[✔️] September 27, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | Courts, Brazil bakes, Fly down to Rio, Water will come, Barents press on methane, Nate Hagens, 1988 Margaret Thatcher speaks

[Richard Pauli]

/*September 27*//*, 2023*/

/[ Seeking salvation from the courts  ] /
*Climate change: Six young people take 32 countries to court*
By Selin Girit
BBC World News
"What I felt was fear," says Claudia Duarte Agostinho as she remembers 
the extreme heatwave and fires that ripped through Portugal in 2017 and 
killed more than 100 people. "The wildfires made me really anxious about 
what sort of future I would have."

Claudia, 24, her brother Martim, 20, and her sister Mariana, 11, are 
among six young Portuguese people who have filed a lawsuit against 32 
governments, including all EU member states, the UK, Norway, Russia, 
Switzerland and Turkey.

They accuse the countries of insufficient action over climate change and 
failing to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions enough to hit the Paris 
Agreement target of limiting global warming to 1.5C.

The case is the first of its kind to be filed at the European Court of 
Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg. If it is successful, it could have 
legally-binding consequences for the governments involved. The first 
hearing in the case is due later on Wednesday...

Aged from 11 to 24, the six claimants argue that the forest fires that 
have occurred in Portugal each year since 2017 are a direct result of 
global warming.

They claim that their fundamental human rights - including the right to 
life, privacy, family life and to be free from discrimination - are 
being violated due to governments' reluctance to fight climate change.

They say they have already been experiencing significant impacts, 
especially because of extreme temperatures in Portugal forcing them to 
spend time indoors and restricting their ability to sleep, concentrate 
or exercise. Some also suffer from eco-anxiety, allergies and 
respiratory conditions including asthma.

None of the young applicants is seeking financial compensation...

"I want a green world without pollution, I want to be healthy," says 
11-year-old Mariana. "I'm in this case because I'm really worried about 
my future. I'm afraid of what the place where we live will look like."

Claudia says Mariana still gets scared when she hears helicopters flying 
above, which remind her of the firefighters back in 2017, when more than 
50,000 acres (78 sq miles, 202 sq km) of forest were destroyed, and 
ashes from the wildfires were falling over their house miles away.

"I think it is really amazing for Mariana to get involved in this case, 
to have such a conscience at her age," Claudia says.

"But it is also very worrying: Why does she need to think about these 
things? She should be playing with her friends and dancing to TikTok 
videos instead."

Lawyers representing the six young claimants are expected to argue in 
court that the 32 governments' current policies are putting the world on 
course for 3C of global warming by the end of the century.

"It's catastrophic heating," says Gearóid Ó Cuinn, director of Global 
Legal Action Network (GLAN) that is supporting the applicants.

"Without urgent action by the governments, the youth applicants involved 
in this case face unbearable heat extremes that'll harm their health and 
their wellbeing. We know that the governments have it within their power 
to do much more to stop this, but they are choosing not to act," he says...
A 2021 Lancet study found that climate anxiety and dissatisfaction with 
government responses to climate change were widespread in children and 
young people across the world and impacted their daily functioning.

Based on a survey of 10,000 children and young people aged 16-25 in 10 
countries across the world, the study suggested that a perceived failure 
by governments to respond to the climate crisis was associated with 
increased distress.

In separate and joint responses to the case, the governments argue that 
the claimants have not sufficiently established that they have suffered 
as a direct consequence of climate change or the Portuguese wildfires.

They claim there is no evidence to show climate change poses an 
immediate risk to human life or health, and also argue that climate 
policy is beyond the scope of the European Court of Human Rights 
jurisdiction.

"These six young people from Portugal, who are ordinary individuals 
concerned about their future, will be facing 32 legal teams, hundreds of 
lawyers representing governments whose inaction is already harming 
them," says Gearóid Ó Cuinn.

"So this is a real David vs Goliath case that is seeking a structural 
change to put us on a much better track in terms of our future."...

The Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatovic, 
who intervened in the case as a third party, says this case has the 
potential to determine how states address climate issues and human rights.

