The Belfast (Maine) CCL chapter hosting H.R. 763 public meeting

From an Essay by Ann OBrien, Daily Camera, January 24, 2020

The January 11th front-page article in the Daily Camera reveals the horrifying effects from the massive wildfires in Australia. While the devastating loss of human lives, property and animals will take decades to overcome, some of the losses will be permanent. If the fires in Australia teach us anything, it is that the time to act on climate change is now.

The need to stem the tide of extreme weather events in the United States and across the globe takes up a big space in my brain. Unfortunately, in recent times, both ends of the political spectrum no longer speak civilly to one another, let alone address the critical issue of climate change. But there is a ray of hope that has put me and many others on an active path to promote a solution to address the damage to our climate.

The work of Citizens’ Climate Lobby is helping to break down the gridlock created by the current divisions over climate change in our nation. CCL is an international nonpartisan organization dedicated to educating legislators and citizens about a practical solution to reduce carbon emissions. CCL has over 400 chapters worldwide that are dedicated to using civil conversation and active listening skills to overcome the divisions that subvert our commitment to address climate change. The lobbying that CCL engages in is best described as gentle, but persistent, persuasion.

I believe that the CCL-endorsed Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (H.R.763) that is now in Congress offers a way forward to reduce the output of carbon in our country. Members of Congress who wish to join Citizens’ Climate Lobby must join with a member of the opposite party. This ensures a nonpartisan approach that acknowledges the need to reduce carbon emissions. CCL’s work to bring Congress on board and to gather support among local businesses and nonprofits is ongoing.

H.R. 763 has been studied and endorsed by well over 1,000 economists. H.R. 763 is co-sponsored by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. If passed, this legislation is projected to produce 40% less carbon over 12 years. Please go to citizensclimatelobby.org to learn more about H.R. 763 and about the work CCL is engaged in.

Colorado has 14 active CCL chapters. My concerns about the impacts of climate change caused me to join the Boulder CCL a year ago. I received a warm welcome. I continue to find their approach refreshing and upbeat. The group combines a mix of ages and political views of members who are united in the work of reducing carbon emissions. Party politics are left at the door. Working with CCL has rekindled my hope that we will stabilize our climate in the years to come.

If you wish to learn about the work of CCL or use your skills in this important effort, there are Boulder County chapters in Boulder, Longmont and the University of Colorado Boulder that can be found through a Google search, at these locations or elsewhere.

The time is now.

>>> Ann OBrien lives in Boulder, Colorado, USA

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See also: The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act of 2019 (H.R. 763) is a bill in the United States House of Representatives that proposes a fee on carbon at the point of extraction to encourage market-driven innovation of clean energy technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The fees are recycled to citizens in monthly dividends. The act was originally introduced in 2018 with bipartisan support from six co-sponsors and died when the 115th congress ended on January 3, 2019. It is principally based on Citizens’ Climate Lobby’s carbon fee and dividend proposal, and this organization advocates for the bill.

### Save the EARTH one VOTE at a time! YOUR VOTE COUNTS! ###

From an Article by Michael E. Mann, Washington Post, November 2, 2018

PHOTO in NEWSPAPER ARTICLE: Thick smoke covers a beach near the village of Sarti in Halkidiki, northern Greece, as a wildifire rages in the area on October 25th.

Summer 2018 saw an unprecedented spate of extreme floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires break out across North America, Europe and Asia. The scenes played out on our television screens and in our social media feeds. This is, as I stated at the time, the face of climate change.

It’s not rocket science. A warmer ocean evaporates more moisture into the atmosphere — so you get worse flooding from coastal storms (think Hurricanes Harvey and Florence). Warmer soils evaporate more moisture into the atmosphere — so you get worse droughts (think California or Syria). Global warming shifts the extreme upper tail of the “bell curve” toward higher temperatures, so you get more frequent and intense heat waves (think summer 2018 just about anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere). Combine heat and drought, and you get worse wildfires (again, think California).

