[✔️] March 9, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | Allergies, worst places to live, Sen Whitehouse, Whales migrate, Finland in February, Eco-Ogre,
Richard Pauli
Richard at CredoandScreed.com
Thu Mar 9 07:56:08 EST 2023
/*March 9, 2023*/
/[ Your nose knows already ClimateCentral reports ]/
*Allergy Season: Earlier, Longer, and Worse*
KEY CONCEPTS
--- Plants are leafing and blooming earlier, and the overall growing
season is lasting longer across much of the U.S.
--- Analysis of temperature data for 203 U.S. cities shows the
freeze-free season lengthened by more than two weeks (15 days) on
average since 1970.
--- For millions of Americans that suffer from seasonal allergies to
pollen and mold, climate change is bringing an earlier, longer, and
overall worse allergy season.
--- Climate Central’s new report Seasonal Allergies: Pollen and Mold
details more of the weather and climate trends that are worsening
allergy season and the associated health risks.
https://assets.ctfassets.net/cxgxgstp8r5d/6HEq6ZLb0QpvXxScvaM7sc/411f03463f31a963499e7069c924902e/FINALSeasonal_allergies_pollen_and_mold_2023__EN_.pdf
* Seasonal allergies: pollen and mold*
Millions of Americans suffer from seasonal allergies each year, and
climate change is making it
worse.
About one-quarter of adults (26%) and 19% of children in the U.S.
suffer from seasonal allergies,
according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Seasonal allergies, such as “hay
fever,” are allergic reactions caused by airborne plant pollen and
mold spores.
A growing body of research shows that warming temperatures, shifting
seasonal patterns, and
more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere—all linked to climate change
and greenhouse gas
emissions—are affecting the length and intensity of allergy season
in the U.S.
Allergies are more than just inconvenient—they are expensive to
manage and can have
significant health implications, such as triggering or worsening
asthma. But there are ways to
mitigate the impact of allergies in a changing climate.
This research brief provides background information and summarizes
Climate Central’s relevant
analyses on weather and climate trends that affect allergy season
locally. These resources can
help explain and report on the growing health risks of outdoor
aeroallergens and their
connection to climate change.
Many plants reproduce by releasing small pollen grains. Small pollen
particles can be carried by
wind, making them more easily inhaled.
When and how pollen grains are dispersed depends on the plant
species and local conditions,
among other factors.
Many tree species release pollen in the spring. Grass pollen often
peaks during the summer,
while weeds—such as ragweed—emit pollen into the fall. This is a
typical pattern of pollen
release for much of the country—but in some regions, plants release
pollen in the winter, too.
https://www.climatecentral.org/climate-matters/allergy-season-earlier-longer-and-worse-2023
/[ Bottom 10 ]/
*Revealed: the 10 worst places to live in US for air pollution*
A Guardian analysis using cutting-edge modelling developed by
researchers tracks deadly PM2.5 levels
- -
10. Central areas in Birmingham, Alabama...
9. A semi-circle of neighborhoods in central Atlanta...
8. Semi-rural areas in central Pennsylvania...
7. A swath of the St Louis Metro Area...
6. A large portion of Houston...
5. A central swath of Indianapolis, Indiana...
4. North-west Indiana industrial zones...
3. Chicago’s South and West Sides...
2. South Los Angeles...
1. Bakersfield, California, area...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/08/10-most-air-polluted-places-to-live-us
- -
/[ Check your neighborhood ]/
*Do you live in an air pollution hotspot? Search our map*
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2023/mar/08/air-pollution-interactive-map-usa-hotspots
/[ NYTimes reports ]/
*Same Message, Bigger Audience: Sen. Whitehouse Flags Climate Costs*
For more than a decade, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse gave daily warnings
about the mounting threat of climate change. Now he has a powerful new
perch.
By Coral Davenport
March 8, 2023
WASHINGTON — Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, has
given 287 speeches on the Senate floor raising alarms about climate
change, often delivered mainly to the C-SPAN cameras in a nearly empty
chamber.
But now Mr. Whitehouse has a much bigger megaphone for his zeal for
saving the planet, and one with real power: earlier this year, Mr.
Whitehouse became chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, which shapes
federal spending and revenue. He is using his new authority to argue
that a warming planet poses fiscal dangers, injecting climate change
into the partisan fight over federal spending, just as economists warned
that the nation is nearing a catastrophic default on its debt.
