[✔️] November 19, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | Kate Marvel, Texas censors textbooks, Carl Sagan, Mt Rainier and Mt Hood, Risk in ice melt, 1992 Al Gore

[Richard Pauli]

/*November 19*//*, 2023*/

/[ Marvel opinion in NYTimes ]/
*I’m a Climate Scientist. I’m Not Screaming Into the Void Anymore.*
Nov. 18, 2023
By Kate Marvel
Dr. Marvel, a climate scientist at the environmental nonprofit Project 
Drawdown, was a lead author on the Fifth National Climate Assessment.
Two and a half years ago, when I was asked to help write the most 
authoritative report on climate change in the United States, I 
hesitated. Did we really need another warning of the dire consequences 
of climate change in this country? The answer, legally, was yes: 
Congress mandates that the National Climate Assessment be updated every 
four years or so. But after four previous assessments and six United 
Nations reports since 1990, I was skeptical that what we needed to 
address climate change was yet another report.

In the end, I said yes, but reluctantly. Frankly, I was sick of 
admonishing people about how bad things could get. Scientists have 
raised the alarm over and over again, and still the temperature rises. 
Extreme events like heat waves, floods, and droughts are becoming more 
severe and frequent, exactly as we predicted they would. We were proved 
right. It didn’t seem to matter.

Our report, which was released on Tuesday, contains more dire warnings. 
There are plenty of new reasons for despair. Thanks to recent scientific 
advances, we can now link climate change to specific extreme weather 
disasters, and we have a better understanding of how the feedback loops 
in the climate system can make warming even worse. We can also now more 
confidently forecast catastrophic outcomes if global emissions continue 
on their current trajectory. But to me, the most surprising new finding 
in the Fifth National Climate Assessment is this: There has been genuine 
progress, too.I’m used to mind-boggling numbers, and there are many of 
them in this report. Human beings have put about 1.6 trillion tons of 
carbon in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution — more than the 
weight of every living thing on Earth combined. But as we wrote the 
report, I learned other, even more mind-boggling numbers. In the last 
decade, the cost of wind energy has declined by 70 percent and solar has 
declined 90 percent. Renewables now make up 80 percent of new 
electricity generation capacity. Our country’s greenhouse gas emissions 
are falling, even as our G.D.P. and population grow.

In the report, we were tasked with projecting future climate change. We 
showed what the United States would look like if the world warms by 2 
degrees Celsius. It wasn’t a pretty picture: more heat waves, more 
uncomfortably hot nights, more downpours, more droughts. If greenhouse 
emissions continue to rise, we could reach that point in the next couple 
of decades. If they fall a little, maybe we can stave it off until the 
middle of the century. But our findings also offered a glimmer of hope: 
If emissions fall dramatically, as the report suggested they could, we 
may never reach 2 degrees Celsius at all. For the first time in my 
career, I felt something strange: optimism. And that simple realization 
was enough to convince me that releasing yet another climate report was 
worthwhile.

Something has changed in the United States, and not just the climate. 
State, local and tribal governments all around the country have begun to 
take action. Some politicians now actually campaign on climate change, 
instead of ignoring or lying about it. Congress passed federal climate 
legislation — something I’d long regarded as impossible — in 2022 as we 
turned in the first draft.

And while the report stresses the urgency of limiting warming to prevent 
terrible risks, it has a new message, too: We can do this. We now know 
how to make the dramatic emissions cuts we’d need to limit warming, and 
it’s very possible to do this in a way that’s sustainable, healthy and 
fair. The conversation has moved on, and the role of scientists has 
changed. We’re not just warning of danger any more. We’re showing the 
way to safety.

I was wrong about those previous reports: They did matter, after all. 
While climate scientists were warning the world of disaster, a small 
army of scientists, engineers, policymakers and others were getting to 
work. These first responders have helped move us toward our climate 
goals. Our warnings did their job.

