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<i><font size="+1"><b>July 2, 2020</b></font></i><br>
<br>
[CBS News video]<br>
<b>House Democrats release plan to fight climate change</b><br>
House Democrats have released a 500-page report with recommendations
for government action to help fight climate change. Congresswoman
Kathy Castor of Florida is the chair of the House Select Committee
on the Climate Crisis, and she joined CBSN to discuss the
recommendations.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.cbsnews.com/video/house-democrats-release-plan-to-fight-climate-change/">https://www.cbsnews.com/video/house-democrats-release-plan-to-fight-climate-change/</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">[changes are predictable]<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><b>Why 2020 to 2050 Will Be 'the Most
Transformative Decades in Human History'</b><br>
Climate change will force more people to leave their homes than at
any other point in human history. Conflict is inevitable.<br>
Eric Holthaus<br>
Jun 24 ยท 2020<br>
From the book 'The Future Earth: A Radical Vision for What's
Possible in the Age of Warming' by Eric Holthaus. Copyright 2020
by Eric Holthaus.<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">The 30 years from 2020 to 2050 will be
among the most transformative decades in all of human history.
Collapsing ice sheets, the aerosol crisis, and rising sea levels
will force more people to leave their homes than at any other
point in human history. In some places, that means conflict is
inevitable.<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">A study from researchers at the
University of California at Berkeley found that higher
temperatures and shifting patterns of extreme weather can cause a
rise in all types of violence, from domestic abuse to civil wars.
In extreme cases, it could cause countries to cease functioning
and collapse altogether.<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">This ominous reality of climate change
is far from fated, however. A rapidly changing environment just
makes conflict more likely, not inevitable. People, ultimately,
are still in control. Our choices determine whether or not these
conflicts will happen. In a world where we've rapidly decided to
embark on constructing an ecological society, we'll have developed
countless tools of conflict avoidance as part of our climate
change adaptation strategies.<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Still, there will be those who choose
to live outside the mainstream society who may pose an existential
threat to the rest of us. Some groups and a few rogue countries
will try to prevent the rest of the world's transition toward
ecological and social justice. They will do this either because of
the lingering influence from the dwindling fossil fuel industry,
or because of a fascist ideological response to climate change
that puts human rights at risk, or out of desperation.<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Mary Annaise Heglar, a climate essayist
and advocate for intersectional approaches to racial and
environmental justice, is inspired particularly by Octavia
Butler's Parable of the Sower for an example of how things could
go very badly. In the book, Butler describes fire-obsessed cults
that spring up in a post-rapid climate change world, craving some
sense amid the destruction and chaos they see all around them.
Heglar thinks that could be just the beginning. "The future I see
is really ugly unless something very, very drastic changes,"
Heglar told me. "It's a world where people find many, many
different ways, very creative ways, to be cruel to one another.
Unpredictability brings out people's cruelty if you're not
careful. And most people are not careful."<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Heglar specifically thinks of the
racial massacre in East Saint Louis, Illinois, in 1917 as an
example of the kind of violence that might emerge if the world is
not careful. Angry white mobs murdered dozens of Black people
after they were hired in place of striking workers at factories
during World War I. If lifesaving technology is not distributed
fairly, or if governments lean too heavily on austerity along
racial lines, or if climate disasters fragment already vulnerable
populations, the result could be truly ugly.<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">"So many things that we think are
impossible today could be completely normal in 20 years," Heglar
told me. "I hear people saying now that 'when it gets really bad,
I'll just move to New Zealand or I'll move to Sweden, where
climate change impact is not going to be that drastic.' But it's
not going to be cute there. First of all, it's going to be mostly
the 1% living there. So if you think your regular ass is gonna be
able to buy land in New Zealand, good luck."<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">An escapist attitude is probably the
most dangerous reaction to climate change today. It drives to the
heart of how the problem of climate change came into being in the
first place: By imagining ourselves as individuals who somehow
exist outside the context of an interconnected, living ecosystem
on a planet where all of our actions deeply affect one another, we
fail to see each other's humanity and right to simply exist. It's
the same attitude that drives the richest men in the world today
to create their own private space agencies. Those who are already
being affected by the climate emergency can't and won't simply be
left to fend for themselves while the privileged few plot their
escape plans -- to higher ground in their neighborhood, to inland
mountain refuges, to Mars.<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Until we build a world that works for
everyone, we'll continue to have people whose survival is
systematically erased by those in power. That's the dystopia for
the rich and powerful: a world where the rest of us finally
realize the power we had all along to fight for a justice-focused
society.<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">It will take active, conscious effort
to defuse the tensions sure to arise in a warming world.
