[✔️] April 16, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | McKibben warns, talking with children, Climate-proof city, 500 days underground, Nautilus is alive, Kim Stanley Robinson, $security, 2008

Sun Apr 16 08:23:08 EDT 2023

/*April*//*16, 2023*/

/[ Opinion - much bigger changes due]/
*We're in for a stretch of heavy climate*
Ominous signs that the next step phase of global warming is starting;
Bill McKibben
Apr 15. 2023...
Every degree Celsius that we warm the planet means the atmosphere holds 
more water vapor; as native Floridian and ace environmental reporter 
Dinah Voyles Pulver pointed out, “with temperatures in the Gulf running 
3 to 4 degrees above normal recently, that's at least 15% more rainfall 
piled up on top of a ‘normal’ storm.”

Get ready for far more of it; there are myriad scattered signs that 
we’re about to go into a phase of particularly steep climbs in global 
temperature. They’re likely to reach impressive new global records—and 
that’s certain to produce havoc we’ve not seen before.
- -
This week’s Fort Lauderdale rainstorm was, on the one hand, an utter 
freak of nature (storms ‘trained’ on the same small geography for hours 
on end, dropping 25 inches of rain in seven hours; the previous record 
for all of April was 19 inches) and on the other hand utterly 
predictable. Every degree Celsius that we warm the planet means the 
atmosphere holds more water vapor; as native Floridian and ace 
environmental reporter Dinah Voyles Pulver pointed out, “with 
temperatures in the Gulf running 3 to 4 degrees above normal recently, 
that's at least 15% more rainfall piled up on top of a ‘normal’ storm.”

Get ready for far more of it; there are myriad scattered signs that 
we’re about to go into a phase of particularly steep climbs in global 
temperature. They’re likely to reach impressive new global records—and 
that’s certain to produce havoc we’ve not seen before...
I don’t say all this in the service of despair, but of preparation. We 
need to be psychologically prepared for the fact that, for all we’ve 
tried to do together, this crisis is about to worsen. Forewarned is, to 
some small extent, forearmed. I suppose some might need to prepare 
themselves individually too, though that’s not my focus (Alex Steffen, 
the futurist, has begun offering courses on ‘ruggedization,’ which links 
personal preparation to community resilience, and defintiely beats 
buying out-of-date MREs from your favorite rightwing podcaster).

But we really need to be prepared politically. Each of these surges in 
warming unleashed by the next El Nino comes with new political 
possibilities, as people see and feel more clearly our peril. At the 
moment, our climate politics, like our climate itself, is a little 
stalled. The surge of change that came from Greta’s school strikes, the 
Paris accords, the Green New Deal has waned; we’re in a new stalemate 
where the oil industry has learned to rely on delay instead of denial. 
It often takes them a few years, but eventually they get good at working 
the politics—for the moment, for instance, they’ve got their captive 
state treasurers locking banks and asset managers in place with the 
charged that worrying about the fiscal implications of the climate 
crisis represents ‘woke capitalism.’

As the next round of savage heatwaves proceeds, it will come with new 
pressure for action from our governments and corporations. We need to be 
able to channel that pressure effectively, with key goals in mind: the 
absolute end to new fossil fuel development and exploration, the quick 
weaning from existing supplies of coal and gas and oil and with it the 
equally rapid buildout of cleaner sources of energy, the unwavering 
support for the places and people hardest hit. There will be all sorts 
of emotions; I hope that the anger people will rightly feel is channeled 
toward the corporate and legal destruction of the companies that have 
lied for three decades and still represent the largest barrier to change.

It’s just the right moment for Not Too Late, a new anthology compiled by 
two old friends who are also among the most stalwart leaders of the 
climate fight. Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young-Latunatabua have managed 
something important: an alternative to doomism that isn’t sentimental or 
treacly, but absolutely serious. “Hope is not the guarantee that things 
will be okay,” Young-Lutunatabua says. “It’s the recognition that 
there’s spaciousness for action, that the future is uncertain, and in 
that uncertainty, we have space to step into and make the future we 
want.” I agree with that—with the caveat that the spaciousness doesn’t 
last forever. I have the strong instinct that this El Nino may be the 
last of these moments that the earth offers us in a time frame still 
relevant to making coherent and savvy civilization-scale change. We dare 
not misuse it.
- -
The rise in sea level seems to be suddenly accelerating, especially 
along the southeast U.S., according to a fascinating account in the 
Washington Post.

This much seems clear: The rapid sea-level rise appears to start in the 
Gulf of Mexico, which has been warming far faster than the global ocean. 
Warm water naturally expands, causing sea levels to rise. That warm 
water also gets carried by currents out of the gulf and along the East 
Coast, affecting places such as Georgia and the Carolinas.
- -
Meanwhile, here’s the bottom of all bottom lines: NOAA reports that the 
atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases spiked sharply again last 
year. This is what all our work is about:
Levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide, the three 
greenhouse gases emitted by human activity that are the most significant 
contributors to climate change, continued their historically high rates 
of growth in the atmosphere during 2022, according to NOAA scientists.