To limit global warming, we need many more people to get on board. This 
will be hard: It will require large-scale changes in infrastructure and 
behavior as well as removing carbon from the atmosphere. And not 
everyone is on board yet. In particular, the fossil fuel industry is 
still ignoring the science. Oil, gas and coal companies already made 
plans for infrastructure that, if used as intended, would cause the 
world to blow past the Paris agreement target of 1.5 degrees Celsius in 
the next few decades.

To prevent this, we need to reach those who haven’t yet been moved by 
our warnings. I’m not talking about the fossil fuel industry here; nor 
do I particularly care about winning over the small but noisy group of 
committed climate deniers. But I believe we can reach the many people 
whose eyes glaze over when they hear yet another dire warning, or see 
another report like the one we just published.

The reason is that now, we have a better story to tell. The evidence is 
clear: Responding to climate change will not only create a better world 
for our children and grandchildren, but it will also make the world 
better for us right now.

Eliminating the sources of greenhouse gas emissions will make our air 
and water cleaner, our economy stronger and our quality of life better. 
It could save hundreds of thousands or even millions of lives across the 
country through air quality benefits alone. Using land more wisely can 
both limit climate change and protect biodiversity. Climate change most 
strongly affects communities that get a raw deal in our society: people 
with low incomes, people of color, children and the elderly. And climate 
action can be an opportunity to redress legacies of racism, neglect and 
injustice.

I could still tell you scary stories about a future ravaged by climate 
change, and they’d be true, at least on the trajectory we’re currently 
on. But it’s also true that we have a once-in-human-history chance, not 
only to prevent the worst effects, but to make the world better right 
now. It would be a shame to squander this opportunity. So I don’t just 
want to talk about the problems anymore. I want to talk about the 
solutions. Consider this your last warning from me.
Kate Marvel, a climate scientist at the environmental nonprofit Project 
Drawdown, was a lead author on the Fifth National Climate Assessment. 
She was previously a research scientist at Columbia University and the 
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/opinion/climate-change-report-us.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/opinion/climate-change-report-us.html?unlocked_article_code=1._Uw.P8n2.CZu2YCWy-Ejj&smid=url-share



/[ Texas censors are screaming into the void ]/
*Texas rejects science textbooks with too much information about climate 
change*
The Republican-majority education board also objected to books 
portraying fossil fuel use in a less-than-positive light.
Nov. 18, 2023
By Clarissa-Jan Lim,
After nearly a week of debate, the Texas Board of Education rejected a 
number of proposed science textbooks for eighth graders on Friday. The 
Republican-majority board raised a range of concerns about seven of 12 
proposed textbooks, most of which had to do with how the books presented 
the climate crisis.

Among the reasons the board rejected books: They had too much 
information about the climate crisis; they were published by companies 
with environmentally friendly policies; they portrayed fossil fuel use 
in an insufficiently positive light, potentially harming the state’s 
economy; and they included teachings about evolution but not creationism.

Certainly the decision is going to be cheered in some quarters. Earlier 
this week, Wayne Christian, a member of the Texas Railroad Commission, 
the top regulator of the state’s oil and gas industry, railed against 
climate science, calling it the “woke environmental agenda” and urging 
the board to approve books that promote fossil fuels.

The proposed textbooks need to adhere to new standards that mandate 
eighth graders learn about the climate crisis. School districts in the 
state are not limited to using books approved by the board, but because 
all approved textbooks comply with state curriculum standards, they are 
often the books chosen, The Texas Tribune reports.

Marisa Perez-Diaz, a Democratic board member, summed up the potential 
influence of ideological and political dogma on education. “My fear is 
that we will render ourselves irrelevant moving forward when it comes to 
what publishers want to work with us and will help us get proper 
materials in front of our young people,” Perez-Diaz said at the meeting.

Conservatives have long pushed textbook publishers to present 
pseudoscientific concepts like “intelligent design” as equivalent to 
well-established scientific theories. But as we’ve seen in the past few 
years, Republican lawmakers are also waging a broader war on the 
humanities, passing legislation that prohibits a comprehensive teaching 
of race, gender and history in the U.S. and beyond.

