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<p><i><font size="+1"><b>October 25, 2020</b></font></i></p>
[that's a millennia]<br>
<b>It's been a thousand years since Colorado has burned like this</b><br>
Colorado's three largest wildfires in history have been in the past
three months. Wildfires on this scale are exceedingly rare without a
boost from climate change.<br>
Eric Holthaus - Oct 25, 2020<br>
<br>
We are in a climate emergency. And you were born at just the right
moment to help change everything.<br>
<br>
Today's newsletter is a continuation of a short three-part series on
the Colorado wildfires that started with Tuesday's deeply emotional
interview with Becky Bolinger, Colorado's Assistant State
Climatologist.<br>
<br>
If you like what you're reading, please subscribe to The Phoenix to
support independent climate journalism at a critical moment in
history.<br>
<b><br>
</b><b>Colorado hasn't seen a fire season this bad in a very, very,
very long time.</b><br>
The three largest fires in Colorado history - the Cameron Peak fire,
the East Troublesome fire, and the Pine Gulch fire - have all burned
this summer.<br>
<br>
This week, the East Troublesome fire actually crossed over the
continental divide through Forest Canyon Pass in Rocky Mountain
National Park at an elevation of 11,320 feet - something
meteorologists were speculating would be an unbelievable feat for
any time of the year, let alone late October. The fire burned an
area the size of Chicago in a day, at high elevation, at
temperatures near freezing.<br>
<br>
Decades of drought and beetle infestations worsened by rapidly
warming temperatures have led to massive stands of dead forests
across western North America - at least 100,000 square miles worth.
In Colorado, more acres have burned this year than in any other
*five year period* on record, combined. Fires are even slowly
advancing through early winter snowstorms - with heavy snows posing
new challenges for firefighting crews.<br>
<br>
None of this is normal.<br>
<br>
Before 2002, Colorado had never recorded a fire larger than 100,000
acres. It now has three burning simultaneously. What's happening in
Colorado isn't a coincidence, it's climate change.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://thephoenix.substack.com/p/its-been-a-thousand-years-since-colorado">https://thephoenix.substack.com/p/its-been-a-thousand-years-since-colorado</a><br>
<p>- -<br>
</p>
[simultaneous]<br>
<b>As Colorado wildfires burn, fears that climate change is causing
"multi-level emergency" mount</b><br>
Heat, aridity, mega-fires and smoke are intensifying faster than
projected<br>
- -<br>
Politicians including presidential candidate Joe Biden and Senate
hopeful John Hickenlooper now refer to "an existential threat" and
call for a shift off the fossil fuels they've supported in the past.<br>
<br>
Yet efforts to help residents cope, and even draw down heat-trapping
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by re-greening farmland and cities,
have barely begun. A Denver Post examination found a $4.2 billion
backlog of forestry work identified by the Colorado State Forest
Service as critical to protect people and property from fires...<br>
- - <br>
What's the rational response?<br>
<br>
"Rationality means getting really serious about GHG (greenhouse gas)
reductions. It also means planning for the worst with respect to
water supplies and fires. We're doing none of these things, although
the water community at least realizes the threat and is making some
efforts to think about it," Udall said.<br>
<br>
"Climate change is the ultimate 'kick-the-can-down-the-road' game.
To fix it you have to have pain now, and reap the benefits later.
