[✔️] April 15, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | CO2 now 423 ppm, Flash droughts, Carbon and sea coasts, Frontline Big Oil, Nate Hagens explains it all

Sat Apr 15 08:42:25 EDT 2023

/*April*//*15, 2023*/

/[ cartoon is amusing - but CO2 levels are 423.01 ppm  ] /
First Dog on the Moon
Climate crisis
*Big news in the close-knit and secretive climate change community!*
14 Apr 2023
Many of these record-breaking climate events go unnoticed because it’s 
too much for our tiny brains so nobody ‘clicks’ on them any more
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/14/big-news-in-the-close-knit-and-secretive-climate-change-community/
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/[  AP overview of droughts ]
/*As Earth warms, more ‘flash droughts’ suck soil, plants dry*
By SETH BORENSTEIN
April 13, 2023
Climate change is making droughts faster and more furious, especially a 
specific fast-developing heat-driven kind that catch farmers by 
surprise, a new study found.

The study in Thursday’s journal Science found droughts in general are 
being triggered faster. But it also showed that a special and 
particularly nasty sudden kind — called “flash droughts” by experts — is 
casting an ever bigger crop-killing footprint.

It comes only in the growing season – mostly summer, but also spring and 
fall – and is insidious because it’s caused not just by the lack of rain 
or snow that’s behind a typical slow-onset drought, hydrologists and 
meteorologists said.

What happens is the air gets so hot and so dry that it sucks water right 
out of plants and soil.

“It’s the increasing thirstiness of the atmosphere,” said UCLA and 
National Center for Atmospheric Research climate scientist Daniel Swain, 
who wasn’t part of the study. Swain called the issue “very relevant in a 
warming climate.”

The term flash drought was coined around 2000 but it really took off in 
2012, when a $30 billion sudden drought struck the central United 
States, one of the worst droughts since the infamous Dust Bowl 
devastated the Plains in the 1930s, according to the study

“Because it occurs very, very fast people started to focus on this new 
phenomenon,” said study lead author Xing Yuan, dean of the School of 
Hydrology and Water Resources at Nanjing University of Information 
Science and Technology in China. “For the 2012 drought, actually the 
drought just developed in a very severe condition just within a month.”

Most of China’s Yangtze River basin last summer was struck by a flash 
drought that developed within only a month due to high temperatures, 
which also triggered wildfires, Yuan said. Parts of the river dried up 
and there was an energy shortage in southern China because hydropower 
wouldn’t work, he said.

“It developed very fast so you don’t have enough time to prepare for 
this drought,” Yuan said.

Another sudden drought happened in the U.S. Southeast in 2016 and was a 
factor in devastating wildfires in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, said Jason 
Otkin, a study co-author and an atmospheric scientist at the University 
of Wisconsin, Madison.

The current drought in the Oklahoma-Texas panhandle and Kansas started 
two years ago as a rapid onset drought, said Joel Lisonbee, a 
climatologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s 
National Integrated Drought Information System in Colorado. He wasn’t 
part of the study but praised it, saying “essentially a warmer world 
allows for faster onset of drought.”

Yuan, Otkin and their research team looked back at droughts, how fast 
they occurred and what kind they were, across the globe since 1951 and 
found flash droughts are happening more often in nearly three-quarters 
of the climate regions of the world. They also found droughts of all 
kinds happening faster.

Although they couldn’t quantify how much faster because of the 
variability in places and times, Yuan said it would be fair to say 
droughts are happening weeks earlier than they once did.

Yuan said some of the bigger increases in sudden droughts have been in 
Europe and Australia. Outside experts pointed to the Amazon as prone to 
them.

“We have to pay attention to this phenomenon because it’s increasing,” 
Yuan said.

Yuan’s team also used computer simulations – both with worst-case 
warming and more moderate warming – and projected that the proportion of 
flash droughts will increase in a warmer world and droughts will 
continue to keep happening faster.

By definition, flash droughts – because they result from low soil 
moisture levels – are especially bad for agriculture, experts said.

The trouble is there has been an old way of thinking that “we have 
months or years before we need to worry about drought,” said Mark 
Svoboda, director of the National Drought Mitigation Center at the 
University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

That’s the reason why Svoboda, who wasn’t part of this study, said he 
pioneered the term “flash drought” and wanted to “dispel the notion that 
droughts only manifest themselves over long period of time.”

Svoboda’s agency recommends that farmers, ranchers, municipal water 
suppliers and hydropower plants come up with plans for droughts. For 
example, farmers and ranchers should know how susceptible they are to 
drought and have alternative plans for plantings or foraging.

NOAA’s Lisonbee said in an email that the problem is “in a slowly 
evolving drought if a farmer thinks the season ahead will be dry, they 
may consider a more drought-tolerant crop that season, but when a flash 
drought occurs it is likely the crops are already in the ground and 
there is little that can be done.”
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Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at 
https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
https://apnews.com/article/drought-sudden-agriculture-climate-change-heat-befc5fc8cf43a430b29f023bca40acc0/
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///[ on coastline carbon capture ]/
*Coastal Carbon Sink Response to Increasing Global and Regional Sea 
Level Rise*
Paul Beckwith
Apr 14, 2023
Coastlines consisting of a bay, a marsh, and then a forest capture a lot 
of carbon. Thus, it is very important to see how this carbon sink 
depends on sea level rise (SLR).

