[✔️] March 17, 2022 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[👀 Richard Pauli]

/*March 17, 2022*/

/[  now a new factor in decisions ]/
*Appellate court rules Biden can consider climate damage in policymaking*
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit stayed a Louisiana federal 
judge’s order blocking the federal government from calculating the cost 
of climate change
By Anna Phillips - March 15, 2022
An appeals court on Wednesday lifted a ban blocking the federal 
government from factoring damage from rising greenhouse gas emissions 
into its decisions, offering a temporary reprieve for President Biden’s 
plans to tackle climate change.

The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit stayed an 
order issued last month by a U.S. District Court judge in Louisiana that 
prevented agencies from considering the harm climate change causes, 
known as the “social cost of carbon.” This figure is used across the 
federal government in rulemaking, from issuing new drilling permits to 
assessing the growing potential for damage such as crop losses and flood 
risks.

The decision means that, at least until there’s a ruling on the case’s 
merits, the Biden administration can continue to consider the economic 
cost of climate change as it writes new rules, and strengthen existing 
ones, that could inch the country closer to Biden’s goal of cutting 
emissions in half by the end of the decade compared with 2005 levels. 
With sweeping climate legislation stalled in Congress, the 
administration is counting on these regulations to meet its emissions 
reduction targets...
- -
“Today’s decision by the 5th Circuit sent a strong message that the rule 
of law cannot be short-circuited to score political victories,” Hana 
Vizcarra, an attorney for the environmental law firm Earthjustice, said 
in an email. “It puts the government back on track to address and assess 
climate change.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/03/16/social-cost-of-carbon-ruling/



//[ Television news coverage ]/
/*UN: Ukraine Crisis is a Chance to Transition Away From Fossil Fuels*
“Fossil fuels make us all vulnerable…to these geopolitical crises and 
shocks,” says Selwin Hart, the Special Adviser to the U.N. 
Secretary-General focusing on climate. With the Russian invasion of 
Ukraine causing a stir in the energy market, it’s time to transition 
more rapidly into renewable energy, Hart says. He talked more about the 
world’s energy future and the U.N. IPCC report on climate change, which 
warns of worsening natural disasters caused by emissions.
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/lx/un-ukraine-crisis-is-a-chance-to-transition-away-from-fossil-fuels/3580163/

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/[ answers are coming soon.   ] /
*Why we still don’t yet know how bad climate migration will get*
The complicated ways climate change affects migration, explained.
By Umair Irfan  Mar 16, 2022,
Why we still don’t yet know how bad climate migration will get
The complicated ways climate change affects migration, explained.

Thousands of migrants who lost their homes and livelihoods due to the 
2017 El Nino Costero phenomenon five years ago now live in precarious 
camps in the desert in northern Peru. Ernesto Benavides/AFP via Getty Images
As sea levels rise, temperatures become unbearable, and disasters grow 
more severe, tens of millions of people may not be able to stay where 
they are. Beyond the human toll it will exact, this climate-driven 
migration is poised to disrupt economic and political stability, which 
could fuel conflict.

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 
the United Nations’ climate research unit, examines the consequences of 
rising average temperatures for people around the world. The 3,600-page 
report provides one of the sharpest and most comprehensive views of a 
warmer world, particularly what happens when people hit the limits of 
what they can adapt to and are forced to move. The report finds that 
most climate migration is poised to occur inside countries rather than 
across borders, and that some climate change effects could actually 
decrease migration in some areas. It also counters misconceptions about 
why people move.

Since the last major IPCC report in 2014, authors said they incorporated 
more social science into their conclusions in the latest installment, 
giving them far more confidence in how they think climate change will 
reshape where people live. “The science seems to be more convergent at 
this point in terms of the kinds of mobility patterns we’re talking 
about,” said Kanta Kumari Rigaud, lead environmental specialist at the 
World Bank whose work on migration was cited in the IPCC report.

Climate change-induced migration is already underway right now and is 
putting people at risk. Rising sea levels, drought, and extreme weather 
have forced people to move in areas like Pacific islands, sub-Saharan 
Africa, and South Asia. Wealthy countries are also seeing climate change 
migration, and it’s worsening existing inequalities. According to the 
IPCC report, “Through displacement and involuntary migration from 
extreme weather and climate events, climate change has generated and 
perpetuated vulnerability.”

Since 2008, an average of more than 20 million people per year have been 
displaced by extreme weather events, many of which were exacerbated by 
climate change, according to the IPCC. Even under the most optimistic 
scenarios for warming this century, these pressures are going to 
increase further.