At his first committee hearing as chairman on Feb. 15, he focused on the
risks of climate change to the federal budget and the global economy. He
gave each of his colleagues a 615-page binder detailing the fiscal
threats posed by droughts, storms, wildfires and rising seas...
“I can make the case for the danger of unchecked climate change blowing
the debt through the roof, in the same way that both the mortgage
meltdown and the pandemic together added $10 trillion to the deficit,”
he said in an interview.
“We have all these warnings,” Mr. Whitehouse said at the Feb. 15
hearing. “Warnings of crashes in coastal property values as rising seas
and more powerful storms hit the 30-year mortgage horizon. Warnings of
insurance collapse from more frequent, intense and unpredictable
wildfires. A dangerous interplay between the insurance and mortgage
markets hitting real estate markets across the country. Inflation from
decreased agricultural yields. Massive infrastructure demand. Trouble in
municipal bond markets.”
The new chairman is also pushing a solution that he believes could draw
support from at least a handful of Republicans, even if they aren’t
eager to support climate action. It’s essentially a tariff added to
imported goods like steel and cement based on the carbon emissions
created by their production. Analysts project that a carbon tariff
placed on imported steel and aluminum, just two of many products that
would be covered, could raise tens of billions of dollars over a decade.
“It advantages American industry and pokes at China’s pollution,” Mr.
Whitehouse said. “And anything that is anti-China warms the cockles of
Republicans’ hearts.”...
- -
Frank Maisano, a veteran Republican media strategist with the firm
Bracewell LLP, which lobbies for fossil fuel companies, said that
despite Mr. Whitehouse’s endless quest to fight climate change, he has
distinguished himself by being willing to work with Republicans.
“Sheldon is willing to go over that line and talk to people and find
practical solutions,” Mr. Maisano said. “It’s shone through already in
his work on carbon capture and nuclear. A lot of these climate
activists, and House progressives, would never be willing to do that.”
Would that ever translate into enough Republican votes to pass a carbon
tariff?
Mr. Maisano paused.
“Perhaps,” he said. “There’s a middle ground there if you’re willing to
find it, and guys like Sheldon Whitehouse have been willing to find it —
even with his strong values on the environmental side.“
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/climate/sheldon-whitehouse-climate-senator.html
/[ Of course, the biggest, most common question - well informed talk -
11 min YouTube video ] /
*Are we all doomed? A climate scientist weighs in.*
Armchair Explorers
Feb 26, 2023
Climate change questions answered.
Q1: Will climate change wipe out humanity?
Anyone who claims this with any certainty is not looking at the science.
What does the science say? Climate change is scary, but we're still well
within the realm where our efforts can prevent the worst outcomes. We
need to transition to a low-carbon future, the sooner the better.
Sources:
1. Hilton B. Is climate change the greatest threat facing humanity
today? 80,000 Hours. 2022. Available from:
https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/climate-change/
2. IPCC. Summary for Policymakers. In: Masson-Delmotte V, Zhai P, Pirani
A, Connors SL, Péan C, Berger S, et al., editors. Climate Change 2021:
The Physical Science Basis Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth
Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Cambridge University Press. In Press.; 2021. Available from:
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/
3. UN. Climate change recognized as ‘threat multiplier’, UN Security
Council debates its impact on peace | UN News. 2019. Available from:
https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/01/1031322
4. WHO. The top 10 causes of death. 2020. Available from:
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-(outdoor)-air-quality-and-health
5. WHO. Ambient (outdoor) air pollution. 2022. Available from:
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-(outdoor)-air-quality-and-health
6. van Oldenborgh GJ, van der Wiel K, Kew S, Philip S, Otto F, Vautard
R, et al. Pathways and Pitfalls in extreme event attribution – World
Weather Attribution. 202. Available from:
https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/pathways-and-pitfalls-in-extreme-event-attribution/
7. Ritchie H, Rosado P, Roser M. Natural Disasters. Our World in Data.
2022 Dec 7; Available from: https://ourworldindata.org/natural-disasters
8. Dunne D. Impact of climate change on health is ‘the major threat of
21st century’. Carbon Brief. 2017. Available from:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/impact-climate-change-health-is-major-threat-21st-century/
9. Mahlstein I, Knutti R, Solomon S, Portmann RW. Early onset of
significant local warming in low latitude countries. Environ Res Lett.
2011 Jul;6(3):034009.
10. Harrington LJ, Frame DJ, Fischer EM, Hawkins E, Joshi M, Jones CD.
Poorest countries experience earlier anthropogenic emergence of daily
temperature extremes. Environ Res Lett. 2016 May;11(5):055007.
