[✔️] May 20, 2022 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*May 20, 2022*/

/[ a ratchet situation ]
/*Western Fire Weather Days Increasing*
MAY 18, 2022
New Climate Central analysis shows more frequent fire weather conditions 
across much of the western U.S. since 1973. Fire weather days have 
increased in all four seasons—especially spring and summer.
KEY CONCEPTS

    - - Wildfire seasons are shaped by many forces, and climate change
    is contributing to recent increases in wildfire intensity,
    frequency, and season length in the western U.S.

    - - Heat, dryness, and wind—the three components of fire weather—are
    occurring more frequently across the western U.S. since 1973,
    according to new Climate Central analysis.

    - - Some areas are seeing more fire weather during seasons when
    wildfires were previously rare.

      -- New Mexico is among the states seeing the largest increases in
    risks during the spring.

    -- Large wildfires can kill people and destroy property. Utilities
    may shut off power during fire weather to prevent equipment-related
    ignitions. And smoke can affect people living thousands  of miles
    away, including on the East Coast.

https://medialibrary.climatecentral.org/resources/western-fire-weather-days-increasing-1/
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/[ heat trends to an emotional boiling point ]/
*Climate crisis is reaching a boiling point*/
/The Stockholm Environment Institute issued an urgent warning that we 
are near the point of no return
By JAKE JOHNSON
PUBLISHED MAY 19, 2022/...
/- -
"Looking at the scientific evidence, we live amid entwined 
crises—planetary and human," the report reads. "The evidence shows just 
how much our human wellbeing relies on the planetary systems that we are 
changing. The natural systems that support life on Earth have been 
breached, and the human systems remain plagued by inequalities."/...
/https://www.salon.com/2022/05/19/climate-is-reaching-a-boiling-point_partner//
/

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/[ slick, attractive report by the Washington Post updates a chronic 
situation ]/
*THE COLORADO RIVER IS IN CRISIS, AND IT’S GETTING WORSE EVERY DAY*
By Karin Brulliard
Photos by Matt McClain
Videos by Erin Patrick O'Connor
May 14, 2022/../

It is a powerhouse: a 1,450-mile waterway that stretches from the Rocky 
Mountains to the Sea of Cortez, serving 40 million people in seven U.S. 
states, 30 federally recognized tribes and Mexico. It hydrates 5 million 
acres of agricultural land and provides critical habitat for rare fish, 
birds and plants./../
/- -/
In an emergency move this month, the federal government held back water 
from Lake Powell, the nation’s second-largest reservoir, where the water 
is at a historic low. Days before, Las Vegas turned on a low-level 
pumping station that will deliver water from fast-drying Lake Mead, the 
largest U.S. reservoir, even if the Hoover Dam fails.../
/- -
“It feels to me like the future is accelerating really quickly now,” 
said Andy Mueller, general manager of the Colorado River District, which 
spans 15 Western Colorado counties. “We’ve been talking to our water 
users about the impacts of climate change and decreasing supply of water 
on the river for probably eight or nine years now. It’s really kind of 
hitting home.”...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2022/colorado-river-crisis/

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/[  this ironic question should not be ignored ] /
*The air conditioning paradox*
How do we cool people without heating up the planet?
By Umair Irfan  - - May 18, 2022
But staying cool amid the heat poses a paradox: The tactics for cooling 
can end up worsening the very problem they’re trying to solve if they 
draw on fossil fuels, or leak refrigerants that are potent heat-trapping 
gases. And the people who stand to experience the most extreme heat are 
often those least able to cool off...
Solving this conundrum requires untangling issues of equity and justice, 
as well as developing better tools for cooling beyond just ACs. It also 
requires rethinking the role of cooling in society. It is not a luxury, 
but a necessity for living in the world that we’ve created for ourselves.

*Heat is dangerous and costly, even before it reaches extremes*
Ambient temperatures are so foundational to our well-being that it’s 
easy to overlook their importance and the threat they pose. Extreme heat 
has been the deadliest weather phenomenon in the United States over the 
past 30 years, according to the National Weather Service...
That’s because heat has so many ways of hurting people. High 
temperatures make it harder for humans to shed excess heat. When air 
reaches temperatures higher than body temperatures, more heat flows into 
the human body than flows out. That can cause hyperthermia, heat stroke, 
and death. Some medications can become less effective with heat, while 
others can make people more susceptible to high temperatures...
- -
Another method is to manufacture more air conditioners that don’t use 
HFCs or other heat-trapping gases. Many countries, including the US, are 
phasing out HFCs. The US Senate will soon vote to ratify the Kigali 
Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, an international treaty that commits 
to cutting HFCs 85 percent by 2050.

