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<font size="+2"><i><b>September 2, 2021</b></i></font><br>
<br>
[predictions]<br>
<b>Wildfire potential in September expected to remain above normal
in parts of the Northwest</b><br>
Bill Gabbert -- September 1, 2021<br>
Predicted to be above normal in Northern California through November<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://wildfiretoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/month1_outlook.png">https://wildfiretoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/month1_outlook.png</a><br>
The forecast for wildland fire potential issued September 1 by the
National Interagency Fire Center predicts that the potential for
wildfires in Northern California will be above normal September
through November. Northern Minnesota and the northwest one-quarter
of the country will also be above normal in September. Hawaii and
Wyoming could be busy in September and October. The southeast
Atlantic coast states may experience above normal fire activity in
October and November, but December looks to be pretty average in all
50 states.<br>
<br>
“Climate outlooks indicate warmer than normal conditions are likely
for much of CONUS through fall. Wetter than average conditions are
likely across western Washington for the fall with below normal
precipitation likely across the Southwest, Great Basin, central
Rockies, and much of the Plains. The Southeast is forecast to have
near normal precipitation through October but turn drier in late
fall and early winter.<br>
<br>
“Much of Southern Area and areas south of the Ohio River are likely
to have below normal significant fire potential in September, but
much of the southeast US and Mid-Atlantic is forecast to have above
normal fire potential in October and November. Normal significant
fire potential is forecast for Alaska along with most of Eastern
Area through the period. The entire US is forecast to have normal
fire potential in December.<br>
<br>
“Above normal significant fire potential is forecast to continue for
September across much of the Northwest and portions of the Great
Basin, Northern Rockies, and Rocky Mountain Geographic Areas. Most
of these areas will return to normal fire potential in October and
November except for portions of Wyoming, northwest Colorado, and the
Black Hills, which will remain above normal into October. Much of
northern California is forecast to have above normal potential
through November with leeside locations in Hawaii likely to have
above normal significant fire potential into October.”...<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://wildfiretoday.com/2021/09/01/wildfire-potential-in-september-expected-to-remain-above-normal-in-parts-of-the-northwest/">https://wildfiretoday.com/2021/09/01/wildfire-potential-in-september-expected-to-remain-above-normal-in-parts-of-the-northwest/</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[Peter Wadams is a gentle and wise scientist]<br>
<b>Arctic Apocalypse</b><br>
Aug 4, 2021<br>
Facing Future<br>
The #Arctic is nearing the tipping point. The world's leading polar
scientist, Dr. Peter Wadhams, is headed to Greenland to study actual
conditions there. He expects the blue ocean event, when the summer
ice melts completely, to occur much sooner than anticipated,
probably in the next year or two. The blue water will absorb more
of the sun's heat, further warming our planet, and the Jet Stream,
which balances weather in the northern hemisphere, will be
disrupted.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PJon1u3U5M">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PJon1u3U5M</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[knock on - BBC]<br>
<b>One in three trees face extinction in wild, says new report</b><br>
They range from well-known oaks and magnolias to tropical timber
trees.<br>
<br>
Experts say 17,500 tree species are at risk - twice the number of
threatened mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles combined.<br>
- -<br>
Trees at particular risk of extinction include:<br>
<blockquote>Large tropical trees known as dipterocarps that are
being lost due to the expansion of palm oil plantations<br>
Oak trees lost to farming and development in parts of Mexico,
Chile and Argentina<br>
Ebony and rosewood trees being felled for timber in Madagascar<br>
Magnolia trees at threat from unsustainable plant collecting<br>
Trees such as ash that are dying from pests and diseases in the UK
and North America<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58394215">https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58394215</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[Look to the future]<br>
<b>After Hurricane Ida, How Much Longer Can New Orleans’s New Levees
Hold?</b><br>
The city may be better protected today than it was before Katrina,
but with every day that passes the protection is waning.<br>
By Elizabeth Kolbert - Aug 30, 2021...<br>
- -<br>
Then there’s the problem that New Orleans is sinking. The city was
built on marshland, and as the soils compact—and the city pumps
water out—the surface is dropping. Much of the city is already
significantly below sea level, and some neighborhoods are subsiding
at a rate of almost five inches a decade. When you factor in
sea-level rise, the rate of subsidence vis-a-vis the Gulf is six
inches every ten years. In 2019, the Corps announced that, owing to
a combination of subsidence and sea-level rise, the system it had
just finished upgrading would no longer provide adequate protection
to the city as early as 2023. Just a few weeks ago, the Corps
proposed spending another $1.7 billion to upgrade the system once
again. As Mark Schleifstein observed, on Nola.com, the price
“reflects the enormous public cost simply to maintain today’s level
of risk reduction.” The upgrade, in other words, wouldn’t really be
an upgrade; it would just be an attempt to maintain the status
quo...<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/after-hurricane-ida-how-much-longer-can-new-orleanss-new-levees-hold">https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/after-hurricane-ida-how-much-longer-can-new-orleanss-new-levees-hold</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[Busy with other things]<br>
<b>Utility That Blacked Out New Orleans Was Too Busy Fighting
Climate Regulations</b><br>
Entergy's infrastructure failed spectacularly on Sunday, frying New
Orleans' electricity grid. It has a history of making the climate
crisis worse.<br>
Dharna Noor - Aug 31, 2921..<br>
- -<br>
On Sunday, the entirety of New Orleans lost power after Entergy
suffered what it called “catastrophic transmission damage” after a
major transmission line crumpled into the Mississippi River and
numerous lines fell throughout the region. Now, the utility is
scrambling to fix the mess, though it currently has no idea when
electricity access will be restored and said it could take weeks.
