[✔️] November 26, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | Money and climate - Salon predictions, Property values, Models crumble, 2006 Stone age thinking.

[Richard Pauli]

/*November 26*//*, 2023*/

/[ SALON addresses difficult subjects - predictions, conjectures, big 
changes ahead   ]/
*Will climate change make our planet a desert? Why "uninhabitable" may 
be the wrong climate framework*
Extreme heat and freak storms may make it harder to live on Earth, but 
calling it a wasteland is counterproductive
By MATTHEW ROZSA
As fall weather bleeds into winter, it can be hard to remember that 
humanity just experienced its hottest summer in recorded history. We now 
hear news of billion dollar climate disasters on a regular basis, 
whether it's heatwaves or flash floods or wildfires. Of course, all 
these things happened before the Industrial Revolution, but the amount 
of heat we've added to the planet has supercharged these natural events, 
making them more destructive and more common.

And things are just getting started. As humans continue to emit 
greenhouse gases from fossil fuels into the atmosphere, extreme weather 
events like heatwaves, floods and tropical storms will become 
increasingly common, according to climate models that we are sadly 
proving right.

But does that mean the entire Earth will literally become uninhabitable? 
Perhaps not, according to scientists who spoke with Salon, but at the 
very least, large sections of the planet will undergo radical, 
life-altering changes thanks to climate change. Indeed, we are already 
seeing the beginning of a future where highly populated regions are 
rendered — if not literally uninhabitable — then at the very least far 
more challenging to live in.

"Areas that are already experiencing significant heat will likely become 
uninhabitable but these locations will spread further north, such as 
into southern Europe and southern U.S. states," Julienne C. Stroeve, 
professor of polar observation and modelling at the University of 
Colorado Boulder, told Salon by email. She described a talk during the 
World Climate Research Programme meeting, "where scientists are looking 
at what a heat wave would have been in a 1°C [34°F] colder or say a 4°C 
[39°F] warmer world. And the example from Germany showed the heat wave 
recently experienced would have risen from 40°C [104°F] to 47°C [117°F], 
which would lead to people likely dying."

Jonathan R. Buzan, a postdoctoral climate researcher at the University 
of Bern, Switzerland, elaborated on the implications of rising heat, 
explaining that it is not easy to determine precisely how different 
regions will be impacted. Some areas will be more affected than others 
but we can begin to understand how using a metric called "wet bulb 
temperature," which is temperature measured by a wet thermometer in the 
shade as water evaporates off it. This is a better way of measuring heat 
stress than a regular thermostat. In some places not as used to extreme 
temperatures, wet bulb conditions can quickly become lethal.
"Above 40°C (104°F), dry heat impacts humans significantly, but below 
40°C, high wet bulb temperatures can dominate," Buzan explained, 
emphasizing that this makes it hard to predict where will become 
uninhabitable. "The expected exposure to moist heat (high wet bulb 
temperatures) is supposed to increase exponentially relative to dry heat.

As a result, Buzan said, areas that will be harder to live in due to 
heat include "monsoonal regions (such as India/Pakistan/South East Asia) 
[that] have the highest combinations of moist and dry heat, and are 
likely to become physically straining first."

Bruce H. Raup from the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the 
University of Colorado warned about another factor that heavily bears on 
a region's inhabitability during climate change, namely "that once a 
place dries significantly (soil moisture drops and surface water 
evaporates), it can get a lot hotter quickly. That's because the energy 
that was going into evaporating water now goes into raising the 
temperature of the surface and near-surface air."

As all of these heat-related weather events build up one on top of the 
other, humans will struggle to survive in ways that are difficult to 
anticipate. Buzan drew attention to a recent study from the Journal of 
Thermal Biology which shows a growing epidemic of Chronic Kidney Disease 
in low latitude countries potentially caused by increased heat, as well 
as a study from the Annals of Medicine and Surgery which found an 
increase in disease outbreaks in flood-ravaged Pakistan.

"What I am wishing to highlight is that there are many unknown 
consequences of climate change in association with heat exposure; both 
short duration from heatwaves, but also long term exposure from 
seasonal, and with enough climate change, yearly exposure," Buzan 
explained to Salon.
Heat waves aren't the only factor making large regions of Earth harder 
to survive in. As Buzan also observed, "island nations are the first to 
be impacted by sea level rise. Agreements to relocate populations are 
already in effect. There is work towards development island rising to 
offset the effects of sea level change. But this isn’t to say that 
coastal areas are not impacted. Miami spends enormous amounts of money 
on pumping water out of the city due to sea level rise."
According to Walt Meier, a Senior Research Scientist at the 
CIRES/University of Colorado National Snow and Ice Data Center, sea 
level rise (SLR) will not be uniform around the world. There are global 
averages given in projections, but they can vary regionally "depending 
on local sea level and land subsidence or uplift."

