[✔️] April 10, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | Reporting Tornadoes, oceans overheating, Nepal glacier melting, Investors demanding attention, Hot air holds and releases water

[Richard Pauli]

/*April*//*10, 2023*/

/[ Pecos Hank videographer, weatherman and storm-chaser- now more of a 
reporter - video not for broadcast ]/

*DEADLY TORNADOES in ARKANSAS - March 31, 2023*

Apr 9, 2023
The Little Rock & Wynne Arkansas tornadoes on March 31, 2023. These 
tornadoes were moving roughly 50 mph leaving behind a wake of destruction.

**NOT FOR REBROADCAST** COPYRIGHT PECOS HANK 2023
To license video contact hankschyma at gmail.com

LITTLE ROCK ARKANSAS TORNADO
On March 31 a Tornado Emergency was issued for Little Rock Arkansas
as an EF3 tornado was tearing through town at 50 mph.  In its 34 mile 
long wake, At least 2,700 structures, houses, apartments, businesses and 
churches would be damaged or destroyed. With peak wind speeds estimated 
at 165 mph this long tracking tornado would cause 54 injuries and 
miraculously only 1 fatality was reported. However, this tornado 
outbreak was just beginning and another intense storm
was racing directly toward the town Wynne Arkansas.

WYNNE ARKANSAS TORNADO
Southeast of Wynne I observed a thin tornado with a high debris cloud 
for about 3 minutes before it appeared to dissipate.  Then, I believe a 
second much larger tornado developed further north. Radar velocity 
appears to validate that these were indeed two separate tornadoes but 
I'm not 100% positive.  The much larger tornado was heading directly 
toward the town center as I documented it while driving north on Highway 1.

This Tornado (currently rated at least EF3) would carved a path through 
Wynne (Cross County) around 445 pm CDT. Structures were obliterated, and 
at least four fatalities resulted. Farther downstream, the same tornado 
wreaked havoc (i.e. homes damaged or destroyed and trees uprooted or 
snapped) just west of Parkin (Cross County) and north of Earle 
(Crittenden County). South of Turrell (Crittenden County), The tornado 
eventually crossed the Mississippi River and dissipated near Burlison, 
TN after a 73 mile trek.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjqWaWdu8P8


/[  oops, bathtub water is too hot.  Withdraw and wait till it cools 
down  ]/
*‘Headed off the charts’: world’s ocean surface temperature hits record 
high*
Scientists warn of more marine heatwaves, leading to increased risk of 
extreme weather
Graham Readfearn
@readfearn
Fri 7 Apr 2023
The temperature of the world’s ocean surface has hit an all-time high 
since satellite records began, leading to marine heatwaves around the 
globe, according to US government data.

Climate scientists said preliminary data from the National Oceanic and 
Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) showed the average temperature at the 
ocean’s surface has been at 21.1C since the start of April – beating the 
previous high of 21C set in 2016.

“The current trajectory looks like it’s headed off the charts, smashing 
previous records,” said Prof Matthew England, a climate scientist at the 
University of New South Wales...
Three years of La Niña conditions across the vast tropical Pacific have 
helped suppress temperatures and dampened the effect of rising 
greenhouse gas emissions.

But scientists said heat was now rising to the ocean surface, pointing 
to a potential El Niño pattern in the tropical Pacific later this year 
that can increase the risk of extreme weather conditions and further 
challenge global heat records.

Dr Mike McPhaden, a senior research scientist at Noaa, said: “The recent 
‘triple dip’ La Niña has come to an end. This prolonged period of cold 
was tamping down global mean surface temperatures despite the rise of 
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

“Now that it’s over, we are likely seeing the climate change signal 
coming through loud and clear.”

La Niña periods – characterised by cooling in the central and eastern 
tropical Pacific and stronger trade winds – have a cooling influence on 
global temperatures. During El Niño periods, the ocean temperatures in 
those regions are warmer than usual and global temperatures are pushed up.

According to the Noaa data, the second-hottest globally averaged ocean 
temperatures coincided with El Niño that ran from 2014 to 2016.
The data is driven mostly by satellite observations but also verified 
with measurements from ships and buoys. The data does not include the 
polar regions.

