[✔️] August 30, 2022 - Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
Richard at CredoandScreed.com
Tue Aug 30 09:25:00 EDT 2022
/*August 30, 2022*/
/[ NPR audio ]
/*Why climate change may be driving more infectious diseases*
August 30, 2022
When discussing the current and future impacts of climate change, the
biggest and most visible events like floods and storms may come to mind...
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But a new study published this month in the journal Nature reveals that
rising temperatures, as well as things like droughts and wildfires, may
have a connection with the spread of diseases, including COVID-19...
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And what is happening is that there are many ways in which climate
change is actually forcing these species to get into contact with us. By
increasing those contacts, it turns out that the amount of pathogens
that are in the wild, are having a higher chance to come in and make us
all sick. What we did in this paper was quantify the magnitude of how
big of a deal this is...
- -
On the real life pressure of these findings
For me it's shocking, you know, reading all these different papers, and
then realizing and putting these things into context, like, "Wow, this
thing was there right in front of our faces?" I have to tell you that
the motivation for us to do this paper was to see if climate change had
something to do with the outbreak of COVID-19. I can tell you up front
that we just don't know yet, but what I can tell you after doing this
work is that there are at least 20 different ways in which COVID-19
could have been caused by climate change. And that, for me, is the
worrisome thing. You know, regardless of whether it is now, climate
change has at least 20 different ways in which it can create things as
bad as COVID-19.
https://www.npr.org/2022/08/30/1119939393/climate-change-pathogenic-disease-monkeypox-covid-19
/[ Scientists getting uppity ]/
*Scientists call on colleagues to protest climate crisis with civil
disobedience*
An article in the Nature Climate Change journal argues that non-violent
direct action taken by experts is effective
Damien Gayle 29 Aug 2022
Scientists should commit acts of civil disobedience to show the public
how seriously they regard the threat posed by the climate crisis, a
group of leading scientists has argued.
“Civil disobedience by scientists has the potential to cut through the
myriad complexities and confusion surrounding the climate crisis,” the
researchers wrote in an article, published in the scientific journal
Nature Climate Change on Monday.
“When those with expertise and knowledge are willing to convey their
concerns in a more uncompromising manner … this affords them particular
effectiveness as a communicative act. This is the insight of Greta
Thunberg when she calls on us to ‘act as you would in a crisis’.”
In recent months, scientists have shown themselves increasingly willing
to take part in direct actions to bring attention to the climate crisis.
A “scientists rebellion” mobilised more than 1,000 scientists in 25
countries in April, while in the UK a number of scientists were arrested
for gluing scientific papers – and their hands – on to the glass facade
of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
The article was jointly written by five climate scientists: Stuart
Capstick, Aaron Thierry, Emily Cox, Steve Westlake and Julia K.
Steinberger. A sixth byline was taken by Oscar Berglund, a political
scientist at the University of Bristol who studies civil disobedience
and social movements.
A note appended to the article disclosed that all the authors “have
participated in, and offered support to, groups carrying out civil
disobedience to press for climate action”.
Berglund said: “What we say in the article is that getting involved in
this kind of thing can actually add weight to the message that this is a
crisis; that these are decent people who know more than anybody else
about how deep in the shit we are, and are taking this kind of action –
non-violent direct action, civil disobedience.
“We have a kind of what we call epistemic authority here: people listen
to what we are saying, as scientists, and it becomes a way of showing
how serious the situation is, that we see ourselves forced to go to
these lengths.”
The article conceded that by taking political action, scientists will
invite the criticism that they have abandoned their impartiality.
However, it added that readers must ask themselves whether science’s
“traditional modes of research and communication” are provoking a
response from decision-makers that meets the enormity of the crisis.
It said: “The widespread notion that sober presentation of evidence by
an ‘honest broker’ to those with power will accomplish the best
interests of populations is itself not a neutral perspective on the
world; it is instead conveniently unthreatening to the status quo and
often rather naive.