"It is actually an alarm to member states, to international 
organisations, to all of us that have a particular chance to show that 
we do care, and that it's not just words on paper. It's not just ticking 
a box and saying we are for this or that resolution. It's about changing 
our policies," she told the BBC.

The ECHR ruling would legally bind the 32 governments at once to 
increase their climate actions by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and 
phasing out fossil fuels.

It would also influence domestic courts who have been seeking guidance 
from the ECHR on cases related to climate change. A verdict is expected 
in nine to 18 months.

Claudia says she often thinks about whether she should have children in 
the future, questioning the state of the world they would be living in. 
"But winning this case would mean there would finally be hope," she says.

"It would mean that people are really listening to us and that they are 
as worried as we are and that the governments would really have to take 
measures to do something about it. It would be amazing for everything - 
for our anxiety, for our futures. A lot of things can follow after that."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66923590



/[  "I'll probably won't fly down to Rio, ... but then again I just 
might" ]/
*‘Even Lucifer was using a fan’: Brazil bakes as mercilessly hot spring 
begins*
Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro and Constance Malleret in São Paulo
Tue 26 Sep 2023
A ferocious heatwave was sweeping South America, and samba composer Beto 
Gago (Stuttering Bob) saw only one thing to do: pop out for an ice-cold 
beer with his drinking buddy Joel Saideira – Last Order Joel.

“Damn, it was grim around here yesterday,” the 76-year-old musician 
grimaced as he stood outside his home in Irajá – reputedly Rio’s hottest 
neighbourhood – with a bohemian’s potbelly spilling out over his lilac 
shorts.

“It was bloody miserable. Even Lucifer was using a fan! He couldn’t bear 
the heat either!” chuckled Gago’s son, a 36-year-old sambista called 
Juninho Thybau..
-- 
With temperatures soaring towards – and in some places over 40C (104F) – 
newspapers and weather forecasters have drawn comparisons with global 
hotspots including Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and even Dallol, Ethiopia, 
which is reputedly the world’s hottest inhabited place.
  Even São Paulo, supposedly Brazil’s cloudy “Land of Drizzle”, is 
sweltering, with temperatures hitting 36.5C on Sunday – its sixth 
hottest day since 1943.

Neighbouring Paraguay – where the rural town of Filadelfia suffered 
44.4C heat – and Peru – where the mercury rose to 40.3C in the Amazon 
outpost of Puerto Esperanza – are also feeling the burn, as is north 
Argentina.

“I don’t know much about meteorology, but ... it’s definitely getting 
hotter. The whole world is, isn’t it?” Juninho Thybau said on Monday, as 
Rio’s most stifling post code braced for more extreme weather.

On the evening news, a weather presenter, Priscila Chagas, warned 
Wednesday could be the hottest day of 2023. “This is the crazy spring,” 
she declared, forecasting temperatures of 41C.

Climatologist Karina Bruno Lima said the succession of record-breaking 
temperatures was unusual and “extremely concerning”. The heatwave 
follows a similar hot spell in August – shortly after the world’s 
hottest month on record – during the southern hemisphere winter.
Lima believed more research was needed to determine precisely how 
climate change affected individual weather events. But “we’re already in 
a context of a changing climate, of a warmer atmosphere and oceans, and 
we must understand that more frequent and more intense extreme weather 
events are now a systemic occurrence”.

Experts partly blame the heat on the climate-heating event El Niño, 
which also causes flooding in some regions. “But it’s not the main 
factor,” argued Lima, from Rio Grande do Sul’s federal university. “The 
main factor truly is anthropogenic global heating.”

“In much of the world we can observe an increase in heat-related extreme 
events. And in Brazil, and South America overall, the tendency is for 
this to get worse.”
That is bad news for the 100,000 residents of already-scorching Irajá, 
which also suffers from being dissected by Avenida Brasil, one of Rio’s 
busiest and most polluted motorways.

