<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<p><i><font size="+1"><b>September 20, 2020</b></font></i></p>
[about the history of information battleground]<br>
<b>How the oil industry made us doubt climate change</b><br>
By Phoebe Keane<br>
BBC News<br>
As climate change becomes a focus of the US election, energy
companies stand accused of trying to downplay their contribution to
global warming. In June, Minnesota's Attorney General sued
ExxonMobil, among others, for launching a "campaign of deception"
which deliberately tried to undermine the science supporting global
warming. So what's behind these claims? And what links them to how
the tobacco industry tried to dismiss the harms of smoking decades
earlier?<br>
To understand what's happening today, we need to go back nearly 40
years...<br>
- -<br>
Marty Hoffert was one of the first scientists to create a model
which predicted the effects of man-made climate change. And he did
so while working for Exxon, one of the world's largest oil
companies, which would later merge with another, Mobil.<br>
At the time Exxon was spending millions of dollars on
ground-breaking research. It wanted to lead the charge as scientists
grappled with the emerging understanding that the warming planet
could cause the climate to change in ways that could make life
pretty difficult for humans.<br>
Hoffert shared his predictions with his managers, showing them what
might happen if we continued burning fossil fuels in our cars,
trucks and planes.<br>
But he noticed a clash between Exxon's own findings, and public
statements made by company bosses, such as the then chief executive
Lee Raymond, who said that "currently, the scientific evidence is
inconclusive as to whether human activities are having a significant
effect on the global climate".<br>
"They were saying things that were contradicting their own
world-class research groups," said Hoffert.<br>
Angry, he left Exxon, and went on to become a leading academic in
the field.<br>
"What they did was immoral. They spread doubt about the dangers of
climate change when their own researchers were confirming how
serious a threat it was."...<br>
- -<br>
Kert Davies has scoured through Exxon's archive. He used to work as
a research director at the environmental pressure group Greenpeace,
where he looked into corporate opposition to climate change. This
inspired him to set up The Climate Investigations Centre. He
explains why this Exxon presentation mattered:<br>
"They are worried the public will take this on, and enact radical
changes in the way we use energy and affect their business, that's
the bottom line."<br>
He says this fear can also be seen in another document from the
archive that sets out the so-called "Exxon position", which was to
"emphasise the uncertainty" regarding climate change...<br>
- -<br>
Jerry Taylor spent 23 years with the Cato Institute - one of those
right wing think tanks - latterly as vice president. Before he left
in 2014, he would regularly appear on TV and radio, insisting that
the science of climate change was uncertain and there was no need to
act. Now, he realises his arguments were based on a
misinterpretation of the science, and he regrets the impact he's had
on the debate.<br>
"For 25 years, climate sceptics like me made it a core matter of
ideological identity that if you believe in climate change, then you
are by definition a socialist. That is what climate sceptics have
done."<br>
The BBC asked the Cato Institute about its work on climate change,
but it did not respond.<br>
This ideological divide has had far-reaching consequences. Polls
conducted in May 2020 showed that just 22% of Americans who vote
Republican believed climate change is man-made, compared with 72% of
Democrats.<br>
Unfortunately many of the "expert scientists" quoted by journalists
to try to offer balance in their coverage of climate change were -
like Jerry Taylor - making arguments based on their beliefs rather
than relevant research.<br>
"Usually these people have some scientific credentials, but they're
not actually experts in climate science," says Harvard historian
Naomi Oreskes.<br>
She began digging into the background of leading climate sceptics,
including Fred Seitz, a nuclear physicist and former president of
the US National Academy of Sciences. She found he was deeply
anti-communist, believing any government intervention in the
marketplace "would put us on the slippery slope to socialism".<br>
She also discovered that he had been active in the debates around
smoking in the 1980s.<br>
"That was a Eureka moment. We realised this was not a scientific
debate. A person with expertise about climate change would in no way
be an expert about oncology or public health or cardiovascular
disease, or any of the key issues associated with tobacco.<br>
"The fact that the same people were arguing in both cases was a clue
that something fishy was going on. That's what led us to discover
this pattern of disinformation that gets systemically used again and
again."<br>
Naomi Oreskes spent years going through the tobacco archive at the
University of California at San Francisco. It contains more than 14
million documents that were made available thanks to litigation
against US tobacco firms.<br>
A strikingly familiar story emerged. Decades before the energy
industry tried to undermine the case for climate change, tobacco
companies had used the same techniques to challenge the emerging
links between smoking and lung cancer in the 1950s.<br>
- -<br>
As John Hill wrote in the 1953 document, "salesmen in the industry
are frantically alarmed, and the decline in tobacco stocks on the
stock exchange market has caused grave concern".<br>
Hill recommended fighting science with science. "We do not believe
the industry should indulge in any flashy or spectacular ballyhoo.
