[✔️] February 18, 2022 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
👀 Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Fri Feb 18 07:58:39 EST 2022
/*February 18, 2022*/
/[ just check the data ] /
*Wildfires are becoming more intense at night and lasting longer, study
finds*
Nighttime-fire intensity in the U.S. West has increased by 28 percent
over the past two decades.
By Kasha Patel - Feb 16, 2022
When the Cameron Peak Fire ignited in northern Colorado in August 2020,
few could foresee its longevity. As it burned, summer turned into
winter. Nearly a semester of school passed. By the time the fire was
fully contained in December, it had become the state’s largest on record.
In recent decades, wildfires have become more intense and longer lasting
amid rising temperatures linked to human-caused climate change. A key
influence on their growing duration? Their increasing ability to survive
the night, when temperatures typically dip and humidity rises...
- -
A study published Wednesday in Nature shows that a trend toward warmer
and drier conditions after sundown is helping blazes withstand what
should be unfavorable conditions — making fire containment more
difficult for responders. Crews are less able to rely on relief in fire
intensity previously offered by nighttime cooling...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/02/16/fire-intensity-night-study/
- -
/[ from the Journal nature ]/
16 February 2022
*Warming weakens the night-time barrier to global fire*
Jennifer K. Balch, John T. Abatzoglou, Maxwell B. Joseph, Michael J.
Koontz, Adam L. Mahood, Joseph McGlinchy, Megan E. Cattau & A. Park
Williams
Nature volume 602, pages442–448 (2022)Cite this article
Abstract
Night-time provides a critical window for slowing or extinguishing
fires owing to the lower temperature and the lower vapour pressure
deficit (VPD). However, fire danger is most often assessed based on
daytime conditions1,2, capturing what promotes fire spread rather
than what impedes fire. Although it is well appreciated that
changing daytime weather conditions are exacerbating fire, potential
changes in night-time conditions—and their associated role as fire
reducers—are less understood. Here we show that night-time fire
intensity has increased, which is linked to hotter and drier nights.
Our findings are based on global satellite observations of daytime
and night-time fire detections and corresponding hourly climate
data, from which we determine landcover-specific thresholds of VPD
(VPDt), below which fire detections are very rare (less than 95 per
cent modelled chance). Globally, daily minimum VPD increased by
25 per cent from 1979 to 2020. Across burnable lands, the annual
number of flammable night-time hours—when VPD exceeds VPDt—increased
by 110 hours, allowing five additional nights when flammability
never ceases. Across nearly one-fifth of burnable lands, flammable
nights increased by at least one week across this period. Globally,
night fires have become 7.2 per cent more intense from 2003 to 2020,
measured via a satellite record. These results reinforce the lack of
night-time relief that wildfire suppression teams have experienced
in recent years. We expect that continued night-time warming owing
to anthropogenic climate change will promote more intense,
longer-lasting and larger fires.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04325-1
- -
/[ High school student shows how to produce and present worthy media ]/
*High school student, Linnea Gebauer submitted a video for the national
C-SPAN StudentCam competition. *The prompt from C-SPAN was, “How does
the federal government impact your life?” She chose to talk about
wildland fire.
Having created and edited videos, to me it is obvious that Linnea put a
great deal of time and effort into research, planning, interviewing
subject matter experts, and editing the dozens of clips into the
finished product. Excellent job, Linnea!
*Fire Season- C-SPAN StudentCam 2022 * https://youtu.be/RXlyDcFTTbY
Jan 19, 2022
Linnea Gebauer
My entry to the 2022 C-SPAN StudentCam documentary competition!
Thank you to everyone who helped make this possible.
The prompt was, "How does the federal government impact your life?"
"Fire Season" explores the National Cohesive Wildland Fire
Management Strategy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXlyDcFTTbY
StudentCam is C-SPAN’s annual national video documentary competition
that encourages students to think critically about issues that affect
our communities and our nation.
