[TheClimate.Vote] December 19, 2017 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Tue Dec 19 09:08:20 EST 2017
/December 19, 2017
/
[Pipelines]
<http://mailchi.mp/climatenexus/mining-giant-spars-with-trade-groups-over-climate-china-unveils-carbon-market-plans-more?e=95b355344d>
Second court challenge filed over water quality certification for
Mountain Valley Pipeline
<http://www.roanoke.com/news/local/franklin_county/second-court-challenge-filed-over-water-quality-certification-for-mountain/article_8f8612ae-c9f3-5e20-9a95-802675230a7c.html><http://www.roanoke.com/news/local/franklin_county/second-court-challenge-filed-over-water-quality-certification-for-mountain/article_8f8612ae-c9f3-5e20-9a95-802675230a7c.html>
(Roanoke Times),
<http://www.roanoke.com/news/local/franklin_county/second-court-challenge-filed-over-water-quality-certification-for-mountain/article_8f8612ae-c9f3-5e20-9a95-802675230a7c.html>
Public hearing Tuesday on natural gas pipeline that would cross the
Potomac
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/public-hearing-tuesday-on-natural-gas-pipeline-that-would-cross-the-potomac/2017/12/18/9c3e6a42-e419-11e7-833f-155031558ff4_story.html>
(Washington Post $)
Before building a $400 million pipeline, make sure your neighbors are on
board
<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-19/a-400-million-barbecue-after-mexican-protesters-dig-up-pipeline>
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-19/a-400-million-barbecue-after-mexican-protesters-dig-up-pipeline
[Seattle TImes]
*Puyallup Tribe leads protest against liquefied-natural-gas plant at
Tacoma Port
<https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/puyallup-tribe-leads-protest-against-lng-plant-at-tacoma-port/>*
About 200 opponents sought to shut down access Monday to Puget Sound
Energy's (PSE) construction of a $310 million liquefied-natural-gas
(LNG) plant at the Port of Tacoma.
Some workers made their way into the plant Monday morning, but others
had been turned away as self-described "protectors" blocked access to a
road to the construction site. The actions continued into Monday
afternoon, with no injuries or violence reported, said Loretta Cool,
spokeswoman for the Tacoma Police Department. Two arrests were made for
misdemeanor offenses, including blocking traffic, she said...
Opponents' concerns include the risks of an explosion. And they argue
against the utility's making new investments in natural gas at a time of
increased concerns about climate change and fossil-fuel emissions.
The "proposed LNG plant poses significant and potentially catastrophic
threats not just to our fishing rights and resources, but to our
homeland, people and neighbors," wrote Bill Sterud, chairman of the
Puyallup Tribal Council in a column published earlier this month in The
(Tacoma) News Tribune.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/puyallup-tribe-leads-protest-against-lng-plant-at-tacoma-port/
[350 Seattle]
https://twitter.com/350_Seattle/status/942794298814210049
@350_Seattle #StandWithPuyallup #NoLNG
https://www.facebook.com/NativeDailyNetwork/videos/763637640495597/
https://www.facebook.com/nolngtacoma/photos/a.161754851241362.1073741828.160568274693353/164972117586302/
"This is the spirit of the people fighting back," Dakota Case, Puyallup
Nation.
Right now activists are blocking all 3 entrances of a huge proposed LNG
(i.e: fracked gas) facility in Tacoma, WA, which is being built without
it's proper permits and against the wishes of the Puyallup Nation--
whose treaty rights it violates.
[Greenbiz]
*AXA: 4C warming makes the world uninsurable
<https://www.greenbiz.com/article/axa-4c-warming-makes-world-uninsurable>*
Insurance giant AXA has announced a quadrupling of its 2020 green
investment target from $3.53 billion to $14.13 billion as the company's
CEO warned more than 4 degrees Celsius of warming this century would
make the world "uninsurable."...
In addition, the firm said it will increase its coal divestment fivefold
to reach $2.83 billion by moving its money away from companies "which
derive more than 30 percent of their revenues from coal, have a
coal-based energy mix that exceeds 30 percent, actively build new coal
plants, or produce more than 20 million tonnes of coal per year."
It also announced plans to divest more than $824 million from main oil
sands producers and associated pipelines, alongside the "discontinuation
of further investments in these businesses," reasoning that oil sands
are "an extremely carbon-intensive form of energy and a serious cause of
environmental pollution."...
"We realize that contributing to the Paris Agreement targets is also
about making clear choices in what we'll no longer finance, especially
when there are good alternatives available," said Timmermans. "We are
taking this decisive step as part of our overall ambition to support the
energy transition."...
