Jean and I live in an ideal part of America: Merlin in Southern Oregon. We did not plan to come here but in 2012 we wanted to move from Payson, Az. and fortune brought us here. However, I started this blog in 2009 when I had seen the integrity and happiness of dogs and wanted to write about them.
However the wider world is far, far from just the integrity and happiness of dogs.
On March 17th Patrice Ayme posted yet another post on his blog about war and I felt that it was important to be read by as many followers of Learning from Dogs as is possible. (The few small typographical changes are mine.)
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Want No War? A Symptom That Nazism Perdures
Do not whine that war is bad. Ask instead what it is for.
Friend of a friend Manfred Krieger: Will mankind ever learn that wars do no good to anyone?
Patrice Ayme: All over the world, the vermin helping Putin claim that war does not do any good. Similarly the Nazis, after claiming for years that they were the party of peace and minorities, accused big bad France of having launched WW2. France did, indeed, but that was after the Nazis had invaded a few countries, including two democracies, and officially killed a few hundred thousands of alleged mental retards and genetically defective (including a relative of Hitler).
Vermin helping Putin vermin has been crawling around the French and German leadership for a quarter of a century. That Putin was a war criminal was obvious as early as 1999.
The Putinists claim that war never helped anyone. So the war to stop Hitler did not do good to anyone? Only an obdurate Nazi would hold that opinion.
My family was hunted by the Gestapo: I am delighted that more than five million Nazis got exterminated like the vicious vermin they were. It would have been better if the French Republic had declared war on the Nazi gangrene earlier. Destroying the vermin when it was weaker would have saved the lives of in excess of 50 million thoroughly innocent people who got killed as a result of having let the Axis fly from victory to victory, gathering alliances with nearly as equally repulsive tyrannies in the process.
This may well be happening now: the Chinese dictatorship is sitting on a fence, not trying to help the Kremlin tyrant too much. The fascist Iranian theocracy retreated a bit when threatened recently by the West after attacks in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and Syria.
This hesitancy on the part of fascists also happened in World War Two; for a long time Mussolini did not dare to join Hitler, but then they militarily cooperated attacking Spain and three years later, attacking France. But ultimately, except for Franco who looked degenerate, but was smarter, fellow dictators, even Stalin, sided with the Axis.
In final analysis, WW2, and also WW1, happened because, primarily, not enough Germans fought the forces of fascist imperialistic plutocracy inside Germany.
So it is a lack of war, not an excess of it, which brought disaster.
That happened because not enough Morally Correct Germans realized in a timely manner that it would do some good to destroy the fascist imperialistic plutocratic mentality.
None of this deplorable meta-mentality is obsolete; France and Germany encouraged and empowered the Kremlin vermin in the last quarter of a century, by building its economy and financing it with advantageous trade. Now the Kremlin vermin is potentially the greatest threat against humanity and civilization, ever. And what does the German government do? Claim that one should not fight the Kremlin gangrene too much, to not aggravate matters too much.
But that appeasement in face of the unacceptable only encourages the latter. Germans still have to understand the biggest lessons of history.
‘An appeaser is one who feeds the crocodile quality food, hoping
that the ferocious creature will die of indigestion.’
A dramatic article from George Monbiot about water!
I read the latest from George Monbiot yesterday morning and was startled. Startled because I hadn’t thought of it before. Startled because here in Merlin, Southern Oregon we have had so much rain since the beginning of November, 2023 that our acres are swimming in the wet. Startled since that time also our Bummer Creek, which flows across our land, has been at record depths.
But this report is incredibly important and I wanted to share it with you, as I have Geo. Monbiot’s permission for so doing.
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Dry Run
Posted on11th March 2024
The mega-droughts in Spain and the US are a portent of a gathering global water crisis.
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 4th March 2024
There’s a flaw in the plan. It’s not a small one: it is an Earth-sized hole in our calculations. To keep pace with the global demand for food, crop production needs to grow by at least 50% by 2050. In principle, if nothing else changes, this is feasible, thanks mostly to improvements in crop breeding and farming techniques. But everything else is going to change.
Even if we set aside all other issues – heat impacts, soil degradation, epidemic plant diseases accelerated by the loss of genetic diversity – there is one which, without help from any other cause, could prevent the world’s people from being fed. Water.
A paper published in 2017 estimated that to match crop production to expected demand, water use for irrigation would have to increase by 146% by the middle of this century. One minor problem. Water is already maxed out.
In general, the dry parts of the world are becoming drier, partly through reduced rainfall; partly through declining river flow as mountain ice and snow retreats; and partly through rising temperatures causing increased evaporation and increased transpiration by plants. Many of the world’s major growing regions are now threatened by “flash droughts”, in which hot and dry weather sucks moisture from the soil at frightening speed. Some places, such as the southwest of the US, now in its 24th year of drought, may have switched permanently to a drier state. Rivers fail to reach the sea, lakes and aquifers are shrinking, species living in freshwater are becoming extinct at roughly five times the rate of species that live on land and major cities are threatened by extreme water stress.
Already, agriculture accounts for 90% of the world’s freshwater use. We have pumped so much out of the ground that we’ve changed the Earth’s spin. The water required to meet growing food demand simply does not exist.
That 2017 paper should have sent everyone scrambling. But as usual, it was ignored by policymakers and the media. Only when the problem arrives in Europe do we acknowledge that there’s a crisis. But while there is understandable panic about the drought in Catalonia and Andalusia, there’s an almost total failure among powerful interests to acknowledge that this is just one instance of a global problem, a problem that should feature at the top of the political agenda.
Though drought measures have triggered protests in Spain, this is far from the most dangerous flashpoint. The catchment of the Indus river is shared by three nuclear powers – India, Pakistan and China – and several highly unstable and divided regions already afflicted by hunger and extreme poverty. Today, 95% of the river’s dry season flow is extracted, mostly for irrigation. But water demand in both Pakistan and India is growing rapidly. Supply – temporarily boosted by the melting of glaciers in the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush – will, before long, peak and then go into decline.
Even under the most optimistic climate scenario, runoff from Asian glaciers is expected to peak before mid-century, and glacier mass will shrink by about 46% by 2100. Some analysts see water competition between India and Pakistan as a major cause of the repeated conflicts in Kashmir. But unless a new Indus waters treaty is struck, taking falling supplies into account, this fighting could be a mere prelude for something much worse.
