[TheClimate.Vote] December 3, 2017 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Sun Dec 3 09:57:07 EST 2017
/December 3, 2017
/
[Prospect]
*GOP Tax Plan Pulls the Plug on Renewable Energy
<http://prospect.org/article/gop-tax-plan-pulls-plug-renewable-energy>*
SAM ROSS-BROWN DECEMBER 1, 2017
Both versions of the GOP tax plan could deal a devastating blow to solar
and wind production.
The GOP tax reform plan barreling toward a vote in the Senate could deal
a devastating blow to the renewable energy industry. Unlike the more
draconian House version, the Senate bill does not slash renewable tax
credits directly, but it does impose steep taxes on the companies that
help finance renewable development. Leaders in the wind and solar sector
warn that such hikes would undercut the industry's most important
financing tools.
"Almost overnight, you would see a devastating reduction in wind and
solar energy investment and development," Gregory Wetstone, the head of
the American Council on Renewable Energy, said in a statement
<http://www.acore.org/resources/press-releases/6305-acore-awea-cres-and-seia-submit-joint-letter-calling-on-senate-to-repair-provisions-that-undermine-renewable-energy-in-the-senate-tax-bill>.
When Senate Republicans released their tax plan two weeks ago, renewable
advocates were initially relieved. The House bill, released in early
November, proposed cutting the Production Tax Credit (PTC) for
renewables by a third, eliminating the Investment Tax Credit for solar
production, and repealing the electric vehicle purchase credit.
The renewable industry depends on these credits to attract new
investment and lower production costs. The American Wind Energy
Association warned
<https://www.awea.org/HouseTaxProposal2017?utm_source=Energy-Pulse+Newsletter&utm_campaign=8001cf2138-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_11_08&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_9761cf3f21-8001cf2138-48653265>
that the House bill would threaten 50,000 jobs and more than $50 billion
in planned investment in the wind sector alone. (However, the bill does
include a generous $15 billion subsidy
<https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/10/6/16428458/us-energy-subsidies>
for coal, oil, and gas companies.)
The Senate version makes no changes to renewable credits, but other
parts of the bill would be just as damaging. A new proposal, the Base
Erosion Anti-Abuse Tax (BEAT), targets multinationals that stash money
overseas to avoid paying U.S. taxes. Under the proposed change, these
corporations would lose many of the deductions they typically claim.
But the tax would also effectively cancel out the renewable credits
enjoyed by the multinationals that play a major role in financing
renewable projects. Typically, when companies like Goldman Sachs or
Facebook invest in a renewable energy project, they get a portion of the
profits along with a renewable tax credit. On average, these agreements
make up between 40 percent and 60 percent
<http://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/knowledge/publications/158454/us-tax-equity-market-could-shrink-under-senate-tax-bill?utm_source=vuture&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20171122%20base%20erosion%20tax_23%20november%202017>
of the capital costs for new solar or wind projects.
If BEAT swallows up those credits, corporations may be far less likely
to invest in renewable energy projects, which could deal a severe blow
to solar and wind energy production. BEAT would also apply
retroactively, threatening existing renewable projects.
In a joint letter
<http://www.acore.org/images/publications/ACORE_AWEA_CRES_SEIA_LetterOnSenateTaxBill_Nov29.pdf>to
Senate leaders, representatives from four major renewable trade
associations expressed alarm at these "extremely problematic" tax
provisions. "Not surprisingly, major financial institutions have
indicated that, under such a regime, they would no longer participate in
tax equity financing," the group warned. "The tax equity marketplace
would collapse under these provisions, leading to a dramatic reduction
in wind and solar energy investment and development."
The states that voted for Trump produce nearly 70 percent of wind
energy, while 85 percent of existing wind projects are in GOP-held
congressional districts.
Ironically, such cuts would disproportionately hurt Trump country: The
states that voted for Trump produce nearly 70 percent of wind energy,
while 85 percent of existing wind projects are in GOP-held congressional
districts.
The tax plan threat comes on the heels of a landmark Lazard study
<https://www.lazard.com/media/450337/lazard-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-110.pdf>
that appeared before the Senate released its bill. Researchers concluded
that building new utility-scale renewable projects in certain regions
can be cheaper than existing fossil fuel sources. But the authors also
stressed that such progress depends on the renewable tax credits.
