[TheClimate.Vote] December 17, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Tue Dec 17 11:49:18 EST 2019
December17 , 2019
[Follow the money]
*Warren says Blackstone worsening climate change in new private equity
salvo*
Sen. Elizabeth Warren is accusing the Blackstone Group of financing the
destruction of the Amazon rainforest and exacerbating climate change,
the presidential candidate's latest attack on the private equity industry.
Blackstone has a stake in Hidrovias do Brasil, an infrastructure company
reportedly linked to deforestation in the rainforest.
"Given the immense global climate ramifications of deforestation in the
Amazon rainforest, it is deeply troubling that U.S.-based private equity
firms like Blackstone have taken advantage of the weakening of Brazil's
environmental safeguards through your investments in the logistics and
resource extraction industries to boost short-term profits, at the
expense of our global climate and Indigenous communities," Warren
(D-Mass.) wrote in a letter to Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman on
Monday...
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/16/elizabeth-warren-blackstone-086197
[video talk sums COP25]
*NEW STUDY : Greenland is melting seven times faster than 30 years ago.*
Dec 15, 2019
Just Have a Think
There's been debate and dispute in recent years over whether Greenland,
and Antarctica, are genuinely losing ice mass. But now a group of
scientists from all the main research bodies has combined and
consolidated their data to reach a solid, trustworthy result. A result
that could scarcely have been less well responded to at the utterly
catastrophic COP25 climate conference in Madrid in early December 2019.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IegLor-1khs
[listen to physicists]
*Halting climate change means a world without fossil fuels--not merely
curbing emissions*
https://phys.org/news/2019-12-halting-climate-world-fossil-fuelsnot.html
- - -
[OK then try ethics]
*An ethicist weighs in on our moral failure to act on climate change*
https://phys.org/news/2019-09-ethicist-moral-failure-climate.html
[Hansen reports]
*November 2019 Global Temperature Update*
November 2019, on global average, was the second warmest November since
reliable measurements began in 1880, at 1.02C relative to the 1951-1980
base period (1.27C relative to 1880-1920). As in October, parts of the
U.S. and Canada, were unusually cold, but the cold area shifted
eastward, centered around the Great Lakes where some locations were
about 3C colder than the 1951-1980 mean (see maps above). Much of
northern Asia was also colder than average in November, but the N.H.
fall as a whole (September-November) was colder than average only in a
Canada/U.S. region (lower right map). The regional cold might cause some
Americans to doubt the reality of global warming, but the maps confirm
that this is a result of air exchange with the Arctic. Cold air
outbreaks increase with a weakened jet stream; perhaps geography tends
to favor a targeting of these cold air outbreaks on the United States.
See images http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/
The 2019 meteorological year (prior December through November) was the
second warmest at 1.23C relative to 1880-1920, trailing only 2016. We
expect calendar year 2019 to be the second warmest year.
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/
[Methane leaks ]
*A Methane Leak, Seen From Space, Proves to Be Far Larger Than Thought*
The first satellite designed to continuously monitor the planet for
methane leaks made a startling discovery last year: A little known
gas-well accident at an Ohio fracking site was in fact one of the
largest methane leaks ever recorded in the United States.
The findings by a Dutch-American team of scientists, published Monday in
the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, mark a step forward
in using space technology to detect leaks of methane, a potent
greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming, from oil and gas
sites worldwide.
The scientists said the new findings reinforced the view that methane
releases like these, which are difficult to predict, could be far more
widespread than previously thought.
"We're entering a new era. With a single observation, a single overpass,
we're able to see plumes of methane coming from large emission sources,"
said Ilse Aben, an expert in satellite remote sensing and one of the
authors of the new research. "That's something totally new that we were
previously not able to do from space."...
- - -
The blowout, in February 2018 at a natural gas well run by an Exxon
Mobil subsidiary in Belmont County, Ohio, released more methane than the
entire oil and gas industries of many nations do in a year, the research
team found. The Ohio episode triggered about 100 residents within a
one-mile radius to evacuate their homes while workers scrambled to plug
the well...
