[✔️] Jan 9, 2024 Global Warming News | Whiplash weather, Dr Jennifer Francis, Brace for more, Grist and Washington State, VOA, BioGeoChemistry, Anoxia, 1989 Reagan letter

Tue Jan 9 23:34:01 EST 2024

/*January*//*9, 2024*/

/[ Uncharted weather whiplash events - "it's so discouraging"  ]/
*Premiered Jan 1, 2024  ClimateGenn #podcast  produced by Nick Breeze*
In this climategenn episode bulletin, I speak with Dr Jennifer Francis 
about her new work looking at Weather Whiplash Events that she and 
colleagues have been studying in the N Atlantic and Europe.

We also discuss the outlook for 2024 as climate impacts worsen and world 
leaders from across the world are doubling down on expanding the root 
cause of the problem: fossil fuels.

If you want to find out more about the failing COP process and why we 
urgently need to hold those delaying structural change directly 
accountable, you can preorder my book COPOUT, available on Amazon or 
another bookstore. https://amzn.to/47llRaW

Thanks for supporting the podcast. I will be resuming interviews gain 
next week and fully appreciate your support.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMxsu1E88NA

- -

/[ defined and referenced in Wikipedia ]/
*Weather whiplash is the phenomenon of rapid swings between extremes in 
weather, which some scientists argue is caused by climate change.*
As of 2019, there was no formal scientific definition for weather whiplash.

Weather whiplash was observed amid the 2022 European heat waves, which 
parched France in one of its worst ever recorded droughts and caused the 
driest July for decades in England, then broke with heavy rain and 
flooding,- and rains the same summer during the Southwestern North 
American megadrought.- In late 2022 and early 2023, the phenomenon again 
struck North America as record cold around Christmas receded into record 
heat in January,- which in early February became even more extreme cold 
across the Northeastern United States.- In the US state of California 
weather events swung from an extreme drought to flooding caused by 
atmospheric rivers.

Weather whiplash can also bring false springs, or winter warm spells 
that conceal a freeze following them, and freak snowstorms early in the 
season; both can disrupt agriculture and the electrical grid...
A study in 2018 found a likelihood both extremes of precipitation would 
increase in California, increasing the chances of very wet years 
following very dry years and vice versa...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_whiplash

- -

/["Rough weather ahead" -- "literally uncharted territory" - 45 min 
video information from Dr Jennifer Francis ]/
*The Arctic Meltdown: Why it Matters to All of Us presented by Jennifer 
Francis*
SCLSNJ
August 7, 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccpNf70byOE

/[ says Bloomberg in this clip $ ]/
*Brace for more climate shocks *
By Olivia Rudgard
With every January over the last decade familiar data emerges: last year 
was hot. In the case of 2023, it was the hottest year ever. It’s become 
so predictable that some weary scientists are pondering joke 
auto-responses to journalist enquiries.

“Every year for the rest of your life will end up being one of the 
hottest in the record,” says one such message, posted on X by Andrew 
Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University. “This in turn 
means that 20__ will end up being among the coldest years of this 
century. Enjoy it while it lasts.”...
- -
A case in point: While El Niño is associated with above normal heat, it 
had barely got going last year when conditions were already extreme. The 
Atlantic Ocean was incredibly warm, reaching record-breaking 
temperatures as early as June. September 2023 was hotter than the 
previous record by a huge margin. More recently, in eastern Australia, 
El Niño usually means a hot, dry summer, but it’s been very wet in 
recent weeks, with severe storms and flash flooding.

Talking to scientists for this story, it was clear that while there are 
possible explanations for all of these things, there are also a lot of 
uncertainties about how exactly the climate is changing. While some 
studies suggest climate change is already amplifying natural phenomena 
like El Niño and will continue to do so, this is an area of active 
research with a lot of unknowns. There’s also the possibility — not 
proven, but possible — that things are accelerating more quickly than we 
expected.

All this highlights the grim reality that a warming world doesn’t just 
mean a few extra degrees on the temperature chart. The global climate is 
a complicated and finely-balanced thing. How exactly we’ve messed with 
it is something we don’t yet fully understand...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-01-08/2024-could-be-even-warmer-than-record-setting-2023 

/[ Grist - audio and text --  Washington State legislation ]/
*Washington’s cap on carbon is raising billions for climate action. Can 
it survive the backlash?*
A repeal initiative blaming the state's climate law for higher gas 
prices could wind up on the ballot in November.
Kate Yoder Staff Writer

Jan 08, 2024

For months now, it’s been free for anyone 18 or younger to ride the 
light rail through Seattle, the ferry across Puget Sound, and buses all 
over Washington state. As students tapped their new ORCA cards and 
hopped on the bus, probably the last thing they were thinking about was 
the state’s carbon pricing program, the source of funding behind their 
free ride.

