[TheClimate.Vote] October 6, 2017 - Daily Global Warming News

[Richard Pauli]

/October 6, 2017/

*Dutch Regulator Warns Banks and Insurers to Factor In Climate Change 
<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-05/dutch-regulator-tasks-banks-and-insurers-on-climate-change-risk>*
Global warming increases chances of costly high-impact storms
Central bank is working on developing climate stress tests
Banks, insurers, and other financial institutions must do more to take 
into account the risks posed by climate change to their business, a 
Dutch Central Bank study said.
As global warming increases the risk of extreme weather events, 
regulators are giving more attention to its economic and market 
implications, with estimates showing that a single high-impact storm 
could cause damages of as much as 60 billion euros ($71 billion), 
according to the report published on Thursday. The Netherlands, which is 
largely below sea level, runs an inordinate risk of being affected by 
such events.
"Dutch insurers will have to deal with an increasing claims-burden as a 
result of climate-related damage," the central bank said in the report. 
"This in turn may lead to shock-induced price rises in premiums. 
Furthermore, climate change is making it more difficult to estimate the 
likelihood of extreme weather."
The study also points out risks that may arise from the transition to a 
low-carbon economy. A majority of financial institutions have yet to 
include "all relevant energy label data in their risk management 
systems," and this may undermine market acceptance and the "value of 
office buildings that do not meet this requirement."
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-05/dutch-regulator-tasks-banks-and-insurers-on-climate-change-risk


*After climate crackdown, TransCanada scraps major tar sands pipeline 
<https://thinkprogress.org/transcanada-scraps-energy-east-9d45aa211463/>*
Blame (or thank) Canada's regulatory board.
After the Canadian government decided to look closely at the potential 
climate impacts of the project, tar sands pipeline developer TransCanada 
scrapped plans to build a pipeline from the Alberta tar sands to the 
East Coast of Canada, where oil would have been loaded on tankers bound 
for refineries in the Gulf Coast.
In a press release Thursday, the company - which is also behind the 
controversial Keystone XL project - said the decision to cancel the 
Energy East project, a tar sands pipeline to New Brunswick, and the 
Eastern Mainline project, a natural gas pipeline along the northern side 
of Lake Ontario, came "after careful review of changed circumstances."
The Canadian National Energy Board told the company in late August that 
the projects'
environmental reviews would look at the total lifecycle greenhouse gas 
(GHG) emissions associated with the projects - including from 
extracting, processing, transporting, refining, and eventually burning 
the fossil fuels.
"The Board typically considers direct GHG emissions from construction 
and operations activities when assessing facilities applications," the 
board wrote in a letter to TransCanada. "Given increasing public 
interest in GHG emissions, together with increasing governmental actions 
and commitments (including the federal government's stated interest in 
assessing upstream GHG emissions associated with major pipelines), the 
Board is of the view that it should also consider indirect GHG emissions 
in its [National Energy Board] Act public interest determination for 
each of the Projects."
https://thinkprogress.org/transcanada-scraps-energy-east-9d45aa211463/
*TransCanada kills controversial Energy East Pipeline project* 
<https://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCAKBN1CA19K-OCABS>
...The decision to scrap the C$15 billion ($12 billion) project came 
nearly a month after the company asked regulators to suspend the 
application process in the face of tough official scrutiny...
It heads off a broader political row over the project for Prime Minister 
Justin Trudeau's Liberal government, which was trying to balance 
diversifying Canada's oil export markets with its commitment to tackling 
climate change.
Canada's National Energy Board (NEB) granted TransCanada a 30-day 
suspension on Sept. 8, after the company said it needed to review the 
impact of new assessment criteria that would consider the C$15.7 billion 
($12.58 billion) project's indirect greenhouse gas contributions...
...environmental groups questioned the need for a pipeline they said was 
at odds with Canada's commitment to tackle climate change.
"This project was so wrong and so dangerous, its hard to believe it was 
seriously contemplated," Gretchen Fitzgerald, national program director 
of environmental organization the Sierra Club, said.
"The emissions associated with new pipelines are inconsistent with our 
climate imperative and the threat to waterways, wildlife, and lands was 
enormous."
Environmental Defence, one of the main groups campaigning against the 
project, said new pipelines could not be justified at a time of 
declining investment in the tar sands, pipeline overcapacity, and a 
transition to renewable energy.
Energy East was up for its second NEB review, after the first stalled 
last year amid protests by environmentalists and after revelations that 
regulatory panel members met privately with a TransCanada consultant.
https://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCAKBN1CA19K-OCABS


