<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<font size="+2"><i><b>December 2, 2021</b></i></font><br>
<br>
[ heating can mean both water and drought ]<br>
<b>‘So Many Dimensions’: A Drought Study Underlines the Complexity
of Climate</b><br>
Low rainfall has caused a humanitarian crisis in Madagascar, but
common assumptions about drought didn’t hold up to scrutiny...<br>
- -<br>
Rainfall in the hard-hit south of Madagascar naturally fluctuates
quite a lot, the researchers said, and they did not find that a
warming climate was making prolonged droughts significantly more
likely.<br>
<br>
Even so, they emphasized the island should still aim to bolster its
ability to cope with dry spells. Scientists convened by the United
Nations have determined that droughts in Madagascar as a whole will
likely increase if global average temperatures rise by more than 2
degrees Celsius — a higher level of warming than the 1.2 degrees
that was considered in the new analysis...<br>
- -<br>
World Weather Attribution has linked other extreme weather events to
human-caused climate change in recent years. The group found that
this summer’s extraordinary heat wave in the Pacific Northwest
almost certainly would not have occurred without it.<br>
<br>
For climate scientists, “droughts are a combination of factors
that’s much more difficult to deal with” than, say, heat waves, said
Piotr Wolski of the Climate System Analysis Group at the University
of Cape Town in South Africa.<br>
<br>
“We have this predominant narrative these days that droughts are
driven largely by anthropogenic climate change,” said Dr. Wolski,
who also worked on the Madagascar study. “It’s not a bad narrative,
because they are — it’s just not everywhere and not in every single
case.”<br>
<br>
In Madagascar, livelihoods are easily destabilized by wild swings in
precipitation, said Daniel Osgood, a research scientist at the
International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia
University who was not involved in the study.<br>
<br>
Dr. Osgood is working on a project to provide affordable drought
insurance to growers in Madagascar. The goal is to help them become
more resilient to the economic shocks that weather can bring about.
“It’s not how much you eat on average,” he said. “It’s how much you
eat every night that really makes a difference.”<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/01/climate/climate-change-madagascar-drought.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/01/climate/climate-change-madagascar-drought.html</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[ Warmer, means wetter, means warmer -- lather, rinse, repeat ]</i><br>
Published: 30 November 2021<br>
<b>New climate models reveal faster and larger increases in Arctic
precipitation than previously projected</b><br>
Michelle R. McCrystall, Julienne Stroeve, Mark Serreze, Bruce C.
Forbes & James A. Screen <br>
Nature Communications volume 12, Article number: 6765 (2021) Cite
this article<br>
Abstract<br>
<blockquote>As the Arctic continues to warm faster than the rest of
the planet, evidence mounts that the region is experiencing
unprecedented environmental change. The hydrological cycle is
projected to intensify throughout the twenty-first century, with
increased evaporation from expanding open water areas and more
precipitation. The latest projections from the sixth phase of the
Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) point to more rapid
Arctic warming and sea-ice loss by the year 2100 than in previous
projections, and consequently, larger and faster changes in the
hydrological cycle. Arctic precipitation (rainfall) increases more
rapidly in CMIP6 than in CMIP5 due to greater global warming and
poleward moisture transport, greater Arctic amplification and
sea-ice loss and increased sensitivity of precipitation to Arctic
warming. The transition from a snow- to rain-dominated Arctic in
the summer and autumn is projected to occur decades earlier and at
a lower level of global warming, potentially under 1.5 °C, with
profound climatic, ecosystem and socio-economic impacts.<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-27031-y">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-27031-y</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><i><br>
</i></p>
<i>[ Young woman starting a YouTube channel about all things global
warming ] <br>
</i><b>Will the largest PR firm in the world drop its fossil fuel
clients?</b><i><br>
</i>Dec 1, 2021<br>
Beckisphere<b><br>
</b>Edelmen might drop fossil fuel clients after climate comm review<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvJTC4viXvk&t=804s">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvJTC4viXvk&t=804s</a>
<p>- -<br>
</p>
<i>[ PR has no direct physical influence on reality. But
tremendous indirect affect on human emotions ] </i><br>
Published: 30 November 2021<br>
<b>The role of public relations firms in climate change politics</b><br>
Robert J. Brulle & Carter Werthman <br>
Climatic Change volume 169, Article number: 8 (2021) Cite this
article<br>
Abstract<br>
<blockquote>Climate change policy has long been subject to influence
by a wide variety of organizations. Despite their importance, the
key role of public relations (PR) firms has long been overlooked
in the climate political space. This paper provides an exploratory