There is no public relations [medicine] known to us at least, which
will cure the ills of the industry."<br>
As a later document by tobacco company Brown and Williamson
summarised the approach: "Doubt is our product, since it is the best
means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds
of the general public."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-53640382">https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-53640382</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[AP and TIME on rapid changes]<br>
<b>Strong Winds Trigger Southern California Wildfire to Explode in
Size, Spread to Desert Floor</b><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://time.com/5890771/southern-california-wildfire-winds/">https://time.com/5890771/southern-california-wildfire-winds/</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[from the Guardian]<br>
<b>The tipping points at the heart of the climate crisis</b><br>
Many parts of the Earth's climate system have been destabilised by
warming, from ice sheets and ocean currents to the Amazon rainforest
- and scientists believe that if one collapses others could
follow...<br>
- -<br>
A particularly important tipping element is the vast ocean current
known as the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC),
which carries warm equatorial water north to the Arctic, and cool
Arctic water south to the equator. The AMOC has collapsed in the
past and many scientists fear it is close to collapsing again - an
event that was depicted (in ridiculously exaggerated and accelerated
form) in the 2004 film The Day After Tomorrow. If the AMOC
collapses, it will transform weather patterns around the globe -
leading to cooler climates in Europe, or at least less warming, and
changing where and when monsoon rains fall in the tropics. For the
UK, this could mean the end of most arable farming, according to a
paper Lenton and others published in January.<br>
<br>
Tumbling dominoes<br>
In 2009, a second study took the idea further. What if the tipping
elements are interconnected? That would mean that setting off one
might set off another - or even unleash a cascade of dramatic
changes, spreading around the globe and reshaping the world we live
in.<br>
<br>
For instance, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet is releasing
huge volumes of cold, fresh water into the north Atlantic. This
weakens the AMOC - so it is distinctly possible that if Greenland
passes its tipping point, the resulting melt will push the AMOC past
its own threshold...<br>
- -<br>
"We actually do need the Paris climate accord," says Winkelmann. The
2016 agreement committed most countries to limit warming to 1.5 to
2C, although the US president, Donald Trump, has since chosen to
pull the US out of it. Winkelmann argues that 1.5C is the right
target, because it takes into account the existence of the tipping
points and gives the best chance of avoiding them. "For some of
these tipping elements," she says, "we're already in that danger
zone."<br>
<br>
Cutting greenhouse gas emissions is not a surprising or original
solution. But it is our best chance to stop the warning signs
flashing red.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/sep/19/the-tipping-points-at-the-heart-of-the-climate-crisis#img-2">https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/sep/19/the-tipping-points-at-the-heart-of-the-climate-crisis#img-2</a><br>
- -<br>
[from Astrophysics Data System]<br>
<b>Climate Tipping Points: Can they trigger a Global Cascade?</b><br>
Armstrong McKay, David; Staal, Arie; Cornell, Sarah; Lenton,
Timothy; Fetzer, Ingo<br>
<b>Abstract</b><br>
<blockquote>Over the past 15 years climate tipping points have
emerged as both an important research topic and source of public
concern. Some articles have suggested that some tipping points
could begin within the 1.5-2oC Paris climate target range, with
many more potentially starting by the ~3-4oC of warming that
current policy is projected to be committed to. Recent work has
also proposed that these tipping points could interact and
potentially 'cascade' - with the impacts of passing one tipping
point being sufficient to trigger the next and so on - resulting
in an emergent global tipping point for a long-term commitment to
a 'Hothouse Earth' trajectory of 4+oC (Steffen et al., 2018).
However, much of the recent discussion relies largely on a
decade-old characterisation of climate tipping points, based on a
literature review and expert elicitation exercise. An updated
characterisation would fully utilise more recent results from
coupled and offline models, model inter-comparisons, and
palaeoclimate studies. The 'tipping cascade' hypothesis has also
not yet been tested, with the suggestion of 2oC as the global
tipping point remaining speculative. Furthermore, the definition
of what counts as a climate tipping point is often inconsistent,
with some purported tipping points represented more accurately as
threshold-free positive feedbacks. Here we perform an updated
systematic review of climate tipping points, cataloguing the
current evidence for each suggested element with reference to
rigorously-applied tipping point definitions. Based on this we
test the potential for a global tipping cascade using a stylised
model, from which we will present preliminary results.
