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<font size="+1"><i>October 14, 2017</i></font><br>
<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609111/did-climate-change-worsen-californias-devastating-fires-probably/">(MIT)
Did Climate Change Fuel California's Devastating Fires?
Probably.</a></b><br>
MIT Technology Review<br>
Nearly two dozen wildfires have burned almost 170,000 acres across
California this week, destroying thousands of structures and killing
23 people so far, in what already amounts to one of the worst
wildfire seasons in the state's history<br>
The clearest way in which global warming increases wildfire risk-one
supported by a growing body of peer-reviewed literature-is higher
temperatures. Warmer air draws moisture from plants, trees, and
soil, increasing what's known as fuel aridity. This provides the dry
fuel and conditions that feed wildfires. Other climatic factors can
also contribute, including decreased rainfall and reduced or
earlier-melting mountain snowpack.<br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609111/did-climate-change-worsen-californias-devastating-fires-probably/">https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609111/did-climate-change-worsen-californias-devastating-fires-probably/</a></font><br>
<br>
<b><br>
</b><b> </b><b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://wlrn.org/post/broward-college-students-ask-local-experts-what-there-me-do-about-climate-change">Broward
College Students Ask Local Experts: 'What Is There For Me To Do
About Climate Change?'</a></b><br>
"Is it too late? Like honestly, is there a point, you know?" Trejos
asked during the question and answer period of the talk."It's just,
I always wanted to know, but I guess you can really never know the
answer until you get to the future."<br>
Jurado doesn't think it's too late at all. <br>
"Personal action does have the capacity to create change, and we all
need to feel empowered," Jurado said. "We should not - and cannot -
feel overwhelmed by this issue." <br>
Jurado focused her presentation on what students can do with basic
information about things like carbon dioxide levels and water
management practices to start feeling like they can make a
difference in their neighborhoods. <br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://wlrn.org/post/broward-college-students-ask-local-experts-what-there-me-do-about-climate-change">http://wlrn.org/post/broward-college-students-ask-local-experts-what-there-me-do-about-climate-change</a></font><br>
<br>
<b><br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2017/10/wild-weather-can-devastate-apple-crops/">Wild
weather can devastate apple crops </a><br>
</b>One orchard's experience is a preview of how climate change will
harm agriculture.<br>
Kee: "Last year, 2016, we had the most devastating spring frost that
we've ever had. We lost about 75 percent of our entire crop."<br>
And extreme rain events are growing more common. One day in July …<br>
Kee: "We received twelve inches of rain, and received those 12
inches in a six to eight hour period."<br>
Flooded fields make orchard maintenance harder. Wet weather also
promotes insects and fungus growth.<br>
Crop insurance can help soften any financial blows. <br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2017/10/wild-weather-can-devastate-apple-crops/">https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2017/10/wild-weather-can-devastate-apple-crops/</a></font><b><br>
<br>
<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/10/sea-ice-hole-antarctica-southern-ocean-spd/">Hole
the Size of Maine Opens in Antarctica Ice</a><br>
</b>This is the first time scientists have observed a hole of this
magnitude since the 1970s.<br>
A mysterious hole as big as the state of Maine has been spotted in
Antarctica's winter sea ice cover.<br>
The hole was discovered by researchers about a month ago. The team,
comprised of scientists from the University of Toronto and the
Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling (SOCCOM)
project, was monitoring the area with satellite technology after a
similar hole opened last year.<br>
Known as a polynya, this year's hole was about 30,000 square miles
at its largest, making it the biggest polynya observed in
Antarctica's Weddell Sea since the 1970s.<br>
Since the hole continually exposes the water to the atmosphere
above, it is difficult for new ice layers to form. When the warmer
water cools, on contact with the frigid temperatures in the
atmosphere, it sinks. Then it reheats in deeper areas, allowing the
cycle to continue.<br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/10/sea-ice-hole-antarctica-southern-ocean-spd/">http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/10/sea-ice-hole-antarctica-southern-ocean-spd/</a></font><br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.newsweek.com/antarctica-ice-melting-climate-change-682646">(video