*How Climate Change Is Making Hunger Worse Around The World 
<https://www.fastcompany.com/40474390/how-climate-change-is-making-hunger-worse-around-the-world>*
The annual Global Food Security Index is now tracking a country's 
natural resource supply, and its resiliency in the event of a major 
natural disaster. The conclusion: climate change is making it harder to 
feed people.
Since 2012, the Economist Intelligence Unit, the research arm of the 
Economist group, has compiled a yearly assessment of the ability of 113 
countries to feed their populations. This year, the Global Food Security 
Index recorded a slip in food security for the first time after four 
consecutive years of improvement; this trend is backed up by the United 
Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, which found that wars and 
climate-related disasters have left 38 million more people 
undernourished than in 2015.
The GFSI gets more granular, tracking the affordability, availability, 
quality, and safety of food on a country-by-country basis to come up 
with a comprehensive food security score. Around 60% of the 113 
countries included in the GFSI saw their scores drop this year. For the 
first time, the U.S. dropped from its place at the top of the rankings, 
scoring 84.6 out of 100–a whole point less than Ireland, whose comeback 
after its financial crisis of 2008 has involved significant research and 
investment in supporting food security.
https://www.fastcompany.com/40474390/how-climate-change-is-making-hunger-worse-around-the-world
-
*Global Food Security Index <http://foodsecurityindex.eiu.com/Country>*
Explore countries
Click map to view country profile
http://foodsecurityindex.eiu.com/Country
-
*Food and farming policies 'need total rethink' 
<http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-41504155>*
By Claire Marshall  BBC News
A big meeting in London will look at how reforms could help halt species 
extinction, meet climate goals, limit the spread of antibiotic 
resistance and improve animal welfare.
The organisers of the Extinction and Livestock Conference say diverse 
interests will be represented.
They include multinational food corporations, native breed farmers, 
neurologists and naturalists.
McDonalds, Tesco and Compass will be rubbing shoulders with those from 
the Sustainable Food Trust, Quorn and WWF. The 500 delegates come from 
more than 30 countries.
Their wide interests illustrate the complex and difficult issues arising 
from global livestock production.
'Catastrophic impacts'
The two-day conference is being organised by Compassion in World Farming 
(CiWF).
The campaigning organisation warns that "there will be catastrophic 
impacts for life on Earth unless there is a global move away from 
intensive farming".
The world is on track to lose two-thirds of its wildlife by the end of 
this decade, largely because habitats have been destroyed to produce 
food for humans.
There has been a rise in so-called "superbugs" linked to the use of 
antibiotics in farmed animals. And methane emissions from livestock have 
made a significant contribution to climate change.
CiWF CEO Philip Lymbery said: "Livestock production, the environment, 
wildlife conservation and human health are all interlinked, so it's 
vital that experts from each of these fields work together to come up 
with practical solutions to stop this before it's too late."
CiWF believes that there should be a total rethink of food and farming 
policies, enshrined in the framework of a UN Convention....
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-41504155