As he shot the breeze on his veranda, Beto Gago reminisced about his 
childhood in the neighbourhood during the 1950s. Hog plum, guava and 
mango trees were everywhere. Nearby forests were still standing and kept 
temperatures down. “It was always hot around here. But there used to be 
this cool breeze,” remembered the shirtless sambista.

“These days, it’s hard to tell which neighbourhood’s the coolest because 
the whole of Rio is bloody roasting,” said his son.
Nearby, at Irajá’s sprawling food distribution centre – reputedly Latin 
America’s second largest – sweat-drenched workers stacked fruit onto 
handcarts despite the relentless heat. “You sweat in the shade and, if 
you stay in the sun, you melt like an ice lolly,” joked Geraldo Lima, 
56, a homeless man who earns about £8 a day loading trucks.

Lima was unsure if global heating was the culprit: “The truth is only 
God knows.” But market workers were certain temperatures were rising. 
“Each day’s worse than the last,” said Thiago dos Santos, a 17-year-old 
porter, as he hauled dozens of wooden crates off to a neighbouring 
favela for recycling.

Juninho Thybau, who is the nephew of Brazil’s most famous samba 
musician, Zeca Pagodinho, insisted Irajá remained the city’s best place 
to live and was not Rio’s only extreme heat hotspot.

He remembered a recent performance in nearby Nilópolis, another area 
famed for its samba scene and blistering heat. “Holy shit, brother, it 
was so hot it felt like I was in hell,” he said, fretting that the worst 
was still to come.

Thybau, who holds a monthly jam session outside his house, said a friend 
at city hall had warned him “a catastrophe” was heading Rio’s way with 
the start of summer in December likely to bring heavy rains and more 
severe heat.

Other adaptation methods beside ice-cold would be needed if the samba 
was to go on. “We’re going to have to hire a water tanker to soak the 
crowd – or one of those fans that pumps out water.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/26/brazil-temperature-spring-heatwave-weather-climate-change

- -

/[ cheer up --  Play this classic music video! ]/
*Michael Nesmith - Rio*
Michael Nesmith's Videoranch
Aug 9, 2017
When presenting Michael Nesmith’s Rio as the first music video, the 
foremost idea up for debate is the definition of a music video.

Chris Blackwell from Island Records asked Nez to make a "clip" to 
promote his new record in Europe. Nez had no idea what a clip was -- and 
rather than understand it as a low-budget recording of an artist miming 
their song on a stage, he recalled Hollywood musicals, Beatles and 
Disney films, and even The Monkees romps.

While editing, director Bill Dear and Nez discovered that music can take 
over the narrative to create continuity even when placed over 
discontinuous images. That continuity is what makes a music video as Nez 
defines it in Infinite Tuesday: An Autobiographical Riff.

Today there is little distinction between performance videos and music 
videos -- any video footage set to a single and released by an artist is 
called a music video. But in 1977, there was a clear difference and the 
artform in Rio was unique because of this found continuity.

Nez created the "video record" with his wife at the time, Kathryn, and 
director Bill Dear in 1977. This band, as he calls the trio in Infinite 
Tuesday: An Autobiographical Riff, went on to create the longform 
Elephant Parts, which featured Rio, and won the first Grammy ever given 
for a music video.

Nez writes more about the emergence of the music video in Infinite 
Tuesday: An Autobiographical Riff. Signed copies are available from 
Videoranch.com http://www.videoranch3d.com/category/...

Visit our music video playlist to check out more music videos by Nez:   
• Music Videos by Michael Nesmith
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnpcTsy10dE



/[ A classic lecture on the future of ice melting --  must see ]/
*The Water Will Come | Jeff Goodell*
Long Now Foundation
Oct 28, 2019  Long Now Seminars
The ocean is not just filling up, it’s swelling up.  Half of sea-level 
rise comes just from the warming of the water.  No matter what humans do 
next, we are now doomed to deal with drastically higher flooding of the 
world's coasts every year for decades, possibly centuries.  Nearly half 
of humanity lives near coasts.  Many of our greatest cities, and their 
infrastructure, will have to deal with the ever-rising waters.