The global surface average for CO2 rose by 2.13 parts per million (ppm) 
to 417.06 ppm, roughly the same rate observed during the last decade. 
Atmospheric CO2 is now 50% higher than pre-industrial levels. 2022 was 
the 11th consecutive year CO2 increased by more than 2 ppm, the highest 
sustained rate of CO2 increases in the 65 years since monitoring began. 
Prior to 2013, three consecutive years of CO2  growth of 2 ppm or more 
had never been recorded.
https://open.substack.com/pub/billmckibben/p/were-in-for-a-stretch-of-heavy-climate

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/[ Talking to our children --  save this text ]
/*You’re Going To Have To Teach Your Kids About Climate Change. Here’s How.*
You want to be honest with children about environmental challenges like 
climate change – but also leave them room for hope. Here are some ways 
to strike a balance.
By Marie Holmes
Apr 14, 2023
“We always think as parents that they don’t know what we’re talking 
about, but they actually are hearing what we’re saying and they’re 
internalizing those feelings,” Burt told HuffPost.

While we don’t want to hide the seriousness of threats like climate 
change from our children, we can frame the information in ways that 
leave the door open for hope...

HuffPost asked several scientists and environmental activists who also 
happen to be parents for tips on how to talk to kids about these issues...

    *1. Spend time in nature with your kids...*

    *2. Limit exposure to media coverage of disasters...*

    *3. Examine your own feelings...*

    *4. Allow them to express their fears and find ways to take action...*

    *5. Learn together about environmental challenges and potential
    solutions...*

    *6. Offer positive examples...*

    *7. Strike a hopeful note...*

    *8. Find community...*

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-to-teach-kids-environmental-threats_l_6437034de4b0ac4091893d90 

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/[ The endless quest for better space - "Where Can We Go?" --  podcast 
from the New Republic  ]
/*In Pursuit of the Climate-Proof City*
As extreme weather events drive more people from their homes, the idea 
of moving to “safe” places—even before disaster strikes—has assumed 
particular urgency.
- -
*Alex Pareene: *For anyone familiar with the town, the idea of Duluth as 
a place to escape to rather than from is a bit surreal. Bob Dylan spent 
his earliest years there. Here’s what he remembers about his hometown: 
“The violent storms that always seemed to be coming straight at you and 
merciless howling winds off the big black mysterious lake with 
treacherous ten-foot waves.”
- -
*Debra: *Choosing to move right now because of climate change is a 
privilege. It’s people who have the privilege to be able to do so both 
financially based on the fact that they have education and jobs that are 
portable, based on the fact that they have support systems that they can 
either take with them or they don’t rely upon so they can move. If 
you’re a single mom and you rely on family nearby to watch your 
children, you can’t pick up and move across the country because you’re 
not going to have that. There is a lot of privilege inherent with the 
ability to move, and the people I spoke to who’ve done it are very aware 
of that as well. There’s also this concern that nobody wants to come 
into a place that they’re choosing to go to as a refuge and then be a 
gentrifier. Nobody wants to have that role, but it’s unavoidable if 
you’re coming in from an economy where your finances go a lot further. 
There’s a lot of complicated ethical and moral pieces to this.
- -
*Debra:* It’s starting. It’s not at the point that I personally think it 
should be based on the irrefutable evidence that we have that climate 
change is happening and it’s getting more extreme, but you are 
absolutely seeing it. For example, in California, you can now find that 
it’s impossible to get wildfire insurance in places where you used to be 
able to get it. And then you have stories like Kim Kardashian and other 
celebrities hiring their own firefighters during wildfires—because they 
simply have the resources to take care of the problem themselves—when 
you have homeowners who will either lose their homes or they’ll have to 
pick up and move to get out of an area of danger. You also have insights 
on Zillow or realtor.com now—there’s flood risk ratings and other 
climate change ratings that appear on home listings, a new thing that 
didn’t exist until a few years ago. Whether or not buyers are aware of 
or are looking at it, I don’t know, because the fastest selling areas of 
the country are still the ones that are most at risk. It’s the coast, 
it’s the warm areas, also the places where home prices are the highest 
because people are either not aware of it or they don’t want to see it. 
But it’s there. The risk is there. It’s playing into the financial 
decisions that banks and lenders are making, but very slowly...
- -
*Jake Bittle: *Disasters are already displacing hundreds of thousands or 
millions of people for any length of time each year. Most of those 
people do end up making it back home. But if even a few tens of 
thousands per year don’t end up making it back to the same places that 
they lived before, then you’re talking about, in the single to double 
digit, millions by the mid-century. Most of those movements are over 
relatively short geographic distances. Even when they’re permanent, 
they’re still moving 10 to 15 miles within the same city or within the 
same metropolitan area, but I think that by the middle of the century, 
you’re going to see more of those movements starting to be longer 
distances. It starts to add up. And it doesn’t look like one coherent 
movement or march northward, but it’s a lot of people, and there’s this 
just element of instability that I think becomes chronic for people who 
live in areas that are perennially prone to disasters...
- -
*Jake: *For the most part, climate change is usually the main factor in 
so many people leaving a certain place if they lose their home or if it 
gets too expensive to live there because there’s not enough housing 
because it got destroyed in a fire. Where people end up right now 
doesn’t seem to be predominantly influenced by considerations of climate 
change. In fact, it looks like people just started to mimic the existing 
trends of migration that are independent of climate change. We have a 
lot of movement into Sunbelt states. People want to live in places like 
Dallas, Atlanta. And so people from the most vulnerable areas like 
coastal Louisiana, California, when they get displaced by climate 
change, they just merge onto the highway of existing migration trends. 
If the South becomes much less hospitable because of extreme heat—which 
is like a chronic problem, it’s not just like once every 10 years—then 
maybe those places start to look a lot less appealing...