That means the more than 793,000 Entergy customers without power
will be forced to deal with blistering heat without air conditioning
and nowhere to store fresh food, all while trying to put the pieces
of their lives back together...<br>
- -<br>
“Entergy has known for decades—including longer than almost any of
the general public who are suffering through Ida and its
aftermath—that burning fossil fuels causes climate change, that
climate change causes more extreme weather, and that these effects
would create vulnerabilities for the electric grid,” David
Pomerantz, the executive director of the Energy and Policy
Institute, said in an email. “Despite that knowledge, Entergy has
used deception, bullying and political power only available to
monopolies to continue burning fossil fuels and to delay or kill
efforts that might have made its customers become more resilient to
climate change.”...<br>
- -<br>
Yet in the intervening years, Entergy has consistently opposed
efforts to get off oil and gas and efforts to make the grid more
resilient. Last year, it announced a plan to reach net zero by
2050... by expanding the use of carbon-polluting natural gas. The
previous year, the firm pushed to gut a plan to pay customers for
excess solar energy that they sell back to the grid, and according
to emails obtained by Energy and Policy Institute, Entergy’s
president of utility operations Rod West baselessly accused the
“solar lobby” of stoking a “class war.”<br>
<br>
The company loves gas so much, an independent investigation found
that it even hired actors to show up at a 2018 city council vote in
a show of astroturfed support of a new gas plant in New Orleans
despite widespread local opposition. (The plant was approved over
those local objections, though Entergy coughed up a $5 million
fine.)<br>
<br>
The utility has fought tooth and nail against federal climate
regulations, too, including a 2007 bill to increase renewable power,
a landmark 2009 cap and trade bill, and the Environmental Protection
Agency’s 2015 Clean Power Plan.<br>
<br>
At the same time, it’s fought against policies to make the grid
ready to handle to extreme weather. In December 2019, it threatened
to sue New Orleans for passing a “resilient renewable portfolio
standard” requiring city electricity to reach net-zero carbon by
2050 and strengthen its climate resilience. All these efforts have
both worsened the climate crisis and made catastrophic damage to the
grid all but inevitable.<br>
<br>
“Throughout all this, the company’s executives and shareholders have
profited handsomely,” said Pomerantz. “Whether via policy or
litigation, Entergy’s shareholders should be forced to pay to help
its customers recover from the tragedy that they helped to
exacerbate with their actions and inactions.”<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://gizmodo.com/utility-that-blacked-out-new-orleans-was-too-busy-fight-1847586645">https://gizmodo.com/utility-that-blacked-out-new-orleans-was-too-busy-fight-1847586645</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<p><br>
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[Joe the Juggler]<br>
<b>Biden is caught between political worlds on climate change</b><br>
Ben Geman<br>
These two things both happened Monday: The Health and Human Services
Department unveiled its climate office, and the White House promoted
efforts to keep gasoline prices in check.<br>
<br>
Why it matters: The two moves show how the White House is now
operating simultaneously in the old and new world of energy and
climate policy.<br>
<br>
On the new front, the new Office of Climate Change and Health Equity
shows how the Biden administration is seeking to stitch efforts to
address the causes and effects of climate change into agencies
government-wide.<br>
But Monday the White House also made public that the Federal Trade
Commission is probing (among other things) gas stations mergers to
avert potentially anti-competitive behavior that could drive up pump
prices.<br>
Our thought bubble: President Biden's administration is looking to
accelerate the transition from fossil fuels, but it's also not going
to abandon what a long string of administrations have viewed as the
political imperative to show they want to constrain fuel costs.<br>
<br>
"In particular, experts said, more needs to be done to understand
how extreme weather affects older people as well as communities of
color, where families are more likely to live in areas hardest hit
by disasters," Lisa Friedman reports.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.axios.com/biden-climate-policy-gas-prices-c33c1717-a275-4ad5-8128-6e68a9d56772.html">https://www.axios.com/biden-climate-policy-gas-prices-c33c1717-a275-4ad5-8128-6e68a9d56772.html</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[Best to learn this before it is taught to us]<br>
<b>Food is Climate - Episode 47: Vegan World 2026! - The Moonshot of
Our Generation</b><br>
Aug 31, 2021<br>
Sailesh Rao<br>
In this episode, we are joined by Glen Merzer, playwright,
screenwriter and author. Glen wrote “Food is Climate” as the chapter
that ate the book that it was originally in. When he found out how
we have been misled into focusing on the wrong solution to the most
important problem of our lives, so<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjdrhLihA6I">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjdrhLihA6I</a><br>
<p>- -</p>
[a new phrase]<br>
<b>Second-Hand Eating</b><br>
May 30, 2021<br>
Earthkin<br>
Eating meat and dairy ends up harming the earth in many unimaginable
ways. It turns out, we do have another alternative. Make your body a
garden, not a graveyard. <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUpAb3vl4Fk">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUpAb3vl4Fk</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[we live on a globe shaped planet]<br>
<b>Global warming: California wildfires, Hurricane Ida are all
connected, Stanford climate expert says</b><br>
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- In California we're experiencing extreme
heat-fueled wildfires. Along the Gulf Coast, Hurricane Ida made
landfall as a category 4.<br>
<br>
A Stanford climate expert says these extreme natural events could
get worse as the planet continues to warm.<br>
Dr. Noah Diffenbaugh says California is officially on a new climate.