This year the competition was open to students in grades 6-12. The
submission deadline was Thursday, January 20, 2022. With cash prizes
totaling $100,000 each year, C-SPAN awards prizes to the top 150 student
documentaries and teachers that are identified as advisors.
https://wildfiretoday.com/2022/02/17/high-school-students-documentary-about-wildland-fire/
/[ Worst of all, Biden has squandered opportunity in the face of rising
danger ] /
*Biden his time: how the US president is failing on the climate crisis*
After the Trump administration gutted environmental agencies and
abandoned the Paris agreement, Biden’s climate legacy is starting to
take shape – and it doesn’t look good
Emily Holden -- 16 Feb 2022
Below is a photo of me in 2017, crowded around the TV at the climate
publication I worked for, looking resigned as then president Donald
Trump announced the US was withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement.
The author, Emily Holden, and her colleagues watch Trump’s Paris
agreement speech
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/5836e66e84be3fce25335d2403f602dd37215eb4/0_139_2974_1786/master/2974.jpg?width=620&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=481ceff250e1ac4a9ddb3ef5b87feebc
I couldn’t have imagined the wild ride I was in for. Over four years,
Trump agencies gutted more than 100 environmental protections for air
and water pollution, biodiversity and climate change. And they did so
with dramatic flair.
The interior secretary rode into his first day on a horse. The head of
the Environmental Protection Agency spent exorbitantly on sound-proof
telephone booths and private planes.
By the end of Trump’s chaotic presidency, I was exhausted. The incoming
Biden administration felt like a much-needed reprieve. Biden vowed to
reinstate the regulations Trump gutted and make the climate crisis a top
priority.
I was skeptical of what he could achieve, but I tried to muster some
hope. Now, a year into Biden’s presidency, it’s clear that what little
optimism I had was misguided.
Biden’s climate legacy is starting to take shape, and it doesn’t look good.
So far, his administration has:
*1. Held the biggest-ever offshore oil drilling lease sale in the Gulf
of Mexico*
In November, Biden offered up 80m acres of water to oil drillers.
For years, the US government has regularly leased portions of the
Gulf of Mexico for offshore exploration and drilling. But
environmental and public health advocates had hoped that the
president who campaigned on climate action would at least scale back
the practice.
Last month, a judge struck down the auction – ruling that the
administration didn’t properly disclose and consider how the leases
would contribute to the climate crisis. That court decision is one
of the biggest climate victories of Biden’s administration. And it
came in spite of the administration’s efforts – not because of them.
Now more than 300 groups have signed on to an emergency petition to
halt all new drilling in the Gulf.
*2. Permitted more drilling on public lands in the West and in Alaska
than Trump did in his first year*
Biden has approved nearly 900 more permits to drill on public land
in 2021 than Trump did in 2017, according to the Center for
Biological Diversity. That’s despite his campaign pledges to end new
oil and gas leasing on federal lands. In November, Biden also urged
drillers to produce more oil, in an effort to lower gasoline prices.
*3. Failed to advance a climate legislative agenda*
On the campaign trail, Biden promised to cut US climate emissions in
half by 2030, including by investing significantly in renewable
power. But his legislative package to do so – Build Back Better –
has stalled. Two Democrats – Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema – may be
the main culprits for this failure, but convincing them to get on
board with his agenda was always going to be one of Biden’s biggest
challenges, and he hasn’t managed to do it.
*4. Faltered in quickly reinstating rules*
Under Biden, even minor regulations that mandate more energy
efficient furnaces, freezers, and lightbulbs are stuck in regulatory
limbo. And he could face a significant blow this month if the
conservative-tilted supreme court decides the federal government
can’t write rules to curb climate pollution from power plants.
Biden hasn’t followed through on the basics. And he certainly hasn’t
brought the kind of sweeping and aggressive action the world’s
scientists say is necessary to avoid catastrophic global heating.
As the US gears up for midterm elections in November, it remains to be
seen whether Biden will go any harder on environmental efforts.
This isn’t the first massive failure of climate efforts at the federal
level, and it won’t be the last. The lesson: policymakers and industries
won’t do the right thing unless they are forced, by our decisions with
our ballots and our wallets.
