[✔️] October 12, 2022 - Global Warming News - daily selection

[Richard Pauli]

/*October 12, 2022*/

/[ Richmond, VA decides to act ]/
*Fearing climate change catastrophe, McEachin asks Richmond to request 
federal flood wall study*
Chris Suarez Oct 11, 2022
Richmond’s flood wall has never been overtopped by the James River in 
its nearly 30 years, but Rep. Donald McEachin, D-4th, thinks a new 
engineering study is needed to assess how much water it can withstand if 
a catastrophic storm hits the city.

  Despite calls for delay, Richmond City Council approves Civilian 
Review Board bill
In a letter sent Tuesday to Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney and City Council 
President Cynthia Newbille , McEachin asked that it formally submit a 
request for a federal study, citing the possibility that climate change 
could cause a “rain bomb” to strike Richmond the same way that Hurricane 
Harvey devastated Houston in 2017.

“Richmond has its own history with severe flooding, and I fear that 
those instances of flooding in the city may increase as we continue to 
experience the effects of climate change,” McEachin said in his letter. 
“I believe it is imperative that we prepare the city for all possibilities.”
While the congressman was able to meet with officials from the Army 
Corps of Engineers recently to discuss his concerns, he said it’s up to 
the city or state government to request the study by the federal agency.

“In this briefing USACE staff noted that the floodwall and levee system 
is built to withstand a 280-year flood event,” McEachin said. “However, 
USACE has not, to date, studied whether the resiliency of the system has 
diminished as the impacts of climate change have become more pronounced.”

Commissioned on Oct. 21, 1994, the $143 million flood wall was designed 
to protect both Shockoe Bottom and Manchester from river flooding up to 
32 feet.
[ read the Letter 
https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/richmond.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/b/02/b024d32d-ee54-50e4-a022-0a8752d5717e/6345dd8cdb2a6.pdf.pdf 
         ]

In addition to the large concrete wall, the city’s flood prevention 
system includes an earthen levee more than a mile long and an additional 
wall-and-levee system about 2,000 feet long. The southern side of the 
system extends about 2 miles, while the northern barrier extends 1.2 miles.

City officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment 
Tuesday afternoon, but the mayor and council have previously stated 
concerns about climate change.
The City Council year passed a resolution declaring a “climate emergency.”

And the city last week announced the hiring of Laura Thomas as its first 
director of sustainability, who will be in charge of overseeing “climate 
equity, action and resilience initiatives.”
https://richmond.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/fearing-climate-change-catastrophe-mceachin-asks-richmond-to-request-federal-flood-wall-study/article_5a76dfec-b767-5903-b915-64d855aaf667.html

https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/richmond.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/b/02/b024d32d-ee54-50e4-a022-0a8752d5717e/6345dd8cdb2a6.pdf.pdf



/[ From Africa News  ]/
*"Heatwaves will make entire regions uninhabitable within decades" -UN, 
Red Cross*
By Rédaction Africanews
  Last updated: 10-11-2022
Heatwaves will become so extreme in certain regions of the world within 
decades that human life there will be unsustainable, the United Nations 
and the Red Cross said Monday.

Heatwaves are predicted to "exceed human physiological and social 
limits" in the Sahel, the Horn of Africa and south and southwest Asia, 
with extreme events triggering "large-scale suffering and loss of life", 
the organisations said.

Heatwave catastrophes this year in countries like Somalia and Pakistan 
foreshadow a future with deadlier, more frequent, and more intense 
heat-related humanitarian emergencies, they warned in a joint report.

The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and 
the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies 
(IFRC) released the report in advance of next month's UN's COP27 climate 
change summit in Egypt.

They said aggressive steps needed to be taken immediately to avert 
potentially recurrent heat disasters, listing steps that could mitigate 
the worst effects of extreme heat.

"There are clear limits beyond which people exposed to extreme heat and 
humidity cannot survive," the report said.

"There are also likely to be levels of extreme heat beyond which 
societies may find it practically impossible to deliver effective 
adaptation for all.