The proof are the heat waves, dry conditions and another record
setting fire season.<br>
<br>
"CAL FIRE and scientists who take the measurements knew that the
vegetation was very dry. We started this year in terms of the summer
season in very severe drought," said Dr. Noah Diffenbaugh, Stanford
Professor of Earth System Science.<br>
<br>
Along the Gulf Coast, Hurricane Ida made landfall as a category 4.
Louisiana's Governor is categorizing it as one of the strongest
storms to make landfall in modern times. We sat down with Stanford
climate expert Dr. Noah Diffenbaugh to understand how these extreme
weather events affecting opposite sides of the country are
ultimately connected.<br>
<br>
"The primary way they are connected is that global warming is
happening at a global scale and all parts of the world are
experiencing that," said Dr. Diffenbaugh...<br>
Research shows global warming is changing the conditions in which
hurricanes are happening. The Ocean is storing more heat than ever.<br>
<br>
"It's not just how warm the surface temperatures are, but also the
heat in the upper layers of the ocean is increasing and that is
providing more energy for storms. We are not just seeing stronger
storms but rapid intensification of storm," said Dr. Diffenbaugh.<br>
<br>
Dr. Diffenbaugh says 90% of the heat that has been added over the
last century is in the ocean. He says this is triggering what would
be category 1 hurricane to intensify and grow into stronger
categories.<br>
<br>
"Decades ago you would see that 1 out of 100 storms would do that.
Now we are seeing like a 5% chance of that happening," said Dr.
Diffenbaugh.<br>
<br>
As fires intensify he says the smoke from the fires will create more
greenhouse gases and air quality will continue to worsen...<br>
Luz Pena: "Should we expect for smoke to sit in certain area for
longer periods of time because of the dry conditions?"<br>
<br>
Dr. Noah Diffenbaugh: "There is research on these air stagnation
events. There is some indication that as global warning increases we
could get more frequent occurrence of these air stagnation events."<br>
<br>
Dr. Diffenbaugh says the solution is a different energy system and
to reduce greenhouse gases fast.<br>
<br>
"Reaching net zero is really in terms of our green gas emissions the
only way to stabilize the climate system," said Dr. Diffenbaugh.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://abc7news.com/global-warming-climate-change-ca-wildfires-hurricane-ida/10986366/">https://abc7news.com/global-warming-climate-change-ca-wildfires-hurricane-ida/10986366/</a><br>
<p>- -<br>
</p>
[yes]<br>
<b>Opinion: While Israelis and Palestinians fight, climate change
threatens the land</b><br>
Opinion by Gershom Gorenberg<br>
Aug, 30, 2021<br>
<br>
A century ago, Egyptian explorer Ahmed Hassanein found pictures of
animals carved in rock in the depth of the Libyan desert. “There are
lions, giraffes, ostriches, and all kinds of gazelles,” he recorded.