11. Douglas HC, Harrington LJ, Joshi M, Hawkins E, Revell LE, Frame DJ.
Changes to population-based emergence of climate change from CMIP5 to
CMIP6. Environ Res Lett. 2022; Available from:
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aca91e
12. McSweeney R, Pearce R, Prater T. Interactive: The impacts of climate
change at 1.5C, 2C and beyond | Carbon Brief. 2018. Available from:
https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/impacts-climate-change-one-point-five-degrees-two-degrees/
13. Pal JS, Eltahir EAB. Future temperature in southwest Asia projected
to exceed a threshold for human adaptability. Nature Clim Change. 2016
Feb;6(2):197–200.
14. Ritchie J, Dowlatabadi H. Why do climate change scenarios return to
coal? Energy. 2017 Dec 1;140:1276–91.
15. Armstrong McKay DI, Staal A, Abrams JF, Winkelmann R, Sakschewski B,
Loriani S, et al. Exceeding 1.5°C global warming could trigger multiple
climate tipping points. Science. 2022 Sep 9;377(6611):eabn7950.
16. Lenton TM, Held H, Kriegler E, Hall JW, Lucht W, Rahmstorf S, et al.
Tipping elements in the Earth’s climate system. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences. 2008 Feb 12;105(6):1786–93.
17. Roser M. Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?. Our World in
Data. 2020. Available from:
https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
18. Clarke L, Edmonds J, Jacoby H, Pitcher H, Reilly J, Richels R.
Scenarios of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Atmospheric Concentrations.
In: Sub-report 21A of Synthesis and Assessment Product 21 by the US
Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change
Research. Department of Energy, Office of Biological & Environmental
Research, Washington, DC., USA; 2007. p. 154.
19. Riahi K, Grübler A, Nakicenovic N. Scenarios of long-term
socio-economic and environmental development under climate
stabilization. Technological Forecasting and Social Change. 2007 Sep
1;74(7):887–935.
20. van Vuuren DP, den Elzen MGJ, Lucas PL, Eickhout B, Strengers BJ,
van Ruijven B, et al. Stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations at low
levels: an assessment of reduction strategies and costs. Climatic
Change. 2007 Mar 1;81(2):119–59.
21. Global Carbon Project. Global Carbon Budget 2022. 2022. Available
from: https://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/index.htm
22. Flynn C, Yamasumi E, Fisher S, Snow D, Grant Z, Kirby M, et al. The
Peoples’ Climate Vote. United Nations Development Programme; 2021 Jan.
Available from: https://www.undp.org/publications/peoples-climate-vote
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scXY34nV4LM
/[ Understand the changes ... video ]/
*What Could THOUSANDS of Mysterious Whales Tell Us About Our Weather?*
PBS Terra
7,058 views Mar 7, 2023
The Arctic is experiencing global warming much faster than the rest of
the world. A new study shows four times faster, in fact! One of the
effects of this accelerated warming is the melting sea ice in the
Arctic. And researchers off the southeast coast of Greenland have
started to notice some surprising and alarming new guests.
A variety of exotic marine life have begun to move in, now able to live
in the warmer waters. And while this may serve as a boon to some of the
inhabitants of the region and its fishing economy, it also signals
profound and likely permanent ecosystem changes and points toward the
kinds of tipping points we may see if we continue emitting greenhouse
gasses into the atmosphere. Tune into this episode of Weathered to learn
about what some of the unexpected consequences might be from the warming
Arctic to our jetstream and our Weather.
Weathered is a show hosted by weather expert Maiya May and produced by
Balance Media that helps explain the most common natural disasters, what
causes them, how they’re changing, and what we can do to prepare.
This episode of Weathered is licensed exclusively to YouTube.Subscribe
to PBS Terra so you never miss an episode! https://bit.ly/3mOfd77
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo90uHHN6R8&
/[ Watch the changes in that area ]/
*Finland’s temperatures 2-3 degrees warmer than usual in February*
February was milder than usual across Finland, according to the Finnish
Meteorological Institute (FMI).
The biggest deviations from average temperatures were measured in
Ostrobothnia and Lapland, where the mercury rose about three degrees
Celsius above the normal average for February.
Average temperatures during the month ranged from around the freezing
point in the Finnish Archipelago to about -9 degrees in central and
northern Lapland.
