<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>July 1, 2021</b></font></i></p>
[Democracy Now video and text]<br>
<b>Sea Level Expert in Miami: “We Are Building Here Like There’s No
Tomorrow — Maybe That’s Correct”</b><br>
June 30, 2021<br>
As the death toll from the 13-story apartment building collapse in
Florida rises to 12, with nearly 150 people still missing, we
examine how the disaster raises new questions about how rising sea
levels will impact oceanside buildings in Miami and other cities.
“The reason this is so important is that either this is something
unique to the building or this is a general problem that all the
condos along the coasts of the world are going to have to deal
with,” says Harold Wanless, a professor in geography and urban
sustainability at the University of Miami who leads a project called
The Invading Sea, a collaborative effort by news organizations
across Florida to address the threat of sea level rise...<br>
- -<br>
<blockquote><b>JUAN GONZÁLEZ:</b> And, Dr. Wanless, could you talk
about the impact of saltwater on structures? Because we see this
in New York City all the time on highways that are right along the
water, that they’re constantly having to repair them because of
the corrosive nature of the salt.<br>
<br>
<b>HAROLD WANLESS:</b> That’s right. And in contrast, Flagler
built the railroad down to Key West in the early part of the
previous century, and he used some German concrete that was
designed for saltwater. And we do it all the time with bridges and
other structures around the world. And the problem is, I don’t
think we’re using the proper quality concrete, because — you know,
it could be in 20 to 30 years we could have as much as two to
three feet of further sea level rise. Ice melt is really
accelerating our sea level rise. And so, we’re really in for it.
And so, we have to deal with the question you asked, straight up.
You know, it’s not, “Well, this is above sea level.” No, it’s not
really above sea level in the near future.<br>
<b>AMY GOODMAN:</b> And can you talk about Miami, its future?<br>
<br>
<b>HAROLD WANLESS:</b> Miami’s future? Well, because we’ve warmed
the ocean — almost all the heat from global warming is in the
ocean — because that warmed ocean and the warmed atmosphere is now
— has initiated and is rapidly accelerating ice melt on both
Greenland and Antarctica, we are, as I said, certainly going to be
in for a two-to-three-foot further sea level rise by midcentury —
a mortgage cycle away only. And we could be at eight to as much as
15 feet by the end of the century.<br>
<br>
So, Miami? Well, there’s only 3% of Miami-Dade County is greater
than 12 feet above sea level. And even at six feet, it’s pretty
well going to be over later this century. But we’re building here
like there’s no tomorrow — maybe that’s correct. You know, it’s a
hard thing for people to think that this hasn’t always been here,
but it hasn’t. Sea level just happened to slow down for the last
couple thousand years, and so we built like this has always been
here. And unfortunately, the barrier island of Miami Beach and all
the barrier islands of the world are going to be inundated,
compromised, eroded, storm surged across more aggressively in the
pretty near future...<br>
<br>
The problem with Miami, we live on very porous limestone, so you
can’t put a dike or a levee around this and keep the water out. It
will come right up through the rock.<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.democracynow.org/2021/6/30/florida_building_collapse_climate_change">https://www.democracynow.org/2021/6/30/florida_building_collapse_climate_change</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[Academic paper]<br>
<b>Hot dry days increase perceived experience with global warming</b><br>
Jennifer R.Marlona, XinranWanga, MattoMildenbergerd ,
ParrishBergquisth , SharmisthaSwaini, KatharineHayhoe, Peter D.Howe,
EdwardMaibach, Anthony Leiserowitz<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021.102247">https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021.102247</a><br>
Highlights<br>
• Some types of weather affect Americans’ belief that they have
experienced global warming.<br>
• Americans associate hot, dry days and extreme drought with global
warming.<br>
• People often fail to interpret extreme rainfall or flooding as due
to global warming.<br>
<blockquote>Abstract<br>
Public perceptions of climate change in the United States are
deeply rooted in cultural values and political identities. Yet, as
the public experiences extreme weather and other climate
change-related impacts, their perceptions of the issue may shift.
Here, we explore whether, when, and where local climate trends
have already influenced perceived experiences of global warming in
the United States. Using a large national survey dataset (n =
13,607), we compare Americans’ experiences of climate with
corresponding trends in seven different high-resolution climate
indicators for the period 2008 to 2015. We find that increases in
hot dry day exposure significantly increases individuals’
perceptions that they have personally experienced global warming.
