also barely referenced at last 
November’s climate conference in Glasgow (COP26) — despite UN 
Sustainable Development Goals that call for incorporating “universal 
access to sexual and reproductive health-care services” into national 
strategies. Among the more than 300 UN press releases from this 
conference, not a single headline mentioned contraception or family 
planning.

We find a related myopia in organizations that promote family planning. 
None of the most powerful agencies — the United Nations, the World 
Health Organization, the Gates Foundation, or the U.S. Agency for 
International Development — acknowledge the climate benefits of 
preventing unintended pregnancies. A 2019 “Data Booklet” from the UN’s 
Department of Economic and Social Affairs (funded partly by the Gates 
Foundation), points out that 10 percent of women globally have “an unmet 
need for family planning.” The booklet emphasizes “women’s and girls’ 
empowerment” but fails to acknowledge a climate benefit from ending 
unwanted pregnancies.

Historical context, of course, is crucial for understanding this taboo. 
Race-based population control was a pillar of Nazi policy and 
propaganda, and in the Americas, too, eugenicists pushed hard for 
“positive” and “negative” eugenics, rewarding the breeding of certain 
populations judged superior and the sterilization of people judged 
inferior. Some 30 U.S. states passed laws allowing the forcible 
sterilization of anyone judged physically or mentally unfit, laws upheld 
by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Even after the collapse of the eugenics movement, population control got 
a bad name as a result of state-sanctioned efforts to limit fertility, 
especially in poorer parts of the world. Forced vasectomies in India in 
the 1970s, for example, led to a backlash that brought down Indira 
Gandhi’s government. Another important turning point was the 1994 UN 
International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, which 
effectively treated any effort to limit population growth in the 
developing world as masking an agenda to suppress populations of the 
Global South.

As a result, the focus of global policy agencies shifted away from 
controlling population to reproductive health, with the goal now being 
to promote gender equality, education, and empowerment of women. Global 
funds for family planning have declined ever since, along with 
environmental justifications for family planning.

Also significant is that many nations with pro-natal policies have some 
of the highest per-capita greenhouse gas emissions.
Another reason for the neglect has been the failure to consider 
reproductive technology — such as birth control and medical abortion — 
as part of technology. The IPCC, for example, focuses on how carbon in 
the atmosphere is likely to impact human health and well-being, but 
ignores how human reproductive technology (and hence reproductive 
freedom) might influence total carbon emissions. The IPCC’s Working 
Group III, for example, explores opportunities for mitigating climate 
change, detailing “hundreds of new mitigation scenarios.” But none of 
these explores how enlarging reproductive freedoms might yield climate 
benefits.

Elements of this myopia go back to the early 1970s, when ecologists 
first started equating “Impact of human activity on the planet” to 
Population x Affluence x Technology (IPAT), with technology conceived as 
“impact per unit of consumption.” Bizarrely, contraception in such 
models is not considered part of “technology.” Technology is conceived 
as lowering the impact of greenhouse-relevant production and/or 
consumption, with reproduction (i.e., birthing, and therefore 
population) treated as beyond the realm of human intervention. 
Population becomes an uncaused cause, an unmoved mover, of emissions.

A good example of this oversight is the IPCC’s 2021 report of Working 
Group I, which considers “the role of human influence” on the climate 
while altogether ignoring human reproductive behavior. “Human influence” 
appears 435 times in this report, but contraception is not mentioned 
once in the 3,949-page volume. Nor is abortion or reproduction. 
Population is treated (again) as a driver of total emissions, but is 
ignored as a means of “limiting human-induced climate change.”

The magnitude of this challenge is evidenced by the fact that more than 
50 countries — including Australia, China, Finland, France, Germany, 
Greece, Hungary, Iran, Japan, Poland, Russia, Singapore, and South Korea 
— have policies to increase birth rates via tax incentives and “baby 
bonuses.” According to a recent study by the United Nations, the 
proportion of countries with pro-natal policies has risen from 10 
percent in 1976 to 28 percent in 2015. State-sanctioned pro-natalism — a 
form of nationalism — is at odds with the reality that population 
remains a significant driver of global greenhouse gas emissions. 
Significant also is that many nations with pro-natal policies have some 
of the highest per-capita greenhouse gas emissions.

Another obstacle is that access to contraception and abortion remains 
dramatically limited in many parts of the world. Today, only 37 percent 
of women live in countries where abortion is available upon request. In 
Africa, an estimated 92 percent of women live under severely restrictive 
laws; in Latin America the proportion is close to 97 percent. And many 
nations ban abortion entirely. Abortion is currently illegal in Andora, 
Aruba, the Congo, Curaçao, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, 
Haiti, Honduras, Iraq, Jamaica, Laos, Madagascar, Malta, Mauritania, 
Nicaragua, the Philippines, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Suriname, Tonga, the 
West Bank and Gaza Strip, and (lately) in many parts of the United 
States. Many of the laws governing abortion in these regions are 
holdovers from a colonial era, imposed by European countries that long 
ago abandoned such restrictive laws for themselves.

Each new baby born in the U.K. will generate 35 times more greenhouse 
gas emissions than a baby born in Bangladesh.
Avoiding unwanted pregnancies (and births) should not, however, be 
imagined as an alternative to, or replacement for, humanity’s need to 
radically decarbonize the global economy. The ultimate solution to 
climate change is to prevent fossil carbon from entering the atmosphere; 
all other policies must be subordinate to this goal. Decarbonization 
will take time, however, which means that an “all hands on deck” 
approach is required, recognizing that some solutions take a bigger bite 
out of the problem than others.