But migration is a complicated phenomenon, and other factors like 
economic development and adaptation could mitigate some of the factors 
that make people relocate. Researchers acknowledge that it’s hard to 
anticipate just how many people will likely have to move in the coming 
decades and which countries will be most affected.

“Climate-related migration is expected to increase, although the drivers 
and outcomes are highly context specific and insufficient evidence 
exists to estimate numbers of climate-related migrants now and in the 
future,” according to the report.

Some scientists also caution that the ways we discuss climate migration 
can be misleading and lead to policies that worsen the harm for those 
worst affected by climate change. The causes and the impacts of 
migration deserve a far more nuanced discussion.

The more the planet warms, the more pressure people will face to move
Migration is the story of human civilization, and throughout history 
people have moved for a myriad of reasons. But what sets climate change 
apart as a driver of migration is that it forces people to move 
involuntarily and at an unprecedented pace and scale.

How much more migration will occur is partly a function of how much 
further the planet will warm. There are several ways that researchers 
have studied these potential shifts. Rigaud said that her work 
incorporated population growth projections mapped around the world and 
then applied projected changes to the climate. Her team examined the 
subsequent effects on variables like rainfall and crop productivity and 
then modeled how people would move in response in different parts of the 
world. By comparing these projections with and without the effects of 
climate change, Rigaud and her team were able to figure out how much 
migration increased or lessened due to warming.

The IPCC report highlights several projections for displacement and 
migration due to climate change. By one estimate, between 31 million and 
72 million people across sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin 
America would be displaced by 2050 due to water stress, sea level rise, 
and crop failure, even under an aggressive effort to cut global emissions.

The new report also analyzed migration forecasts in several regions and 
found that the effects weren’t consistent or distributed evenly around 
the world. “Africa could have the largest scale of climate-induced 
migration within countries,” Rigaud said. “As many as 85 million 
[migrants] could come from sub-Saharan Africa.”

Climate change made migration more likely in some places and trapped 
people in others. In Kenya, increased rainfall is linked to reduced 
rural-to-urban movement, whereas in Zambia, more precipitation is poised 
to drive more migration. In Ghana, researchers found that drought led to 
fewer residents saying they were planning to move.
But researchers noted that there are other factors to consider beyond 
climate change. Migration is also a function of the economy; wealthier 
parts of the world are better able to hold their ground in the face of 
rising heats and higher temperatures. “There are always socio-economic 
conditions and governance that are highly relevant to how violent 
conflict or migration occurs,” said Carol Farbotko, an adjunct research 
fellow at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia, in an email.

The IPCC report also notes that there are still some important gaps in 
our understanding of how climate change will influence migration: “More 
detailed local and regional models are needed, incorporating migrant 
destinations and immobility.”
*Myths and misconceptions are undermining efforts to deal with migration*
There’s a subtext to many public discussions around climate change and 
migration, that a warmer world will lead to hordes of people fleeing 
poorer countries for wealthier ones, threatening the safety and the 
economy of any place they go. Institutions like the US Defense 
Department describe climate-induced migration as a potential security 
threat. Such framing has fueled media panics and xenophobia.

But this narrative is inaccurate and misses crucial context, according 
to Farbotko. For one thing, the IPCC notes that the vast majority of 
migration, from climate change or from other factors, occurs within the 
borders of a country.
And while climate change can bring immense pressure to move, migration 
is often a last resort. People often do all that they can to stay where 
they are, according to Gabrielle Wong-Parodi, an assistant professor of 
earth system science at Stanford University. That makes it difficult to 
get people out of the way of likely threats like wildfires or coastal 
flooding.

“People say that they’re going to move, yet it’s unlikely they will move 
unless they are forcibly moved in response to some climate-related 
extreme, like their home gets destroyed,” said Wong-Parodi.

On the other hand, it means people are willing to try a lot of different 
strategies to deal with the effects of warming, even in precarious 
places like islands facing rising sea levels. In Fiji, for example, the 
government is already working to relocate coastal communities further 
inland. In Vanuatu, officials are integrating climate change and 
migration into all aspects of their decision-making, including sectors 
like housing and education.

“In both cases, the focus is on in-country solutions, not international 
border crossing,” Farbotko said.
That raises the thorny question of who should pay for such programs and 
how much countries that historically emitted the most greenhouse gases 
should contribute. International climate negotiations have been derailed 
several times because they failed to agree on how the countries that 
profited most from burning fossil fuels should compensate those facing 
the most severe effects of warming now.