ReferencesSteffen, W., et al.: Trajectories of the Earth System in
the Anthropocene, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 115(33), 8252-8259,
doi:10.1073/pnas.1810141115, 2018.<br>
</blockquote>
Publication: 22nd EGU General Assembly, held online 4-8 May, 2020,
id.17889<br>
Pub Date: May 2020 Bibcode: 2020EGUGA..2217889A <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020EGUGA..2217889A/abstract">https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020EGUGA..2217889A/abstract</a><br>
- -<br>
[See also]<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020EGUGA..2217889A/similar">https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020EGUGA..2217889A/similar</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[One task]<br>
<b>'Too late to stop it': California's future hinges on managing
megafires</b><br>
Oliver Milman - 19 Sep 2020 ...<br>
The record scale of the flames, which have consumed an area larger
than the state of Connecticut, is bringing scientists' expectations
of the climate crisis into reality. Rather than merely entering a
new but stable era, the US west is on a moving escalator to further
extremes. "In 20 years from now, the current circumstances will feel
more normal," said Waleed Abdalati, former chief scientist of Nasa.
"It's not that we are all screwed, but it's too late to put a stop
to it. We can slow it, but we can't stop it now."...<br>
- -<br>
It will get worse as the planet heats up further; the only question
is the degree. Scientists predict the area scorched by wildfire will
increase by 77% by the end of the century, with the number of
extreme fire days jumping 20% in just the next 15 years - a scenario
that raises profound questions over the way life is conducted in the
US west in an evolving era of megafire.<br>
<br>
The crushing expense of major cities across California has caused a
housing crisis that has collided with the state's wildfire problem.
People seeking an affordable, or more bucolic and spacious, life
have moved a rash of newly built houses carved into the scrublands
and pine forests of what's known as the wildland-urban interface. As
a result, it is estimated that one in four Californians now live in
a high-risk fire zone.<br>
<br>
While there are some localized rules around clearing potentially
flammable vegetation from near dwellings, there are no universally
applied building codes to make houses more fire resistant, nor any
state plan to steer development away from fire-prone areas.
Insurers, facing mounting losses, have started to retreat, although
California has imposed a temporary ban on cancelling insurance for
about 800,000 homes situated in riskier parts of the state.<br>
<br>
As a result, homes continue to be built featuring classic wood
shingle roofs and deckings that allow burning embers to leap from
building to building. "People often have an idea of aesthetic beauty
that makes things more risky," said Paige Fischer, an environmental
scientist at the University of Michigan.<br>
- -<br>
The crisis is playing across different states and ecosystems. In
Oregon, more than 500,000 people - a tenth of the population - have
faced orders to flee. "Apocalyptic is about the right word," said
Doug Franzke, a pastor who was covered in falling ash as fire
crackled around the town of Molalla. "The Bible talks of the Earth
being desolate and it was about that."<br>
<br>
California and Oregon will increasingly have to wrestle the
trade-offs between a lifestyle that remains idyllic for many people
and the multiplying risks of fire. The need for those hard decisions
is perhaps now clearer than ever - the front page headline of the
Los Angeles Times screamed "California's climate apocalypse" on
Sunday...<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/18/california-fires-wildfires-future-housing">https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/18/california-fires-wildfires-future-housing</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[opinion in the Guardian]<br>
<b>America is at war with deadly wildfires. Yet Trump is on the side
of the inferno</b><br>
David Sirota - Sept 19, 2020<br>
Trump long ago made clear that in the with-us-or-against-us climate
war, he is against us and has enthusiastically joined the side of
the inferno<br>
<br>
This wasn't how it was supposed to go. When Donald Trump became
president, the expectation was that he would follow in the footsteps
of George W Bush and Barack Obama, and merely allow emissions,
fossil fuel subsidies and oil exports to continue to rise. That kind
of run-of-the-mill villainy is so bipartisan and has been so
normalized that it's barely considered news when even Democratic
governors publicly lament climate change, while continuing to
approve fossil fuel development.<br>
<br>
But normal villainy wasn't enough for Trump. He and the Republican
party wanted to be supervillains for their fossil fuel industry
donors, and so they have not merely enacted policies encouraging
more carbon emissions and tacked on fossil fuel subsidies to
pandemic response bills. They have also overseen an effort to change
the rules of environmental politics and disempower climate activism
for the long haul.<br>
In other words: they haven't just waived the white flag, they have