It was evidence that the surrounding area had once been verdant
savanna. A prehistoric shift in climate, from natural causes, had
made the land unlivable for beasts and humans.<br>
<br>
I thought about that desolate place recently as I looked at the pale
splotch of the sun behind clouds of smoke from a forest fire west of
Jerusalem. I imagined explorers coming here in 500 years from
temperate Greenland or Antarctica, looking at the desolate hills of
the once-fertile land. In place of carvings of giraffes, they may
find inscriptions in Hebrew and Arabic, commemorating victims of the
struggle between Israelis and Palestinians, which ended when the
land itself died.<br>
<br>
The climate is shifting, this time because of human negligence.<br>
<br>
In December 2010, when a huge forest fire raged through the Carmel
range above Haifa, it seemed like a unique disaster. Then, in
November 2016, came major blazes both in the Haifa area and the
hills near Jerusalem. A wave of fires in 2019 was followed by
another in 2020, and then by this month’s firestorm outside
Jerusalem. What was unique has become annual.<br>
<br>
As usual, allegations of arson followed the latest blaze. Police and
firefighters reportedly asked the Shin Bet security service to join
the investigation, given suspicion of “nationalist motives” —
meaning Palestinian terror. Palestinians, meanwhile, pointed to
photos of the denuded hillsides. The fires, they said, revealed
agricultural terraces of pre-1948 Palestinian villages, which had
been hidden by Israeli forestation. Both reactions neatly fit the
disaster into the familiar frame of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.<br>
<br>
I don’t make light of that conflict, or of the complicated history
of 1948. But attention is a limited resource, and both Israelis and
Palestinians should be devoting much of our attention to whether any
of us will be able to live here in 2048.<br>
<br>
<br>
As Tel Aviv University climate expert Amir Givati told me,
temperatures in the entire Mediterranean region are rising even
faster than the global average. In Israel, he says, the increase in
recent decades is 2 degrees Celsius.<br>
<br>
The change isn’t equally spread through the wet Mediterranean winter
and the rainless summer, says climatologist Hadas Saaroni, also of
Tel Aviv University. “The summer is heating up more than the
winter,” she said. And the wet season is getting shorter, Saaroni
and colleagues found in recent research. Though total annual
rainfall isn’t shrinking, it’s falling on fewer days — meaning more
floods, less water soaking into soil and more parched months between
the last rain of spring and the first storm of fall or winter.<br>
<br>
Fall, at the end of dry seasons that lasted too long, has been
particularly dangerous in recent years. But this year’s megafire —
or possibly the first such fire this year — came in August,
indicating that already in summer, conditions are worse than in the
past. The longer dry season, says Givati, combines with unusual heat
to dry plants totally, “from the leaves down to the roots,” so that
they are more flammable and burn quicker. “There have always been
fires,” he says, “but what’s happening now are firestorms. The
spread is so quick that it is difficult to control.”<br>
<br>
The fires are the most blatant symptom of change here — easier to
visualize than the vanishing of cool breezes on August nights, or
steadily worse heatwaves. But year by year, the land is less
livable.<br>
<br>
In this harsh glare, the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict is
beyond tragic. Why should Israel insist that it cannot give up
settlements, or Palestinians insist on the individual right of
return of refugees to homes in pre-1967 Israel, when both peoples
may end up as climate refugees knocking uselessly on the gates of
Canada and Finland? We should be desperate to reach a political
compromise so that our diplomats can jointly travel from capital to
capital, demanding action on greenhouse emissions.<br>
<br>
To make that case, though, we need to do more here. “There’s no
doubt that we need to increase the use of solar energy drastically,”
says climatologist Saaroni. Yet, as of 2020, Israel was producing
just 7 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, and the
cabinet recently gutted key goals from a plan to cut emissions.<br>
<br>
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli peace activist and former
renewable energy executive Gershon Baskin spent years “fighting the
Palestinian Authority and the Israeli authorities to get Palestine
to become 50 percent” dependent on renewable energy during daylight
hours, he told me. Israeli unwillingness to give up control over
land and grid lines and “Palestinian governmental dysfunctionality”
foiled the plan, he says. “We’ve shed so much blood over how much we
love this land,” Baskin says, “and yet we treat it so badly.”<br>
<br>
That cannot last. Let me combine cynicism and optimism: Israelis and
Palestinians now face a shared, existential threat. Perhaps that
will finally force us to make peace and work together.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/30/while-israelis-palestinians-fight-climate-change-threatens-land/">https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/30/while-israelis-palestinians-fight-climate-change-threatens-land/</a><br>
<p>- -<br>
</p>
<br>
[Global warming is global, so it applies everywhere]<br>
<b>A New Breed of Crisis: War and Warming Collide in Afghanistan</b><br>
Unrest and climate change are creating an agonizing feedback loop
that punishes some of the world’s most vulnerable people.<br>
Somini Sengupta has reported on more than 10 conflicts around the
world, including in Afghanistan.<br>
<br>
Aug. 30, 2021<br>
Parts of Afghanistan have warmed twice as much as the global
average. Spring rains have declined, most worryingly in some of the
country’s most important farmland. Droughts are more frequent in
vast swaths of the country, including a punishing dry spell now in
the north and west, the second in three years.<br>
<br>
Afghanistan embodies a new breed of international crisis, where the
hazards of war collide with the hazards of climate change, creating
a nightmarish feedback loop that punishes some of the world’s most
vulnerable people and destroys their countries’ ability to cope.<br>
<br>
And while it would be facile to attribute the conflict in
Afghanistan to climate change, the effects of warming act as what
military analysts call threat multipliers, amplifying conflicts over
water, putting people out of work in a nation whose people largely
live off agriculture, while the conflict itself consumes attention
and resources.<br>
<br>
“The war has exacerbated climate change impacts. For 10 years, over
50 percent of the national budget goes to the war,” said Noor Ahmad
Akhundzadah, a professor of hydrology at Kabul University, said by
phone Thursday. “Now there is no government, and the future is
unclear. Our current situation today is completely hopeless.”...<br>
- -<br>
A third of all Afghans face what the United Nations calls crisis
levels of food insecurity. Because of the fighting, many people
haven’t been able to plant their crops in time. Because of the
drought, the harvest this year is certain to be poor. The World Food
Program says 40 percent of crops are lost, the price of wheat has
gone up by 25 percent, and the aid agency’s own food stock is due to
run out by the end of September.<br>
<br>
Afghanistan is not the only country to face such compounding misery.