The targeting of public education has alarmed educators and parents. And 
as we’ve seen time and time again, those most obviously harmed by these 
policies are the students.
https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/msnbc/texas-science-textbooks-climate-change-rcna125841

- -

/[ looking for the titles of these books  ]/
*Texas education board rejects climate change lessons in textbooks*
by: Ryan Chandler
Posted: Nov 15, 2023

AUSTIN (Nexstar) — The State Board of Education on Tuesday gave an 
initial rejection to some science textbooks after concerns over their 
lessons on climate change.

Members of the 15-seat education policy committee voted on party lines 
to withhold approval from numerous textbooks that recognize fossil fuels 
as a cause of manmade climate change.

Among the rejections were publisher Green Ninja’s middle school science 
textbooks, which provides exercises that direct students to write about 
the future changes to weather and climate. Another publisher, EduSmart, 
was struck from the list for depictions that one board member worried 
cast the oil and gas industry in a “negative light.”

“There’s an overemphasis on the evils of oil and gas and virtues of 
renewables,” District 15 board member Aaron Kinsey said of another 
textbook. Kinsey is a Midland Republican and CEO of the oilfield 
services company American Patrols, which contracts with oil and gas 
companies to provide aerial surveys.

“I just think this Accelerate learning curriculum does a disservice to 
our students because it only only presents one side,” Pearland board 
member Julie Pickren said of another publisher. “A general theme 
throughout their entire science curriculum is that climate change is 
manmade. There’s no discussion or presenting different theories.”

“This is not something that’s debated in the scientific realm at all, 
it’s just something that’s controversial in the political realm,” KXAN 
Chief Meteorologist David Yeomans said. “Teaching climate change to kids 
is the same as teaching them about gravity or addition and subtraction. 
These are settled scientific facts. It’s not being ‘anti’ anything.”

Democrat Aicha Davis worries the board is protecting the image of the 
oil and gas industry at the expense of objectivity.

“Do you want pictures of children in oil fields?,” Davis rhetorically 
asked the board on Wednesday. “We literally had that discussion on 
making sure oil and gas is always seen positively… we want to give 
students information, we want to give them knowledge… we want them to 
know how to keep our earth here.”

Publishers can now amend the language of their material to try and 
secure approval in a final vote on Friday. School districts are not 
required to use the materials approved by the board, but the board’s 
selections have a heavy influence on curriculum both around the state 
and across the country.

As Davis explains, publishers cater to Texas’ requirements because of 
the state’s large market of millions of students. Because of the higher 
cost associated with printing multiple versions of textbooks, other 
states often end up with the version Texas prefers.

“We have to make sure we have really good standards and really good 
textbooks here in Texas. It does influence what other states are going 
to get as well,” Davis said.
https://www.kxan.com/news/texas-education-board-rejects-climate-change-lessons-in-textbooks/

- -

/[ for this Carl Sagan lecture you may want to boost the playback speed 
- actual lecture starts 9:30 ]/
*Bunyan Lecture 1993 - Carl Sagan*
Stanford Physics
Oct 31, 2016  Bunyan Lectures
VHS tape from 1993; cuts off suddenly at 2 hrs, 3min.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hez5MyKQIMs



/[ OPB transcript and audio play of mountains in my region of the 
Pacific NW ]/
*The high-altitude impacts of climate change on Mount Rainier and Mount 
Hood*
By Sheraz Sadiq (OPB)
Oct. 5, 2023
Broadcast: Wednesday, Oct. 11

