[✔️] January 31, 2022 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[👀 Richard Pauli]

/*January 31, 2022*/

/[  Methane delivers half a degree of heating that can be immediately 
stopped ] /
*Can We Tame the Methane Monster?*
Jan 27, 2022
Facing Future
#Methane is a potent greenhouse gas and a major contributor to the 
climate crisis.  Many jurisdictions, however, are using outdated 
accounting methods that vastly underestimate methane’s impact. Further, 
the fossil fuel industry has created momentum for the use of 
greenwashing technologies like “blue hydrogen.”  Host Raya Salter speaks 
with Professor Bob Howarth to discover what science is revealing about 
the true threat of methane, and how New York State is innovating on 
methane policy with the recently passed 'Climate Leadership and 
Community Protection Act'.

Dr. Bob Howarth is the David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology and 
Environmental Biology at Cornell University.  Dr. Howarth is a 
biogeochemistry and ecosystem scientist.  His research laboratory works 
broadly on human alteration of element cycles in coastal marine 
ecosystems and watersheds, and also works on the environmental 
consequences of energy systems, particularly from oil and gas 
development.  Dr. Howarth is also a member of the NYS Climate Action 
Council, which is tasked with developing the plan for NY to reach its 
nation leading climate goals.  Bob works on policy domestically and 
internationally and was pivotal in helping NYS devise its GHG regulations.

Host Raya Salter is a climate and energy attorney, educator and 
activist.  She is an adjunct professor of law at Cardozo Law School and 
the author of the book “Energy Justice” (2018).  She is also a member of 
the New York State Climate Action Council.  She is @ClimateAuntie on IG 
and her web site is www.RayaSalter.com.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YKRoQdMLew


/[ new ideas promoted in a brief video.  Pumped hydro-power ]/
*Have we found the missing link in the energy storage equation?*
Jan 30, 2022
Just Have a Think
Utility scale energy storage solutions are evolving very quickly as more 
and more intermittent energy sources are being connected to global 
electricity grids. Manganese dioxide flow batteries may offer a very 
cost effective way of bridging the gap between short duration 
lithium-ion batteries
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN0bjac2tHQ


[ future foods ]
*How Climate Change Will Shift the Farming Landscape for Coffee, Cashews 
and Avocados*
Some countries will gain farmland while other countries will lose it.
Jan 26, 2022
James Gaines, Contributor
(Inside Science) -- Some countries that grow coffee, cashews and 
avocados will see the amount of land best suited to these crops shrink 
because of climate change, highlighting the need to plan adaptations 
now, according to new work published today in the journal PLOS One.

The crops we eat depend on a variety of soil and climate conditions to 
grow, and climate change is expected to affect both temperature and 
rainfall in many areas around the world. Previous research has looked at 
how crops would be affected by these changes, and the findings spell 
trouble for some crops, including coffee.

To find out where the best growing conditions for coffee, cashews and 
avocados are today, environmental systems scientist Roman Grüter and his 
colleagues combined information about what conditions these crops prefer 
with maps of current climate data and different soil or land types. 
Then, by incorporating climate models, they predicted where conditions 
would improve and where they would decline. The final maps were precise 
enough that Grüter, affiliated with the Zurich University of Applied 
Sciences and an author of the new study, could zoom in to less than a 
square kilometer in resolution.

As earlier studies had suggested, the researchers found that the global 
area suitable for producing coffee will decrease. The new study was the 
first to look at cashews and avocados on a global scale, and it found 
that the areas suited to growing cashews may actually increase, while 
avocados are predicted to lose much of their best-suited land but may 
see an increase in areas of moderate suitability.

Beyond the global picture, however, Grüter's maps show how individual 
countries or areas -- and the farmers who live there -- may be affected. 
For example, Brazil may gain farmland well-suited for cashews while 
Venezuela may lose it. Meanwhile, most of the coffee-growing areas in 
Vietnam may decline in suitability, while China may see increases. Even 
within a country's borders, there may be shifts, including changes in 
the areas of Mexico best suited to avocados.

The crops in the study are important sources of income for farmers 
around the world, especially farmers with less than five acres of land. 
Many people may see their personal farms and livelihoods affected. 
Planning for how to adapt should start now, said Grüter. For instance, 
countries could try to help smallholder farmers by breeding or planting 
new varieties adapted for higher temperatures or drought.