"On current trajectories, heatwaves could meet and exceed these 
physiological and social limits in the coming decades, including in 
regions such as the Sahel and south and southwest Asia."

It warned that the impact of this would be "large-scale suffering and 
loss of life, population movements and further entrenched inequality."

The combined effects of ageing, warming and urbanisation would cause a 
significant increase in the number of at-risk people in developing 
countries in the coming decades.

"Projected future death rates from extreme heat are staggeringly high -- 
comparable in magnitude by the end of the century to all cancers or all 
infectious diseases -- and staggeringly unequal," the report said.

Agricultural workers, children, the elderly and pregnant and 
breastfeeding women are at higher risk of illness and death, the report 
claimed.

"As the climate crisis goes unchecked, extreme weather events, such as 
heatwaves and floods, are hitting the most vulnerable people the 
hardest," said UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths.

"Nowhere is the impact more brutally felt than in countries already 
reeling from hunger, conflict and poverty."

IFRC Secretary-General Jagan Chapagain urged countries at COP27 to 
invest in climate adaptation and mitigation in the regions most at risk.

OCHA and the IFRC suggested five main steps to help combat the impact of 
extreme heatwaves, including providing early information to help people 
and authorities react in time, and finding new ways of financing 
local-level action.

They also included humanitarian organisations testing more 
"thermally-appropriate" emergency shelters and "cooling centres", while 
getting communities to alter their development planning to take account 
of likely extreme heat impacts.
https://www.africanews.com/2022/10/11/heatwaves-will-make-entire-regions-uninhabitable-within-decades-un-red-cross/



/[   "100% of our water comes out of the Ogallala Aquifer "  brief video ]
/*Nebraska State Climatologist Martha Shulski PhD on the Ogallala Aquifer*
Oct 11, 2022  The Ogallala Aquifer is a massive supply of groundwater 
that is crucial to agriculture in the western Plains of North America.
Portions of the Aquifer are being depleted much faster than nature can 
recharge them.  I spoke to Nebraska State Climatologist Martha Shulski.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-EMeXu8kyQ


/[ -- moving ice grinds rocks, makes a sand ]/
*Unlocking the secrets of 'glacier flour'*
by Carl von Ossietzky  -- Universität Oldenburg

OCTOBER 7, 2022
In addition to living cells and dead organic material, the water of the 
Garibaldi Fjord in Patagonia contains mainly mineral particles. Credit: 
Jochen Wollschläger
The meltwater from glaciers carries thousands of tiny rock fragments 
into the sea. Using a special camera, researchers at the University of 
Oldenburg can make these mineral particles visible in all their 
diversity—and investigate their impact on ecosystems.

Dr. Jochen Wollschläger is studying a fascinating collage. Photos of 
more than a hundred tiny particles are gathered together in the image. 
Some look like shards of glass with jagged edges, delicate and 
translucent. Others are darker and rather clumpy in shape, but still 
translucent. A few are completely opaque.

"The picture shows photos of the particles we found in a water sample 
from the Garibaldi Fjord in southern Patagonia," says the marine 
biologist, who researches the optical properties of seawater in the 
Marine Sensor Systems group at the University of Oldenburg's Institute 
for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment (ICBM).

Wollschläger spent January and February of this year on board the 
research vessel Meteor, studying how the melting of glaciers is 
affecting the ecosystems in the fjords in the Beagle Channel of the 
Tierra del Fuego Archipelago together with other marine scientists from 
the ICBM, Bremerhaven, Chile and Argentina.

The tiny particles play an important role in the water—in particular the 
transparent splinters: "These mineral particles are called 'glacial 
flour'. They consist of tiny grains of rock that are scoured off the 
underlying rock when a glacier migrates," the researcher explains. When 
glaciers melt due to global warming, particles that were previously 
trapped in the ice are released into the water.