There’s a widespread belief that these problems can be solved simply by enhancing the efficiency of irrigation: huge amounts of water are wasted in agriculture. So let me introduce you to the irrigation efficiency paradox. As better techniques ensure that less water is required to grow a given volume of crops, irrigation becomes cheaper. As a result, it attracts more investment, encourages farmers to grow thirstier, more profitable plants, and expands across a wider area. This is what happened, for instance, in the Guadiana river basin in Spain, where a €600m investment to reduce water use by improving the efficiency of irrigation has instead increased it.
You can overcome the paradox through regulation: laws to limit both total and individual water consumption. But governments prefer to rely on technology alone. Without political and economic measures, it doesn’t work.
Nor are other technofixes likely to solve the problem. Governments are planning massive engineering schemes to pipe water from one place to another. But climate breakdown and rising demand ensure that many of the donor regions are also likely to run dry. Water from desalination plants typically costs five or 10 times as much as water from the ground or the sky, while the process requires masses of energy and generates great volumes of toxic brine.
Above all, we need to change our diets. Those of us with dietary choice (in other words, the richer half of the world’s population) should seek to minimise the water footprint of our food. With apologies for harping on about it, this is yet another reason to switch to an animal-free diet, which reduces both total crop demand and, in most cases, water use. The water demand of certain plant products, especially almonds and pistachios in California, has become a major theme in the culture wars, as rightwing influencers attack plant-based diets. But, excessive as the watering of these crops is, more than twice as much irrigation water is used in California to grow forage plants to feed livestock, especially dairy cows. Dairy milk has much higher water demand even than the worst alternative (almond milk), and is astronomically higher than the best alternatives, such as oat or soya milk.
This is not to give all plant products a free pass: horticulture can make massive demands on water supplies. Even within a plant-based diet, we should be switching from some grains, vegetables and fruit to others. Governments and retailers should help us through a combination of stronger rules and informative labelling.
Instead, they do the opposite. Last month, at the behest of the EU’s agricultural commissioner, Janusz Wojciechowski, the European Commission deleted from its new climate plan the call to incentivise “diversified” (animal-free) protein sources. Regulatory capture is never stronger than in the food and farming sector.
I hate to pile yet more on to you, but some of us have to try to counter the endless bias against relevance in politics and most of the media. This is yet another of those massive neglected issues, any one of which could be fatal to peace and prosperity on a habitable planet. Somehow, we need to recover our focus.
We think that climate change is a relatively recent phenomenon. Wrong! And I am not going to say any more because this post from The Conversation covers it beautifully.
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What ancient farmers can really teach us about adapting to climate change – and how political power influences success or failure
A farmer paddles to his fields on an artificial island among canals, part of an ancient Aztec system known as chinampas, in 2021. AP Photo /Marco Ugarte
In dozens of archaeological discoveries around the world, from the once-successful reservoirs and canals of Angkor Wat in Cambodia to the deserted Viking colonies of Greenland, new evidence paints pictures of civilizations struggling with unforeseen climate changes and the reality that their farming practices had become unsustainable.
Among these discoveries are also success stories, where ancient farming practices helped civilizations survive the hard times.
Zuni farmers in the southwestern United States made it through long stretches of extremely low rainfall between A.D. 1200 and 1400 by embracing small-scale, decentralized irrigation systems. Farmers in Ghana coped with severe droughts from 1450 to 1650 by planting indigenous African grains, like drought-tolerant pearl millet.
Ancient practices like these are gaining new interest today. As countries face unprecedented heat waves, storms and melting glaciers, some farmers and international development organizations are reaching deep into the agricultural archives to revive these ancient solutions.
Drought-stricken farmers in Spain have reclaimed medieval Moorish irrigation technology. International companies hungry for carbon offsets have paid big money for biochar made using pre-Columbian Amazonian production techniques. Texas ranchers have turned to ancient cover cropping methods to buffer against unpredictable weather patterns.
But grasping for ancient technologies and techniques without paying attention to historical context misses one of the most important lessons ancient farmers can reveal: Agricultural sustainability is as much about power and sovereignty as it is about soil, water and crops.
In the tropical lowlands of Mexico and Central America, Indigenous Maya farmers have been practicing milpa agriculture for thousands of years. Milpa farmers adapted to drought by gently steering forest ecology through controlled burns and careful woodland conservation.
The knowledge of milpa farming empowered many rural farmers to navigate climate changes during the notorious Maya Collapse – two centuries of political disintegration and urban depopulation between A.D. 800 to 1000. Importantly, later Maya political leaders worked with farmers to keep this flexibility. Their light-handed approach is still legible in the artifacts and settlement patterns of post-Collapse farming communities and preserved in the flexible tribute schedules for Maya farmers documented by 16th century Spanish monks.
Maya farmers and researchers explain milpa farming.
In my book, “Rooting in a Useless Land: Ancient Farmers, Celebrity Chefs, and Environmental Justice in Yucatán,” I trace the deep history of the Maya milpa. Using archaeology, I show how ancient farmers adapted milpa agriculture in response to centuries of drought and political upheaval.
However, these groups condemned the traditional milpa practice of burning new areas of forest as unsustainable. They instead promoted a “no-burn” version to grow certified organic maize for high-end restaurants. Their no-burn version of milpa relies on fertilizers to grow maize in a fixed location, rather than using controlled fire ecology to manage soil fertility across vast forests.
The result restricted the traditional practices Maya farmers have used for centuries. It also fed into a modern political threat to traditional Maya milpa farming: land grabs.
Traditional milpa agriculture requires a lot of forested land, since farmers need to relocate their fields every couple of years. But that need for forest is at odds with hotel companies, industrial cattle ranches and green energy developers who want cheap land and see Maya milpa forest management practices as inefficient. No-burn milpa eases this conflict by locking maize agriculture into one small space indefinitely, instead of spreading it out through the forest over generations. But it also changes tradition.
Maya milpa farmers are now fighting to practice their ancient agricultural techniques, not because they’ve forgotten or lost those techniques, but because neocolonial land privatization policies actively undermine farmers’ ability to manage woodlands as their ancestors did.
Milpa farmers are increasingly left to either adopt a rebranded version of their heritage or quit farming all together – as many have done.
Mexico’s fragile artificial islands: Threats from development
When I look to the work of other archaeologists investigating ancient agricultural practices, I see these same entanglements of power and sustainability.
In central Mexico, chinampas are ancient systems of artificial islands and canals. They have enabled farmers to cultivate food in wetlands for centuries.
The continuing existence of chinampas is a legacy of deep ecological knowledge and a resource enabling communities to feed themselves.