Meier added that he would prefer the term "less inhabitable" rather than 
"uninhabitable," since humans could adapt to some of the changes they 
experience. Yet the questions remains of whether it is worth it to, for 
example, build levees and raise coastal elevation for areas that 
experience regular flooding due to sea level rise.

"These are very high cost adaptations," Meier wrote to Salon. "Is it 
just less expensive to abandon inhospitable environments? In many cases, 
probably yes."

Climate change will also pound regions of the Earth with intensified 
storms. Raup shared an analogy that "if you raised the floor of a 
basketball court by 4 inches, you'd expect more slam dunks. You expected 
some before, but now you expect more because the hoop is within easier 
reach of more players. Similarly, raising the average temperature of the 
atmosphere and the surface waters in the ocean provides a boost of 
energy to weather systems, and allows more water vapor to be in the 
atmosphere."
While Buzan said it is "extremely difficult" to anticipate which regions 
will become uninhabitable due to intensified storms, he observed that 
"hurricanes are likely the type of storms that will cause consistent 
problems. However, as we’ve seen with extreme rainfall recently in 
Pakistan or in Germany, one can have extreme rainfall that causes 
widespread damage, but that does not mean that it will happen again or 
frequently."...

He added, "The connection to extreme rain and disease, however, should 
not be overlooked. Water that is not cleared efficiently can quickly 
become a breeding ground for disease and parasites."

While these sobering developments could trigger climate despair, the 
experts who commented for this article insisted that "uninhabitability" 
is a potentially damaging framework through which to view the question 
of climate change. Instead of "uninhabitable," it may instead be useful 
to think of the world as being "harder to inhabit."

"A strictly climate determinism perspective is limiting and distorts 
reality," Matthew Huber, Professor of Geography in the Maxwell School of 
Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, wrote to Salon. 
"From the perspective of severe weather/climate or drought, Northern 
Canada and Las Vegas are uninhabitable. Most of the Netherlands is below 
sea level, so it is uninhabitable by simple sea level metrics. But 
people can build the necessary infrastructure to make a region inhabitable."
According to Huber, the more important question is, "Do the regions that 
are negatively impacted by climate change have the resources (money, 
technology, institutions, culture, political will) necessary to keep 
regions habitable and will they make the decision to do so?"

While he acknowledged that in some cases a place like an island nation 
may literally become uninhabitable, Huber said use of the term is 
generally harmful because it can lead to writing off large parts of the 
globe.

"Once one has labelled a region as such, it leads to a cognitive switch 
in which many people will start blaming the people who live there for 
living in a region that 'everyone knows' is uninhabitable," Huber said. 
"This becomes a blame-the-victim situation which simultaneously erases 
the responsibility of those who can afford to provide the necessary 
resources to maintain habitability and agency of those who would attempt 
it."
https://www.salon.com/2023/11/25/will-climate-change-make-our-planet-a-desert-why-uninhabitable-may-be-the-climate-framework/



/[ Climate change makes for revenue anxiety ]/
*Red Flag: Sea level rise may wash away property values, tax revenues*
By Colin A. Young
State House News Service
Nov 18, 2023

BOSTON — Climate change is here and its impacts are affecting more 
people than ever. and with the release of the fifth National Climate 
Assessment on Tuesday, the White House is hoping to give Americans some 
detailed and practical information on how they can expect their 
communities to change and adapt.

“It is the most up-to-date and comprehensive assessment of how climate 
change is affecting all of us here in the United States. It is your 
guide to climate change in the U.S,” Allison Crimmins, the director of 
the first National Climate Assessment update since 2018, told reporters 
Monday.

“The assessment shows that more and more people across the US are 
experiencing climate change right now, right outside their window. and a 
lot of them are experiencing it through extreme weather events. In the 
1980s, the country experienced on average a $1 billion disaster every 
four months. Now we see one every three weeks.”

The new report does not make specific policy recommendations, but rather 
considers how climate change is already playing out across the country, 
what more might be expected in the coming decades, and what the federal 
government, states, municipalities, nonprofits, homeowners and others 
can do to prepare for greater impacts and respond to extreme weather events.

