[✔️] July 2, 2022 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Sat Jul 2 10:45:10 EDT 2022

/*July 2, 2022*/

/[ very positive spin right in the headline ] /
*Wildfire risk has grown nearly everywhere, but we can still influence 
where and how fires strike*
by Stefan H Doerr, Cristina Santín, John Abatzoglou, Matthew William 
Jones and Pep Canadell, The Conversation
JULY 1, 2022
Humans have raised CO₂ levels in the atmosphere to 50% above what they 
were before the industrial revolution. As a result, the world has 
already warmed by 1.1°C over the past century and reports indicate that 
it could reach 2.7°C of warming by the end of this century...
- -
We found that the length of the fire weather season (when most fires 
tend to occur) has already expanded significantly in many regions since 
the 1980s. On average, this season has lengthened by 27% globally, but 
the increases have been particularly pronounced in the Amazon, the 
Mediterranean and the western forests of North America...
- -
The number of days with extreme fire weather—when temperatures are 
particularly high, recent rainfall and humidity is particularly low and 
winds are capable of fanning a blaze—have become 54% more frequent at 
the global level. Because of this, larger and more severe fires that are 
difficult to contain are now more likely than they were in the past. 
This is one of the reasons that some of the recent fires in the western 
US or Australia have been so extensive and damaging. More extreme fires 
burn more vegetation, exacting a heavier toll on ecosystems and emitting 
more CO₂ to the atmosphere.

We also predicted that climate change's influence on fire weather will 
escalate in the future, with each additional degree of global warming 
substantially enhancing the risk of wildfires by preparing the landscape 
to burn.

If global temperatures reach upwards of 2°C above the pre-industrial 
average, fire weather conditions will be virtually unrecognizable 
compared with those in the recent history of most world regions...
- -
Although weather conditions conducive to wildfires are on an upward 
trajectory in nearly every part of the world, human actions still 
mediate or override the climatic influence in many regions. This may 
seem encouraging, but the effectiveness of human efforts to dampen the 
role of climate change diminishes with every additional decimal of a 
degree of warming.

Predicting how climate change and human activity will affect future 
wildfire risk worldwide is difficult, but one aspect is very clear. 
Slowing and reversing the accumulation of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases 
in the Earth's atmosphere will slow the acceleration of wildfire risk. 
Weather conditions promoting fire have already increased faster than 
anticipated in many wildfire-prone regions, and committing to further 
warming through emissions will undoubtedly raise them further.

Failing to keep global warming under 2°C, the minimal goal of the Paris 
Agreement, carries a dangerous price: unprecedented wildfire risks on 
the world stage. What we do next matters.
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-wildfire-grown.html

/[ Interesting and important observation "Only a crisis breeds changes"  
-- money meets crisis ]/
*Why Capitalism Loves Disasters*
7,702 views  Jul 1, 2022  Get a year of both Nebula and Curiosity Stream 
for just 14.79 here: https://curiositystream.com/occ
Watch the full companion video covering the basics of Ecosocialism here: 
https://nebula.app/videos/occ-what-is...

In this Our Changing Climate climate change video essay, I look at why 
disaster capitalism exists and how it works. Specifically, I dive into 
the core principles behind disaster capitalism-- how crises are 
exploited to pass neoliberal policies, turn a profit, and privatize land 
and resources previously held in common. But I also dive into how 
climate change and the climate crisis are a gold mine for disaster 
capitalism. Not only does capitalism destabilize communities on the 
frontlines of climate change and climate disasters, but it also 
capitalizes on the destruction of these natural disasters, further 
entrenching free-market capitalist ideas and policies. Capitalism is 
fueling climate change as well as profiting and exploiting the wreckage 
it leaves in its wake.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2ZVx8QiEUg

/[ Top-Notch Sarcasm about the EPA ruling and Roe  - (humor)  ] /
*Nation’s Fetuses Puzzled Why Supreme Court Wants Them Exposed to Air 
Pollution*
By Andy Borowitz
June 30, 2022
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The United States Supreme Court’s 
decision to curtail the E.P.A.’s ability to regulate carbon dioxide has 
drawn a puzzled reaction from the nation’s fetuses.

A statement from the Association of American Fetuses expressed 
“bafflement” that the Court would issue a ruling that increased the 
amount of atmospheric carbon monoxide, which has been shown to have a 
damaging effect on fetal health.

“It’s impossible for us to see today’s ruling as anything but flagrantly 
anti-fetus,” the statement read. “To say that we fetuses are 
disappointed would be putting it mildly.”