overview of the extent and nature of involvement of PR firms in
climate political action by organizations in five sectors:
Coal/Steel/Rail, Oil & Gas, Utilities, Renewable Energy, and
the Environmental Movement. The analysis shows that the engagement
of public relations firms by organizations in all of these sectors
is widespread. In absolute terms, the Utility and Gas & Oil
sectors engage the most PR firms, and the Environmental Movement
engages the fewest. Organizations in the Utilities Sector show a
statistically significant higher use of PR firms than the other
sectors. Within each sector, engagement of PR firms is
concentrated in a few firms, and the major oil companies and
electrical-supply manufactures are the heaviest employers of such
firms. PR firms generally specialize in representing specific
sectors, and a few larger PR firms are widely engaged in climate
and energy political activity. PR firms developed campaigns that
frequently relied on third-party groups to engage with the public,
criticize opponents, and serve as the face of an advertising
campaign. Our analysis shows that PR firms are a key
organizational actor in climate politics.<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-021-03244-4">https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-021-03244-4</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[ Click link for details ] </i><br>
<b>Top-10 weirdest things about the bonkers 2021 Atlantic hurricane
season</b><br>
The season featured an insanely busy start followed by eerily quiet
October, a tropical storm that formed over land, and two landfalls
in Rhode Island, among other oddities.<br>
by JEFF MASTERS<br>
NOVEMBER 30, 2021<br>
<br>
The 2021 Atlantic hurricane season draws to an official close on
November 30, after generating an extraordinary 21 named storms
(third highest on record), seven hurricanes, four major hurricanes,
and an accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) of 145. Those numbers
compare with the 1991-2020 averages for an entire season of 14.4
named storms, 7.2 hurricanes, 3.2 major hurricanes, and an ACE index
of 123. As documented by Brian McNoldy, Senior Research Associate at
University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric
Science, 2021 marked the sixth consecutive year with an ACE index
above 129: “this has never happened before, not during the satellite
era, not since records begin in 1851. This sustained level of
tropical cyclone activity in the Atlantic is unprecedented even for
four years, let alone six!”<br>
<br>
<b>1. Second consecutive year to run through the entire alphabet</b><br>
<br>
<b>2. A record 19 U.S. landfalls in two years</b><br>
<br>
<b>3. For the second year in a row, Louisiana suffers a
record-strength hurricane landfall</b><br>
<br>
<b>4. In its first forecast for Ida, NHC predicted a near-major
hurricane in 72 hours</b><br>
<br>
<b>5. Ida’s rapid intensification</b><br>
<br>
<b>6. A hurricane of non-tropical origin threatens New England</b><br>
<br>
<b>7. After 30 years with no landfalling named storm, Rhode Island
suffers two landfalls</b><br>
<br>
<b>8. Tropical Storm Claudette forms over land</b><br>
<br>
<b>9. Hyperactive through late September, then nothing until October
30</b><br>
<br>
<b>10. For the first time, a damaging nor’easter transitions to a
tropical storm</b><br>
<br>
Honorable mention: Hurricane Sam intensified into a category 4
hurricane at a location unusually far to the southeast,<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/11/top-10-weirdest-things-about-the-bonkers-2021-atlantic-hurricane-season/">https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/11/top-10-weirdest-things-about-the-bonkers-2021-atlantic-hurricane-season/</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
<i>[ matter-of-fact delivery in Scientific American - full text ]</i><br>
<b>Humans Are Doomed to Go Extinct</b><br>
Habitat degradation, low genetic variation and declining fertility
are setting Homo sapiens up for collapse <br>
November 30, 2021<br>
AUTHOR Henry Gee <br>
Cast your mind back, if you will, to 1965, when Tom Lehrer recorded
his live album That Was the Year That Was. Lehrer prefaced a song
called “So Long Mom (A Song for World War III)” by saying that “if
there's going to be any songs coming out of World War III, we’d
better start writing them now.” Another preoccupation of the 1960s,
apart from nuclear annihilation, was overpopulation. Stanford
University biologist Paul Ehrlich’s book The Population Bomb was
published in 1968, a year when the rate of world population growth
was more than 2 percent—the highest in recorded history.<br>
<br>
Half a century on, the threat of nuclear annihilation has lost its
imminence. As for overpopulation, more than twice as many people
live on the earth now as in 1968, and they do so (in very
broad-brush terms) in greater comfort and affluence than anyone
suspected. Although the population is still increasing, the rate of
increase has halved since 1968. Current population predictions vary.
But the general consensus is that it’ll top out sometime midcentury
and start to fall sharply. As soon as 2100, the global population
size could be less than it is now. In most countries—including
poorer ones—the birth rate is now well below the death rate. In some
countries, the population will soon be half the current value.
