[✔️] November 15, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | Increase health stresses, Dr James Hansen urgency, Kevin Anderson book, Climate and Mind, McKibben and Dressler, 1990 Bush signs Clean Air Act
Richard Pauli
Richard at CredoandScreed.com
Wed Nov 15 08:34:27 EST 2023
/*November 15*//*, 2023*/
/[ big changes stated today ]/
*Health Risks Linked to Climate Change Are Getting Worse, Experts Warn*
The 8th update to a major international report shows more people are
getting sick and dying from extreme heat, drought and other climate
problems.
By Delger Erdenesanaa
Nov. 14, 2023
Climate change continues to have a worsening effect on health and
mortality around the world, according to an exhaustive report published
on Tuesday by an international team of 114 researchers.
One of the starkest findings is that heat-related deaths of people older
than 65 have increased by 85 percent since the 1990s, according to
modeling that incorporates both changing temperatures and demographics.
People in this age group, along with babies, are especially vulnerable
to health risks like heat stroke. As global temperatures have risen,
older people and infants now are exposed to twice the number of
heat-wave days annually as they were from 1986 to 2005.
The report, published in the medical journal The Lancet, also tracked
estimated lost income and food insecurity. Globally, exposure to extreme
heat, and resulting losses in productivity or inability to work, may
have led to income losses as high as $863 billion in 2022. And, in 2021,
an estimated 127 million more people experienced moderate or severe food
insecurity linked to heat waves and droughts, compared with 1981-2010.
“We’ve lost very precious years of climate action and that has come at
an enormous health cost,” said Marina Romanello, a researcher at
University College London and the executive director of the report,
known as The Lancet Countdown. “The loss of life, the impact that people
experience, is irreversible.”...
- -
The indicators of public health tracked in the report have generally
declined over the nine years the researchers have produced editions of
the assessment.
The analysis also examined health outcomes for individual countries,
including the United States. Heat-related deaths of adults 65 and older
increased by 88 percent between 2018 and 2022, compared with 2000-04. An
estimated 23,200 older Americans died in 2022 because of exposure to
extreme heat.
Forests and carbon capture. Restoring global forests where they
naturally occur could potentially capture an additional 226 gigatons of
planet-warming carbon, according to a new study. But scientists warned
that the outcome couldn’t be achieved without cutting greenhouse gas
emissions.
Ominous signs. Greenland’s mountain glaciers and floating ice shelves
are melting faster than they were just a few decades ago and becoming
destabilized, according to two separate studies. The findings are
particularly significant as ice melting into the ocean from Greenland is
one of the biggest contributors to global sea level rise.
A hot year. A data analysis by European climate scientists found that
October 2023 was the warmest October on record globally, on the heels of
the hottest September on record. The findings round out a year of rising
temperatures that is projected to be the hottest one on record.
A new wildfire risk. Forest fires may get more attention, but a new
study reveals that grassland fires are more widespread and destructive
across the United States. Almost every year since 1990, the study found,
grass and shrub fires burned more land than forest fires did, and they
destroyed more homes, too.
Dire warnings. Global warming may be happening more quickly than
previously thought, according to a new study by a group of researchers
that included former NASA scientist James Hansen, whose testimony before
Congress 35 years ago helped raise broad awareness of climate change.
For health practitioners, the statistics are not abstract or faceless.
“These numbers remind me of the elderly patients I see in my own
hospital with heatstroke,” said Dr. Renee Salas, an emergency medicine
physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Salas is one of the report’s co-authors and said she viewed the
project like tracking vital signs in a patient, but on a national and
international scale...
- -
For the first time, this year’s Lancet Countdown included projections
for the future. If the global average temperature rises by 2 degrees
Celsius compared with pre-industrial temperatures, an increasingly
likely future unless society significantly reduces greenhouse gas
emissions, the number of heat-related deaths each year will increase by
370 percent by the middle of this century, the report found.
*It’s Not Your Imagination. Summers Are Getting Hotter.*
As the planet has warmed, summer temperatures have shifted toward more
extreme heat.
