[✔️] March 2, 2024 Global Warming News | 3 futures, Wildfires future, Millions of US climate displaced, Bechdel Test for Climate Change, 2005 Piltx resigns

[Richard Pauli]

/*March*//*2, 2024*/

/[ Academic study of 3 ways to ponder the future   ]/
*Climate catastrophe: The value of envisioning the worst-case scenarios 
of climate change*
Joe P. L. Davidson, Luke Kemp
First published: 12 December 2023 https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.871
Edited by: Matthias Heymann, Domain Editor and Maria Carmen Lemos, 
Editor-in-Chief

    *Abstract*
    Many now argue that we should think about the previously unthinkable
    risks of climate change, including societal collapses and human
    extinction. Calamitous images of the future are not pathological or
    counterproductive: it is both necessary and valuable to imagine the
    worst-case scenarios of climate change. Critics of climate
    catastrophe often group together all visions of disastrous futures
    under labels like doomism or pessimism. This is unhelpful and
    greater nuance is required. We need to distinguish between climate
    doomists (who see catastrophe as imminent and unavoidable) and
    climate risk realists (who see catastrophe as one potential future
    that should be avoided). We also need to split apart the different
    ways of envisioning climate catastrophe to understand their distinct
    strengths and weaknesses. We outline and compare three alternative
    modes of viewing the worst-case scenarios of climate change:
    foresight, agitation, and fiction. The first centers on modeling
    catastrophic climate scenarios, the second on the use of images of
    climate catastrophe for political action, and the third on fictional
    visions of future climate disasters. These different approaches are
    complementary and should be better integrated to create more
    comprehensive models of the future. All of them would benefit from
    viewing the future as uncertain, reflecting on the social position
    of the author, and guarding against the authoritarian “stomp reflex”
    that can be induced by discussions of crisis and emergency...

- -
*7 CONCLUSION*
The three different approaches to exploring climate endgames (foresight, 
agitation, and fiction) each have their strengths and weaknesses. 
Foresight is the most systematic and grounded way of thinking about the 
future. Unfortunately, it frequently fails in having simplistic methods 
that ignore risk cascades, societal responses, and other contributors to 
global catastrophic risk. Agitation can help to mobilize the public, but 
runs the risk of misrepresenting the evidence, potentially creating 
fatalism (in the case of climate doomism), and depoliticizing climate 
change. Fiction can help to create more holistic visions of the future, 
encourage reflection on how future crisis interacts with past and 
present injustices, help craft new visions of society, and foster 
humility. Yet it runs the risk of being too speculative and ignoring the 
unprecedented nature of current climate change. These approaches, for 
all their differences, are complementary and can only be improved by 
combining them. There may be other ways of exploring endgames, and we 
invite others to further investigate these.

The emphasis of this article has been on the differences and synergies 
between alternative modes of envisioning the worst-case scenarios of 
climate change. This is not a general philosophical defense of 
catastrophic thinking as others have articulated (Dupuy, 2023). 
Nevertheless, there are some broader lessons that can be drawn from our 
comparative approach. Effective catastrophic envisioning requires that 
scholars, activists, and writers alike need to stress that a 
catastrophic future is uncertain, not inevitable, and reflect on their 
own social position. We should aim to be climate risk realists (aware of 
the uncertain and malleable nature of the future), not climate doomists 
(who see catastrophe as imminent and inevitable). Importantly, the 
broader scientific community should be careful to distinguish between 
the two and not lazily brand any discussion of climate catastrophe as 
climate doomism. In short, climate catastrophe should not be vilified as 
climate doomism. Drawing on more diverse groups and encouraging 
deliberation across communities will also help to ensure that our 
judgments about the future are robust, not biased towards particularly 
powerful social positions, and highlight the link between current 
injustices and future disasters. Like cutting emissions, exploring 
climate endgames requires a diverse, thoughtful, and integrated 
approach. We cannot view a dangerous and distant horizon with one (or 
both) eye(s) shut.
https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.871



/[ "What we have here is a 'failure to communicate'"  ]/
*Climate Change Is Raising Texas’ Already High Wildfire Risks*
The Smokehouse Creek fire is a sign of more to come. Property insurers 
in Texas are already responding
by Delger Erdenesanaa and Christopher Flavelle
Feb. 29, 2024
Climate change is increasing the risk of wildfires in Texas, a danger 
made real this week as the Smokehouse Creek fire, the largest in state 
history, burns out of control across the Panhandle region.