Less light in the depths

A layer of meltwater about one to one-and-a-half meters thick often 
forms on the surface of the water in fjords. This layer has a milky, 
clouded appearance due to the tiny mineral fragments it contains. "The 
particles limit the amount of light that penetrates to the depths," 
reports Wollschläger, who is researching how this affects the underwater 
light conditions—and how free-swimming, tiny algae cope with the reduced 
amounts of light.

To measure the amount of glacial flour in the water, Wollschläger uses 
an instrument called a FlowCam which performs three tasks 
simultaneously: it provides a microscopic analysis of liquid samples, 
creates enlarged images of the particles suspended in the liquid, and 
characterizes the particles on the basis of various measurements.

"In principle, the FlowCam functions as a kind of automatic microscope 
with an integrated camera," the biologist explains. It measures 
variables such as the particles' diameter, color, transparency and 
estimated volume. On the basis of this information Wollschläger then 
sorts the particles into different categories.

In the collage, the particles from the Garibaldi Fjord have been sorted 
according to size. In addition to dead organic material the odd living 
cell—mainly tiny algae—can be observed. However, in some samples more 
than 90 percent of the particles are glacial flour—an indication that 
the water of the fjord contains enormous amounts of meltwater in some 
places.

Wollschläger is currently analyzing the data in greater detail, but one 
thing is already clear: the glacial flour has a major impact on the 
growth of plant plankton—which in turn forms the basis of the food chain 
in the marine environment. "In many places it is already so dark 20 
meters below the surface that hardly any photosynthesis can take place," 
says Wollschläger. The big question now is how much glacial flour will 
end up in the fjords in the future, as the glaciers continue to melt.
https://phys.org/news/2022-10-secrets-glacier-flour.html



/[Climate finance -- follow the money, again ]/
*Further Delaying Climate Policies Will Hurt Economic Growth *
The transition to a greener future has a price—but the longer countries 
wait to make the shift, the larger the costs
Benjamin Carton, Jean-Marc Natal
October 5, 2022
The world must cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least a quarter before 
the end of this decade to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Progress 
needed toward such a major shift will inevitably impose short-term 
economic costs, though these are dwarfed by the innumerable long-term 
benefits of slowing climate change.

In our latest World Economic Outlook, we estimate the near-term impact 
of different climate mitigation policies on output and inflation. If the 
right measures are implemented immediately and phased in over the next 
eight years, the costs will be small. However, if the transition to 
renewables is delayed, the costs will be much greater.

To assess the short-term impact of transitioning to renewables, we 
developed a model that splits countries into four regions—China, the 
euro area, the United States, and a block representing the rest of the 
world. We assume that each region introduces budget-neutral policies 
that include greenhouse gas taxes, which are increased gradually to 
achieve a 25 percent reduction in emissions by 2030, combined with 
transfers to households, subsidies to low-emitting technologies, and 
labor tax cuts.

The results show that such a policy package could slow global economic 
growth by 0.15 percentage point to 0.25 percentage point annually from 
now until 2030, depending on how quickly regions can wean off fossil 
fuels for electricity generation. The more difficult the transition to 
clean electricity, the greater the greenhouse gas tax increase or 
equivalent regulations needed to incentivize change—and the larger the 
macroeconomic costs in terms of lost output and higher inflation.

For Europe, the United States, and China, the costs will likely be 
lower, ranging between 0.05 percentage point and 0.20 percentage point 
on average over eight years. Not surprisingly, the costs will be highest 
for fossil-fuel exporters and energy-intensive emerging market 
economies, which on balance drive the results for the rest of the world. 
That means countries must cooperate more on finance and technology 
needed to reduce costs—and share more of the required 
know-how—especially when it comes to low-income countries. In all cases, 
however, policymakers should consider potential long-term output losses 
from unchecked climate change, which could be orders of magnitude larger 
according to some estimates.

In most regions, inflation increases moderately, from 0.1 percentage 
point to 0.4 percentage point. To curb the costs, climate policies must 
be gradual. But to be most effective, they also need to be credible. If 
climate policies are only partially credible, firms and households will 
not consider future tax increases when planning investment decisions.