Yet some heavy emitters are even seeing benefits from the effects of 
warming. Countries like Australia and New Zealand draw on labor from 
Pacific islands to help grow food. But they offer few options for 
permanent relocation for workers from countries like Tuvalu and 
Kiribati. Australia and New Zealand are also failing to meet their 
obligations to help these island countries adapt to climate change, 
according to Farbotko.

“This is a form of climate nationalism,” she said.

Some researchers also say that it’s worth rethinking how migration is 
always framed as a problem, as Giovanni Bettini, a senior lecturer at 
Lancaster University studying migration, wrote in The Conversation:

The idea we should “solve” climate migration is rooted in a view of 
mobility as pathological, as the result of a failure to develop, to 
adapt to climate change, or to be more resilient. But in reality, 
migration is an ordinary social, economic, and political process. It’s 
neither inherently good nor bad.

Such thinking points toward less fearmongering and more cooperation 
among countries. In some instances, migration might even be mutually 
beneficial.

Reshaping a society’s attitudes toward migrants is much easier said than 
done. But understanding the actual factors that force people to relocate 
might help policymakers make more humane decisions that reduce suffering 
rather than adding to it.
https://www.vox.com/2022/3/16/22960468/ipcc-climate-change-migration-migrant-refugee



/[ Yes, yes it is.   And increasingly so.  ]/
*Is battling back-to-back disasters distracting us from fighting the 
climate crisis?*
Jeff Sparrow
Environmentalists once saw abstraction as the biggest obstacle to 
climate action. How, they wondered, could one focus the public on the 
distant future?

Today, we confront the opposite problem, with the very immediacy of the 
crisis generating a strange paralysis.

When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that global 
heating made extreme flooding more common, its new report at the end of 
February spurred relatively little discussion – in part because of the 
water covering swathes of Queensland and New South Wales.

As tinnies plucked desperate residents from the deluge, who could give 
due weight to the warning from Prof Brendan Mackey, one of the IPPC 
authors, that the science clearly projected “an increase of heavy 
rainfall events?”
The urgency of rescuing flood victims muffled the impact of a document 
that the UN secretary general, António Guterres, described as “an atlas 
of human suffering”. It also diverted attention from a previous 
manifestation of that suffering: the 2019/2020 Black Summer fires that 
burned out 84m acres of land and killed at least 33 people.

That crisis remains far from resolved, with more than half of the 
$2.74bn pledged by the Morrison government to bushfire recovery still 
unallocated.

Yet, as the scale of recent flood damage becomes more apparent, the 
Black Summer survivors might legitimately wonder as to whether they’ll 
be remembered or not.

On Twitter, the chief executive of Greenpeace, David Ritter, has 
compiled a helpful list of scientific warnings connecting fossil fuels, 
atmospheric warmth and rainfall.

In 2007, for instance, the Garnaut climate change review predicted 
“longer dry spells broken by heavier rainfall events”; in 2015, 
scientists found that global warming increased the frequency of La Niña 
events; in 2016, the Department of Energy and the Environment published 
a State of the Climate report which warned of more intense floods.

A comparable dossier might be assembled about bushfires, beginning with 
the 2003 report that explained how “climate change throughout the 
present century is predicted to lead to increased temperatures and, with 
them, a heightened risk of unplanned fire.”

In 2007, the IPCC warned that “heatwaves and fires are virtually certain 
to increase in intensity and frequency”; in 2008, the National Inquiry 
on Bushfire Mitigation and Management explained that “fires’ frequency, 
intensity, and size are expected to increase under climate change”.

But despite all of that, in 2017, Scott Morrison chose to borrow a 
“prop” from his friends at the Minerals Council of Australia to wave in 
the House of Representatives.

“This is coal,” he laughed. “Don’t be afraid, don’t be scared. It won’t 
hurt you!”

A few years later, the same Scott Morrison stood in a ruined Lismore and 
mused: “Australia is getting hard to live in because of these disasters.”

With the right climate policy we might have transitioned away from 
fossil fuels under conditions of relative stability. Instead, we’ve 
allowed the symptoms of ecological breakdown to proliferate so greatly 
as to render addressing underlying causes increasingly difficult.

“I’ve never seen so many natural disasters …” said the Queensland 
premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk. “[M]ore cyclones, more floods, a couple 
of year ago … we had the catastrophic fire event in central Queensland.”

But even as Palaszczuk acknowledged the role of the climate crisis in 
the recent catastrophes, she doubled down on her state’s output of 
fossil fuels.