The chinampas of Xochimilco are a UNESCO world heritage site today, but development expanding from Mexico City has put their survival in danger. Sergei Saint via Flickr, CC BY-ND
But archaeology has revealed that generations of sustainable chinampa management could be overturned almost overnight. That happened when the expansionist Aztec Empire decided to re-engineer Lake Xaltocan for salt production in the 14th century and rendered its chinampas unusable.
Today, the future of chinampa agriculture hinges on a pocket of protected fields stewarded by local farmers in the marshy outskirts of Mexico City. These fields are now at risk as demand for housing drives informal settlements into the chinampa zone.
Andean raised fields: A story of labor exploitation
Traditional Andean agriculture in South America incorporates a diverse range of ancient cultivation techniques. One in particular has a complicated history of attracting revival efforts.
In the 1980s, government agencies, archaeologists and development organizations spent a fortune trying to persuade Andean farmers to revive raised field farming. Ancient raised fields had been found around Lake Titicaca, on the border of Peru and Bolivia. These groups became convinced that this relic technology could curb hunger in the Andes by enabling back-to-back potato harvests with no need for fallowing.
But Andean farmers had no connection to the labor-intensive raised fields. The practice had been abandoned even before the rise of Inca civilization in the 13th century. The effort to revive ancient raised field agriculture collapsed.
Since then, more archaeological discoveries around Lake Titicaca have suggested that ancient farmers were forced to work the raised fields by the expansionist Tiwanaku empire during its peak between AD 500 and 1100. Far from the politically neutral narrative promoted by development organizations, the raised fields were not there to help farmers feed themselves. They were a technology for exploiting labor and extracting surplus crops from ancient Andean farmers.
Respecting ancient practices’ histories
Reclaiming ancestral farming techniques can be a step toward sustainable food systems, especially when descendant communities lead their reclamation. The world can, and I think should, reach back to recover agricultural practices from our collective past.
But we can’t pretend that those practices are apolitical.
The Maya milpa farmers who continue to practice controlled burns in defiance of land privatizers understand the value of ancient techniques and the threat posed by political power. So do the Mexican chinampa farmers working to restore local food to disenfranchised urban communities. And so do the Andean farmers refusing to participate in once-exploitive raised field rehabilitation projects.
Depending on how they are used, ancient agricultural practices can either reinforce social inequalities or create more equitable food systems. Ancient practices aren’t inherently good – it takes a deeper commitment to just and equitable food systems to make them sustainable.
We like to think that the changing climate is a modern phenomenon but this article shows it is not. That sentence by Chelsea Fisher offers a route out of the present situation: “The world can, and I think should, reach back to recover agricultural practices from our collective past.”
There have been so many disastrous activities on climate change, and I am not belittling them, but it was amazing to come across a TED Talk last Saturday that I watched. But first the speaker, Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, who was born in Asmara, Eritrea. Her bio (in part):
From WikiPedia:
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Asmeret Asefaw Berhe is a soil biogeochemist and political ecologist who is the current Director of the Office of Science at the US Department of Energy. She was previously the Professor of Soil Biogeochemistry and the Ted and Jan Falasco Chair in Earth Sciences and Geology in the Department of Life and Environmental Sciences; University of California, Merced.[1] Her research group worked to understand how soil helps regulate the Earth’s climate.
Advocacy and global impact work
Berhe’s work at the intersection of soil, climate change, and political ecology lends itself well to a number of global issues. During her graduate career, she was a member of the working group that produced the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which was called for by the United Nations Secretary Kofi Annan to assess the impact of humans on the environment. She was one of the lead authors on the 2005 report’s chapter on “Drivers of Change in Ecosystem Condition and Services.”[19] The Assessment received the Zayed International Prize for the Environment in 2005.[20]
In 2018, Berhe was selected as part of the inaugural National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine New Voices in Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine cohort, as an early career leader working to advance the conversation around key emerging global issues and communicate the evidence base around those challenges.[21]
An advocate for women in science, Berhe is currently a co-Principal Investigator of ADVANCEGeo, which is working to transform the workplace climate of the geosciences to increase retention of women in the field and develop a sustainable model that can be transferred to other scientific domains. Currently, the Earth Science Women’s Network (ESWN), the Association for Women Geoscientists, and the American Geophysical Union (AGU) have partnered to address the issue of sexual harassment in the earth, space and environmental sciences.[22] The program led by Erika Marín-Spiotta and is run with support from a four-year $1.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation.[23]
She currently serves as an advisory board member of 500 Women Scientists, a grassroots organization working to make science open, inclusive, and accessible, and is on the leadership board of the Earth Science Women’s Network.
Earth’s soil can store vast amounts of carbon. Biogeochemist Asmeret Asefaw Berhe says soil could be a powerful tool for fighting climate change – if only we stopped treating it like dirt.
About Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe is a soil biogeochemist and President Biden’s nominee to lead the Department of Energy Office of Science. She is a professor of soil biogeochemistry at University of California, Merced. Her research group works to understand how soil helps regulate the earth’s climate.
Berhe’s work exists at the intersection of soil, climate change, and political ecology. During her graduate career, she was a member of the working group that produced the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which was called for by the United Nations to assess the impact of humans on the environment.
Berhe received a B.Sc. in Soil and Water Conservation at the University of Asmara in Eritrea. She has an M.Sc. in Political Ecology from Michigan State University and a Ph.D. in Biogeochemistry from University of California, Berkeley.
This segment of the TED Radio Hour was produced by Matthew Cloutier and Sylvie Douglis and edited by Rachel Faulkner and Katie Simon. You can follow us on Facebook @TEDRadioHour and email us at TEDRadioHour@npr.org.
Now that positive TED Talk:
We wish Asmeret the very best of fortune in bringing about these changes.
The challenge with writing posts, albeit not so often, about the global environment, especially when I am a non-scientist, is that one relies entirely on the words of others. In the case of a recent article, published by The Conversation, the authors are claimed to be specialists, and I do not doubt their credentials.
The three authors are René van Westen who is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Climate Physics, at Utrecht University, Henk A. Dijkstra who is a Professor of Physics, also at Utrecht University, and Michael Kliphuis, a Climate Model Specialist, again at Utrecht University.
So, here is their article:
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Atlantic Ocean is headed for a tipping point − once melting glaciers shut down the Gulf Stream, we would see extreme climate change within decades, study shows
Superstorms, abrupt climate shifts and New York City frozen in ice. That’s how the blockbuster Hollywood movie “The Day After Tomorrow” depicted an abrupt shutdown of the Atlantic Ocean’s circulation and the catastrophic consequences.