https://newrepublic.com/article/171759/pursuit-climate-proof-city?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tnr_weekly 

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/[( how to face the changes to our planet )]/
*Spanish woman emerges after spending 500 days living alone in cave*
Beatriz Flamini says she endured swarms of flies, read 60 books and 
never missed the sunlight
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/14/spanish-woman-emerges-after-spending-500-days-living-alone-in-cave

/[  Explorer Prof. Peter Ward and Nautilus ]/
*He's studied these ‘living fossils’ for over 50 years. They’re still a 
bit of a mystery*
Kim Malcolm
John O'Brien
April 14, 2023...
- -
*Ward shared specific concerns about humanity's future.*

I think the runaway greenhouse is going to continue. Rising sea level is 
the greatest threat because it very quickly causes fertile land to 
become salinated. Most rice is grown at very, very low elevations. You 
just raise the sea level by two meters and a huge percentage of current 
rice crops are going to disappear. People get hungry, they get cranky, 
and they get warlike. This is my greatest fear.

Humans, we can build what we need to survive. We as a species are not 
going to be killed by climate change. One-hundred years from now, 200 
years from now, if there are still nuclear weapons, which there probably 
will be, then we could see the extinction of humans, but the climate 
itself won't kill us. So I guess that's optimism and pessimism in the 
same point.

https://kuow.org/stories/he-s-studied-these-living-fossils-for-over-50-years-they-re-still-a-bit-of-a-mystery

/[ interview ]/
*Kim Stanley Robinson: "Climate, Fiction, and The Future" | The Great 
Simplification #66*
Nate Hagens
3,661 views  Apr 12, 2023  The Great Simplification - with Nate Hagens
Show Summary:

    On this episode, Nate is joined by climate science fiction author
    Kim Stanley Robinson to discuss how he contributes to the discussion
    of climate and pro-social change-making through writing. There have
    been many calls to improve the communication of scientists to the
    general public in hopes it will help people understand the severity
    of the various global threats we face. A key component to such
    communication comes from art and literature. Even further, the
    humanities help us think about the type of future and culture we
    want to have given the information that science brings us. How can
    we incorporate fiction into our set of tools to bring more people
    into awareness of the pressing systemic dynamics underpinning global
    events?

About Kim Stanley Robinson:
Kim Stanley Robinson is an American science fiction writer. He is the 
author of about twenty books, including the internationally bestselling 
Mars trilogy, and more recently Red Moon, New York 2140, and The 
Ministry for the Future. He was part of the U.S. National Science 
Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers’ Program in 1995 and 2016, 
and a featured speaker at COP-26 in Glasgow, as a guest of the UK 
government and the UN. His work has been translated into 28 languages, 
and won awards including the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards. In 
2016 asteroid 72432 was named “Kimrobinson.”
https://youtu.be/Xc53KPv7flk

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*The Enhancement and Standardization of Climate-Related Disclosures for 
Investors*
   (Letter)
Tim Malloch writes to the Securities and Exchange Commission in response 
to consultation on the proposed rules for climate-related standard 
disclosures for investors. He proposes that central banks should move 
from their current positions as observers and intervene to introduce a 
carbon coin.
https://globalcarbonreward.org/newsletters/carbon-coin/

/[The news archive - looking back]/
/*April 16, 2008*/
April 16, 2008: President George W. Bush delivers a widely panned Rose 
Garden speech on carbon pollution.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89713249

https://www.c-span.org/video/?204885-1/global-climate-change

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/16/AR2008041603084.html

http://youtu.be/yg5Z62Gzc4I (Fox's spin, er, coverage)

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