People are now becoming worried about underpopulation.<br>
<br>
As a paleontologist, I take the long view. Mammal species tend to
come and go rather rapidly, appearing, flourishing and disappearing
in a million years or so. The fossil record indicates that Homo
sapiens has been around for 315,000 years or so, but for most of
that time, the species was rare—so rare, in fact, that it came close
to extinction, perhaps more than once. Thus were sown the seeds of
humanity’s doom: the current population has grown, very rapidly,
from something much smaller. The result is that, as a species, H.
sapiens is extraordinarily samey. There is more genetic variation in
a few troupes of wild chimpanzees than in the entire human
population. Lack of genetic variation is never good for species
survival.<br>
<br>
What is more, over the past few decades, the quality of human sperm
has declined massively, possibly leading to lower birth rates, for
reasons nobody is really sure about. Pollution—a by-product of human
degradation of the environment—is one possible factor. Another might
be stress, which, I suggest, could be triggered by living in close
proximity to other people for a long period. For most of human
evolution, people rode light on the land, living in scattered bands.
The habit of living in cities, practically on top of one another
(literally so, in an apartment block) is a very recent habit.<br>
<br>
Another reason for the downturn in population growth is economic.
Politicians strive for relentless economic growth, but this is not
sustainable in a world where resources are finite. H. sapiens
already sequesters between 25 and 40 percent of net primary
productivity—that is, the organic matter that plants create out of
air, water and sunshine. As well as being bad news for the millions
of other species on our planet that rely on this matter, such
sequestration might be having deleterious effects on human economic
prospects. People nowadays have to work harder and longer to
maintain the standards of living enjoyed by their parents, if such
standards are even obtainable. Indeed, there is growing evidence
that economic productivity has stalled or even declined globally in
the past 20 years. One result could be that people are putting off
having children, perhaps so long that their own fertility starts to
decline.<br>
<br>
An additional factor in the shrinking rate of population growth is
something that can only be regarded as entirely welcome and long
overdue: the economic, reproductive and political emancipation of
women. It began hardly more than a century ago but has already
doubled the workforce and improved the educational attainment,
longevity and economic potential of human beings generally. With
improved contraception and better health care, women need not bear
as many children to ensure that at least some survive the perils of
early infancy. But having fewer children, and doing so later, means
that populations are likely to shrink.<br>
<br>
The most insidious threat to humankind is something called
“extinction debt.” There comes a time in the progress of any
species, even ones that seem to be thriving, when extinction will be
inevitable, no matter what they might do to avert it. The cause of
extinction is usually a delayed reaction to habitat loss. The
species most at risk are those that dominate particular habitat
patches at the expense of others, who tend to migrate elsewhere, and
are therefore spread more thinly. Humans occupy more or less the
whole planet, and with our sequestration of a large wedge of the
productivity of this planetwide habitat patch, we are dominant
within it. H. sapiens might therefore already be a dead species
walking.<br>
<br>
The signs are already there for those willing to see them. When the
habitat becomes degraded such that there are fewer resources to go
around; when fertility starts to decline; when the birth rate sinks
below the death rate; and when genetic resources are limited—the
only way is down. The question is “How fast?”<br>
<br>
I suspect that the human population is set not just for shrinkage
but collapse—and soon. To paraphrase Lehrer, if we are going to
write about human extinction, we’d better start writing now.<br>
<br>
Henry Gee is a paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and editor at
Nature. His latest book is A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-doomed-to-go-extinct/">https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-doomed-to-go-extinct/</a><br>
<p>- -</p>
<i>[ hear the song see him in this YouTube video ]</i><br>
<b>Tom Lehrer - So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III) - with intro
- widescreen</b><br>
Jan 19, 2009<br>
The Tom Lehrer Wisdom Channel<br>
57.7K subscribers<br>
Tom Lehrer on public domain (2020):<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrbv40ENU_o">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrbv40ENU_o</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
<i>[ 9 minute video - animation - from the New Yorker ] </i><br>
<b>Living in an Age of Extinction</b><br>
Released on 11/04/2021<br>
In “Sad Beauty,” directed by Arjan Brentjes, a young artist
contracts a deadly bacterial infection and begins to see
hallucinatory messages from the natural world.<br>
<br>
Set in a fictional city, the animated film features a landscape that
is stripped of the organic. The closest thing to nature that remains
is its facsimile captured in steel.<br>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.newyorker.com/video/watch/living-in-an-age-of-extinction">https://www.newyorker.com/video/watch/living-in-an-age-of-extinction</a><br>
</p>
<p>- - </p>
<i>[ More about this movie ]</i><br>
<b>An Artist’s Imagining of Life After Humanity</b><br>
Arjan Brentjes’s film “Sad Beauty” finds an unexpected source of
solace in the age of ecological despair.<br>
Film by Arjan Brentjes<br>
Text by Mengfei Chen<br>
When the Dutch filmmaker Arjan Brentjes was growing up in the
nineteen-seventies, he was taught that, in general, the story of
humanity was one of progress, “going from a worse to better world
for everybody.” Brentjes held onto this belief for much of his life.