text) MASSIVE HOLE APPEARS IN ANTARCTIC ICE AND SCIENTISTS
AREN'T SURE WHY</a></b><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.newsweek.com/antarctica-ice-melting-climate-change-682646">http://www.newsweek.com/antarctica-ice-melting-climate-change-682646</a><br>
See also: <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://qz.com/1101155/a-mysterious-hole-larger-than-the-netherlands-has-opened-in-the-middle-of-antarctic-ice/">https://qz.com/1101155/a-mysterious-hole-larger-than-the-netherlands-has-opened-in-the-middle-of-antarctic-ice/</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.barrons.com/articles/4-climate-change-stocks-to-buy-1507901895">4
Climate-Change Stocks to Buy</a></b><br>
Companies with exposure to solar power and building efficiency look
most attractive.<br>
HSBC's Amit Shrivastava and Robert Parkes attempt to rank investment
themes in the climate change space, and they think that investors
should focus on solar and buildings efficiencies companies, and skip
investment firms and diversified renewables.<br>
Moreover, solar installations are slated to grow at a rapid clip:<br>
U.S. stocks in this category include Microsemi (MSCC), and First
Solar (FSLR).<br>
They also like building efficiency stocks: The group offers
forecasted EPS growth of 20% over the next year, while the stocks
are trading at a discount to their historical averages. <br>
U.S. stocks in this category include Johnson Controls (JCI) and
Ingersoll Rand (IR).<br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.barrons.com/articles/4-climate-change-stocks-to-buy-1507901895">http://www.barrons.com/articles/4-climate-change-stocks-to-buy-1507901895</a></font><br>
<br>
<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/node/3029">A photo
report from Usinsk, its people and its oil</a></b><br>
Text and photo by Petr Shelomovsky<br>
The city of Usinsk in the north of the Republic of Komi is famous
for history's largest oil spill on land in 1994. According to
unofficial data, between 100-120 thousand tons of fuel spilled into
the ground. Although the authorities insisted that it was only half
that much. There has been nothing comparable to this "black record"
in the last 20 years, but emergency situations on pipelines occur
almost every day.<br>
"The Kolva River has lost all its fish resources. The concentration
of oil products in the caught fish is exceeded. The ecosystem does
not die because there are few fry, but because the ecosystem is
destroyed, it's toxic. The fish does not return there. No matter how
many fry there is in the poisoned pool, there will not be any sense.
Though it looks beautiful."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/node/3029">https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/node/3029</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/10/12/psychological-toll-natural-disasters-000547">'Katrina
brain': The invisible long-term toll of megastorms</a></b><br>
Long after a big hurricane blows through, its effects hammer the
mental-health system.<br>
NEW ORLEANS - Brandi Wagner thought she had survived Hurricane
Katrina. She hung tough while the storm's 170-mph winds pummeled her
home, and powered through two months of sleeping in a sweltering
camper outside the city with her boyfriend's mother. It was later,
after the storm waters had receded and Wagner went back to New
Orleans to rebuild her home and her life that she fell apart.<br>
"I didn't think it was the storm at first. I didn't really know what
was happening to me," Wagner, now 48, recalls. "We could see the
waterline on houses, and rooftop signs with 'please help us,' and
that big X where dead bodies were found. I started sobbing and
couldn't stop. I was crying all the time, just really losing it."<br>
Twelve years later, Wagner is disabled and unable to work because of
the depression and anxiety she developed in the wake of the 2005
storm. She's also in treatment for an opioid addiction that
developed after she started popping prescription painkillers and
drinking heavily to blunt the day-to-day reality of recovering from
Katrina.<br>
s flood waters recede from Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria and Nate,
and survivors work to rebuild communities in Texas, Florida and the
Caribbean, mental health experts warn that the hidden psychological
toll will mount over time, expressed in heightened rates of
depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance
abuse, domestic violence, divorce, murder and suicide.<br>
In New Orleans, doctors are still treating the psychological
