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<i><font size="+1"><b>February 28, 2021</b></font></i>
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[keeping paintings dry]<br>
<b>The Louvre moves its treasures as climate change brings more
floods to Paris</b><br>
by Melissa Godin | Thomson Reuters Foundation<br>
Friday, 26 February 2021<br>
The Paris museum is relocating many artworks not on display to a
storage facility in northern France designed to stand up to global
warming impacts...<br>
- -<br>
The problem is not unique to Paris. Italy built flood barriers to
protect Venice's historic city centre after salty sea water damaged
St Mark's Basilica, while London's Tate galleries sit on flood-prone
sites. [<br>
<br>
"We have a lot of museums whose collections will be affected if they
are not stored properly," said Mechtild Rossler, director of the
UNESCO World Heritage Centre, which supports landmark buildings
recognised by the U.N. cultural agency.<br>
<br>
By mid-2021, Louvre officials hope 250,000 at-risk paintings,
sculptures and tapestries - including the Venus de Milo - will be in
their new, $120 million home, where they will be safe from floods,
heatwaves and other extreme weather...<br>
- -<br>
The Seine has always been prone to flooding.<br>
<br>
During the Great Flood of 1910, the river rose by 8.6m. Roads were
submerged for two months, the metro flooded, and thousands were
evacuated, with damage estimated by Louvre officials at $1.9 billion
in today's currency.<br>
<br>
With climate change, Parisians have seen more frequent flooding. Two
of the worst floods since 1910 have been during the last five years.
In 2016, the river rose 6.1m and in 2018, by 5.8m - slightly less
than during the floods of 1982 and 1955.<br>
<br>
While the 2016 flood did not damage any art, it did force the Louvre
to quickly shut and move 35,000 works from its basement storerooms
to higher grounds in 48 hours, costing the museum approximately $1.8
million in lost revenue.<br>
<br>
"The teams at the Louvre were in panic mode," said Hamish Crockett,
project architect of the centre. "It was a reminder that the need
(for the centre) was very real."...<br>
- -<br>
Other major museums are taking note.<br>
<br>
The British Museum is building storage space for archived artefacts
in Shinfield, some 40 miles (64 km) west of London.<br>
<br>
In the Netherlands, some 600,000 objects from four national
collections, including the Rijksmuseum, will be housed in a centre
in Amersfoort, 50 km southeast of Amsterdam.<br>
<br>
"We are seeing heritage sites disappear due to climate change,"
Crockett said. "This is the new reality."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://news.trust.org/item/20210226085732-pyja5/">https://news.trust.org/item/20210226085732-pyja5/</a><br>
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[Gallup polling matters]<br>
FEBRUARY 26, 2021<br>
<b>The Texas Power Crisis and American Public Opinion</b><br>
BY FRANK NEWPORT<br>
The massive power outages and resulting disruptions (and deaths) in
Texas after a period of extreme cold in mid-February have
significant implications for the nation as a whole. The high-profile
catastrophe could also affect U.S. public opinion on several key
issues.<br>
<br>
<b>Reconsider the Move to Alternative Energy Sources?</b><br>
The Texas disaster quickly led to discussions of "green" energy and
the implications of shifts from traditional fuel sources to
alternatives such as wind and solar. Most reviews show that a loss
of wind power due to the extreme cold in Texas was no more
significant than the loss of power from traditional sources that
furnish the vast majority of power in the state. But several Texas
officials used the occasion to deflect blame for the crisis to the
state's use of alternative energy sources. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott
said at one point during the crisis, "This shows how the Green New
Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America. Our
wind and our solar got shut down, and they were collectively more
than 10% of our power grid, and that thrust Texas into a situation
where it was lacking power on a statewide basis. ... It just shows
that fossil fuel is necessary." And this week The Wall Street
Journal editorialized, "More Green Blackouts Ahead."<br>
<br>
Prior to the Texas outages, Americans were quite positive about
alternative energy sources. As I pointed out in a recent review,
"Americans are concerned about the quality of the environment and
are sensitive to the environmental harm done by various energy
sources. Given this, the significant majority of Americans appear
amenable to the idea of de-emphasizing fossil fuels, whether through
laws that beef up fuel efficiency standards or by discouraging the
production of heavy polluters like coal." And my colleague Justin
McCarthy noted in his 2019 review of Gallup data that "most
Americans support the general idea of dramatically reducing the
country's use of fossil fuels over the next two decades as a way to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address climate change."<br>
<br>
Could these attitudes be changed if Americans read or hear about
hypotheses that increased reliance on alternative energy made Texas
more vulnerable to power outages (whatever the reality)? Forthcoming
research, particularly Gallup's March Environment survey, will help
answer that question.<br>
<br>
It's also possible that the image of the nation's oil and gas
industry, already in the bottom half of the 25 industries measured
in Gallup's annual update, will suffer further as a result of the
Texas crisis.<br>
<br>
<b>More Concern About Climate Change?</b><br>
The extreme weather conditions in Texas, last year's wildfires in
California and 2012's Hurricane Sandy have all been portrayed as
examples of the impact of climate change on our weather. As The
Washington Post recently pointed out, "Some of the complex systems
our society depends upon for basic necessities and economic growth,
such as electricity, are unprepared even for the climate extremes of
today, let alone more severe extremes climate scientists warn are
coming." The question here is whether the Texas situation will help
drive this realization home, and thus increase Americans' worry
about climate change and its impact on earth's human societies.<br>
<br>
Before the Texas situation, climate change was a relatively
low-salience issue for Americans. Despite climate change being
labeled an "existential threat" by politicians and others, very few
Americans name it (or any aspect of the environment, for that
matter) as the most important problem facing the nation (3% in
Gallup's February update). Still, there is some evident concern when
Americans are reminded about climate change in survey questions.