We do not find robust evidence that other precipitation and
temperature anomalies have had a similar effect. We also use
multilevel modeling to explore county-level patterns of perceived
experiences with climate change. Whereas the individual-level
analysis describes a likely causal relationship between a changing
climate and individuals’ perceived experience, the multilevel
model depicts county-level changes in perceived experience
resulting from particular climate trends. Overall, we find that
exposure to hot dry days, has a modest influence on perceived
experience, independent of the political and socio-demographic
factors that dominate U.S. climate opinions today.<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959378021000261">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959378021000261</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[Information battleground]<br>
<b>Big oil and gas kept a dirty secret for decades. Now they may pay
the price</b><br>
Chris McGreal<br>
Wed 30 Jun 2021 <br>
Via an unprecedented wave of lawsuits, America’s petroleum giants
face a reckoning for the devastation caused by fossil fuels..<br>
The environmentalist Bill McKibben once characterized the fossil
fuel industry’s behavior as “the most consequential cover-up in US
history”. And now for the first time in decades, the lawsuits chart
a path toward public accountability that climate activists say has
the potential to rival big tobacco’s downfall after it concealed the
real dangers of smoking.<br>
<br>
“We are at an inflection point,” said Daniel Farber, a law professor
at the University of California, Berkeley and director of the Center
for Law, Energy, and the Environment.<br>
<br>
“Things have to get worse for the oil companies,” he added. “Even if
they’ve got a pretty good chance of winning the litigation in
places, the discovery of pretty clearcut wrong doing – that they
knew their product was bad and they were lying to the public –
really weakens the industry’s ability to resist legislation and
settlements.”...<br>
- - <br>
In 1979, an Exxon study said that burning fossil fuels “will cause
dramatic environmental effects” in the coming decades.<br>
<br>
“The potential problem is great and urgent,” it concluded.<br>
But instead of heeding the evidence of the research they were
funding, major oil firms worked together to bury the findings and
manufacture a counter narrative to undermine the growing scientific
consensus around climate science. The fossil fuel industry’s
campaign to create uncertainty paid off for decades by muddying
public understanding of the growing dangers from global heating and
stalling political action.<br>
<br>
The urgency of the crisis is not in doubt..<br>
- -<br>
Exxon set up equipment on a supertanker, the Esso Atlantic, to
monitor carbon dioxide in seawater and the air. In 1982, the
company’s scientists drew up a graph accurately plotting an increase
in the globe’s temperature to date.<br>
<br>
“The 1980s revealed an established consensus among scientists,” the
Minnesota lawsuit against Exxon says. “A 1982 internal Exxon
document … explicitly declares that the science was ‘unanimous’ and
that climate change would ‘bring about significant changes in the
earth’s climate’.”<br>
<br>
Then the monitoring on the Esso Atlantic was suddenly called off and
other research downgraded.<br>
<br>
What followed was what Naomi Oreskes, co-author of the report
America Misled, called a “systematic, organised campaign by Exxon
and other oil companies to sow doubt about the science and prevent
meaningful action”.<br>
<br>
The report accused the energy companies of not only polluting the
air but also “the information landscape” by replicating the
cigarette makers’ playbook of cherry-picking data, using fake
experts and promoting conspiracy theories to attack a growing
scientific consensus.<br>
<br>
Many of the lawsuits draw on a raft of Exxon documents held at the
University of Texas, and uncovered by the Columbia Journalism School
and the Los Angeles Times in 2015.<br>
Among them is a 1988 Exxon memo laying out a strategy to push for a
“balanced scientific approach”, which meant giving equal weight to
hard evidence and climate change denialism. That move bore fruit in
parts of the media into the 2000s as the oil industry repositioned
global heating as theory, not fact, contributing to the most
deep-rooted climate denialism in any developed country.<br>
<br>
The company placed advertisements in major American newspapers to
sow doubt. One in the New York Times in 2000, under the headline
“Unsettled Science”, compared climate data to changing weather
forecasts. It claimed scientists were divided, when an overwhelming
consensus already backed the evidence of a growing climate crisis,
and said that the supposed doubts meant it was too soon to act.<br>
<br>
Exxon’s chairman and chief executive, Lee Raymond, told industry
executives in 1996 that “scientific evidence remains inconclusive as
to whether human activities affect global climate”.<br>
<br>
“It’s a long and dangerous leap to conclude that we should,
therefore, cut fossil fuel use,” he said.<br>
<br>
Documents show that his company’s scientists were telling Exxon’s
management that the real danger lay in the failure to do exactly
that.<br>
<br>
In 2019, Martin Hoffert, a professor of physics at New York
University, told a congressional hearing that as a consultant to
Exxon on climate modelling in the 1980s, he worked on eight
scientific papers for the company that showed fossil fuel burning
was “increasingly having a perceptible influence on Earth’s
climate”.<br>
<br>
Hoffert said he “hoped that the work would help to persuade Exxon to
invest in developing energy solutions the world needed”. That was
not the result.<br>
