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<p><i><font size="+1"><b>January 8, 2021</b></font></i></p>
[Data into information]<br>
<b>Research confirms increase in river flooding and droughts in
U.S., Canada</b><br>
JANUARY 7, 2021<br>
The number of "extreme streamflow" events observed in river systems
have increased significantly across the United States and Canada
over the last century, according to a study from Dartmouth College.<br>
In regions where water runoff from snowmelt is a main contributor to
river streamflow, the study found a rise in extreme events, such as
flooding.<br>
<br>
In drought-prone regions in the western and southeastern U.S., the
study found that the frequency of extreme low-flow events has also
become more common, particularly during summer and fall.<br>
<br>
The research, published in Science Advances, analyzed records dating
back to 1910 to confirm the effects of recent changes in
precipitation levels on river systems.<br>
<br>
"Floods and droughts are extremely expensive and often
life-threatening events," said Evan Dethier, a postdoctoral
researcher at Dartmouth and the lead author of the paper. "It's
really important that we have good estimates of how likely extreme
events are to occur and whether that likelihood is changing."<br>
<br>
Although changes in precipitation and extreme streamflows have been
observed in the past, there has been no research consensus on
whether droughts and floods have actually increased in frequency.<br>
<br>
Past research efforts have mostly focused on annual peak flows,
potentially missing important seasonal changes to extreme low-flow
events that can be pulled from daily streamflow records. Those
efforts have also been hampered by the mixing of data from regions
that have different precipitation patterns and natural seasonal
cycles.<br>
<br>
According to the research paper: The results demonstrate that
"increases in the frequency of both high- and low-flow extreme
streamflow events are, in fact, widespread."...<br>
"Previous attempts to analyze regional pattern in streamflow were
usually based on fixed geographical regions that were largely
unsuccessful," said Carl Renshaw, a professor of earth sciences at
Dartmouth. "The novel clustering approach used in this research
defines regions based on the hydrology—not geographical or political
boundaries—to better reveal the significant shifts occurring for
both high and low streamflows."<br>
<br>
The Dartmouth study combined 541 rivers in the U.S. and Canada into
15 hydrological regions organized by seasonal streamflow
characteristics, such as whether streams flood due to tropical
storms or rain falling on melting snow. This grouping allowed for
more sensitive detection of trends in extreme flow events on both an
annual and seasonal basis.<br>
<br>
Out of the 15 "hydro-regions" created, 12 had enough rivers to be
analyzed in the study. The rivers studied were judged to be
minimally affected by human activity and included extensive records
that span 60 or more years.<br>
<br>
"The shifts toward more extreme events are especially important
given the age of our dams, bridges, and roads. The changes to river
flows that we found are important for those who manage or depend on
this type of infrastructure," said Dethier.<br>
<br>
According to the study, in the regions where streamflow changes were
found to be statistically significant, floods and droughts have, on
average, doubled in frequency relative to the period of 1950 to
1969.<br>
<br>
Significant changes in the frequency of floods were found to be most
common in the Canadian and northern U.S. regions where annual peak
flows are consistently associated with spring snowmelt runoff.<br>
<br>
The increase in flooding has come despite reduction in snowpack
caused by warming winter temperatures. The research team believes
that the increases in extreme precipitation during the high-flow
season may make up for the reduction in snowpack storage.<br>
<br>
Changes in drought and extreme low-flow frequency were found to be
more variable.<br>
<br>
While floods were found to be more localized, droughts were found to
be "generally reflective of large-scale climatic forcing" and more
likely to be widespread across a region.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://phys.org/news/2021-01-river-droughts-canada.html">https://phys.org/news/2021-01-river-droughts-canada.html</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[Opinion Gizmodo]<br>
<b>The Climate Crisis Will Be Steroids for Fascism</b><br>
Brian Kahn - Jan 7, 2021<br>
The Capitol has a police force with a $500 million budget, and yet
it failed at its one job on Wednesday. Members of Congress, among
the most protected people on the planet, were forced to hide in
undisclosed locations as violent extremists overran the Capitol.<br>
<br>
The anti-democratic message Wednesday’s insurrection sent is
chilling. Far-right mobs incited by the president over baseless
conspiracy theories and a commitment to white nationalism breached
one of the most secure places in the U.S. and disrupted a basic
democratic process of certifying election results. But what it
portends for both the future of the Republican Party and its
response to the climate crisis is even more chilling.<br>
<br>
The ingredients for the toxic soup that stirred extremists to take
on one of the branches of government (as well as numerous
coordinated attacks at the state level) will only grow more
plentiful and powerful as the climate crisis worsens. If elected
officials aren’t ready to take a clear-eyed look at the damage done
on Wednesday and what awaits us in the coming hotter decades, we’ll
face even more extreme assaults on democracy and the most vulnerable
among us.<br>
<br>
The violent assault on the Capitol followed a pattern increasingly
familiar in the Trump era, though it’s been an undercurrent in
American society for much longer. Blatant lies about the election
being rigged were spread over social media and used as cover to
convene in Washington, DC, and storm the Capitol. Extremists clashed
with police, met minimal resistance outside, and were allowed to
mill about the building for hours, trashing offices and posing in
the Senate for Parler-worthy photos.<br>
<br>
Then they were allowed to politely file out of the building and only
a few dozen were arrested. That number may rise, but the initial
response pales in comparison to how Black Lives Matter protesters
were treated this summer. Not to mention climate-related protesters
like Fire Drill Fridays where police created a huge perimeter to
cordon off press and onlookers and brought in buses to process
protesters who were arrested.<br>
Wednesday’s insurrection and law enforcement’s frail response are
eerily similar to what happened this summer when right-wing militias
spread conspiracies about wildfires in Oregon. In that case,
extremists sowed confusion to assert control over regions engulfed
in smoke, setting up armed checkpoints and threatening journalists.