Gallup's Lydia Saad reported last year on a segmentation of the
public based on their views toward global warming, and concluded,
"The largest group, describing 51% of Americans today, are what can
be termed 'Concerned Believers.' They attribute global warming to
human actions and take the threat seriously." And Pew Research in
2020 reported that a majority of Americans think the government is
not doing enough to deal with climate change.<br>
<br>
Additionally, a 2019 CBS News poll found that large majorities of
Americans believed climate change contributed "a great deal" or
"some" to a list of weather extremes. A Pew Research poll in 2019
similarly found that significant majorities of Americans at that
point already said that extreme weather events were examples of the
ways in which climate change was affecting their local community.
Gallup asked Americans in 2019 if the temperatures in their local
area had been colder or warmer than usual, and those who said yes
were then asked if those temperatures were the result of climate
change or normal variations. About a third of all Americans both
said that the temperatures were either warmer or colder than usual
and believed those changes were due to climate change.<br>
<br>
The Texas situation is one in a long list of weather extremes in
recent years, including floods, tornadoes, droughts, severe
thunderstorms, winter storms, wildfires and extreme temperatures. At
some point, all of these types of weather events may begin to
increase Americans' recognition that climate change is affecting
their daily lives.<br>
<br>
<b>Lose Faith in State Governments?</b><br>
Another consequence of the Texas situation could be a diminution of
the public's faith in state governments. Americans' trust in their
state government has traditionally ranked higher than their trust in
the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.
This is a long-standing manifestation of the public opinion verity
that things closer to home are viewed more positively than things
further away. Indeed, it was Texas officials' antipathy toward the
federal government that resulted in the decision decades ago to
create the state's own power grid system, independent of federal
regulation. This "go it alone" approach to power distribution
obviously did not work well in the recent crisis.<br>
<br>
A majority of Americans (54%) in Gallup's September Governance poll
said that the federal government should do more to address the
nation's problems. This is the highest such percentage since Gallup
began asking the question in 1992 (this measure came in the middle
of the COVID-19 pandemic, which may have affected the responses).