While Hollywood’s vision was over the top, the 2004 movie raised a serious question: If global warming shuts down the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which is crucial for carrying heat from the tropics to the northern latitudes, how abrupt and severe would the climate changes be?
In a new study using the latest generation of Earth’s climate models, we simulated the flow of fresh water until the ocean circulation reached that tipping point.
The results showed that the circulation could fully shut down within a century of hitting the tipping point, and that it’s headed in that direction. If that happened, average temperatures would drop by several degrees in North America, parts of Asia and Europe, and people would see severe and cascading consequences around the world.
We also discovered a physics-based early warning signal that can alert the world when the Atlantic Ocean circulation is nearing its tipping point.
In the Atlantic Ocean circulation, the relatively warm and salty surface water near the equator flows toward Greenland. During its journey it crosses the Caribbean Sea, loops up into the Gulf of Mexico, and then flows along the U.S. East Coast before crossing the Atlantic.
This current, also known as the Gulf Stream, brings heat to Europe. As it flows northward and cools, the water mass becomes heavier. By the time it reaches Greenland, it starts to sink and flow southward. The sinking of water near Greenland pulls water from elsewhere in the Atlantic Ocean and the cycle repeats, like a conveyor belt.
This is where our study comes in. We performed an experiment with a detailed climate model to find the tipping point for an abrupt shutdown by slowly increasing the input of fresh water.
We found that once it reaches the tipping point, the conveyor belt shuts down within 100 years. The heat transport toward the north is strongly reduced, leading to abrupt climate shifts.
The result: Dangerous cold in the North
Regions that are influenced by the Gulf Stream receive substantially less heat when the circulation stops. This cools the North American and European continents by a few degrees.
The European climate is much more influenced by the Gulf Stream than other regions. In our experiment, that meant parts of the continent changed at more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) per decade – far faster than today’s global warming of about 0.36 F (0.2 C) per decade. We found that parts of Norway would experience temperature drops of more than 36 F (20 C). On the other hand, regions in the Southern Hemisphere would warm by a few degrees.
The annual mean temperature changes after the conveyor belt stops reflect an extreme temperature drop in northern Europe in particular. René M. van Westen
These temperature changes develop over about 100 years. That might seem like a long time, but on typical climate time scales, it is abrupt.
The conveyor belt shutting down would also affect sea level and precipitation patterns, which can push other ecosystems closer to their tipping points. For example, the Amazon rainforest is vulnerable to declining precipitation. If its forest ecosystem turned to grassland, the transition would release carbon to the atmosphere and result in the loss of a valuable carbon sink, further accelerating climate change.
The Atlantic circulation has slowed significantly in the distant past. During glacial periods when ice sheets that covered large parts of the planet were melting, the influx of fresh water slowed the Atlantic circulation, triggering huge climate fluctuations.
So, when will we see this tipping point?
The big question – when will the Atlantic circulation reach a tipping point – remains unanswered. Observations don’t go back far enough to provide a clear result. While a recent study suggested that the conveyor belt is rapidly approaching its tipping point, possibly within a few years, these statistical analyses made several assumptions that give rise to uncertainty.
Instead, we were able to develop a physics-based and observable early warning signal involving the salinity transport at the southern boundary of the Atlantic Ocean. Once a threshold is reached, the tipping point is likely to follow in one to four decades.
A climate model experiment shows how quickly the AMOC slows once it reaches a tipping point with a threshold of fresh water entering the ocean. How soon that will happen remains an open question. René M. van Westen
The climate impacts from our study underline the severity of such an abrupt conveyor belt collapse. The temperature, sea level and precipitation changes will severely affect society, and the climate shifts are unstoppable on human time scales.
It might seem counterintuitive to worry about extreme cold as the planet warms, but if the main Atlantic Ocean circulation shuts down from too much meltwater pouring in, that’s the risk ahead.
This article was updated to Feb. 11, 2024, to fix a typo: The experiment found temperatures in parts of Europe changed by more than 5 F per decade.
I am 79! I like to think that whatever is coming down the wires, so to speak, will be after my death. But that is a cop out for a) I have a son and a daughter who are in their early fifties, b) I have a grandson, my daughter and son-in-law’s young man, who is a teenager, with his birthday next month, and c) I could possibly live for another twenty years.
The challenge is how to bring this imminent catastrophic global change in temperature to the fore. We need a global solution now enforced by a globally respected group of scientists and leaders, and, frankly, I do not see that happening.
All one can do is to hope. Hope that the global community will eschew the present-day extremes of warring behaviour and see the need for change. That is NOW!
So that the Hollywood movie, The Day After Tomorrow, remains a fictional story. And for those that have forgotten the film or who have never seen it, here is a small slice of a Wikipedia report:
“The Future of Democracy” is, for me, incredibly interesting.
I haven’t a clue as to how long I have been listening to the annual Reith Lecture on BBC Radio 4. It has been many years.
As Wikipedia explains:
The Reith Lectures is a series of annual BBCradiolectures given by leading figures of the day. They are commissioned by the BBC and broadcast on Radio 4 and the World Service. The lectures were inaugurated in 1948 to mark the historic contribution made to public service broadcasting by Lord Reith, the corporation’s first director-general.
Reith maintained that broadcasting should be a public service that aimed to enrich the intellectual and cultural life of the nation. It is in this spirit that the BBC each year invites a leading figure to deliver the lectures. The aim is to advance public understanding and debate about issues of contemporary interest.
Wikipedia
From the BBC’s History of the BBC.
As the BBC explains on the BBC Sounds website:
Released On: 29 Nov 2023
Available for over a year
This year’s BBC Reith Lecturer is Ben Ansell, Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions at Nuffield College, Oxford University.
He will deliver four lectures called “Our Democratic Future,” asking how we can build a politics that works for all of us with systems which are robust to the challenges of the twenty first century, from climate change to artificial intelligence. In this first lecture, recorded at New Broadcasting House in London in front of an audience, Professor Ansell asks whether we are in a ‘democratic recession’, where longstanding democracies are at risk of breakdown and authoritarianism is resurgent. And he examines how resilient democracies are to the challenges of artificial intelligence, social media and if they can effectively address core challenges from climate change to inequality.
The Reith Lectures are presented by Anita Anand and produced by Jim Frank. The Editor is China Collins. Reith Co-ordinator is Brenda Brown. The series is mixed by Rod Farquhar and Neil Churchill.