One year after it went into effect, Washington’s “cap-and-invest” system 
has already brought in an eyebrow-raising $2.2 billion for action on 
climate change. The Climate Commitment Act, signed by Governor Jay 
Inslee in 2021, establishes a statewide limit on greenhouse gas 
emissions that steadily lowers over time. The law also creates a market, 
like California’s, for businesses to buy “allowances” for the carbon 
pollution they emit, prodding them to cut their emissions — and at the 
same time generating a boatload of money to tackle climate change. 
Touted as the “gold standard” for state climate policy, the law requires 
Washington to slash its emissions nearly in half by 2030, using 1990 
levels as the baseline.

The program’s early success has attracted attention — praise from 
climate advocates and pushback from anti-tax hawks. A hedge fund manager 
named Brian Heywood has funded a petition drive to repeal the Climate 
Commitment Act, over its effects on gas prices, along with other 
petitions to strike down the state’s capital gains tax, give the police 
more leeway to pursue vehicles, and grant parents access to their kids’ 
medical records at school. The repeal could be headed to voters as a 
ballot initiative this November. If voters approve it, Heywood’s 
initiative wouldn’t just cancel the climate law; it would block the 
state from creating any other cap-and-trade system in the future.

“This is going to force us to do a better job communicating and 
defending our policies,” said Joe Nguyễn, a state senator representing 
White Center, an area just south of Seattle, who chairs the state’s 
Environment, Energy, and Technology Committee.

Experts said that the law is already having tangible benefits. 
Businesses, hoping to avoid paying for costly pollution “allowances,” 
are figuring out how to run their operations while emitting less carbon. 
Meanwhile, the revenue from the program is spurring clean energy 
efforts, including a large-scale solar project by the Yakama Nation, and 
attracting green industries like clean hydrogen. The funding will also 
help families install energy-efficient (and money-saving) heat pumps and 
provide incentives for garbage trucks, delivery vans, and buses to go 
electric.

The fate of the climate law could have ripple effects beyond Washington, 
the second state to adopt a cap on carbon after California. New York, 
for example, just unveiled plans for a cap-and-invest program in 
December. Officials in New York are closely monitoring the backlash in 
Washington state, and, in turn, other Northeastern states are watching 
New York to see what it decides. If Washington’s law goes up in flames, 
states might decide against enshrining similar carbon-cutting laws. But 
if it survives the backlash, it could boost other politicians’ 
confidence in putting a price on carbon pollution.

Grist spoke with experts in Washington about the lessons they’ve 
learned, one year into the program. They suggested that advocates for 
any stringent carbon price should be ready to play defense right away — 
and should work to make its benefits tangible to people around the state.

“The success of the Climate Commitment Act will depend on whether real 
people in real neighborhoods are actually seeing better infrastructure 
and things like better transit, home weatherization and electrification, 
and reductions in emissions from industry,” said Deric Gruen, 
co-executive director of the Front and Centered, an environmental 
justice coalition based in Seattle.

*The gas price debacle*
If the state’s residents have heard anything about the law, it’s most 
likely been about the bane of politics: the price of gasoline. 
Washington’s gas prices soared to $4.91 a gallon on average in June, the 
highest in the country.

Almost as soon as the first auction to sell pollution credits was held 
in March, raising $300 million, opponents started drawing a connection 
between the climate law and “pain at the pump.” The price of emitting a 
ton of carbon dioxide clocked in at $49, nearly double the average price 
in California’s cap-and-trade market at the time. Kelly Hall, the 
Washington director for the regional nonprofit Climate Solutions, 
attributes the higher prices to the stringency of Washington’s program, 
which requires more ambitious carbon dioxide cuts than California’s.

In a YouTube video promoting the repeal campaign, Heywood calls the law 
a “sneaky” gas tax and characterizes it as a money-grab by the state 
government. “Who knows where [the money] goes?” he asks in the video. He 
maintains that Inslee and state Democrats weren’t upfront about its 
potential cost to drivers of gas-powered vehicles. Last year, Heywood 
hired signature gatherers to go around the state, and in November, they 
turned in more than 400,000 signatures to repeal the climate law. If 
enough of those signatures pass the verification process, the repeal 
initiative will be headed to voters this November.

“Once those auctions were high, there were billboards and ad campaigns 
and everything blaming the price of gas on this,” said David Mendoza, 
the director of government relations at The Nature Conservancy in 
Seattle. “Being ready for that pushback as soon as implementation 
actually gets started, I think is key.”