These data suggest the public may be more likely now than in the
past to agree that the federal government has a legitimate role to
play in providing for the public's basic infrastructure needs. The
power grid situation and its regulation are thus playing out as the
latest chapter in the historical conflict over exactly what role the
federal government should have in Americans' lives, one of the
critical issues we have faced as a nation since it was founded. The
whole situation also raises questions about competence and the
ability of government at any level to maintain the basic systems the
nation needs to continue operating. If states lose credibility in
the eyes of the public, the federal government may increasingly be
seen as the entity best situated to address pressing energy
concerns.<br>
<br>
<b>Impact on the 2024 Presidential Race?</b><br>
One potential consequence of the Texas power situation is a possible
ripple effect on the national political scene. The politician most
in the spotlight is Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who ran for the GOP
presidential nomination in 2016 and by most accounts will be running
again in 2024. Cruz got massive media attention when he left Texas
for a vacation in Cancun in the middle of February's power outages,
leaving his fellow Texans suffering back at home. Cruz quickly
returned to Houston, did the usual mea culpas and attempted to atone
for his sins by passing out bottled water at Houston-area aid
stations. How all of this will affect his 2024 presidential bid is a
major unknown. Clearly, if nothing else, this latest incident has
helped raise Cruz's name identification nationwide and among the
Republican base he needs to win the party nomination. (It used to be
said that all publicity is good publicity as long as they spell the
name right.) At this point, national horse race polls among
Republicans put Cruz nowhere near front-runner status for the 2024
GOP nomination. But that means little; Jimmy Carter in 1973 and
Barack Obama in 2005 were also nowhere near front-runner status for
their party's nomination. Cruz's behavior in February 2021 at the
least will likely provide his Republican opponents with campaign
fodder as the national presidential campaign heats up in 2023.<br>
<br>
<b>Bottom Line</b><br>
Prior to the Texas crisis, energy was not a top-of-mind concern for
Americans. Few mentioned it as the nation's top priority, and only
28% of Americans in our latest update said they worried a great deal
about the availability and affordability of energy, much lower than
at previous times over the past two decades. It is likely
respondents were thinking about gas for their cars rather than
electricity in their homes in answering that question, but the Texas
crisis may accelerate a focus on the nation's power grid when
Americans contemplate the nation's energy situation. This will be
particularly true if electric cars displace gas-powered autos in
ever-increasing numbers, further increasing reliance on the power
grid for basic transportation.<br>
<br>
Frank Newport, Ph.D., is a Gallup senior scientist<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/330389/texas-power-crisis-american-public-opinion.aspx">https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/330389/texas-power-crisis-american-public-opinion.aspx</a><br>
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[political opinion about the future]<br>
FEBRUARY 26, 2021<br>
<b>Politics with Amy Walter: The Future of American Politics</b><br>
<p>Chryl Laird, assistant professor of government and legal studies
at Bowdoin College,<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.npr.org/podcasts/381444253/pri-the-takeaway">https://www.npr.org/podcasts/381444253/pri-the-takeaway</a> <br>
Play it starting about 48:15<br>
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<br>
[Snow falls, melts, gravity tugs]<br>
<b>As Deaths Surge, Scientists Study the Link Between Climate Change
and Avalanches</b><br>
There are clues globally that the avalanche threat is escalating in
some regions as the planet warms, triggered by greater temperature
swings and more intense rain and snow storms.<br>
By Bob Berwyn<br>
February 23, 2021<br>
- -<br>
Explosively Unleashing Frozen Climate Energy<br>
Another way of looking at avalanches is to think of them as frozen
packets of energy from different parts of the climate system that
are all being intensified by global warming—tropical heat, moist
atmospheric rivers and Arctic winds all stored in the form of snow
on a mountainside. Avalanches often start with a boom or a crack, as
all that energy suddenly releases kinetically. And the more
explosives you pack into a bomb, the bigger the bang.<br>
<br>
It’s almost impossible to say any one particular avalanche was
caused by global warming, but it’s also not accurate to say that
global warming is not a factor, since all of today’s weather is
happening in a climate that’s already been fundamentally changed by
global warming...<br>
- -<br>
Many avalanches simply release under the pull of gravity or a slight
surface perturbation, like the temperature increase when clouds lift
over a steep snow-covered slope. By its nature, snow is one of the
substances most sensitive to climate, so it stands to reason that
global warming will affect avalanches, said Perry Bartelt, a
researcher with the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and
Landscape Research in Davos. <br>
<br>
“A 1 to 2 degree Celsius (1.8 to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) rise in
temperature will change the dynamics of how an avalanche will flow,”
he said, explaining that the varied and complex effects are under
scrutiny at a recently-founded research center for climate and
extremes in Switzerland. “We want to know what this means for us and
for avalanches,” he said.<br>
<br>
It’s hard enough to find a global warming signal on something as big
and devastating as hurricanes, which kill hundreds every year, and
looking for it in avalanches is like trying to find a lost ski pole
in the Vail parking lot on a busy Saturday. So for now, it’s still
impossible to say exactly how global warming will affect avalanche
hazards, Bartelt said.<br>
<br>
What We Do Know About Avalanches and Climate Change<br>
There are clues all over the world that avalanche patterns are
changing on our warming planet, along with changes to other related
extremes, including temperature swings and more intense rainstorms
and snowstorms. <br>
<br>
A study published in early February recreated a record of avalanches
in northwestern Montana going back to the 1600s by looking at tree
rings. The true long-term picture is partly skewed because not that
many old trees survive. But the study’s findings showed the greatest
number of avalanche scars since the 1980s, and especially since
2000...<br>
- -<br>
“This has to do with climate change,” he said. “It gets cold, it
gets very warm, then very cold again. Thermal forcing is changing
the property of the snowpack and that changes expectations.” ...<br>
- -<br>
Urban Avalanche Threat in Alaska<br>
Avalanches also constitute an active threat in Juneau, Alaska, where
entire neighborhoods, as well as the important subarctic harbor, are
vulnerable, said snow and avalanche scientist Gabriel Wolken,
manager of the Climate & Cryosphere Hazards Program with the
Alaska Department of Natural Resources.<br>
<br>
Projected warming, increased precipitation intensity and
rain-on-snow events “could significantly impact the extent,
behavior, and predictability of snow avalanches … which are the most
deadly natural hazard in the state,” he said. “As climate warming
continues, there is an expectation of an increase in Alaska’s
vulnerability to avalanche hazards.” <br>
<br>
Juneau has the highest avalanche danger of any urban area in North
America, with some existing neighborhoods at the base of the nearby
mountains threatened by more than a dozen existing slide paths off
Mt. Juneau and Mt. Gastineau, and new development sprawling into
potential new danger zones from stronger avalanches fueled by global
warming...<br>
- -<br>
Rosemary Randall, a psychologist in the United Kingdom researching
climate anxiety, said it’s possible that the Covid lockdowns have
exacerbated other mental and emotional stress that can lead to
riskier behavior, including lack of sleep, and work or home demands.