More than 90% of the extra heat caused by adding greenhouse gases to the 
atmosphere from burning fossil fuels and deforestation has been taken up 
by the ocean.

A study last year said the amount of heat accumulating in the ocean was 
accelerating and penetrating deeper, providing fuel for extreme weather.

England, a co-author of that study, said: “What we are seeing now [with 
the record sea surface temperatures] is the emergence of a warming 
signal that more clearly reveals the footprint of our increased 
interference with the climate system.”...

Measurements from the top 2km of the ocean show the rapid accumulation 
of heat in the upper parts of the ocean, particularly since the 1980s.

Dr Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist and distinguished scholar at the 
US National Center for Atmospheric Research, said observations showed 
the heat in the tropical Pacific was extending down to more than 100 
metres...
- -
Prof Dietmar Dommenget, a climate scientist and modeller at Monash 
University, said the signal of human-caused global heating was much 
clearer in the oceans.

“Obviously we’re in a fast-warming climate and we’re going to see new 
records all the time. A lot of our forecasts are predicting an El Niño.

“If this happens, we’ll see new records not just in the ocean but on 
land. This data is already suggesting we’re seeing a record and there 
could be more coming later this year.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/08/headed-off-the-charts-worlds-ocean-surface-temperature-hits-record-high

- -

/[ see for yourself in your region ]/
*Marine Heatwave Tracker*
This web application shows near-real-time information on where in the 
world marine heatwaves (MHW) and marine cold-spells (MCS) are occurring 
and what category they are.
https://www.phys.ocean.dal.ca/~schlegel/



/[ From Asia ]/
*Glacial Melt is Dispossessing Nepal’s Indigenous Communities*
Shrinking glaciers are forcing residents to flee, leaving a scattering 
of ghost towns across the country’s unforgiving north.
By Tulsi Rauniyar
April 04, 2023...
- -
  “Most people in the area are still unaware of the full consequences of 
global warming. The communities who are most vulnerable to the effects 
of climate change are generally unaware of the nature of possible 
impacts, and may not be fully prepared to deal with them.”

Shrinking Glaciers, Shrinking Settlements

Just over a decade ago, relatively little was known about the glaciers 
that run through the Hindu Kush Himalayas, the vast and icy mountain 
range system that runs across Central and South Asia, from Afghanistan 
in the west to Myanmar in the east.

In the past decade, research efforts have intensified, largely driven by 
a major error in a report published in 2007 by the intergovernmental 
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The report incorrectly predicted that 
Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035, prompting a closer 
examination of the subject. This increased focus has resulted in 
significant advancements in our understanding of glacier loss. 
Scientists have sounded the alarm: a 2014 study by ICIMOD that was 
conducted using satellite data showed that between 1980 and 2010, Nepal 
lost a quarter of its glacier area.

While many of the world’s 198,000 glaciers have been studied 
extensively, the few in Nepal remain mostly unexamined. As Sudeep 
Thakuri, a researcher in glaciology, put it, “this side of the Himalayas 
is a blank hole.” The reasons are largely financial: Nepal is a 
relatively poor country, and there are scant funds available for 
research. “To adequately study the Himalayan glaciers, we need thirty to 
forty times more money and technical support than we actually receive,” 
Thakuri told The Diplomat.
- -
Running Out of Options
While the likes of Kancho Dolkar have chosen to stay on in Dhye, other 
members of the village chose to leave after water became too scarce. A 
few kilometers downstream, they recently built a new village, named 
Chambaleh, where they work in a village collective, growing and selling 
apples.

But the settlement process in Chambaleh is fraught as well. The village 
still isn’t recognized by the federal government, which means its 
residents don’t have a legal right to the land. This weakens their 
tenure security, makes it difficult to bequeath land to their children, 
and creates challenges when applying for essential services such as 
getting their homes connected to the electrical grid. They have a hard 
time procuring credit from banks to build houses and selling their 
apples at the market for a fair price, thanks to local taxes levied on 
agricultural products from unregistered farms.