Climate scientists have become increasingly comfortable talking about these connections. Much like how medical science has developed key diagnostic tools, we have developed sophisticated tools to diagnose the impact climate change is having on extreme weather events.

One of these tools, “extreme event attribution,” can be thought of as climate science’s version of an X-ray. In this case, a climate model is run both with and without the human effect on climate. One then compares how often a particular extreme event happens in both the “with” and “without” cases. If it occurs sufficiently more often (i.e., beyond the “noise”) in the former case, a study can “attribute” and quantify how climate change affected the extremeness of the event.

The scorching European heat wave this summer, according to one such study, was made more than twice as likely by global warming. The record rainfall in North Carolina from Hurricane Florence was, according to another study, increased by as much as 50 percent by warming oceans.

The climate models used in these sorts of studies represent remarkable achievements in the world of science. But no tool is perfect. In our medical analogy, some injuries — such as soft tissue damage — are too subtle to be detected by an X-ray. So medical professionals developed even more sophisticated tools, such as MRI. Similarly, some climate-change impacts on extreme weather are too subtle to be captured by current generation climate models.

In a study my co-authors and I recently published in the journal Science Advances, we identified a key factor behind the rise in extreme summer weather events (such as the ones that played out in summer 2018) that — as we demonstrate in our study — is not captured by current generation climate models.

Using an alternative approach based on a combination of models and real-world observations, we showed that climate change is causing the summer jet stream to behave increasingly oddly. The characteristic continental-scale meanders of the jet stream (its “waviness”) as it travels from west to east are becoming more pronounced and are tending to remain locked in place for longer stretches of time.

Under these circumstances — when, for example, a deep high-pressure “ridge” gets stuck over California or Europe — we usually see extreme heat, drought and wildfire. And typically there’s a deep low-pressure “trough” downstream, stuck over, say, the eastern United States or Japan, yielding excessive rainfall and flooding. That’s exactly what happened in summer 2018. The spate of extreme floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires we experienced were a consequence of such jet stream behavior.

Our study shows that climate change is making that behavior more common, giving us the disastrous European heat wave of 2003 (during which more than 30,000 people perished), the devastating 2011 Texas drought (during which ranchers ranchers in Oklahoma and Texas lost 24 percent and 17 percent of their cattle, respectively), the 2016 Alberta wildfire (the costliest natural disaster in Canadian history) and yes, the extreme summer of 2018.

Just as climate models almost certainly underestimate the impact climate change has already had on such weather extremes, projections from these models also likely underestimate future increases in these types of events. Our study indicates that we can expect many more summers like 2018 — or worse.

Climate-change deniers love to point to scientific uncertainty as justification for inaction on climate. But uncertainty is a reason for even more concerted action. We already know that projections historically have been too optimistic about the rates of ice sheet collapse and sea-level rise. Now it appears they are also underestimating the odds of extreme weather as well. The consequences of doing nothing grow by the day. The time to act is now.

>>> Michael E. Mann is director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center and co-author with Tom Toles of “The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy.”

Take Responsibility to the Next Level

Descriptive Information Available on Leaders, Speakers, Topics & Schedules

The Global Climate Action Summit will bring leaders and people together from around the world to “Take Responsible Ambition to the Next Level.” It will be a moment to celebrate the extraordinary achievements of states, regions, cities, companies, investors and citizens with respect to climate action.

It will also be a launchpad for deeper worldwide commitments and accelerated action from countries—supported by all sectors of society—that can put the globe on track to prevent dangerous climate change and realize the historic Paris Agreement.

The decarbonization of the global economy is in sight. Transformational changes are happening across the world and across all sectors as a result of technological innovation, new and creative policies and political will at all levels.

States and regions, cities, businesses and investors are leading the charge on pushing down global emissions by 2020, setting the stage to reach net zero emissions by midcentury.​​

At the heart of the Paris Climate Change Agreement is the commitment by national governments to review their progress and rachet up the ambition of national climate action plans, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

The Global Climate Action Summit, happening midway between Paris 2015 and 2020, is timed to provide the confidence to governments to ‘step up’ and trigger this next level of ambition sooner rather than later.