devastation of Katrina. More than 7,000 patients receive care for
mental and behavioral health conditions just from the Jefferson
Parish Human Services Authority, a state-run mental health clinic in
Marrero, just across the Mississippi River from New Orleans. At
least 90 percent of the patients lived through Katrina and many
still suffer from storm-related disorders, according to medical
director and chief psychiatrist Thomas Hauth, who adds that he and
most of his fellow clinicians also suffer from some level of
long-term anxiety from the storm.<br>
A year after Katrina, psychiatrist James Barbee reported that many
of his patients in New Orleans had deteriorated from post-Katrina
anxiety to more serious cases of depression and anxiety. "People are
just wearing down," Barbee said. "There was an initial spirit about
bouncing back and recovering, but it's diminished over time, as
weeks have become months."<br>
But perhaps the greatest risk of adverse mental health reactions to
storms occurs when an entire community like New Orleans' Lower Ninth
Ward is so completely destroyed that people can't return to normal
for months or years, if ever. For those who left and went to live in
Houston, Atlanta and other far-flung cities, the dislocation and
loss of community was equally harmful, researchers say.<br>
"People are only physically and mentally resilient to a point and
then they are either irretrievably injured or they die," Kessler
said. If storms intensify in the future, the kind of devastation
parts of New Orleans experienced could become more common, he said.<br>
Some public health experts say that we need to start thinking of
longer-term solutions to the longer-term problem of severe weather;
instead of trying to treat post-storm psychological damage, we
should avoid it in the first place by persuading residents to move
out of storm-prone areas.<br>
"Whether people decide to stay or decide to move, which means giving
up a way of life, the long-term psychological costs of climate
change appear to be inevitable," Harvard's Kessler said. "We can
expect a growing number of people to have to face that dilemma.
They'll be affected by extreme weather one way or another, and they
will need psychological help that already is in short supply."<br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/10/12/psychological-toll-natural-disasters-000547">http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/10/12/psychological-toll-natural-disasters-000547</a></font><br>
<br>
<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Oakland-hills-fire-survivors-brace-for-blaze-they-12274230.php">Oakland
hills fire survivors brace for blaze they know is coming</a></b><br>
The Oakland hills neighbors wondered if the smoke was coming from
their backyards, because they know it will happen again.<br>
Both Piper and Burgess lost their homes in the 1991 Oakland hills
fire that killed 25 people and destroyed 3,500 houses. But what they
smelled this week was smoke from the fires roaring through Wine
Country, deadly infernos that had parts of the East Bay wrapped in
an opaque haze.<br>
The small fires that burn in the East Bay hills every summer are a
habitual way of life, not unlike waiting in an hour-long line for a
table at a popular brunch spot on the weekend. But Piper and Burgess
know that wildfires like the 1991 firestorm happen once every two to
three decades in the hills.<br>
"We cannot be in denial," Burgess said. "We're trying to also help
educate people. We want them to know what they should be preparing
for."<br>
The point Piper and Burgess made: It's not just on the city to
monitor fire hazards in the hills.<br>
"Homeowners have to own the fire," Piper said. "We're responsible
for making sure our house has defensible space."<br>
That means keeping a healthy clearing - no brush, large trees or
dead vegetation - around a property.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Oakland-hills-fire-survivors-brace-for-blaze-they-12274230.php">http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Oakland-hills-fire-survivors-brace-for-blaze-they-12274230.php</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/09/15/25416873/big-investors-tell-big-banks-to-freak-the-fuck-out-about-climate-change">(rant
classic) Big Investors Tell Big Banks to Freak the Fuck out
about Climate Change</a></b><br>
by Charles Mudede <br>
The <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2017/09/14/big-investors-take-aim-at-banks-over-climate.html">Financial
Times reports </a>that a "coalition of institutional investors
managing more than $1tn in assets" wants the world's biggest banks
to basically reassess and strongly respond to the exposure of
investments to climate change-related "catastrophic damage."<br>