State officials have estimated that the program added somewhere around 
26 cents to the price of a gallon of gas, though some economists have 
put the number as high as 55 cents. Confidentiality rules around which 
companies are participating in cap-and-trade auctions make the analysis 
difficult. Lawmakers like Nguyễn are working on a “transparency bill,” 
similar to one that went into effect in California last year, that aims 
to open financial records from oil companies to see if they’re price 
gouging.

Proponents of the Climate Commitment Act argue that Washington’s gas 
prices have always been higher than the national average — they reached 
$5.50 in 2022, before the climate law began — and that oil companies are 
choosing to pass the costs onto consumers. They also point out that 
drivers of electric vehicles in the state are paying the equivalent of 
less than $1.50 a gallon in electricity. Last year, tens of thousands of 
Washingtonians switched to electric vehicles.

“If we are concerned about the cost of transportation for Washington 
businesses and residents, we have to keep our focus away from the 
arm-waving of the variations of gas prices that we’ve suffered through 
for decades and really look to true solutions,” said Michael Mann, the 
executive director for Clean & Prosperous Washington, a climate-friendly 
business coalition. “And the true solution to lower our transportation 
costs is to get off of fossil fuels.”

*Who’s getting the money?*
Legislators are using the revenue from the auctions for dozens of 
programs to tackle the state’s two biggest sources of carbon emissions: 
transportation and buildings. They have set aside $400 million for 
public transit projects, including the free transit for youth program, 
and $120 million for electrifying garbage trucks, delivery vans, school 
buses, and other large vehicles. Another $115 million is earmarked for 
rebates to help low-income households and small businesses install 
energy-efficient equipment like heat pumps, a key tool for lowering 
carbon emissions and energy bills.

The Climate Commitment Act requires that at least 35 percent of the 
investments go toward “overburdened communities,” such as the $25 
million that’s for improving air quality in polluted neighborhoods. An 
additional 10 percent of investments are set aside for projects that 
directly benefit Native American tribes. The state budgeted $50 million 
to help tribes address climate change and adapt to its effects, for 
example, and $20 million for the Yakama Nation’s utility to build solar 
panels over irrigation canals.

The rest of the proceeds go to cleaning up transportation, accelerating 
the shift to clean energy, and helping communities and ecosystems 
withstand the effects of climate change, without specific percentages 
attached.

Front and Centered, which originally opposed the law based on concerns 
that cap-and-trade would fail to limit pollution, is now focused on 
making sure that communities get their promised share of the revenue. 
“The conversation is leaning into this thing about gas prices,” said 
Gruen, the group’s co-executive director, “but the attention really 
needs to be on effectiveness in reducing pollution and justice for 
frontline communities, and that seems to be getting lost in the 
conversation.” He says that communities should get more of a say in the 
budgeting process, so they get to be part of climate solutions in their 
neighborhoods.

It’s taking a while for some projects to get up and running, but that’s 
sort of the nature of the work, Mendoza said. “From my own engagement 
with government agencies, they’re trying to do things differently,” he 
said. “They know that they need to invest in overburdened communities. 
They know they want to reach smaller organizations to get in a pipeline 
to receive these funds that invest directly in communities.”

*How things are changing for businesses*
Climate policies are often discussed in terms of “carrots” (the rewards) 
and “sticks” (the punishments for emissions). The “stick” in 
Washington’s law prompts businesses to clean up their act so they don’t 
have to pay for pollution credits. Some progress is already happening on 
that front, according to Mann of Clean and Prosperous. The oil giant BP, 
which supported the Climate Commitment Act, spent about $270 million on 
efficiency upgrades at its refinery in Cherry Point near Bellingham, 
estimated to reduce the facility’s emissions by 7 percent. Washington’s 
law also gave the U.S. its first all-electric Amtrak bus line when the 
transportation company MTRWestern, which contracted with Amtrak, swapped 
its diesel-powered bus between Seattle and Bellingham for one that 
charges on electricity.

Then there are the carrots. Every dollar invested by the state has 
yielded $5 in federal money through matching grant programs from the 
federal Inflation Reduction Act and bipartisan infrastructure law, 
according to Nguyễn. Legislators in other states are jealous, he said, 
“because we were able to take advantage of these things when they 
couldn’t, and it’s going to really accelerate the work that we’re doing.”