“Queensland is lucky,” she said. “We have coal, we have gas, and we have 
huge renewable investment, which is going to really rapidly increase 
over the next 10 years.”

One presumes that, with a multibillion-dollar flood bill looming and 
many of its citizens homeless, the state doesn’t want to forgo the 
mining revenue on which it has traditionally relied.

Advertisement
What an illustration of the mess in which we find ourselves – reliant on 
coal to pay for the damage coal brings!

In a different context, the sociologist C Wright Mills outlined what he 
called “crackpot realism”, a political consensus perfectly reasonable on 
its own terms but utterly deranged from the perspective of the species.

Most scientists attribute the proliferation of pandemics to 
environmental degradation: deforestation and uncontrolled urbanisation 
increase the likelihood of pathogens crossing over from animals to humans.

So, logically, Covid-19 should have spurred a ceasefire in the war on 
nature. But that’s not what happened. Carbon emissions have now 
rebounded to their highest level in human history, as, in response to 
the Covid downturn, politicians relied on coal to reboot their economies.

The same “crackpot realism” manifests in relation to Ukraine.

As the British academic Helen Thompson notes, it’s been obvious for 
decades that “addressing climate change would be constrained by 
geopolitics, and that choices about which new energy sources to develop 
would have geopolitical consequences.”

The west’s refusal to quit fossil fuels thus facilitated Russia’s 
imperial ambitions. Paradoxically, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has now 
emboldened those most committed to further pollution.

The Nationals’ Matt Canavan, for instance, say that the war means 
Australians should “stop trying to save the planet by building a green 
economy, and instead defend Australia by rebuilding our industrial base.”
- -
If we once hoped that real-world manifestations of the climate emergency 
would, in and of themselves, force world leaders to change, we should 
quit kidding ourselves. It’s now clear the reverse holds true: that each 
fresh environmental calamity sends the wealthy and the powerful, like 
dogs returning to their vomit, to the cheap profits of the carbon economy.

As disaster chases disaster, we need to hold our leaders’ feet to the 
flames – and, for that matter, to the water. That means drawing the 
links between global heating and the proliferation of “one-in-1000-year” 
occurrences and insisting on climate action, even (or perhaps 
especially) amid economic and political uncertainty.

Yes, the “crackpot realists” of the political class will scoff. They’ll 
say we’re naive and dismiss us as utopians.

Mills had a response to such people. “[P]recisely what they call 
utopian,” he said, “is now the condition of human survival”.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/15/is-battling-back-to-back-disasters-distracting-us-from-fighting-the-climate-crisis



[Boston jumps instantly from the 18th century to the 20th century]
*Boston plans to replace historic gas lamps with LEDs in effort to 
reduce carbon emissions*
By David Abel Globe Staff, March 15, 2022

Nearly four centuries old, Boston likes to flaunt its Colonial charms.

Among the legacies of the city’s venerable age, like tricorn hats and 
narrow cobblestone streets, are 2,800 gas street lights that flicker day 
and night through ornate lamps from the Back Bay to Charlestown.

But their nostalgic appeal has faded in a time when burning fossil fuels 
is causing the planet to warm at a dangerous rate, and Mayor Michelle Wu 
is seeking to eliminate as much of the city’s carbon emissions as soon 
as possible.

In a first step toward replacing the gas lamps, city officials last week 
installed Boston’s first faux version, which simulates a flame with 
highly energy-efficient LED lights...
- -
The new lamp, designed to look nearly identical to the existing street 
lights, was installed in Bay Village, a historic enclave near downtown, 
where several gas lamps had to be temporarily removed for a construction 
project.

So far, the faux gas lamp has received mixed reviews.

“At this point, we’re keeping an open mind,” said Tom Perkins, president 
of the Bay Village Neighborhood Association, whose group planned to meet 
Monday night with neighbors and members of the neighborhood’s historic 
district commission to hear any concerns. “We’re looking closely at the 
prototype.”

He wasn’t happy with the reddish quality of the LEDs, and it seems to 
shine a bit too brightly, compared with the muted white light of a gas 
flame. And although Perkins described the lamps as “a bit squat,” he was 
glad they didn’t look turnpike lights.
- -
Over the weekend, Sue Prindle, chair of the architecture committee 
Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay, went to Bay Village to inspect 
the faux gas lamp.

“I think the color is a little off and the intensity is a little high, 
but it’s very close to what we have now,” she said.

Prindle noted that most of the city’s gas lamps are modern replicas of 
the originals, many of them installed in the 1960s.