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/axa-4c-warming-makes-world-uninsurable
-
[Insurance broker]
*What Would a World Without Insurance Look Like?
<http://www.ccinsb.com/world-without-insurance/>*
[short term]Here are five likely realities:
Homeownership would be for the wealthy
Driving a car would be a financial risk
Necessary and risky jobs would be desolate
It would be near to impossible to start a business
The economy would be weaker
http://www.ccinsb.com/world-without-insurance/
[theGuardian]
*Trump will drop climate change from US National Security Strategy
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/18/trump-drop-climate-change-national-security-strategy>*
President to outline new approach in unprecedented White House speech
Obama administration added climate to list of threats to US interests
Instead, Trump's NSS paper will emphasis the need for the US to regain
its economic competitiveness in the world.
That stance represents a sharp change from the Obama administration's
NSS, which placed climate change as one of the main dangers facing the
nation and made building international consensus on containing global
warming a national security priority.
The Federalist website, which first reported that Trump would drop
climate change from the NSS, quoted the draft document as suggesting the
Trump administration would actively oppose efforts to reduce the burning
of oil, gas and coal for energy.
"US leadership is indispensable to countering an anti-growth energy
agenda that is detrimental to US economic and energy security
interests," the website quoted the document as saying.
"Given future global energy demand, much of the developing world will
require fossil fuels, as well as other forms of energy, to power their
economies and lift their people out of poverty."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/18/trump-drop-climate-change-national-security-strategy
-
[Whitehouse.gov]
*President Donald J. Trump Announces a National Security Strategy to
Advance America's Interests
<https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-announces-national-security-strategy-advance-americas-interests/>*
By: President Donald J. Trump
A NEW NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY FOR A NEW ERA: Less than a year after
taking office, President Donald J. Trump is unveiling a new National
Security Strategy that sets a positive strategic direction for the
United States that will restore America's advantages in the world and
build upon our country's great strengths...
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-announces-national-security-strategy-advance-americas-interests/
-
[Commentary from THE CENTER FOR CLIMATE & SECURITY]
*Reaction: The New National Security Strategy and Climate Change
<https://climateandsecurity.org/2017/12/18/reaction-the-new-national-security-strategy-and-climate-change/>*
In short, the NSS does not advance the bipartisan national security
consensus on climate change. Indeed, it demonstrates a step backward.
However, the document is vague enough, and the tide on the issue in the
U.S. has changed so significantly, that it will likely have little
effect on how the military and national security communities, on both
sides of the aisle (or no side of aisle), address the threat. That said,
here's to hoping that the next version better captures this country's
national security consensus on the matter. Not least as the risks are
growing with each passing year.
https://climateandsecurity.org/2017/12/18/reaction-the-new-national-security-strategy-and-climate-change/
[video Peter Sinclair's Climate Denial Crock of the Week]
*"This isn't a Double A Mate" Aussies Debate Tesla's Giant Battery
<https://climatecrocks.com/2017/12/18/this-isnt-a-double-a-mate-aussies-debate-teslas-giant-battery/>*
News and comedy show from Australia displays humorous news take that we
need more of in the US.
Is Elon Musk's Huge Battery in South Australia A Waste of Money? (2017)
<https://youtu.be/vgOgW0IEWeg>
https://youtu.be/vgOgW0IEWeg
https://climatecrocks.com/2017/12/18/this-isnt-a-double-a-mate-aussies-debate-teslas-giant-battery/
*East Antarctic Ice Has a Wild Past. It May Be a Harbinger
<https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/12/east-antarctic-ice-retreat-global-warming/>*
The East Antarctic ice sheet has fluctuated wildly in the past, a study
finds-adding to concerns of a dramatic meltback in the future.
The ice covering East Antarctica, more than 12,000 feet thick in many
places, has long been considered more stable and permanent than the West
Antarctic Ice Sheet-and thus more likely to weather global warming
unscathed. But the new research, published this week in Nature by Sean
Gulick of the University of Texas and his colleagues, reinforces a
growing concern that large swaths of East Antarctica are more vulnerable
than once thought.
In February 2014, the researchers steamed along the Sabrina Coast of
East Antarctica, picking their way among icebergs, in the icebreaker
Nathaniel B. Palmer. A low thud resounded in the air every few seconds -
the muffled burst of submerged air guns towed by the ship. The sound
waves penetrated as far as 1,500 feet into the seabed before reflecting
off internal boundaries in the sediments. Detectors at the surface
recorded those echoes.