Welcome to my website. I am Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. My work focuses on a variety of issues in political economy, including both comparative politics and international relations.
I am also co-editor (with David Samuels) of Comparative Political Studies.
My 2010 book, From the Ballot to the Blackboard, published by Cambridge University Press, is available here. My 2014 book (with David Samuels), Inequality and Democratization: An Elite-Competition Approach, published by Cambridge University Press, is available here.
This site contains a variety of working papers, syllabi, my biography, and other information about my academic work. My CV is available here.
It is Wednesday morning in Southern Oregon and already I am having to think about the post for tomorrow. Not that this is a problem it is just one more thing that I want to do. Plus we are in the middle of a local heat wave with temperatures expected to be well above 100 degrees F and possibly 109 deg F (42.8 deg C.).
So I am turning to Treehugger for a dog post and hoping that I shall be able to share it with you all.
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Dogs Could Revolutionize the Sustainability of Future Pandemic Testing
Scent dogs are quicker, more effective, and create less healthcare waste than conventional COVID tests.
One of the more frustrating roadblocks in navigating the COVID-19 pandemic was the difficulty in getting quick, accurate test results. Sometimes, results for PCR tests took up to two weeks, rendering their diagnosis useless for planning isolation scenarios. Meanwhile, rapid tests still oftentimes provide a false negative if taken too soon after infection. When I had COVID, I was four days into symptoms before I got a positive at-home test—I’ve heard many people recount similar stories.
The testing we have is certainly better than nothing, but it leaves a lot to be desired. If only there were a better way, say, using something with remarkable innate sensitivity. Like, dogs. Far-fetched? Not at all.
A review of recent research concluded that scent dogs may represent a cheaper, faster, and more effective way to detect COVID-19 and could be a key tool in future pandemics. This could be a game-changer for sustainability as well, eliminating the enormous amount of waste that comes with billions of testing kits.
The review, published in De Gruyter’s Journal of Osteopathic Medicine, found that scent dogs are as effective, or even more effective, than conventional COVID-19 tests such as PCR tests.
Most of us know that dogs have a remarkable sense of smell; they sniff out drugs and explosives and have even successfully identified patients with certain cancers, Parkinson’s, and diabetes. They have up to 300 million olfactory cells, compared to 5 or 6 million in humans. And they use one-third of their brains to process scent information—humans just use 5%.
Professor Tommy Dickey of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Heather Junqueira of BioScent Detection Dogs analyzed 29 different studies in which dogs detected COVID-19. “The studies were performed using over 31,000 samples by over 400 scientists from more than 30 countries using 19 different dog breeds. In some studies, the scent dogs sniffed people directly, sometimes in public places as a health screening. In others, the dogs sniffed patient samples such as sweat, saliva, or urine samples,” explains a press statement from De Gruyter.
Dogs’ Incredible Accuracy
The dogs ranged from Labrador retrievers and Belgian malinois to beagles and English springer spaniels. In most of the studies, the dogs demonstrated similar or better sensitivity and specificity than the current gold-standard PCR tests or antigen tests.
“In one study, four of the dogs could detect the equivalent of less than 2.6 x 10−12 copies of viral RNA per milliliter. This is equivalent to detecting one drop of any odorous substance dissolved in ten and a half Olympic-sized swimming pools and is three orders of magnitude better than modern scientific instruments,” notes De Gruyter.
Remarkably, they not only detected COVID-19 in symptomatic, pre-symptomatic, and asymptomatic patients, but they could also sniff out COVID variants and even long COVID.
Considering the Safety of the Dogs
One thing we certainly don’t want is for dogs to become collateral damage in the pursuit of better testing. The study authors acknowledge this, writing that the “safety of scent dogs, their handlers, and those who are inspected by the dogs is critical for the acceptance and implementation of the scent dog screening and testing approach.”
“This is consistent with the One Health paradigm,” they add, “which defines health as more than the absence of disease and recognizes the interrelationships among humans, animals, and environmental welfare.”
The authors evaluated whether medical detection dogs could contract and become ill with the COVID-19 virus and if dogs pass on the COVID-19 virus to humans. From a number of studies, they concluded that dogs are in the low-risk category. “To our knowledge, there have been no deaths of dogs that can be unequivocally attributed to COVID-19,” the authors explain. “Importantly, the studies described above suggest that it is safe for healthy individual handlers to utilize scent dogs to directly screen and test individuals who may be infected with the COVID-19 virus.”
Speedy Test Results
A major benefit of using the dogs is their speed. In one study, researchers were able to do a lineup with 40 samples, including sample collection, lineup loading, and unloading, within just 3 minutes.
“The time between RT-PCR sampling and the return of results can be up to days, whereas the RAG test results are obtained within about 15 min.,” write the study authors. “Again, if scent dogs directly sniff individuals, results are learned in seconds, or a few minutes if samples are taken and sniffed soon after by the dogs.”
“The criticality of the speed of the return of test results cannot be overemphasized,” the authors add.
Elimination of Plastic Waste
That dogs could provide a result in seconds to minutes is crucial. But additionally, and importantly, scent tests by dogs don’t require expensive lab equipment or create mountains of plastic waste, unlike conventional diagnostic approaches.
As of December 22, 2022, the United States alone had performed around 1.15 billion tests for COVID-19. Thinking of all the material for the testing kits and all the resources used for testing labs and sending samples around, etc., the reduction in ecological footprint is potentially tremendous.
Not to mention the cost. Some of the research in the review was, in fact, motivated by the need for inexpensive testing in developing nations, the authors note.
“Although many people have heard about the exceptional abilities of dogs to help humans, their value to the medical field has been considered fascinating, but not ready for real-world medical use,” says Dickey. “Having conducted this review, we believe that scent dogs deserve their place as a serious diagnostic methodology that could be particularly useful during pandemics, potentially as part of rapid health screenings in public spaces. We are confident that scent dogs will be useful in detecting a wide variety of diseases in the future.”
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In the interests of expanding the argument, here is a copy of a comment left to that original post:
Here we go again, using animals for testing. I believe that dogs can’t smell covid and detected it 100%, but we humans NEVER treat animals with the respect and equality they deserve, so I am very concern for the safety and health of testing “smell Covid” dogs… I know a person that have esophageal cancer and for almost 5 years before it was diagnosed, his dog (an adorable mutt) insisted on crawling over her owner chest every single time that he laid down, in an attempt to “cure” the inflammation in that spot. After the cancer was eliminated with chemo and surgery the dog stopped doing it… I which we humans were more connected and attentive with animal wisdom, to learn from them, respecting and became better people.