Mount Rainier in Washington state is covered with nearly 30 square miles 
of glaciers and icy patches - more than Mount Hood, Crater Lake and all 
other volcanic mountains combined, from British Columbia to Northern 
California. But climate change is taking a toll on Mount Rainier’s 
glaciers, according to a study published in June. It found a 42% 
reduction in glacier area from 1896 to 2021, and officially removed 
Stevens glacier from the park’s inventory. The situation appears worse 
for the glaciers at Mount Hood, according to a new photographic survey 
completed last month by the Oregon Glaciers Institute. It found that the 
seven major glaciers at Mount Hood had receded an average of 60% over 
the past 120 years, and that roughly a quarter of that loss happened in 
just the last 20 years. Joining us to discuss the toll climate change is 
taking on the ice cover in these iconic and popular Northwest peaks are 
Scott Beason, a park geologist at Mount Rainier National Park, and 
Anders Carlson, the president of the Oregon Glaciers Institute.

The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a 
volunteer:

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Mount 
Rainier is covered with nearly 30 square miles of glaciers and icy 
patches, more than Mount Hood, Crater Lake, and all the other volcanic 
mountains from British Columbia to northern California combined. But 
climate change is taking a huge toll on Mount Rainier’s glaciers 
according to a study published in June. It found a 42% reduction in 
glacial area over the last 125 years. The situation is even worse on 
Mount Hood, according to a photographic survey that was just completed. 
We start with Scott Beason. He’s a park geologist at Mount Rainier 
National Park. Welcome to the show.

Scott Beason: Hello.

Miller: I want to start with some basics. What is a year in the life of 
a healthy glacier like?

Beason: It’s a good question. Glacier is a balance between accumulation 
of snow and ablation, or melt, of the snow in the summertime. So in the 
winter time, you get a massive accumulation of snow. And in the 
summertime, you lose quite a bit of that snow through processes like 
snow melt and the sun hitting the snow and things like that. And when 
you get a period of time where there’s enough snow that lingers around 
from year to year, the next year you get another accumulation of snow, 
and then another year and another year. And before you know it, it’s 
kind of like a layer cake of snow. And that turns into a thing called 
firn, a year’s accumulation of snow. And then enough time goes by and 
that turns into glacial ice. It’s a situation where we have snow that 
accumulates and does not melt. And then over those processes, turns into 
a glacier.

Miller: How does that compare to what’s happening on Mount Rainier right 
now?

Beason: What we’re seeing at Mount Rainier is that we’re getting more 
rain falling than snow, and we’re getting less snow accumulating. So in 
a given year, we expect to see a certain amount of snow, and we’re 
seeing less of that. The glaciers of Mount Rainier are in a situation 
where they’re not getting recharged with the snow that they need to be. 
And we’re basically losing glacial ice over time. We won’t have the 
recharge in snow, and then the summer snow melt melts down into the 
glacial ice underneath of it, and basically you’re losing the glacial 
mass over time.

Miller: The data that makes up the study that you recently released goes 
back to 1896. Were glaciers shrinking at the turn of the 20th century?

Beason: Yeah actually, they were. From 1896 to the next survey that we 
had, 1913, we did lose ice between those periods of time. So we were 
losing ice for sure in that time. But the rate that we’re seeing in the 
last decade or two has really accelerated based on the historic data 
that we have.

Miller: How much of that loss that we’re talking about is recent, as 
opposed to 120 something years old?

Beason: You’re looking at rates. So in the last six years, we’re seeing 
a rate of about 2.5 times that estimated in the previous period. That 
was from 2009 to 2015. And we go back from the 1896 period to the 2021 
period, you see a rate loss of about 0.2 square miles per year. And in 
the last period, it’s about 0.3. So it’s about doubling that rate that 
we have had from the historic period.

Miller: And you get the sense that even that is accelerating?

Beason: It is definitely accelerating.

Miller: I mentioned that finding that more than 40% of glacial area was 
lost between 1896 and 2021. But if I understand correctly, that doesn’t 
include the depth or the thickness of the ice. What happens if you 
include that third dimension, how much volume has been lost?

Beason: Volume can be really difficult to calculate in the glacier just 
because it’s really hard to actually see through the glacier itself. But 
when we look at the volume reduction, we’re seeing a reduction of about 
52% in that 125 year period. We’re definitely seeing more ice melting 
when you add in that third dimension. The math is more complicated, but 
definitely a lot of ice loss on the mountain.