Of the world’s 25 nations most vulnerable to climate change, more
than a dozen are affected by conflict or civil unrest, according to
an index developed by the University of Notre Dame.<br>
<br>
In Somalia, pummeled by decades of conflict, there’s been a
threefold increase in extreme weather events since 1990, compared to
the previous 20 year-period, making it all but impossible for
ordinary people to recover after each shock. In 2020, more than a
million Somalis were displaced from their homes, about a third
because of drought, according to the United Nations.<br>
<br>
In Syria, a prolonged drought, made more likely by man-made climate
change, according to researchers, drove people out of the
countryside and fed simmering antigovernment grievances that led to
an uprising in 2011 and ultimately, a full-blown civil war. This
year again, drought looms over Syria, particularly its breadbasket
region, the northeastern Hassakeh Province.<br>
<br>
In Mali, a violent insurgency has made it harder for farmers and
herders to deal with a succession of droughts and flood, according
to aid agencies.<br>
<br>
“The convergence of climate risks and conflict further worsens food
and economic insecurity and health disparities, limits access to
essential services, while weakening the capacity of governments,
institutions and societies to provide support,” the International
Committee of the Red Cross warned in a recent report that examined
the combined effects of conflict and climate shocks, including in
Mali.<br>
<br>
Climate change cannot be blamed for any single war, and certainly
not the one in Afghanistan. But rising temperatures, and the weather
shocks that come with it, act as what Marshall Burke, a Stanford
University professor, calls “a finger on the scale that makes
underlying conflict worse.” That is particularly true, he argued, in
places that have undergone a long conflict and where government
institutions have all but dissolved...<br>
<br>
“None of this means that climate is the only or the most important
factor in conflict,” said Dr. Burke, co-author of a 2013 paper
looking at the role of climate change in dozens of conflicts across
many years. “But based on this evidence, the international community
would be foolish to ignore the threat that a warming climate
represents.”<br>
<br>
The combination of war and warming compound the risks facing some of
the world’s most vulnerable people: According to the United Nations
children’s agency, Afghanistan is the 15th riskiest country in the
world for children, because of climate hazards, like heat and
drought, and a lack of essential services, like health care. Two
million Afghan children are malnourished.<br>
<br>
That is in sharp contrast to Afghanistan’s part in global warming.
An average Afghan produces 0.2 metric tons of carbon dioxide
emissions per year, compared to nearly 16 metric tons of the average
American.<br>
<br>
The collapse of the government has also made Afghanistan’s
participation in the next international climate talks entirely
uncertain, said one of its members Ahmad Samim Hoshmand. “Now I
don’t know. I’m not part of any government. What government I should
represent?” he said.<br>
<br>
Until recently, he had been the government official in charge of
enforcing the country’s ban on ozone-depleting substances, like
refrigerants used in old air-conditioners and that are banned by the
Montreal Protocol, an international agreement that Afghanistan had
ratified. Just days before the Taliban seized Kabul, he fled to
Tajikistan. The traders of illegal substances whom he helped arrest
are now out of prison, keen to exact revenge. He says they will kill
him if he returns.<br>
<br>
Mr. Hoshmand is now scrambling to emigrate elsewhere. His visa in
Tajikistan expires in a matter of weeks. “My only hope is the ozone
community, the Montreal Protocol community, if they can support me,”
he said.<br>
<br>
Afghanistan’s geography is a study of extreme hazard, from the
glacier-peaked Hindu Kush mountains in the north to its melon farms
in the west to the arid south, stung by dust storms.<br>
<br>
Climate data is sparse for Afghanistan. But a recent analysis based
on what little data exists suggests that a decline in spring rains
has already afflicted much of the country, but most acutely in the
country’s north, where farmers and herders rely almost entirely on
the rains to grow crops and water their flocks.<br>
<br>
Over the past 60 years, average temperatures have risen sharply, by
1.8 degrees Celsius since 1950 in the country as a whole and by more
than 2 degrees Celsius in the south.<br>
<br>
“Climate change will make it extremely challenging to maintain — let
alone increase — any economic and development gains achieved so far
in Afghanistan,” the United Nations warned in a 2016 report.