Chairman Raju Bista of Lo-Gekar Municipality which includes the village 
of Dhye and Samzong, says that the residents have little say about local 
issues, and that their grievances aren’t represented in national 
discussions. They say they feel disconnected due to their remote 
location and hardly know what’s happening in their district or the 
country at large...
- -
Migration often announces itself with disasters and devastation but the 
resettlement at Chambaleh reflected a quieter type of disruption. Even 
still, the locals said it was clear that a seismic shift was taking 
place around them. For Kancho Dolkar and others across Nepal, climate 
change is something that was imposed on them by the rest of the world 
and is impacting the fate of the glaciers that are so integral to the 
survival of their communities.

For a country like Nepal, which barely has the institutional capacity or 
financial resources to adequately manage development in the remote 
frontier regions, let alone to pay the premiums necessary to ameliorate 
the challenges brought upon by climate change, Sherpa poses a critical 
question: How can communities on the forefront of climate change sustain 
themselves in the lack of even basic infrastructure?

The article was supported by a grant from Internews’ Earth Journalism 
Network.
https://thediplomat.com/2023/04/glacial-melt-is-dispossessing-nepals-indigenous-communities/



/[ follow the money again  - text and audio ] /
*Businesses face more and more pressure from investors to act on climate 
change*
April 9, 20236:00 AM ET
By Michael Copley

Every spring, shareholders in publicly-traded companies get to weigh in 
on how they're run. It's a chance for investors to vote on proposals to 
shape corporate policies for things like executive pay and political 
spending. But as the Earth heats up, annual shareholder meetings have 
become a battleground for activist investors who are pressing companies 
for more aggressive action on climate change.

This year, shareholders filed around 540 proposals as of mid-February 
asking companies to address environmental, social and corporate 
governance issues, according to Proxy Preview. Resolutions focused on 
climate change accounted for about a quarter of this year's total, with 
the number increasing by about 12% from the same point in 2022.

Investors want to know how companies are contributing to rising 
temperatures, and what they're doing about the problem. They're calling 
for executives and corporate boards to set targets for cutting 
greenhouse gas emissions, and then to report on their progress. And they 
want to know how businesses plan to keep making money as industries are 
reshaped by the push to cut emissions.

The message to companies is, "set targets, issue plans, give us clear 
disclosure," says Kirsten Snow Spalding, who leads investor initiatives 
at Ceres, a nonprofit focused on sustainability. "And all of it is 
about, how are you addressing the risks and moving towards the 
opportunities?"...
- -
*Are shareholder proposals working?*
Most resolutions are non-binding, but just introducing them has proven 
to be an effective tool for activist investors. Last year, shareholders 
withdrew a record 110 proposals that were focused on climate change 
after they struck deals with companies, according to Ceres. Another 15 
climate resolutions that went to a vote at various corporations won 
majority support from shareholders.

"The trend toward climate action is really on the rise," Spalding says.

But the pace of corporate change is slower than activists would like — 
and what climate science shows is needed. Scientists working for the 
United Nations say the planet is on track for catastrophic warming that 
will cause more extreme weather. Heat waves, droughts and floods that 
are fueled by climate change are already inflicting severe economic 
damage and killing and displacing people around the world.

Some of the worst impacts could be avoided by quickly cutting emissions. 
Right now, though, emissions aren't falling. Activists say a lot of 
companies aren't doing enough to address the threat, despite pressure 
from investors.
*Activist shareholders focus on emissions that are hard to measure*
Chubb Ltd., a big insurance company, is one of the businesses that 
activist investors are targeting this year.
Chubb is already cutting its own greenhouse gas emissions. But, like 
other insurers, the company doesn't directly produce a lot of emissions. 
However, some of its clients do. So, Chubb says it's limited its 
underwriting and investing in coal and oil sands. And the company said 
in March that it will require clients in the oil and gas industry to cut 
emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

But the company's recent methane initiative was met with a shrug from a 
leading shareholder advocacy group called As You Sow. It noted that a 
lot of oil and gas companies already have their own plans to reduce 
methane emissions.

"I don't ever like to say this, but it feels a little bit like window 
dressing — that they are attempting to convince investors that they're 
taking action," says Danielle Fugere, president of As You Sow. "But 
because they aren't measuring, they aren't disclosing, we don't have a 
way to measure the effectiveness of those actions."

