[TheClimate.Vote] May 27, 2017 - Daily Global Warming News

[Richard Pauli]

/May 27, 2017/

Governments sued over *climate change*, with banks and firms next 
<https://www.newscientist.com/article/2132927-governments-sued-over-climate-change-with-banks-and-firms-next/> 

If you can't beat them, sue them. Citizens are increasingly taking 
governments to court over climate change inaction, with financial 
lenders - and possibly big firms - next in the firing line.
Some 894 climate change cases have now been filed in 24 countries, 
according to a report published last week by the United Nations 
Environment Programme and Columbia Law School's Sabin Center for Climate 
Change Law in New York.
By some distance, most - 654 - have been in the US. Australia sits in 
second place, with 80 cases, and the UK third, with 49. The number of 
countries with climate cases has tripled since 2014.
Citizens have filed the vast majority of these cases against 
governments, with a handful lodged against fossil fuel companies.
Separately, campaign group ClientEarth has written to energy giants BP 
and Glencore warning them of the risk of investor lawsuits based on 
over-optimistic statements about future fossil fuel demand in their 
reporting.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2132927-governments-sued-over-climate-change-with-banks-and-firms-next/


    US fossil fuel groups pull out of *climate change*court case
    <https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-lawsuit-idUSKBN18M0DG>

Three fossil fuel industry groups dropped their attempt to intervene in 
a court case over climate change this week after failing to reach an 
agreement on a unified legal position on climate science, court filings 
show.
The American Petroleum Institute (API) and the National Association of 
Manufacturers (NAM), prominent trade groups in the oil and gas industry, 
along with the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), 
intervened in a federal case in which a group of teenagers sued the U.S. 
government for violating their constitutional rights by causing climate 
change.
The three groups were arguing that a judgment requiring the government 
to tighten environmental regulations would harm their business 
interests. But discord arose among them after a judge ordered them to 
submit a joint filing stating their views on climate science.
A lawyer representing the three groups said in a court hearing on May 18 
that they were unable to agree on the causes and effects of human 
activity and greenhouse gas emissions on the climate, transcripts of the 
proceedings show.
"It seems pretty clear that the trade group intervenors have recognized 
that there may be costs as well as benefits to intervention and that 
they might be better off leaving the defense of the case to the 
government," said Seth Jaffe, an environmental lawyer who is a partner 
at Foley Hoag in Boston. He is not involved in the case.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-lawsuit-idUSKBN18M0DG


    Norway's $950 billion wealth fund commissions research on*climate
    change* <https://www.reuters.com/article/norway-swf-idUSO9N1HC00I>

The research arm of Norway's sovereign wealth fund has awarded grants 
for two projects on how climate change affects the economy and capital 
markets, it said on Friday.
The studies will be carried out at Columbia University and New York 
University, it added.
Norway's sovereign wealth fund, the world's largest with assets of $950 
billion, has been built with revenues from the country's oil and gas 
industry.
https://www.reuters.com/article/norway-swf-idUSO9N1HC00I

*So much water pulsed through a melting glacier that it warped the 
Earth's crust
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/05/25/so-much-water-pulsed-through-a-melting-glacier-that-it-warped-the-earths-crust/>*NASA 
scientists detected a pulse of melting  ice and water traveling through 
a major glacier in Greenland that was so big that it warped the solid 
Earth — a surge equivalent in mass to 18,000 Empire State Buildings.
The pulse — which occurred during the 2012 record melt year — traveled 
nearly 15 miles through the Rink Glacier in western Greenland over four 
months before reaching the sea, the researchers said.
"It's a gigantic mass," said Eric Larour, one of the study's authors and 
a researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "It is able to bend 
the bedrock around it."...
Richard Alley, a glaciologist at Penn State University who was not 
involved in the study, explained it this way:
"Find a bed," Alley said by email. "Put a little piece of tape on the 
sheet.  Put your fist right next to the tape and push down, while 
watching the tape.  The tape will move down as you push down, and also 
will move horizontally toward your fist just a little. Put your fist 
farther away, and the tape won't move as much.  Push harder, and it will 
move more. While pushing down, slide your fist past the tape, and you'll 
see a pattern of vertical and horizontal motions of the tape."...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/05/25/so-much-water-pulsed-through-a-melting-glacier-that-it-warped-the-earths-crust/
*Mass transport waves amplified by intense Greenland melt and detected 
in solid Earth deformation 
<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017GL073478/full>*
Plain Language Summary
It has become well known that seasonal ice flow variability of Greenland 
outlet glaciers may often be associated with the drainage of 
supraglacial lakes that accumulate meltwater during summer. However, 
tracking the details is inevitably limited due to the fact that the 
mechanisms and rates of meltwater transfer are hidden from view, and 
theoretical models are fraught with a number of difficulties. Here we 
use a previously unrecognized source of data that constrain the mass 
transport during a season of intense Greenland melting and document the 
evolution of a mass transport wave as it passes down glacier. The 
breakthrough is twofold: demonstration of the power of the new technique 
and the first measurement of the mass amplitude. The technique is 
effectively using the measurement of the deformed solid Earth elastic 
response as a filter that uniquely responds to neighboring glacier mass 
changes. We quantify that the wave through Rink Glacier is enormous in 
terms of its mass transport, amounting to about half of the average 
annual discharge during 2000-2005, and travels at an average speed of 
7.1 km/month. Our mass transport wave measurement is the first of its 
kind, on any of the major outlet glaciers of either Greenland or Antarctica.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017GL073478/full