The momentum we generate this year must lead to bending the curve of emissions down by 2020—science advises us that this gives the world the best opportunity to prevent the worst effects of climate change. 2018 therefore must be the beginning of a new phase of action and ambition on climate change.

The Summit will underscore the urgency of the threat of climate change by mobilizing the voices and experience of real people, in real communities already facing real and stark threats. It will challenge and channel the energy and idealism of people everywhere to step up and overcome it.

At the Summit, international and local leaders from states, regions, cities, businesses, investors and civil society—known as “non-party stakeholders/non-state actors”—will be joined by national government leaders, scientists, students, nonprofits and others in a new wave of mobilization.

They will be sharing what they have achieved to date and committing to doing more to usher in the era of decarbonization, greater levels of sustainability and prosperity for the many rather than the few.

These actors will also celebrate a range of new climate commitments under five key areas: Healthy Energy Systems, Inclusive Economic Growth, Sustainable Communities, Land and Ocean Stewardship and Transformative Climate Investments.

The confidence, enthusiasm and support generated by this wave of action now and through 2019, will embolden national governments leaders to trigger the necessary domestic processes ahead of 2020 while also triggering more states and regions, cities, businesses and investors to ‘step up’ further action themselves.

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PATRICIA ESPINOSA — Executive Secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change

I am delighted to be one of the co-chairs of the California Summit where we have an opportunity to move the needle further and faster towards the swift realization of the goals of the Paris Agreement.

In major theaters on Friday, July 28-th

From an Article by Dr. Joe Romm, Think Progress, July 20, 2017

New film tells the rollercoaster story of the climate movement and Paris agreement with humor and humanity.

A decade ago, former Vice President Al Gore had one of the unlikeliest hit films of all time, An Inconvenient Truth. Now he’s back with a follow-up, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, which premiered in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday.
In an interview with Stephen Colbert on CBS’s The Late Show Monday night, Gore joked, “And to young people in particular, I really recommend this movie as a date movie… it’s a hot date movie. It’s an amazingly hot date movie.”

But the truth is this movie is a great movie for anyone who cares about humanity and where we are headed. It tells the stories of the ups and downs of the climate movement, the Paris climate negotiations, and Gore’s own life — and it’s an emotional rollercoaster filled with moments of joy and despair.

Gore told the audience he thought the original, a 2006 documentary of a slideshow on climate change that would become one of the most successful documentaries of all time, was a “bad idea” and had to be convinced by Jeff Skoll, former CEO of eBay and founder of Participant Media. Skoll ended up producing the Oscar-winning film that help start a national conversation on climate change.

Gore and Skoll have again partnered to produce the sequel, which takes off where the original ends and tells the story — through Gore’s eyes — of the climate movement leading up to drama of the Paris climate negotiations and, yes, the election of President Donald Trump.

Gore sense of humor and his humanity suffuse the new movie, one of the reasons it’s even better than the original. Indeed, for those who still think of the former vice president in terms of his media stereotype from the 2000 election — “stiff” and “wooden” — the movie will be quite a surprise. He has emerged as a world-class communicator.

The sequel also fixes the biggest flaw in the original, which was criticized for not enough focus on solutions. This film makes the new clean energy revolution a major focus.

The documentary has many unexpected moments, including the behind-the-scenes role Gore played in getting India on board during the Paris negotiations and Gore’s remarkable meeting with a conservative Republican mayor “in the reddest county in the reddest state” who is taking his city 100 percent renewable.

This is a movie to take a date — or kids — to, but it is especially valuable for people who are involved in the climate movement, or any social justice movement.

For many activists, nothing is harder than staying motivated year after year in the face of the inevitable failures along the (too) slow road to social justice. But few progressives have had to face the disappointments and despair that Gore has, most infamously his controversial presidential defeat in 2000.