At the same time, the researchers point out that reducing fossil fuel
pollution is proving beneficial for global health. Deaths from air
pollution related to fossil fuels have decreased by 15 percent since
2005, with most of that improvement a result of less coal-related
pollution entering the atmosphere.
The value of The Lancet Countdown is its ongoing monitoring of climate
change’s effects on global health, said Sharon Friel, director of the
Planetary Health Equity Hothouse at the Australian National University.
Climate ReportsThe Fifth National Climate Assessment came out Tuesday.
And U.N. findings released the same day paint a dire picture in which
the countries aren’t doing nearly enough to keep global warming within
relatively safe levels.
Dr. Friel was not involved in the report, but read it and wrote an
accompanying commentary.
Dr. Howard Frumkin, a former special assistant to the director for
climate change and health at the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, said the report was a valuable dashboard but that the
climate impacts he most worried about were not the obvious ones
highlighted. Researchers and policymakers need to pay attention to the
health effects of people being displaced by climate change and
migrating, Dr. Frumkin said.
“If you’re on cancer chemotherapy or if you are getting kidney dialysis
or if you’re getting addiction treatment and you have to move suddenly,
that’s terribly disruptive and threatening,” he said. Dr. Frumkin was
not involved in the new report but was a co-author on previous editions.
Over the years, the health experts involved in this project have
included more research about the continued use of fossil fuels being the
root cause of health issues.
“The diagnosis in this report is very clear,” Dr. Salas said. “Further
expansion of fossil fuels is reckless and the data clearly shows that it
threatens the health and well-being of every person.”
The researchers point out that health care systems, and other societal
infrastructure health care depends on, haven’t adapted quickly enough to
our current level of global warming.
“If we haven’t been able to cope today, chances are we won’t be able to
cope in the future,” Dr. Romanello said.
The report is likely to be discussed at the annual United Nations
climate summit in the United Arab Emirates that starts in a few weeks.
This year the summit will include a greater focus on human health.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/14/climate/climate-change-health-effects-lancet.html?unlocked_article_code=1.-kw.UUui.l8ldoL9uIeyG&smid=url-share
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/14/climate/climate-change-health-effects-lancet.html
- -
/[ other sources of information on over-heating ]/
*The 2023 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change:
the imperative for a health-centred response in a world facing
irreversible harms*
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)01859-7/fulltext
/[ two years ago Dr James Hansen reminisces ]/
*An URGENT Chat with the Godfather of Climate Science*
Decouple Media
Dec 6, 2021 Decouple Podcast
In this very special episode, I am joined live in Berlin by the
"Godfather of Climate Science," Dr. James Hansen.
Dr. James Hansen is the former director of the NASA Goddard Institute
for Space Studies, and is now the Director of the "Climate Science,
Awareness and Solutions Program" at Columbia University's Earth
Institute. He was one of the first to bring climate change to the public
eye with his famous testimony before the U.S. congress in the 1980s.
Since then, he has continued to be at the forefront of the climate debate.
We discuss a wide range of topics:
• The emergence of the science on global warming from rising CO2 levels
• Dr. Hansen's experience as a high-caliber climate advocate
• The shift from climate deniers to climate lukewarmists
• The two most important climate actions for Dr. Hansen, a carbon
tax and support for nuclear power
• Why Dr. Hansen didn't go to COP26
• The anti-nuclear lobby
• The virtually unlimited government support for renewables
• Differential responsibility for climate change
• The contrast between German and Chinese approaches to climate action
• Fukushima, alarmism, and anti-nuclear NRC picks
• Reflections on geoengineering
Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:14 Becoming Dr James Hansen
5:40 Early Climate research
7:47 Testifying to congress & political interference
10:21 Climate deniers & lukewarmists
12:38 Dr Hansen’s major climate concerns
14:05 Are the COP meetings useful?
16:06 Nuclear energy as a solution
21:35 Environmental groups would lose donations if they supported
nuclear
23:16 Electrify everything, the need for reliable energy & the rally
to save German Nuclear
32:20 Net zero & negative emissions
36:41 Mr Hansen goes to China
42:08 Global North owes it to the Global South to cooperate on energy
47:47 Germans and Nuclear
51:54 Nuclear accidents, safety & the NRC
57:37 Nuclear Influencers
1:00:33 Geo-engineering
1:06:27 Do we need to be looking beyond 2100?