Overcoming a coordinated effort by the fossil fuel industry to
save itself is not going to be easy, but we know it's coming. That
effort has been going on since the fossil fuel industry began, and
it won't just go away in the 2040s, even amid two decades of
radical and hopeful changes. As always, our best hope will remain
that we can prepare along the way to increase the chances of a
peaceful transition to a fossil-free world.<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">We know that the weather in the 2040s
will be worse than it is today. A major, sudden change, like a
collapsing ice sheet or a quick rise in global temperatures after
eliminating aerosols, would make the weather even more destructive
than current predictions, even if we are able to radically reduce
greenhouse gas emissions. What we can control, of course, is how
we decide to respond to the worsening weather.<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Since my conversation years ago with
Rear Admiral David Titley, I've repeated his idea of "catastrophic
success" over and over to myself when I think things can't get any
worse, and I've let it shape my view of how the world could
quickly change beyond our wildest imaginations -- for the better.
Titley sees the warming world both as a scientist (he's a
meteorologist by training) and as a former military officer. He
understands that the potential for a massive increase in refugees
is a heartbreaking and almost inevitable looming humanitarian
crisis due to the science of the escalating severity of droughts,
floods, and severe weather we've already seen in recent decades
and the historical tendency for leaders to close borders during
times of crisis. A worsening of this trend could make the world
practically ungovernable in our lifetimes.<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">The U.S. military has been among the
first large-scale entities to recognize this. That kind of makes
sense if you consider its mission of ensuring U.S. safety and
prosperity continues for as long as possible: Without planetary
stability, there is no U.S. stability. That's part of why U.S.
military strategists at the Pentagon have begun calling climate
change a "threat multiplier."<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">When Titley talks about migration,
though, even he struggles to put the stakes in context. In the
2040s, if global sea levels rise by three feet and droughts,
fires, heat waves, and floods continue to worsen, we could see
around 250 million people forced from their homes. That's about
four times as many people as are currently displaced and about 50
times as many as were displaced during the Syrian civil war. In
short, it would challenge our understanding of nationality,
borders, and politics as usual.<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">"Post-World War II," Titley told me,
"tens of millions of people within Europe were on forced migration
in the 1940s. We kind of gloss over that part of history. I mean,
Europe was really bad after World War II. It's part of what got
the Marshall Plan. I think it really kind of scared us that, hey,
this whole place is just collapsing, basically, and something had
to be done."<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">An uncontrolled, unanticipated
climate-related migration crisis could be even worse than the
refugee crisis after World War II, which, despite its horrors,
displaced less than 1% of the world's population. Climate change
could displace three times that amount just in the next two or
three decades. Although displacement due to extreme weather is
already becoming increasingly common, the proximate cause of
displacement and migration is usually fleeing violent conflict.