"I think it's important to invest not only in modeling, but also now 
really invest in adaptation strategies," said Grüter. He said he also 
thinks countries should include the affected farmers in decision-making. 
"Take the farmers on board from the beginning," he said...
- -
At the end of the day, adds chief Kokoi, all such plans hinge on 
ensuring that the people who have lived in, and managed, these forests 
for thousands of years are recognised as their rightful owners. As Perez 
Rubio puts it: “People ask us: ‘How can we help keep forests standing?’, 
and we say, ‘Start by recognising our rights. Then we can help you’.”
https://insidescience.org/news/how-climate-change-will-shift-farming-landscape-coffee-cashews-and-avocados



[ see a toucan ]
*While politicians dither, indigenous groups are taking climate action*
Martin Wright - January 28, 2022
Indigenous attendees at COP26 may have come away disappointed, but 
they’re not sitting around waiting for help

Among the grey suits and government stands in the Blue Zone of COP26, 
one bright spot stood out. Literally. The Indigenous Peoples’ Pavilion 
was a relative riot of colour, largely thanks to the folk who stood and 
sat outside it, chatting, planning, laughing – their traditional 
costumes bright with multicoloured feathers and beads.

But they weren’t there for decoration. Representing millions of people 
from the world’s rainforests in particular, they are meeting the climate 
crisis on the frontline.

All told tales of weather extremes hitting their farms and fishing, of 
drought, storms or fires threatening their ability to make a living. 
They were not only in Glasgow to make the case for global support, but 
also to make clear that they are not waiting around for international 
rescue – they’re taking action themselves on a whole range of 
fronts...echnology is one. Faced with outsiders muscling into their 
forest lands, the Murui Huitoto of the Peruvian Amazon have partnered 
with Global Forest Watch to equip and train themselves with GPS tracking 
devices and drones.

These help them spot illegal incursions and report intruders before they 
can do much harm. As their leader, Jorge Perez Rubio, explains: “In the 
past, the only way we could find out what was happening was to walk long 
distances. By the time we got there, it was too late, and the trees had 
been destroyed.”

An independent study shows the initiative has cut forest loss by over 50 
per cent compared to unmonitored areas...
- -
"I think it's important to invest not only in modeling, but also now 
really invest in adaptation strategies," said Grüter. He said he also 
thinks countries should include the affected farmers in decision-making. 
"Take the farmers on board from the beginning," he said.
https://www.positive.news/environment/these-indigenous-groups-are-taking-bold-climate-action/



/[ moving toward the money ] /
*How to Win More Global Warming Lawsuits*
By Mark Buchanan | Bloomberg
Jan 30, 2022
The fight against global warming is rapidly moving into the courtrooms. 
In the past few years, in landmark cases in the Netherlands, Germany and 
France, courts have agreed that state and corporate entities have a duty 
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and demanded they adopt more 
aggressive policies. A Dutch court, for example, ordered the government 
to reduce emissions to 25% below 1990s levels, forcing it to go beyond 
its proposed goal of 17%.

These rulings mark an encouraging shift. Over the decades, plaintiffs 
have brought — and lost — more than a thousand major cases accusing 
governments and private companies of causing specific damages through 
climate emissions.

One reason this dismal record may be changing is that plaintiffs are 
making more persuasive arguments. But they could be doing even better. 
According to a recent a study of arguments put forth in 73 recent or 
ongoing cases, plaintiffs are generally failing to use the up-to-date 
science capable of linking climate emissions to direct harmful consequences.

“Attribution” — the term scientists use to describe the evidence linking 
human behavior to global warming — isn’t as easy as it might seem. 
Proving that some flood or storm damage is due to climate change, and 
not just a freak event of normal weather, means showing that such an 
event would have been much more unlikely in a world in which climate 
change wasn’t happening. To do that, scientists have to rely on good 
statistical understanding of the normal climate system and weather — if 
warming weren’t happening — and make a clear distinction from what is 
actually happening now.

Collecting that historical data and building those scientific models has 
been difficult. But researchers have persisted. In 2018, a summer heat 
wave in northern Europe brought average temperatures more than 5°C 
higher (9° F) than the recent historical norm. Detailed studies of this 
event based on available data and atmospheric modeling eventually 
concluded that such an event was roughly 100 times more likely than it 
would have been in the absence of climate change. In a realistic 
statistical sense, climate change caused it, as well as the damage 
following from it, which included many hundreds of excess deaths caused 
by extreme temperatures in Sweden, Finland and Denmark.

