Environment & Climate Change/Articles & Reports

From Organized Power
< Environment & Climate Change
Revision as of 20:33, 20 August 2017 by United (Talk | contribs) (→‎Articles & Reports: How Fossil Fuel Money Made Climate Change Denial the Word of God)

Jump to: navigation, search

Articles & Reports

(Listed alphabetically.)

In a small committed group you can choose the behaviours you want to encourage, and you can choose how much energy you want to spend helping each other learn new habits.
Lesson One: “Only mass social movements can save us now. Because we know where the current system, left unchecked, is headed.”
The warmest temperature ever recorded on the continent of Antarctica may have occurred on Tuesday, March 24, 2015, when the mercury shot up to 63.5°F (17.5°C) at Argentina's Esperanza Base on the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. According to weather records researcher Maximiliano Herrera, the previous hottest temperature recorded in Antarctica was 63.3°F (17.4°C) set just one day previously at Argentina's Marambio Base, on a small islet just off the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. Prior to this week's remarkable heat wave, the hottest known temperature in Antarctica was the 62.8°F (17.1°C) recorded at Esperanza Base on April 24, 1961.
Michael Specter, New Yorker: The meagre allotment of water available to each Pakistani is a third of what it was in 1950. As the country’s population rises, that amount is falling fast. Dozens of other countries face similar situations—not someday, or soon, but now. Rapid climate change, population growth, and a growing demand for meat (and, thus, for the water required to grow feed for livestock) have propelled them into a state of emergency.
Twenty African nations have banded together to build a monumental Great Green Wall of Africa - a forest of drought-resistant trees stretching across the edge of the Sahara Desert.
If fresh water were a bank account, the world's spending deficit against that account would be deeply in the red and approaching a tipping point of default. And in precisely the same way the U.S. government borrows money to cover today's expenses with no intention of ever paying it back, human society is also borrowing water to cover today's water demands with no intention or capability of ever paying it back.
ALEC, an influential right-wing lobbying group funded in part by petrochemical billionaires Charles and David Koch, has been working to undermine anti-pollution and pro-clean energy policies for years. But in 2014, the group adopted a new tactic — seeking out friendly state attorneys and encouraging them to sue the EPA.
Arctic sea ice in all seasons is declining and the rate of loss is increasing. Multiple lines of study show this is impacting weather outside of the Arctic. Increased energy (heat) in the Arctic is slowing the progress of the jet stream around globe, allowing weather systems to linger, increasing the risk of severe weather happening more often in any one place. Increased warmth also means increased moisture in the Arctic - which increases the amount of snow, which in turn causes the jet stream to concentrate winter weather in North America and Eurasia.
Prominent climate change denier Gov. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) is changing his tune on global warming, potentially signalling a shift in the politics of climate in the US. Well-known for his refusal to acknowledge the scientific consensus on the issue, Scott has flipped the script and suddenly softened his climate change denial in the run-up to election season. He even announced that he will meet with climate scientists who recently pressed him on his record. While Scott has not yet refuted his previous outright denial of human-caused climate change, polls suggest he might be right to do so soon. Nearly 80 percent of Florida voters want federal restrictions on carbon pollution and 71 percent of Florida voters say they are concerned about climate change. According the the National Climate Assessment, Florida is particularly at risk from climate impacts, including rising sea-levels that could cripple the state’s tourism and recreation industries and even flood Gov. Scott’s multi-million dollar beachfront mansion.
(Governor Jay Inslee of Washington), aided by what is expected to be millions of dollars from his billionaire friend Tom Steyer, is using the story of Washington’s oysters — scientists say a rise in carbon levels has spiked the acidity of the Pacific and is killing off shellfish — to make the case for passing the most far-reaching climate change policies in the nation.