1:08:31 Dr Hansen health tips & Outro
Listen to the interview
https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/chris15401/episodes/Carbon-Fees-and-Nuclear-Power-feat--Dr--James-Hansen-e1bb433
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6L6cEf87Jyc
/[ discussion on failure of politics and need to get real faster]/
*Kevin Anderson: Climate Failures and Phantasies | Full episode*
Nick Breeze ClimateGenn
Premiered 106 minutes ago ClimateGenn #podcast produced by Nick Breeze
In this full climategenn episode I am speaking with Professor Kevin
Anderson from the Universities of Manchester and Uppsala about how
journalists and experts have failed the public by an over dependence on
reductionist thinking, as opposed to systems thinking, much needed to
avert disaster.
[PREORDER: MY BOOK ‘COPOUT - HOW GOVERNMENTS HAVE FAILED THE PEOPLE ON
CLIMATE’ (AD LIB BOOKS) IS AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER - https://copout.genn.cc ]
Instead of making the space for envisioning a better world, perpetrators
of the status quo instead construct fantasies as a way to deflect
criticism and delay real action.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_7Z58eVzk4
*[ Web site for resources ]*
*CLIMATE & MIND*
EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLIMATE DISRUPTION, HUMAN BEHAVIOR &
HUMAN EXPERIENCE
Climate & Mind
Resources
Books, academic articles, In the News, reports, people & groups,
podcasts & interviews, videos & movies, climate art, and more.
Climate & Mental Health Professions
Social Work, Psychology, Psychiatry, Nursing, and Disaster Mental Health
Climate Communication & Behavior Change
What helps people learn, understand, and take action?
Kids, Youth & Climate
Climate Cafe & Climate Circle
Climate Impacts on Mental Health
Climate Grief
Psychology of Eco-Fascism
Global Mental Health & Climate
How climate breakdown impacts the mental health and resiliency of
populations (coming soon!)
Coping in the Face of Climate Breakdown
https://www.climateandmind.org/
/[ quick video comment ]/
*Andrew Dessler and Bill McKibben on Climate Impacts with Temperature*
greenmanbucket
Nov 13, 2023
Climate models have been quite accurate predicting the increase in
global temperatures over the last 50 years.
Where they fall short has been anticipating the impacts that a given
amount of temperature rise might have. Dr Andrew Dessler and writer
Bill McKibben explain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV2xsw3_tfU
/[The news archive - back when, for a brief moment, Republicans acted
properly..... ]/
/*November 15, 1990 */
November 15, 1990: President George H. W. Bush signs the Clean Air Act
of 1990, which utilizes cap-and-trade--an idea Republicans would later
disavow as a means of reducing carbon pollution--to reduce acid rain
pollution.
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/AirActS
*Clean Air Act Signing Ceremony*
President George H. W. Bush signed the Clean Air Act which was new
legislation requiring pollution controls for automobiles, factories and
electric utilities
NOVEMBER 15, 1990
*Clean Air Act Signing Ceremony*
President George H. W. Bush signed the Clean Air Act which was new
legislation requiring pollution controls for automobiles, factories and
electric utilities.
...people all over the world. And the new environmental F. OSS is
growing. We see it in community efforts and in school involve that
across America and we're saying it in the innovative response of private
industry in alternative fuel service stations. Electric vehicles. These
companies understand. We must pioneer new technology. Find new solutions
invasion. New Horizons. If we're to build a bright future and a better
America for our children. There's an old saying we don't inherit the
earth from our parents. We borrow it from our children. We have
succeeded today. The cause of a sense a common sense of global
stewardship. A sense that it is the earth. That indoors and that all of
us are simply holding a sacred trust. Left for future generations. For
the sake of future generations. Again thank each and every one of you
for your commitment to our precious environment. And I am now honored to
sign this clean air bill into law. And thank you all who have worked so
hard for this day....
https://www.c-span.org/video/?15006-1/clean-air-act-signing-ceremony
- -
*The GOP Changes Its Tune on Cap and Trade*
Cap and trade was conceived by Reagan, delivered by the first Bush, and
praised by the second Bush. Ironically, it’s now threatened by GOP
officials, writes Daniel J. Weiss.