    Can't sleep? Maybe*global warming*is to blame
    <http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-climate-change-sleep-20170522-story.html>

In a paper published Friday in Science Advances, researchers show that 
when local temperatures get unusually high people don't sleep as well as 
they usually do. And if climate trends continue, we can expect to have 
more frequent heat waves that also last longer.
"There are going to be lots and lots of impacts of climate change and 
this is just another factor in a mosaic of negative factors," said Nick 
Obradovich, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and a 
research scientist at the MIT media lab, who led the work.
If you've ever weathered a particularly sweaty summer in a stuffy 
apartment with no air conditioning, then you know how hard it can be to 
fall asleep when the temperature is sky high.
It turns out that we actually need to cool down a bit before we go to 
sleep. Previous research has shown that just before bedtime our core 
temperature dips, signaling that it's time for some shut-eye.
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-climate-change-sleep-20170522-story.html


    Barack Obama on food and *climate change*: 'We can still act and it
    won't be too late'
    <https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/may/26/barack-obama-food-climate-change>

uring the course of my presidency, I made climate change a top priority, 
because I believe that, for all the challenges that we face, this is the 
one that will define the contours of this century more dramatically 
perhaps than the others. No nation, whether it's large or small, rich or 
poor, will be immune from the impacts of climate change. We are already 
experiencing it in America, where some cities are seeing floods on sunny 
days, where wildfire seasons are longer and more dangerous, where in our 
arctic state, Alaska, we're seeing rapidly eroding shorelines, and 
glaciers receding at a pace unseen in modern times.
Over my eight years in office, we dramatically increased our generation 
of clean energy, we acted to curtail our use of dirty energy, and we 
invested in energy efficiency across the board. At the 2015 climate 
change summit in Paris, we helped lead the world to the first 
significant global agreement for a low-carbon future.
But here's the thing: even if every country somehow puts the brakes on 
emissions, climate change would still have an impact on our world for 
years to come. Our changing climate is already making it more difficult 
to produce food, and we've already seen shrinking yields and spiking 
food prices that, in some cases, are leading to political instability. 
And when most of the world's poor work in agriculture, the stark 
imbalances that we've worked so hard to close between developed and 
developing countries will be even tougher to close. The cost will be 
borne by people in poor nations that are least equipped to handle it. In 
fact, some of the refugee flows into Europe originate not only from 
conflict, but also from places where there are food shortages, which 
will get far worse as climate change continues. So if we don't take the 
action necessary to slow and ultimately stop these trends, the migration 
that has put such a burden on Europe already will just continue to get 
worse.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/may/26/barack-obama-food-climate-change


    TOP WH ADVISER: Trump Will Choose The Economy Over*Global Warming*
    <http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/26/top-wh-adviser-trump-will-choose-the-economy-over-global-warming/>

White House chief economic adviser Gary Cohn angered German officials 
Thursday when he said President Donald Trump would choose growing the 
economy over fighting global warming if the two goals came into conflict.
"If it comes to a choice between measures to curtail global warming 
under the 2015 Paris climate accord and growing the U.S. economy, 
economic considerations would prevail," Cohn told reporters on Air Force 
One Thursday.
Cohn's statement comes as European officials lobby Trump to stay party 
to the Paris agreement, which the Obama administration joined in 2016 
without the advice and consent of the Senate. Trump promised to withdraw 
from the Paris agreement on the campaign trail, but it's unknown if the 
president will keep his promise.
http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/26/top-wh-adviser-trump-will-choose-the-economy-over-global-warming/