Mr. Inslee, who is campaigning for his agenda across the state this summer with oyster farmers in tow, is trying to position himself as America’s leading governor in the climate change fight. But Mr. Inslee does not have the support of the majority of the Washington State Senate, particularly those conservative lawmakers from the rural inland, so Mr. Steyer’s advocacy group, NextGen Climate, is working with the Washington League of Conservation Voters to handpick Democratic, pro-climate policy candidates across the state.
Mr. Steyer, a retired California hedge-fund manager has pledged to spend $100 million on climate issues in elections across the country this year (2014).
Governor Inslee is the author of a book on renewable energy, Apollo’s Fire: Igniting America’s Clean Energy Economy.
Dave’s Note: Billionaire Tom Steyer spends big money on efforts to combat climate change (see article): “Tom Steyer struggles to find big-money donors.”
Denialists are dead wrong about the science. But they understand something the left still doesn’t get about the revolutionary meaning of climate change.
Denialists gained traction by making climate about economics: action will destroy capitalism, they have claimed, killing jobs and sending prices soaring. But at a time when a growing number of people agree with the protesters at Occupy Wall Street, many of whom argue that capitalism-as-usual is itself the cause of lost jobs and debt slavery, there is a unique opportunity to seize the economic terrain from the right. This would require making a persuasive case that the real solutions to the climate crisis are also our best hope of building a much more enlightened economic system—one that closes deep inequalities, strengthens and transforms the public sphere, generates plentiful, dignified work and radically reins in corporate power. It would also require a shift away from the notion that climate action is just one issue on a laundry list of worthy causes vying for progressive attention. Just as climate denialism has become a core identity issue on the right, utterly entwined with defending current systems of power and wealth, the scientific reality of climate change must, for progressives, occupy a central place in a coherent narrative about the perils of unrestrained greed and the need for real alternatives.
Are our families, businesses and nations prepared to adapt to the coming planetary climate changes, economic losses and resource shortages?
Our current infrastructure (dikes, dams, levies, water and sewage treatment plants and much of our other infrastructure,) has most often been designed to withstand the extreme climate events that occur about once every hundred years (century storms.) The coming more extreme storms caused by increasing human caused atmospheric carbon pollution will eventually create and become millennial storms --- climate events of such an extreme in severity that there has been nothing like them on the planet for thousand of years.
Wollersheim’s Blog: The Universe Blog: Evolution 2.0 Religion 2.0 Climate Crisis: “We work in the world to forward the Job One for Humanity Climate Re-stabilization Plan.”
We have the right culture and the right people in Portland to build a clean and equitable city given the challenges we face. What is needed now is a sense of urgency and the courage to do what is necessary to make good on our moral obligations to youth, future generations, and the integrity of the natural world.
October 23, 2012 - FRONTLINE explores the massive shift in public opinion on climate change.
Global warming is moving much more quickly than scientists thought it would. Even if the biggest current and prospective emitters - the United States, China and India - were to slam on the brakes today, the earth would continue to heat up for decades. At best, we may be able to slow things down and deal with the consequences, without social and political breakdown. Gwynne Dyer examines several radical short-and medium-term measures now being considered - all of them controversial.
Nafeez Ahmed: Global warming has been on vacation for a few years. But that's only because the excess heat - two Hiroshima bombs-worth every second - has been buried in the deep ocean. But within a few years that's set to change, producing a huge decade-long warming surge, focused on the Arctic, that could overwhelm us all.
Good overview of climate science dating back to 1824, when French physicist Joseph Fourier discovered how the atmosphere traps heat and maintains the earth’s temperature.
Quote from Johnson mentioned in article:
“Air pollution is no longer confined to isolated places. This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through radioactive materials and a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.” –Lyndon Baines Johnson. Monday, February 8, 1965.[1]
  • Earth: Game Over?: We're in the middle of a sixth mass extinction, and this will be the first one—and possibly the last—we will witness as human beings.
The world needs to invest a trillion dollars into clean energy—every year between now and 2050.