Yet Gore remains remarkably optimistic and filled with hope. Seeing how he is able to keep going decade after decade is an inspiring life lesson anyone can learn from.

The film hits theaters on July 28th.

Judi Dench at Rio 2016

Judi Dench Narrates Rio Olympics Climate Change Video

Although the Rio Opening Ceremony is a time for celebration and a showcase of all the wonderful things Brazil has to offer, the ceremony also took the time to talk about a serious issue: climate change. And who better to discuss this worldwide issue than England’s sweetheart?

Academy Award winner Judi Dench narrated the Rio Olympics climate change video with a sincerity and seriousness that caught many viewers attention. The video showed maps and diagrams, displaying how the global temperatures are rising, causing the melting of ice caps and the warming of cities across the globe, including, of course, Rio.

Rio has been disappearing under floodwaters and it’s no surprise that Brazil took this opportunity, when they have all of the world’s eyes on them, to raise awareness about an issue that greatly affects the city and the country as a whole. Brazil is home to a large part of the Amazon and the video also focused in on how important trees are to the environment, noting how trees can even delay global warming, but they can’t stop it.

Dench was the perfect choice to narrate this short film. Her melodious voice grabbed viewers’ attention while also being clear about the importance of the issue. It’s no surprise that she was chosen to fill this role, and, ironically enough, her James Bond co-star, Daniel Craig, filled a similar role when he participated in a skit for the London 2012 Olympics. Although Craig’s performance was much less serious than the work Dench did for the 2016 Olympics, it’s interesting that they were both chosen to participate in Olympic films.

Of course, climate change is still a very highly debated topic and not everyone was pleased with Brazil using the opening ceremony as a platform to promote awareness about climate change. However, for the most part, the response seems to be positive. Many feel that the discussion about climate change was necessary and a great way for Brazil to use its platform.

Science is overwhelmingly in favor of supporting climate change. Still, regardless of personal views on the topic, it’s hard to deny that the video and the display that went along with it was well done. The images, along with Dench’s voice, made for a captivating video that will keep people talking.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Extreme Heat Enhanced By Global Warming

What science can tell us about the links between global warming and massive heat waves

From an Article by Chris Mooney, Washington Post, July 21, 2016

The Capitol can be seen as a jogger runs along the National Mall on July 21 in Washington, where area temperatures are forecasted to reach the upper 90s for the next few days.

The United States is witnessing a massive, dangerous heat wave, as a huge system of high pressure covers the central part of the country. It’s a big enough deal that yesterday President Obama even tweeted about it, including a map showing the maximum heat index in some parts of the Midwest and Southeast reaching 110 or 115 degrees on Saturday.

Here in Washington, temperatures could break 100 degrees Friday or over the weekend.

This will, inevitably, lead to much talk of climate change in the coming days. So it’s important to separate the scientific wheat from the chaff and figure out what science can, and can’t, reliably say about the link between an event like this and a warming planet — especially in a year that, on a global scale, has shattered past temperature records for six out of the last six months.

And the gist is that when it comes to extreme heat waves in general — heat waves that appear out of the norm in some way, for instance in their intensity, frequency, or duration — while scientists never say individual events are “caused” by climate change, they are getting less and less circumspect about making some connection.

“As predictable as the sunrise, some will say heat waves always happened,” said Marshall Shepherd, director of the atmospheric sciences program at the University of Georgia and former president of the American Meteorological Society. “Yep, so did home runs in baseball, but the steroid era brought more and longer home runs. A new National Academies study suggests that ‘heat waves’ may be one of the primary climate change markers like home runs were in baseball.”

[It’s official: We can now say global warming made some weather events worse]

In other words, when a planet warms, the odds shift in favor of more intense or long lasting heat waves. That’s just plain logic.

Indeed, the National Academy of Sciences report in question notes that, “Confidence in attribution findings of anthropogenic influence is greatest for those extreme events that are related to an aspect of temperature, such as the observed long-term warming of the region or global climate, where there is little doubt that human activities have caused an observed change.”