Both GOP tax bills follow the familiar pattern propping up the fossil
fuel industry while sowing deep uncertainty about the future of
renewables. At a time when solar and wind development has never been
more critical - or more profitable - President Trump and his
congressional allies are pushing a tax regime that would compromise
America's ability to fight the global climate crisis.
http://prospect.org/article/gop-tax-plan-pulls-plug-renewable-energy
*
**Giant West Antarctic iceberg disintegrates
<https://phys.org/news/2017-12-giant-west-antarctic-iceberg-disintegrates.html>*
An animation of the giant iceberg that calved off the Pine Island
Glacier in West Antarctica just over two months ago shows an unexpected
break up.
Satellite images revealed a 100-square-mile iceberg calving from
Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier (PIG) in September. The calving event
did not come as a complete surprise, but is a troubling sign for future
sea-level rise. Scientists expected the iceberg to drift far out into
the Southern Ocean before breaking up. However, it got stuck, probably
impeded by thick sea ice, before it started to disintegrate into many
smaller icebergs.
Dr Robert Larter, a marine geophysicist at British Antarctic Survey, who
flew over the PIG rift last season during his research cruise with the
German Alfred Wegener Institute, explains:
"What we're witnessing on Pine Island Glacier is worrying. We're now
seeing changes in the calving behaviour of the ice shelf, when for 68
years we saw a pattern of advance and retreat resulting in the calving
of a single large iceberg which left the ice front to approximately the
same place. The calving of icebergs in 2001, 2007 and 2013 are
well-documented. Each calving event returned the ice front to more or
less the same position and the ice shelf flowed into the sea again. But
with continuing thinning it was clear that sooner or later there would
have to be a change to this pattern – and this is what we are witnessing
now.
https://phys.org/news/2017-12-giant-west-antarctic-iceberg-disintegrates.html
[New Yorker radio]*
(audio) Praying for Tangier Island 21:00
<https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/praying-for-tangier-island-and-barry-blitts-presidents>*
Tangier Island is washing out to sea, and its residents may be among the
first American refugees of climate change. But that's not how they see
the loss of their island.
https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/praying-for-tangier-island-and-barry-blitts-presidents
*How the waste and inefficiency of neoliberalism attacks our children's
health <http://www.monbiot.com/2017/12/01/driven-mad/>*
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 29^th November 2017
Deregulation, the government and the newspapers assure us, saves money
and time and reduces frustration. That's the theory. But, as I see every
day, it doesn't quite work like this.
My youngest daughter's school has been trying to protect its children
from the toxic cloud in which they work and play. The teachers know how
much damage <http://www.monbiot.com/2017/03/05/car-sick/> traffic
pollution does to their lungs <https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/1306770/>,
hearts and brains <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26825441>. They
know that it reduces their cognitive development
<http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001792>,
their ability to concentrate
<https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/wp-content/uploads/advpub/2016/6/EHP299.acco.pdf>
and their capacity for exercise
<http://www.lung.org/our-initiatives/healthy-air/outdoor/air-pollution/children-and-air-pollution.html>.
They know it's a minor miracle that no one has yet been crushed by the
cars jostling to get as close as possible to the school gates. But
thanks to the government's refusal to legislate, there is little they
can do. Far from freeing us from effort, the absence of regulation
wastes everybody's time.
At my suggestion, the school invited the charity Living Streets
<https://www.livingstreets.org.uk/> to come in and enthuse the children
about walking or cycling to school. I attended the first assembly at
which one of their organisers spoke. She was lively, funny and
captivating. With the help of a giant puppet and the promise of badges
if they joined in, the children went wild for her, and for the cause.
The school, led by its committed headteacher, has done everything it can
to support the scheme.
For a few weeks, it worked. Everyone noticed the difference. No longer
were cars mounting the pavement – and almost mounting each other –
outside the gates. The children were using their legs, families were
talking to each other on the way. But the cars have crept back in, and
now, though the clever and catchy programme continues, we're almost back
where we started: school begins and ends under a cloud.
Some of the drivers are the people who were elbowing in before; others
occupy the space vacated by those who respect the scheme. Living Streets
will keep returning, but, now that the first flush of enthusiasm has
abated, sustaining the programme will be harder.
Aside from the damage to our children's health, it's the redundancy of
it all that gets to me. The government could solve much of this problem
at a stroke, with a duty on councils to impose the kind of parking ban
around schools at arrival and departure times that parts of Edinburgh
<http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14706064.Call_for_school_traffic_ban_as_Edinburgh_introduces_permanent_exclusion_zones/>
and Solihull now use
<http://www.itv.com/news/central/2017-09-05/solihull-schools-parking-ban/>.
Technologies such as numberplate recognition cameras and rising bollards
(both of which allow residents and drivers with a disability card to
pass, while excluding others) can make enforcement automatic.