“I favor this,” she said. “I think there’s certainly a reason to go 
electric, given the environmental concerns.”

Her colleague, Elliott Laffer, chair of the Neighborhood Association of 
the Back Bay, called the city’s plan “basically a good idea.”

“Having lights that burn natural gas 24 hours a day doesn’t seem like 
the kind of thing the city should have in a world in which the climate 
is changing,” he said.

Given that faux gas lamps look very much like the existing lamps, he 
said: “Why would anyone oppose this, unless they had a grand attachment 
to gas?”

City officials also noted that there would be significant savings by 
using LEDs.

The electric bill for the LED street lamps, they estimate, would be 
about one-tenth the cost of operating gas lamps. Moreover, the old 
lights require maintenance on average every two years, while LED lights 
can go as long as 10 years without requiring service, they said.

Still, they would be about five times more expensive to install than the 
typical street light, costing about $5,000 each for the whole lamp. And 
some neighborhood officials said they had doubts about the city’s cost 
estimates for the new lights.

“In reimagining our city’s historic streetlights, we have an opportunity 
to take an important step toward becoming a green new city, while 
preserving the historical integrity that shapes Boston’s character,” she 
said.

Franklin-Hodge, her chief of streets, noted that 85 percent of all city 
street lights now use LEDs. He said that it is time for the city to 
start converting the gas lamps as well, but that it is just at the 
beginning of the process and plans far more conversations with 
neighborhood groups and historic commissions.

“We are confident that these discussions will lead us toward a path that 
allows us to preserve the historic character of our gas-lit 
neighborhoods, while addressing the urgent need to reduce our carbon 
footprint,” he said. “We can and must do both.”
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/03/15/science/boston-plans-replace-historic-gas-lamps-with-leds-effort-reduce-carbon-emissions/?et_rid=1469871530&s_campaign=todaysheadlines:newsletter



/[ NASA knows about planets ] /
*Too Hot to Handle: How Climate Change May Make Some Places Too Hot to Live*
By Alan Buis,
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
In Brief:
As Earth’s climate warms, incidences of extreme heat and humidity are 
rising, with significant consequences for human health. Climate 
scientists are tracking a key measure of heat stress that can warn us of 
harmful conditions.

*How hot is too hot?*

As Earth’s climate warms, heat waves are becoming more frequent and 
severe. The health dangers of extreme heat have scientists and medical 
experts increasingly concerned. And for good reason: heat stress is a 
leading cause of weather-related deaths in the United States each year. 
A recent example is the record-breaking heat wave that hit the U.S. 
Pacific Northwest last summer, killing hundreds...

    https://climate.nasa.gov/internal_resources/2525
    Heat is the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the United
    States over the 30-year period from 1991 to 2020. Credit: NOAA

Extreme levels of heat stress have more than doubled over the past 40 
years. That trend is expected to continue, says Colin Raymond of NASA’s 
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Raymond is lead author 
of a 2020 study on extreme heat and humidity, published in Science Advances.
Weather forecasters use different tools to assess the potential for heat 
stress. Indeed, measurements of heat stress figure prominently in your 
daily weather report. In addition to forecasts of temperature and 
relative humidity, you’ll see something called the heat index, or 
apparent temperature. The heat index is a measure of what the air 
temperature feels like to our bodies when relative humidity is factored 
in. Calculated for shady areas, the heat index reflects how 
uncomfortable we feel when it’s hot and humid.
Because the heat index requires calibration, it’s a somewhat subjective 
measurement. In fact, different countries use different versions of it. 
For this reason, scientists conducting global climate studies are 
looking increasingly at another measure of heat stress called wet-bulb 
temperature.

Wet-bulb temperature is the lowest temperature to which an object can 
cool down when moisture evaporates from it. The lower the wet-bulb 
temperature, the easier it is for us to cool down. It measures how well 
our bodies cool down by sweating when it’s hot and humid, and tells us 
if conditions may be harmful to our health, or even deadly.
Both wet-bulb temperature and heat index are calculated using data on 
air temperature and humidity -- the two most important factors that 
affect heat stress. However, wet-bulb temperature is measured using a 
different technique.

Originally, wet-bulb temperature was measured by wrapping a wet cloth 
around the bulb of a thermometer and exposing it to air. As water 
evaporated from the cloth, the thermometer recorded the drop in 
temperature. The higher the relative humidity, the less moisture 
evaporated before the bulb and the surrounding air are the same 
temperature. Today, wet-bulb temperature is typically calculated using 
measurements from electronic instruments at weather stations...
Raymond says the highest wet-bulb temperature that humans can survive 
when exposed to the elements for at least six hours is about 95 degrees 
Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius).

