[TheClimate.Vote] April 28, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Sat Apr 28 09:42:54 EDT 2018
/April 28, 2018/
[Legal opinion]
*Proving Extreme Weather Link to Climate Will Drive Liability Suits,
Paper Says
<https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2018/04/26/extreme-weather-attribution-climate-liability/>*
The emerging science that is increasingly able to determine how much of
an extreme weather event is attributable to climate change may drive
growth in climate liability suits, according to a new paper published in
the Journal of Energy and Natural Resources Law...
"Scientists are now able to better understand the drivers of extreme
weather, and quantify the extent to which climate change shifts the goal
posts of expected weather patterns," the authors wrote.
The science of extreme weather attribution analyzes the relationship
between extreme events and long-term climate disturbances such as
volcano eruptions, solar variations, changes in land use and carbon
emissions. It makes connections and predictions by using advanced - and
rapidly improving - computational data to develop increasingly
sophisticated climate models.
https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2018/04/26/extreme-weather-attribution-climate-liability/
- - - - -
[Source: Journal of Energy & Natural Resources Law]
*Extreme weather event attribution science and climate change
litigation: an essential step in the causal chain?
<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02646811.2018.1451020>*
Sophie Marjanac & Lindene Patton
Abstract
The 2017 North Atlantic hurricane season caused the highest
disaster-related losses ever seen in the United States, with many people
asking questions about the causes and liabilities for the impacts of
these kinds of events. As climate-related loss and damage mount, there
is growing interest in the role of law in dealing with the complex and
multi-scalar problem of climate change. This article builds on a shorter
piece entitled 'Acts of God, human influence and litigation' published
by the authors in Nature Geoscience in August 2017. It is an
interdisciplinary and cross-jurisdictional analysis of the emerging
science of extreme weather event attribution (which analyses the human
impact on extreme weather events), and the implications this new science
may have for the law, litigation and the scope of the duty of care of a
range of actors. We suggest that the science of event attribution may
become a driver of litigation, as it shifts understanding of what
weather is expected and, relevantly for law, foreseeable. This may have
an impact on the duties of government actors as well as private parties.
We explain the discipline of event attribution science to lawyers,
discuss some technical issues related to the use of this evidence in
court and make some suggestions regarding the types of 'climate change'
cases it may influence. We conclude that the first kind of litigation to
emerge is most likely to arise from failures to adapt to, or to prepare
for, our changing climate.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02646811.2018.1451020
[Oil Change International]
*Fund managers recognise "imminent risks posed to fossil fuel
investments from climate change"
<http://priceofoil.org/2018/04/26/fund-managers-recognise-imminent-risks-posed-to-fossil-fuel-investments-from-climate-change/>*
Andy Rowell,
Earlier today, oil giant Shell surprised analysts with better than
expected first quarter results, as earnings "surged" on the back of
rising oil prices.
Shell's CEO, Ben van Beurden, was bullish in a statement: "Shell's
strong earnings this quarter were underpinned by higher oil and gas
prices, the continued growth and very good performance of our Integrated
Gas business, and improved profitability in our Upstream business", he said.
Even the press was optimistic about the prospects for Big Oil in the
short-term. "The latest figures come at a time when the environment for
oil companies is dramatically improving, amid signs the energy market is
rebalancing and crude futures have rallied to multi-year highs,"
reported CNBC.
But Shell's short-term profit surge masks much deeper storm clouds that
are gathering on the horizon. As an article in Forbes today reports:
"Three risks that are haunting Big Oil … A recent survey reported that
fund managers believe International Oil Companies (IOCs) will be
negatively revalued within a few years due to climate change related risks."
Forbes was writing about the results of a new survey, entitled "Not long
Now" by the UK's Sustainable Investment and Finance Association (UKSIF)
and the Climate Change Collaboration, which examined the views of fund
managers on the issue of oil and climate change. The three risks
concerned are squeezing the industry from all sides:
-"Reputational damage because of their role in causing climate change;
-Litigation for losses from climate change; and
-Regulation to curtail fossil fuel pollution."