Law enforcement turned a blind eye, and in the case of one sheriff,
even briefed extremists. At the time, experts told me it was in part
an attempt by far-right figures to see what they could get away
with.<br>
<br>
The lesson in both cases is that the pushed boundaries didn’t snap
back. The permissive nature of law enforcement and people in
power—more than 120 Republican representatives and senators voted to
decertify state election results based on lies after the mob invaded
the Capitol Building—opens the door to further violent probing.<br>
<br>
Now, I’m a firm believer that an assault on democracy or unlawful
behavior during a climate-fueled disaster alone should be reason to
hold people to account. But looking at the two events in tandem and
seeing the climate future that awaits us is what really raises my
alarm bells—and should raise those of the people in power.
Pretending this will pass or offering broad platitudes that “we are
better than this” will ensure more terror.<br>
<br>
Climate change is chaos by nature. It means more powerful storms,
more intense wildfires, more extreme floods and droughts. It is an
assault on the weakest among us, and decades of the right-wing
mindset of small government have left the country with fewer
resources to deal with the fallout. As the summer’s wildfires show,
the far-right will be there to try to fill the power void. Those
fires occurred in a predominantly white region.<br>
<br>
There’s a strong strain of white nationalism and neo-Nazism that ran
through Wednesday’s insurrection, and it’s easy to imagine what will
happen when flames or storms hit places that are predominantly
Black, brown, or Indigenous. In fact, we don’t need to imagine it at
all. We’ve seen it in the gunman who showed up at a Walmart to kill
immigrants whom he falsely blamed for putting strain on the
environment. And we saw it in the white vigilante violence in the
vacuum after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. We’ve seen it so
frequently, it even has a name: ecofascism.<br>
<br>
After Wednesday, the boundaries of permissible violence have now
expanded to a distorting degree, at a time of increasing climate
instability. White supremacists, neo-Nazis, and other extremists
literally took over the halls of power and got away with it. When
climate change upends communities with far fewer
defenses—communities that hate groups already scapegoat—the results
will be catastrophic.<br>
<br>
It’s never been clearer that a large chunk of the nation’s top
Republican leaders will embrace and even fuel this extremism and
hate. The Venn diagram of people who push election denial and
climate denial has near-perfect overlap, but even if these figures
deny the climate crisis, they’ll still look to exploit it. At the
end of the day, their goal is to use easy-to-disprove lies to build
and consolidate power.<br>
<br>
Fixing a mess like this absolutely has to be part of the process of
addressing climate change. Accountability for those who incited
extremists is a good place to start. Emily Atkin of Heated noted on
Twitter in the wake of the Georgia special election that gave
Democrats the Senate that democracy reform is climate policy, and I
have to agree. Washington, DC, statehood, getting corrosive money
out of politics, and expelling seditionists are all good places to
start. A strong federal response to climate change that both draws
down emissions and protects people from the impacts already in the
pipeline is also crucial. Decades of weakening the federal
government and proselytizing about the power of the individual has
left millions exposed to calamity. Rebuilding the federal response
to climate change, and ensuring it also engages everyone in moving
the country forward through good-paying jobs and a just transition
for frontline and fossil fuel communities, are essential to beating
hate groups into the background.<br>
<br>
None of this will make the fascism on full display disappear
overnight. But doing nothing or insisting we turn the page opens the
door to something much worse.<br>
Brian Kahn - Managing editor, Earther<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://earther.gizmodo.com/the-climate-crisis-will-be-steroids-for-fascism-1846009446">https://earther.gizmodo.com/the-climate-crisis-will-be-steroids-for-fascism-1846009446</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
[Wired]<br>
<b>Climate Change Is Turning Cities Into Ovens</b><br>
A new model estimates that by 2100, cities across the world could
warm as much as 4.4 degrees Celsius. It’s a deadly consequence of
the “heat island” effect.<br>
MATT SIMON - 1.07.2021<br>
- -<br>
Cities are but a blip. Researchers are more interested in the
dynamics of things like the ocean, ice, and air currents. “We're
closing this kind of gap,” says Lei Zhao, a climate scientist at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and lead author on a
recent paper published in Nature Climate Change describing the
modeling. “We provide urban-specific projections for the future.”...<br>
His team’s model suggests that hotter cities could be catastrophic
for urban public health, which is already suffering from the effects
of increasing heat. Between 2000 and 2016, according to the World
Health Organization, the number of people exposed to heat waves
jumped by 125 million, and extreme heat claimed more than 166,000
lives between 1998 and 2017. And while at the moment half the