I think that second sentence should read can smell covid but have left it how it was printed.
Anyway, I will leave readers to cover the main article which speaks very highly of man’s best friend.
Today, August 14th, here in Southern Oregon we are expecting 111 degrees Fahrenheit or 43.8 degrees C. That is really hot! (And at home it reached 108 deg. F. at 3pm.)
So it seems pertinent to republish a post from The Conversation that was published on July 21st, 2023.
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Is it really hotter now than any time in 100,000 years?
Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Northern Arizona University
As scorching heat grips large swaths of the Earth, a lot of people are trying to put the extreme temperatures into context and asking: When was it ever this hot before?
Globally, 2023 has seen some of the hottest days in modern measurements, but what about farther back, before weather stations and satellites?
Some news outlets have reported that daily temperatures hit a 100,000-year high.
As a paleoclimate scientist who studies temperatures of the past, I see where this claim comes from, but I cringe at the inexact headlines. While this claim may well be correct, there are no detailed temperature records extending back 100,000 years, so we don’t know for sure.
Here’s what we can confidently say about when Earth was last this hot.
This is a new climate state
Scientists concluded a few years ago that Earth had entered a new climate state not seen in more than 100,000 years. As fellow climate scientist Nick McKay and I recently discussed in a scientific journal article, that conclusion was part of a climate assessment report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2021.
Earth was already more than 1 degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) warmer than preindustrial times, and the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were high enough to assure temperatures would stay elevated for a long time.
Earth’s average temperature has exceeded 1 degree Celsius (1.8 F) above the preindustrial baseline. This new climate state will very likely persist for centuries as the warmest period in more than 100,000 years. The chart shows different reconstructions of temperature over time, with measured temperatures since 1850 and a projection to 2300 based on an intermediate emissions scenario. D.S. Kaufman and N.P. McKay, 2022, and published datasets, Author provided
Even under the most optimistic scenarios of the future – in which humans stop burning fossil fuels and reduce other greenhouse gas emissions – average global temperature will very likely remain at least 1 C above preindustrial temperatures, and possibly much higher, for multiple centuries.
This new climate state, characterized by a multi-century global warming level of 1 C and higher, can be reliably compared with temperature reconstructions from the very distant past.
How we estimate past temperature
To reconstruct temperatures from times before thermometers, paleoclimate scientists rely on information stored in a variety of natural archives.
The most widespread archive going back many thousands of years is at the bottom of lakes and oceans, where an assortment of biological, chemical and physical evidence offers clues to the past. These materials build up continuously over time and can be analyzed by extracting a sediment core from the lake bed or ocean floor.
University of Arizona scientist Ellie Broadman holds a sediment core from the bottom of a lake on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula. Emily Stone
These sediment-based records are rich sources of information that have enabled paleoclimate scientists to reconstruct past global temperatures, but they have important limitations.
For one, bottom currents and burrowing organisms can mix the sediment, blurring any short-term temperature spikes. For another, the timeline for each record is not known precisely, so when multiple records are averaged together to estimate past global temperature, fine-scale fluctuations can be canceled out.
Because of this, paleoclimate scientists are reluctant to compare the long-term record of past temperature with short-term extremes.
Looking back tens of thousands of years
Earth’s average global temperature has fluctuated between glacial and interglacial conditions in cycles lasting around 100,000 years, driven largely by slow and predictable changes in Earth’s orbit with attendant changes in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. We are currently in an interglacial period that began around 12,000 years ago as ice sheets retreated and greenhouse gases rose.
Looking at that 12,000-year interglacial period, global temperature averaged over multiple centuries might have peaked roughly around 6,000 years ago, but probably did not exceed the 1 C global warming level at that point, according to the IPCC report. Another study found that global average temperatures continued to increase across the interglacial period. This is a topic of active research.
That means we have to look farther back to find a time that might have been as warm as today.
The last glacial episode lasted nearly 100,000 years. There is no evidence that long-term global temperatures reached the preindustrial baseline anytime during that period.
If we look even farther back, to the previous interglacial period, which peaked around 125,000 years ago, we do find evidence of warmer temperatures. The evidence suggests the long-term average temperature was probably no more than 1.5 C (2.7 F) above preindustrial levels – not much more than the current global warming level.
Now what?
Without rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the Earth is currently on course to reach temperatures of roughly 3 C (5.4 F) above preindustrial levels by the end of the century, and possibly quite a bit higher.
At that point, we would need to look back millions of years to find a climate state with temperatures as hot. That would take us back to the previous geologic epoch, the Pliocene, when the Earth’s climate was a distant relative of the one that sustained the rise of agriculture and civilization.
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It is difficult to know what to say other than one hopes that Governments and country leaders recognise the situation and DO SOMETHING!
As Dr. Michael Mann put it in the last issue of The Humanist: “The only obstacles aren’t the laws of physics, but the flaws in our politics.“
I have a son and a daughter in their early 50’s and a grandson who is 12. They, along with millions of other younger people, need action now.
A start to a fascinating programme on BBC Radio 4.
Yesterday morning (Oregon time) had me listening to a new series on BBC Sounds. It was Frontlines of Journalism. Here is what the Beeb had to say about it:
Released On: 27 Feb 2023
Available for over a year
In the spring of 2023, twenty years after the Americans, the British and their allies invaded to overthrow Saddam Hussein, BBC International Editor Jeremy Bowen was reporting from Iraq for the BBC. He described the invasion as ‘a catastrophe’. Taking you to some of the most difficult stories Jeremy and other journalists have covered; in this episode – why impartiality is not about trying to get perfect balance, the truth lying somewhere in the middle. Often it does not. Jeremy speaks with: journalist Rana Rahimpour who was born in Iran but left when she was 25 to work for the BBC; former BBC bureau chief Milton Nkosi, who grew up under apartheid in Soweto, South Africa; journalist and environmentalist George Monbiot, and CNN’s Chief International Anchor Christiane Amanpour.
Presenter: Jeremy Bowen Producer: Georgia Catt Assistant Producer: Sam Peach Additional research: Rob Byrne Series mixing: Jackie Margerum Series Editor: Philip Sellars.
But in wanting to present a little more to you readers, I did some research on the topic and came across this article published by the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford. I cannot see a warning about not sharing this with you.
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Impartiality is still key for news audiences. Here’s how to rethink it for the digital age
Our research shows people still value the ideal of impartial news. A new report offer suggestions to adapt it to a challenging environment.