The 30 fund managers surveyed hold collectively over $18 trillion in
assets under management. Despite this financial influence, fund managers
are often the hidden link in the oil chain. However, if they lose
confidence in the companies they invest in, believing that their
investments will become stranded assets and the finance for the industry
dries up, even corporate Goliaths like Shell could be in real trouble.
And that could happen much sooner than the companies themselves predict...
- - - -
It adds the fund manager sector is "clear that International Oil
Companies (IOCs) will be negatively revalued within a few years because
of climate change related risks". Some 90% of fund managers expect at
least one of the risks above "to impact significantly the valuation of
IOCs within 2 years"....
- - - -
Indeed, the dirty tar sands, risky fragile Arctic or filthy
carbon-munching coal might be the first places where investors take
flight from fossil fuels but soon it could be any fossil fuel
investment, anywhere. Times they really are a changing.
But as Forbes says: "The question, as ever, remains to what extent
Shell, it its compatriots like Chevron and Exxon, have really understood
how the market (and perceptions of the market) are changing, and the
extent to which they are prepared to face that change."
More at:
http://priceofoil.org/2018/04/26/fund-managers-recognise-imminent-risks-posed-to-fossil-fuel-investments-from-climate-change/
[Margaret Swedish]
*News of the planet and the nexus of culture, ecology, justice, and
spirituality.*
Wednesday, April 25, 2018
*Chaos and Collapse, Part II
<https://newcreationews.blogspot.com/2018/04/chaos-and-collapse-part-ii.html>*
There is no way out of our predicament, but there is a way through it.
So let's look at what experience, our own deep personal experience, is
telling us - when we pay attention to it, when we can work through the
fear of looking at this irresolvable mess that humans have made and
begin to see clearly how dire our situation really is. Let's surface
that stuff and then see what it tells us about how to live now - because
that's where we begin to discover, to perceive the way through...
https://newcreationews.blogspot.com/2018/04/chaos-and-collapse-part-ii.html
- - -- -
[Part 1]*
Chaos and collapse, along with some seriously crazy weather - Part I
<https://newcreationews.blogspot.com/2018/04/chaos-and-collapse-along-with-some.html>*
Refusal to know, one of the mental illnesses of our time. But that time
is over. We know now because the results of living on the planet like
this, voraciously and greedily, are coming in. They have arrived. And,
as I think most of you know by now, I'm pretty much done trying to
soften the message. We don't have time for that. We have to get
motivated. We have to figure out what we're going to do now in the face
of this reality...
https://newcreationews.blogspot.com/2018/04/chaos-and-collapse-along-with-some.html.
[coined term: /technofideism/]
*The Dangerous Belief That Extreme Technology Will Fix Climate Change
<https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/geoengineering-climate-change_us_5ae07919e4b061c0bfa3e794>*
It boils down to a failure to question capitalism, civilization, and the
notion of progress.
Aleszu Bajak
"It's a failure to accept complexity of the system, and the system
includes people," Ehrenfeld told me recently over coffee. For
decades, Ehrenfeld, who is now retired, researched and promoted the
concept of sustainability. But to Ehrenfeld, after all the climate
conferences, all the stakeholder roundtables, all the debates on
market-driven solutions, the questions and answers being debated
never questioned capitalism, civilization, and the notion of progress.
Tackling a problem as deeply ingrained as global warming, Ehrenfeld
said, will require humanity to face an existential question that
geoengineering alone cannot address: Are we willing to sacrifice
growth to ensure the survival of our species?
"Absent decoupling growth from progress," Ehrenfeld said, "we won't
address the core of the problem."
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/geoengineering-climate-change_us_5ae07919e4b061c0bfa3e794
- - - - - -
[slides and talk by Oreskes]
*Technofideism and Climate Change
<https://slideslive.com/38893068/technofideism-and-climate-change>*
by Naomi Oreskes · Feb 25, 2015 · PACITA
https://slideslive.com/38893068/technofideism-and-climate-change
"an uncritical techno-fideism - a 'blind confidence in technical
solutions' - the market logic that harnesses it with a single-minded
focus on profit, without thinking about the actual goals of human activity."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFxejbcpE1U
- - - - - -
[A passage from their book Merchants of Doubt:]
*Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on
Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming
<https://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1608193942>*
Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway
"Cornucopians hold to a blind faith in technology that isn't borne
out by the historical evidence. We call it 'technofideism.'
