[✔️] December 12, 2022 - Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*December 12, 2022*/

/[ clips from Inside Climate News...produced in partnership with the 
Pulitzer Center.  ] /
*Climate Change is Driving Millions to the Precipice of a ‘Raging Food 
Catastrophe’*
In the Horn of Africa, a climate change-induced drought is exposing 
cracks in the global food system and pushing humanitarian aid to a 
breaking point.
By Georgina Gustin
December 11, 2022
TORICHA, Kenya—If there’s a ring around the sun, it will rain. If the 
gude bird sings in descending notes, the skies will open. If vultures 
gather, the showers will begin...
- -
The government has drilled boreholes, but there aren’t enough of them. 
Herders have to travel long distances to reach the water and then 
equally long distances to find any remaining pasture. Where there’s 
water, there’s no pasture and where there’s even the scantest bit of 
uneaten pasture left, there’s no water. On the trek between one place 
and the other, animals crumple from exhaustion and die.
- -
Near the village shop, relief workers from a local aid group called 
PACIDA distribute corn, beans, cooking oil, salt and sugar. A water 
truck is scheduled to come soon, too, but international aid has lapsed, 
so it will be the last for a long time.

“Even with this they won’t get a meal every day,” says Adano Salesa, a 
program officer with the group who is in charge of distributing the food 
to each eligible person. Only the most vulnerable get a share.

“If there is no more help,” he says, methodically consulting a 
checklist, “people will die.”...
- -
*A System Ill Prepared for Shocks*
Nearly 26 million people in the Horn of Africa are facing extreme 
hunger, with some areas already reaching catastrophic famine levels, 
according to the United Nations. The situation here is unfolding as a 
food crisis threatens a record number of people around the world, with 
nearly 345 million at acute levels of hunger and nearly 50 million 
people on the brink of famine.

“We are on the way to a raging food catastrophe,” U.N. Secretary General 
António Guterres tweeted recently...
- -
“This is unprecedented,” said Rupsha Banerjee, a drought and livestock 
expert with the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi.

In Kenya, home to two of the world’s largest refugee camps, people 
fleeing countries to its northern region are taxing resources in the 
communities where the camps are situated, sparking conflicts over 
already stretched resources. In some areas, farmers are fighting with 
herders who are encroaching on their land in search of pasture for their 
animals. Grisly revenge killings of both people and livestock are 
becoming a regular occurrence...
- -
The situation here, experts say, is a microcosm of what happens when 
climate change shifts patterns that humans, animals and plants have 
relied on for centuries and millennia.

“In the Horn of Africa, you have a triple whammy,” said Tim Benton, who 
leads the environment and society program at the London-based think tank 
Chatham House. “Another year of bad weather, high food prices and the 
high costs of shipping, and high prices mean less food aid.”

“All of that has the potential to destabilize the region, with greater 
migrant flows and more pressure on neighboring countries,” he said. 
“It’s not just starving people in Africa we should be worried about, 
it’s the consequences for conflict.”

For Ali and millions like her, the forces behind her suffering are 
abstract and distant notions. But for officials overseeing aid to 
refugees, there is a direct line between the behaviors of rich 
countries, which are largely to blame for climate change, and her 
family’s misfortunes.

“These are communities that have contributed nothing to climate change, 
but they’re the ones staring, literally, into the face of the climate 
crisis,” said Gemma Connell, who heads the southern and eastern Africa 
regional office of the U.N’.s Office for the Coordination of 
Humanitarian Affairs. “It’s just devastating to see people who’ve done 
nothing go through this.”

All anyone talks about here in Marsabit County is the lack of rain. On a 
recent federal holiday, newscasters and pundits lamented that there was 
little to celebrate, given that 4 million people in 23 of the country’s 
47 counties were on the brink of starvation.

In Marsabit, Kenya’s largest county, one in five people is going hungry.

“My greatest fear is the loss of life in the coming days and months,” 
says Immaculate Mutua, the county’s nutrition coordinator, sitting at a 
chipped conference table in the county health department. “We’re just 
hanging on a cliff. Starvation is already happening. It’s not a worry 
for tomorrow. It is here.”...
- -
Across Turkana County, especially in the north, closer to the border 
with Ethiopia and South Sudan, the story is repeated in village after 
village. The animals are dead. The water points produce water that’s too 
salty or dirty to drink.

“The livestock are finished,” says Margaret Nanok, holding up a plastic 
bottle filled with coffee-colored water. “And we’re just scooping water 
from undug shallow wells.”

Nanok explains that she and the other women have to walk nine miles, to 
the base of a nearby hill, to collect water. “The whole day is wasted,” 
she says. “We have to leave the infants and children behind."...
- -
*A Step Too Late*
Two thousand miles to the north, in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm 
el-Sheikh, government officials and negotiators from around the world 
gathered last month at the United Nations 27th Conference of the 
Parties, known as COP27, to gauge the world’s promises to cut greenhouse 
gas emissions. And there, as record-high hunger levels gripped the 
continent, discussions about food security inched closer to the 
forefront of the proceedings.