And that growing fire risk is beginning to affect the insurance market 
in Texas, raising premiums for homeowners and causing some insurers to 
withdraw from parts of the state.

For the Smokehouse Creek fire to grow so big so quickly, three weather 
conditions had to align: high temperatures, low relative humidity and 
strong winds, said John Nielsen-Gammon, the Texas state climatologist 
and a professor of atmospheric science at Texas A&M University.

On Monday, as the Smokehouse Creek fire began to spread, it was 82 
degrees Fahrenheit in Amarillo. The city’s average daytime high 
temperature in February is 54 degrees, according to the National Weather 
Service.
As of Thursday, a New York Times tracker based on federal data shows 
more than one million acres burning, making the fire one of the most 
destructive in U.S. history.
Temperatures in Texas have risen by 0.61 degrees Fahrenheit per decade 
since 1975, according to a 2021 report by the state climatologist’s 
office. The relative humidity in this region has been decreasing as 
well, Dr. Nielsen-Gammon said. It’s less clear whether the winds have 
changed significantly.
Climate change is likely making fire season start earlier and last 
longer, he said, by increasing the number of days in a year with hot and 
dry weather conditions that enable wildfires.

*Texas is currently the state with the second highest number of 
properties that are vulnerable to wildfires, behind Florida*, according 
to analysis by the nonprofit research group First Street Foundation.
In most of Texas, wildfires happen in the summer. But across the 
Southern Plains, including the Texas Panhandle, fire risk is highest 
around March when temperatures warm, strong winds blow over the flat 
landscape and dry grass left from the previous growing season can easily 
catch fire.

Only about 1 percent of wildfires in Texas happen in the Panhandle, but 
the region accounts for half of the state’s acres burned, said Sean 
Dugan, a spokesman for the Texas A&M Forest Service. “They’re not very 
numerous. But when they do happen, they get really big,” he said.

Normally, if there is no drought, in April the landscape starts to 
become green and the Panhandle’s fire risk goes down. But this year, 
there are “enhanced chances” of a dry spring and summer and a hot 
summer, Dr. Nielsen-Gammon said. As a result, he expects the fire risk 
to remain high in the Panhandle and it may be higher during the summer 
in the rest of the state as well.

*As the climate changes, the very concept of a fire season is becoming 
blurry.*

“There were clear fire seasons for Texas in the past, but fires have 
become a year-round threat,” said Yongqiang Liu, a meteorologist at the 
U.S. Forest Service’s Southern Research Station, in an email.

Texans are noticing the uptick in extreme weather events, said Jeremy 
Mazur, a senior policy adviser at Texas 2036, a nonpartisan research 
organization that helps fund an extreme weather report written by the 
state climatologist.
A top concern of residents is the rising cost of homeowners insurance, 
according to a recent survey conducted by Texas 2036. About 88 percent 
of 1,000 likely voters polled expressed some level of concern about 
extreme weather events increasing what they pay for property insurance.

“The real impact that we’re starting to see from this growing wildfire 
risk is in the form of growing property insurance premiums,” Mr. Mazur said.

Texas homeowners saw their insurance rates increase 53.6 percent between 
2019 and 2023, according to data compiled by S&P Global Market 
Intelligence. That was the highest percentage increase of any state 
except Arizona.

Allstate, the second-largest insurer in Texas, included wildfires as one 
of its “greatest areas of potential catastrophe losses” in a regulatory 
filing this month.