“Exxon was publicly promoting views that its own scientists knew
were wrong, and we knew that because we were the major group working
on this. This was immoral and has greatly set back efforts to
address climate change,” said Hoffert.<br>
<br>
“They deliberately created doubt when internal research confirmed
how serious a threat it was. As a result, in my opinion, homes and
livelihoods will likely be destroyed and lives lost.”<br>
<br>
Exxon worked alongside Chevron, Shell, BP and smaller oil firms to
shift attention away from the growing climate crisis. They funded
the industry’s trade body, API, as it drew up a multimillion-dollar
plan to ensure that “climate change becomes a non- issue” through
disinformation. The plan said “victory will be achieved” when
“recognition of uncertainties become part of the ‘conventional
wisdom’”.<br>
<br>
The fossil fuel industry also used its considerable resources to
pour billions of dollars into political lobbying to block
unfavourable laws and to fund front organisations with neutral and
scientific-sounding names, such as the Global Climate Coalition
(GCC). In 2001, the US state department told the GCC that President
George W Bush rejected the Kyoto protocol to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions “in part, based on input from you”.<br>
<br>
Exxon alone has funded more than 40 groups to deny climate science,
including the George C Marshall Institute, which one lawsuit claims
orchestrated a “sham petition” denying manmade global climate
change. It was later denounced by the National Academy of Science as
“a deliberate attempt to mislead scientists”.<br>
<br>
To Sharon Eubanks the conspiracy to deny science sounded very
familiar. From 2000, she led the US justice department’s legal team
against nine tobacco firms in one of the largest civil cases filed
under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (Rico) Act,
which was designed to combat organised crime.<br>
<br>
In 2006, a federal judge found that the industry had spent decades
committing a huge fraud on the American public by lying about the
dangers of smoking and pushing cigarettes to young people.<br>
<br>
Eubanks said that when she looked at the fossil fuel industry’s
strategy, she immediately recognised big tobacco’s playbook.<br>
<br>
“Big oil was engaged in exactly the same type of behaviour that the
tobacco companies engaged in and were found liable for fraud on a
massive scale,” said Eubanks. “The cover-up, the denial of the
problem, the funding of scientists to question the science. The same
pattern. And some of the same lawyers represent both tobacco and big
oil.”<br>
<br>
The danger for the fossil fuel industry is that the parallels do not
end there.<br>
<br>
The legal process is likely to oblige the oil conglomerates to turn
over years of internal communications revealing what they knew about
climate change, when and how they responded. Given what has already
come out from Exxon, they are unlikely to help the industry’s case.<br>
<br>
Eubanks, who is now advising attorneys general and others suing the
oil industry, said a turning point in her action against big tobacco
came with the discovery of internal company memos in a state case in
Minnesota. They included language that talked about recruiting young
people as “replacement smokers” for those who died from cigarettes.<br>
<br>
“I think the public was particularly stunned by some of the content
of the documents and the talk about the need for bigger bags to take
home all the money they were going to make from getting people to
smoke,” said Eubanks.<br>
<br>
The exposure of the tobacco companies’ internal communications
shifted the public mood and the politics, helping to open the door
to legislation to curb smoking that the industry had been
successfully resisting for decades.<br>
<br>
Farber, the Berkeley law professor, said the discovery process
carries a similar danger for the oil companies because it is likely
to expose yet more evidence that they set out to deceive. He said
that will undercut any attempt by the energy giants to claim in
court that they were ignorant of the damage they were causing.<br>
<br>
Farber said it will also be difficult for the oil industry to resist
the weight of US lawsuits, shareholder activism and shifting public
and political opinion. “It might push them towards settlement or
supporting legislation that releases some from liability in return
for some major concessions such as a large tax to finance responses
to climate change.”<br>
<br>
The alternative, said Farber, is to take their chance on judges and
juries who may be increasingly inclined to take the climate crisis
seriously.<br>
<br>
“They may think this is an emergency that requires a response. That
the oil companies should be held responsible for the harm they’ve
caused and that could be very expensive,” he said. “If they lose,
it’s catastrophic ultimately.”<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/30/climate-crimes-oil-and-gas-environment">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/30/climate-crimes-oil-and-gas-environment</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
[checking in with Russia]<br>
<b>The looming Arctic collapse: more than 40% of north Russian
buildings are starting to crumble</b><br>
Previously solid ground is quickly degrading. The melting of the
permafrost is about to cause huge damage to buildings and
infrastructure across the country, Russia's natural resource
minister warns.<br>
Atle Staalesen -- June 28, 2021<br>
The heat is on, and it is hitting the Arctic with detrimental
consequence. Global warming is now leading to quick and irreversible
change in the North. And Russia is among the ones worst affected.<br>
<br>
This week, the temperatures in the Russian north again beat records.