*Industry Lawsuits Try to Paint Environmental Activism as Illegal Racket 
<https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04102017/greenpeace-rico-racketeering-lawsuit-environmental-activism-resolute-dakota-access->*
Logging and pipeline companies are using a new legal tactic to seek 
damages from Greenpeace and other groups. The long-shot cases are having 
a chilling effect.
Then, on the last day of that month, Greenpeace and Stand were hit with 
an unusual lawsuit brought by Resolute Forest Products, one of Canada's 
largest logging and paper companies, that could cost the groups hundreds 
of millions of dollars if Resolute wins.
The timber company said the organizations, which for years had 
campaigned against Resolute's logging in Canada's boreal forest, were 
conspiring illegally to extort the company's customers and defraud their 
own donors.
Invoking the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or 
RICO, a federal conspiracy law devised to ensnare mobsters, the suit 
accuses the organizations, as well as several green campaigners 
individually and numerous unidentified "co-conspirators," of running 
what amounts to a giant racket.
"Maximizing donations, not saving the environment, is Greenpeace's true 
objective," the complaint says. "Its campaigns are consistently based on 
sensational misinformation untethered to facts or science, but crafted 
instead to induce strong emotions and, thereby, donations." Dozens of 
the group's campaign emails and tweets, it said, constituted wire fraud.
"As an NGO, that is a deeply chilling argument," said Carroll Muffett, 
president of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), 
which joined eight other groups to file an amici curiae brief supporting 
a move to dismiss Resolute's case.
Read the filed complaint 
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3229327-Complaint.html>https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3229327-Complaint.html
The far-reaching lawsuit has seized attention across the environmental 
advocacy and legal communities. Arguments are to be heard in court next 
week.
On Oct. 10, Greenpeace will ask a federal judge in California to dismiss 
the case. The group submitted a similar motion last year in Georgia, 
where the suit was originally filed. The Georgia judge later moved the 
case to California, where two of the defendants are based, saying 
Resolute had not provided any "factual basis from which to infer that 
defendants committed fraud or extortion" in Georgia. "Rather, the 
allegations in the complaint, at best, support the inference that the 
defendants organized and held a protest in Augusta."
"It is very alarming that you can have plaintiffs like this, 
representing corporate interests attacking legitimate critics doing 
advocacy work by just drafting a complaint, throwing whatever in there, 
stretching racketeering law and going after constitutionally protected 
free speech by throwing labels out there basically trying to criminalize 
legitimate advocacy work," said Tom Wetterer, Greenpeace's general counsel.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04102017/greenpeace-rico-racketeering-lawsuit-environmental-activism-resolute-dakota-access-
-
*Stand with Me on October 10: A Moment of Truth in Trumpian Lawsuit 
<https://www.stand.earth/latest/stand-me-october-10-moment-truth-trumpian-lawsuit>*
https://www.stand.earth/latest/stand-me-october-10-moment-truth-trumpian-lawsuit


*Trump Takes a First Step Toward Scrapping Obama's Global Warming Policy 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/04/climate/trump-climate-change.html>*
WASHINGTON - The Trump administration will repeal the Clean Power Plan, 
the centerpiece of President Barack Obama's effort to fight climate 
change, and will ask the public to recommend ways it could be replaced, 
according to an internal Environmental Protection Agency document.
The draft proposal represents the administration's first substantive 
step toward rolling back the plan, which was designed to curb greenhouse 
gas emissions from the power sector, after months of presidential tweets 
and condemnations of Mr. Obama's efforts to reduce climate-warming 
pollution.
But it also lays the groundwork for new, presumably weaker, regulations 
by asking for the public and industry to offer ideas for a replacement...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/04/climate/trump-climate-change.html


*Why people around the world fear climate change more than Americans do 
<https://phys.org/news/2017-10-people-world-climate-americans.html>*
Phys.Org     Public response can vary depending on what's going on in 
the news that ... Merely substituting the term "global warming" – now a 
politically charged ...
When asked about major threats to their country, Europeans are more 
likely than Americans to cite global climate change, according to a 
recent Pew Research Center survey. Just 56 percent of Americans see 
climate change as a major threat, versus an average of 64 percent of 
Europeans surveyed.
Why the difference? Like climate data itself, data regarding public 
concern for climate change are "noisy." Public response can vary 
depending on what's going on in the news that week. Surveys of these 
types of surveys find no single explanation for how the public perceives 
the threat of climate change.
Of course, many explanations exist. As a climatologist who has taught 
university classes and given public lectures on global climate change 
for 30 years, I find it clear that public concern about climate change 
has evolved dramatically over the past three decades. In the U.S., now 
more than ever, it seems tied to ideology.
A person's outlook on the world can also complicate matters.Another 
recent Pew survey found that Americans are more likely to believe they 
control their own destiny and that they "tend to prioritize individual 
liberty, while Europeans tend to value the role of the state to ensure 
no one in society is in need."
https://phys.org/news/2017-10-people-world-climate-americans.html