Emily Holden is the founder and editor-in-chief of Floodlight News, a
nonprofit newsroom that investigates the corporations holding back
climate action. Follow it on Twitter here.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/16/down-to-earth-joe-biden-climate
/[ Or perhaps everyone has been driven crazy - 40 min video ]/
*Societal Decline of Rationality and the Collective Good; with the Rise
of Emotion and the Individual*
Feb 17, 2022
Paul Beckwith
Is our entire world going nuts?
Are people in all fields of human endeavour, and at all levels of
government and corporations losing it?
Are we no smarter than a sack-of-hammers?
Often, it seems that way to me, due to human inability to address
climate change. In the last few weeks, with the “occupation of Ottawa”
this feeling has been greatly amplified, at least for me and the vast
majority of Ottawa residents.
This is not just in our imaginations. I chat about a recent peer
reviewed scientific paper that examines the language used in millions of
books from 1850 to present day.
This study clearly shows a decline in rationality and science based
thought since the 1980s, and a sharp rise in intuitive and emotional
type words over the last few decades. Not only is rationality being
trumped by emotion and beliefs, but we have also shifted away from the
collective, to the individual.
Fascinating study, with numerous, far reaching implications, especially
since we need science and rational thinking to preserve any semblance of
democracy, and have any change of dealing with abrupt climate system
change and near-term (5 to 10 year) global food shortages from extreme
weather in our climate casino.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRDkc1keaR0
- -
/[ think about words ]/
doi: 10.1073/pnas.2107848118.
*The rise and fall of rationality in language*
Marten Scheffer 1, Ingrid van de Leemput 2, Els Weinans 2 3, Johan Bollen 4
Affiliations expand
PMID: 34916287 PMCID: PMC8713757 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2107848118
*Abstract*
The surge of post-truth political argumentation suggests that we are
living in a special historical period when it comes to the balance
between emotion and reasoning. To explore if this is indeed the
case, we analyze language in millions of books covering the period
from 1850 to 2019 represented in Google nGram data. We show that the
use of words associated with rationality, such as "determine" and
"conclusion," rose systematically after 1850, while words related to
human experience such as "feel" and "believe" declined. This pattern
reversed over the past decades, paralleled by a shift from a
collectivistic to an individualistic focus as reflected, among other
things, by the ratio of singular to plural pronouns such as "I"/"we"
and "he"/"they." Interpreting this synchronous sea change in book
language remains challenging. However, as we show, the nature of
this reversal occurs in fiction as well as nonfiction. Moreover, the
pattern of change in the ratio between sentiment and rationality
flag words since 1850 also occurs in New York Times articles,
suggesting that it is not an artifact of the book corpora we
analyzed. Finally, we show that word trends in books parallel trends
in corresponding Google search terms, supporting the idea that
changes in book language do in part reflect changes in interest. All
in all, our results suggest that over the past decades, there has
been a marked shift in public interest from the collective to the
individual, and from rationality toward emotion.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34916287/
/[ Concluding words clip, headline says it, but you may click for
details ]/
*Opinion: As climate change worsens, Republicans insist we must do nothing*
//By Paul Waldman - -Columnist - -2-16-2022
- - -
So today, the consensus Republican position appears to be that even
thinking about climate change in economic policy is a threat to
prosperity, a stunningly upside-down perspective on the future of the
economy. Meanwhile, the more liberal position within the GOP is
essentially that while climate change is real and perhaps we shouldn’t
actively work to make it worse, we shouldn’t do much of anything to make
it better either.
This means that every step of progress we make on climate will only come
after a fight. And with the power they wield, Republicans will make
those fights as long and difficult as possible.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/16/climate-change-worsens/
/[The news archive - looking back]/
*On this day in the history of global warming February 18, 2004*
February 18, 2004: Sixty scientists, including several Nobel laureates,
issue a joint statement denouncing the George W. Bush administration for
distorting, downplaying and disregarding scientific findings on such
issues as human-caused climate change.
http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/abuses_of_science/scientists-sign-on-statement.html
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