Election posters of Germany’s top candidates for chancellor. September 16, 2021. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch
Most people agree that news organisations and journalists should reflect all sides of an issue and not push a particular agenda – at least when asked about it in surveys. Our 2021 Digital News Report finds this to be true across countries and age groups.
However, many people feel that the media often fail to live up to this ideal. Our surveys consistently show that committed partisans believe that traditional media coverage is unfair, especially in countries where debates about politics or social justice have become deeply polarised. In recent years we’ve also seen an increase in opinion-led television formats such as Fox News/MSNBC in the United States, GB News in the UK and CNews in France, while many traditional print publications have focussed on distinctive and robust opinion as a way of standing out online.
Together with the growth of partisan websites, YouTubers and podcasters, audiences now have access to a wider range of views than ever before. Against this background, some have questioned traditional approaches to impartiality that try to represent all points of view within a single broadcast or publication. Other critics go further – arguing that impartiality has given extreme or unrepresentative views undue prominence, through its focus on balance, helping to legitimise climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers amongst others.
This all raises the question: how relevant is impartial and objective journalism to audiences today? The Reuters Institute commissioned market research company JV Consulting to carry out qualitative research in four countries – Brazil, Germany, the UK, and the US – with different news markets, traditions of public broadcasting, and systems of media regulation. They conducted a series of focus groups and in-depth interviews on our behalf in February and March 2021 with politically and ethnically diverse groups of older and younger people interested in and engaged with news (52 people in total).
These are some of the key findings of the report:
Engaged audiences in the four countries researched still care about impartiality and say it helps define news, even if some consider it an impossible ideal. They want journalists to focus on facts, objectivity and fairness, and to steer clear of opinions and bias in reporting, leaving them to decide for themselves how they feel about the news. Alongside accuracy, impartiality is a foundational value of news that underpins audiences’ trust.
People recognise the risk of giving exposure to extreme views or one side in the name of balance. However, evidence from this group of engaged users is that they are even more concerned about the suppression and silencing of viewpoints. There are particular misgivings about this in Brazil and Germany, where twentieth century history frames some people’s views.
Most participants recognise that there were some topics (e.g., science stories, natural disasters, and questions of social justice) where there were not always two or more sides to represent. Here, many felt there should be more latitude for journalists to present just one perspective or an established point of view. There are also expectations that journalists will show greater empathy and connection in their reporting than perhaps traditional interpretations of impartiality have allowed in the past.
Across countries, newer digital formats such as social media are perceived as carrying more risk of bias along with the growth of more informal and entertaining broadcast formats such as chat shows and podcasts. Impartiality is more vulnerable in these contexts, as well as when the news is emotive or controversial, because journalists’ personal views risk slipping out in the impulse to engage, although the subject and intention have a bearing on how audiences feel about this.
Younger people, who have grown up using more informal and digital sources, tend to have different expectations of impartiality, often looking for journalism that aligns with their values. But overall, their underlying attitudes and desires are remarkably similar to older people’s.
Different countries’ news traditions shape people’s experiences and expectations. Audiences in the US cannot envisage a world without partisan news outlets, but in the UK and Germany, with their public service traditions, most audiences still laud the upholding of impartiality.
Respondents also delineate between news reporting (where impartiality is expected) and opinion/commentary (where people expect that views are argued for). Importantly, many told us that they often find it difficult to distinguish between the two, especially online. Interviewees like news and they like opinion, but want them very clearly separated.
It is important to recognise that not all news organisations are committed to impartiality: indeed, some make a virtue of creating news and opinion with a clear point of view. But most will want to take note of audience desires for a range of views to be represented and to see clearer labelling of news and opinion. For news organisations that are committed to impartiality, the report highlights the increased dangers in areas where journalism is more informal or accessed in distributed environments. Public media like the BBC have already embarked on updated training and issued new guidelines on these issues. Audiences have also sent a clear signal in this report that they would like much greater transparency over why certain perspectives are included or excluded, however difficult this may be in practice.
Finally, the report notes that given the importance of social media, search and other access points, technology platforms such as Facebook, Google and Apple, will also need to develop clearer guidelines on impartiality – as their own trust levels will depend on fair implementation of policies around inclusion and exclusion, whether by algorithm or human intervention.
Now this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea but when one thinks of the enormous amount of news and information one gathers from the television, the radio, the press and a wide variety of online sources then thinking a little more about the truth of what we are being told is crucial to us making wise decisions. including voting where appropriate.
People still value the ideal of impartial news; there is no question about that!
There is no question that we are warming the world, and in my mind, there’s very little doubt that it is us older persons who are the cause. Take this chart, for example, where the effects of populations in the 1980’s – 2000’s had a dramatic impact on the worsening trend:
The reason for today’s post is to share an article that writes of the science of precipitation.
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THE PHYSICS OF PRECIPITATION IN A WARMING CLIMATE
WRITTEN BY DR ASHLEIGH MASSAM
The scientific consensus on climate change is that atmospheric temperatures are rising and will continue to rise. Mean global temperatures are already 1˚C warmer than preindustrial times (relative to 1850–1900), predominantly due to human activity increasing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (IPCC, 2018a). The 2020 Paris Conference of Parties (COP) agreed on the aim of a 1.5˚C cap on climate change-induced warming, although without rapidly introducing measures to reduce carbon and greenhouse gas emissions, global warming could easily go beyond this limit.
In fact, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that even a mean global temperature increase of 1.5˚C will lead to an increase in the frequency and intensity of rainfall events. But what links a warmer climate to an increase in intense rainfall events? This blog post will explain the physics behind the changes to precipitation rates in a warming climate.
A SIMPLE OVERVIEW OF THE PHYSICS
Climate projections simultaneously warn of higher annual mean surface temperatures, higher rates of intense rainfall and more frequent intense rainfall events. The atmospheric moisture content increases with respect to a change in temperature – essentially, the warmer the atmosphere, the more water is held in the atmosphere, and therefore higher rates of precipitation can be expected.
This is explained by the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship between surface temperature and water vapour. According to the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship, atmospheric water content increases by between 6 and 7% per 1 °C. Therefore, even just an increase of 1.5°C could result in ~9% more water in the atmosphere, which could have a major impact on storm systems and subsequent rainfall.
Storm systems travelling across oceans will have an increased moisture content from water evaporated from the sea surface, forming a larger storm system and therefore more precipitation. JBA has recently discussed the risk of flooding from intensifying rainfall due to climate change and this will be explored in respect to storm systems later in this blog.