Opposition to “cap-and-trade” legislation to reduce global warming
pollution is a common refrain among many Republican and a few Democratic
officials this fall. The program is derided as a “cap and tax” that
would drain voters’ wallets while bankrupting the nation. But ironically
enough, the three most recent Republican presidents promoted cap and
trade, including Ronald Reagan. They employed such a system to phase out
lead in gasoline, cut chlorofluorocarbons and other ozone-depleting
chemicals, and reduce sulfur pollution from power plants responsible for
acid rain—all without undue cost. Officials who are criticizing it now
are doing so for political purposes, and they could likely make it
harder to employ cost-effective, market-based policies in the future to
significantly lower pollution at an affordable cost.
For instance, the “Pledge to America: the 2010 Republican Agenda”
promises to “oppose attempts to impose a national ‘cap and trade’ energy
tax.” After the demise of comprehensive global warming legislation in
the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) gloated that
“cap-and-trade, which is also known as the national energy tax, is dead
in the United States Senate.”
Yet many Republican officials greatly admire the father of cap and
trade: President Ronald Reagan. Former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) praised
Reagan last year:
When you realize the magnitude of President Reagan’s achievements, there
is absolutely no reason why anyone would ignore his ‘demonstrably good’
example.
Nonetheless, she opposes a global warming plan that would employ the
innovative cap-and-trade system first created by President Reagan. Like
Palin, many of today’s public officials are repudiating Reagan’s legacy
of cap and trade for cheap political gain and to curry favor with the
polluting industries that are supporting attacks on those who voted for
a cap-and-trade market mechanism to reduce global warming pollution.
A little history is in order. Cap and trade was developed as a more
flexible, market-based system to reduce environmental pollution compared
to the so-called “command and control” model employed by environmental
laws in the 1970s. The old system required each polluting facility to
make a fixed reduction in air or water contamination, which ignored that
some facilities could cut pollution more cheaply than others.
Cap and trade is a cost-effective alternative that allows the firms that
can more cheaply reduce their emissions below their required limit to
sell any additional reductions to companies that are not able to make
reductions as easily. This creates a system that guarantees a set level
of overall reductions while rewarding the most efficient companies and
ensuring that the cap can be met at the lowest possible cost to the economy.
The Reagan White House conceived the first cap-and-trade program to
reduce pollution. It was used in the 1980s to phase out lead in gasoline
at a lower cost. An EPA analysis shows:
…estimated savings from the lead trading program of approximately 20
percent over alternative programs that did not provide for lead banking,
a cost savings of about $250 million per year.
President Reagan also signed the Montreal Protocol in 1987 to slash the
production and use of chemicals that deplete the upper ozone layer
essential to screen out cancer-causing ultraviolet rays. His
administration established a cap-and-trade system to implement the
chemical reductions the protocol required. A 2006 scientific assessment
concluded that “the Montreal Protocol is working” to reduce chemicals
and protect the ozone layer.
President George H.W. Bush, Reagan’s successor, was the first president
to propose the employment of a cap-and-trade system in an environmental
law. The Clean Air Act of 1990 includes his proposed cap-and-trade
system to reduce the sulfur pollution from power plants responsible for
acid rain.
The Clean Air Act passed the Senate by a vote of 89-10 and the House by
401-25. Many staunch conservatives voted for it including Sens. Kit Bond
(R-Mo), Trent Lott (R-MS), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and Strom Thurmond
(R-SC). Conservative House supporters included Reps. Newt Gingrich
(R-GA), Joe Barton (R-TX), Dennis Hastert (R-IL), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), and
Fred Upton (R-MI).