Miller: The data in this latest study went up to 2021. Do you have any 
sense for what’s happened in just the last two years?

Beason: We didn’t really look at the last two years. We basically do the 
survey whenever we have a good opportunity to get clear satellite 
imagery and funding to do the surveys. Looking at and talking to other 
researchers, there’s a couple other glaciers that we’re looking at, 
we’ve basically removed them from our survey at this point. So, the Van 
Trump Glacier and the Pyramid Glacier are probably no longer considered 
a glacier in the park. Our survey kept them in place just because we 
still saw evidence of the glacier there. But since then, it’s just 
continual loss.

Miller: Why do you do this? What are the many things that are at stake 
when glaciers disappear?

Beason: Glaciers are a source of clear, fresh, cold water that’s 
provided to rivers in the park. There’s a lot of aquatic species that 
depend on that cold water for their habitat. Bull Trout is one example 
of that. There’s a study just recently done that looked at the 
anticipated effects of climate change in the next century, to see what 
would happen with the Bull Trout habitat as we lose that glacial ice. 
It’s pretty stark for that species specifically. They’re gonna lose 
their habitat. They’re gonna have to move to different locations or 
they’re just gonna die out.

The other thing that I have an interest in is a process called a debris 
flow, where as you retreat, glacial ice, you’re leaving behind sediment 
that is basically super steep, it’s not sorted, it can fail any time. 
You get a surge of water or something that happens in the glacier and it 
can pick up that material and mobilize into what’s called a debris flow. 
Then the debris flows can go downstream, affect park infrastructure, and 
really damage old growth forests, infrastructure, it can affect people, 
visitors, and the employees that work here at Mount Rainier.

Miller: And they can be deadly, right?

Beason: They can be. Thankfully so far, they have not been. There was a 
debris flow in 2015 where we had a visitor that was taking a video and 
it went right by them. And it was sort of terrifying seeing that video. 
It’s cool seeing the process, but at the same time, it was terrifying 
that they were that close to it.

Miller: We are talking about climate change here, about specific sites, 
in this case on Mount Rainier, being impacted by human actions on a 
global scale. And obviously the biggest thing we can do as a species is 
to stop burning fossil fuels. But are there other specific interventions 
for saving glaciers?

Beason: This question we get frequently is “what can we do with glaciers 
in the park?” There isn’t a lot that we can really do. Monitoring is 
what we’re really good at doing. In some locations in Europe, they talk 
about putting tarps and stuff on glaciers. But when you talk about 29 
square miles of ice, that’s just not feasible. Really, the long term 
solution is to look at climate emissions and see how we can change those 
over time, watch and see how it happens with the climate from there.

Miller: Scott Beason, thanks very much.

Beason: Thank you.

Miller: For another perspective on melting glaciers, we turn now to 
Anders Carlson. He is the president of the Oregon Glaciers Institute. 
Welcome back to the show.

Anders Carlson: Thank you, Dave.

Miller: Can you remind us what the Oregon Glaciers Institute is?

Carlson: Sure thing. It’s a small nonprofit formed in 2020, volunteer 
citizen scientists looking at documenting the changes in Oregon’s 
glaciers and the impacts they have on our environment and ecosystems.

Miller: My understanding is that you heard a promo for our conversation 
that we were going to be having with Scott Beason, and you said, “I have 
news to share with Oregon about Mount Hood.” So, what are the surveys 
that you recently completed?