As You Sow filed a shareholder proposal last year asking Chubb to 
publish a report on whether and how it plans to measure and cut 
greenhouse gas emissions connected to its underwriting, insurance and 
investing activities. The group wants Chubb to make commitments that 
align with the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 
degrees Celsius by the end of the century. To do that, all greenhouse 
gas emissions need to be eliminated or offset by 2050.

A majority of Chubb's shareholders backed the proposal. But the company 
said it didn't know how to "reasonably measure" emissions from the 
entities it insures. As You Sow and other activists filed a similar 
proposal this year that's set for a vote at Chubb's annual meeting in May.

"Insurers' activities can contribute to systemic climate risk to the 
global economy, investor portfolios, and insurers' profitability," the 
activist investors say in the proposal.
How one company is responding to a shareholder resolution
Chubb is urging investors to vote against the resolution. The company 
didn't make anyone available to NPR for an interview. It said in a 
recent filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that 
there's still not a "well-established and widely accepted" way to 
measure emissions from all its customers...

Methods for measuring these so-called Scope 3 emissions aren't perfect, 
but more than 3,300 companies reported theirs anyway in 2021.

"Chubb shares the proponent's goal of achieving a net zero economy by 
2050," the company said in a recent filing to the SEC, referring to As 
You Sow. "We disagree that forcing Chubb to set targets related to the 
emissions produced by its insureds, rather than Chubb's own emissions, 
would advance that goal."

Chubb is planning more investments in "alternative energy and clean 
tech," the company said in a climate report last year, and it says its 
underwriting practices are encouraging companies to move away from using 
the dirtiest fossil fuels.

It's unclear if most Chubb shareholders will vote again this year for 
the company to make a plan to cut emissions from its various business 
activities.

*Mainstream investors want climate proposals tailored to individual 
companies*
While the number of shareholder resolutions focused on climate change 
has been increasing, support, on average, fell last year for those that 
went to a vote at annual meetings. Ceres says average support dropped to 
about 32% from 42% in 2021 amid a global energy crisis and rising inflation.

Paul Washington, who leads The Conference Board ESG Center, a 
sustainability think tank, says the decline was also driven by concerns 
that proposals were too prescriptive and might interfere with how 
companies are run. Investors were also less willing to consider 
shareholder resolutions when companies had their own climate strategies. 
He says those same factors are at play this year.

"I think there's still a strong interest [in] climate from mainstream 
investors," says Washington. "But they are taking a more case-by-case 
approach to what climate strategy makes sense for a particular industry 
and a particular company."
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/09/1168446621/businesses-face-more-and-more-pressure-from-investors-to-act-on-climate-change


//
/[ Heated air holds more water vapor, and at other times releases water 
and is very dry  ]/
*What happens when we run out of water? Thanks to climate change, a 
dystopian premise is coming true*
Experts say climate change is depleting or polluting our freshwater 
sources. Can we survive in a drier world?
By MATTHEW ROZSA
Staff Writer

Arguably the most important question for humanity in the 21st century is 
how we will adapt to climate change. While climate change is a 
multifaceted problem that is going to wreak all kinds of havoc on Earth 
and its life, humans will inevitably need to focus on preserving 
resources that are most fundamental to sustaining us. Water is foremost 
among them. The inorganic compound covers 71 percent of the Earth's 
surface and is without question one of the most vital resources. Humans 
cannot survive for more than three days without consuming it, and water 
is essential to growing and raising the plants and animals that humans 
rely on for food. Since only three percent of Earth's water is 
freshwater, and less than half of that is potable (safe for drinking), 
it would be a very bad thing if climate change made potable water more 
scarce.

Unfortunately, experts say that is exactly what is happening.

Water is becoming scarce both in quantity and quality, explains East 
Carolina University associate professor of geology Dr. Alex K. Manda in 
an email to Salon. Manda added that we can expect "reduction in 
precipitation amounts due to changing climate, persistent drought 
conditions [and] excessive withdrawals of groundwater from aquifers." 
Meanwhile, the quality of freshwater is diminishing, too, owing to 
"saltwater intrusion [and] pollution of water resources."
Dr. Michael E. Mann can attest to this from his own experience. A 
professor of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of 
Pennsylvania, Mann and a team of scientists studied the so-called "water 
tower" of Asia, the Tibetan Plateau — a natural feature so massive and 
significant that 2 billion people rely on water from its downstream 
flow. According to their research, "in a 'business as usual' scenario, 
where we fail to meaningfully curtail fossil fuel burning in the decades 
ahead, we can expect a substantial — that is, nearly 100% loss — of 
water availability to downstream regions of the Tibetan Plateau," as 
Mann explained in the report. This will imperil the water supplies for 
"central Asia, Afghanistan, Northern India, Kashmir and Pakistan by the 
middle of the century."