“In particular, for extreme heat and cold events, changes in long-term mean conditions provide a basis for expecting that there should also be changes in extreme conditions.”

And we’ve definitely already had changes in not only “long-term mean conditions,” but in heat waves themselves. The U.S. National Climate Assessment found that U.S. heat waves have already “become more frequent and intense,” that the U.S. is shattering high temperature records far more frequently than it is shattering low temperature records (just as you’d expect), and that it is seeing correspondingly fewer cold spells.

As for future projections, meanwhile, the assessment added that “Climate models project that the same summertime temperatures that ranked among the hottest 5% in 1950-1979 will occur at least 70% of the time by 2035-2064 in the U.S. if global emissions of heat-trapping gases continue to grow.”

However, pointing all of this out is not the same as making a specific attribution for this specific heat event — rather, it is saying that attribution can be made for this class or type of event. Beyond that, specific attribution requires active research, and an attention to the actual temperatures, duration and other aspects of the weather phenomenon. That’s because, as Shepherd notes, there are always heat waves, even in a stable climate.

Typically, in such an attribution study, scientists will use sets of climate models — one set including the factors that drive human global warming and the other including purely “natural” factors — and see if an event like the one in question is more likely to occur in the first set of models. Researchers are getting better and better at performing these kinds of studies fast, in near real time. So don’t be at all surprised if we see such a study for the current heat wave event — just as we saw for, most recently, the devastating bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, which was tied to an extreme marine heatwave off Australia’s northeastern coast.

But in the meantime, some scientists and experts aren’t holding back.

“With every heat wave, probably the number one question is, is it climate change, or is it not? Well the answer is, it’s both,” said Texas Tech University climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe on a press call Thursday. “We get heat waves naturally, but climate change is amping them up, it’s giving them that extra energy, to make them even more serious, and have even greater impacts.”

Hayhoe didn’t attempt a specific attribution of the current heat wave, any more than Shepherd did. Rather, she’s once again articulating the general connection.

“We are not used to having heat waves that are extreme as the ones we see today,” she said.

It’s important to underscore, as Hayhoe did, that this event poses severe risks to health — particularly for children and the elderly — and also to crops across the U.S. heartland. She pointed to an extreme 2003 heat wave that affected Paris and Europe, and which has indeed been connected to climate change through statistical attribution analysis. That event killed hundreds of people in Paris and London, and a recent study attributed at least some of those deaths, themselves, to climate change.

So these links are real, if not always simple to characterize. Now, it’s all about watching this current event carefully, taking preparations, and seeing what scientists have to say once they run their analyses.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Prof. Hayhoe, Texas Tech

Meet the Evangelical Scientist Who Believes in Climate Change

By Terrence Henry, NPR State Impact TEXAS, April 26, 2014

Texas Tech University — Texas Tech climatologist Katharine Hayhoe was recently selected as one of Time Magazine’s ’100 Most Influential People.’

Yes, you can believe in both God and climate change. Just ask Katharine Hayhoe, Director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech, who is well known for her work on the impacts of climate change. She’s also an evangelical Christian, and has become a vocal proponent for doing more to bridge the divide between faith and science.

Hayhoe was recently selected as one of Time Magazine’s ‘100 Most Influential People.’

After receiving the honor, she spoke with KUT’s David Brown, host of the forthcoming daily news show, Texas Standard. Hayhoe learned of her selection via email. “I actually thought the email was spam at first,” Hayhoe tells Brown.