The science for making such causal links has matured in the past decade 
due to concerted efforts of groups such as the World Weather Attribution 
organization, created by scientists who have developed exhaustive 
methods for determining which events are and aren’t good candidates for 
realistic attribution. It’s unfortunate that, so far, the activists 
bringing climate cases don’t seem to be keeping up with the science.

In their study of recent cases, for example, Rupert Stuart-Smith of the 
Oxford Sustainable Law Programme and colleagues found that plaintiffs in 
nearly 75% of the cases — typically relating to damages from extreme 
temperatures or sea-level rise — made no effort to demonstrate a clear 
causal link between the damage they experienced and defendants’ 
emissions. Instead, plaintiffs mostly hoped it would be enough if the 
court accepted the existence of a general link between climate emissions 
and increased risks for extreme events.

The better alternative, these researchers argue, would be to present 
specific evidence to link particular damages at one time and place to 
defendants’ actions. That may seem inherently difficult, as emissions 
come from so many sources, but attribution has developed statistical 
techniques to reliably estimate the portion of damage attributable to 
individual emitters. And such arguments are in spirit no different from 
arguments courts have long accepted in other areas – for example, in 
cases determining partial liability for health consequences from tobacco 
smoke or asbestos. Such estimates see Exxon Mobil and Chevron as each 
having contributed more than 2% to the cumulative acidification of the 
oceans, with coal and cement producers in China accounting for more than 
10%.

More specific arguments could make a big difference. A decade ago, a 
courts that rejected climate-related lawsuits suggested that legitimate 
links could never be made between defendants’ emissions and plaintiffs’ 
injuries. That view was premature. The science has decisively moved on. 
Now, in many cases, such links can be made with high confidence.

It’s not surprising, perhaps, that legal experts haven’t kept up with 
latest science, which is getting stronger all the time. If activists and 
their legal teams begin employing better science, the legal battles 
could soon start tipping the other way, in which case courts might drive 
real change on emissions policies.

Mark Buchanan, a physicist and science writer, is the author of the book 
“Forecast: What Physics, Meteorology and the Natural Sciences Can Teach 
Us About Economics.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/how-to-win-more-global-warming-lawsuits/2022/01/29/9803e17a-810c-11ec-8cc8-b696564ba796_story.html



/[ video recording of live presentation ]/
*Climate Change and Displacement: Experiences from Latin America & the 
Caribbean and the Middle East*
live on Jan 28, 2022
Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs
About the Event
Migration within and across borders has become a global concern as 
people flee violence, political and social instability, and economic 
hardship. The effects of climate change, in particular, rising 
temperatures, sea levels, more intense storms, and droughts, already 
exacerbate existing vulnerabilities and are expected to become more 
significant in driving migration.

This discussion focuses on the experiences of migrants in Latin America, 
the Caribbean, and the Middle East, exploring how climate change and 
environmental hazards exacerbate existing vulnerabilities and affect 
patterns of migration and the challenges that migrants face negotiating 
these, with a particular focus on the experiences of women.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J4ZLhkJfYA



/[   clips from a Variety review ] /
*'To the End’ Review: A Documentary About Trying to Change the Systems 
Enabling Climate Change*
Rachel Lears’ follow-up to 'Knock Down the House' charts the efforts of 
prominent young U.S. climate policy activists over the last three years.
By Dennis Harvey
Unstoppable force meets immovable object in “To the End.” Rachel Lears’ 
documentary inspires in its portrait of youthful activists organizing to 
push impactful climate-change policies into American political reality — 
and exasperates in the resistance with which that urgent quest is 
greeted on both sides of the entrenched-power aisle. Covering several 
years of fast-moving events, this Sundance premiere is too exclusively 
U.S.-focused to be particularly viable for offshore programmers, but its 
topicality should stir sales interest on home turf.

Like the director’s last feature “Knock Down the House,” about the 2018 
Congressional election, this one also throws a spotlight on New York 
state candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Her successful bid for a House 
of Representatives seat greatly encouraged other progressives, for whom 
she is seen now as their principal “inside” ally — as well as 
conservatives’ preferred target tor outrage on nearly any subject. But 
the principals here are a lower-profile trio of women involved in 
organizations aggressively agitating for the transformational changes 
proposed in the Green New Deal sponsored by Ocasio-Cortez (alongside 
Massachusetts’ Ed Markey). That complex long-range plan aims not just to 
apply climate-crisis fixes, but as she puts it here, to provide “a 
vehicle to truly deliver economic, racial and social justice in America.”