Some insurance companies have begun to withdraw from parts of the Texas 
market. People in Llano and Burnet counties, southwest of Dallas, report 
being dropped by their insurers because of wildfire risk, the news 
outlet KXAN reported last week.
State legislators are starting to take note, but more action is needed, 
Mr. Mazur said. During the last legislative session, a Republican 
representative from East Texas introduced a bill to require the state 
forest service to recommend ways to mitigate the state’s wildfire risks. 
The bill was removed from the calendar before the end of session.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/29/climate/smokehouse-creek-fire-insurance-climate.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/29/climate/smokehouse-creek-fire-insurance-climate.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ZU0.o1a1.Gex0th7elqMH&smid=url-share



/[ Lessons not learned, will be repeated.  ]/
*Disasters Forced 2.5 Million Americans From Their Homes Last Year*
Many of those displaced also reported food shortages and predatory 
scams, according to new data from the Census Bureau.
By Aidan Gardiner
Feb. 22, 2024
An estimated 2.5 million people were forced from their homes in the 
United States by weather-related disasters in 2023, according to new 
data from the Census Bureau.

The numbers, issued on Thursday, paint a more complete picture than ever 
before of the lives of these people in the aftermath of disasters. More 
than a third said they had experienced at least some food shortage in 
the first month after being displaced. More than half reported that they 
had interacted with someone who seemed to be trying to defraud them. And 
more than a third said they had been displaced for longer than a month.

The United States experienced 28 disasters last year that each cost at 
least $1 billion. But until recently, the number of Americans displaced 
by those disasters has been hard to estimate because of the nation’s 
patchwork response system.

Understanding the human toll of disasters, not just the financial costs, 
is increasingly urgent as climate change supercharges extreme weather, 
experts say.
A lot of people’s lives are disrupted by these events in small and large 
ways,” said Andrew Rumbach, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, a 
nonprofit group that focuses on advancing upward mobility and equity. 
“It has a really big cumulative cost that’s hard to capture. This, at 
least, gives us a snapshot of that.”
The displacement data were gathered in the bureau’s Household Pulse 
Survey, which aims to measure how emerging social and economic 
challenges are affecting Americans. The survey added questions about 
disasters in December 2022.

Those first results, issued in January of 2023, showed that about 3.3 
million people had been displaced in the year before. According to the 
latest batch of responses, collected in January and early February, 2.5 
million said they had been displaced at some point last year.

The change from year to year is very likely a normal fluctuation, 
experts said, and may also reflect some limitations of the survey.

Different versions of the survey are sent periodically by text message 
and email to more than a million households at a time. The survey is 
self-reported and takes about 20 minutes. The number of people who 
respond can vary from about 40,000 to 80,000. The Census Bureau then 
assigns weights to the responses to make them representative of the 
broader population.
The Census Bureau notes that “sample sizes may be small and the standard 
errors may be large.” But experts say the results still provide some of 
the best available numbers on displacement.

“It’s a bit of a grain-of-salt number,” said Dr. Rumbach, who holds a 
Ph.D. in city and regional planning. “But at the same time, it’s a data 
set in a world where we don’t have a lot of good data sets.”

Hurricanes remained the most commonly cited cause of displacement, 
followed by floods and fires. Florida, Texas, California and Louisiana 
all had hundreds of thousands flee their homes.

A precise count of those displaced by disasters has been elusive because 
responding agencies and nonprofit groups only know how many people they 
serve, which leaves out displaced people who do not ask for help and 
communities that do not receive help at all. For example, the Federal 
Emergency Management Agency only responds to events that get a federal 
emergency declaration.

“That’s only a small portion of overall disasters,” Dr. Rumbach said. As 
an example, he pointed to floods that wreck a handful of homes and other 
so-called “low attention disasters” that often affect more rural 
communities. “There’s no incentive for people to add up all of those,” 
he said.
But the Pulse survey tries to do that, Dr. Rumbach said, even though 
some researchers are wary about drawing very broad conclusions.

“The concepts themselves — What is a disaster? What is displacement? — 
are really left open to the interpretation of the survey respondent,” 
said Elizabeth Fussell, a professor of population studies at Brown 
University.

The survey lists fire among the “natural disasters” that could lead to a 
displacement, for example, and some experts say it is not hard to 
imagine someone selecting that after a house fire. Dr. Fussell also 
noted that while earlier federal surveys counted those who had 
permanently moved from their homes after a disaster, “displacement” in 
the pulse survey could refer to a daylong departure.

While respondents can opt to say they “never returned” to their homes, 
experts cautioned that the short-term nature of the survey might make 
the true number of permanently displaced people hard to discern.