Why do they hold this belief when history shows it to be untrue?
Again we turn to Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom, where he
claimed that "the great advances of civilization, in industry or
agriculture, have never come from centralized government." To
historians of technology, this would be laughable had it not been
written (five years after Sputnik) by one of the most influential
economists of the second half of the twentieth century.
The most important technology of the industrial age was the ability
to produce parts that were perfectly identical and interchangeable.
Blacksmiths and carpenters couldn't do it; in fact, humans can't do
it routinely in any profession. Only machines can. It was the U.S.
Army's Ordnance Department that developed this ability to have
machines make parts for other machines, spending nearly fifty years
on this effort - an inconceivable period of research for a private
corporation in the nineteenth century. Army Ordnance wanted guns
that could be repaired easily on or near a battlefield by switching
out the parts. Once the basic technology to do this - machine tools,
as we know them today - was invented, it spread rapidly through the
American economy. Despite efforts to prevent it, it soon spread to
Europe and Japan, as well. Markets spread the technology of machine
tools throughout the world, but markets did not create it.
Centralized government, in the form of the U.S. Army, was the
inventor of the modern machine age.
Machine tools are not the exception that proves the rule; there are
many other cases of government-financed technology that were
commercialized and redounded to the benefit of society. Even while
Friedman was writing his soon-to-be-famous book, digital computers
were beginning to find uses beyond the U.S. government's weapons
systems, for which they were originally developed. Private
enterprise transformed that technology into something that could be
used and afforded by the masses, but the U.S. government made it
possible in the first place. The U.S. government also played a major
role in the development of Silicon Valley. In recent years,
something we now all depend on - the Internet, originally ARPANET -
was developed as a complex collaboration of universities, government
agencies, and industry, funded largely by the Department of
Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency. It was expanded and
developed into the Internet by the government support provided by
the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991,
promoted by then-senator Al Gore.
In other cases, new technologies were invented by individual or
corporate entrepreneurs, but it was government action or support
that transformed them into commercially viable technologies;
airplanes and transistors come to mind. (Transistors were explicitly
promoted by the U.S. government when they realized that Minutemen
missiles needed onboard rather than remote controls, and vacuum
tubes would not suffice.) Still other technologies were invented by
individuals but were spread through government policy. Electricity
was extended beyond the major cities by a federal loan-guarantee
program during the Great Depression. The U.S. interstate highway
system, which arguably created postwar America as we know it, was
the brainchild of President Dwight Eisenhower, who recognized the
role it could play both in the U.S. economy and in national defense;
it became the model for similar highway systems around the globe.
And nuclear power, which may help us out of the global warming
conundrum, was a by-product of the technology that launched the Cold
War: the atomic bomb. The relationship between technology,
innovation, and economic and political systems is varied and
complex. It cannot be reduced to a simple article of faith about the
virtues of a free market."
https://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1608193942/ref=sr_1_1
- - - - -
[Oreskes radio interview 54 mins]
*The Collapse of Western Civilization?*
<http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/the-collapse-of-western-civilization3f/5674090>
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/the-collapse-of-western-civilization3f/5674090
Naomi Oreskes says scientists have given up on the much talked about
two-degree ceiling as the absolute maximum for a rise in average
global temperature ; we need to consider an average increase more
like four or five degrees. Yet despite what is being recorded and
what everyone can see, some people still say it isn't happening and
there's nothing to worry about. But the heat will change the Earth
as we know it. Naomi Oreskes draws on scientific reports to describe
the world four hundred years from now. She offers analysis as to why
denialism still exists, and why some are prepared to fund their
campaigns of disinformation.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/the-collapse-of-western-civilization3f/5674090
Hear the MP3 or save to your device:
http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2014/08/ssw_20140816.mp3
*This Day in Climate History - April 28, 2011
<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/42809364#42809364> - from
D.R. Tucker*
April 28, 2011: On MSNBC's "The Last Word," guest host Chris Hayes and
guests Chris Mooney and Jonathan Kay analyze the right wing's fixation
on denying climate change and other objective truths.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/42809364#42809364
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