At the same time, there is going to be a massive market for sustainable 
cooling technologies. “There are billions of people that aspire to be 
wealthy, and as your income starts going up, you’re going to want to 
have access to cooling,” Kyte said.

The electricity that powers air conditioners needs to come from sources 
that don’t emit greenhouse gases, so dialing down coal, oil, and natural 
gas power on the grid and ramping up wind, solar, and nuclear energy is 
crucial...
- -
It’s also a law of nature that you can’t cool a space without heating up 
another. In cities, the heat from running ACs at night can raise ambient 
temperatures by 1°C, or 1.8°F.

Air conditioners pose another direct problem for the climate. Many of 
them use refrigerants that are also powerful heat-trapping gases. 
Chemicals like hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) can be upward of 12,000 times 
more potent at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. 
Small coolant leaks multiplied by billions of AC units could be 
devastating for the climate...
- -
During warmer weather, pollutants like ozone form faster, which can lead 
to breathing problems. In addition, the stress from heat is cumulative. 
High temperatures at night are particularly worrying because it means 
people have little relief from the heat during the day. Because of 
climate change, nights are actually warming faster than daylight hours.

And when extreme heat combines with humidity, the weather can turn 
lethal. To measure the risk from these conditions, scientists track the 
wet-bulb temperature, the temperature and humidity conditions where 
water will not evaporate. Higher wet-bulb temperatures mean it’s harder 
for a person to cool off by sweating. A healthy person can withstand a 
wet-bulb temperature of 35°C, or 95°F, for six hours. Older adults, 
young children, and people with underlying health conditions start to 
suffer at much lower thresholds.

But high temperatures can cause harm well before they reach the tip of 
the thermometer. For people who work on farms, on construction sites, in 
kitchens, or in factories, hotter temperatures lead to more injuries. 
Avoiding these risks has costs, too, as workers weigh lost wages against 
the potential for harm at work. Even in cooler workplaces like offices, 
studies have found that high temperatures reduce productivity and 
performance.

“The knock-on effects of heat are extraordinary,” said Rachel Kyte, dean 
of the Fletcher School at Tufts University, who coauthored a 2018 report 
titled “Chilling Prospects: Providing Sustainable Cooling for All.”

That adds up to a huge economic toll. By one estimate, heat costs the US 
economy $100 billion per year, a number poised to rise to $200 billion 
by 2030 and $500 billion by 2050 if nothing is done to mitigate climate 
change or the resulting harm...
- -
Cooling may also require a more collective approach. Rather than 
installing ACs on every individual home, some areas can use district 
cooling systems. And in emergencies, people will need public cooling 
centers.

Regulators need to step in, too. The US currently doesn’t have a 
national workplace standard for heat exposure, but the Occupational 
Safety and Health Administration is now in the process of developing a 
rule to protect workers from high temperatures. Governments also need to 
enforce tougher standards for energy efficiency in cooling.

The fixes for extreme heat don’t stop at the border. The countries that 
have historically burned the most fossil fuels now have the wealth to 
cope with rising temperatures, while those who contributed least to the 
problem are facing the most dangerous heat with the fewest resources. 
Ergo, rich countries are obligated to help places facing dangerous heat 
deploy cooling, and to help pay for it.

“I think that the economic case and the global security case for 
investing in these countries’ ability to deploy hyper-efficient, 
nonpolluting technologies is pretty damn clear,” Kyte said. “We’re all 
living on the same planet.”