used federal and state governments to undermine the opponents of the
climate disaster now lighting the country on fire.<br>
<br>
This attitude shift from passive surrender to active complicity is
most evident in Trump and the Republican party's behavior the past
six months. The same president who was quick to send in federal
police to crush Portland protests hasn't lifted a finger to try to
help extinguish the wildfires now bearing down on the same city -
and that federal inaction happened only months after Trump's fellow
Republicans shut down the Oregon state legislature in order to block
climate change legislation.<br>
<br>
But that's hardly a surprise, because Trump long ago made clear that
in the with-us-or-against-us climate war, he is against us and has
enthusiastically joined the side of the inferno...<br>
- -<br>
"The amazing thing they're saying is human activities are going to
lead to this rise of carbon dioxide that is disastrous for the
environment and society. And then they're saying they're not going
to do anything about it," one scientist told the Post.<br>
<br>
That's an understatement - in truth, Trump and his party have taken
proactive steps to prevent anyone else from doing anything about it
either...<br>
- - <br>
It is not enough to win the election, appoint a few people who are
slightly less bad than Trump's rogues gallery and then call it a
day. It isn't even enough to just roll back Trump's worst policies.
The underlying rules of the political game must change to give more
power to those trying to fix the problem - and less power to
industries that are actively, knowingly creating the crisis to pad
their own bottom line.<br>
<br>
That is the only way that we will reorient the government to stop
fighting for climate change and instead start defending our planet
against climate change.<br>
<br>
In this binary war, you are either with humanity in the fight
against the crisis, or you are against us - there is no middle
ground.<br>
David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist. He is also an editor at
large at Jacobin, and the publisher of the newsletter Too Much
Information. He served as Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign
speechwriter<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/19/america-deadly-wildfires-trump-inferno">https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/19/america-deadly-wildfires-trump-inferno</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[heat brings more fire]<br>
<b>The science connecting wildfires to climate change</b><br>
A heating-up planet has driven huge increases in wildfire area
burned over the past few decades.<br>
BY ALEJANDRA BORUNDA<br>
SEPTEMBER 17, 2020<br>
<br>
CLIMATE CHANGE HAS inexorably stacked the deck in favor of bigger
and more intense fires across the American West over the past few
decades, science has incontrovertibly shown. Increasing heat,
changing rain and snow patterns, shifts in plant communities, and
other climate-related changes have vastly increased the likelihood
that fires will start more often and burn more intensely and widely
than they have in the past.<br>
<br>
The scale and intensity of the wildfires burning across the western
U.S. right now is "staggering," says Philip Higuera, a wildfire
scientist and paleoecologist at the University of Montana. More than
five million acres have already burned this year--and much more may
be yet to come...<br>
- - <br>
Noah Diffenbaugh, a climate scientist at Stanford University, makes
a baseball analogy to describe increase in risk. "If there's a
three-run home run in baseball, it's the home run that definitely
caused the runners to round the bases and score. The home run is the
proximal cause of the event. But people being on base matters," he
says, and global warming is putting people on base...<br>
- -<br>
<b>Heat like a thirsty sponge</b><br>
In some ways, fire is simple. It takes three components: the right
weather and climate conditions, plenty of burnable fuel, and a
spark.<br>
<br>
"People are changing all three of those," says Jennifer Balch, a
fire ecologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "Climate
change is not the only thing going on, but it is a big and important
part of the story." (Human-caused ignitions are clearly a major part
of the risk: A study published in September, on which Balch was a
co-author, found that humans were responsible for 97 percent of the
ignitions that caused fires that then threatened homes in the
wildland-urban interface, between 1992 and 2015).<br>
<br>
Climate change has affected the first two components (and in some
cases, the third) in clear, measurable ways that have become
increasingly obvious over the past few decades.<br>
<br>
The clearest connection is with warming air temperatures. The planet
has heated up nearly continuously since the start of the Industrial
Revolution in the late 1800s, when humans started burning massive
quantities of fossil fuels, releasing carbon dioxide that traps
excess heat in the atmosphere. Since then, global average
temperatures have ticked up roughly 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree
Celsius); California's change is closer to 3 degrees Fahrenheit.
