[✔️] March 12, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | Willow drill, Eco-economics, Attribution, drought in Europe

Sun Mar 12 10:51:48 EDT 2023

/*March 12, 2023*/

/[ Twitter media campaign  ]/
*4 Reasons Biden Shouldn’t Approve The Willow Project*
The Willow Arctic drilling project might be a climate disaster waiting 
to happen — and Pres. Biden is about to decide whether to approve it
https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1634412079149903877
- -
https://twitter.com/commondreams/status/1634443772447662080?

*"The proposed expansion of oil and gas drilling in Alaska is recklessly 
irresponsible," former Vice President Al Gore says of the Willow oil 
project. #StopWillow*
**
*Echoing Climate TikTok, Al Gore Says Biden OK of Willow Would Be 
'Recklessly Irresponsible'*
"As I watch millions of people join the #StopWillow movement, these 
staggering numbers send a clear message that today's youth expect 
President Biden and Secretary Haaland to step up," said one activist.
 From climate campaigners on TikTok to former Vice President Al Gore, 
people who care about the planet across the United States are pressuring 
the Biden administration to block ConocoPhillips' multibillion-dollar 
Willow oil project in Alaska.

    "We don't need to prop up the fossil fuel industry with new,
    multiyear projects that are a recipe for climate chaos."- -

Though Willow is backed by Alaska's three-member congressional 
delegation, Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy, and the state Legislature, 
opponents of the project have taken social media by storm with the 
hashtag #StopWillow.

"I have never seen so many videos, so many comments, mentions about a 
climate topic on social media," 26-year-old Alaina Wood, a scientist and 
climate activist with more than 353,500 followers on the video platform 
TikTok, told The Washington Post Tuesday.
- -
A Change.org petition urging Biden to stop Willow—now signed by more 
than 3 million people and promoted by groups including the 
Indigenous-led NDN Collective—declares that "there must come a point 
where human health, food security, environmental justice, and a 
functioning ecosystem come before corporate profit."...
- -
Even if the Biden administration gives Willow the green light, that 
approval is expected to be met with legal challenges.

"I think that litigation is very likely," Earthjustice senior attorney 
Jeremy Lieb told The Guardian. “We and our clients don't see any 
acceptable version of this project."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/willow-project-tiktok-climate-biden?

- -

/[Toward a greater understanding ]/
*“Ecological Economics” titled: “Economics for the Future: Beyond the 
SuperOrganism” *
N.J. Hagens
Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future, United States
Highlights
•  We lack a cohesive map on how behavior, economy, and the environment 
interconnect.

•  Global human society is functioning as an energy dissipating 
superorganism.

•  Climate change is but one of many symptoms emergent from this growth 
dynamic.

•  Culturally, this “Superorganism” doesn’t need to be the destiny of 
Homo sapiens.

•  A systems economics can inform the ‘reconstruction’ after financial 
recalibration.

    *Abstract*
    Our environment and economy are at a crossroads. This paper attempts
    a cohesive narrative on how human evolved behavior, money, energy,
    economy and the environment fit together. Humans strive for the same
    emotional state of our successful ancestors. In a resource rich
    environment, we coordinate in groups, corporations and nations, to
    maximize financial surplus, tethered to energy, tethered to carbon.
    At global scales, the emergent result of this combination is a
    mindless, energy hungry, CO2 emitting Superorganism. Under this
    dynamic we are now behaviorally ‘growth constrained’ and will use
    any means possible to avoid facing this reality. The farther we kick
    the can, the larger the disconnect between our financial and
    physical reality becomes. The moment of this recalibration will be a
    watershed time for our culture, but could also be the birth of a new
    ‘systems economics’. and resultant different ways of living. The
    next 30 years are the time to apply all we’ve learned during the
    past 30 years. We’ve arrived at a species level conversation.

“Ecological Economics addresses the relationships between ecosystems and 
economic systems in the broadest sense.” – Robert Costanza, (the first 
sentence in the first article in the first issue of Ecological Economics)

“The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic 
emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology.”– E.O. Wilson

“We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less 
and less meaning.” –Jean Baudrillard

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed 
until it is faced.” – James Baldwin
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800919310067

/[ an important web site to revisit  ]/
*World Weather Attribution*
Since 2015 the World Weather Attribution (WWA) initiative has been 
conducting real-time attribution analysis of extreme weather events as 
they happen around the world. This provides the public, scientists and 
decision-makers with the means to make clear connections between 
greenhouse gas emissions and impactful extreme weather events, such as 
storms, floods, heatwaves and droughts.

We research and develop scientific tools and methodologies to perform 
timely and robust assessments of whether and to what extent 
human-induced climate change played a role in the magnitude and 
frequency of extreme weather events.