Without this intervention, headteachers all over the country have to
take on the issue one car at a time. Add up their efforts and you're
likely to find that this pointless replication runs into hundreds –
perhaps thousands – of times the public labour that government action
would require. If there is one group of people whose time is both
stretched and socially valuable, it is headteachers.
Some schools have lobbied their councils for traffic restriction orders,
generally without success. But why should we have to fight the same
battle borough by borough for our children's health? Why should their
lung capacity be subject to a postcode lottery?
The lack of regulation also creates social tension. When I have gently
asked other parents not to park in front of the school gates – making
the passage difficult and dangerous for other families, and pumping
pollution straight into our children's faces – the outcome is rarely
positive. Last month a lollipop lady employed by a school in Colchester
to protect the children from traffic resigned because of the threats and
abuse she received
<http://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/15602339.Lollipop_lady_quits_after_being_targeted_by_angry_parents/>
from a few parents. Despite her uniform, she could exercise only moral
power, which simply bounces off some people. "Our children are now yet
again at risk when crossing the road," the headteacher remarked.
I've begun to realise that getting as close to the gates as possible is
not just about minimising the need to walk. It's also about being seen
in your new car. The bigger it is, the greater the incentive to be seen.
This could explain why some parents drive 100 metres to the school every
morning. By the time they find a parking place, they could have walked
back and forth three times.
Self-regulation works well in a commons – a resource controlled and
managed by a community
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/27/rich-assets-resources-prosperity-commons-george-monbiot>.
But the streets are not a commons. They are a state asset, that is
treated as a free for all
<http://www.monbiot.com/1994/01/01/the-tragedy-of-enclosure/>. When the
state owns a resource but won't control it, the community has neither
the right nor the power to regulate its use. All that is left is
voluntarism. The efforts of those who try to defend the common good are
undermined by free riders. Without regulation, the most selfish and
anti-social people dominate.
The government's efforts are pathetic. Its cycling and walking
investment strategy
<https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/603527/cycling-walking-investment-strategy.pdf>
is based on this rousing vision: "we want more people to have access to
safe, attractive routes for cycling and walking by 2040." Yes, 2040.
They bailed out the banks in hours. But our children's health can wait
until they have children of their own. It intends to halve its feeble
investment
<https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/603527/cycling-walking-investment-strategy.pdf>
in cycling and walking between now and 2021.
When I have raised this issue on social media I've been told "well it's
your fault for living in a posh part of London." But I don't live in
London, and the school has one of the poorest catchments in the county.
Personal contract purchase for cars has helped to universalise this
issue (as well as threatening another sub-prime crisis
<https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/10/car-loans-personal-contract-plans-vehicle-financial-crisis-pcp>).
Almost every school gate is now shrouded in pollution.
Air pollution disproportionately affects poorer communities
<http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/28882/7/Barnes%20and%20Chatterton%20%25282016%2529%20An%20environmental%20justice%20analysis%20of%20exposure%20to%20traffic-related%20pollutants%20in%20England%20and%20Wales%20%2528FINAL%2529.pdf>,
exposing their children to yet another disadvantage, as their lungs and
brains are stunted. One study suggests
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/apr/22/nearly-40-million-people-live-in-uk-areas-with-illegal-air-pollution>
that 38 million people here – 59% of the population – are immersed in
pollution above the legal limit. Only those who can afford to live in
villages and the leafy suburbs escape.
The state's failure to regulate has not delivered freedom. It has
delivered waste and inefficiency, helplessness and frustration, a loss
of trust in each other, and of belief in our democratic power to improve
our lives. Far from releasing us, it has snarled us up in traffic. And
it leaves a massive public health issue unaddressed, at whose scale we
can only begin to guess. Our children choke on the government's refusal
to govern.
http://www.monbiot.com/2017/12/01/driven-mad/
[Scientific American]
*El Nino Might Speed Up Climate Change
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/el-nino-might-speed-up-climate-change/>*
Scientists have evidence that El Nino boosts CO2 levels, and they are
pinning down how
Every two to seven years, abnormally warm water in the Pacific Ocean
causes an atmospheric disturbance called El Nino. It often makes extreme
weather worse in various places around the world: greater floods,
tougher droughts, more wildfires. Now scientists have new evidence
indicating El Nino conditions might also add extra carbon dioxide to the
atmosphere as well as lessen the ability of trees to absorb the
greenhouse gas...
