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<p><i><font size="+1"><b>August 14, 2021</b></font></i></p>
[why not? Everything is connected]<br>
<b>In the West, a Connection Between Covid and Wildfires</b><br>
- -<br>
To arrive at their conclusion, the researchers used satellite data
of smoke plumes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration to identify the locations and days affected by
wildfires. They paired those readings with PM 2.5 data from
ground-level air quality monitors in each of the counties and
Covid-19 cases and death rates from data compiled by the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention.<br>
<br>
Their statistical model accounted for other factors such as weather
and the amount of time people were at home, and included a four-week
lag to capture the virus’s incubation period as well as the
additional time it can take for infected people’s health to
deteriorate.<br>
- -<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/13/climate/wildfires-smoke-covid.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/13/climate/wildfires-smoke-covid.html</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/09/12/us/12CLI-covidfires/merlin_177201186_fd791411-6c22-4fe0-8764-412d1bc2eee0-superJumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp">https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/09/12/us/12CLI-covidfires/merlin_177201186_fd791411-6c22-4fe0-8764-412d1bc2eee0-superJumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[simple data]<br>
<b>July 2021 was Earth’s hottest month ever recorded, NOAA finds</b><br>
The combined land and ocean-surface temperature this July was 1.67
degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average, NOAA found. This
was 0.02 degrees higher than the previous record tied in July 2016,
July 2019 and July 2020. The agency said 2021 will likely rank among
the top 10 warmest years on record.<br>
<br>
Monthly surface temperatures analysis from NASA also showed the
global mean temperature anomaly for this month was about 1.66
degrees above the 1951-1980 July average.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/08/13/july-2021-hottest-record-month/">https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/08/13/july-2021-hottest-record-month/</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[to learn AND go stupid in the same gesture]<br>
<b>Amid Extreme Weather, a Shift Among Republicans on Climate Change</b><br>
Many Republicans in Congress no longer deny that Earth is heating
because of fossil fuel emissions. But they say abandoning oil, gas
and coal will harm the economy...<br>
- -<br>
Still, the fact that Republicans recognize emissions as a problem
marks progress, however incremental, said Tom Moyer, the Utah state
coordinator for the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, which is trying to
build bipartisan support for a tax on carbon dioxide emissions.
“They’re small bites at a solution, but it’s so much more than we
could have gotten even a few years ago,” he said. “And hopefully the
trend continues.”<br>
<br>
Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, said of climate
change last September, “I concur that it is happening and it is a
problem. The argument is about how to best address it.”<br>
<br>
Senator John Cornyn of oil and gas-rich Texas said in a July
interview, “I have no doubt the climate is changing and people
contribute to it.” Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama said he thinks
weather disasters simply happen, yet “a lot of it, I’m sure, with
all the stuff we put in the air, is self-made.”<br>
<br>
Even Senator James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who famously once
threw a snowball on the Senate floor to claim the planet is not
getting hotter, insisted last month that he never called climate
change a “hoax,” only that the dire consequences have been
overblown. (Mr. Inhofe is the author of a book entitled “The
Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your
Future.”)..<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/13/climate/republicans-climate-change.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/13/climate/republicans-climate-change.html</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
[transition technology is empty]<br>
<b>Big Oil’s New 'Clean' Fuel Is Dirtier Than They Say</b><br>
The much-hyped blue hydrogen actually has a shockingly large
greenhouse gas footprint, according to new research.<br>
- -<br>
The methane findings in the IPCC report are especially worrisome
when considering what a natural-gas-heavy process creating hydrogen
from fossil fuel and storing the CO2 emissions is. In fact, making
the hydrogen is so energy-intensive that blue hydrogen’s greenhouse
gas footprint is bigger than that of natural gas. In other words,
burning this supposed “clean” fuel actually is worse, greenhouse
gas-wise, than just using natural gas itself.<br>
<br>
“It takes a large amount of natural gas to make hydrogen, using the
methane in the gas as the feedstock source, but also to burn it to
power the steam-reforming process and the CO2 capture process,”
Howarth said. “There are emissions of both CO2 and methane
associated with this large use of gas.”..,.<br>
- -<br>
“We need to move away from all fossil fuels as soon as possible,”
Howarth said. “The best way to do that is with 100% renewable
electricity from solar, wind, and hydro sources, combined with
beneficial electrification to provide heat from high-efficiency heat
pumps and to provide transportation from electric vehicles. Blue
hydrogen is a dangerous distraction, which, if actually employed at
scale, would aggravate rather than help address climate change.