Carlson: So, we finalized two surveys. One is just documenting how many 
glaciers remain in the Oregon cascades. And then what the recent one 
that I contacted you about was in 2003, a mountaineer and emergency room 
doctor in the Portland area, Doctor Steve Boyer, for posterity’s sake 
decided to go out and measure the location of the termini of glaciers on 
Mount Hood, and also photograph them. And he probably at least at one 
point held the record for the number of summits on Mount Hood as well. 
And he shared this information with us a few years ago. and we then 
decided this summer to go out 20 years later and repeat his survey to 
document how much these glaciers have changed in the last 20 years. So 
kind of a 20 years of the 21st century glacier change on Mount Hood. And 
the last official published documentation of glacier change on Hood was 
finalized in 2001 to 2004.

Miller: So almost 20 years later, you did this again. So tell us the bad 
news.

Carlson: Oh, the bad news is that there’s been massive loss of ice on 
Hood. At a bigger perspective, about in the last 120 years, 60% of the 
major glaciers on Hood have lost 60% of their area. Now, that’s over the 
last 120 years. 25% of that occurred in the last 20 years. And so, 
roughly, of the area lost in the last 120 years, 40% of that occurred in 
the last two decades. It’s been a rapid increase in the rate of glacier 
loss in the first two decades of this millennium. Just to put some 
numbers on it, up to the turn of the millennium, glaciers on Hood were 
retreating at about 3.5% per decade of the area loss. In the last 20 
years, this has increased by 3.6 times to 12.5% of the area loss per decade.

Miller: What we’re talking about is just a worse version of the exact 
same dynamics that we are hearing about on Mount Rainier, which I guess 
makes sense given that we’re talking about a significantly lower 
elevation mountain on Hood, and a little bit further south, warmer in 
two different ways. How did you actually carry out this survey? What 
were the physical challenges of doing this?

Carlson: Good question. When Steve did this back in 2003, he took his 
time going around the mountain and just climbing up the different 
drainages on various weekends in the late summer, early fall. We don’t 
have that luxury anymore 20 years later. So we had to go for it when you 
could have a window with no forest fire smoke, which has greatly reduced 
the ability to conduct such research in Oregon, because the best time 
we’ll get glaciers is late summer, early fall. That’s also when our 
skies get choked with smoke and you shouldn’t be outside.

So we found a window to do it in. And then instead of just going up the 
different drainages, going around a cone, we’ll circumnavigate Hood 
above treeline. The intent was to walk every ice margin around the mountain.

And that was really difficult. For one, the glaciers are retreating 
fast, and so there’s a lot of water there, and that has made the ground 
unsure. Like Scott just mentioned, debris flows are increasing. And then 
on top of that, the rock fall above the glaciers is dramatically 
increased as well. You see it on the glaciers themselves where they’re 
becoming debris armored and covered with a rock fall. But it’s also 
coming after us. We had to actually bail on one of our pathways because 
bowling ball sized rocks are flying down randomly every five minutes 
onto Newton Clark Glacier. And then we saw a giant landslide occur. We 
videotaped it, and it is just right out of the glacier just shooting 
down right where we wanted to go. So it has become very, very dangerous 
to conduct this work in the late summers because of the warming climate 
that’s removed the snow and ice protecting the underlying rock from 
falling down.

Miller: So, essentially for thousands of years, these huge rocks have 
been kept in place by ice. Now the ice is melting and the rocks are just 
falling down the mountain.

Carlson: The mountains are literally falling apart with the loss of snow 
and ice on them.

Miller: What about Oregon’s other glaciers? I’m thinking in particular 
about Central Oregon on Mount Jefferson or South Sister or the other 
Sisters?

Carlson: Good question. They are in worse shape than Mount Hood. Mount 
Hood, just like you mentioned before, Hood being further south and lower 
elevation than Rainier making it warmer,  Hood is also the most 
resilient mountain within the state of Oregon to climate change because 
it’s the tallest and furthest north. As you go south, the problems 
become worse. In Mount Jefferson this summer, the glaciers outside of 
Whitewater Glacier had no snow on them at the end of the summer. And so 
they’re in very bad shape, they’re not getting any refurbishment of 
snow. They’re on a starvation diet. When you go down to the Three 
Sisters region - South Sister, Middle Sister, North Sister and Broken 
Top - they’ve been in that kind of state for five to six years now at a 
bare minimum. In short, it’s gotten too warm in that region to sustain 
glaciers for a long period of time. They’re going to disappear in that 
region in the current climate. It’s already too hot in Oregon to have 
glaciers in the Three Sisters region.