At intersections of social and economic justice, hundreds gather in Richmond California to build strategy for a 'just transition' away from an economy that is 'crashing planet.'
Personal attacks are common among deniers. Their lies are continually debunked, leaving them with no rational challenge to overwhelming scientific evidence that the world is warming and that humans are largely responsible. Comments under my columns about global warming include endless repetition of falsehoods like “there’s been no warming for 18 years”, “it’s the sun”, and references to “communist misanthropes”, “libtard warmers”, alarmists and worse…
Cities depend on good infrastructure. Roads, pipes, sewers, libraries and buses operate so seamlessly that their importance often goes unnoticed — until they fail. It's only then that we recognize how dependent we are on them.
Like our built infrastructure, nature also is crucial to the livability of our communities. In addition to a range of other benefits, forested watersheds provide people with clean drinking water, wetlands protect us from floods and process our waste and vegetated banks protect our home properties from erosion.
Conservative groups, funded by fossil fuel magnates, spend approximately one billion dollars every year interfering with public understanding of what is actually happening to our world.
All the international negotiations and agreements to date are not going to help avert the imminent catastrophe. Not even the boldest targets to reduce carbon pollution put forward by the smartest nations are going to move the dial. It’s all an illusion of movement, kind of like Alice in Wonderland’s Red Queen, running and running but not going anywhere.
It's especially worrying because the Arctic is warming faster than nearly anywhere else on Earth. Now, along with melting sea ice and thawing permafrost, we have to add to our list of 'feedback loop' concerns that warming Arctic oceans may be releasing fonts of methane. That is, the warmer the ocean gets, the more methane gets spewed out of those stores on the continental shelf, and the warmer the ocean gets, ad infinitum.
Tristram Korten, Florida Center for Investigative Reporting: Florida Department of Environmental Protection officials have been ordered not to use the term “climate change” or “global warming” in any official communications, emails, or reports, according to former DEP employees, consultants, volunteers and records obtained by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting.
The policy goes beyond semantics and has affected reports, educational efforts and public policy in a department with about 3,200 employees and $1.4 billion budget.
“We were told not to use the terms ‘climate change,’ ‘global warming’ or ‘sustainability,’” said Christopher Byrd, an attorney with the DEP’s Office of General Counsel in Tallahassee from 2008 to 2013. “That message was communicated to me and my colleagues by our superiors in the Office of General Counsel.”
More than 50 unions representing millions of workers worldwide have added their voice to the growing chorus calling for strong climate action, as they joined an initiative aimed at mobilising support for an ambitious climate deal in Paris in 2015 (30 November to 11 December 2015). The Unions4Climate action, launched at the World Congress of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) in Berlin this week, calls for a deal that is good for the climate and that drives an industrial transformation and creates jobs. Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of the ITUC said: “Threats to jobs and livelihoods include the threat of climate change. For unions it is simple. There are no jobs on a dead planet”. According to the ITUC, strong climate action could create 48 million new jobs in 12 countries – in Germany up to 400,000 new renewable energy jobs have been created in just two years. Unions will use the Unions4Climate to push for ambitious commitments from governments, discuss plans for industrial transformation and to debate the best ways to secure workers decent, green jobs.
Adam Epstein, Quartz: Norway, the nation with the largest sovereign fund in the world, is withdrawing from its investments in fossil fuels. A number of universities, cities, and religious institutions have joined the so-called “divestment” movement, but Norway is the first nation to do so officially.
“It’s not the first time a country’s fund has sold off companies,” Jamie Henn, co-founder of the international climate-change advocacy group 350.org, told Quartz. “But it’s definitely the first time they’ve done so in the context of climate risk and environmental concerns.”
The thawing of such terrain, rife with centuries of carbon, would release incredible amounts of methane gas and affect global temperatures.
“Pound for pound, the comparative impact of [methane gas] on climate change is over 20 times greater than [carbon dioxide] over a 100-year period.”