Policy makers should be skeptical of such ideas until they are
thoroughly vetted by independent full lifecycle analysis by
scientists and engineers in a transparent and peer-reviewed
framework.”<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://gizmodo.com/big-oil-s-new-clean-fuel-is-dirtier-than-they-say-1847474392">https://gizmodo.com/big-oil-s-new-clean-fuel-is-dirtier-than-they-say-1847474392</a><br>
<p>- -<br>
</p>
[Great blue hope]<br>
<b>Biden-backed ‘blue’ hydrogen may pollute more than coal, study
finds</b><br>
Infrastructure bill includes $8bn to develop ‘clean hydrogen’ but
study finds large emissions from production of ‘blue’ hydrogen<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/12/clean-fuel-blue-hydrogen-coal-study">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/12/clean-fuel-blue-hydrogen-coal-study</a><br>
- -<br>
<br>
[The great clean hope is empty promise]<br>
<b>For Many, Hydrogen Is the Fuel of the Future. New Research Raises
Doubts.</b><br>
Industry has been promoting hydrogen as a reliable, next-generation
fuel to power cars, heat homes and generate electricity. It may, in
fact, be worse for the climate than previously thought...<br>
- -<br>
The hydrogen study showed that “the potential to keep using fossil
fuels with something extra added on as a potential climate solution
is neither fully accounting for emissions, nor making realistic
assumptions” about future costs, he said in an email.<br>
- -<br>
For the foreseeable future, most hydrogen fuel will very likely be
made from natural gas through an energy-intensive and polluting
method called the steam reforming process, which uses steam, high
heat and pressure to break down the methane into hydrogen and carbon
dioxide.<br>
<br>
Blue hydrogen uses the same process but applies carbon capture and
storage technology, which involves capturing carbon dioxide before
it is released into the atmosphere and then pumping it underground
in an effort to lock it away. But that still doesn’t account for the
natural gas that generates the hydrogen, powers the steam reforming
process and runs the CO2 capture. “Those are substantial,” Dr.
Howarth of Cornell said.<br>
<br>
Amy Townsend-Small, an associate professor in environmental science
at the University of Cincinnati and an expert on methane emissions,
said more scientists were starting to examine some of the industry
claims around hydrogen, in the same way they had scrutinized the
climate effects of natural gas production. “I think this research is
going drive the conversation forward,” she said.<br>
<br>
Plans to produce and use hydrogen are moving ahead. National Grid,
together with Stony Brook University and New York State, is studying
integrating hydrogen into its existing gas infrastructure, though
the project seeks to produce hydrogen using renewable energy.<br>
<br>
Entergy believed hydrogen was “part of creating a long-term
carbon-free future,” complementing renewables like wind or solar,
which generate power only intermittently, said Jerry Nappi, a
spokesman for the utility. “Hydrogen is an important technology that
will allow utilities to adopt much greater levels of renewables,” he
said.<br>
<br>
National Grid referred to its net zero plan, which says hydrogen
will play a major role in the next few decades and that producing
hydrogen from renewable energy was the linchpin.<br>
<br>
New York State was “exploring all technologies” including hydrogen
in support of its climate goals, said Kate T. Muller, a spokeswoman
for the state’s Energy Research and Development Authority. Still,
its researchers would “review and consider the blue hydrogen paper,”
she said.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/12/climate/hydrogen-fuel-natural-gas-pollution.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/12/climate/hydrogen-fuel-natural-gas-pollution.html</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
[example salvo from the disinformation battleground]<br>
<b>A New Book Manages to Get Climate Science Badly Wrong</b><br>
In Unsettled, Steven Koonin deploys that highly misleading label to
falsely suggest that we don’t understand the risks well enough to
take action<br>
<br>
By Gary Yohe on May 13, 2021<br>
A New Book Manages to Get Climate Science Badly Wrong<br>
<br>
Steven Koonin, a former undersecretary for science of the Department
of Energy in the Obama administration, but more recently considered
for an advisory post to Scott Pruitt when he was administrator of
the Environmental Protection Agency, has published a new book.