This will slow the transition (less investment in thermal insulation and 
heating, low-emitting technologies, etc.), requiring more stringent 
policies to reach the same decarbonization goal. Inflation would be 
higher and gross domestic product growth lower by the end of the decade 
as a result. We estimate that only partially credible policies could 
almost double the cost of transitioning to renewables by 2030.

Inflation and monetary policy

A pressing concern among policymakers is whether climate policy could 
complicate the job of central banks, and potentially stoke wage-price 
spirals in the current high-inflation environment. Our analysis shows 
this is not the case.

Gradual and credibly implemented climate mitigation policies give 
households and firms the motive and time to transition toward a 
low-emission economy. Monetary policy will need to adjust to ensure 
inflation expectations remain anchored, but for the kind of policies 
simulated, the costs are small and much easier for central banks to 
handle than typical supply shocks that cause a sudden surge in energy 
prices.

Using the United States as an example, we show how climate policies 
impact inflation and growth under a range of scenarios. When policies 
are gradual and credible, the output-inflation trade-off is small. 
Central banks can choose to either stabilize a price index that includes 
greenhouse gas taxes or let the tax fully pass through prices. The 
former would only cost an additional 0.1 percentage point of growth 
annually.

If the transition is more difficult—reflecting a slower transition to 
clean electricity generation—the trade-off increases but remains manageable.

The costs would be much higher if monetary policy were to lose 
credibility, a concern in today’s high-inflation environment. If 
inflation expectations become de-anchored, introducing climate policies 
could lead to second-round effects and a larger output-inflation 
trade-off, as illustrated by the less-credible monetary policy scenario. 
Our analytical chapter shows how to design climate policies to avoid 
such a situation, curbing the impact of the greenhouse gas tax on 
inflation with subsidies, feebates or labor tax cuts. Is it reasonable 
to wait—as some have proposed—until inflation is down before 
implementing climate mitigation policies? We ran a scenario delaying 
implementation until 2027 that still achieves the same reduction in 
cumulative emissions in the long term. The delayed package is phased in 
more rapidly and requires a higher greenhouse gas tax, since a steeper 
decline in emissions is necessary to offset the accumulation of 
emissions from 2023 to 2026.

The results are striking. Even in the most favorable circumstances when 
monetary policy is credible and the transition to decarbonized 
electricity is rapid, the output-inflation trade-off would rise 
significantly; GDP would have to drop by 1.5 percent below baseline over 
four years to drive inflation back to target. Delay beyond 2027 would 
require an even more rushed transition in which inflation can be 
contained only at significant cost to real GDP. The longer we wait, the 
worse the trade-off.

Better understanding the near-term macroeconomic implications of climate 
policies and their interaction with other policies is crucial to enhance 
their design. Transitioning to a cleaner economy entails short-term 
costs, but delaying will be far costlier.

—This blog is based on Chapter 3 of the October 2022 World Economic 
Outlook, “Near-term Macroeconomic Impact of Decarbonization Policies.” 
The authors of the chapter are Mehdi Benatiya Andaloussi, Benjamin 
Carton (co-lead), Christopher Evans, Florence Jaumotte, Dirk Muir, 
Jean-Marc Natal (co-lead), Augustus J. Panton, and Simon Voigts.
https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2022/10/05/further-delaying-climate-policies-will-hurt-economic-growth


/[ Climate Collapse ]/
*Climate change and the threat to civilization*
Daniel Steel, C. Tyler DesRoches https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7318-6948 
tyler.desroches at asu.edu, and Kian Mintz-WooAuthors Info &
October 6, 2022
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2210525119