When President Bush signed the Clean Air Act into law he highlighted its
innovative cap-and-trade mechanism:
The acid rain allowance trading program will be the first large-scale
regulatory use of market incentives and is already being seen as a model
for regulatory reform efforts here and abroad.
By employing a system that generates the most environmental protection
for every dollar spent, the trading system lays the groundwork for a new
era of smarter government regulation; one that is more compatible with
economic growth than using only the command and control approaches of
the past.
President Bush’s prediction came true. An EPA analysis a decade after
the law was passed determined that the actual cost of cutting sulfur
emissions by 40 percent was substantially lower than it had predicted:
“$1 to $2 billion per year, just one quarter of original EPA estimates.”
A CAP analysis determined that in 2006 utility rates were 5 percent
lower (in real dollars) than before the act passed in 1990. And the U.S.
economy added 16 million jobs during this time.
President George W. Bush also included a cap-and-trade mechanism in his
“Clear Skies” bill that would have amended the Clean Air Act. Upon the
bill’s introduction he noted the success of his father’s cap-and-trade
program:
The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments have significantly reduced air
pollution, especially through the innovative "cap-and trade" acid rain
control program. [It] has been a resounding success, cutting annual
sulfur dioxide emissions in the first phase by 50 percent below allowed
levels. Emissions were reduced faster than required, and at far less
cost…The program only requires a handful of EPA employees to operate.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) introduced several global warming pollution
reductions bills during the previous decade. While running for president
in 2008 McCain proposed to reduce global warming pollution via a
cap-and-trade program.
John McCain’s climate plan will be similar to the very successful acid
rain trading program created under the first President Bush in the early
1990s.
A cap-and-trade system sends a market signal that organizes the whole
economy around our environmental goals…The market evolves by requiring
sensible reductions in greenhouse gases, but also allowing full
flexibility in how industry meets that requirement.
Then-Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) also supported a cap-and-trade system to
reduce global warming pollution as the GOP nominee for vice president.
She reiterated that support (see 34:00) during the vice presidential debate.
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA) also endorsed a
cap-and-trade system to reduce global warming pollution in 2007:
I think if you have mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading
system, much like we did with sulfur, and if you have a tax-incentive
program for investing in the solutions, that there’s a package there
that’s very, very good. And frankly, it’s something I would strongly
support.
Gingrich has changed his tune, however, just two years later. He railed
against the “cap-and-trade energy tax” in 2009.
Why have Republicans and a few Democrats rejected this successful policy
innovation developed and deployed by Republican Presidents Reagan, Bush,
and Bush? In Gingrich’s case it may be the $350,000 from oil and coal
interests his political committee received during the first quarter of
2010 alone.
In addition to giving money to Gingrich, Big Oil, Dirty Coal, and other
special interests have spent hundreds millions of dollars over the past
two years to convince legislators, politicians, and citizens to oppose
cap and trade and other measures that would create jobs, cut oil use,
and reduce pollution. Center for American Progress Action Fund analyses
find that these interests spent at least $68 million in 2010 alone to
air misleading and fictitious ads on global warming. What’s more, many
of these same interests spent over $500 million in 18 months to lobby
Congress to oppose clean energy and global warming legislation.
The New York Times reports that these efforts are bearing fruit:
[Tea Party views] in general align with those of the fossil fuel
industries, which have for decades waged a concerted campaign to raise
doubts about the science of global warming and to undermine policies
devised to address it.
They have created and lavishly financed institutes to produce
anti-global-warming studies, paid for rallies and Web sites to question
the science, and generated scores of economic analyses that purport to
show that policies to reduce emissions of climate-altering gases will
have a devastating effect on jobs and the overall economy.
Special interest money, then, has played a big role in public officials
rejecting this tool created and sharpened by Presidents Reagan, Bush,
and Bush.
Among Tea Party activists, ideology also plays a part in their rejection
of cap and trade as a solution to global warming. Many activists do not
believe that global warming is real despite reams of scientific data to
the contrary. A New York Times poll found:
…that only 14 percent of Tea Party supporters said that global warming
is an environmental problem that is having an effect now, while 49
percent of the rest of the public believes that it is. More than half of
Tea Party supporters said that global warming would have no serious
effect at any time in the future, while only 15 percent of other
Americans share that view, the poll found.