In Saskylah, a small community in the Arctic Circle, the air
temperature reached 31.9 C, the highest measurement since 1936.
According to Roshydromet, the Russian meteorology institute, average
temperatures along parts of the Russian Arctic coast have since 1998
increased with as much as 4,95 C degrees... <br>
- -<br>
Researchers from the Russian Cryosphere Institute believe that the
border of the permafrost zone over the last 40 years has moved more
than 30 km to the north and that up to 500 square kilometers of land
is every year sliding into the Arctic ocean and disappearing.<br>
<br>
This process is irreversable, and it is impossible to stop it, Head
of the Russian Cryosphere Institute Dmitry Drozdev said.<br>
<br>
With the melting of the frozen tundra comes also growing risks of
new and lethal diseases. Among the many infectious disease agents
preserved in the permafrost is Anthrax.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/climate-crisis/2021/06/looming-arctic-collapse-more-40-north-russian-buildings-are-starting-crumble">https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/climate-crisis/2021/06/looming-arctic-collapse-more-40-north-russian-buildings-are-starting-crumble</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[The news archive - looking back]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming July
1, 1983</b></font><br>
<p>July 1, 2014: Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen praises
former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson for pointing out that
climate disruption is indeed risky business. He also observes:<br>
<br>
"What possesses the tea party on climate change? Some of it has to
do with traditional anti-establishment sentiment. If the elite say
it’s getting hot, then it must be getting cold. Mostly, though,
its position is rooted in a raging antipathy toward (hiss!) big
government. Climate change is hardly a local problem. Strictly
speaking, it isn’t even a national problem. (China and India are
major polluters.) It will take national and international
agreements to deal with global warming, and tea party types would
rather — almost literally — burn in a kind of hell than submit to
Washington or, God forbid, the United Nations.<br>
<br>
"So reports will be issued and the Obama administration will pump
for a reduction in carbon emissions and much of the Republican
Party will deny the undeniable. But the waters will rise and the
country will bake. Years from now, people gasping for air will ask
how we let this happen and the GOP, sticking to its plan, will
deny that anything is happening at all. Have an iced tea, y’all."<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-on-climate-the-tea-party-would-rather-burn-than-submit-to-washington/2014/06/30/35166398-007d-11e4-b8ff-89afd3fad6bd_story.html?hpid=z3">http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-on-climate-the-tea-party-would-rather-burn-than-submit-to-washington/2014/06/30/35166398-007d-11e4-b8ff-89afd3fad6bd_story.html?hpid=z3</a>
<br>
</p>
<br>
<p>/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/</p>
<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"
moz-do-not-send="true"><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"
moz-do-not-send="true">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"
moz-do-not-send="true"><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. This is a hobby production curated by Richard
Pauli<br>
By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain 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" moz-do-not-send="true">contact@theclimate.vote</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:contact@theclimate.vote" moz-do-not-send="true"><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"
moz-do-not-send="true">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"
moz-do-not-send="true">http://TheClimate.Vote</a> <a
class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://TheClimate.Vote/"
moz-do-not-send="true"><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>