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<p><i><font size="+1"><b>October 5, 2020</b></font></i></p>
[video and text - clips from CBS 60 Minutes]<br>
<b>The climate science behind this year's wildfires and powerful
storms</b><br>
Is climate change reversible? Scott Pelley speaks with the "father
of climate science" and others for an answer.<br>
Oct 04 2020<br>
CORRESPONDENT Scott Pelley<br>
At least 31 have died in the largest wildfires in California
history. The east is defending itself against twice the usual number
of tropical cyclones. And what may be the highest temperature ever
recorded on Earth came in August in the United States. It's a torrid
2020 and it was forecast 32 years ago. In the 1980's, a NASA
scientist named James Hansen discovered that climate change, driven
by carbon emissions, was upon us. His graphs, of three decades ago,
accurately traced the global rise in temperature to the year 2020.
Last week, we had a lot of questions for Hansen. Are these disasters
climate change? Do things get worse? Is it too late to do anything?
But before we get to the causes, let us show you the effects...<br>
- - <br>
California smoke blew more than 2,000 miles to the east and drifted
over the Pennsylvania farm of retired NASA scientist James Hansen.
His 1988 paper on carbon and climate accurately predicted
temperatures up to the far-off year of 2020. <br>
<br>
James Hansen: Yeah, we're seeing exactly what we expected. But I
expected that governments would be wise enough that they would begin
to adopt policies to preserve the future for young people. But they
haven't done that yet.<br>
<br>
Hansen is the father of climate change science. For 32 years he was
director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Today, at
79, he runs the program on climate science at Columbia University. <br>
<br>
Scott Pelley: What is your forecast for the next 30 years?<br>
<br>
James Hansen: Well, if we don't change anything, then we're going to
continue to see more and more of these extreme regional events
because the physics is quite simple. As you add more greenhouse
gases to the atmosphere, you increase the heating of the surface.
So, at the times and places where it's dry you get more extreme
droughts. The fire seasons become longer. The fires burn hotter. But
at the times and places where it's wet, you get more evaporation of
the water. And you get warmer, moist air, which provides greater
rainfall. And it's the fuel for storms...<br>
- - -<br>
Michael Mann: People ask, are we dealing with a new normal? And the
sobering answer is, that's the best-case scenario. A new normal is
the best-case scenario 'cause that sorta means, well, we've got a
new situation and we just have to learn how to deal with it. But
it's much worse than that. So, there are surprises in store and
we're seeing some of those surprises play out now.<br>
<br>
Michael Mann is a geophysicist whose work on past climate showed
today's rate of warming began with the Industrial Revolution. Mann
is a lightning rod for deniers, but his research has been verified
again and again. Mann is director of the Earth System Science Center
at Penn State and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. <br>
<br>
Scott Pelley: But there've always been fires in the west. There've
always been hurricanes in the east. How do we know that climate
change is involved in this?...<br>
- -<br>
Michael Mann: Well, there are a number of independent sort of
sources of information, lines of evidence that tell us that this
isn't natural, that this is human-caused. Let's look at the big
picture, the warming of the planet a little less than 2 degrees
Fahrenheit warming of the planet since pre-industrial time. Now,
people ask, well, couldn't that happen naturally? Well, it turns out
that if you look at the factors that are driving natural changes
right now -- small but measurable fluctuations in the brightness of
the sun, Volcanic eruptions -- they tell us that earth should've
cooled slightly over the past half-century. <br>
<br>
Here's what he means. In that yellow line at bottom, NASA has
measured a steady decline in heat from the sun since the 1950's. But
the red line, the temperature of the Earth, has only increased. <br>
<br>
Michael Mann: We can only explain that warming when we include the
human factor of increased greenhouse gas concentrations; in
particular, carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.<br>
<br>
Scott Pelley: Well, the president says about climate change, science
doesn't know. <br>
<br>
Michael Mann: The president doesn't know. And he should know better.
He should know that the world's leading scientific organizations,
our own U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and national academies of
every major industrial nation, every scientific society in the
United States that's weighed in on the matter. This is a scientific
consensus. There's about as much scientific consensus about
human-caused climate change as there is about gravity...<br>
- - <br>
Scott Pelley: I did my first climate story more than 20 years ago
and I remember, at the time, being told that there would be terrible
fires and terrible hurricanes in 100 years; that this was a problem
for our great-grandchildren. What changed?<br>
<br>
Michael Mann: what we're finding is that many of these changes can
happen faster than we thought they could. We didn't really expect to
see substantial loss of ice from the two major continental ice
sheets, the Greenland Ice Sheet and the Antarctic Ice Sheet. But
now, the satellite measurements and in situ measurements tell us
that they're already losing ice. They're already beginning that
process of collapse. It's already contributing to sea level rise,
decades ahead of schedule. <br>
<br>
Still, geophysicist Michael Mann told us warming can be stopped.