The damage from Irma is now estimated at $90 billion (but if the
storm had moved 20 miles to the east, it would have been a
world-historical $200 billion). The damage from Harvey is growing to
$100 billion. And as big as these losses are, they don't account for
the lost productivity during the long recovery period, exceptional
and unexpected legal expenses, and long-term mental and physical
health costs. The US economy is already feeling the drag of these
disasters. Grist reports that "financial firms Moody's and Goldman
Sachs have already lowered their estimates of overall U.S. economic
growth. Goldman Sachs added that as many as 100,000 jobs could be
lost as businesses downsize in the wake of the storms."<br>
It's also estimated that 10 percent of the population has been
"directly impacted by the storms." Expect these storms to break as
many minds as they have broken homes.<br>
Though the US government is currently run by climate deniers,
eventually the price tag on ignoring climate change will become
intolerable for almost all areas of the economy save those whose
profits are entirely tied to the burning of fossils. But when this
happens, when global warming it is too expensive for a large number
of major capitalists, will the US shift from a high carbon economy
to low carbon one? No. It most likely will not. Never underestimate
the power of social engineering (humans are ruled by ideas) and the
grip the petroleum industry has on advertising and political
institutions. A low carbon economy actually means a completely
different kind of society and ideology. We can expect the fossil
fuel sector to remain in control until the intolerable costs of
climate change are coupled with intolerable death tolls. By that
time, it will be too late do much of anything.<font size="-1"><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/09/15/25416873/big-investors-tell-big-banks-to-freak-the-fuck-out-about-climate-change">http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/09/15/25416873/big-investors-tell-big-banks-to-freak-the-fuck-out-about-climate-change</a></font><br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sdn3O6aaMNc">-<br>
(musical respite) I Didn't F*ck It Up - Katie Goodman of Broad
Comedy</a></b><br>
"They, whoever they are, they f*cked it up." Written by Katie
Goodman and Soren Kisiel. Filmed by Ryan Stumpe and AVERingenuity.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sdn3O6aaMNc">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sdn3O6aaMNc</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<font size="+1"><b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2013-10-14/news/bs-ed-climate-20131014_1_ipcc-report-climate-change-intergovernmental-panel">This
Day in Climate History October 14, 2013</a> - from D.R.
Tucker</b></font><br>
October 14, 2013: In an editorial, the Baltimore Sun declares:<br>
"The latest analysis produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on<br>
Climate Change (IPCC), compiled by hundreds of scientists and dozens<br>
of authors from around the globe, shows that climate change is real,<br>
it's largely caused by man, and it's the greatest environmental
threat<br>
we face.<br>
"That's not alarmism, it's reality. Of course, know-nothing deniers<br>
will be as dismissive of the IPCC findings as they've been of
similar<br>
reports in the past. That the IPCC is under the auspices of the
United<br>
Nations will be used to stir up nationalistic suspicions. That
climate<br>
change policy is highly inconvenient for the fossil fuel industries<br>
will cause the big coal and oil companies to continue their<br>
disinformation campaigns.<br>
"None of which changes the reality that climate change poses a
serious<br>
threat, and as the evidence mounts, it's actually become easier to<br>
distinguish these basic changes in the ecosystem from the normal ups<br>
and downs of weather. No one super storm or drought or tornado is<br>
traceable to global warming, of course, but the data are simply too<br>
overwhelming to ignore. Each of the last three decades has proven<br>
successively warmer than the previous. Any recent slowing of that<br>
trend or plateau, as the report notes, has more to do with variables<br>
such as volcanic activity and the solar cycle over the last five
years<br>
than it does the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere."<br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2013-10-14/news/bs-ed-climate-20131014_1_ipcc-report-climate-change-intergovernmental-panel">http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2013-10-14/news/bs-ed-climate-20131014_1_ipcc-report-climate-change-intergovernmental-panel</a></font><br>
<br>
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