With 200 events focused on food systems and agriculture, four major 
pavilions devoted to food and one day dedicated to agriculture, some 
dubbed it the “Food COP.” The “implementation plan” that emerged from 
the conference prominently acknowledges food for the first time, noting 
“the fundamental priority of safeguarding food security and ending 
hunger, and the particular vulnerabilities of food production systems to 
the adverse impacts of climate change.”

Globally, food systems and farming contribute roughly one-third of the 
world’s total climate-warming gases yet at the same time are under 
serious duress from the effects of a changing climate. This year alone 
was a striking case in point, with droughts and floods across many 
countries, including the U.S., where drought in the Southwest and 
central Plains cut crop yields and forced ranchers to sell off livestock.

The COP discussions on agriculture focused on reducing its contributions 
to climate-warming gases, especially methane. More countries signed on 
to a year-old pledge to reduce methane, promising to devote more funding 
to helping farmers limit emissions of that potent greenhouse gas.

But, with millions on the verge of famine, food security experts and 
advocacy groups used the talks as a platform to call for a broader and 
more fundamental overhaul.

“The food security crisis, the repercussions of the drought in East 
Africa, are putting a very sharp point on the fact that our food systems 
are broken,” said Sara Farley, a vice president with the Rockefeller 
Foundation, which operated one of the food-focused pavilions at the COP 
meeting. “The food system can’t respond effectively to the crisis, and 
they won’t be able to respond to future crises if we’re doing business 
as usual.”
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11122022/kenya-somalia-africa-famine-hunger-climate-change/



/[ Keystone spill in Kansas, icky, icky. ]/
*Kansas residents hold their noses as crews mop up massive U.S. oil spill*
December 11, 2022
By Erwin Seba and Nia Williams
Investigators, cleanup crews begin scouring oil pipeline spill in Kansas

WASHINGTON, Kan., Dec 10 (Reuters) - Residents near the site of the 
worst U.S. oil pipeline leak in a decade took the commotion and smell in 
stride as cleanup crews labored in near-freezing temperatures, and 
investigators searched for clues to what caused the spill.

A heavy odor of oil hung in the air as tractor trailers ferried 
generators, lighting and ground mats to a muddy site on the outskirts of 
this farming community, where a breach in the Keystone pipeline 
discovered on Wednesday spewed 14,000 barrels of oil.

Pipeline operator TC Energy (TRP.TO) said on Friday it was evaluating 
plans to restart the line, which carries 622,000 barrels per day of 
Canadian oil to U.S. refineries and export hubs.

"We could smell it first thing in the morning; it was bad," said 
Washington resident Dana Cecrle, 56. He shrugged off the disruption: 
"Stuff breaks. Pipelines break, oil trains derail."

TC Energy did not provide details of the breach or say when a restart on 
the broken segment could begin. Officials are scheduled on Monday to 
receive a briefing on the pipeline breach and cleanup, said Washington 
County's emergency preparedness coordinator, Randy Hubbard, on Saturday.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/residents-hold-their-nose-crews-mop-up-huge-us-oil-spill-2022-12-10/


/[ This American Life -- NPR radio segment ]/
*762: Apocalypse Creep Act One: Apocalypse Now-ish*
Producer Alix Spiegel reports on the city of Pacifica, California. A 
huge fight erupted there after it was asked to start planning for sea 
level rise. Some in town think it’s time to face the future, others say 
it’s far too early. (37 minutes)
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/762/apocalypse-creep/act-one-8



/[ ABC news report on rising seas -- video  ]/
*How climate change, rising sea levels are transforming coastlines 
around the world l ABCNL*
ABC News
13.9M subscribers
26,832 views  Nov 22, 2022
ABC News’ chief meteorologist Ginger Zee reports on how long-term 
erosion and strong storms are chipping away at the shore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9d6n_uUfFo



/[  models, conjectures and prediction - collapse of the AMOC Gulf 
Stream in a few years -- video ]/
*Abrupt global ocean circulation collapse. Time to start prepping?*
Just Have a Think
29,321 views  Dec 11, 2022
An abrupt collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, 
or AMOC, was the plotline for the 2004 hit movie 'The Day After 
Tomorrow'. Thankfully the apocalyptic scenes depicted in that film are 
not going to happen, but the AMOC system has been weakening for decades 
and it is likely to grind to a halt at some point in the not too distant 
future, with profound effects on our planetary systems. So, can we do 
anything about it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2ETr6X1lOk



/[ Down Under is already up to it... ]/
*Australia already at “worst case” climate scenarios for 2030*
Data analysis by climate expert Professor David Karoly shows concerning 
trend.
12 December 2022 / Matthew Agius
Australia appears to be already experiencing the worst-case climate 
scenarios that were projected to occur eight years from now.