A fairly new peer reviewed scientific paper studies this, and finds out 
that for low (2-5 mm per year) up to high (about 10 mm per year) of SLR 
there is an increase in the amount of carbon stored. The study shows the 
importance of carbon that is deposited into soils and sediments from 
growing vegetation, versus carbon that is brought there from elsewhere 
(by sea water inundation and marsh brine).

Most importantly, the research finds that as SLR increases at faster 
rates than 10 mm per year the coastline is not able to adjust fast 
enough and the carbon sink then reduces a lot. Bad news.

Global sea level rise is about 4.5 mm per year now, but regional 
differences are very significant. Specifically, local SLR of about 10 mm 
per year are already being seen in some areas of the US southeast 
coastline and southern Gulf Coast ecosystems. Not good.
https://youtu.be/x92wUzN6b6M

- -

/[ from the journal nature ]/
*Sea Level Rise is a Double-Edged Sword for Coastal Carbon Sequestration*
We demonstrate that sea level rise enhances carbon preservation in 
soils, but changes the location of carbon storage- from relatively 
stable forests to more vulnerable marshes.
Published Mar 13, 2023
Go to the profile of Kendall Valentine
Kendall Valentine
Assistant Professor, University of Washingto
https://earthenvironmentcommunity.nature.com/posts/carbon-becomes-vulnerable-with-slr

/[ Three parts Classic videos from last year --  History of a deception 
first PBS video  1:24  ]/
In an epic three-part documentary series, FRONTLINE investigates the 
decades-long failure to confront the threat of climate change and the 
role of the fossil fuel industry.
*The Power of Big Oil Part One: Denial (full documentary) | FRONTLINE*
FRONTLINE PBS | Official
1,679,993 views  Apr 19, 2022  #ClimateChange #Docuseries #BigOil
Watch part one of “The Power of Big Oil,” a three-episode FRONTLINE 
docuseries investigating the fossil fuel industry’s history of casting 
doubt and delaying action on climate change.

    Part One charts the fossil fuel industry’s early research on climate
    change and investigates industry efforts to sow seeds of doubt about
    the science. Part Two explores the industry’s efforts to stall
    climate policy, even as evidence about climate change grew more
    certain in the new millennium. And as leading climate scientists
    issue new warnings about climate change, Part Three examines how the
    fossil fuel industry worked to delay the transition to renewable
    energy sources — including by promoting natural gas as a cleaner
    alternative.

Go inside the decades-long failure to confront the threat and increasing 
impacts of climate change in “The Power of Big Oil.” This deeply 
researched docuseries reveals what scientists, corporations and 
politicians have known about human-caused climate change for decades, 
and the missed opportunities to mitigate the problem.

Parts two and three of “The Power of Big Oil” premiere April 26 and May 
3 on PBS and online: https://to.pbs.org/3rByEEe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAAbcNl4Lb8&

- - full documentary in 3 parts
*THE POWER OF BIG OIL  PART ONE: DENIAL*
Apr. 19, 2022 / 1h 25m
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/the-power-of-big-oil/

*PART TWO: DOUBT Apr. 26, 2022 / 54m*
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/the-power-of-big-oil/#video-2

*PART THREE: DELAY **May. 03, 2022 / 54m*
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/the-power-of-big-oil/#video-3
Transcript for all three 
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/the-power-of-big-oil/transcript/

/[ Nate Hagens ]/
*Reality, Probability, and Perception | Frankly #29*
Nate Hagens
Apr 14, 2023  #thegreatsimplification #frankly #natehagens
Recorded April 10, 2023
Description
In this Frankly, Nate explains how he views the future from a 
probability perspective - a tool frequently used in industries such as 
finance, retirement planning, and by e.g. gamblers. While there will be 
only one eventual outcome, the possible paths to that future fall in a 
distribution, with some results much more likely than others. We can 
shift these results with our actions in the present. However, no one 
person can know this distribution perfectly, only the distribution 
shaped by their own bias, knowledge, and perspective. How might we use a 
probabilistic approach to better understand what’s possible - and even 
to better relate to others? By thinking of the future as a spectrum, can 
we avoid falling into traps of certainty and complacency that inevitably 
lead to inaction? While there are some outcomes that are impossible, 
there are still many within our power to steer towards during a 
Simplification.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWn2svl6aBU

/[The news archive - looking back]/
/*April 15, 1988, 2013, 2014*/
April 15, 1988: In a speech at St. John's University in New York, 
Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore states (specifically in 
reference to the threat of nuclear weapons, though the statement 
certainly applies to *another* worldwide threat): "I believe that it is 
possible that future generations will look back on this election year of 
1988 and wonder with amazement how we could have let these problems go 
unattended for so long."

(22:50--23:01)
http://c-spanvideo.org/program/GoreCampa

- -

April 15, 2013: InsideClimate News wins the Pulitzer Prize for national 
reporting.

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20130415/insideclimate-news-team-wins-pulitzer-prize-national-reporting

- -
April 15, 2014:

• The New York Times reports on political obstacles to action on climate 
change in Congress.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/15/us/politics/political-rifts-slow-us-effort-on-climate-laws.html

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