Crimmins said she hopes the report “will not just be a book on a shelf 
gathering dust” and that people around the country will use the 
interactive atlas being released alongside the report to drill down on 
the ways that climate change is affecting their neighborhoods.

“This is a guide or a tool that we want people to use to inform climate 
decisions,” she said.

“A water utility manager in Chicago can understand the extreme rainfall 
that’s coming so that they can design sewers that don’t overflow. Or an 
urban planner in Texas can tell where to locate cooling centers to give 
people refuge from the extreme heat. Or a hospital manager in the 
southeast can get ahead of the diseases that ticks and mosquitoes are 
bringing into their region,” Arati Prabhakar, director of the White 
House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said. “This is how people 
across America can prepare for and respond to the climate crisis.”

David Reidmiller, an author of the climate assessment’s northeast 
chapter, said the most pressing threats to this part of the country are 
“heavy precipitation and flooding, followed by sea level rise and 
coastal inundation, given how concentrated so much of our economies and 
livelihoods are in the coastal zone in the Northeast.”

The threats that climate change, particularly sea level rise, poses to 
coastal communities and economies was highlighted at the state’s annual 
Investor Conference earlier this month.

Michael Goodman, the former head of the UMass Dartmouth Public Policy 
Center who is now senior advisor to the chancellor on economic 
development and strategic initiatives, said as part of his presentation 
on the Massachusetts economy that while population and labor force 
growth are expected to be slow statewide over the rest of this decade, 
growth rates for both are projected to be stronger in coastal areas.

That will make coastal resilience essential, Goodman said. He included a 
chart from a 2020 study that considered how sea level rise will decrease 
property tax revenues in Massachusetts coastal communities. The 
researchers chose Massachusetts to study because of the state’s “high 
exposure” to sea level rise (SLR) and the budgetary reliance on property 
taxes for municipalities – property taxes constitute 41% of local 
revenues in Massachusetts, but an average of 60% of local revenues among 
coastal municipalities.

“In absolute terms, 3 ft of SLR threatens 1.4% ($104 million) of current 
property taxes of 89 coastal municipalities by chronically inundating 
over 15,000 taxable acres currently valued at $8.89 billion,” the report 
said. “Six feet of SLR threatens 12.5% ($946 million) of current 
property taxes of 99 coastal municipalities by chronically inundating 
almost 37,000 taxable acres valued at $64.4 billion.”

Sea level rise could affect almost half of all Massachusetts residents 
in coming decades. Already about 43 percent of the state’s population 
lives in coastal communities, and the populations in most of those 
cities and towns are expected to increase.

Massachusetts state government recently undertook its own exercise of 
considering how more-frequent extreme weather will impact the Bay State 
and what government can do to prepare and respond.

The state’s updated (and federally-mandated) Statewide Hazard Mitigation 
and Climate Adaptation Plan identified flooding from precipitation, 
coastal flooding and erosion due to sea level rise as the most 
significant hazards to Massachusetts.

Massachusetts is planning for sea level rise of up to 2.5 feet by 2050 
and 4.3 feet by 2070 (both compared to 2008 sea level) if global 
emissions are not significantly curtailed. The current annual average 
damage to coastal buildings in Massachusetts is about $185 million, but 
the new report projected that amount will nearly double by 2030 due to 
changes in sea level and storm surge.
https://www.gloucestertimes.com/news/red-flag-sea-level-rise-may-wash-away-property-values-tax-revenues/article_237a074b-0890-58e7-8fe7-e45493af8e1d.html



/[ follow the money ]/
*Economic models buckle under strain of climate reality*
By Mark John
November 22, 2023
*Summary*
-- Critics say economic models not fit for purpose
-- Economists urged to take broader, cross-discipline view
-- COP28 climate talks start in Dubai on Nov. 30
Nov 22 (Reuters) - Ahead of international climate talks in Dubai this 
month, economists are updating estimates of the impact of global warming 
on the world economy, sometimes calculating down to a decimal place the 
hit to output in decades to come.

But detractors say those numbers are the product of economic models that 
are not fit to capture the full extent of climate damage. As such, they 
can provide an alibi for policy inaction...
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/economic-models-buckle-under-strain-climate-reality-2023-11-22/ 




/[The news archive "I'll be back.." calling out Senator Inhofe  ]/
/*November 26, 2006 */
November 26, 2006: In an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," Gov. 
Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) notes that fellow Republican Sen. James 
Inhofe of Oklahoma is someone who has his "thinking in the Stone Age" on 
climate.

http://youtu.be/gcZ7DWMeyQA



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