This is medicine, stronger than hydroxychloroquine.
Description:
“Hope is a message that survives somehow..”
This is a lyric you will hear as we envision the power of the day we are together again. After the pandemic has abated, we will emerge changed, worn, compassionate, and anew. Wholehearted, on that day we will walk hand in hand…
This is song by Humbird, arranged for chorus by Will Robertson and performed by the CBH chorus. To learn more about Congregation Bet Haverim, visit: http://www.CongregationBetHaverim.org
Remember that hurricanes are getting stronger, as expected over a warming ocean. An ever growing proportion of hurricane intensity estimates from satellite data finds *major* hurricane intensity (categories 3-5). Their share has increased by a quarter, from 32% to 40%.
I interviewed Jim Kossin after last year’s hurricane season.
Past Democratic presidential nominees have certainly acknowledged the threat of climate change in their campaigns, though the issue has never been one to run on in and of itself. In 2008, then-Senator Obama committed to an 80% emissions reduction from 1990 levels by 2050 as part of his campaign, though his messaging was confusing at times. And in 2016, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton didn’t shy away from addressing the climate crisis, but she talked about it markedly lessafter winning her party’s nomination and didn’t hold a campaign event devoted solely to climate change until 3 weeks before the election.
Which is why it’s worth noting that current Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden today put out an entire political ad devoted to the issue of climate change (the first presidential nominee to do so).The ad features John King, the co-owner of King Orchards, a fruit farm in Central Lake, Michigan and highlights the ways in which climate change – including late spring frosts, flooding, and droughts – continues to wreak havoc on Northern Michigan cherry farmers.
More from University of Michigan Ross School of Business professor Andy Hoffman – this time on the insurance industry’s response to climate change, and industry’s role as change agent.
Hurricane Delta rapidly intensified into a category 4 hurricane over the warm waters of the western Caribbean on Tuesday morning, with the potential to land a devastating blow to Cancun, Mexico, on Wednesday morning. Delta is expected to turn to the north by Thursday and make landfall on the central Gulf of Mexico coast of the U.S. on Friday or Saturday.
Delta, which was just a tropical depression at 5 a.m. EDT Monday, has put on a rare feat of rapid intensification, increasing its winds by 70 mph (from 40 mph to 110 mph) in its first 24 hours since becoming a named storm at 8 a.m. EDT Monday. According to Dr. Phil Klotzbach, this is the most intensification in a 24-hour period for an October Atlantic named storm since Hurricane Wilma in 2005. According to Tomer Berg, Delta did the fastest intensification from a 35-mph tropical depression to a 130-mph category 4 hurricane in modern Atlantic records, accomplishing the feat in just 30 hours. The previous record was Keith in 2000 (42 hours).
Delta just went from 35mph tropical depression to 130mph category 4 hurricane in 30 hours!
I can't find any other storm on record in the Atlantic that has achieved this feat.
The next largest 30-hour intensification from tropical depression is Celia 1970: 35mph to 115mph.
BREAKING: Explosive intensification. 20 mins after becoming Cat 3, #Delta catapults to Cat 4, w/ 130 mph winds. 90 mph increase in wind in under 28 hours. Strongest Greek-named storm on record. Update: https://t.co/RrKRr3YxcNpic.twitter.com/3sTXhh6Ibd
The United States has already endured nine tropical storm or hurricane landfalls during the record-setting 2020 hurricane season, and a 10th significant and rapidly intensifying storm is en route to the battered Gulf Coast.
Hurricane Delta, which exploded into a major, Category 4 storm in the northwest Caribbean on Tuesday morning, is expected to slam ashore in coastal Louisiana unleashing a dangerous combination of damaging wind, flooding rain, and surging ocean water Friday into Saturday. Before that it will deal a serious blow to Cancun and the Yucatán Peninsula.
On Tuesday morning, Hurricane Delta was continuing to rapidly intensify, lurching from a 40 mph tropical storm to a 130 mph Category 4 in just over 27 hours. This is the fastest rate of strengthening for an Atlantic hurricane in October since Wilma in 2005. Delta is forecast to strike Cancun and the Yucatán Peninsula on Wednesday with maximum sustained winds of at least 140 mph.
Overall, news audiences want more climate coverage, and Fox News viewers are notably divided. Other important findings:
Let’s start with the basics. In all 6 news audiences we studied (incl. Fox), majorities think global warming is happening. About 45% of the Fox News audience are “worried” about global warming. Far more are worried in the other 5 news audiences.
Given another term, the Trump administration will double down on climate denial, and is considering appointing a “Red Team” of climate deniers to evaluate (read distort) climate science. But this has already been done.
The American Physical Society staged a “Red team, blue team” exercise in 2014, in evaluating and updating the Society’s statement on climate change. Ben Santer of Livermore Labs was a member of the “Blue” team, in support of consensus, science, and reason.
In the early days of the Trump administration, this idea was being floated. Cooler heads realized that the only people willing to serve on the “Red” team were nitwits and clowns, and the idea was shelved. I interviewed Ben Santer during that moment in time, to get his perspective – it’s been waiting for this moment.
The Trump administration is slow-walking a mandatory climate report by not seeking out scientists to work on it, says one of the authors of the last National Climate Assessment.
Donald Wuebbles, a climate scientist at the University of Illinois who co-led the first volume of the fourth National Climate Assessment, said the Trump administration is late in putting out a call in the Federal Register for researchers to produce the fifth version.
“It’s not being approved to go out, so therefore they’re just sitting on it. And I don’t know if it’s NOAA or the White House, but somebody’s sitting on it, so that’s just holding up getting up the NCA 5 going,” Wuebbles said.
By law, Congress and the White House are supposed to receive a report no less than every four years on the state of climate change and its impacts on humanity and the natural world.
The fourth version was unequivocal in its assessment of the problem. “Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, primarily as a result of human activities,” noted the authors.
That sentiment contrasts with the views of President Trump, who previously has described climate change as a hoax.
The Trump administration tried to bury the last version of the assessment, in 2018, by releasing it the day after Thanksgiving.
Administration officials then spent months preparing an adversarial review of its findings. That effort ultimately was scuttled by the campaign, but Trump told the architect of the scheme that he might revive it after the election. –
I interviewed Andy Hoffmann of the University of Michigan Ross School of business and has a joint appointment to School for Environment & Sustainability. Andy has been working for many years to bring together business, science and activism to deal with climate as well as a host of other pressing issues.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The Business Roundtable, a grouping of CEOs from some of the biggest US companies, announced on Wednesday it supports market-based carbon pricing to fight climate change, a shift from the past when the group was divided on the issue.
The lobbying group, representing over 200 major US corporations ranging for Amazon.com to Chevron, said it supported slashing US greenhouse gas emissions 80% below 2005 levels by 2050 to help limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, in line with the Paris Agreement international climate deal.
“The new Business Roundtable position on climate change reflects our belief that a national market-based emissions reduction policy is critical to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to levels designed to avoid the worst effects and mitigate the impacts of climate change,” said Doug McMillon, chief executive of Walmart and chairman of the Business Roundtable.
The move marks a shift from the group’s earlier position on carbon pricing, when it declined to support legislation that would have established an economy-wide cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emissions.
Longer takes from key interviews here. Above, this is the headline, and expressed here very well by Mike Mann. We have more power over the climate than we thought a few years ago. Going to carbon neutral, or negative, can pull us back from the brink.
Above, James Hansen, below, California’s State Fire Chief.