Wet-bulb temperatures are on the rise around the world, and Earth’s 
climate has begun to exceed this limit.

Graph of global wet-bulb temperature readings exceeding 27 degrees 
Celsius (80.5 degrees Fahrenheit)
Trend in the global count of recorded instances of wet-bulb temperature 
readings exceeding 27 degrees Celsius (80.5 degrees Fahrenheit), from 
two sources: weather stations (right axis, black line) and a gridded 
‘reanalysis’ product (left axis, gray line). The dashed lines are 
regressions showing the trend for each time series. Credit: Raymond et 
al. 2020, Science Advances
Since 2005, wet-bulb temperature values above 95 degrees Fahrenheit have 
occurred for short periods of time on nine separate occasions in a few 
subtropical places like Pakistan and the Persian Gulf. They also appear 
to be becoming more frequent. In addition, incidences of slightly lower 
wet-bulb temperature values in the 90 to 95-degree Fahrenheit (32 to 
35-degree Celsius) range have more than tripled over the 40 years 
studied by Raymond’s team.
The results have important implications. The hotter it is, the more 
strain our bodies feel, and the more we need to sweat to cool down. But 
humid air has less capacity to hold additional moisture, so water 
evaporates more slowly in humid conditions.

Think about when you step out of a hot shower. Water evaporates off your 
body and you feel cooler. But if it’s hot or humid (or both) in the 
room, it’s harder to feel cool. This feeling relates directly to what 
the wet-bulb temperature is measuring.

As long as the wet-bulb temperature is well below your skin temperature, 
your body can release heat to your surroundings through radiation and 
sweating. But as the wet-bulb temperature approaches your core 
temperature, you lose the ability to cool down. This triggers changes in 
your body. You dehydrate. Your organs become stressed, especially your 
heart. Blood rushes to your skin to try to release heat, starving your 
internal organs. The results can be deadly.

“Once the wet-bulb temperature exceeds 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees 
Fahrenheit), no amount of sweating or other adaptive behavior is enough 
to lower your body to a safe operating temperature,” Raymond said. “Most 
of the time it’s not a problem, because the wet-bulb temperature is 
usually 5-to-10 degrees Celsius below body temperature, even in hot, 
humid places.”
- -
*Future Hot Spots*
Raymond says it’s hard to say when we might see global wet-bulb 
temperatures regularly topping 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees 
Celsius). That’s because it’s a complex process that’s happening 
gradually and unfolding differently in different places. But climate 
models tell us certain regions are likely to exceed those temperatures 
in the next 30-to-50 years. The most vulnerable areas include South 
Asia, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea by around 2050; and Eastern 
China, parts of Southeast Asia, and Brazil by 2070.
The United States isn’t immune, however. Within 50 years, Midwestern 
states like Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa will likely hit the critical 
wet-bulb temperature limit.
https://climate.nasa.gov/ask-nasa-climate/3151/too-hot-to-handle-how-climate-change-may-make-some-places-too-hot-to-live/


/[  from the research papers ] /
*Time is running out to counteract global climate change*
by IIASA  -- MARCH 11, 2022
"The atmosphere, land, and ocean carbon system is much more fragile than 
is widely believed. Based on the stress–strain insights from our study, 
we expect that the atmosphere, land, and ocean carbon system could be 
forced outside its natural regime well before 2050 if the current trend 
in emissions is not reversed immediately and sustainably. These insights 
are independent from any external target values such as temperature 
targets justified by means of global change research, and suggest that 
the time window for counter measures, including mitigation and 
adaptation, is much shorter than we think," says study lead author 
Matthias Jonas, a senior researcher in the IIASA Exploratory Modeling of 
Human-Natural Systems Research Group.
https://phys.org/news/2022-03-counteract-global-climate.html
More information: Matthias Jonas et al, Quantifying memory and 
persistence in the atmosphere–land and ocean carbon system, Earth System 
Dynamics (2022). DOI: 10.5194/esd-13-439-2022