To reduce population in a manner consistent with human rights and 
liberties, we have to reframe this mitigation opportunity as a means to 
prevent unwanted births. Reducing population in this manner is 
consistent with the enlargement of human liberties; again, our goal 
should be to reduce or eliminate births that are clearly unwanted.

Globally, unwanted pregnancies result from myriad causes, including lack 
of access to contraception, prohibitive cost of contraception, failed 
contraception, sexual assault and violence, child and forced marriage, 
religious opposition, laws banning abortion, absence of sex education, 
and concerns about side effects of chemical contraception. Millions of 
the babies born into the world every year are the result of coercive 
conception, which means that access to contraception can help solve the 
climate crisis while enlarging human liberties.

Of course, not all births are equal when it comes to carbon footprint. 
According to the World Bank, the average inhabitant of a high-income 
nation contributes 10 tons of carbon per year, while the average person 
living in a low-income nation contributes only 0.2 tons. This means that 
births averted in rich countries will result in higher carbon savings 
than births averted in poorer parts of the world. Burundi, Ethiopia, and 
Papua New Guinea together have about the same total population as the 
U.S., but collectively contribute only about one percent of the global 
added carbon burden, compared to the U.S., which generates 15 percent of 
global carbon emissions. By one calculation, each new baby born in the 
U.K. will generate 35 times more greenhouse gas emissions than a baby 
born in Bangladesh.

Crucial also to understand, though, is that different countries have 
different access to effective birth control and abortion. In most 
European countries, for example, contraception is included as part of 
ordinary health delivery, and abortion is readily available. By 
contrast, in many states of the U.S., effective contraception is often 
expensive and abortion highly restricted, particularly after the Supreme 
Court in June overturned a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion 
when it struck down the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. A high unmet need for 
reproductive health services, coupled with high CO2 emissions per 
capita, creates an opportunity for more effective family planning in the 
U.S.

Globally, we need to think about climate mitigation more broadly, to 
include reproductive technologies — or the lack thereof. The benefits of 
family planning must be broadened to include its value in helping to 
prevent climate change. It’s a win-win — saving the planet while 
enlarging human liberties.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/unwanted-pregnancy-contraception-abortion-climate-change


/[The news archive - looking back]/
/*August 3, 2015*/
The New York Times reports:

"The issue of climate change played almost no role in the 2012 
presidential campaign.

President Obama barely mentioned the topic, nor did the Republican 
nominee, Mitt Romney. It was not raised in a single presidential debate.

"But as Mr. Obama prepares to leave office, his own aggressive actions 
on climate change have thrust the issue into the 2016 campaign. 
Strategists now say that this battle for the White House could feature 
more substantive debate over global warming policy than any previous 
presidential race."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/03/us/politics/obama-policy-could-force-robust-climate-discussion-from-2016-candidates.html?_r=0

=======================================
*Mass media is lacking, here are a few daily summariesof global warming 
news - email delivered*

=========================================================
**Inside Climate News*
Newsletters
We deliver climate news to your inbox like nobody else. Every day or 
once a week, our original stories and digest of the web’s top headlines 
deliver the full story, for free.
https://insideclimatenews.org/
---------------------------------------
**Climate Nexus* https://climatenexus.org/hot-news/*
Delivered straight to your inbox every morning, Hot News summarizes the 
most important climate and energy news of the day, delivering an 
unmatched aggregation of timely, relevant reporting. It also provides 
original reporting and commentary on climate denial and pro-polluter 
activity that would otherwise remain largely unexposed.    5 weekday
=================================
*Carbon Brief Daily https://www.carbonbrief.org/newsletter-sign-up*
Every weekday morning, in time for your morning coffee, Carbon Brief 
sends out a free email known as the “Daily Briefing” to thousands of 
subscribers around the world. The email is a digest of the past 24 hours 
of media coverage related to climate change and energy, as well as our 
pick of the key studies published in the peer-reviewed journals.
more at https://www.getrevue.co/publisher/carbon-brief
==================================
*T*he Daily Climate *Subscribe https://ehsciences.activehosted.com/f/61*
Get The Daily Climate in your inbox - FREE! Top news on climate impacts, 
solutions, politics, drivers. Delivered week days. Better than coffee.
Other newsletters  at https://www.dailyclimate.org/originals/

/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/ 

/Archive of Daily Global Warming News 
<https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/2017-October/date.html> 
/
https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote

/To receive daily mailings - click to Subscribe 
<mailto:subscribe at theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request> 
to news digest./

   Privacy and Security:*This mailing is text-only.  It does not carry 
images or attachments which may originate from remote servers.  A 
text-only message can provide greater privacy to the receiver and 
sender. This is a hobby production curated by Richard Pauli
By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain cannot be used for commercial 
purposes. Messages have no tracking software.
To subscribe, email: contact at theclimate.vote 
<mailto:contact at theclimate.vote> with subject subscribe, To Unsubscribe, 
subject: unsubscribe
Also you may subscribe/unsubscribe at 
https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote
Links and headlines assembled and curated by Richard Pauli for 
http://TheClimate.Vote <http://TheClimate.Vote/> delivering succinct 
information for citizens and responsible governments of all levels. List 
membership is confidential and records are scrupulously restricted to 
this mailing list.