We’ve made real and significant advances in isolating the climate signal 
in the costly impacts of such events, in both developed and developing 
countries. Our partners are at the forefront of this emerging scientific 
field.
https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/

/[ dry Summer in Europe -- now in Winter drought -- video overview of 
the predicament  ]/
*European Water Crisis Worsens as Heat Waves and Drought Continue to 
Blanket the Continent*
Paul Beckwith
Mar 11, 2023
Lots of Europe is bone-dry at the moment. The normal precipitation this 
winter has not materialized, so consequently lakes, reservoirs, and 
rivers are at much lower water levels than normal, by about 50 to 60% or 
even more. The famed ski resorts in the Alps are suffering from greatly 
reduced snow pack accumulation.

Last summer Europe endured its most severe and widespread drought in 500 
years, and there has been no recovery since then. Thus, this years 
drought has a four to five month head start over what occurred last 
year. There is almost no precipitation in the forecast either.

Ground water measurements by the GRACE gravity anomaly satellites show 
that lack of water in Europe has actually been occurring since 2018.

In this video I chat about this extremely dire water situation in Europe 
and the abrupt climate system change causes (attribution studies show 
20x worsening of droughts). I wonder whether this is a weather 
whiplashing situation where there will be an excess of water in a few 
years, or if this is becoming a quasi-permanent situation for Europe. I 
wonder if the jet stream has actually started rotation about a lower 
latitude center-of-cold with the lack of Arctic Sea Ice, and is actually 
passing south of Europe more frequently
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8lrxXaoVac

/[The news archive - looking back at a huge train crash 8 years ago -- 
what did we learn?  what fixed? ]/
/*March 12, 2015 */
March 12, 2015:
In the New York Times, Marcus Stern observes:

"A CSX freight train ran off the rails last month in rural Mount Carbon, 
W.Va. One after another, exploding rail cars sent hellish fireballs 
hundreds of feet into the clear winter sky. Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin 
declared a state of emergency, and the fires burned for several days.

"The Feb. 16 accident was one of a series of recent fiery derailments 
highlighting the danger of using freight trains to ship crude oil from 
wellheads in North Dakota to refineries in congested regions along 
America’s coastlines. The most recent was last week, when a Burlington 
Northern Santa Fe oil train with roughly 100 cars derailed, causing at 
least two cars, each with about 30,000 gallons of crude oil, to explode, 
burn and leak near the Mississippi River, south of Galena, Ill.

"These explosions have generally been attributed to the design of the 
rail cars — they’re notoriously puncture-prone — and the volatility of 
the oil; it tends to blow up. Less attention has been paid to questions 
surrounding the safety and regulation of the nation’s aging network of 
140,000 miles of freight rails, which carry their explosive cargo 
through urban corridors, sensitive ecological zones and populous suburbs."

    *Dangerous Trains, Aging Rails*
    By Marcus Stern
    March 12, 2015

    A CSX freight train ran off the rails last month in rural Mount
    Carbon, W.Va. One after another, exploding rail cars sent hellish
    fireballs hundreds of feet into the clear winter sky. Gov. Earl Ray
    Tomblin declared a state of emergency, and the fires burned for
    several days.

    The Feb. 16 accident was one of a series of recent fiery derailments
    highlighting the danger of using freight trains to ship crude oil
    from wellheads in North Dakota to refineries in congested regions
    along America’s coastlines. The most recent was last week, when a
    Burlington Northern Santa Fe oil train with roughly 100 cars
    derailed, causing at least two cars, each with about 30,000 gallons
    of crude oil, to explode, burn and leak near the Mississippi River,
    south of Galena, Ill.

    These explosions have generally been attributed to the design of the
    rail cars — they’re notoriously puncture-prone — and the volatility
    of the oil; it tends to blow up. Less attention has been paid to
    questions surrounding the safety and regulation of the nation’s
    aging network of 140,000 miles of freight rails, which carry their
    explosive cargo through urban corridors, sensitive ecological zones
    and populous suburbs.

    Case in point: The wooden trestles that flank the Mobile and Ohio
    railroad bridge, built in 1898, as it traverses Alabama’s Black
    Warrior River between the cities of Northport and Tuscaloosa. Oil
    trains rumble roughly 40 feet aloft, while joggers and baby
    strollers pass underneath. One of the trestles runs past the
    Tuscaloosa Amphitheater. Yet when I visited last May, many of the
    trestles’ supports were rotted and some of its cross braces were
    dangling or missing.

    After that accident, federal officials promised to develop sweeping
    new regulations to make sure nothing like it happens in the United
    States. In the interim, the Department of Transportation issued an
    emergency order requiring railroads to get federal permission before
    leaving trains unattended with their engines running, a major factor
    in the Lac-Mégantic explosion. And the railroads agreed to a number
    of voluntary steps, including keeping oil trains under 50 m.p.h.