Released on May 4 and entitled Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells
Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters, its major theme is that the
science about the Earth’s climate is anything but settled. He argues
that pundits and politicians and most of the population who feel
otherwise are victims of what he has publicly called “consensus
science.”<br>
<br>
Koonin is wrong on both counts. The science is stronger than ever
around findings that speak to the likelihood and consequences of
climate impacts, and has been growing stronger for decades. In the
early days of research, the uncertainty was wide; but with each
subsequent step that uncertainty has narrowed or become better
understood. This is how science works, and in the case of climate,
the early indications detected and attributed in the 1980s and
1990s, have come true, over and over again and sooner than
anticipated.<br>
<br>
This is not to say that uncertainty is being eliminated, but
decision makers have become more comfortable dealing with the
inevitable residuals. They are using the best and most honest
science to inform prospective investments in abatement (reducing
greenhouse gas emissions to diminish the estimated likelihoods of
dangerous climate change impacts) and adaptation (reducing
vulnerabilities to diminish their current and projected
consequences).<br>
<br>
Koonin’s intervention into the debate about what to do about climate
risks seems to be designed to subvert this progress in all respects
by making distracting, irrelevant, misguided, misleading and
unqualified statements about supposed uncertainties that he thinks
scientists have buried under the rug. Here, I consider a few early
statements in his own words. They are taken verbatim from his
introductory pages so he must want the reader to see them as
relevant take-home findings from the entire book. They are evaluated
briefly in their proper context, supported by findings documented in
the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
It is important to note that Koonin recognizes this source in his
discussion of assessments, and even covers the foundations of the
confidence and likelihood language embedded in its findings
(specific references from the IPCC report are presented in
brackets).<br>
<br>
Two such statements by Koonin followed the simple preamble “For
example, both the literature and government reports that summarize
and assess the state of climate science say clearly that…”:<br>
<br>
“Heat waves in the US are now no more common than they were in 1900,
and that the warmest temperatures in the US have not risen in the
past fifty years.” (Italics in the original.) This is a questionable
statement depending on the definition of “heat wave”, and so it is
really uninformative. Heat waves are poor indicators of heat stress.
Whether or not they are becoming more frequent, they have clearly
become hotter and longer over the past few decades while populations
have grown more vulnerable in large measure because they are, on
average, older [Section 19.6.2.1]. Moreover, during these longer
extreme heat events, it is nighttime temperatures that are
increasing most. As a result, people never get relief from
insufferable heat and more of them are at risk of dying.<br>
“The warmest temperatures in the US have not risen in the past fifty
years.” According to what measure? Highest annual global averages?
Absolutely not. That the planet is has warmed since the industrial
revolution is unequivocal with more than 30 percent of that warming
having occurred over the last 25 years, and the hottest annual
temperatures in that history have followed suit [Section SPM.1].<br>
Here are a few more statements from Koonin’s first two pages under
the introduction that “Here are three more that might surprise you,
drawn from recently published research or the latest assessments of
climate science published by the US government and the UN”:<br>
<br>
“Greenland’s ice sheet isn’t shrinking any more rapidly today than
it was eighty years ago.” For a risk-based approach to climate
discussions about what we “should do,” this statement is irrelevant.