Warming has accelerated since the 1980s to just under 0.2 degrees
Celsius (0.3 degrees F) per decade, and it's likely to accelerate
further in the future.<br>
<br>
That might not seem like very much warming, but just a little can go
a long way. Hot air, if it's not at 100 percent humidity, is like a
thirsty sponge: It soaks up water from whatever it touches--plants
(living or dead) and soil, lakes and rivers. The hotter and drier
the air, the more it sucks up, and the amount of water it can hold
increases exponentially as the temperature rises; small increases in
the air's heat can mean big increases in the intensity with which it
pulls out water. Scientists can measure this "vapor pressure
deficit"--the difference between how much water the air holds and
how much it could hold. If that deficit is cranked up for a long
time, soils and vegetation will parch.<br>
<br>
A brief heat spell will dry out the smallish stuff or the already
dead stuff--and maybe even some of the bigger tinder. Intense,
record-breaking heat waves like the ones that encompassed the West
during August and early September likely caused major crisping of
burnable material, as the regional vapor pressure deficit and
associated drought climbed to record levels.<br>
<br>
"In a lot of places, you have a lot of 'flashy' fuel on the ground,"
says Balch. "This stuff that's as thin as paper--(like) grasses.
Short-term drought events or heat waves are really impactful for
drying those out." That small stuff ignites so easily that it can
often help speed along a fire's spread.<br>
<br>
When excess heat stays in place for months or longer, the wildfire
risk rises even further.<br>
<br>
An early, warm spring can jump-start a summer drought by extending
the season of heat and growth, increasing the amount of water vapor
that is shed by plant leaves or that evaporates directly from soil.
Lower soil moisture, in turn, can feed back into the local warming
cycle and intensify it, since evaporating moisture usually takes up
a lot of the energy the sun beams down. When there's no moisture
left to evaporate, the soil or vegetation, dead and alive, absorbs
that heat instead--feeding back into the drying-out process that
increases fire risk.<br>
<br>
This year, the snow melted early; across the West, snow cover in
February and March was well below its long-term average.<br>
<br>
Then, the heat kicked in and stayed. Many western states had their
hottest summers on record; the average temperature across the U.S.
was 2.6 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average.<br>
<br>
But even before that, a longer, deeper aridity had California and
much of the West in its grips from 2011 until a brief period of
reprieve last year. Not coincidentally, five of the state's hottest
years on record occurred in the past decade.<br>
<br>
A particularly severe phase of that persistent drought, fueled by
climate change and of an intensity not seen for the preceding 1,200
years, set in between 2012 to 2016. It stressed out the region's
trees more and more as the water deficit dragged on. In the grand
conifer forests of the Sierra Nevada, as in many other forests
across the state, the damage accumulated.<br>
<br>
By 2014, millions of trees had died, pushed beyond repair by the
record-breaking temperatures and dryness, which reached so far into
the soil that even the deep-rooted trees could find no moisture. By
2015, mass die-off was obviously underway; by 2016, the mortality
count soared to about 100 million. At high elevations, nearly 80
percent of the trees died. And across the state, some 150 million
trees have died since the drought's onset. Many of those trees are
still there, drying out, a major fuel source ready to burn hot and
bright when a fire arrives.<br>
<br>
Since the 1970s, a recent study found, human-caused climate change
caused more than half of the drying-out of burnable materials and
consequent fire risk.<br>
<br>
"These most recent heat waves are coming on top of an already hotter
period, and it's all coming together and sucking moisture out of
dead and live fuels, into the atmosphere," says Matthew Hurteau, a
climate scientist at the University of New Mexico.<br>
<br>
<b>Changing rains, changing snows</b><br>
Climate change is messing with the seasonal rain and snow patterns
across the Western U.S., too--one of the other factors that controls
fire risk.<br>
<br>
Springtime is often coming earlier. Snowpack, which usually provides
about 30 percent of the state's summer water needs, is melting
earlier in year, giving the plants and soils longer to dry out. A
2016 study found that over 70 percent of the area burned in forest
fires between 1970 and 2012 occurred in years where the winter snows
disappeared early.<br>
<br>
The hot drying-out season is stretching on the tail end, too,
according to research published in August. Higher autumn
temperatures and less precipitation--in particular, a growing delay
in the onset of winter rains, which usually puts an end to the fire
season in California--have led to a 20 percent increase in the
number of autumn days ripe for burning.<br>
<br>
In all, the western fire season has extended by at least 84 days