HOW PRECIPITATION IS FORMED
In meteorology, precipitation can be liquid or solid water that falls from the atmosphere and reaches the Earth’s surface. Types of precipitation include rain, sleet, or snow, depending on the temperature of the atmosphere. During the water cycle (fig. 1), water evaporates from the surface into the atmosphere, and changes state from liquid to vapour. The water vapour forms cloud droplets, which join together until the heavy droplets fall from the clouds as precipitation. Several processes affect this simple view of the journey from evaporation to precipitation.
Figure 1: A diagram of the water cycle showing the connections between water masses, the atmosphere and the transpiration and condensation of water vapour.
THE SURFACE TEMPERATURE – PRECIPITATION RELATIONSHIP IN MORE DEPTH
The connection between precipitation and surface temperature is defined by the Clausius-Clapeyron equations. The Clausius-Clapeyron equations calculate the energy required to cause a chemical reaction at a given pressure. In terms of precipitation, the Clausius-Clapeyron equations can be used to calculate the thermal energy required to condense water vapour into droplets when the atmospheric pressure is known.
When water droplets are evaporated into the atmosphere, they travel upwards. As the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship is dependent on atmospheric pressure, the thermal energy requirement for a phase change is lower at a lower pressure. As the water droplets travel upwards, two things happen:
The atmospheric pressure decreases, and
The atmospheric temperature cools (this is known as the temperature lapse rate and is typically estimated at -6.5°C per kilometre).
When the water vapour reaches an elevation where the atmospheric pressure and temperature satisfy the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship, the water vapour condenses into cloud droplets.
IMPACTS OF A WARMING CLIMATE ON THE SURFACE TEMPERATURE – PRECIPITATION RELATIONSHIP
The release of carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gases, into the atmosphere by humans has already led to climate change in the form of atmospheric warming. Long-term measurements show that the atmosphere has already warmed by 1°C since 1900. IPCC projections suggest that additional warming is inevitable, and attempts are being made to keep global atmospheric warming to under 1.5°C. Although, as previously mentioned, this could still increase the frequency and intensity of rainfall (IPCC, 2018b). To understand how an increase in annual mean surface temperature will influence rainfall events, we can apply the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship in a geographical context.
As the Clausius-Clapeyron equations define the relationship between vapour and pressure, they can also be used to define the saturation vapour pressure with respect to temperature. In meteorology, the saturation vapour pressure is the maximum pressure of water vapour, at a given temperature, before it condenses. Therefore, the pressure required to condense a water droplet increases exponentially with respect to a change in temperature.
This means that the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship can be used to determine the moisture content of the atmosphere. Warmer atmospheric temperatures will increase the atmospheric moisture content before condensation because the atmospheric pressure will not be affected by climate change in the same way as temperature. This results in the previously mentioned calculation that moisture content will increase by ~6.5% in the atmosphere per 1°C increase in temperature and means that atmospheric warming of 1.5°C will yield an increase in atmospheric moisture content of ~9%.
THE EFFECT ON STORMS AND PRECIPITATION
This ~9% increase has an impact on storm systems and therefore rainfall. Hurricane Harvey made landfall on the coast of Texas in August 2017. Over seven days, areas of Texas including Galveston and Houston experienced nearly 1.5 metres of rainfall.
Research published since the event suggests that the intensity of Hurricane Harvey is attributable to a combination of the storm stalling over one location and climate change. The Gulf of Mexico, the source of moisture for Hurricane Harvey, has experienced anthropogenic-induced sea-surface temperature warming of 1°C since preindustrial times (Pall et al., 2017; Trenberth et al., 2018). Comparing Hurricane Harvey’s precipitation records with an equivalent event from 1950, extreme value analysis concluded that climate change contributed to a 5-7% increase in rainfall rates covering the full region affected by the hurricane (Risser and Wehner, 2017).
With an increase in rainfall events and the wider impacts of climate change, it’s important for organisations to think about the potential risk to their business. JBA’s UK Climate Change Flood Model assesses and quantifies future flood risk in the UK under a warming climate and complements our range of global Climate Change Analytics, helping clients to understand and manage the effects of climate change on their assets and to enable long-term planning.
IPCC, 2018a: Summary for Policymakers. In: Global warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty [Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, H.-O. Pörtner, D. Roberts, J. Skea, P.R. Shukla, A. Pirani, W. Moufouma-Okia, C. Péan, R. Pidcock, S. Connors, J.B.R. Matthews, Y. Chen, X. Zhou, M.I.Gomis, E. Lonnoy, T.Maycock, M.Tignor, and T. Waterfield (eds.)].]. World Meteorological Organization, Geneva, Switzerland.
IPCC, 2018b. Impacts of 1.5ºC Global Warming on Natural and Human Systems. In: Global Warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty [Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, H.-O. Pörtner, D. Roberts, J. Skea, P.R. Shukla, A. Pirani, W. Moufouma-Okia, C. Péan, R. Pidcock, S. Connors, J.B.R. Matthews, Y. Chen, X. Zhou, M.I.Gomis, E. Lonnoy, T.Maycock, M.Tignor, and T. Waterfield (eds.)]. World Meteorological Organization, Geneva, Switzerland.
Pall, P., Patricola, C.M., Wehner, M.F., Stone, D.A., Paciorek, C.J., Collins, W.D. 2017. Diagnosing conditional anthropogenic contributions to heavy Colorado rainfall in September 2013. Weather and Climate Extremes, 17, pp 1-6.
Risser, M.D., Wehner, MF. 2017. Attributable human-induced changes in the likelihood and magnitude of the observed extreme precipitation during Hurricane Harvey. Geophysical Research Letters¸ 44(24), doi: 10.1002/2017GL075888.
Trenberth, K.E., Cheng, L., Jacobs, P., Zhang, Y., Fasullo, J. 2018. Hurricane Harvey links to ocean heat content and climate change adaptation. Earth’s Future, 6(5), doi: 10.1029/2018EF000825
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The IPCC states what is clearly known in science circles; a warmer atmosphere equals more moisture in the air and that translates into more rainfall.
It comes down to warmer atmospheric temperatures increasing the atmospheric moisture content before condensation, simply because the atmospheric pressure will not be affected by climate change in the same way as temperature, as was described earlier in the paper. The reference to Hurricane Harvey was very powerful.
The world has to focus on climate change in an urgent manner. Because there isn’t a great deal of time, something like 10 years, at most, to bring about huge changes in the way we consume energy.
Learning from Dogs 