    But more than a year and a half after Lac-Mégantic, new regulations
    have yet to be finalized as the railroad and oil industries argue
    about various proposed provisions. The emergency order didn’t end
    the practice of railroads’ leaving oil trains on tracks with their
    engines running; it simply required companies to have a written plan
    for doing so. And without regulations, reporting or penalties, the
    public has only the railroads’ word they are complying with the 50
    m.p.h. speed limit.

    For trackside communities, the stakes are obviously high. New
    hydraulic fracturing technology has allowed oil developers to tap
    vast amounts of deeply buried oil in parts of North Dakota, Montana
    and Canada. Without significant new pipeline capacity, the only way
    to get the oil to refineries is by train. Rail car shipments of
    crude oil rose from 9,500 in 2008 to more than 400,000 last year.

    To protect communities and the environment, the Transportation
    Department needs to act quickly to require more resilient rail cars,
    improve the safety of rail infrastructure and operations, and reduce
    the volatility of oil at the wellhead, before it is loaded onto trains.

    Instead, the debate over regulations inches along as oil trains
    continue to roll through downtown Philadelphia, suburban Chicago and
    along the Hudson River in New York and the Schuylkill in eastern
    Pennsylvania, passing close to a nuclear power plant.

    Before leaving office last year, Deborah A. P. Hersman, the
    chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, questioned
    whether industry representatives and regulators had a tombstone
    mentality when it came to oil trains. If nobody dies, she suggested,
    there’s no pressure to act. So far, the tombstones have all been in
    Canada.

    Marcus Stern has examined the hazards of shipping oil by rail for
    InsideClimate News, the Weather Channel and the Investigative Fund.
    He reports for a San Diego-based writers group, Hashtag30.

    After that accident, federal officials promised to develop sweeping
    new regulations to make sure nothing like it happens in the United
    States. In the interim, the Department of Transportation issued an
    emergency order requiring railroads to get federal permission before
    leaving trains unattended with their engines running, a major factor
    in the Lac-Mégantic explosion. And the railroads agreed to a number
    of voluntary steps, including keeping oil trains under 50 m.p.h.

    But more than a year and a half after Lac-Mégantic, new regulations
    have yet to be finalized as the railroad and oil industries argue
    about various proposed provisions. The emergency order didn’t end
    the practice of railroads’ leaving oil trains on tracks with their
    engines running; it simply required companies to have a written plan
    for doing so. And without regulations, reporting or penalties, the
    public has only the railroads’ word they are complying with the 50
    m.p.h. speed limit.

    For trackside communities, the stakes are obviously high. New
    hydraulic fracturing technology has allowed oil developers to tap
    vast amounts of deeply buried oil in parts of North Dakota, Montana
    and Canada. Without significant new pipeline capacity, the only way
    to get the oil to refineries is by train. Rail car shipments of
    crude oil rose from 9,500 in 2008 to more than 400,000 last year.

    To protect communities and the environment, the Transportation
    Department needs to act quickly to require more resilient rail cars,
    improve the safety of rail infrastructure and operations, and reduce
    the volatility of oil at the wellhead, before it is loaded onto trains.

    Instead, the debate over regulations inches along as oil trains
    continue to roll through downtown Philadelphia, suburban Chicago and
    along the Hudson River in New York and the Schuylkill in eastern
    Pennsylvania, passing close to a nuclear power plant.

    Before leaving office last year, Deborah A. P. Hersman, the
    chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, questioned
    whether industry representatives and regulators had a tombstone
    mentality when it came to oil trains. If nobody dies, she suggested,
    there’s no pressure to act. So far, the tombstones have all been in
    Canada.

    Marcus Stern has examined the hazards of shipping oil by rail for
    InsideClimate News, the Weather Channel and the Investigative Fund.
    He reports for a San Diego-based writers group, Hashtag30.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/12/opinion/dangerous-trains-aging-rails.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

    https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/12/opinion/dangerous-trains-aging-rails.html?unlocked_article_code=GmxqT6M3lPByOHXRO17Xwya4sPHqNxln5Kbg7M03m-tzym2xrBwOD6aEpJbF6oAqHwM3Hgcp2gLu7uQCbF5dQ9e8mJm8VmJekI-nLF6gmqMwREneWdWSjyP3FoI4Qu9_FEcGVIKf9DYlGqBrFPx1xtp6OJ3KeJnLWbahaFATDUlvbRIVZe6_KxMHE-ojXLtXjad-5roLwU5ENy-zMhka81VtQ6v3LwbyYfeREU2oKEoyoJ0H2TBtTgK_6o8Ohv-Ko7Hh44DYrmToWV4QS0NY2geHWPk0Dyot6jHpIFNhufxcc1twVJx4ha9vOf4YcIZ_78biz6jX5lTETKA-rxiO0zvAGykm_Q&smid=url-share

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