As a carbon booster, El Nino could hasten rising temperatures, bringing
the world to dangerous thresholds sooner than thought. It could also
enhance feedbacks between climate and vegetation that could reduce
plants' ability to absorb CO2 in non-Nino years as well. If bad droughts
or wildfires kill many trees, for example, forests and their carbon
sequestering potential may take centuries to recover, if ever...
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/el-nino-might-speed-up-climate-change/
[Phys.Org]
*Study discovers why global warming will accelerate as CO2 levels rise
<https://phys.org/news/2017-11-global-co2.html>*
Global warming is likely to speed up as the Earth becomes increasingly
more sensitive to atmospheric CO₂ concentrations, scientists from the
University of Reading have warned.
In a new study, published this week in the prestigious journal PNAS, the
scientists explain that the influence of increasing levels of
atmospheric CO2 on global warming will become more severe over time
because the patterns of warming of the Earth's surface will lead to
reduced cloud cover in some sensitive regions and less heat being able
to escape into space.
Evidence suggests that the upper level of the Earth's atmosphere warms
faster than the surface in response to CO2 levels. However, the new
study shows that as CO2 levels increase further, the rate of warming in
the upper levels slows in comparison with that closer to the Earth's
surface.
Reduced contrast in temperature between the upper and lower levels of
the atmosphere causes decreased low altitude cloud cover over some areas
of the Earth's oceans, leading to more sunlight reaching the sea
surface, and therefore a more rapid rise in sea surface temperatures.
These conditions also impede the loss of heat from the atmosphere into
space, contributing to the accelerated surface warming in response to
rising CO2 concentrations.
These results emphasise the importance of rapidly reducing human caused
emissions of greenhouse gases to avoid the worst impacts from ongoing
climate change as discussed at the recent COP23 meeting in Bonn that
builds upon the 2017 Paris climate agreement.
https://phys.org/news/2017-11-global-co2.html
[Scientific American (blog)]
*Doom-and-Gloom Scenarios on Climate Change Won't Solve Our Problem
<https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/doom-and-gloom-scenarios-on-climate-change-wont-solve-our-problem/>*
Reframing the situation from one of despair to one of opportunity could
help to resolve the conflicts over climate change
About 80 percent of media coverage of climate change, and 90 percent of
coverage of reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
framed the subject in terms of disaster, according to a 2013 study
<http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/research/files/Climate%2520Change%2520in%2520the%2520Media.pdf>
by James Painter, head of the Journalism Fellowship Program at the
Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Some particularly
hysterical recent pieces
<http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html>
have even proclaimed that changes will occur so rapidly that the world
will be uninhabitable
<https://guymcpherson.com/climate-chaos/climate-change-summary-and-update/>
(and we will all be dead) in the next 10 years.
This tone and communications tactic is likely to be ineffective. Decades
of psychology research reveal that individuals are extremely poor at
assessing future negative consequences of current behaviors. Individuals
tend to employ emotion, rather than facts, to make judgements,
suggesting that warnings about the impact of climate change might not be
adequately evaluated by skeptics. Discussions of climate change instead
should be reframed to highlight opportunities for change and
possibilities for cultivating environmental and economic benefit.
If there is any hope of changing minds and behaviors on this crucial
issue, those of us driving discussions of climate change have a
responsibility to engage climate skeptics. Appeals using more optimistic
language might be our best strategy for doing so. Reframings must steer
clear of the endless quibbling over minor details of climate science
findings and instead repackage forecasts into more digestible and
immediate material. Such a strategy could revive dialogue and transform
skeptics into allies.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/doom-and-gloom-scenarios-on-climate-change-wont-solve-our-problem/
*(YouTube video ) Climate State is Back!
<http://climatestate.com/2017/12/02/climate-state-is-back/>*
... the channel is back and that is important, because it is the largest
with the scope on climate science, featuring hundreds of videos on that
subject.
We want to thank all of you who shared our recent coverage on this issue
in their social network, and especially we want to thank all the people
from all over the world, who signed our petition. Thank You, you made a
difference!
Glaciers Accelerate Toward Sea and may Speed Up further
<https://youtu.be/IKVj_AUw0Y0>
Two of the frozen continent's fastest-moving glaciers are shedding an
increasing amount of ice into the Amundsen Sea each year.
https://youtu.be/IKVj_AUw0Y0
http://climatestate.com/
*This Day in Climate History December 3, 2009
<http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/380473> - from D.R. Tucker*
December 3, 2009: MSNBC host Keith Olbermann calls out the hosts of
the Fox News Channel program "Fox and Friends" for selectively editing
a segment of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" to imply that host Jon
Stewart rejected the evidence of human-caused climate change.
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/380473
/
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