Miller: What does all this mean for people who love being on mountains 
for skiing, for hiking, for whatever?

Carlson: It’s a dramatic loss. It’s fundamentally changing the way we 
view the mountains in Oregon. We have iconic snow covered peaks that we 
see on the horizon and we go to and get reprieve in the summers for 
going up and getting a ski. You can’t do that anymore. And if you go 
later in the summer, you might get hit by a rock. It’s shortening what 
was our year round ski season that we brag about. Timberline doesn’t 
operate now throughout the whole year. They do a good job of maintaining 
the Palmer Snowfield on Hood, but they cease operations in August now 
versus letting people ski into September and only stopping just to 
repair the list before the winter comes.

The streams will start running dry in the late summers, and it’ll impact 
what Scott was saying there, the salmon, the trout. It’s gonna make 
water wars increase because you’re gonna have hotter streams with less 
water in them, and a conflict between withdrawals for agriculture and 
ranching and drinking water versus keeping the streams flowing and cold 
enough for salmon and trout species to survive. So, it’s not good at all.

Miller: What has this work been like for you emotionally? To take part 
in these surveys that put numbers to what you can already see with your 
naked eye?

Carlson: In a way it’s cathartic because you could see it happening. And 
when we started the Oregon Glaciers Institute, the main reason was that 
nobody was paying attention to this in the state of Oregon. We can now 
at least put numbers on it and make people be aware of what’s happening. 
Basically, the climate’s already too hot. And so we need to cool down 
from where we are if we want to keep Oregon the way we’ve known and 
loved the place we live in. So this is one of the best ways to document 
and make people aware of how the climate is changing and will impact our 
way of life in this state.

Miller: Anders Carlson, thanks very much for your time. I appreciate it.

Carlson: Thank you.

Miller: Anders Carlson is the president of the Oregon Glaciers Institute.

Contact “Think Out Loud®”
If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a 
topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an 
email to thinkoutloud at opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 
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https://www.opb.org/article/2023/10/05/mount-rainiers-iconic-glaciers-are-disappearing/



/[ a bit of fear pandering, but interesting ]/
*A Dangerous 'Factor X' Could Be Lurking in Earth's Ice, Scientist Warns*
ENVIRONMENT
13 November 2023
By MIKE MCRAE
Earth's rapid defrosting is putting our ecosystems and our own personal 
health at risk of a litany of threats, including a slew of potential 
pathogens that may once have wreaked havoc among our ancestors.
As reported by Newsweek's Pandora Dewan, scientists are increasingly 
concerned that viruses successfully reawakened after tens of thousands 
of years preserved in permafrost could be a sign of worse things to come.

"There is a Factor X that we really don't know very much about," Umeå 
University infectious disease specialist Birgitta Evengård told Dewan.

As speculative as such future threats happen to be, what researchers 
have uncovered in recent years warrants serious consideration into 
improving surveillance and investigation of potential spillover events 
in the Arctic
Thanks to the very way infectious diseases work, most epidemics are 
likely to come from a novel source, such as a population of wild 
animals. Studies have shown outbreaks of zoonotic diseases are on the 
increase, both in number and in diversity, with deaths expected to 
continue to rise by an average of nearly 10 percent each year.

Statistics like these don't even take into account spikes caused by 
catastrophic events like COVID-19, which are also expected to occur with 
greater frequency as the climate shifts and humans encroach on a greater 
diversity of animal habitats.

While history can tell us a thing or two about diseases spilling across 
from one host to another through space, the possibility of a pathogen 
making a giant leap through time is new territory for researchers.
Yet there are solid reasons to suspect it's possible, and even likely.