It is the future that worries us. Observations from 11 satellite
missions monitoring the Arctic and Antarctic show that ice sheets
are losing mass six times faster than they were in the 1990s. Is
this the beginning of a new trend? Perhaps. The settled state of the
science for those who have adopted a risk management approach is
that this is a high-risk possibility (huge consequences) that should
be taken seriously and examined more completely. This is even more
important because, even without those contributions to the
historical trend that is accelerating, rising sea levels will
continue to exaggerate coastal exposure by dramatically shrinking
the return times of all variety of storms [Section 19.6.2.1]; that
is, 1-in-100 year storms become 1-in-50 year events, and 1-in-50
year storms become 1-in-10 year events and eventually nearly annual
facts of life.<br>
“The net economic impact of human-induced climate change will be
minimal through at least the end of this century.” It is
unconscionable to make a statement like this, and not just because
the adjective “minimal” is not at all informative. It is
unsupportable without qualification because aggregate estimates are
so woefully incomplete [Section 19.6.3.5]. Nonetheless, Swiss Re
recently released a big report on climate change saying that
insurance companies are underinsuring against rising climate risks
that are rising now and projected to continue to do so over the near
term. Despite the uncertainty, they see an imminent source of risk,
and are not waiting until projections of the end of the century
clear up to respond.<br>
The first of these misdirection statements about Greenland is even
more troubling because the rise in global mean sea level has
accelerated. This is widely known despite claims to the contrary in
Chapter 8 which is described in the introduction as a “levelheaded
look at sea levels, which have been rising over the past many
millennia.” Koonin continues: “We’ll untangle what we really know
about human influences on the current rate of rise (about one foot
per century) and explain why it’s very hard to believe that surging
seas will drown the coasts any time soon.”<br>
<br>
The trouble is that while seas have risen eight to nine inches since
1880, more than 30 percent of that increase has occurred during the
last two decades: 30 percent of the historical record over the past
14 percent of the time series. This is why rising sea levels are
expected with very high confidence to exaggerate coastal exposure
and economic consequences [Section 19.6.2.1].<br>
<br>
His teaser for Chapter 7 is an equally troubling misdirection. He
promises to highlight “some points likely to surprise anyone who
follows the news—for instance, that the global area burned by fires
each year has declined by 25 percent since observations began in
1998.” Global statistics are meaningless in this context. Wildfires
(if that is what he is talking about) are local events whose
regional patterns of intensity and frequency fit well into
risk-based calibrations because they are increasing in many
locations. Take, for example, the 2020 experience. Record wildfires
were seen across the western United States, Siberia, Indonesia and
Australia (extending from 2019) to name a few major locations.<br>
<br>
Take a more specific example. From August through October of 2020,
California suffered through what became the largest wildfire in
California history. It was accompanied by the third, fourth, fifth
and sixth largest conflagrations in the state’s history; and all
five of them were still burning on October 3. Their incredible
intensity and coincidence can only be explained by the confluence of
four climate change consequences that have been attributed to
climate changes so far: record numbers of nighttime dry lightning
strikes during a long and record-setting drought, a record-setting
heat wave extending from July through August, a decade of
bark-beetle infestation that killed 85 percent of the trees across
enormous tracks of forests, and long-term warming that has extended
the fire season by 75 days.<br>
<br>
So, what is the takeaway message? Regardless of what Koonin has
written in his new book, the science is clear, and the consensus is
incredibly wide. Scientists are generating and reporting data with
more and more specificity about climate impacts and surrounding
uncertainties all the time. This is particularly true with regard to
the exaggerated natural, social and economic risks associated with
climate extremes—the low-probability, high-consequence events that
are such a vital part of effective risk management. This is not an
unsettled state of affairs. It is living inside a moving picture of
what is happening portrayed with sharper clarity and more detail
with every new peer-reviewed paper.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-new-book-manages-to-get-climate-science-badly-wrong/">https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-new-book-manages-to-get-climate-science-badly-wrong/</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
[The news archive - looking back]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming
August 14 , 2008</b></font><br>
August 14, 2008: GOP presidential candidate John McCain discusses
his views on energy and climate change in Aspen, Colorado.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://youtu.be/BqqZzY0fjC0">http://youtu.be/BqqZzY0fjC0</a><br>
<br>
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