“In addition to documenting the climate crisis in ever greater detail,
we are obliged to consider how we might act in new ways to help bring
about a necessary and urgent transformation.
“In the meantime, we have long since arrived at the point at which civil
disobedience by scientists has become justified.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/29/scientists-call-on-colleagues-to-protest-climate-crisis-with-civil-disobedience
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https://twitter.com/damiengayle/status/1514205389809668096?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1514205389809668096%7Ctwgr%5E55e9bc6c179af7c1f2b134e6157e63c9376ea4e7%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fenvironment%2F2022%2Faug%2F29%2Fscientists-call-on-colleagues-to-protest-climate-crisis-with-civil-disobedience
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https://twitter.com/damiengayle/status/978977046528495616/photo/1
[ Oh goody, just in time for Halloween season ]
*‘Zombie ice’ from Greenland will raise sea level 10 inches*
By SETH BORENSTEIN
August 29, 2022
- -
What scientists did for the study was look at the ice in balance. In
perfect equilibrium, snowfall in the mountains in Greenland flows down
and recharges and thickens the sides of glaciers, balancing out what’s
melting on the edges. But in the last few decades there’s less
replenishment and more melting, creating imbalance. Study authors looked
at the ratio of what’s being added to what’s being lost and calculated
that 3.3% of Greenland’s total ice volume will melt no matter what
happens with the world cutting carbon pollution, Colgan said.
“I think starving would be a good phrase,” for what’s happening to the
ice, Colgan said.
One of the study authors said that more than 120 trillion tons (110
trillion metric tons) of ice is already doomed to melt from the warming
ice sheet’s inability to replenish its edges. When that ice melts into
water, if it were concentrated only over the United States, it would be
37 feet (11 meters) deep....
- -
Colgan said this is actually all a best case scenario. The year 2012
(and to a different degree 2019 ) was a huge melt year, when the
equilibrium between adding and subtracting ice was most out of balance.
If Earth starts to undergo more years like 2012, Greenland melt could
trigger 30 inches (78 centimeters) of sea level rise, he said. Those two
years seem extreme now, but years that look normal now would have been
extreme 50 years ago, he said.
“That’s how climate change works,” Colgan said. “Today’s outliers become
tomorrow’s averages.”
https://apnews.com/article/science-oceans-glaciers-greenland-climate-and-environment-9cd7662658ebbeaba05682352de8aa87
/[ the full article is much more interesting ]/
*Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios*
Luke Kemp https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7447-4335 ltk27 at cam.ac.uk, Chi Xu
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1841-9032, Joanna Depledge, +7 , Kristie L.
Ebi https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4746-8236, Goodwin Gibbins, Timothy A.
Kohler https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3414-6660, Johan Rockström, Marten
Scheffer https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2100-0312, Hans Joachim
Schellnhuber https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7453-4935, Will Steffen
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1163-6736, and Timothy M. Lenton
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6725-7498-7Authors Info & Affiliations
Edited by Kerry Emanuel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge, MA; received May 20, 2021; accepted March 25, 2022
August 1, 2022
119 (34) e2108146119
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2108146119
*Abstract*
Prudent risk management requires consideration of bad-to-worst-case
scenarios. Yet, for climate change, such potential futures are poorly
understood. Could anthropogenic climate change result in worldwide
societal collapse or even eventual human extinction? At present, this is
a dangerously underexplored topic. Yet there are ample reasons to
suspect that climate change could result in a global catastrophe.