The melting of Siberia’s permafrost is “a climate time bomb waiting to explode if released into the atmosphere”.
“The fragile and rapidly changing Arctic region is home to large reservoirs of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, (is) vulnerable to being released into the atmosphere, where it can add to global warming”.
(Liberal climate change denialism adds) up to the belief that we can avoid the most catastrophic levels of climate disruption without changing our fundamental way of life. This is myth is based on errors that are as profound and basic as the conservative denial of climate change itself.
Solar and renewables are being touted as the energy sources of the future, but will they provide enough power relative to the energy that must be invested in them? Engineer Graham Palmer argues there’s no easy solution to the fact that we’re running out of fossil fuels.
The IPCC's 'Representative Concentration Pathways' are based on fantasy technology that must draw massive volumes of CO2 out of the atmosphere late this century - an unjustified hope that conceals a very bleak future for Earth, and humanity.
It is quite clear that we have no carbon budget whatsoever. The account, far from being in surplus, is horrendously overdrawn. To claim we have a few decades of safely burning coal, oil and gas is an utter nonsense.
We reached out to a handful of scientists, policy experts, writers and activists to ask: “If you could require America to do just one thing — any one thing — to combat climate change in 2014, what would it be?”
Florida Department of Environmental Protection officials have been ordered not to use the terms "climate change" or "global warming" in any official communications, emails, or reports, according to former DEP employees, consultants, volunteers and records obtained by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting.
"We were told not to use the terms 'climate change,' 'global warming' or 'sustainability,' " said Christopher Byrd, an attorney with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's Office of General Counsel in Tallahassee from 2008 to 2013. "That message was communicated to me and my colleagues by our superiors."
New research links climate change to Syria's devastating civil war.
Climate denial isn't a worldwide delusion. It's a distinctly Anglophone one.
Not only is the United States clearly the worst in its climate denial, but Great Britain and Australia are second and third worst, respectively. Canada, meanwhile, is the seventh worst.
The US is home to 91 different organizations (think tanks, advocacy groups, and trade associations) that collectively comprise a "climate change counter-movement." The annual funding of these organizations, collectively, is "just over $900 million." That is a truly massive amount of English-speaking climate "skeptic" activity, and while the study was limited to the US, it is hard to imagine that anything comparable exists in non-English speaking countries.
Reports: World Faces 'Insurmountable' Water Shortage
The world risks an "insurmountable" water crisis by 2040 without an immediate and significant overhaul of energy consumption and demand, a research team reported on Wednesday. "There will be no water by 2040 if we keep doing what we're doing today," said Professor Benjamin Sovacool of Denmark's Aarhus University, who co-authored two reports on the world's rapidly decreasing sources of freshwater.
May 22, 2014: At the ITUC congress in Berlin, more than 50 unions representing millions of workers signed up for the Unions4Climate action. This call for climate justice signals the start of a global mobilisation for a climate deal in Paris in 2015.
The battle against global warming is going to continue to require an uprising on behalf of the planet. That is because the fossil fuel and extraction (along with other profiteering) industries are actually rooting on behalf of negative climate change.
A new study by researchers at NASA and the University of California, Irvine, finds a rapidly melting section of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet appears to be in an irreversible state of decline, with nothing to stop the glaciers in this area from melting into the sea.
Science tells us what must happen; capitalism tells us that it doesn’t matter. Such is the psychosis buried at the heart of a system whereby money overrides physics. The fact that continued operation calls into question, in its current form, the sustained existence of our entire biosphere, still cannot overcome the remorseless logic of capital accumulation.

References

  1. ↑ President Lyndon B. Johnson's Special Message to the Congress on Conservation and Restoration of Natural Beauty. Monday, February 8, 1965.
Retrieved from "https://organizedpower.org/empower/index.php?title=Environment_%26_Climate_Change/Articles_%26_Reports&oldid=208"