The lowest temperature measured last month was a bone-chilling -33.4
degrees Celsius at the Lompolonvuoma observation station in Kittilä,
Finnish Lapland, on 22 February.
Finland’s average temperatures were also milder than usual last month.
For example, January was the third-warmest on record in the
Ostrobothnian municipality of Kronoby.
Western areas also saw less snowfall in February than normal, according
to FMI
https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/climate-crisis/2023/03/finlands-temperatures-2-3-degrees-warmer-usual-february
/[ do math the easiest way possible ]/
*Simpler Math Predicts How Close Ecosystems Are to Collapse*
By replacing thousands of equations with just one, ecology modelers can
more accurately assess how close fragile environments are to a
disastrous “tipping point.”
"It’s like tilting a glass of water, explained György Barabas, a
theoretical ecologist at Linköping University in Sweden. “If we push it
a little bit, it will return,” he said. “But if we push it too far, it
will tip over.” Once the glass is toppled over, a small push can’t
return the glass to an upright position or refill it with water."
- -
Last August in Nature Ecology & Evolution, Gao and an international team
of colleagues showed how to squish thousands of calculations into just
one by collapsing all the interactions into a single weighted average.
That simplification reduces the formidable complexity to just a handful
of key drivers.
“With one equation, we know everything,” Gao said. “Before, you have a
feeling. Now you have a number.”...
- -
Moreover, since the August publication, the researchers have already
figured out two ways to make the calculation more accurate for
heterogeneous ecosystems. They’re also incorporating other types of
interactions within an ecosystem, including predator-prey relationships
and a type of interaction called competitive dynamics.
It took 10 years to develop this equation, Gao said, and it will take
many more for the equations to accurately predict outcomes for
real-world ecosystems — years that are precious because the need for
interventions seems pressing. But he isn’t disheartened, perhaps
because, as Barabas noted, even foundational models that provide a proof
of concept or a simple illustration of an idea can be useful. “By making
it easier to analyze certain types of models … they can help even if
they are not used to make explicit predictions for real communities,”
Barabas said.
Lenton agreed. “When you’re faced with complex systems, from a position
of relative ignorance, anything is good,” he said. “I’m excited because
I feel like we’re getting really toward the practical point of actually
being able to do better.”
The team recently showed the model’s usefulness by applying it to data
from a seagrass restoration project in the mid-Atlantic that dates back
to 1999. The researchers determined the specific amount of seagrass that
needed restoration for the ecosystem to recover. In the future, Gao
plans to work with ecologists to run the model on Lake George in New
York, which Rensselaer often uses as a test bed.
Gao’s hope is that someday the model can help inform decisions about
conservation and restoration efforts to prevent irreversible damage.
“Even when we know the system is declining,” he said, “we still have
time to do something.”
https://www.quantamagazine.org/simpler-math-predicts-how-close-ecosystems-are-to-collapse-20230306/
/[The news archive - looking back at one of the biggest eco-ogres ever
to inhabit government.]/
/*March 9, 2017*/
March 9, 2017: In an appearance on CNBC, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt
denies human-caused climate change.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/09/epa-chief-scott-pruitt.html
https://thinkprogress.org/epa-head-falsely-claims-carbon-emissions-arent-the-cause-of-global-warming-262bd9b0937e#.oaigkdwq0
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/09/us/politics/epa-scott-pruitt-global-warming.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur
*E.P.A. Chief Doubts Consensus View of Climate Change*
Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. administrator, spoke at an energy
conference in Houston on Thursday. “The future ain’t what it used to
be at the E.P.A.,” he said.
By Coral Davenport
March 9, 2017
WASHINGTON — Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection
Agency, said on Thursday that carbon dioxide was not a primary
contributor to global warming, a statement at odds with the
established scientific consensus on climate change.
Asked his views on the role of carbon dioxide, the heat-trapping gas
produced by burning fossil fuels, in increasing global warming, Mr.
Pruitt said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that “I think that measuring with
precision human activity on the climate is something very
challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the
degree of impact, so, no, I would not agree that it’s a primary
contributor to the global warming that we see.”
“But we don’t know that yet,” he added. “We need to continue the
debate and continue the review and the analysis.”
Mr. Pruitt’s statement contradicts decades of research and analysis
by international scientific institutions and federal agencies,
including the E.P.A. His remarks on Thursday, which were more
categorical than similar testimony before the Senate, may also put
him in conflict with laws and regulations that the E.P.A. is charged
with enforcing...
=======================================
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