world’s population lives in urban areas, that proportion is expected
to rise to 70 percent by 2050, according to the authors of this new
paper. People in search of economic opportunity are unknowingly
rushing into peril.<br>
<br>
“When I read these papers, I just don't know what's wrong with
humanity, to be honest with you. Because this is like the same song
being sung by different people,” says climate scientist Camilo Mora
of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, who wasn’t involved in the
work. “Come on, man! When are we going to get serious about this
problem? This is another person ringing the bell. We just for some
reason refuse to hear this thing.”<br>
<br>
To calculate how much city temperatures might rise, Zhao and his
colleagues from a number of institutions, including Princeton
University and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, built a
statistical model for the climate of urban regions, focusing on
changing temperatures and humidities. These two factors are the
conspiring menaces of extreme heat: Our bodies respond to high
temperatures by perspiring, which is more fancily known as
evaporative cooling. But humidity makes this process less efficient,
because the more moist the air is, the less readily it accepts
evaporating sweat from our bodies. That’s why humid heat feels so
much more uncomfortable than dry heat.<br>
<br>
Heat and humidity are not only uncomfortable; they can be dangerous.
Mora has identified 27 different ways heat can kill a person. When
your body detects that it’s overheating, it redirects blood from the
organs at your core to your skin, thus dissipating more heat into
the air around you. (This is why your skin turns red when you’re
hot.) In extreme heat, this can spiral out of control, resulting in
ischemia, or the critically low flow of blood to the organs. This
can damage crucial organs like the brain or heart. In addition, a
high body temperature can cause cell death, known as heat
cytotoxity. Humidity compounds the risk of overheating and organ
failure, since you can’t sweat as efficiently to cool down.<br>
- -<br>
To model how these two forces might affect cities, Zhao and his team
turned their statistical model into an “emulator,” which mimics
complex climate models, but focuses on urban areas. They could then
apply the emulator to results from over two dozen global climate
models, assuming either intermediate or high emission levels going
forward, to translate coarse climate model outputs to the city
level. When they assumed an intermediate level of emissions, they
found that, on average, the planet’s urban regions could warm 1.9
degrees C over the next 80 years; when they assumed a high level,
the figure became an astonishing 4.4 degrees C...<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.wired.com/story/climate-change-is-turning-cities-into-ovens/">https://www.wired.com/story/climate-change-is-turning-cities-into-ovens/</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 -
January 8, 2003 </b></font><br>
Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) introduce
the bipartisan Climate Stewardship Act of 2003, which would
establish a federal cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions. (The bill would be defeated in the Senate in October
2003.)...<br>
<blockquote>
<p>Senator James M. Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who is
chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said the
causes of global warming were still open to question. He
indicated that he had a fundamental difference with the
McCain-Lieberman approach by noting that the Congressional
Budget Office had found that cap-and-trade programs amounted to
''an energy tax on consumers.''<br>
<br>
Many people at the hearing rejected the idea that the White
House was doing something serious about global warming and
criticized the administration for saying it needed to do more
research.<br>
<br>
Mr. Lieberman, the first witness, said the administration's
approach would ''allow greenhouse-gas emissions to keep
increasing indefinitely, presenting this country and the world
with a bigger and bigger environmental crisis to tackle down the
road,'' hurting the economy and America's stature in the world.<br>
<br>
Of his bill, he said, ''we do less than is explicitly called for
under the Kyoto agreement, but we sure do a lot more than
nothing.''<br>
<br>
Speaking for the administration at the hearing was James R.
Mahoney, assistant commerce secretary and deputy administrator
of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.<br>
<br>
Dr. Mahoney said, ''We do have evidence of global change,'' but
he added, ''There are substantial uncertainties about causes,
and because of that uncertainty about causes, there's also
substantial uncertainty about mitigation methods that might be
effective.''...<br>
</p>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/09/us/politics-economy-environment-mccain-lieberman-offer-bill-require-cuts-gases.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/09/us/politics-economy-environment-mccain-lieberman-offer-bill-require-cuts-gases.html</a>
<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.edf.org/news/environmental-defense-praises-new-mccain-lieberman-climate-bill">http://www.edf.org/news/environmental-defense-praises-new-mccain-lieberman-climate-bill</a>
<br>
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