In 2016, anthrax was reportedly responsible for the deaths of more than 
2,000 reindeer and a single person in the sparsely populated 
Yamalo-Nenets district of northwest Siberia. The origin of this 
particular outbreak is thought to be an infected animal carcass, one 
that had been long frozen in the Siberian ice.

The bacterium responsible for the disease, Bacillus anthracis, has 
evolved a talent for hibernating in the form of a spore, with another 
species in the same genus being revived in the laboratory following tens 
of millions of years of preservation inside a bee trapped in amber.

Viruses can have a similar knack for sleeping away the centuries. Just 
last year, researchers reported on the revival of a 50,000 year old 
amoeba virus found in frozen sediment 16 meters (52 meters) below a 
Russian lake.

What these laboratory studies have to say about the chances of 
real-world viral infections is hard to say. While viruses require the 
right 'machinery' to latch onto host cells and replicate inside, there's 
no clear rule about the evolutionary relationship between two potential 
hosts, making it hard to predict just how susceptible we might be to a 
pathogen based on what they infected in the past.
On the other hand, the rate and intensity of contact with a virus might 
make all the difference in whether it eventually evolved a means of 
infecting a new host. Dump enough microbes into a shared ecosystem over 
a short time frame, there's a chance at least one might find a new host 
to infect.

Researchers from the University of Ottawa used DNA and RNA sequencing to 
build a picture of the kinds of viruses found in the soil and water of 
Lake Hazen, the largest freshwater lake in the High Arctic. Their study, 
published in 2022, suggests the frozen north could become "fertile 
ground for emerging pandemics" as ice continues to melt.

Measuring the overlap between the family trees of the viruses and 
potential hosts, their investigation showed the chances of a spillover 
of trapped viruses into a known susceptible host population rises as the 
rate of glacial melt increases.

While a return of smallpox, the next coronavirus, or some completely 
novel kind of virus known only to our distant ancestors are all 
terrifying possibilities, the chances a pathogen might emerge that 
influences critical parts of a food web can't be dismissed either; 
either as an agent of infection or as a source of carbon itself.
Knowing what we do, there are almost certainly unknown factors contained 
in long-frozen ice that could take us by surprise.

Evengård's message to Dewan is one that bears repeating. "There is a lot 
we don't know, and what very few people have looked into is the permafrost."
https://www.sciencealert.com/a-dangerous-factor-x-could-be-lurking-in-earths-ice-scientist-warns



/[ DW Documentary on Doomers ]/
*Are climate doomers right?*
DW Planet A
May 26, 2023  #Doomer #planeta #Climatepsychology
A growing number of people believe that humanity is doomed because of 
climate change, while some are even full-blown preparing for a world 
post-collapse. Like Ben Green, who calls himself a “happy doomer”. Join 
me as I visit the old army barracks he calls home, to figure out if he’s 
right to be preparing for such an eventuality.
- -
Author: Aditi Rajagopal ...

We're destroying our environment at an alarming rate. But it doesn't 
need to be this way. Our new channel Planet A explores the shift towards 
an eco-friendly world — and challenges our ideas about what dealing with 
climate change means. We look at the big and the small: What we can do 
and how the system needs to change. Every Friday we'll take a truly 
global look at how to get us out of this mess.
#planeta #Doomer #Climatepsychology
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB6smZzFgVY



/[The news archive - political persuasion and misinformation pandering  ]/
/*November 19, 1992*/
October 19, 1992: In the third presidential debate, President George H. 
W. Bush accuses Democratic challenger Bill Clinton and his running mate, 
Senator Al Gore, of pandering to "the spotted owl crowd or the extremes 
in the environmental movement" by supporting an increase in fuel 
efficiency standards. Clinton defends the idea of raising fuel 
efficiency standards; in addition, he states, "We also ought to convert 
more vehicles to compressed natural gas. That's another way to improve 
the environment."
(26:30-29:00)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCGtHqIwKek




=== Other climate news sources ===========================================
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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
=================================
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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
==================================
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