since the 1970s. Cal Fire, California's fire protection service, has
said publicly that it no longer considers there to be a wildfire
"season," because the season is now the entire year.<br>
<br>
The very character of the fires has also changed, growing larger and
more intense, and that in turn can accelerate future fire risk. Even
plants that need fire to propagate, like many high-elevation
conifers, are now often finding themselves in fires more intense and
powerful than they're adapted for, says Scott Stephens, a forest
ecologist and fire expert at the University of California, Berkeley.<br>
<br>
"One of the very alarming trends we're starting to see is that these
fires are killing very large patches of conifers: 200, 300, 500,
1,000-acre patches, and some even larger," he says. In contrast,
research from his group and others found that in the Sierra Nevada
forests, before European colonizers arrived and started changing the
landscape, the patches burned were small: less than an acre in many
cases, or sometimes a bit bigger. And, Stephens says, the increase
in fire size has accelerated in the climate-changed present,
particularly since the 1990s.<br>
<br>
That's a problem because when vast swaths of forest burn, we can no
longer count on them to self-regenerate. The seed sources and gentle
shade that may have been normal in the past are gone, and the
conditions become ripe for highly flammable species, like non-native
grasses and shrubs, to move in. Similar plant transitions are also
occurring across other fire-prone habitat, like Southern
California's chaparral and Colorado's forests.<br>
<br>
<b>The bottom line</b><br>
So climate change has increased fire risk in both direct and
indirect ways. When an ignition happens, even if it's natural-- like
the unusual and dramatic lightning swarm that hit the Bay Area in
August--the chances of it spawning a big fire are much higher than
they would be, absent climate change. Overall, over the past few
decades in California, the annual average area burned increased
fivefold.<br>
<br>
Today's fires are both shocking and wholly expected, say many
researchers. "That's the tricky thing about fires--it isn't any one
thing that's causing them, it's multiple puzzle pieces fitting
together," says Balch. Climate change. Forest management. Human
behavior. Learning to adapt to the new reality and mitigate risks
requires swift, decisive action from many different angles, she
says.<br>
<br>
"What this year is showing me is the nature of fires here is
changing, and changing really fast," says Higuera. "We need to be
doing like five things at once: patting our heads, rubbing our
belly, chewing gum, and more, but for fire."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/09/climate-change-increases-risk-fires-western-us/">https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/09/climate-change-increases-risk-fires-western-us/</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
[Listed faith documents - links found at Interfaith Power &
Light]<br>
<b>Religious Statements on Climate Change</b><br>
Most religious communities have released statements on Climate
Change and the need to care for Creation. The following list
(organized alphabetically first by religion, then by denomination)
demonstrates the unity within the religious community on these
important issues.<br>
<br>
Please let us know if there are any additional statements you would
like to see included.<br>
<br>
Baha'i<br>
Seizing the Opportunity: Redefining the Challenge of Climate Change<br>
<br>
A statement of the Baha'i International Community to the United
Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, France<br>
<br>
The Time to Act is Now - A Buddhist Declaration on Climate Change<br>
<br>
A Western Soto Zen Buddhist Statement on the Climate Crisis<br>
<br>
Christian<br>
Joint Statement on Environment by Pope Francis and Ecumenical
Patriarch Bartholomew Sept 1, 2017<br>
<br>
17 Anglican Bishops across six continents issue urgent call for
climate justice<br>
<br>
Anglican Church of Canada, The Episcopal Church, Evangelical
Lutheran Church in America, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada -
A Pastoral Message on Climate Change<br>
<br>
Baptist - A Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and
Climate Change<br>
<br>
Catholic - U.S. Catholic Bishops' Statement on Climate Change<br>
<br>
Catholic - Vatican on Climate Change<br>
<br>
Catholic - Pope Mass: Protecting Creation a Christian responsibility<br>
<br>
Catholic - Frequently Asked Questions on the Papal Encyclical<br>
<br>
Church of the Brethren - Statement on Global Climate Change<br>
<br>
Eastern Orthod0x - Statement on the Environment<br>
<br>
Episcopal Church - Sustaining Hope in the Face of Climate Change<br>
<br>
Evangelical Climate Initiative - Call to Action<br>
<br>
Evangelical Lutheran Church of America - Caring for Creation:
Vision, Hope, and Justice<br>
<br>
Evangelical Lutheran Church of America - Issue Paper: Global Warming
and Climate Change<br>
<br>
Mennonite - Creation Care Network<br>
<br>
Presbyterian Church USA - U.S. Energy Policy and Global Warming<br>
<br>