That's never a good setup for political action."...<br>
- - <br>
"The safety of our communities is at risk. Our water supply is at
risk. And we provide water that leaves our high country and flows to
18 different states and Mexico. All of Colorado is in drought now
and you're not going to hang onto soil if you've burned all the
vegetation off of it," he said. "It doesn't do any good to say
you're going to do something. At some point, you have to actually do
it."...<br>
more at -
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.denverpost.com/2020/10/25/colorado-wildfires-climate-change/">https://www.denverpost.com/2020/10/25/colorado-wildfires-climate-change/</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[deep science video with transcript -- from physicist Sabine
Hossenfelder]<br>
<b>How can climate be predictable if weather is chaotic?</b><br>
Oct 24, 2020<br>
Sabine Hossenfelder<br>
transcript concludes:<br>
<blockquote>Even though the system is chaotic, one clearly sees that
the response of the system does<br>
have a predictable dependence on the input parameter.<br>
To see this better, I have calculated the average of these curves
as a function of the<br>
"radiative forcing", for a sample of initial values.<br>
And this is what you get:<br>
You clearly see that the average value is strongly correlated with
the radiative forcing.<br>
Again, the scatter you see here is because I am averaging over a
rather arbitrarily chosen<br>
finite period.<br>
What this means is that in a chaotic system, the trends of average
values can be predictable,<br>
even though you cannot predict the exact state of the system
beyond a short period of time.<br>
And this is exactly what is happening in climate models.<br>
Scientists cannot predict whether it will rain on June 15th, 2079,
but they can very<br>
well predict the average rainfall in 2079 as a function of
increasing carbon dioxide<br>
levels.<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5fwYtU7Rhg">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5fwYtU7Rhg</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[not a surprise, but still disturbing]<br>
<b>Exxon Spends Millions on Facebook To Keep the Fossil Fuel
Industry Alive</b><br>
Aided by a right-wing political consulting firm, the company is
rallying supporters to fight for oil and gas interests at every
level of government.<br>
CHRISTINE MACDONALD OCTOBER 20, 2020<br>
...<br>
An In These Times investigation, supported by a year-long
fellowship from the Leonard C. Goodman Institute for
Investigative Reporting, examined 11,622 Exxon social media ads
containing around 350 distinct messages that ran in the two-year
period from June 1, 2018, to May 31, 2020, and appeared on U.S.
Facebook and Instagram users' screens as many as 265 million
times. Facebook (which owns Instagram) has allowed access to the
ads it serves through its Ad Library since May 2018, created by
Facebook after a number of transparency scandals.<br>
- - <br>
Exxon has spent more than any other major corporation on
"social issues, elections, or politics" Facebook ads (outside
of Facebook itself), and is the country's ninth-largest buyer of
such ads overall: $15.6 million from May 7, 2018, to October 8,
2020. Almost every other top spender is an organization related
to presidential campaigning. The top 100 pages are primarily
politicians, nonprofits and other mission-driven
organizations: The only major corporation outside of Exxon,
Facebook and Instagram is Goldman Sachs, which spent less than a
quarter of Exxon's total...<br>
- -<br>
Exxon's use of social media to lobby the public goes way beyond the
rest of the industry.<br>
- -<br>
As GOP digital strategist Mindy Finn explained to Politico:
"[Digital organizing is] not just raw numbers. It's analyzing
and determining who those people [who are engaging] are and
matching them back to voter profiles. … It's not having the most
Facebook likes and clicks, because the 'who' matters."<br>
<br>
While only age, sex and state information for each ad is
provided by the Facebook Ad Library, Facebook allows ad buyers
to target ads based on actual online behavior, in addition to
self-reported characteristics like work and education. It can
target using online shopping and browsing history, for
example, and whether a person is likely to engage with
conservative or liberal political content. <br>
- -<br>
Stephanie Prufer, an oceans campaigner at the Center for
Biological Diversity, says she doesn't think Exxon's
strategy will work for the company, especially among youth.<br>
<br>
"I'm not surprised that Exxon is targeting the demographic that
they are," she says, referring to the fact that Exxon ads
disproportionately appear on the screens of older social media
users. "They know they are not going to be able to get the support
of people who are afraid for their own futures. I'm 24 and I worry
every single day about what will become of my future if the oil
companies keep drilling."<br>
<br>
"The science is so clear," she adds. "We need to keep oil in the
ground. We need to end drilling on our coast, not revive it."<br>
<br>
David DeMaris served as a technology consultant on this story.
Juan Caicedo contributed fact-checking.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://inthesetimes.com/article/exxon-facebook-instagram-advertising-fracking-climate-fossil-fuels">https://inthesetimes.com/article/exxon-facebook-instagram-advertising-fracking-climate-fossil-fuels</a><br>
<br>
<br>
[Labor understands global warming]<br>
<b>Why labor unions support Mike Siegel</b><br>
Premiered Oct 13, 2020<br>
Sunrise Movement<br>
What use is a good job if you don't have a home to come home to?
What use is a country if you can't work to better the lives of
yourself and your neighbors? <br>
Unions have a saying, if you're not at the table you're on the menu.