The data also show that the people facing the worst disaster outcomes 
tend to be from communities with less political power and who are 
subject to discrimination. Black people and Latinos tend to be displaced 
most often, and poorer people tend to be displaced for longer, experts 
said. That is amplified for people in those groups who also identify as 
L.G.B.T.Q., according to one analysis.

  “There are many federal agencies that are very well aware that climate 
change is happening and that it will manifest as weather-related 
disasters,” Dr. Fussell said. “There’s a need to understand the scale of 
those.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/22/climate/climate-disasters-survivors-displacement.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/22/climate/climate-disasters-survivors-displacement.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ZU0.8VyQ.4JZQZhp4EFMM&smid=url-share



/[ Call it Pass / Fail  -- 
https://www.indiewire.com/news/business/bechdel-test-climate-change-film-good-energy-1234958880/ 
]/

*Now There’s a Bechdel Test for Climate Change in Film*
A new test says only a handful of this year's Oscar -nominated films 
both acknowledge that climate change exists and has characters who are 
aware of its impact.
BY BRIAN WELK
MARCH 1, 2024 12:00 PM
Alison Bechdel came up with the comic strip premise for the Bechdel Test 
in 1985, identifying the lack of female representation in countless 
movies and TV shows in which two women don’t even speak to one another. 
The first use of the phrase “global warming” preceded that in 1975, but 
now in an unusual marriage, the two concepts are coming together to help 
entertainment address climate change.

Non-profit organization Good Energy is today launching what it’s calling 
a “Climate Reality Check,” introducing a study and its criteria for a 
Bechdel-type test assessing whether some recent releases acknowledge the 
existence of climate change in its text.

The test is intended as a guide for screenwriters and industry 
professionals to “interrogate their own stories” and see whether 
Hollywood is representing reality — the grim reality being climate 
change — on screen. And the organization is calling it a reality check 
because it believes that if a movie is set in the present day where 
climate change is a persistent and looming problem, it should at least 
acknowledge that reality and “reflect the world as it is.”

That doesn’t sound like that high a bar, but there’s some nuance in 
terms of what is being tracked. Researchers as part of the study were 
looking for the phrases “climate change,” “a changing climate,” “the 
climate crisis,” “global warming,” “a warming world,” “melting 
glaciers,” “rising seas,” or other phrases that can suggest at the 
effects of climate change on the planet. Seeing bad weather alone didn’t 
cut it, unless the character acknowledged that such storms or calamities 
are happening with greater frequency.

“When stories erase climate change, they seem increasingly out of touch 
with reality,” the study reads. “The more that stories include climate, 
the more authentic and relevant they are, allowing them to connect with 
audiences and their experience of being alive in the age of climate change.”

The second component, “a character knows it,” could be demonstrated 
through dialogue, a news report seen by the character, someone attending 
an event specifically geared toward taking action, or that the character 
is clearly identified in a professional role designed to address climate 
change. Even for stories that are post-apocalyptic in nature, the study 
says, awareness of climate change and its effects shouldn’t be assumed; 
it has to be demonstrated.

The study says 75 percent of young people between 16-25 across 10 
diverse countries find the future frightening because of climate change, 
but only 37 percent talk about it regularly with family or friends. The 
organization believes having characters on screen address it can 
eliminate climate anxiety, hopelessness, and inaction. The report even 
suggests that the lack of climate discussion in film is a strategy of 
the fossil fuel industry to sow silence and skepticism.

“Audiences want on-screen stories that reflect themselves and their 
reality, but report that they aren’t seeing characters who share their 
level of concern about climate change,” the report says. “This component 
of the test directly addresses that gap. A character talking about 
climate change can help
model conversations about it in real life, and simple conversations 
about climate change can be remarkably influential. As climate scientist 
Dr. Katharine Hayhoe says, the most important thing a person can do to 
fight climate change is to talk about it.”

As part of the study, Good Energy along with researchers at Colby 
College’s Buck Lab for Climate and Environment looked at the 31 
different Oscar-nominated films in 2024. Only 13 of them were 
contemporary stories set in the present or near future, not period 
dramas or science fiction fantasies, which were not analyzed. Of those 
13, only three movies passed the test and addressed climate change in 
some form. Those films are “Barbie,” “Mission: Impossible — Dead 
Reckoning Part 1,” and “Nyad.”