    G7 summit agrees on countering terrorism but not*climate change*
    <http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40055027>

Why no deal on climate change?
"The question of the Paris climate accord is still hanging," said Mr 
Gentiloni.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the discussions with Mr Trump had 
been "intensive".
"The United States made clear that it has not yet made its decision and 
will not do so here, but rather will continue to work on this," she said.
President Trump, who once dismissed global warming as a "hoax", has 
previously threatened to pull out of the Paris agreement.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40055027


    What the U.S. Could Learn from the Dutch on*Climate Change*
    <https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607942/what-the-us-could-learn-from-the-dutch-on-climate-change/>

Earlier this month, the Netherlands completed one of the largest 
offshore wind farms in the world, as an accelerating wind boom finally 
helps the country make real progress on its renewable energy goals.
The 600-megawatt Gemini wind park, operating 150 turbines in the North 
Sea, will serve some 1.5 million citizens. Several other major offshore 
wind farms are under development as well, which will collectively push 
total wind capacity to nearly 4.5 gigawatts by 2023 (see "The Wind Fuels 
the North Sea's Next Energy Boom").
"As a country we were heavily dependent on fossil fuels, and our way to 
renewables has been bumpy," Sharon Dijksma, the nation's minister for 
the environment, told MIT Technology Review this week. "So this 
government decided that we needed to step up the pace."
Indeed, the Netherlands had to take bigger swings to meet a binding 
requirement to reach 14 percent renewable energy sources by 2020 under a 
European agreement, as well as emission reduction targets under the 
Paris climate accords. Clean energy sources currently account for around 
6 percent of generation there, lagging well behind most of its European 
peers.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607942/what-the-us-could-learn-from-the-dutch-on-climate-change/

*NEW SOURCE OF METHANE DISCOVERED IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN 
<https://cage.uit.no/news/new-source-methane-discovered-arctic-ocean/>*
A reservoir of abiotic methane has been discovered in the Arctic Ocean. 
This means that there is more of the greenhouse gas trapped under the 
seabed than previously thought.  By: Maja Sojtaric
Methane, a highly effective greenhouse gas, is usually produced by 
decomposition of organic material, a complex process involving bacteria 
and microbes.
But there is another type of methane that can appear under specific 
circumstances: Abiotic methane is formed by chemical reactions in the 
oceanic crust beneath the seafloor.
New findings by a team of CAGE scientists show that deep water gas 
hydrates, icy substances in the sediments that trap huge amounts of the 
methane, can be a reservoir for abiotic methane. One such reservoir was 
recently discovered on the ultraslow spreading Knipovich ridge, in the 
deep Fram Strait of the Arctic Ocean. The study suggests that abiotic 
methane could supply vast systems of methane hydrate throughout the Arctic.
The results were recently published in Geology online and will be 
featured in the journal´s May issue.
https://cage.uit.no/news/new-source-methane-discovered-arctic-ocean/


*This Day in Climate History May 27, 2008 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/business/27exxon.html>-  from D.R. 
Tucker*
May 27, 2008: The New York Times reports: Rockefellers Seek Change at Exxon

    "The Rockefeller family built one of the great American fortunes by
    supplying the nation with oil. Now history has come full circle:
    some family members say it is time to start moving beyond the oil age."
    The family members have thrown their support behind a shareholder
    rebellion that is ruffling feathers at Exxon Mobil, the giant oil
    company descended from John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust.
    The resolutions ask Exxon to take the threat of global warming more
    seriously and look for alternatives to spewing greenhouse gases into
    the air...
    One resolution would urge the company to study the impact of global
    warming on poor countries, another would encourage Exxon to reduce
    its emissions and a third would encourage it to do more research on
    renewable energy sources like solar panels and wind turbines....
    A fourth resolution, ...would strip Rex W. Tillerson of his position
    as chairman of Exxon's board, forcing the company to separate that
    job from the chief executive's job.
    "The truth is that Exxon Mobil is profiting in the short term from
    investments and decisions made many years ago, and by focusing on a
    narrow path that ignores the rapidly shifting energy landscape
    around the world," she added.
    The resolution on Exxon’s chairmanship was offered for several years
    before the Rockefellers became publicly involved and last year was
    supported by 40 percent of shareholders who voted. Royal Dutch Shell
    and BP already separate the positions of chairman and chief
    executive, as do many other companies.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/business/27exxon.html

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