How do we anticipate a world that could quickly fracture and
urgently work to reduce the risk of violent conflict before it
occurs?<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">A crisis like this will require
proactive harm reduction on a civilizational scale. We will need
to establish policies that encourage, rather than restrict,
freedom of movement. And we must establish robust social safety
nets so that families are less likely to abandon their homes in
search of a place where they can simply live. Also, even before we
reach zero emissions globally, we will have to recognize the need
to take aggressive actions to reduce the level of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere. All of this will remain just as urgent in the
2040s as in 2020.<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">"I'm probably wrong," Titley said, "but
I'm actually more optimistic that we are going to do real things
now than I have been for a long, long time. I think there's actual
legitimate cause for optimism."<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Specifically, Titley pointed to the
steady shift away from outright denial among rank-and-file members
of the Republican Party as evidence that attitudes can shift
toward action, no matter how meager. And once that facade of
climate denial breaks, an avalanche of action could soon follow.
"We may be much closer to catastrophic success right now. Things
can change, and not always for the worse. They can change for the
better. It can happen very, very quickly."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://onezero.medium.com/why-2020-to-2050-will-be-the-most-transformative-decades-in-human-history-ba282dcd83c7">https://onezero.medium.com/why-2020-to-2050-will-be-the-most-transformative-decades-in-human-history-ba282dcd83c7</a><br>
</div>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[Heating to come]<br>
<b>Global heating will make it much harder for tropical plants to
germinate, study finds</b><br>
Temperatures will be too hot for the seeds of one in five plants by
the year 2070, Australian researcher says.<br>
Global heating will make it much harder for tropical plants around
the world to germinate, with temperatures becoming too hot for the
seeds of one in five plants by the year 2070, according to a new
study.<br>
<br>
Global heating will impact the ability of more than half of all
tropical plants to germinate if emissions of greenhouse gases remain
high...<br>
- -<br>
The seed bank database includes a range of germination experiments
and Sentinella and colleagues examined only species where results
covered the same species from the same locations.<br>
<br>
Then the study looked at the warmest three months of each year from
1970 to 2000 where those plants existed, and compared those
temperatures to what was expected by 2070 under a scenario where
greenhouse gas emissions remain very high.<br>
<br>
By 2070, the results showed more than half the tropical plants had
been pushed beyond the best temperature range for germination. For
about 20% of species, the study suggested temperatures would be too
high for the plants to germinate...<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jul/02/global-heating-will-make-it-much-harder-for-tropical-plants-to-germinate-study-finds">https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jul/02/global-heating-will-make-it-much-harder-for-tropical-plants-to-germinate-study-finds</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
[clips from the NewYorker article]<br>
<b>What Facebook and the Oil Industry Have in Common</b><br>
By Bill McKibben - July 1, 2020<br>
Why is it so hard to get Facebook to do anything about the hate and
deception that fill its pages, even when it's clear that they are
helping to destroy democracy? And why, of all things, did the
company recently decide to exempt a climate-denial post from its
fact-checking process? The answer is clear: Facebook's core business
is to get as many people as possible to spend as many hours as
possible on its site, so that it can sell those people's attention
to advertisers. (A Facebook spokesperson said the company's policy
stipulates that "clear opinion content is not subject to
fact-checking on Facebook.") This notion of core business explains a
lot--including why it's so hard to make rapid gains in the fight
against climate change.<br>
<br>
For decades, people have asked me why the oil companies don't just
become solar companies. They don't for the same reason that Facebook
doesn't behave decently: an oil company's core business is digging
stuff up and burning it, just as Facebook's is to keep people glued
to their screens. Digging and burning is all that oil companies know
how to do--and why the industry has spent the past thirty years
building a disinformation machine to stall action on climate change.
It's why--with the evidence of climate destruction growing by the
day--the best that any of them can offer are vague pronouncements
about getting to "net zero by 2050"--which is another way of saying,
"We're not going to change much of anything anytime soon." (The
American giants, like ExxonMobil, won't even do that.)<br>
<br>
Total, the French oil company, has made the 2050 pledge, but it is
projected to increase fossil-fuel production by twelve percent
between 2018 and 2030. These are precisely the years when we must
cut emissions in half, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, to have any chance of meeting the vital targets set
by the Paris climate agreement, which aim to hold the planet's
temperature increase as close as possible to one and a half degrees
Celsius. The next six months will be crucial as nations prepare
coronavirus recovery plans. Because effective climate planning at
this moment will require keeping most oil, coal, and gas reserves in
the ground, the industry will resist fiercely.<br>
<br>
So we need power brought to bear from companies whose core business
is not directly challenged by climate activism. Consider the example
of Facebook again: after organizing by people like Judd Legum and
StopHateForProfit.org, companies including Unilever and Coca-Cola
agreed to temporarily stop advertising on the social platform.