“Increasingly frequent and severe droughts and floods, accelerated
desertification, and decreasing water flows in the country’s
glacier-dependent rivers will all directly affect rural livelihoods
— and therefore the national economy and the country’s ability to
feed itself.”<br>
<br>
This is the country’s biggest risk, Dr. Akhundzadah argued.
Three-fourths of his compatriots work in agriculture, and any
unpredictable weather can be calamitous, all the more so in a
country where there hasn’t been a stable government and no safety
net to speak of.<br>
<br>
The Taliban, for their part, appear more exercised by the need to
scrub women’s pictures from billboards than addressing climate
hazards.<br>
<br>
But climate change is a threat multiplier for the Taliban, too.
Analysts say water management will be critical to its legitimacy
with Afghan citizens, and it is likely to be one of the most
important issues in the Taliban’s relations with its neighbors as
well.<br>
<br>
Already on the Afghan battlefield, as in many battlefields
throughout history, water has been an important currency. The
Taliban, in their bid for Herat, a strategic city in the west,
repeatedly attacked a dam that is critical for drinking water,
agriculture and electricity for the people of the region. Likewise,
in Kandahar Province in the south, one of the Taliban’s most
critical victories was to seize control of a dam that holds water
for drinking and irrigation.<br>
<br>
Climate change also stands to complicate the Taliban’s ability to
fulfill a key promise: the elimination of opium poppy cultivation.
Poppies require far less water than, say, wheat or melons, and they
are far more profitable. Poppy farming employs an estimated 120,000
Afghans and brings in an estimated $300-400 million a year,
according to the United Nations, and has in turn enriched the
Taliban.<br>
<br>
Areas under poppy cultivation grew sharply in 2020.<br>
<br>
Analysts said the Taliban would seek to use a poppy ban to gain
legitimacy from foreign powers, like Qatar and China. But it is
likely to face pushback from growers who have few alternatives as
the rains become less reliable.<br>
<br>
“It’s going to be a gigantic political flash point,” said Vanda
Felbab-Brown, who studies the region at the Brookings Institution in
Washington.<br>
<br>
The last drought, in 2018, left four million Afghans in need of food
aid and forced 371,000 people to leave their homes, many of whom
haven’t returned.<br>
<br>
“The effects of the severe drought are compounded by conflict and
the Covid-19 pandemic in a context where half the population were
already in need of aid,” the United Nations humanitarian
coordinator, Ramiz Alakbarov, said by email from Kabul on Thursday.
“With little financial reserves, people are forced to resort to
child labor, child marriage, risky irregular migration exposing them
to trafficking and other protection risks. Many are taking on
catastrophic levels of debt and selling their assets.”<br>
<br>
Dr. Akhundzadah, a father of four, is hoping to emigrate, too. But
like his fellow academics, he said he has not worked for foreign
governments and has no way to be evacuated from the country. The
university is closed. Banks are closed. He is looking for research
jobs abroad. For now, there are no commercial flights out of the
country.<br>
<br>
“Till now I’m OK,” he said on the phone. “The future is unclear. It
will be difficult to live here.”<br>
Somini Sengupta is an international climate correspondent.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/30/climate/afghanistan-climate-taliban.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/30/climate/afghanistan-climate-taliban.html</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
[compassion risk research]<br>
<b>Paul Slovic | Confronting the Deadly Arithmetic of Compassion |
Talks at Google</b><br>
Aug 28, 2021<br>
Talks at Google<br>
Paul Slovic discusses human perception towards mass tragedies and
losses at scale.<br>
<br>
We as a global society value individual lives greatly and respond
strongly to protect a single person in need, but often ignore mass
tragedies and fail to take appropriate measures to reduce their
losses. As the numbers grow larger, we become insensitive; the data
fail to trigger the emotion or feeling necessary to motivate action.
In some cases, large numbers convey a false sense of inefficacy,
discouraging us from taking valuable actions. Understanding how our
minds deceive us in the face of large losses of life is essential to
motivating actions needed to reduce the harm from catastrophic
consequences such as those associated with poverty, disease, climate
disasters, and violence.<br>
<br>
Paul Slovic received his B.A. degree from Stanford University, and
his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in psychology from the University of
Michigan. In 1976, Dr. Slovic founded the research institute
Decision Research with Sarah Lichtenstein and Baruch Fischhoff,
where he currently serves as President. He has also been a professor
of psychology at the University of Oregon since 1986. He and his
colleagues worldwide have developed methods to describe risk
perceptions and measure their impacts on individuals, industry, and
society. His most recent work examines “psychic numbing” and the
failure to respond to global threats from genocide and nuclear war.