Analyzing the mechanisms for these extreme consequences could help
galvanize action, improve resilience, and inform policy, including
emergency responses. We outline current knowledge about the likelihood
of extreme climate change, discuss why understanding bad-to-worst cases
is vital, articulate reasons for concern about catastrophic outcomes,
define key terms, and put forward a research agenda. The proposed agenda
covers four main questions: 1) What is the potential for climate change
to drive mass extinction events? 2) What are the mechanisms that could
result in human mass mortality and morbidity? 3) What are human
societies' vulnerabilities to climate-triggered risk cascades, such as
from conflict, political instability, and systemic financial risk? 4)
How can these multiple strands of evidence—together with other global
dangers—be usefully synthesized into an “integrated catastrophe
assessment”? It is time for the scientific community to grapple with the
challenge of better understanding catastrophic climate change.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2108146119
/[The news archive - looking back]/
/*August 30, 2005*/
August 30, 2005:
In an essay published in the Boston Globe, and republished the next
day in the New York Times, Ross Gelbspan writes:
"The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by
the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming."
Published on Tuesday, August 30, 2005 by the Boston Globe
Katrina's Real Name
by Ross Gelbspan
The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina
by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming.
When the year began with a two-foot snowfall in Los Angeles, the
cause was global warming.
When 124-mile-an-hour winds shut down nuclear plants in Scandinavia
and cut power to hundreds of thousands of people in Ireland and the
United Kingdom, the driver was global warming.
When a severe drought in the Midwest dropped water levels in the
Missouri River to their lowest on record earlier this summer, the
reason was global warming.
In July, when the worst drought on record triggered wildfires in
Spain and Portugal and left water levels in France at their lowest
in 30 years, the explanation was global warming.
When a lethal heat wave in Arizona kept temperatures above 110
degrees and killed more than 20 people in one week, the culprit was
global warming.
And when the Indian city of Bombay (Mumbai) received 37 inches of
rain in one day -- killing 1,000 people and disrupting the lives of
20 million others -- the villain was global warming.
As the atmosphere warms, it generates longer droughts, more-intense
downpours, more-frequent heat waves, and more-severe storms.
Although Katrina began as a relatively small hurricane that glanced
off south Florida, it was supercharged with extraordinary intensity
by the relatively blistering sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of
Mexico.
The consequences are as heartbreaking as they are terrifying.
Unfortunately, very few people in America know the real name of
Hurricane Katrina because the coal and oil industries have spent
millions of dollars to keep the public in doubt about the issue.
The reason is simple: To allow the climate to stabilize requires
humanity to cut its use of coal and oil by 70 percent. That, of
course, threatens the survival of one of the largest commercial
enterprises in history.
In 1995, public utility hearings in Minnesota found that the coal
industry had paid more than $1 million to four scientists who were
public dissenters on global warming. And ExxonMobil has spent more
than $13 million since 1998 on an anti-global warming public
relations and lobbying campaign.
In 2000, big oil and big coal scored their biggest electoral victory
yet when President George W. Bush was elected president -- and
subsequently took suggestions from the industry for his climate and
energy policies.
As the pace of climate change accelerates, many researchers fear we
have already entered a period of irreversible runaway climate change.
Against this background, the ignorance of the American public about
global warming stands out as an indictment of the US media.
When the US press has bothered to cover the subject of global
warming, it has focused almost exclusively on its political and
diplomatic aspects and not on what the warming is doing to our
agriculture, water supplies, plant and animal life, public health,
and weather.
For years, the fossil fuel industry has lobbied the media to accord
the same weight to a handful of global warming skeptics that it
accords the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change -- more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries reporting to
the United Nations.
Today, with the science having become even more robust -- and the
impacts as visible as the megastorm that covered much of the Gulf of
Mexico -- the press bears a share of the guilt for our self-induced
destruction with the oil and coal industries.
As a Bostonian, I am afraid that the coming winter will -- like last
winter -- be unusually short and devastatingly severe. At the
beginning of 2005, a deadly ice storm knocked out power to thousands
of people in New England and dropped a record-setting 42.2 inches of
snow on Boston.
The conventional name of the month was January. Its real name is
global warming.
Ross Gelbspan is author of ''The Heat Is On" and ''Boiling Point."
© 2005 Boston Globe
http://web.archive.org/web/20130618033413/http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0830-22.htm
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