Coke's core business is selling you fizzy sugar water that can help
make you diabetic--when that's threatened, the company fights back.
But when it feared being attacked for helping Facebook's core
business, it simply stopped advertising with the company, which
wasn't essential for Coke's business.<br>
<br>
That's why it is critical to get third parties to pressure the oil
industry. This past month, the growing fossil-fuel divestment
campaign got a huge boost when the Vatican, whose core business is
saving souls, called for divestment, and the Queen of England, whose
core business is unclear but involves hats, divested millions from
the industry. Keith Ellison, the attorney general of Minnesota,
announced that he was suing ExxonMobil, as well as the American
Petroleum Institute and Koch Industries, for perpetrating a fraud by
spreading climate denial for decades. (Ellison's core business is
justice, and his office is pursuing this climate action at the same
time that it is prosecuting the killers of George Floyd.) All this,
in turn, puts pressure on the financial industry to stop handing
over cash to oil companies. As I pointed out in a piece last summer,
JPMorgan Chase may be the biggest fossil-fuel lender on earth, but
that's still only about seven per cent of its business--big, but not
core.<br>
<br>
Effective progress on climate will require government and the
finance industry to enforce the edicts of chemistry and physics:
massive action undertaken inside a decade, not gradual, gentle
course correction. And that will require the rest of us to press
those institutions. Because our core business is survival...<br>
more at - <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/what-facebook-and-the-oil-industry-have-in-common">https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/what-facebook-and-the-oil-industry-have-in-common</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
[beavers say 'gnaw'] <br>
<b>The Newest Threat to a Warming Alaskan Arctic: Beavers</b><br>
The large rodents are creating lakes that accelerate the thawing of
frozen soils and potentially increase greenhouse gas emissions, a
study finds.<br>
BY BOB BERWYN, INSIDECLIMATE NEWS - JUN 29, 2020<br>
Alaskan beavers are carving out a growing web of channels, dams and
ponds in the frozen Arctic tundra of northwestern Alaska, helping to
turn it into a soggy sponge that intensifies global warming.<br>
<br>
On the Baldwin Peninsula, near Kotzebue, for example, the big
rodents have been so busy that they're hastening the regional
thawing of the permafrost, raising new concerns about how fast those
organic frozen soils will melt and release long-trapped greenhouse
gases into the atmosphere, said scientists who are studying the
beavers' activity.<br>
<br>
The number of new beaver dams and lakes continues to grow
exponentially, suggesting that "beavers are a greater influence than
climate on surface water extent,"<br>
- - <br>
The bigger and deeper the pools made by the beavers, the warmer the
water. The larger pools hold heat longer, which delays refreezing in
autumn. Tape said Arctic vegetation, permafrost, hydrology and
wildlife are all linked. Even against the backdrop of other recent
Arctic global warming extremes, like raging wildfires, record heat
waves and dwindling glaciers and sea ice, the impact of beavers
stands out, he said. <br>
<br>
"It's not gradual change," he said. "It's like hitting the landscape
with a hammer."<br>
<br>
"And it's a continual change that the Arctic is just not used to,"
he added.<br>
- -<br>
Another way to see them is as "agents of Arctic adaptation," said
Ben Goldfarb, author of a recent natural history book that shows how
beavers could help many other species, including humans, survive the
era of rapid, human-caused climate change. <br>
<br>
"Beavers create fantastic habitat for all kinds of species, like
songbirds and moose," Goldfarb said. "All of those species are
moving northward because of climate change, and beavers are
preparing the way." As a habitat-creating keystone species, beavers
are also important food for wolves, and recent research shows that
beaver ponds are good at keeping carbon locked up, he added.<br>
<br>
Beavers may even hold the key to survival for some salmon species