The global mining company Fortescue, for example, obtained $20 million 
from the state to build a multibillion-dollar “clean hydrogen” plant in 
Centralia, Washington, near an old coal-fired power plant that’s set to 
retire in 2025. (Hydrogen can replace fossil fuels in a range of 
tough-to-decarbonize industries, from aviation to steelmaking.) The 
project was recently awarded an additional $1 billion in federal funds. 
Without the revenue from the Climate Commitment Act, Mann said, getting 
the grant money from the state that made the project eligible for 
federal funding “would have been next to impossible.”

Another example is Group14, a Seattle startup that’s building the 
world’s largest factory for advanced silicon battery materials, which 
promises to make the lithium-ion batteries used in EVs more powerful and 
faster-charging. The factory, set to open in Moses Lake, Washington 
later this year, is expected to provide enough battery materials for 
200,000 electric vehicles every year. It’s bolstered by funds from 
Washington’s program and the federal bipartisan infrastructure law.

Whatever happens next with Washington’s cap-and-invest law, whether it 
gets overturned or continues to bring in billions for climate action, 
it’s bound to influence how other states choose to tackle global 
warming. “It’s so funny when people see these things like this happen, 
and they say, ‘Oh, well, this went wrong, and that went wrong, and that 
went wrong,’” Nguyễn said. “And it’s like, of course — that’s what 
leadership looks like. You know, nobody had a map of how this was 
supposed to happen.”

https://grist.org/politics/washington-carbon-cap-investments-gas-prices/

/[ from Voice Of America  video report 3 mins ]/
*Climate Change Ruining Farms on El Salvador’s Coast*
January 8, 2024
Claudia Zaldaña
The impact of climate change is increasingly evident along El Salvador’s 
coastlines where saltwater is slowly claiming what once was farmland. 
Veronica Villafañe narrates this report from Claudia Zaldaña
https://www.voanews.com/a/climate-change-ruining-farms-on-el-salvador-s-coast/7430826.html

/[ It's gonna take millions of years to sequester carbon - says Geo Girl ]/
*What Are The Biogeochemical Cycles & How Do They Work? GEO GIRL*
GEO GIRL
Jan 7, 2024
This is a follow up video to last week's 'What is Biogeochemistry' 
video: https://youtu.be/WTpkame9Sd0, so check that out first if you want 
a recap on biogeochem and why it is important field to study! In this 
video, we cover the major global biogechemical cycles, including the 
carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorous cycles, the 
factors that affect these cycles, and how perturbations in these cycles 
can cause major global climate and environmental change. Hope you enjoy! ;D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZekTSsFbejU

- -

/[ Even more geology - about ocean anoxia - was there actually a purple 
sky? ] /
*The Ocean Fertilization Plan & Its Potential Consequences | GEO GIRL*
GEO GIRL
Oct 15, 2023
So, there is a plan involving fertilizing the ocean to decrease the 
amount of carbon in the atmosphere and combat global warming. Will it 
work? How? What are the downsides?

This video was made in response to comments asking whether ocean 
fertilization may work. I am sorry it took me so long to make this 
video, but I hope it answers your questions! Feel free to leave more 
comments with future video ideas, you guys have some really great ideas! :D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYOTFuklRvI

/[The news archive - President Ronald Reagan sent a letter to the House 
Speaker ]/
/*January 9, 1989 */
January 9, 1989: In a letter to House Speaker Jim Wright and Vice 
President George H. W. Bush, President Ronald Reagan writes: "Because 
changes in the earth’s natural systems can have tremendous economic and 
social effects, global climate change is becoming a critical concern."
(Apparently, Reagan's reference to the "critical concern" of climate 
change has never been acknowledged by right-wing media entities such as 
the Fox News Channel.)

    • To continue the significant progress we have made in cleaning up
    the environment, I recommend a $153 million increase for the
    Environmental Protection Agency's regulatory, research and
    enforcement programs. I also recommend an increase of $315 million
    for the Superfund hazardous waste clean-up program in order to
    maintain the program's momentum and support a stronger enforcement role.

    • Because changes in the earth's natural systems can have tremendous
    economic and social effects, global climate change is becoming a
    critical concern. Our ability to understand and predict these
    changes is currently limited, and a better understanding is
    essential for developing policies. The budget proposes a coordinated
    and effective Federal research program on global change. This budget
    is accompanied by a report by the Committee on Earth Sciences that
    describes this program and its strategy.

    • Last year's fires on Federal forestlands indicated the need for
    more timely funding for annual fire-fighting costs. I therefore
    propose that two new Federal wild land firefighting accounts be
    established in the Departments of Agriculture and Interior.

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/letter-the-speaker-the-house-representatives-and-the-president-the-senate-transmitting-24
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=35346

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