/[ Down Under is feeling suppressed - from the Carbon Brief Daily ] /
*Losing this court case feels like we’ve lost our chance for a safe future*
Anjali Sharma, The Sydney Morning Herald
The Sydney Morning Herald has a piece by Anjali Sharma, a student and 
climate activist who was one of the eight teenagers who, alongside an 
87-year-old nun, convinced an Australian court that the government had a 
legal duty to children when assessing fossil fuel projects. Their case 
was overturned yesterday, after the Australian government won an appeal 
against the ruling that it has a duty of care to protect children from 
harm caused by climate change. “In this case, it felt like winning was 
everything. We lost, and I’m angry. I’m angry, and so devastated,” 
writes Sharma. “Today’s ruling does not change the minister’s moral 
obligation to protect young people from climate change. It does not 
change the science. It does not put out the fires or drain the 
floodwaters.” She concludes: “What I will say with absolute certainty, 
however, is that the world is watching the Australian government’s 
abhorrent failure to act on climate change. While other countries set 
strict emissions reductions targets and shift their focus to renewable 
energy, the Australian government approves more fossil fuel projects. 
Something has to change”. A Guardian piece by writer and lawyer Kieran 
Pender also considers the outcome of the case.
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/losing-this-court-case-feels-like-we-ve-lost-our-chance-for-a-safe-future-20220315-p5a4sc.html



/[The news archive - looking back at water problems ]/
*March 17, 2014*
The New York Times reports:
"Across the parched American West, the long drought has set off a series 
of fierce legal and political battles over who controls an increasingly 
dear treasure — water."

    *West’s Drought and Growth Intensify Conflict Over Water Rights*
    By Michael Wines
    March 16, 2014
    MUMFORD, Tex. — Across the parched American West, the long drought
    has set off a series of fierce legal and political battles over who
    controls an increasingly dear treasure — water.

    Just outside this minuscule farm town, Frank DeStefano was feeding a
    500-acre cotton crop with water from the Brazos River 16 months ago
    when state regulators told him and hundreds of others on the river
    to shut down their pumps. A sprawling petrochemical complex at the
    junction of the Brazos and the Gulf of Mexico held senior rights to
    the river’s water — and with the Brazos shriveled, it had run short.

    State regulators ordered Mr. DeStefano and others with lesser rights
    to make up the deficit. But they gave cities and power plants along
    the Brazos a pass, concluding that public health and safety overrode
    the farmers’ own water rights.
    Now Mr. DeStefano and other farmers are in court, arguing that the
    state is wrong — and so far, they are winning.
    “I understand cities need water, people need water, but it kind of
    gets to me how agriculture is pushed to the back of the line,” he
    said. “We’re on pins and needles wondering when the next call is
    going to be made. It’s hard enough to make a living without things
    like this.”

    Residents of the arid West have always scrapped over water. But
    years of persistent drought are now intensifying those struggles,
    and the explosive growth — and thirst — of Western cities and
    suburbs is raising their stakes to an entirely new level.

    In southern Texas, along the Gulf coast southwest of Houston, the
    state has cut off deliveries of river water to rice farmers for
    three years to sustain reservoirs that supply booming Austin, about
    100 miles upstream. In Nevada, a coalition ranging from
    environmentalists to the Utah League of Women Voters filed federal
    lawsuits last month seeking to block a pipeline that would supply
    Las Vegas with groundwater from an aquifer straddling the
    Nevada-Utah border.

    In Colorado, officials in the largely rural west slope of the Rocky
    Mountains are imposing stiff restrictions on requests to ship water
    across the mountains to Denver and the rest of the state’s populous
    eastern half. Fearing for their existence, Colorado farm towns on
    the Arkansas River have mobilized to block sales of local water
    rights to Denver’s fast-growing suburbs.
    In Arizona, activists and the federal government are fighting plans
    to tap groundwater used by a vast housing development — a move that
    would reduce the water level of a protected river. Kansas accuses
    Colorado and Nebraska of allowing their farmers to divert Kansas’
    share of the Republican River, which flows through all three states.
    A similar dispute between New Mexico and Texas is before the United
    States Supreme Court.

    California, in the midst of a major drought, so far has witnessed
    but a few local skirmishes. In January, environmentalists and sport
    fishermen sued to halt the drilling of hundreds of new groundwater
    wells sought by Central Valley farmers, saying more pumping would
    lower stream levels.

    That may not last long, said Stuart Somach, a Sacramento
    water-rights lawyer. California farmers have long grumbled about
    big-city designs on their water; Northern California has long
    grumbled about being the spigot that supplies most of the water to
    the dry south.

    “We’re very close to the time that people are going to start staking
    out rights. We’re right at the cusp,” Mr. Somach said. “If this
    drought persists, depending on how state and federal agencies react,
    you’re going to get some real conflicts going.”
    Actually, the laws that govern most of the West’s water seem
    tailor-made for fighting.