So while billions of people are facing more devastating and extreme 
heat, protecting them and avoiding as much warming as possible benefits 
everyone on Earth. Air conditioning is now an unfortunate necessity, but 
it’s also an opportunity to address some of the underlying injustices of 
climate change.
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/23067049/heat-wave-air-conditioning-cooling-india-climate-change



/[ Opinion - heaps of criticism for inaction   ]/
*Beyond Magical Thinking: Time to Get Real on Climate Change*
Despite decades of studies and climate summits, greenhouse gas emissions 
continue to soar. Energy scientist Vaclav Smil says it’s time to stop 
ricocheting between apocalyptic forecasts and rosy models of rapid CO2 
cuts and focus on the difficult task of remaking our energy system.
BY VACLAV SMIL  -- MAY 19, 2022
- -
We are increasingly subjected to opposing propensities to embrace 
catastrophism (those who say there are just years left before the final 
curtain descends on modern civilization) and techno-optimism (those who 
predict that the powers of invention will open unlimited horizons beyond 
the confines of the Earth, turning all terrestrial challenges into 
inconsequential histories). I have little use for either of these 
positions. I do not see any already predetermined outcomes, but rather a 
complicated trajectory contingent on our — far from foreclosed— choices.

Catastrophists have always had a hard time imagining that human 
ingenuity can meet future food, energy, and material needs — but during 
the past three generations we have done so despite a tripling of the 
global population since 1950. And techno-optimists, who promise endless, 
near-miraculous solutions, must reckon with a similarly poor record. One 
of the best-known failures has been the belief in the all-encompassing 
power of nuclear fission as the solution to our energy needs.

In the latest burst of intensified catastrophism, some journalists and 
activists write about climate apocalypse now, issuing final warnings: In 
the future, areas best suited for human habitation will shrink, large 
areas of the Earth are to become uninhabitable soon, climate migration 
will reshape America and the world, average global income will decline 
substantially. Some prophecies claim that we might only have about a 
decade left to avert a global catastrophe.
I am convinced that we could do without this continuing flood of 
never-less-than-worrisome and too-often-quite-frightening predictions. 
How helpful is it to be told every day that the world is coming to an 
end in 2050 or even 2030? And if these claims are true, why should we 
even worry about global warming?

On the other side, why is it that some scientists keep on charting such 
arbitrarily bending and plunging curves leading to near-instant 
decarbonization? And why are others promising the early arrival of 
technical super-fixes that will support high standards of living for all 
humanity? There are no limits to assembling such models, leaving 
prognosticators to posit 100 percent inexpensive thermonuclear 
electricity or cold fusion by 2050. Only the imagination limits these 
assumptions: they range from fairly plausible to patently delusionary.

Such predictably repetitive prophecies (however well-meant and however 
passionately presented) do not offer any practical advice about the 
deployment of the best possible technical solutions, about the most 
effective ways of legally binding global cooperation, or about tackling 
the difficult challenge of convincing populations of the need for 
significant expenditures whose benefits will not be seen for decades to 
come.
- -
And in a civilization where production of essential commodities now 
serves nearly 8 billion people, any departure from established practices 
also runs into the constraints of scale. Even though the supply of new 
renewables (wind, solar, new biofuels) rose impressively — about 
fiftyfold during the first 20 years of the 21st century — the world’s 
dependence on fossil carbon declined only marginally, from 87 percent to 
85 percent of the total supply.

Moreover, any effective commitments will be expensive and will have to 
last for at least two generations in order to bring the desired outcome 
(of much reduced, if not totally eliminated, greenhouse gas emissions). 
And even drastic reductions going well beyond anything that could be 
realistically envisaged will not show any convincing benefits for 
decades. This raises the extraordinarily difficult problem of 
intergenerational justice — that is, our never- failing propensity to 
discount the future.
We value now more than later, and we price it accordingly. Should 
average global life expectancy (about 72 years in 2020) remain the same, 
the generation born near the middle of the 21st century would be the 
first to experience a cumulative economic net benefit from 
climate-change mitigation policies. Are the young citizens of affluent 
countries ready to put these distant benefits ahead of their more 
immediate gains? Are they willing to sustain this course for more than 
half a century?

Nobody in 1945 could have predicted a world with more than 5 billion 
additional people that is also better fed than at any time in history. A 
lifetime later, there is no reason to believe that we are in a better 
position to foresee the extent of coming technical innovations, the 
events that will shape the fortunes of nations, and the decisions (or 
their regrettable absence) that will determine the fate of our 
civilization during the next 75 years.