Take a listen to Hayhoe explain how she thinks accepting and acting on the science of climate change is a responsibility for Christians:  SoundCloud Recording

https://soundcloud.com/kutnews/texas-tech-climatologist-among-times-100-most-influential-people

>>>>>>>>>>

>>> Professor Hayhoe was a lead author on the recent “Third National Climate Assessment: We’re feeling effects of climate change.”  The report is available online in its entirety at: http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/

>>> See also this Evangelical “Call to Action”:

http://www.npr.org/documents/2006/feb/evangelical/calltoaction.pdf

Activities Sept. 19th thru 24th

Climate Activists to Converge on NYC for UN Summit, People’s Climate March (9/21/14) and More

From an Article by Anastasia Pantsios, EcoWatch.com, September 9, 2014

For one week surrounding the UN Climate Summit 2014, the focus of the environmental movement will be in New York City. A dizzying array of events will take place, sponsored by hundreds of nonprofit organizations, businesses and religious groups all demanding immediate climate action.

One of the most high-profile events of the week that will capture widespread international attention is the People’s Climate March on September 21st.

Busloads of marchers are coming from all parts of the country and international participants are expected as well. With more than a thousand partnering groups, including nonprofits, religious groups, advocacy organizations, schools and businesses, tens of thousands—maybe more—could show up, with expectations of this event being the largest climate action in world history.

March organizers hope to impress on the world leaders who will be meeting at the UN on September 23rd that there is mass public demand for action on climate change and to take that level of public engagement to an even higher level.

“We believe that world leaders will only act (or be able to act) on climate change when everyday people express the desire, and create the political mandate for them to do so,” said organizers of the march. “Therefore, we aren’t opposed to this summit happening, and it is generally a good thing for heads of state to discuss climate change. We don’t have blind faith that the summit will solve the crisis either. We think that organizing, mobilizing and building social movements are ultimately what changes the course of history.”

While the UN Climate Summit on September 23rd is not open to the public (although it will be broadcast for public viewing), the schedule of activities is so dense that finding time to sleep that week might be a concern for any activist heading to NYC.

There are many small preliminary events including sign-making parties, rallies, meetings, concerts, forums and social gatherings. There are conferences, lectures, meetings and other events, both public and invitation only, listed at Climate Week NYC.

Here is a small sampling of some of the events going on in NYC that week:

NYC Climate Convergence from Sept. 19 – 21, an alternative to the UN Climate Summit. It will feature speakers like The Shock Doctrine author Naomi Klein, workshops, teach-ins, music and more.

Join Riverkeeper and Waterkeeper Alliance as part of NYC Climate Convergence Sept. 20 at St. Johns University in Room 112 from 10:45 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. Hudson Riverkeeper Paul Gallay will moderate an all-star panel of leaders and experts on the climate-water nexus.

Religions for the Earth Conference: This event will gather together more than 200 international religious and spiritual leaders at the Union Theological Seminary.

Solutions Grassroots Tour: Nightly music and theater performance and film screening at the Irondale Center in Brooklyn. Sept. 22-26, it’s “an interactive music, theater and film event that motivates towns to adopt renewable energy solutions.” Watch the trailer here.

People’s Climate Justice Summit hosted by the Climate Justice Alliance will feature workshops, interactive panels and other activities to provide an alternative voice to the UN Climate Summit. This event is at the New School University Auditorium & UN Church Center from Sept. 22-23.

Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) is hosting “Women Leading Solutions on the Front Lines of Climate Change” with an international panel of women leaders at the UN Church Center on Sept. 22. The following day it’s co-sponsoring “Rights of Nature and Systemic Change in Climate Solutions” with the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature on Sept. 23.

Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting: The theme of this four-day event, Sept. 21-24, is “Reimagining Impact” and it will stress the effectiveness of various climate strategies. It features plenary sessions, breakout groups, workshops and a star-studded lineup of speakers including President Obama, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Matt Damon.

The UN Climate Summit itself will be broadcast online Sept. 23. “The Summit will consist of an opening ceremony; announcements by heads of state and governments; announcements by the private sector; and the launch of new initiatives that address key action areas by coalitions of governments, businesses and civil society organizations,” according to the UN. The Secretary-General will summarize the outcome of the day at the closing ceremony.”

See also: China and UK Join Forces on Climate Change Agreement