Quaker - Earthcare Mission Program<br>
<br>
United Church of Christ - A Resolution on Climate Change<br>
<br>
United Methodist Church - Church Statement on Climate Change<br>
<br>
Hindu Declaration on Climate Change<br>
<br>
Interfaith Declaration on Climate Change (IDCC)<br>
<br>
The (Yale) Forum on Religion and Ecology - Judaism and Climate
Change<br>
<br>
Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change<br>
<br>
Sikh Statement on Climate Change<br>
<br>
Unitarian Universalist - Threat of Global Warming/Climate Change<br>
<br>
Additional Statements<br>
The (Yale) Forum on Religion and Ecology<br>
<br>
Faith Traditions Creation Care Statements, a variety of statements
on a visually appealing one-page handout compiled by IPL intern
Rachel Clyde<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.interfaithpowerandlight.org/religious-statements-on-climate-change/">https://www.interfaithpowerandlight.org/religious-statements-on-climate-change/</a>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
[lecture]<br>
<b>Jet Stream Strength and Waviness Modified by Interaction with
Cyclones like Hurricanes: Part 2 of 3</b><br>
Sep 18, 2020<br>
Paul Beckwith<br>
My main intention in this 3 part video series is to show you how
large cyclones (hurricanes, tropical cyclones, typhoons, even
medicanes) interact with the jet streams, and can either add
energy to them (amplify them) or take energy from them, depending
on their size, extent, rotation direction, and proximity to ridges
and/or troughs. The modified jet stream (faster or slower; wavier
or less wavy; streakier or more uniform)) that results from this
interaction then propagates thousands of miles downstream and
changes weather there. Specifically, I show how the strong
tropical cyclones that hit the Japan, South Korea region amplified
the ridges and troughs of the jet stream, which then propagated
downstream over many days and then caused a record breaking
weather whiplashing from record warm temperatures in parts of
Colorado to freezing temperatures and even snowfall. It is clear
that the jet stream, which guides storms, can have high amplitude
ridges and troughs that can break off the jet stream (cutoff lows,
for example) generating cyclones, and now it should be clear that
cyclones can themselves modify the jet streams by interacting with
them. <br>
Yes, the dog wags it's tail, but clearly the moving tail can also
wag the dog!!<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HfOSwTjH28">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HfOSwTjH28</a><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[Digging back into the internet news archive]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming -
September 20, 2013 </b></font><br>
<p>The Obama administration proposes new EPA regulations intended to
reduce carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants in the US.<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/13/epa-to-announce-carbonlimitsonnewpowerplants.html">http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/13/epa-to-announce-carbonlimitsonnewpowerplants.html</a><br>
<br>
</p>
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/<br>
<br>
/Archive of Daily Global Warming News <a
class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/2017-October/date.html"><https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/2017-October/date.html></a>
/<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote">https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote</a><br>
<br>
/To receive daily mailings - click to Subscribe <a
class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:subscribe@theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request"><mailto:subscribe@theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request></a>
to news digest./<br>
<br>
*** Privacy and Security:*This mailing is text-only. It does not
carry images or attachments which may originate from remote
servers. A text-only message can provide greater privacy to the
receiver and sender.<br>
By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain must be used for
democratic and election purposes and cannot be used for commercial
purposes. Messages have no tracking software.<br>
To subscribe, email: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:contact@theclimate.vote">contact@theclimate.vote</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:contact@theclimate.vote"><mailto:contact@theclimate.vote></a>
with subject subscribe, To Unsubscribe, subject: unsubscribe<br>
Also you may subscribe/unsubscribe at <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote">https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote</a><br>
Links and headlines assembled and curated by Richard Pauli for <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://TheClimate.Vote">http://TheClimate.Vote</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://TheClimate.Vote/"><http://TheClimate.Vote/></a>
delivering succinct information for citizens and responsible
governments of all levels. List membership is confidential and
records are scrupulously restricted to this mailing list.<br>
<br>
<br>
</body>
</html>