The highlighted figures are Varshini Prakash, co-founder of youth 
climate activist coalition Sunrise Movement; Alexandra Rojas, executive 
director of progressive political action committee Justice Democrats; 
and Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Climate Policy Director at liberal think tank 
The Roosevelt Institute. They’re all women of color under 35 who see the 
political “establishment” not just as corrupted by corporate and other 
lobbyist moneys, but fundamentally deaf to the concerns of their 
generation. They are the ones who’ll be spending most of their lives 
after a climate-crisis “tipping point” many scientists see as just a 
decade or so away, while more than a few of their government 
representatives continue to debate whether that threat even exists.

Sunrise Movement explodes in public awareness after a November 2018 
sit-in (which AOC joined) at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Capitol Hill 
office. Crisscrossing the country to chart activity only briefly slowed 
by COVID, “To the End” sees gains and setbacks for these players and 
colleagues over the ensuing three years. Their message enters mainstream 
dialogue, but at the same time, there is often rotely dismissive 
pushback — not just from the expected “Socialism!”-screaming 
conservatives, but many Democrats too. With Bernie Sanders again pushed 
out of the way in 2020’s Presidential race, professed centrist Joe Biden 
at first seems weak on environmental issues, until his camp grows 
surprisingly inclusive of progressive allies and ideas.

Once he’s ensconced in the White House, the “Build Back Better” plan 
seems a worthy alternative to the “Green Deal,” couching climate 
policies in a warm blanket of infrastructure improvement and job 
creation. Or at least it does until bipartisan “compromise” guts much of 
its key content. Even then, its passage remains stymied by the GOP, as 
well as fence-straddlers like West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, who claims 
his objections occupy the “common-sense middle,” but who also happens to 
be the Senate’s largest recipient of coal and natural-gas industry money.

As these political developments unfold, Lears takes a 
reports-from-the-front approach, frequently leaving D.C. to follow 
door-to-door vote canvassers or protest marchers around the nation. We 
also see Rojas grapple with the pressures of being a frequent CNN 
commentator while still a relative greenhorn in her mid-20s, among other 
backstage glimpses; major news events like the Congressional committee 
hearing at which oil company CEOs feigned great “concern” over climate 
change, then went mum at the mention of the related disinformation 
campaigns they fund; and the ever-escalating, often catastrophic 
evidence of environmental crisis, from fires to floods.

While the recent setbacks noted here are depressing to all concerned, no 
one is giving up. As Prakash puts it, her generation is no longer 
“banking on the adults in the room to have a plan.” Those ostensible 
grownups are much invested in the political status quo, while she sees 
the only way to address ecological crisis is to fundamentally “change 
politics in the United States.” That means a drastic shift to policies 
that actually help average citizens, as well as the environment — much 
like the original Great Depression-era New Deal, a comparison whose 
respective embrace and damnation neatly demarcates one essential U.S. 
party divide these days.

As her own director of photography, Lears deploys a lot of sweeping 
drone shots to break up potential hand-held and talking-head visual 
monotony. Other tech and design elements are also first-rate, as “To the 
End” keeps its large canvas entertaining and informative. Even so, it 
preaches enough to the choir that this documentary can hardly serve as 
an introduction for those belatedly coming to terms with its central issues.