Oceans and forests would begin to absorb excess carbon in a matter
of years if emissions, principally from coal-fired power plants, are
reduced close to zero. Former NASA scientist James Hansen believes
the way to do that is for governments to tax cheap fossil fuels to
make them more expensive than clean alternatives...<br>
- - -<br>
Scott Pelley: At what point does it become too late?<br>
<br>
James Hansen: It becomes too late if you get to the point that you
cannot stop the ice sheet disintegration. That's the biggest point
of no return. We can get to a point where we're going to get several
meters of sea level rise out of our control. That's too late. We
would lose our coastal cities. And more than half of the large
cities in the world are on coastlines.<br>
<br>
Scott Pelley: If we don't start to reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere,
50 years from now, someone doing research on this time might look at
this interview and I wonder what you would like to say to them.<br>
<br>
Michael Mann: That-- that's a tough question. I would say we did
everything we could and we're sorry. We're sorry that we failed. But
I don't think that's our future. I don't want that to be our future.
That's a possible future. We have to recognize that. The worst
visions that Hollywood has given us of dystopian futures are real
possible futures if we don't act on this problem; the greatest
crisis that we face as a civilization.<br>
<br>
Produced by Maria Gavrilovic and Alex Ortiz. Broadcast associate,
Ian Flickinger. Edited by April Wilson.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/western-wilfires-record-temperatures-california-60-minutes-2020-10-04/">https://www.cbsnews.com/news/western-wilfires-record-temperatures-california-60-minutes-2020-10-04/</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[6-minute listen on NPR]<br>
<b>Washington Gov. Jay Inslee On How To Stay Optimistic On Fighting
Climate Change</b><br>
October 4, 2020<br>
- - <br>
On maintaining optimistic<br>
<br>
There is progress going on in the United States. We just need to
make it national. That's No. 1.<br>
<br>
No. 2, the technology, the rapidity of the technological progress is
incredible. I actually wrote a book about this a decade ago, and I
had a vision that we were going to have technological changes to
make electric cars productive, which they now are becoming cost
effective and [have] huge range. That solar would become cheaper —
and wind — than coal that has happened.<br>
<br>
So the technology, the curve of technology is as rapid in clean
energy as it was in computing. And if you see how far we've come
since the first laptop, we're doing the same thing in clean energy.<br>
<br>
And the third reason that we need to be optimistic is that it's just
the only effective tool. I think maybe it was Churchill who said,
"when you're going through hell, keep going." And that's what we
need to do in this matter.<br>
<br>
Robert Baldwin III and Tinbete Ermyas produced and edited the audio
version of this story.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.npr.org/2020/10/04/920164724/washington-gov-jay-inslee-on-how-to-stay-optimistic-on-fighting-climate-change">https://www.npr.org/2020/10/04/920164724/washington-gov-jay-inslee-on-how-to-stay-optimistic-on-fighting-climate-change</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[Breakthrough invention for electric power]<br>
<b>Physicists build circuit that generates clean, limitless power
from graphene</b><br>
Researchers harnessed the atomic motion of graphene to generate an
electrical current that could lead to a chip to replace batteries.<br>
October 2, 2020<br>
University of Arkansas<br>
Summary: Physicists have successfully generated an electrical
current from the atomic motion of graphene, discovering a new source
of clean, limitless power...<br>
- -<br>
A team of University of Arkansas physicists has successfully
developed a circuit capable of capturing graphene's thermal motion
and converting it into an electrical current.<br>
<br>
"An energy-harvesting circuit based on graphene could be
incorporated into a chip to provide clean, limitless, low-voltage
power for small devices or sensors," said Paul Thibado, professor of
physics and lead researcher in the discovery.<br>
<br>
The findings, published in the journal Physical Review E, are proof
of a theory the physicists developed at the U of A three years ago
that freestanding graphene -- a single layer of carbon atoms --
ripples and buckles in a way that holds promise for energy
harvesting.<br>
<br>
The idea of harvesting energy from graphene is controversial because
it refutes physicist Richard Feynman's well-known assertion that the
thermal motion of atoms, known as Brownian motion, cannot do work.