But, in recent years, observing the widespread inaction of world
leaders in the face of the climate crisis and the global rise of
authoritarianism, he felt the pull of fatalism. It seemed clear to
him that a catastrophe was under way, and we had likely passed the
point of being able to do anything to avert it. “We could have
reached the peak. And now we are sliding back into something much
worse,” he said. With some understatement, he continued, “I was not
a happy camper.”<br>
<br>
In 2018, he began working on an animated film, “Sad Beauty,” an
exploration of his ecological anxieties. Set in a fictional city, it
features a landscape that, other than its human inhabitants, is
stripped of the organic: the sky rains ash, and the stark
silhouettes of dead trees stand in contrast to the sinuous lines of
Art Nouveau buildings—the closest thing to nature that remains is
its facsimile captured in steel. The film’s protagonist, a young
naturalist, spends her days drawing extinct insects in the back
rooms of a natural-history museum; she must walk down a corridor
lined with the fossilized bones of dinosaurs and mastodons to get to
her workspace. At home, she listens as a news anchor reads a daily
litany of the species of animals that have gone extinct. As the film
progresses, the anchor begins to report on the emergence of a new
drug-resistant microbe and its unstoppable spread.<br>
<br>
Brentjes had completed most of the film before the covid-19 pandemic
began. He said that, for a while, he was worried about how it would
be received. He even changed the ending, which originally featured a
skeleton in an astronaut suit floating in space, a reference to
Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” and to Brentjes’s distaste
for space colonization—“totally stupid because we are part of life
on Earth”—because he was afraid it would be interpreted as
insensitive commentary in the face of the ongoing pandemic’s death
toll. To date, such reactions have not materialized. Many people
have viewed the film as an environmental warning.<br>
<br>
But it was not his main intent to sound an alarm about climate
collapse. People interested in the film, he pointed out, are likely
already concerned with the environment, and don’t need anyone to
tell them about the dangers of climate change. Instead, Brentjes
hopes that “Sad Beauty” provides viewers with an “extreme form of
consolation.” Around the time he came up with the seeds of what
would eventually become the film, Brentjes had been watching
documentaries about nature, deep time, and the history of the
cosmos. As he watched them, he found an unexpected source of
solace—bacteria. “I discovered that bacteria were around for, like,
three billion years. And they were, in a way, the basis of life. At
some point, [humans] are there, but we are also just carrying the
original life of the world around with us, which are the bacteria,”
he told me. (A study from the National Institutes of Health
estimates that the ratio of bacterial to human cells in the typical
person is about one to one.) “And then I thought, Well, it’s
actually quite beautiful.”<br>
<br>
Brentjes’s musings echo those of the biologist E. O. Wilson, whose
work has shaped our understanding of biodiversity on Earth. Wilson,
too, has contemplated the horror of extinction: “Deeper than
despair, more terrifying than death, is the thought that everything
in time will disappear, that all we have been and will become will
leave no trace whatsoever,” he writes. But he also believes that it
is possible for humans to envision “a different kind of
immortality,” beyond the thriving of our own species. That
possibility, Wilson writes, “resides in those remnants of the
natural world we have not yet destroyed. The rest of life is a
parallel world. It could exist and continue evolving for what to the
human mind is an eternity.” This is the “extreme form of
consolation” that Brentjes hopes to offer through his film. He told
me, “We have to try to make the best of it on Earth, but if we don’t
succeed there is still beauty. There will be beauty in one million
years on this planet.”<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/screening-room/an-artists-imagining-of-life-after-humanity">https://www.newyorker.com/culture/screening-room/an-artists-imagining-of-life-after-humanity</a><br>
<br>
<p><i><br>
</i></p>
<br>
[The news archive - looking back]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming
December 2, 1970</b></font><br>
December 2, 1970: The United States Environmental Protection Agency
is established.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www2.epa.gov/aboutepa/epa-history">http://www2.epa.gov/aboutepa/epa-history</a><br>
<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
moz-txt-link-freetext" 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>