I am neither a pessimist nor an optimist. I am a scientist trying to 
explain how the world really works. A realistic grasp of our past, 
present, and uncertain future is the best foundation for approaching the 
unknowable expanse of time before us. While we cannot be specific, we 
know that the most likely prospect is a mixture of progress and 
setbacks, of seemingly insurmountable difficulties and near-miraculous 
advances. The future, as ever, is not predetermined. Its outcome depends 
on our actions.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/beyond-magical-thinking-time-to-get-real-about-climate-change



/[ a nice personal video assessment of the COP meeting ] /
*Climate Futures: Beyond 02022 | Kim Stanley Robinson*
Mar 28, 2022  Long Now continues our dialogue with the acclaimed writer 
Kim Stanley Robinson around COP26 and his most recent book The Ministry 
for the Future. Clean energy advocate & author Ramez Naam will join 
Robinson on stage after the talk for a further discussion.

Tackling topics from carbon quantitative easing, to political action, to 
planetary-level engineering, Robinson describes our current situation as 
"all-hands-on-deck" where every possible mitigation strategy should be 
tried. You can find our other talks with Kim Stanley Robinson on our 
YouTube channel.

Kim Stanley Robinson is an American novelist, widely recognized as one 
of the foremost living writers of science fiction and increasingly, 
climate fiction. His work has been described as humanist or literary 
science fiction and his use of scientific accuracy and non-fiction 
descriptions places him in the hard sci-fi genre.

Robinson has published more than 20 novels including his much honored 
"Mars trilogy", New York 2140 (02017), and The Ministry for the Future 
(02020). Robinson studied under Ursula K Le Guin and earned a Ph.D. in 
literature from UCSD with a dissertation on the works of Philip K. Dick.

"Climate Futures: Beyond 02022" was given on March 03, 02022 as part of 
Long Now's Seminar series. The series was started in 02003 to build a 
compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking from some of the 
world's leading thinkers. The Seminars take place in San Francisco and 
are curated and hosted by Stewart Brand.
https://youtu.be/oUYr89QbFQ0



/[//One nation will pay money to eliminate carbon pollution ] /
*New Zealand to Help Pay for Cleaner Cars*
May 18, 2022
New Zealand’s government recently announced it will help pay for poorer 
families to replace their old cars with cleaner hybrid or electric vehicles.

The government said it plans to spend $357 million on the test program.

The move is part of a wider plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 
Greenhouse gases are believed to cause warming temperatures in the 
Earth’s atmosphere.

New Zealand plans to provide aid for businesses to reduce emissions and 
have buses that run on environmentally safe fuel by 2035. The government 
also plans to provide food-waste collection for most homes by 2030.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in a statement, “We’ve all seen the 
recent reports on sea level rise and its impact right here in New 
Zealand. We cannot leave the issue of climate change until it’s too late 
to fix.”

The plan is a step toward New Zealand’s stated goal of reaching net-zero 
carbon emissions by 2050. Reaching net-zero emissions means not creating 
more carbon in the atmosphere than oceans and forests can remove.

Ardern said that reducing dependence on fossil fuels would help protect 
families from extreme price increases.

The plan also sets a goal of reducing total car travel by 20 percent 
over the next 13 years.

The programs will be paid for from a $2.8 billion climate emergency 
response fund. Officials said that over time, money collected from 
polluters would pay for the programs rather than taxes from families.

Some critics of the plan say it continued to be less restrictive on New 
Zealand’s huge agriculture industry. Agriculture creates about half of 
the nation’s total greenhouse gas emissions. But the industry is also 
important to the economy as the nation’s biggest export earner.

David Seymour is the leader of New Zealand’s ACT political party. He 
said that some of the announced programs are proven to be ineffective 
“and have been tried and failed overseas.”

Seymour added that people should be able to choose how they reduce 
emissions through the market-based emissions trading plan.

I’m Jonathan Evans.

Nick Perry reported on this story for the Associated Press. Jonathan 
Evans adapted this story for Learning English.
https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/new-zealand-to-help-pay-for-cleaner-cars-/6577118.html



/[The news archive - looking back on this important legal defeat ]/
/*May 20, 2013*/
The US Supreme Court refuses to hear an appeal of the 9th US Circuit 
Court of Appeals' decision in the Kivalina v. ExxonMobil case, 
effectively ending one effort to hold fossil fuel companies legally 
accountable for carbon pollution.

http://environblog.jenner.com/corporate_environmental_l/2013/05/high-court-refuses-to-take-up-kivalina-climate-suit.html 



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