Thibado's team found that at room temperature the thermal motion of
graphene does in fact induce an alternating current (AC) in a
circuit, an achievement thought to be impossible.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201002091029.htm">https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201002091029.htm</a><br>
- -<br>
<b>Physicists build circuit that generates clean, limitless power
from graphene</b><br>
In the 1950s, physicist Leon Brillouin published a landmark paper
refuting the idea that adding a single diode, a one-way electrical
gate, to a circuit is the solution to harvesting energy from
Brownian motion. Knowing this, Thibado's group built their circuit
with two diodes for converting AC into a direct current (DC). With
the diodes in opposition allowing the current to flow both ways,
they provide separate paths through the circuit, producing a pulsing
DC current that performs work on a load resistor.<br>
<br>
<b>video graphene animation</b> <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://youtu.be/KiLTEjm8zLw">https://youtu.be/KiLTEjm8zLw</a><br>
<br>
Additionally, they discovered that their design increased the amount
of power delivered. "We also found that the on-off, switch-like
behavior of the diodes actually amplifies the power delivered,
rather than reducing it, as previously thought," said Thibado. "The
rate of change in resistance provided by the diodes adds an extra
factor to the power."<br>
<br>
The team used a relatively new field of physics to prove the diodes
increased the circuit's power. "In proving this power enhancement,
we drew from the emergent field of stochastic thermodynamics and
extended the nearly century-old, celebrated theory of Nyquist," said
coauthor Pradeep Kumar, associate professor of physics and coauthor.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://phys.org/news/2020-10-physicists-circuit-limitless-power-graphene.html">https://phys.org/news/2020-10-physicists-circuit-limitless-power-graphene.html</a>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[Hot ground]<br>
<b>Geothermal ground source heat pumps. Heating your home from your
own back yard!</b><br>
Oct 4, 2020<br>
Just Have a Think<br>
Geothermal energy could be potentially transformational for our
power grids, as we saw in our last video. But you and I can also get
in on the act by drawing our own domestic heating from beneath our
gardens (or communal gardens if you live in an apartment block). The
technology is called a Ground Source Heat Pump. They've been around
for a while but they are growing very quickly in popularity and may
prove to be one of the lynch pins in helping us get to carbon
neutrality by 2050.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jCHYUuEDZ8">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jCHYUuEDZ8</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[about proxy data]<br>
<b>How Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity is WORSE than Expected;
Dependent on Initial Temperature: 1 of 3</b><br>
Oct 4, 2020<br>
Paul Beckwith<br>
Part 1: I chat in detail in a three video series on how today’s
climate and rate of change of climate related to the Eocene and PETM
(Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum). Despite recent advances, the
link between evolution of atmospheric CO2 and climate during the
Eocene greenhouse period remains unclear. Modelling studies suggest
that to achieve the global warmth that characterised the early
Eocene, warmer climates must be more sensitive to CO2 forcing than
colder climates. In other words, climate sensitivity (temperature vs
CO2 level) depends on the starting conditions. In the new
peer-reviewed paper that I discuss, they test this assertion in the
geological record by combining a new high-resolution boron
isotope-based CO2 record with novel estimates of Global Mean
Temperature. They find that Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS)
was indeed higher during the warmest intervals of the Eocene,
agreeing well with recent model simulations, and declined through
the Eocene as global climate cooled. These observations indicate
that the canonical IPCC range of ECS (1.5 to 4.5 C per doubling) is
unlikely to be appropriate for high-CO2 warm climates of the past,
and the state dependency of ECS may play an increasingly important
role in determining the state of future climate as the Earth
continues to warm. In other words, we are fucked.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReSapwEn9eA">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReSapwEn9eA</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[emergency responses - article and audio]<br>
<b>Global demand for U.S. military assistance increasing as weather
grows more extreme</b><br>
The military often provides aid when a weather disaster or
humanitarian crisis strikes.<br>
When a natural disaster or humanitarian crisis strikes, the U.S.
military often helps provide critical aid. And as weather becomes
more extreme, the need for that assistance is growing.<br>
<br>
“The demand for American military resources to help out in
humanitarian disasters is increasing year by year,” says Lee Gunn, a
retired Navy vice admiral and vice chair of the CNA Military
Advisory Board, which assesses potential national security threats.<br>
<br>
He says storms are not the only threat. Slow-moving disasters can
also lead to major crises.<br>
<br>
In southeast Asia, warming oceans are affecting fish habitats,
making fishing more difficult. And rising seas are pushing more
saltwater inland, which can disrupt rice agriculture. Gunn says
these impacts threaten the region’s economy and food security.<br>
<br>
“These stresses are going to lead far more often to humanitarian
disasters,” he says.<br>
<br>
And that could become a concern for the U.S. military.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/09/global-demand-for-u-s-military-assistance-growing-as-weather-grows-more-extreme/">https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/09/global-demand-for-u-s-military-assistance-growing-as-weather-grows-more-extreme/</a><br>
“Because we care about the people around the world and we care about
the stability that we’re able to provide that facilitates
international trade … and these thriving communities everywhere,” he
says.<br>
<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 -
October 5, 1988 </b></font><br>
<p>Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen (D) and Indiana Senator Dan Quayle
(R) discuss global warming in the Vice Presidential debate, with
both men agreeing that the problem must be addressed during the
next four years; Bentsen suggests that natural gas and ethanol
might be alternatives to oil dependence. <br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://youtu.be/99-v2Farbjs">http://youtu.be/99-v2Farbjs</a> - (49:33-52:45) </p>
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