Some coasts in the world are already experiencing what is coming for 
every coast soon.  Jeff Goodell's reports from those places are doubly 
grim.  The harm is already huge, but the response of local people is 
even more disturbing.  With few exceptions, they and their governments 
refuse to accept that the problem is permanent and will keep getting 
worse.  Those most affected by global warming—rich and poor—remain 
perversely in denial about it.

There’s lots of talk, but humanity is doing almost nothing to adapt to 
sea level rise.  So far.

Jeff Goodell is author of The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking 
Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World (2017), How To Cool the 
Planet (2010), and Big Coal (2006).

"The Water Will Come" was given on April 02, 02019 as part of Long Now's 
Seminar series. The series was started in 02003 to build a compelling 
body of ideas about long-term thinking from some of the world's leading 
thinkers. The Seminars take place in San Francisco and are curated and 
hosted by Stewart Brand. To follow the talks, you can:

Subscribe to our podcasts: http://longnow.org/seminars/podcast
Explore the full series: http://longnow.org/seminars
More ideas on long-term thinking: http://blog.longnow.org

The Long Now Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to fostering long-term 
thinking and responsibility. Our projects include a 10,000 Year Clock, 
endangered language preservation, thousand year+ data storage, and Long 
Bets, an arena for accountable predictions.

Become a Long Now member to support this series, join our community, and 
connect with our ongoing work to explore and deepen long-term thinking: 
http://longnow.org/membership

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcPbLJEDy50



/[  insights from the award winning Barents Observer ]/
*Methane beneath the Greenland ice sheet to intensify climate warming, 
scientists warn. A unique project to access the ice-sheet bed hopes to 
expose the scale of the danger.*
September 18, 2023
*A hidden climate danger*
Text:  Elizaveta Vereykina
It has been another exceptional year for the Earth’s climate system. 
There doesn’t seem a week when record-breaking floods, wildfires, 
heatwaves, and sea-ice losses have not grabbed global headlines.

Yet while debates on the climate crisis have often revolved around the 
question of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, it is methane (CH4) that 
many see as the key to limiting future warming. This potent greenhouse 
gas, with its warming potential 84 times greater than that of CO2 over a 
20-year period, has so far been responsible for around 30% of the 
current rise in global temperature.

Worryingly, some scientists believe that large and unaccounted stores of 
methane are locked up beneath the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. As 
these glaciers continue to melt and retreat, this gas would be released 
into the atmosphere at accelerating rates, thus creating a vicious 
amplifying climate feedback.

/   [ see the chart of methane in global atmosphere 
https://thebarentsobserver.com/sites/default/files/resize/climate-change-1000x705.png]/
To uncover how much methane is being potentially produced and stored 
beneath these vulnerable ice sheets, this summer a team of 7 scientists 
from Norway, Czechia, Brazil, and North America traveled to Greenland to 
undertake an ambitious and risky project to see what is happening 
directly at the bed of the ice sheet.

The chosen study site was Isunguata Sermia - a relatively small outlet 
glacier - but crucially an area where methane has already been found to 
be leaking from the ice margin.

*Getting onto the ice**
*Isunguata Sermia is the only area of the entire ice sheet accessible by 
road. All the equipment, fuel, and supplies needed for a 3-week science 
camp could therefore be transported here and then onto the ice by a 
short helicopter trip. The logistics were not always straightforward 
though.

*Reaching for the unknown*
To gain access to this hidden environment beneath the ice sheet, the 
scientists needed to create a borehole - a window through the entire ice 
column.

With the help of a clean hot-water drill - essentially an 
industrial-scale pressure washer - the drilling team melted their way 
down from the glacier surface all the way to its base.

  Heating and pressurizing the purified hot water through this hose also 
required multiple diesel heaters and pumps weighing up to 400 kg each. 
Shifting them around the ice sheet by hand without lifting equipment 
became extremely physically demanding.