The fetuses asked John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, 
Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch to reconsider their 
ruling in the E.P.A. case. “It just doesn’t seem very pro-life to us,” 
the fetuses said.
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/nations-fetuses-puzzled-why-supreme-court-wants-them-exposed-to-air-pollution

https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=253&emc=edit_dww_20220630&instance_id=65472&nl=david-wallace-wells&productCode=DWW&regi_id=88317039&segment_id=97284&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F9e731caf-9fc6-5fbc-ab66-2882fd12faad&user_id=92d43392605ea6bb4bdc7142e9488efb

/[ ultimately -- everything is cultural  -- or maybe class conscious ] /
*The most profound effect of West Virginia v. Environmental Protection 
Agency may ultimately be cultural*
By David Wallace-Wells  - -  June 30, 2022

Many of the headlines about the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling on West 
Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday have suggested 
an existential setback: a major blow to American decarbonization and 
global climate ambition. But the effect is less like a nail in the 
coffin and more like putting an additional set of brakes on an already 
stalled project. For the time being, at least, the decision functions 
chiefly to cement the status quo.

The problem is, the status quo is bad enough. Cristiana Figueres, the 
former head of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change, recently 
described the world’s current trajectory as “a suicidal path,” and 
globally, the United States was already the most conspicuous laggard. 
Without meaningful legislative progress in the coming months, President 
Biden will have managed to deliver only 9 percent of his climate promises.

Without them, the country will fall far short of its own international 
pledges, which, given the scale of American emissions, will make it 
almost impossible for the world as a whole to fulfill its already 
unlikely targets. If Republicans win control of Congress in the November 
midterms, then the window on the prospect of such legislation may be 
shut for at least a few years. The E.P.A. decision may feel like a 
backbreaker, but the policy path to responsible, aggressive emissions 
reductions looked pretty broken yesterday.

Of course, the right question isn’t: Are we moving in the right 
direction or the wrong one, or standing still? That’s because, given the 
urgency of decarbonization and the pressing threat of dramatic climate 
impacts, time is the most precious commodity. That’s the meaning of the 
writer and activist Bill McKibben’s famous phrase, “Winning slowly is 
the same as losing.”

The Supreme Court decision is a bit worse than that, though, in how it 
restricts the E.P.A.’s ability to effectively regulate dirty energy 
rapidly off the grid without the explicit support of Congress. But this 
case was unusual in that it applied to potential powers rather than 
ongoing policy or law, and because that kind of power has never been and 
is not now being exercised by the agency, the judgment applies more to 
hypothetical futures than to present-tense policy.

And while every climate scientist and advocate would tell you that the 
country needs to do much, much more to curb emissions, West Virginia v. 
E.P.A. applies centrally to powers the agency is not presently 
exercising, and takes some possible future approaches away from 
regulators without turning back the clock as it did last week in 
overturning Roe v. Wade. In recent weeks, when climate-conscious 
analysts surveyed the range of possible outcomes, this was not one of 
the apocalyptic possibilities, and the agency has retained some 
authority to regulate greenhouse gasses — just not in the comprehensive, 
“generation shifting” way designed under former President Barack Obama’s 
never-actually-implemented Clean Power Plan. The judgment even affirmed 
that greenhouse gases represent a public danger.

And so given how unlikely near-term American policy progress seemed to 
begin with, the more profound effect of West Virginia may ultimately be 
cultural, shifting the climate mood in two ways: some mix of new 
outrage, frustration and despair among those Americans holding out hope 
for political and policy reversals and an embrace of global climate 
leadership, and eye-rolling and exasperation by those abroad who are 
already inclined to see the United States as the world’s biggest climate 
hypocrite.

At home, a majority of Americans want to see more done by Congress (61 
percent), the president (52 percent) and corporations (70 percent), 
according to the gold-standard polling conducted by Yale Climate 
Communications last fall, which also found that a record share of the 
country (33 percent) was “alarmed” about warming. For the alarmed — and 
for the many more Americans who described themselves as “concerned” — 
the decision may confirm an intuitive sense, pieced together also from 
setbacks well beyond climate, that the system is broken, with power 
aligned against action and every avenue of potential progress barricaded 
by the forces of inertia. For the country’s highest court to consider 
the urgent challenge of warming and say, in effect, that we should be 
doing less rather than more — whatever the immediate policy effect — 
comes as a profound psychological blow.

Indeed, this term, the supermajority conservative court seems to be 
taking over the role long played by Congress as the public face of 
federal dysfunction and stalemate — at best. On reproductive rights and 
guns, the picture is darker still.

On climate, as recently as several years ago, advocates had hopes of 
seeing a much different case reach the court and radically reshape the 
climate priorities of the country. In Juliana v. United States, often 
called “Kids v. Climate,” a group of underage litigants hoped to 
establish a younger generation’s fundamental right to a future 
undisturbed by the climate impacts imposed by earlier generations. Given 
the makeup of the court even then, this was probably always a somewhat 
optimistic hope (at the moment, Juliana is stalled in District Court). 
But instead, West Virginia v. E.P.A. is the climate case — and decision 
— the country got. The mood is grim, and “we’re only as screwed as we 
were yesterday” is not much of a comfort or a rallying cry.