<br>
<br>
But she said people suffering from depression related to Covid-19
are not the most likely “to see skiing as a solution to their
difficult feelings. “Anxious and depressed people tend to stay home.
Risk is usually the last thing they seek out.”<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23022021/avalanche-climate-change-coronavirus/">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23022021/avalanche-climate-change-coronavirus/</a><br>
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[Digging back into the internet news archive]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming -
February 28, 2017 </b></font><br>
<p>The Los Angeles Times editorial page observes:<br>
<br>
“The risk of climate change from global warming has long since
moved from abstract theory into reality, even if the ostriches
surrounding President Trump won’t see it. Recently appointed
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt is
joined at the wallet to the industry, as a trove of recently
released emails from his work as Oklahoma attorney general
confirms, so don’t expect much from him. Conservative members of
Congress also buy into the nonsense — as do Trump and Pruitt —
that human activity has little to do with rising global
temperatures, more severe weather patterns, stressed flora and
fauna and what scientists believe is a looming mass extinction
that is unfolding at a much faster pace than the five previously
identified mass extinctions in history. In terms of Earth’s
evolution, that is a split second.<br>
<br>
“But, oh, the jobs! We need the jobs! And the cheap fuel! The
adage of missing the forest for the trees comes to mind. The
overwhelming consensus by scientists is that the world needs to
move away from fossil fuels and toward renewable sources such as
wind and solar. In the meantime, we need to be even more
aggressive, not less, in limiting the burning or release of
methane and other harmful emissions. <br>
<br>
“To that end, the Obama administration regulations were a step in
the right direction. Which brings Newton’s Third Law of Physics
into play: For every action, there is an opposite and equal
reaction. Earlier this month, the Republican-led House of
Representatives invoked the Congressional Review Act to kill the
Obama regulations governing wells on federal land, and the bill is
now before the Senate, with a vote possible this week.<br>
<br>
“The Senate should refuse to join the House in passing this
irresponsible bill. The methane regulations, which are to be
phased in, are good, sensible policy. The federal Bureau of Land
Management estimated that between 2009 and 2015, the oil and gas
industry wasted, through emissions or flaring, 462 billion cubic
feet of methane — enough to supply natural gas for 6.2 million
households for a year — from wells in public and tribal lands. Not
only was the gas lost, the unburned methane went directly into the
atmosphere. And taxpayers missed out on $23 million a year in
royalties that would have been due had the methane been captured
and sold. <br>
<br>
“Fortunately, the EPA rules governing non-federal land wells are
less likely to be rescinded. The rules were adopted long enough
ago that they are no longer subject to the Congressional Review
Act, which means that to roll them back, the Trump administration
would have to go through a lengthy regulatory review process.
Unfortunately, those rules only cover future wells, not existing
ones. (The federal land rules cover both.) Instead of attacking
the federal land rules, Congress should extend the same
regulations to the existing wells on non-federal land. But don’t
hold your breath.<br>
<br>
“The world should be weaning itself from fossil fuels as quickly
as possible. That Trump and the Republican Congress disagree is
not only disappointing, but dangerous.”<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-methane-obama-congress-20170227-story.html">http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-methane-obama-congress-20170227-story.html</a>
<br>
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