These seismic profiles, as they're called, revealed hundreds of layers
of mud, sand, and gravel that had been eroded off the Antarctic
continent over millions of years by the slow action of glaciers, then
carried out to sea. The deeper layers showed that Antarctic ice first
appeared around 50 million years ago-just 15 million years after the
dinosaurs died off, and "a lot earlier than we thought," says
paleo-oceanographer Amelia Shevenell of the University of South Florida,
who was on the ship.
The succession of layers allowed Shevenell and her colleagues to
reconstruct the ice sheet's alternating episodes of expansion and
retreat over the tens of millions of years that followed its initial
formation.
During cold periods, the researchers found, the ice advanced 100 miles
or more beyond its present-day edge, bulldozing out onto the continental
shelf. In warm times, it ice shrank to less than its present-day size,
retreating far into the Aurora Basin.
But the team was most intrigued by deep scars they found buried hundreds
of feet beneath the seafloor. The V-shaped notches, cut into underlying
layers of sand and mud, looked like "tunnel valleys": Grooves cut by
meltwater flowing under the ice sheet while it was sitting on the seafloor.
At over half a mile wide and 500 feet deep, the largest of these grooves
could have carried as much water as the Mississippi River - for a
geologic instant. The researchers think they might have been formed by
catastrophic events, when vast lakes of melt water on the glacier's
surface suddenly drained through cracks in the ice.
"For a short period of time you have a Niagara Falls amount of water
pouring down to the base of the ice sheet," says Slawek Tulaczyk, a
glaciologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not
part of the research team but who studies the flow of water beneath ice
sheets. When that water hits soft sediments under the ice, "it will just
chew into that and erode a tunnel quite readily."
One or more of these floods occurred during at least 11 episodes in the
period between 30 million and six million years ago, the new study
finds. The floods likely happened during periods of tumultuous
transition, when the ice sheet had expanded to well beyond its
present-day size. The ice was then hit by a rapidly warming climate,
with hot summers causing vast lakes of meltwater to form on its
surface-and it roared into retreat.
The air above most of the East and West Antarctic ice sheets today is
too cold for them to melt at the surface. They are mainly shrinking from
the underside, in spots where the edge of the ice is strafed by deep,
warm ocean currents.
During much of the time that Antarctica was repeatedly losing so much
ice off its topside, levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were
similar to what they are today - perhaps only a little higher. By the
end of the century, DeConto says, "we're going to be climbing way
outside of that range."
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/12/east-antarctic-ice-retreat-global-warming/
[Naomi Klein]
*Hope Trumps Nope: A Blueprint for Resistance
<https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2018-1-january-february/feature/hope-trumps-nope-blueprint-for-resistance>*
To build the world we want, we must dare to dream big and out loud
This may sound alarmist, but I have interviewed the leading scientists
in the world on this question, and their research shows that it's simply
a neutral description of reality. The window during which there is time
to lower emissions sufficiently to avoid truly catastrophic warming is
closing rapidly. Lots of social movements have adopted Samuel Beckett's
famous line "Try again. Fail again. Fail better" as a lighthearted
motto. I've always liked the attitude; we can't be perfect, we won't
always win, but we should strive to improve. The trouble is, Beckett's
dictum doesn't work for climate-not at this stage in the game. If we
keep failing to lower emissions, if we keep failing to kick-start the
transition in earnest away from fossil fuels and to an economy based on
renewables, if we keep dodging the question of wasteful consumption and
the quest for more and more and bigger and bigger, there won't be more
opportunities to fail better. Nearly everything is moving faster than
the climate change modeling projected, including Arctic sea-ice loss,
ice sheet collapse, ocean warming, sea level rise, and coral bleaching.
The next time voters in countries around the world go to the polls, more
sea ice will have melted, more coastal land will have been lost, more
species will have disappeared for good. The chance for us to keep
temperatures below what it would take for island nations such as, say,
Tuvalu or the Maldives to be saved from drowning becomes that much
slimmer. These are irreversible changes-we don't get a do-over on a
drowned country.