That's why an unprecedented coalition of unions are backing Green
New Deal champion, Mike Siegel because any deal he'll make in
congress, starts with workers. Mike Siegel is a democrat running for
congress in Texas's 10th district, to unseat the incumbent
republican, Michael Mccaul. Mike also supports Housing and
Healthcare for All, Police Reform, and Gun reform. You can learn
more about his platform at siegelfortexas.org. <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOgRw4cRm5k&feature=youtu.be">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOgRw4cRm5k&feature=youtu.be</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
[Climate and Capitalism]<br>
<b>Triple Crisis in the Anthropocene Ocean.</b><br>
Part Three: The Heat of 3.6 Billion Atom Bombs<br>
by Ian Angus - October 24, 2020 <br>
- -<br>
Scientists measure the ocean's heat content in joules -- the amount
of energy required to produce one watt of power for one second. In a
commentary on the latest data, Lijing Cheng of China's Institute of
Atmospheric Physics calculates that the increase in ocean heat
content over the past 25 years required the addition of 228
sextillion joules of heat -- that's 228 followed by 21 zeroes.<br>
<br>
"That's a lot of zeros indeed. To make it easier to understand, I
did a calculation. The Hiroshima atom-bomb exploded with an energy
of about 63,000,000,000,000 Joules. The amount of heat we have put
in the world's oceans in the past 25 years equals to 3.6 billion
Hiroshima atom-bomb explosions."<br>
<br>
That's about five Hiroshima bombs a second -- and the rate is
accelerating.<br>
Since 1987 the ocean has warmed 4.5 times as fast as in the previous
three decades.[iii] The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) projects that even if emissions are substantially reduced, by
2100 the ocean will heat 2 to 4 times as much as it has since 1970
-- and if emissions are not cut, it will heat 5 to 7 times as
much...<br>
- -<br>
The sudden growth of scientific interest in marine heatwaves is no
accident. It reflects a real shift in the ocean's climate in the
past two decades: a radical increase in the frequency, intensity and
duration of periods of when water temperatures are much higher than
normal. Such extreme events can have devastating impacts on ocean
ecosystems: organisms that have evolved to live within a limited
temperature range must adapt, flee or die when that range is
exceeded...<br>
- -<br>
All by itself, ocean warming is a major threat to the stability of
the world's largest ecosystem -- but ocean warming does not occur
"all by itself." The deadly trio of ocean warming, loss of oxygen
and acidification are all consequences of disrupting the global
carbon cycle. Burning massive amounts of long-buried carbon has
changed the ocean's chemistry, heated the water and driven out
oxygen. Those processes take place simultaneously and reinforce each
other, making the ocean increasingly inhospitable, even deadly, for
living things from microbes to whales.<br>
<br>
Worse, the deadly trio isn't acting alone. Overfishing has wiped out
many species, and it's predicted that most wild fish populations
will be 90% depleted by 2050. Pollutants, including tons of plastics
that essentially last forever, are poisoning marine life from
coastlines to the deepest trenches. Nitrogen fertilizer run-off has
created a thousand or more dead zones in coastal waters and
estuaries. Off-shore oil wells are leaking deadly hydrocarbons, and
mining companies are preparing to dredge rare minerals from the deep
sea floor, destroying some of the few remaining undamaged parts of
Earth's surface.<br>
<br>
As environmental geologists Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams write,
"a wholesale refashioning of the marine ecosystem" is now underway.
If business as usual continues, "pervasive changes in the physical,
chemical and biological boundary conditions of the sea … [will]
transform, irreversibly, and for the worse, the Earth and its
oceans."<br>
<br>
The effect of that transformation was summed up by Agence
France-Presse, in its account of the IPCC's 2019 report on the
oceans: "The same oceans that nourished human evolution are poised
to unleash misery on a global scale unless the carbon pollution
destabilizing Earth's marine environment is brought to heel."<br>
<br>
This article continues my series on metabolic rifts. As always, I
welcome your comments, corrections and constructive criticism.--IA<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://climateandcapitalism.com/2020/10/24/triple-crisis-in-the-anthropocene-ocean-part-three-the-heat-of-3-6-billion-atom-bombs/">https://climateandcapitalism.com/2020/10/24/triple-crisis-in-the-anthropocene-ocean-part-three-the-heat-of-3-6-billion-atom-bombs/</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
[Digging back into the internet news archive]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming -
October 25, 2013 </b></font><br>
<p>On MSNBC's "The Cycle," writer David Gessner discusses the
grotesque legacy of Superstorm Sandy.<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.msnbc.com/the-cycle/watch/hurricane-sandy-one-year-later-56848963789#">http://www.msnbc.com/the-cycle/watch/hurricane-sandy-one-year-later-56848963789#</a><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
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