In the case of “Barbie,” the teenaged Sasha dismantles Barbie’s view of 
reality by telling her “you’re killing the planet with your 
glorification of rampant consumerism,” a laugh line that still feels 
rooted in the real world. “Dead Reckoning’s” Kittridge warns Ethan Hunt 
about the “war for the last of our dwindling energy, drinkable water, 
breathable air.” And in “Nyad,” Jodie Foster’s Bonnie bluntly name 
checks global warming as the reason “the box jellyfish came up off the 
shallow reef when we left Cuba,” which later becomes a key plot point in 
Diane Nyad’s quest to make the swim from Cuba.

Good Energy back in 2022 released a playbook for screenwriters about how 
they can more seamlessly introduce such concepts into their writing. The 
organization believes that with this test, writers can be rigorous in 
assessing their stories.

“The Climate Reality Check does not suggest or require that every story 
center climate change, nor does it prescribe what kinds of stories 
filmmakers should tell. It simply measures whether our current climate 
reality is being reflected on-screen. How that is done, friends, is up 
to you,” the report reads.

“I’m thrilled to see that several of my favorite Oscar-nominated films 
from the last year passed the Climate Reality Check,” Good Energy 
founder and CEO Anna Jane Joyner said in a statement. “It’s a clear 
demonstration that acknowledging the climate crisis on-screen can be 
done in entertaining and artful ways that are authentic to the story. 
More proof that audiences crave seeing their own world and experience, 
which now universally includes the climate crisis, reflected on screen.”

“Humans are storytelling animals and climate change is the biggest story 
of our time. It affects every part of our lives and threatens everything 
we depend on and hold dear,” said Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, PhD, 
Associate Professor of English, Colby College. “Yet it has been absent 
from the stories we consume. The Climate Reality Check is a simple, 
illuminating, and powerful tool that can be used to evaluate any group 
of narratives — from films and TV shows to video games and novels — for 
their reflection of our climate reality. In this way, the Climate 
Reality Check provides a new and necessary perspective on storytelling 
in and for a world on fire.”

The Climate Reality Check was created by Anna Jane Joyner, Carmiel 
Banasky, Bruno Olmedo Quiroga, and Matthew Schneider-Mayerson.

https://www.indiewire.com/news/business/bechdel-test-climate-change-film-good-energy-1234958880/



/[The news archive -  ]/
/*March 2, 2005 */
March 2, 2005: Rick Piltz resigns from the US Climate Change Science 
Program after relentless, extensive efforts by Bush White House 
officials to censor scientific reports on climate change.
http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?id=5316&method=full


/Archive of Daily Global Warming News 
https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/

=== Other climate news sources ===========================================
**Inside Climate News*
Newsletters
https://insideclimatenews.org/
---------------------------------------
**Climate Nexus* https://climatenexus.org/hot-news/*
   5 weekday
=================================
*Carbon Brief Daily https://www.carbonbrief.org/newsletter-sign-up*
Every weekday morning
more at https://www.getrevue.co/publisher/carbon-brief
==================================
*T*he Daily Climate *Subscribe https://ehsciences.activehosted.com/f/61*
Other newsletters  at https://www.dailyclimate.org/originals/ 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/ 



/To receive daily mailings - click to Subscribe 
<mailto:subscribe at theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request> 
to news digest./

/Archive of Daily Global Warming News 
https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/

Privacy and Security:*This mailing is text-only -- and carries no images 
or attachments which may originate from remote servers.  Text-only 
messages provide greater privacy to the receiver and sender. This is a 
personal hobby production curated by Richard Pauli
By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain cannot be used for commercial 
purposes. Messages have no tracking software.
To subscribe, email: contact at theclimate.vote 
<mailto:contact at theclimate.vote> with subject subscribe, To Unsubscribe, 
subject: unsubscribe
Also you may subscribe/unsubscribe at 
https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote
Links and headlines assembled and curated by Richard Pauli for 
http://TheClimate.Vote <http://TheClimate.Vote/> delivering succinct 
information for citizens and responsible governments of all levels. List 
membership is confidential and records are scrupulously restricted to 
this mailing list.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/attachments/20240302/d7affa43/attachment.htm>