    In many places, the rules for owning or using groundwater are still
    in flux: In Texas, landowners own the groundwater beneath their
    property, but a neighbor pumping groundwater from the same aquifer
    can siphon it away without penalty. The Arizona court battle over a
    proposed housing development hinges on the still-murky question of
    whether the state can allow the builder to pump groundwater that
    sustains a river that is under federal control.
    In contrast, the prevailing law on rivers and streams is all too
    clear: The earlier someone stakes a claim on a stretch of water, the
    more bulletproof that owner’s right to it.

    “If you’ve got the oldest claim on that river, you get to use that
    water regardless of what you’re using it for — agriculture,
    industry, whatever,” said Gabriel Eckstein, a professor at Texas A &
    M University School of Law and a lawyer with Sullivan and Worcester.
    “That’s regardless of whether you’re doing it efficiently,
    regardless of whether it’s the highest use.”

    In the rural West of days past, when even arid climes held enough
    water for everyone, that principle worked well. In the booming West
    of today, it is increasingly a recipe for conflict.
    The Lower Colorado River Authority decided last month to cut off
    water deliveries to rice farmers after concluding that two
    reservoirs supplying Austin and other upstream towns were
    dangerously low — at about 38 percent of capacity. The farmers had
    no recourse, because they had no water rights: They had sold them to
    the authority decades ago.

    The cutoff nevertheless has come to underscore the tinderbox
    relationship between the state’s rural past and its urban future. At
    a packed hearing before an administrative law judge last month,
    farmers and others downstream complained that they were surrendering
    their water while Austin residents continued to wash their cars,
    groom golf courses and water their lawns, albeit only once a week
    under water-saving restrictions.

    Urbanites argue that drinking-water reservoirs were not intended to
    irrigate farms, a point the farmers contest, and that recreational
    businesses along the reservoirs are going bankrupt. A town on one of
    the reservoirs, Lake Travis, has to truck in water to keep taps
    flowing, they say.
    “The tensions exist in every river basin in the state,” Jason Hill,
    a water-rights lawyer now representing the Texas city of San Angelo
    in another rights dispute, said. “You don’t really know the value of
    something until you run out of it and know you want it again. And
    water has historically been an underappreciated resource.
    Across Texas, as in Austin, rural interests clearly are waging a
    rear-guard battle. The Texas Water Development Board, the state’s
    planning agency, figures that cities’ demand for water will rise
    nearly 75 percent by 2060, while the use of water for irrigation
    will decline by 17 percent. By then, cities — not farmers — will be
    the dominant consumers of water.

    But the farmers are not giving up without a fight.

    In 2011, the Texas Legislature gave a nod to that shifting priority,
    authorizing the state’s Commission on Environmental Quality to
    suspend water rights in emergencies like droughts. While the
    commission still had to allot water to rights holders in order of
    seniority, the Legislature said, it also could consider — as much as
    was practical — how that water was being used before ordering a
    rights holder’s pumps shut off.

    A year later, when drought left the Dow Chemical Company’s Freeport
    petrochemical plant short of Brazos River water, the company asked
    the commission to honor its 83-year-old water rights and to order
    more recent users to make up its shortage.

    And the commission did — but only after deciding that 66 Texas towns
    and electric utilities should be exempted from a cutoff for health
    and safety reasons, even though hundreds of farmers and others who
    lost their water held more senior rights. Indeed, court documents
    state, the exempted towns and utilities held rights to 96 percent of
    the water affected by Dow’s claim. The remaining 4 percent, mostly
    farmers like Mr. De Stefano, lost all right to irrigate their crops
    until the suspension ended several weeks later.

    In the ensuing lawsuit, Mr. DeStefano and others argued that the
    commission could not pick winners and losers when enforcing water
    rights enshrined in law. “State law says that first in time, first
    in right. That means what it says,” said Joshua Katz, an Austin
    lawyer representing the farmers’ interest. Prudent cities, he said,
    do what prudent farmers do to brace for drought: They buy more
    senior water rights.
    A trial court sided last year with the farmers, and the case is on
    appeal. But should the region’s drought not let up, people here say,
    further lawsuits in Texas and across the West are all but inevitable.

    “It truly is a good time to be a water attorney in Texas,” said Mr.
    Hill, the lawyer in San Angelo dispute. “There’s work here as far as
    the eye can see.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/17/us/wests-drought-and-growth-intensify-conflict-over-water-rights.html


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