https://variety.com/2022/film/festivals/to-the-end-review-1235158133/

- -

[ Hollywood Reporter review  ]
*Green New Deal Doc ‘To the End’: Film Review | Sundance 2022*
Director Rachel Lears follows up 'Knock Down the House' by once again 
teaming with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and three other young women 
engaged in a battle for the world's survival.
BY LESLIE FELPERIN - JAN 23, 2022
Rachel Lears’ breakout Netflix documentary feature Knock Down the House, 
which premiered at Sundance in 2019, followed four aspiring progressive 
U.S. politicians, all women, who had just been running for office in the 
2018 election cycle...
- -
A few years have passed and now Lears delivers, again with a Sundance 
premiere, To the End, a sequel of sorts to Knock Down the House in that 
it once again features heroine Ocasio-Cortez plus a whole new trio of 
activists hoping to make a difference on the political landscape. This 
time the focus is the climate crisis, and each of the activists featured 
— AOC, Varshini Prakash from the youth-driven Sunrise Movement, 
Alexandra Rojas from action group Justice Democrats, and Rhiana 
Gunn-Wright of the Roosevelt Institute and co-author of the Green New 
Deal policy document — are trying to pass legislation that will combat 
that crisis. But the right is fighting back, and the alliance on the 
left is riven with squabbling factions even though time is running out 
and the stakes have never seemed higher.
- -
The film’s opening quote from Antonio Gramsci, “The crisis consists of 
just this: The old world is dying and the new world cannot quite be 
born. In the meantime, all kinds of dreadful things are happening,” is 
apt indeed — especially that last bit about “dreadful things.” One of 
those very things features here in the shape of Joe Manchin, the senator 
from West Virginia whom Paula Jean Swearengin tried unsuccessfully to 
unseat in Knock Down the House. Here he’s seen on a clip from Fox News 
refusing to support the Build Back Better Act, with its raft of green 
legislation, and insisting that, why no, it has nothing to do with his 
personal ties to the coal industry. The women featured in the film, 
along with us, the audience, can only look on in despair.

Due to the fact that the canvas is broader this time around — and the 
subjects Lears has chosen to focus on don’t have four discreet, parallel 
narratives that we can see through to the end — there’s inevitably less 
coherence to this film strictly in terms of storytelling. Instead, each 
of these women is trying to make a difference in the climate crisis in 
very specific ways, but for all of them history keeps interfering. Each 
of the women is a person of color, and while at first that’s not really 
in the foreground, the issue of race inflects their stories as the 
murder of George Floyd sparks protests across the country, right at the 
same time that a pandemic is raging. Inevitably, there’s a lot of 
footage here of our subjects watching and reacting to the news.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially when the subjects we’re 
watching have interesting things to say about what they’re watching. For 
example, there’s a sequence where the ferociously astute and articulate 
Gunn-Wright dissects an oil industry lobbyist’s lies and obfuscations in 
a video clip. The scene immediately brings to mind AOC’s similar 
semiotics-savvy dissection of her opponent’s campaign pamphlet in House.

Elsewhere, we see Rojas bridling at the way 
then-still-running-for-president Elizabeth Warren talks about climate 
policy (Rojas is a fervent Bernie Sanders supporter), a moment that 
underscores the fissures on the left. Also, given Rojas is seen 
frequently appearing as a commentator on CNN, there’s a slight sense 
that this risks becoming a bit inside baseball with so much footage of 
media figures and politicians sniping about other media figures and 
politicians. Indeed, there’s a bit of irritation expressed with “the 
mainstream media” and its handling of the Green New Deal, as if this 
film isn’t itself part of that larger media-mediated conversation.

The scenes that follow Sunrise Movement protestor Prakash and her 
friends at least point the camera at the grassroots of the fight for the 
planet’s future. Barely more than kids, full of ideals and plenty of 
moxie, many of them are willing to risk their health with hunger strikes 
and other sacrifices to get their point across.

It seems so unfair that they keep trying when the media landscape is so 
hideously crowded with other news. Still, one can’t help but admire 
their willingness to keep going and not give up. After all, there’s an 
even younger generation coming up behind them, represented by 
Gunn-Wright’s own adorable newborn, even more at risk of inheriting an 
uninhabitable earth.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/to-the-end-review-sundance-2022-1235079660/ 




/[The news archive - looking back]/
*On this day in the history of global warming January 31, 1989*
January 31, 1989: The Los Angeles Times reports:

    "Secretary of State James A. Baker III, emphasizing the Bush
    Administration's concern about global environmental problems, said
    Monday that the nations of the world cannot wait for solid
    scientific confirmation of global warming before taking action.

    "In the first remarks on global environmental issues by a senior
    Bush Administration official since the inauguration, Baker said that
    the United States and the world must 'focus immediately' on energy
    conservation, reforestation and reductions in harmful chemical
    emissions.

    "'We can probably not afford to wait until all the uncertainties
    have been resolved before we do act. Time will not make the problem
    go away,' Baker told delegates from more than 40 nations to the
    newly formed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."

http://articles.latimes.com/1989-01-31/news/mn-1251_1_global-warming

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/31/science/joint-effort-urged-to-guard-climate.html 



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