Tea Partiers, therefore, would oppose any solution to a problem they do
not believe exists.
There’s a bigger point to be made here, though. This summer the Senate
failed to act on global warming legislation that employed a
cap-and-trade mechanism to reduce costs. Noted economists Richard
Schmalensee, who worked in the Reagan White House, and Robert Stavins
warned soon after that rejecting cap-and-trade programs such as those in
the Senate bill could increase the expense of future pollution
reductions. They worry that policymakers would hesitate to employ a
discredited cap-and-trade system and instead rely on a traditional, more
expensive command-and-control method.
To reject this legacy and embrace the failed 1970s policies of
one-size-fits-all regulatory mandates would signify unilateral surrender
of principled support for markets. If some conservatives oppose energy
or climate policies because of disagreement about the threat of climate
change or the costs of those policies, so be it. But in the process of
debating risks and costs, there should be no tarnishing of market-based
policy instruments. Such a scorched-earth approach will come back to
haunt when future environmental policies will not be able to use the
power of the marketplace to reduce business costs.
Schmalensee and Stavins’s warning should be heeded: This current crop of
Republican and a few Democratic officials—in their zeal to curry favor
with their special interest funders and Tea Party activists—could doom
future efforts to follow the path paved by Presidents Reagan, Bush, and
Bush to reduce pollution in the most cost-effective way possible.
Daniel J. Weiss is a Senior Fellow and the Director of Climate Strategy
at American Progress, where he leads the Center’s clean energy and
climate advocacy campaign.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-gop-changes-its-tune-on-cap-and-trade/
=== Other climate news sources ===========================================
**Inside Climate News*
Newsletters
We deliver climate news to your inbox like nobody else. Every day or
once a week, our original stories and digest of the web’s top headlines
deliver the full story, for free.
https://insideclimatenews.org/
---------------------------------------
**Climate Nexus* https://climatenexus.org/hot-news/*
Delivered straight to your inbox every morning, Hot News summarizes the
most important climate and energy news of the day, delivering an
unmatched aggregation of timely, relevant reporting. It also provides
original reporting and commentary on climate denial and pro-polluter
activity that would otherwise remain largely unexposed. 5 weekday
=================================
*Carbon Brief Daily https://www.carbonbrief.org/newsletter-sign-up*
Every weekday morning, in time for your morning coffee, Carbon Brief
sends out a free email known as the “Daily Briefing” to thousands of
subscribers around the world. The email is a digest of the past 24 hours
of media coverage related to climate change and energy, as well as our
pick of the key studies published in the peer-reviewed journals.
more at https://www.getrevue.co/publisher/carbon-brief
==================================
*T*he Daily Climate *Subscribe https://ehsciences.activehosted.com/f/61*
Get The Daily Climate in your inbox - FREE! Top news on climate impacts,
solutions, politics, drivers. Delivered week days. Better than coffee.
Other newsletters at https://www.dailyclimate.org/originals/
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/
/Archive of Daily Global Warming News
https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/
/To receive daily mailings - click to Subscribe
<mailto:subscribe at theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request>
to news digest./
Privacy and Security:*This mailing is text-only -- and carries no images
or attachments which may originate from remote servers. Text-only
messages provide greater privacy to the receiver and sender. This is a
personal hobby production curated by Richard Pauli
By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain cannot be used for commercial
purposes. Messages have no tracking software.
To subscribe, email: contact at theclimate.vote
<mailto:contact at theclimate.vote> with subject subscribe, To Unsubscribe,
subject: unsubscribe
Also you may subscribe/unsubscribe at
https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote
Links and headlines assembled and curated by Richard Pauli for
http://TheClimate.Vote <http://TheClimate.Vote/> delivering succinct
information for citizens and responsible governments of all levels. List
membership is confidential and records are scrupulously restricted to
this mailing list.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/attachments/20231115/a90dff8c/attachment.htm>
More information about the theClimate.Vote
mailing list