*Drilling begins*
Despite their solid appearance, glaciers deform and flow like honey 
under their immense weight. Drilling a hole through glacial ice is 
therefore a constant battle against the creeping physics and freezing 
temperatures wanting to close it shut again.

The scientists therefore had to work continuously around the clock to 
keep the heaters fuelled and ensure the hot water supply into the 
borehole didn’t stop - any breakdown in the system could have disastrous 
consequences: the drill equipment could just freeze into the ice and be 
lost. The microbiologists were working too, collecting water samples 
from the borehole to monitor any changes in its chemistry during the 
drilling process.

After days of non-stop work, and the fuel supply reaching critically low 
levels, water suddenly drained from the bottom of the borehole. It was 
the sign the drilling team had been waiting for; they had finally made a 
successful connection to the ice sheet bed.

At over 1000 metres below their feet, the final ice at the bed of the 
glacier had been penetrated, allowing the column of water filling the 
borehole to partially drain away. With the window now open the 
scientists had roughly 24 hours to recover as many samples of the 
sediments below as possible, before this roughly 30 cm-wide hole closed 
again - the race was on!

Collecting samples blind and through a narrow 1 km-long hole is an 
extremely difficult task. Despite several instruments being deployed 
down the borehole during the next day, luck was not on the scientist’s 
side. The borehole had closed shut before anything could be recovered.

*Hope not lost*
Although the scientists had no samples and very little fuel, what they 
did have was plenty of time. Their helicopter pickup back to town would 
not be for another 2 weeks.

With their camp only 6 km from the edge of the ice sheet and 
civilization, an audacious plan was hatched to pack in the diesel 
required to reopen the borehole. Over the next week, each member of the 
team pitched in to carry up to 30 litres of fuel evey day on their backs 
through the crevassed terrain of the ice-sheet margin.
While some were hiking with fuel, other scientists set about collecting 
seismic data to infer more about what lay beneath the ice they were 
drilling. By sending explosive waves of energy through the ice and 
precisely measuring their echos off what lay below with an array of 
geophones, the scientists could retrieve useful information such as how 
the ice thickness varied and the nature of any sediments below.

The fuel carry was still ongoing, and after 7 days the team had managed 
to transport on their feet 600 litres of diesel – three full barrels – 
into camp. This would be just enough to start the heaters again and 
reopen the 1km-deep borehole.

While the initial progress of the second borehole was good, at just over 
400 m down the drill encountered a problem again. This time it 
encountered a blockage that it could not navigate past. With fuel 
running low, and with the potential risk of getting the drill 
permanently stuck or damaged, the decision was made at 3 a.m. to abort 
and pack up for this season.

*Hard lessons learned*
The final days were spent transporting all equipment off the ice and 
removing all traces of the camp. While the scientists did not retrieve 
the sediment cores from the bed that they had hoped for, the ice drill 
was successfully tested to over 1 km and many lessons were learned that 
will be adopted for campaigns over the next few years where the team 
will access the bed again in Greenland, and ultimately, Antarctica.
https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/node/11805



/[ a 45 min video lecture gives a better understanding of carbon energy  ]/
*Nate Hagens l The Superorganism and the future‍ l Stockholm Impact/Week 
2023*
Norrsken Foundation
Sep 20, 2023
The Superorganism and the future‍ by Nate Hagens, director of the 
Institute for the Study of Energy & Our Future, host of the Great 
Simplification podcast. Recorded live at Stockholm Impact Week 2023.
Stockholm Impact Week is an annual Summit hosted by Norrsken and the 
City of Stockholm, dedicated to defining the critical issues of our time 
and enabling solutions to them.
Read more about Norrsken Foundation: norrsken.org
Read more about Stockholm Impact/Week 2023: impactweek.se
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN87PWfj7LA



/[ The news archive - looking back to political leader who called 
attention to our predicament ]/
/*September 27, 1988 */
September 27, 1988: In a speech to the Royal Society in London, Margaret 
Thatcher addresses the environmental threats of global warming, the 
ozone layer and acid rain, noting the risk of rising sea levels to the 
Maldives.

http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107346


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