that are losing their streams to global warming and other changes
farther south.<br>
<br>
"We're losing salmon in other places. If they're going to shift
their climate envelope, they're probably going to need beavers to
help them," Goldfarb said.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/29062020/beavers-alaska-climate-change-permafrost">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/29062020/beavers-alaska-climate-change-permafrost</a><br>
<br>
<br>
[Digging back into the internet news archive]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming -
July 2, 2006 </b></font><br>
Notorious climate denier Dick Lindzen whines, moans, kvetches and
complains about "An Inconvenient Truth" in a piece for the Wall
Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com. <br>
<blockquote><b>Don't Believe the Hype</b><br>
Al Gore is wrong. There's no "consensus" on global warming.<br>
BY RICHARD S. LINDZEN<br>
Sunday, July 2, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT<br>
According to Al Gore's new film "An Inconvenient Truth," we're in
for "a planetary emergency": melting ice sheets, huge increases in
sea levels, more and stronger hurricanes, and invasions of
tropical disease, among other cataclysms--unless we change the way
we live now.<br>
<br>
Bill Clinton has become the latest evangelist for Mr. Gore's
gospel, proclaiming that current weather events show that he and
Mr. Gore were right about global warming, and we are all suffering
the consequences of President Bush's obtuseness on the matter. And
why not? Mr. Gore assures us that "the debate in the scientific
community is over."<br>
<br>
That statement, which Mr. Gore made in an interview with George
Stephanopoulos on ABC, ought to have been followed by an asterisk.
What exactly is this debate that Mr. Gore is referring to? Is
there really a scientific community that is debating all these
issues and then somehow agreeing in unison? Far from such a thing
being over, it has never been clear to me what this "debate"
actually is in the first place...<br>
- - <br>
So what, then, is one to make of this alleged debate? I would
suggest at least three points.<br>
First, nonscientists generally do not want to bother with
understanding the science. Claims of consensus relieve policy
types, environmental advocates and politicians of any need to do
so. Such claims also serve to intimidate the public and even
scientists--especially those outside the area of climate dynamics.
Secondly, given that the question of human attribution largely
cannot be resolved, its use in promoting visions of disaster
constitutes nothing so much as a bait-and-switch scam. That is an
inauspicious beginning to what Mr. Gore claims is not a political
issue but a "moral" crusade.<br>
<br>
Lastly, there is a clear attempt to establish truth not by
scientific methods but by perpetual repetition. An earlier attempt
at this was accompanied by tragedy. Perhaps Marx was right. This
time around we may have farce--if we're lucky.<br>
Mr. Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric
Science at MIT.<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://web.archive.org/web/20060705111127/http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008597">http://web.archive.org/web/20060705111127/http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008597</a>
<br>
- - <br>
We may learn more about Lindzen at DeSmogBlog <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.desmogblog.com/richard-lindzen">https://www.desmogblog.com/richard-lindzen</a>
<br>
<br>
Including Fossil Fuel Funding<br>
As part of a March 2018 legal case between the cities of San
Francisco and Oakland and fossil fuel companies, Lindzen was asked
by the judge to disclose any connections he had to connected
parties.]<br>
<br>
In response, Lindzen reported that he had received $25,000 per year
for his position at the Cato Institute since 2013. He also disclosed
$1,500 from the Texas Public Policy Foundation for a "climate
science lecture" in 2017, and approximately $30,000 from Peabody
Coal in connection to testimony Lindzen gave at a proceeding of the
Minnesota Public Utilities Commissions in September 2015....<br>
<br>
<br>
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