Internationally, the climate reputation of the United States is already 
somewhat tattered. The United States is the world’s largest producer of 
oil, its second largest producer of gas and its third largest consumer 
of coal, and also its largest historical emitter by an outrageous 
margin, responsible for about twice as much carbon damage already done 
to the planet as any other country on Earth. On a per capita basis, the 
country has done five or six times as much damage as China, which is the 
second most responsible nation; given likely emissions curves this 
century, that gap will probably never close.

And yet — despite that responsibility, despite the United States’ early 
environmental action a half-century ago, and despite the fact that, 
thanks to abundant land and renewable resources, it may now be the best 
positioned in the world to race through a power transition, which would 
also generate considerable prosperity — the United States pulled out of 
the Kyoto Protocol, undermined negotiations in Copenhagen and withdrew 
at least briefly from the Paris climate accord.

Domestically, it failed to pass major climate legislation with a 
filibuster-proof Democratic Senate majority in 2009, and failed again in 
2021 and so far in 2022, with a slimmer majority but still with control 
of both Congress and the White House. And according to at least one 
recent assessment from O.D.I. Climate and the Zurich Flood Resilience 
Alliance, it has fallen much more spectacularly short in delivering its 
own promises of climate finance aid to the developing world than any of 
the other nation in the Global North — producing a shortfall of more 
than $40 billion in 2020, when no other country missed its mark by even 
$5 billion.

This is all terrible. But it isn’t much changed by West Virginia v. 
E.P.A. either. U.S. emissions are not likely to rise. The powers the 
judgment restricts were never actually exercised under the Clean Power 
Plan. The Affordable Clean Energy Rule, devised by former President 
Donald Trump as a fossil-fuel-friendly alternative to the C.P.P., is not 
in effect either. And American emissions have fallen faster without a 
cap-and-trade program and without the C.P.P. than advocates of either 
suggested was possible under those programs.

That’s not to say that where things stood yesterday is an encouraging 
place to be, or that the decision is meaningless. It could well prove a 
significant setback in the years ahead, though presumably only under a 
more aggressive or more empowered Democratic administration than this one.

For the time being, it probably changes more about the way we might 
imagine possible climate futures than anything about the one we are 
actually building today through inaction. But when it’s all hands on 
deck, you don’t want one hand tied behind your back. Which is why, for 
those keeping a close eye on the ever shortening timelines for action, 
today probably feels considerably more restrictive still — a handcuffing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/01/opinion/environment/supreme-court-climate-change-west-virginia-epa.html

/[   PBS Classic from May of this year - part 3 video ] /
*The Power of Big Oil, Part Three: Delay (full documentary) | FRONTLINE*
437,582 views  May 3, 2022  Watch the final episode of “The Power of Big 
Oil,” a three-part FRONTLINE docuseries investigating what scientists, 
corporations and politicians have known about human-caused climate 
change for decades — and the missed opportunities to mitigate the problem.

This journalism is made possible by viewers like you. Support your local 
PBS station here: http://www.pbs.org/donate.

Throughout the first two episodes of “The Power of Big Oil,” FRONTLINE 
went inside the fossil fuel industry’s efforts in the 1980s, 1990s and 
2000s to stall action on climate change by cultivating denial and doubt.

The third and final episode of the series brings the story up to the 
present.

“Delay,” part three of “The Power of Big Oil,” investigates how, even as 
the warnings about climate change grew, the U.S. reemerged as one of the 
world's biggest oil and gas producers, and the fossil fuel industry 
worked to delay the transition to renewable energy sources — including 
by promoting natural gas as a cleaner alternative. But as the country 
was entering a gas boom, a former Exxon Mobil engineer tells FRONTLINE 
that the industry wasn’t monitoring for methane leaks that could 
turbo-charge the climate crisis.

As it brings the Big Oil series to a close, “Delay” unpacks the Obama, 
Trump and Biden administrations’ actions on climate change; explores 
what may happen next; and examines what’s at stake.

Part one, “Denial,” is now streaming: https://bit.ly/3xTxYhg
Part two, “Doubt,” is also streaming: https://bit.ly/37UjSSm

“The Power of Big Oil” is a FRONTLINE Production with Mongoose Pictures 
in association with BBC and Arte. The series producer is Dan Edge. The 
producer and director of episode 3 is Robin Barnwell. The editorial 
consultant is Russell Gold. The senior producers are James Jacoby and 
Eamonn Matthews. The executive producer for FRONTLINE is Raney 
Aronson-Rath.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8UOJqs5F9Q

/[ successful energy storage working for over 40 years - brief video 
explanation ]/
*Michigan's Energy Storage Solution: Already Online for 40 Years*
14 views  Jul 1, 2022  Experts explain the pumped storage power plant at 
Ludington Michigan.
100 year old technology perfectly meets the clean energy moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3dzT80g4zU

/[The news archive - looking back at dangerous disinformation ]/
/*July 2, 2006*/
July 2, 2006: Notorious climate denier Dick Lindzen whines, moans, 
kvetches and complains about "An Inconvenient Truth" in a piece for the 
Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com.

http://web.archive.org/web/20060705111127/http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008597 

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