The latest peer-reviewed science tells us that if we want a good shot at
protecting coastal cities in my son's lifetime-including metropolises
like New York City and Mumbai-then we need to get off fossil fuels with
superhuman speed. A paper from Oxford University that came out during
the U.S. presidential campaign, published in the Applied Energy journal,
concluded that for humanity to have a fifty-fifty chance of meeting the
temperature targets set in the climate accord negotiated in Paris at the
end of 2015, every new power plant would have to be zero-carbon starting
in 2018. That's the second year of the Trump presidency....
https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2018-1-january-february/feature/hope-trumps-nope-blueprint-for-resistance
[theGuardian]
*Scientists have beaten down the best climate denial argument
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/dec/18/scientists-have-beaten-down-the-best-climate-denial-argument>*
Clouds don't act as a climate thermostat, and they're not going to save
us from global warming
Climate deniers have come up with a lot of arguments about why we
shouldn't worry about global warming - about 200 of them - but most are
quite poor, contradictory, and easily debunked by consulting the
peer-reviewed scientific literature. The cleverest climate contrarians
settle on the least implausible argument - that equilibrium climate
sensitivity (ECS - how much a doubling of the amount of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere will increase Earth's surface temperature) is low,
meaning that the planet will warm relatively slowly in response to human
carbon pollution.
But they have to explain how that can be the case, because there are a
lot of factors that amplify global warming. For example, a warmer
atmosphere holds more water vapor, which is itself a greenhouse gas,
adding further warming. Warming also melts ice, leaving Earth's surface
less reflective, absorbing more sunlight. There are a number of these
amplifying 'feedbacks,' but few that would act to significantly slow
global warming.
Clouds are one possible exception, because they both act to amplify
global warming (being made of water vapor) and dampen it (being white
and reflective). Which effect wins out depends on the type of cloud, and
so whether clouds act to accelerate or slow global warming depends on
exactly how the formation of different types of clouds changes in a
hotter world. That's hard to predict, so many contrarians have wishfully
argued that clouds will essentially act as a thermostat to control
global warming.
Research suggests if anything, clouds amplify global warming
https://twitter.com/PatrickTBrown31/status/938470170103660546/photo/1
A new study published in Nature by Stanford scientists Patrick Brown and
Ken Caldeira found that so far, the global climate models that best
simulate the Earth's global energy imbalance tend to predict the most
future global warming. These results suggest the ECS is around 3.7°C.
This is higher than the previous best estimate of 3.1°C, and if correct,
would shrink our carbon budget by about 15%.
The study found that the biggest contributor to the difference between
the accurate and inaccurate models was in how well they simulated cloud
changes. And while it's just one study, several prior papers arrived at
similar conclusions.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/dec/18/scientists-have-beaten-down-the-best-climate-denial-argument
[NY Times]
*E.P.A. Employees Spoke Out. Then Came Scrutiny of Their Email
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/17/us/politics/epa-pruitt-media-monitoring.html>*
December 18, 2017:
"One Environmental Protection Agency employee spoke up at a private
lunch held near the agency headquarters, saying she feared the nation
might be headed toward an "environmental catastrophe." Another staff
member, from Seattle, sent a letter to Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A.
administrator, raising similar concerns about the direction of the
agency. A third, from Philadelphia, went to a rally where he protested
against agency budget cuts.
"Three different agency employees, in different jobs, from three
different cities, but each encountered a similar outcome: Federal
records show that within a matter of days, requests were submitted for
copies of emails written by them that mentioned either Mr. Pruitt or
President Trump, or any communication with Democrats in Congress that
might have been critical of the agency.
"The requests came from a Virginia-based lawyer working with America
Rising, a Republican campaign research group that specializes in
helping party candidates and conservative groups find damaging
information on political rivals, and which, in this case, was looking
for information that could undermine employees who had criticized the
E.P.A.
"Now a company affiliated with America Rising, named Definers Public
Affairs, has been hired by the E.P.A. to provide 'media monitoring,'
in a move the agency said was intended to keep better track of
newspaper and video stories about E.P.A. operations nationwide.
"But the sequence of events has created a wave of fear among
employees, particularly those already subject to special scrutiny, who
said official assurances hardly put them at ease."..
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/17/us/politics/epa-pruitt-media-monitoring.html
*An American Beach Story: When Property Rights Clash with the Rising Sea
<https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16122017/beach-erosion-sea-level-rise-property-rights-massachusetts-government-storm-nourishment-project>*
The American ethos of individualism is clashing with efforts to protect
coastal communities against sea level rise, often to the homeowners'
detriment.
By Nicholas Kusnetz
Sixty years ago, Don Hourihan and his father laid the bricks for a
rustic home on the Humarock peninsula in southern Massachusetts. Today,
engineers warn that a storm could one day burst through this narrow
sandbar that separates the Atlantic Ocean and the South River tidal
marsh, right next to his house....
This year, the town of Scituate, which includes Humarock, proposed
building a $9.6 million artificial dune
<https://www.scituatema.gov/sites/scituatema/files/uploads/humarock_finalreport_20170630.pdf>
and raised road to protect the homes...