He publishes extensively and serves as a consultant to industry and
government. <br>
<br>
Dr. Slovic is a past President of the Society for Risk Analysis and
in 1991 received its Distinguished Contribution Award. In 1993 he
received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the
American Psychological Association. In 1995 he received the
Outstanding Contribution to Science Award from the Oregon Academy of
Science. He has received honorary doctorates from the Stockholm
School of Economics (1996) and the University of East Anglia (2005).
Dr. Slovic was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
in 2015 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2016. <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVslwDOO5kM">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVslwDOO5kM</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
[trees]<br>
<b>California Planted Trees to Fight Climate Change. Those Trees Are
Now on Fire.</b><br>
RISHIKA PARDIKAR<br>
California’s emissions reduction program is going up in smoke
because regulators severely underestimated the impact of climate
change–fueled wildfires.<br>
- -<br>
When the original program was conceived, California presumed that
some forests would naturally burn — and therefore the law required
polluters to buy slightly more woodland as an insurance mechanism to
account for such losses. But experts say the amount of woodland set
aside in these so-called “buffer pools” wildly underestimated the
amount of trees that are now burning in the era of climate change.<br>
<br>
And companies that invested in forestland to counter their
greenhouse gas pollution and look responsible are not obligated to
invest more when wildfires subsequently incinerate those offsets.<br>
<br>
The result: The fires are now burning up the much-touted emissions
reduction projects that are necessary to combat the climate crisis.<br>
- -<br>
<b>Underestimating Wildfire Risks</b><br>
When forests burn, they release carbon dioxide. That’s why
California’s carbon offset projects were designed to set aside 2 to
4 percent of their forests as excess woodlands to account for such
emissions. But the size of these buffer pools are “nowhere near
adequate for the risks that forests face in the United States in a
changing climate,” said William Anderegg, associate professor,
University of Utah and lead author of a 2020 paper that assessed
climate-driven risks to carbon offset projects.<br>
- -<br>
“We’ve Bought Forest Offsets That Are Now Burning”<br>
Major brands have invested in carbon-offset forest projects to meet
emission reduction targets — and many of those companies publicly
brag about them to try to convince customers and investors that they
are environmentally responsible businesses.<br>
<br>
“We’ve bought forest offsets that are now burning,” Elizabeth
Willmott, Microsoft’s carbon program manager, said at a carbon
removal panel earlier this month. “We don’t want this to force us to
pull out of investing in nature-based solutions… [but companies
must] get really smart about what the risks are.”<br>
<br>
Similarly, BP, the multinational oil and gas company, recently
touted its investments in carbon offsets after spending more than
$100 million to purchase thirteen million emission credits from the
massive Colville carbon-offset project in Washington state. But this
summer, roughly fifty thousand of the project’s four hundred fifty
thousand acres burned to the ground.<br>
<br>
Last year, a California state working group tasked with revamping
the state’s offset protocols submitted a report recommending
prioritizing fire suppression efforts in carbon-offset forest
projects, among other endeavors.<br>
<br>
But Anderegg at the University of Utah said that the task force’s
recommendations were skewed toward business interests that
benefitted from carbon-offset projects, including timber companies.
And earlier this year, several environmental advocates resigned from
the task force, said Anderegg, because “the group was not taking
their interests into account.”<br>
<br>
According to Haya, director of the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project,
no amount of project tweaks or offset recalculations will address
the core problem of California’s carbon-offset program: Companies
are choosing to invest in forest offsets because it allows them to
avoid the difficult but more important work of fully reducing their
own emissions.<br>
<br>
“If we want our climate policies to succeed, we need to take a clear
look at the evidence and decide whether we should rely on offsets at
all,” said Anderegg. “Reducing emissions directly will be far more
effective and less risky.”<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/08/california-climate-change-crisis-wildfires-carbon-offset-pollution">https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/08/california-climate-change-crisis-wildfires-carbon-offset-pollution</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
[Information weapons]<br>
<b>Study: The public is pretty confused by your climate change
jargon</b><br>
Carbon neutral? Mitigation? People don't know the words scientists
think they do.<br>
Kate Yoder & Matthew Craft - Sep 01, 2021<br>
<br>
If you’ve ever furrowed your brow trying to remember what
“mitigation” meant, you’re not alone.<br>
<br>
Many people don’t understand key terms experts use to talk about
climate change, according to a recent study from researchers
affiliated with the United Nations Foundation and the University of
Southern California. Some of the most difficult-to-understand words
were mitigation, referring to efforts to reduce emissions to slow
down climate change, and carbon-neutral, when there’s no net
increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the air.<br>
<br>
Experts in a given field might think that technical language is more
precise or more efficient than commonplace alternatives. But
subjecting normal people to obscure terms can leave them feeling
confused and disengaged and can sometimes encourage a
head-in-the-sand response. Everyone has heard the advice “know your