Collapse Scenarios
Collapse Mechanisms

In a speech about climate change from April 4th of this year, UN General 
Secretary António Guterres lambasted “the empty pledges that put us on 
track to an unlivable world” and warned that “we are on a fast track to 
climate disaster” (1). Although stark, Guterres’ statements were not 
novel. Guterres has made similar remarks on previous occasions, as have 
other public figures, including Sir David Attenborough, who warned in 
2018 that inaction on climate change could lead to “the collapse of our 
civilizations” (2). In their article, “World Scientists’ Warning of a 
Climate Emergency 2021”—which now has more than 14,700 signatories from 
158 countries—William J. Ripple and colleagues state that climate change 
could “cause significant disruptions to ecosystems, society, and 
economies, potentially making large areas of Earth uninhabitable”...
- -
Because civilization cannot exist in unlivable or uninhabitable places, 
all of the above warnings can be understood as asserting the potential 
for anthropogenic climate change to cause civilization collapse (or 
“climate collapse”) to a greater or lesser extent. Yet despite 
discussing many adverse impacts, climate science literature, as 
synthesized for instance by assessment reports of the Intergovernmental 
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has little at all to say about whether 
or under which conditions climate change might threaten civilization. 
Although a body of scientific research exists on historical and 
archeological cases of collapse (4), discussions of mechanisms whereby 
climate change might cause the collapse of current civilizations has 
mostly been the province of journalists, philosophers, novelists, and 
filmmakers. We believe that this should change.
Here we call for treating the mechanisms and uncertainties associated 
with climate collapse as a critically important topic for scientific 
inquiry. Doing so requires clarifying what “civilization collapse” means 
and explaining how it connects to topics addressed in climate science, 
such as increased risks from both fast- and slow-onset extreme weather 
events. This kind of information, we claim, is crucial for the public 
and for policymakers alike, for whom climate collapse may be a serious 
concern. Our analysis builds on the latest research, including Kemp et 
al.’s PNAS Perspective, which drew attention to the importance of 
scientifically exploring the ways that climate outcomes can impact 
complex socioeconomic systems (5). We go further by providing greater 
detail about societal collapse, for instance, distinguishing three 
progressively more severe scenarios. Moreover, we emphasize avoiding 
doom-saying bias and recommend studying collapse mechanisms in 
conjunction with successful adaptation and resilience, seeing these as 
two sides of the same coin.
Collapse Scenarios
We define civilization collapse as the loss of societal capacity to 
maintain essential governance functions, especially maintaining 
security, the rule of law, and the provision of basic necessities such 
as food and water. Civilization collapses in this sense could be 
associated with civil strife, violence, and widespread scarcity, and 
thus have extremely adverse effects on human welfare. Such collapses can 
be wider or narrower in scope, so we consider three representative 
scenarios...
- -
There is, in sum, no solid basis at present for dismissing the broken 
world and global collapse as too unlikely to merit serious 
consideration. Given the moral and practical importance of these 
scenarios, we believe that science should endeavor to learn more about 
mechanisms that might lead to them.
As a topic of urgent concern to humanity, the risk of climate collapse 
demands careful scientific investigation. And research on closely 
related topics—such as past cases of collapse, limits to adaptation, and 
systemic risk—makes it difficult to argue that climate collapse is 
impossible to study scientifically. Still, some may worry that pursuing 
scientific study of climate collapse will cause anxiety and encourage 
emotional disengagement from action on climate change.
We disagree. Warnings about climate collapse issued by scientists and 
scientifically informed public figures are already present in the public 
discourse, whereas survey data suggest that climate change is a source 
of widespread public concern and anxiety (26, 27). Against this 
backdrop, careful scientific study of climate collapse might act as a 
counterweight to discussions of climate collapse that are 
sensationalistic or biased towards portending doom. And, depending on 
the results of the research, it might serve as a rebuttal to skeptics 
who refuse to take the possibility of climate collapse seriously at all. 
A sober assessment of the risk of climate collapse and the pathways by 
which it can be kept at bay, we suggest, may help to settle nerves and 
spur action.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2210525119



/[The news archive - looking back at Nobel Peace Prize and Global Warming ]/
/*October 12, 2007*/
October 12, 2007: Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate 
Change win the Nobel Peace Prize.

http://youtu.be/gkrXNbn3y6o

http://youtu.be/NJo_w3lLyvo


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