Nor will the issues be limited to potability.

"One thing we know is that stronger hurricanes and more severe flooding 
events can wreak havoc on factories and refineries, releasing hazardous 
chemicals into the environment, as we've seen in Houston, Louisiana, and 
Alabama," Mann told Salon by email.
- -
"In short, climate change is making dry regions drier — and wet regions 
wetter," Akanda says.  As such, "the water scarcity problems are getting 
worse ... we are seeing longer and warmer drought cycles, and over 
larger geographic areas." He mentioned that urban development is 
exacerbating water scarcity issues that are already being worsened by 
warming temperatures (Phoenix, for instance, may in the near future be 
close to uninhabitable). "Human practices are also playing a major role 
as urbanization is intensifying the demand in many arid regions where 
water is already scarce (Dubai, Los Angeles, etc.) and also due to civil 
unrest and conflicts which are destroying the infrastructure and 
limiting supplies (Yemen, Ethiopia, etc)."

Humans rely on irrigated agriculture so heavily that it accounts for 
roughly 90 percent of our species' total water consumption, and is 
responsible for 40 percent of our total food consumption. Despite that, 
we are just beginning to figure out ways to meet the biggest challenges 
caused by our impending water scarcity crisis. Dr. Lorenzo Rosa, the 
Principal Investigator at Carnegie Institution for Science at the 
Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, specializes in this 
problem and referred Salon to his 2022 report for the journal 
Environmental Research Letters. As Rosa explains, because our population 
is expanding, humans will need to expand irrigated agriculture to 
underutilized rainfed croplands in order to meet future global food 
demand. Yet we've only begun to quantify how to make irrigation 
sustainable, despite it being "one of the land management practices with 
the largest environmental and hydroclimatic impacts." Rosa's study 
detailed the areas where sophisticated policies will be necessary, 
ranging from global food security and water quality to energy use and 
water storage infrastructure.

"Agricultural interventions adopted under current climate conditions may 
be ineffective under future global warming," Rosa writes. "By the end of 
the century, freshwater limitations could require the reversal of 60 
million hectares from irrigated to rainfed. However, climate change is 
altering rainfall patterns in a way that will exacerbate water-stress 
over 70 million hectares of currently rainfed croplands, which provide 
food for 700 million people worldwide." Even worse, climate change will 
increase the intensity and length of heat waves, so people will be 
hotter even as crop yields go down.

While humanity's water future is bleak, it is not hopeless. Akanda, for 
one, had plenty of policy suggestions.

"There are many," Akanda wrote to Salon. "First and foremost, 
governments need to do a far better job of risk communication — sharing 
the science, explaining the details and the potential impacts on food, 
health, and livelihoods to the affected public." Akanda said another 
focus should be in forecasting, and sharing resources in that realm. 
"For example, in a big river basin, all the riparian countries should 
invest together in a basinwide forecasting scheme instead of unilateral 
developments," he opined.

Akanda also advocated for better disaster management and contingency 
planning, all of which "goes without saying," but added that "those are 
all post-event responses. Governments need to be proactive and 
preemptive ... armed with early warning systems and efficient plans for 
adaptation and protection."
https://www.salon.com/2023/04/08/what-happens-when-we-run-out-of-water-thanks-to-climate-change-a-dystopian-premise-is-coming-true/



/[The news archive - looking back]/
/*April 10, 2007*/
April 10, 2007: In a debate with Senator John Kerry in Washington, DC, 
Newt Gingrich acknowledges that climate change is real and largely 
caused by human activity, though he insists that regulatory solutions 
are not needed to stem emissions. By 2009, Gingrich would once again 
suggest that the basic science of human-caused climate change was in 
dispute.

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/197538-1

https://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/02/19/gingrich-didnt-always-take-issue-with-john-kerr/198125 



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