It’s a sobering finding, revealed by world-renowned climate scientist 
David Karoly’s analysis of how closely projections released in 2015 by 
the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO align to actual temperatures and 
rainfall experienced by 12 major Australian cities, including the capitals.

He presented his data titled “Evaluation of near-term climate change 
projections for selected Australian cities using recent observations” at 
the recent Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society conference.

“Unfortunately, things like temperature extremes – days over 35 and 40 
degrees Celsius – and decline in rainfall in southern Australia… were 
tracking at or above what was projected for the 2030s,” Professor Karoly 
tells Cosmos.

Cities further north were also seen to experience climate changes 
consistent with 2030 projections, though not worst-case rainfall scenarios.
- -
*So, how do these climate models project possible futures?*
Climate models simulate plausible climate futures.

They are the most accurate and useful tools available to anticipate and 
estimate the Earth’s future climate, and extend the calculations used by 
meteorologists to predict short-term weather. In this way, climate 
projections look beyond this week, this month and even this year.

Models use complex data inputs and mathematical calculations to simulate 
possible climate outcomes. To give a sense of the effort to ensure 
accuracy, hundreds of scientists and substantial supporting resources 
are required to build a model.

 From Alabama to Australia: One American’s Hurricane-inspired journey to 
climate science down under

Not all models are the same, but each use mathematical equations to 
represent complex processes and interactions in the atmosphere, oceans 
and land surface.

Basically, lots of time, money and brain power go towards making these 
incredibly useful models.

“There are multiple representations of those ‘plausible futures’, and 
typically the projections don’t look at just one – they look at range of 
plausible futures,” Karoly says.

“Coordinated experiments have been run with these global models to 
evaluate their performance and to allow their results to be combined for 
future climate projections.”

To determine their precision, climate models are run over historical 
periods to see how closely their simulations align with past weather 
records.

The closer the alignment, the greater confidence in the model’s ability 
to simulate future scenarios.
- -

Climate futures are uncertain, and scientists are quick to emphasise 
there are many variables that will influence the climate. But these 
uncertainties are small, and have become smaller and smaller as the 
reliability of climate models has improved.

Once models are verified, they’re then used to project forward 
scenarios.In simple terms, this process is repeated by climate 
scientists around the world to inform decision-makers, businesses and 
individuals on what changes might look like years into the future...

*- -**
**“In the most recent decade, it’s hitting us faster and harder.”*
Farmers are one group particularly interested in the changing climate.

They rely on having accurate data to inform their operations – when and 
what to plant – based on expected temperature, rainfall, storm activity 
and more.

And it was discussions with farmers that prompted Karoly to look back on 
how accurate the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO’s past climate 
projections were.

These farmers and others who rely on accurate weather had noticed their 
climate expectations hadn’t married up with reality.

“I thought I’d better evaluate,” Karoly says.

“For many people, they’ve been noticing climate and weather changing 
around them.”

Karoly’s findings are troubling: already, 12 Australian cities are 
experiencing climate conditions that were projected to occur a decade 
from now. While specific to these locations, the findings could be 
considered broad indicators for the rest of the nation.

“Many businesses and many people who are looking at climate impacts tend 
to look at the mid-range projections for the future,” Karoly says.

“What I’ve been finding is that the mid-range climate projections for 
2030 already significantly underestimate the magnitude of the likely 
climate impacts in terms of extreme temperatures.”

“These sorts of events that were projected to be much worse in the 
2030s, and 2050s, are happening already. What we’re experiencing in some 
sense, for many parts of Australia, is the weather of the 2030s, or the 
worst case of the 2030s, now.”

One thing that Karoly did not review was extreme short-term rainfall, 
making it difficult to consider recent events like the recent triple La 
Nina, which incidentally saw 2022 become the wettest Sydney year on record.

Karoly says his results may mean experts need to revise their use of 
climate models. At the very least, he says, worst-case scenarios using 
existing simulations need to be given greater consideration.

“Maybe the issue is we haven’t actually got high resolution, or high 
enough resolution to represent some important [climate] processes,” he says.

“It’s potentially a risk with using coarser models… using a simple 
downscaling approach. We’re usually tracking within the full range, but 
experiencing the worst case.”
Originally published by Cosmos as Australia already at “worst case” 
climate scenarios for 2030
https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth/australia-climate-at-worst-case-2030-scenarios/



/[The news archive - here is an official report on politics attacking 
science - this is a very interesting video from a Republican pollster ]/
/*December 12, 2007*/
December 12, 2007:
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform releases the 
report "Political Interference with Climate Change Science under the 
Bush Administration."
http://mark-bowen.com/images/downloads/house_oversight_committee-rept_1207.pdf 




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