audience.” That’s easier said than done, especially since many
specialists may not even realize what counts as jargon, with their
non-expert days long in the past.<br>
<br>
“Some of the people in our study were really concerned about climate
change,” said Wändi Bruine de Bruin, a professor of psychology and
behavioral science at the University of Southern California’s Sol
Price School of Public Policy. “If they don’t understand what you’re
trying to tell them, you could be missing an opportunity to make a
difference.” <br>
<br>
The researchers landed on a shortlist of terms for the study by
talking with experts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, a group of U.N. scientists that released a dire report last
month warning that greenhouse gas emissions were quickly
destabilizing the climate with devastating and “irreversible”
consequences. They picked words and phrases that were important for
understanding climate policy but tend to get misinterpreted, like
tipping point, carbon dioxide removal, and adaptation. Then the
researchers interviewed 20 people, picked to provide a diversity of
views, asking them to define these words and rate how easy they were
to understand. The takeaway from the study: “many of the terms were
unfamiliar or perceived as needlessly complex.” <br>
<br>
More than half of the participants turned out to be unfamiliar with
the meaning of mitigation in its climate change context, instead
associating it with law or insurance, where the term refers to
minimizing losses. “Mitigation, oh God I hate this word,” one person
said. Another third appeared to conflate it with the
similar-sounding “mediation,” where a neutral party helps resolve a
conflict through discussion. <br>
<br>
An informal survey by Grist of folks around Seattle revealed similar
problems. Bud Goodwin, owner of Rising Sun Farms & Produce in
Seattle, feels strongly that something needs to be done about
climate change. Worsening droughts, wildfires, and heavy rains have
hit the farmers who supply his fruits and vegetables. He said he’s
heard the terms tipping point, carbon-neutral, and adaptation in the
context of climate change. But he was stumped when it came to
mitigation. “The only thing I can think of is ‘mitigating
circumstances,’” he said. “That’s the only time I’ve heard of that
used. And I don’t know if that’s the right context.”<br>
<br>
Theo Henderson, who works at Third Place Books in north Seattle, was
unsure what to make of the phrase tipping point when it’s used so
widely in other contexts, like epidemiology, Malcolm Gladwell’s
famous book, and iconic moments in sports. “It’s used in
contradictory ways,” he said. “It’s almost like you just don’t want
to say it anymore, because it means different things to different
people.” <br>
<br>
In a bit of irony, even the phrase used to talk about talking about
climate change — “climate communication” — confounded some people on
the streets of Seattle.<br>
<br>
That general sense of confusion was reflected in the study. When
asked about tipping point — a point of no return for ice shelves,
ocean patterns, rainforests, or other systems central to life on
Earth — people didn’t always see the link to the warming planet,
instead thinking of a seesaw, a sudden change of mind, or difficulty
going back to how things were before. Only 15 percent of those
interviewed in the study mentioned climate change in their initial
definition.<br>
<br>
Another inscrutable phrase for some was carbon neutral, with just
under half of people in the study understanding it right off the
bat. Some people found the shorthand use of carbon confusing. “I
know carbon is used in front of a lot of words, carbon dioxide,
carbon monoxide … Carbon neutral means – I don’t know,” one
participant said.<br>
<br>
Even putting the tricky words and phrases in context — the classic
vocab-learning trick you learned in school — often failed to help
people understand their meanings. The example sentences, pulled from
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, were long and
wordy and often filled with other jargon. See for yourself. Does the
following sentence help you understand what sustainable development
means? “Natural hazards, climate change, and societal vulnerability
can pose fundamental limits to sustainable development.” (If you’re
curious, the study describes sustainable development as “meeting the
needs of people living today without compromising the needs of
people living in the future.”)<br>
<br>
Companies have helped muddy the picture by using buzzwords to tout
their sustainability cred. You can buy “carbon-negative” hand
sanitizer or a “climate positive” burger. In a recent survey
commissioned by Yeo Valley, an organic dairy company in the United
Kingdom, 79 percent of people said that eco-friendly jargon should
be translated into plainer language. <br>
<br>
There are plenty of ways to phrase things more simply, and
communication experts have long advised specialists to do so. But
the problem is, Bruine de Bruin said, scientists might not even
realize which words are coming across as gibberish, having used
mitigation for so long that they think it’s a simple,
straightforward term. The concrete examples of misunderstandings
quoted in the study, she said, and are “more powerful than people
coming in saying, ‘Look, don’t use jargon.’”<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://grist.org/language/study-climate-change-jargon-mitigation-tipping-points/">https://grist.org/language/study-climate-change-jargon-mitigation-tipping-points/</a><br>
<br>
<br>
[The news archive - looking back]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming
September 2, 2005</b></font><br>
September 2, 2005: Climate scientist Stephen Schneider appears on
"Real Time with Bill Maher" to discuss climate change's role in
Hurricane Katrina.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://youtu.be/H9mWZZ2U6EQ">http://youtu.be/H9mWZZ2U6EQ</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<p>/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/</p>
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