*Preparing Aging Populations for Climate Change in British Columbia and 
Beyond - Panel Session <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wegMuOHyyPw>*
(https://youtu.be/wegMuOHyyPw?t=33m11s Living close to highways
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wegMuOHyyPw


*1.5 degrees C: Geophysically impossible or not? 
<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2017/10/1-5oc-geophysically-impossible-or-not/>*
4 October 2017
Guest commentary by Ben Sanderson
Millar et al's recent paper in Nature Geoscience has provoked a lot of 
lively discussion, with the authors of the original paper releasing a 
statement to clarify that there paper did not suggest that "action to 
reduce greenhouse gas emissions is no longer urgent", rather that 1.5 
degrees C (above the pre-industrial) is not "geophysically impossible".
The range of post-2014 allowable emissions for a 66% chance of not 
passing 1.5 degrees C in Millar et al of 200-240GtC implies that the 
planet would exceed the threshold after 2030 at current emissions 
levels, compared with the AR5 analysis which would imply most likely 
exceedance before 2020. Assuming the Millar numbers are correct changes 
1.5 degrees C from fantasy to merely very difficult.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2017/10/1-5oc-geophysically-impossible-or-not/


*CRISPR: can gene-editing help nature cope with climate change? 
<https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/nature/2017/10/crispr-can-gene-editing-help-nature-cope-climate-change>*
CRISPR also holds the potential to pass these genetic changes on down 
through the generations and make them permanent. As this excellent 
RadioLab podcast episode explains, the technology is capable of 
performing what it known as a "gene drive". This is when scientists make 
sure an altered gene is inherited at a higher rate than through natural 
reproduction alone.
It can thus be used to create - or wipe out - entire features from a 
species. Want modified mosquitos that are incapable of carrying malaria 
to out-breed their natural cousins? Scientists have already demonstrated 
this is possible in the lab.
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/nature/2017/10/crispr-can-gene-editing-help-nature-cope-climate-change


*Global warming doesn't stop when the emissions stop 
<https://phys.org/news/2017-10-global-doesnt-emissions.html>*
Our climate is out of balance: Increasing accumulation of CO2 in the 
atmosphere has caused the Earth's temperature to increase by 0.8 degrees 
C since the beginning of the industrial revolution. ... even if we 
stopped all emissions from fossil fuels tomorrow, the Earth would still 
warm by a further 0.3 degrees C. In this interview, Mauritsen explains 
why it will take millennia for the Earth to get back into balance.
We can see how far we are from the climate targets set out in the Paris 
Agreement, which state that the Earth should not warm by more than 1.5-2 
degrees C. According to our study, there is a 13 percent probability 
that we have already exceeded the 1.5 degrees C target. We have also 
shown that, based on current emissions, we still have 30 years until the 
probability of staying under the 1.5 degrees C target falls to 50 percent.
https://phys.org/news/2017-10-global-doesnt-emissions.html


*Solar Grew Faster Than All Other Forms of Power for the First Time 
<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-04/dawn-of-solar-age-declared-as-pv-beats-all-other-forms-of-power>*
Renewables enjoyed record installations in 2016, IEA says
Forecaster sees solar dominating the renewables industry
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-04/dawn-of-solar-age-declared-as-pv-beats-all-other-forms-of-power


*(video) Old People Don’t Care About Climate Change 
<https://youtu.be/_FpihogHAQM>**(humor, sarcasm) 
<https://youtu.be/_FpihogHAQM>*
https://youtu.be/_FpihogHAQM


*This Day in Climate History October 6, 2014 
<http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/the-war-on-the-war-on-coal-338458691505#> 
-  from D.R. Tucker*
October 6, 2014: MSNBC's Chris Hayes airs the first part of a series
on the politics of coal in the US.
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/the-war-on-the-war-on-coal-338458691505#
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/united-mine-workers-prez-and-chris-hayes-spar-338418755664#
http://www.msnbc.com/now/watch/kentucky--ground-zero-for-war-on-coal-338770499970#
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