As public officials at all levels of government try to protect the
nation's coasts from rising seas, they're confronting an American ethos
that champions individualism over central planning. The federal
government has no master plan for adapting to sea level rise. States
often leave critical decisions about coastal infrastructure to local
governments. And many people would prefer to protect their own property...
Coastal towns face a sobering reality: They've been losing land for a
century, and they'll lose even more in the decades ahead. To fight this
encroachment, states, towns and the federal government have spent
billions of dollars bolstering dunes and beaches with sand pumped from
the seafloor or imported from inland mines-more than $3.1 billion from
2007-2016, according to data compiled by Western Carolina University...
Beach building is one of the more effective, environmentally friendly
measures against coastal erosion, according to geologists and engineers.
But some beachfront homeowners have resisted, particularly when they've
been obliged to sign easements that open their property to public access...
Without some form of protection, Humarock faces a grim future.
"Because everything is storm driven here, it's not a 'how long'," said
Ramsey, the engineer. The worst-case scenario is a nor'easter creating
another inlet, destroying whatever is in the way and turning part of
Humarock into an island. A new breach could also damage the marsh,
magnifying the risk for many more homes and businesses. "When it
happens, it's just going to happen."
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16122017/beach-erosion-sea-level-rise-property-rights-massachusetts-government-storm-nourishment-project
[audio and transcript]
*Researching How To Fight Climate Change With Geoengineering
<https://www.npr.org/2017/12/17/571443704/researching-fighting-climate-change-with-geoengineering>*
NPR's Lulu Garcia Navarro talks with Rep. Jerry McNerney, Democrat of
California, about his new bill to research the effects and risks of
"geoengineering" the planet as a way to fight climate change.
MCNERNEY: (Laughter) Plenty could go wrong. But I think the biggest
thing is that we might change the climate patterns enough to disrupt
national production of wheat or food. It could cause severe flooding and
severe droughts in certain parts of the world. So I think the risks are
very, very high, and we need to have a clear understanding of what the
science tells us about these projects....
We have to reduce carbon emissions first. That's our first priority.
That's the thing we have to do with all vigor. But, you know, it takes
years or decades for carbon buildup in the atmosphere to have a
noticeable impact. And so we're just on the leading edge of climate
change, and there's about 10 years of carbon emissions out there that
haven't even impacted us fully yet. So we may be in for some truly
catastrophic changes. We need to know what the alternatives are....
Isn't there an old saying that if you're in a hole, stop digging? Well,
we're clearly in a hole now. Climate change is becoming more obvious,
and if we don't stop emissions or reduce emissions, then it's just going
to accelerate. So we have to know what our options are.
https://www.npr.org/2017/12/17/571443704/researching-fighting-climate-change-with-geoengineering
-
*[**Free PDF download
<https://www.boell.de/sites/default/files/bigbadfix_a4_col4web.pdf?dimension1=division_iup>**]*
*The Big Bad Fix: The case against geoengineering
<https://www.boell.de/en/2017/12/01/big-bad-fix-case-against-geoengineering>*
Date of Publication: December 2017
Number of Pages: 76
Language of Publication: English
The "Big Bad Fix" provides policy makers, journalists, NGO activists,
social movements, and other change agents with a comprehensive overview
of the key actors, technologies and fora relevant in the geoengineering
discourse. It delivers a sound background analysis of the history of
geoengineering, the various vested interests shaping it, and case
studies on some of the most important technologies and experiments.
It calls for an urgent and immediate ban on the deployment and outdoor
testing of Solar Radiation Management technologies for their potential
to suspend human rights, democracy, and international peace. It argues
for a governance of geoengineering that is participatory and
transparent, grounded in international law, built on the precautionary
principle and informed by a rigorous debate on real, existing,
transformative and just climate policies and practices.
It is a call to action for a movement of movements to come together to
oppose geoengineering as a technofix for climate change and as a threat
to world peace, democracy and human rights.
download
<https://www.boell.de/sites/default/files/bigbadfix_a4_col4web.pdf?dimension1=division_iup>
https://www.boell.de/en/2017/12/01/big-bad-fix-case-against-geoengineering
*This Day in Climate History December 19, 2008
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/us/21drilling.html>- from D.R. Tucker*
December 19, 2008:
Tim DeChristopher engages in civil disobedience during an (illegal)
Bureau of Land Management oil and gas lease auction in Salt Lake City,
Utah. He is later prosecuted for his activism and sentenced to two
years in prison. /Tim DeChristopher, bidder #70/
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/us/21drilling.html $
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