- - - -
When burned for electricity, natural gas is cleaner than coal, producing
about half the carbon dioxide that coal does. But if methane escapes
into the atmosphere before being burned, it can warm the planet more
than 80 times as much as the same amount of carbon dioxide over a
20-year period.
The satellite's measurements showed that, in Ohio in the 20 days it took
for Exxon to plug the well, about 120 metric tons of methane an hour
were released. That amounted to twice the rate of the largest known
methane leak in the United States, from an oil and gas storage facility
in Aliso Canyon, Calif., in 2015, though that event lasted longer and
had higher emissions overall...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/16/climate/methane-leak-satellite.html
[Reuters sums up talks]
*'Total disconnect': Voices from marathon Madrid climate summit*
(Contains profanity in paragraph 20)
MADRID (Reuters) - A U.N. climate summit closed on Sunday with major
states snubbing calls for tougher action to combat global warming,
prompting sharp criticism from smaller countries and environmental
activists.
Here are some key quotes from the final days of the COP25 summit:
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres:
"The international community lost an important opportunity to show
increased ambition on mitigation, adaptation and finance to tackle
the climate crisis. We must not give up and I will not give up."
Sofie Nordvik, Norway's youth delegates:
"We lack the ambition needed to avoid this climate emergency. Our
leaders need to step up. The world would have looked very different
if young people were in charge today."
Zhou Yingmin, China's lead negotiator:
"The results of the meeting did not meet our expectations... I
believe everyone regrets that the result was not proportionate to
our efforts."
Alden Meyer, Union of Concerned Scientists:
"I've been attending these climate negotiations since they first
started in 1991. But never have I seen the almost total disconnect
we've seen here at COP25 in Madrid between what the science requires
and what the climate negotiations are delivering in terms of
meaningful action."
Carolina Schmidt, president of the talks on behalf of Chile:
"We are all tired."
"We are of mixed emotions."
"This has been the longest COP in the history of COPs."
Ian Fry, Tuvalu representative:
"There are millions of people all around the world who are already
suffering from the impacts of climate change. Denying this fact
could be interpreted by some to be a crime against humanity."
Kevin Conrad, Papua New Guinea's climate envoy:
"Over the last 24 hours, 90% of the participants have not been
involved in this process."
Ronan McNern, a spokesman for civil disobedience group Extinction
Rebellion, after dumping a pile of horse manure near the entrance of
the summit:
"Out of shit come the best roses. We hope that the international
community comes together to create a beautiful future."
New York Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter:
"An utter failure. COP25 & conferences like it are intended to be
actual negotiations to urgently draw down global carbon emissions -
not cocktail parties to make politicians feel better about
themselves as they squash dissent & sell off our futures to fossil
fuel interests."
Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International:
"This COP exposed the role of polluters in politics and the youth's
deep distrust of government, as climate blockers like Brazil and
Saudi Arabia, enabled by an irresponsibly weak Chilean leadership,
peddled carbon deals and steamrolled scientists and civil society."
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-accord-quotebox/total-disconnect-voices-from-marathon-madrid-climate-summit-idUSKBN1YJ0EW
[Meanwhile in Britain - Opinion]
*The Guardian view on climate change diplomacy: is Boris Johnson up to it?*
Editorial
Next year the prime minister will have to secure global support for a
climate deal while using Brexit to try to undercut the European Union's
environmental protections...
- - -
The irony is that he needs a global green deal while pursuing a
post-Brexit British trade policy to outcompete the European Union by
undercutting green standards...
- - -
Mr Johnson does not want a rerun of the UN summit in Copenhagen in 2009,
which ended in failure amid clashes between 100,000 environmental
protesters and Danish police. To ensure that the Glasgow conference
passes off smoothly, he will first have to show that he is cleaning up
his act at home. At present the government won't hit carbon reduction
targets after 2028, hardly inspiring confidence that the UK will reach
net-zero by 2050. This needs more than just a new government department.
Mr Johnson's newfound green zeal can be politically useful: his
manifesto promised to spend 6bn [Sterling] on improving the energy
efficiency of 2.2m social homes, which may be allocated - brazenly - to
the constituencies of new northern Tory MPs.
But whatever his own approach, Mr Johnson's fate is in the hands of
others. Most important are US voters who might deliver a Democratic
president just days before the Glasgow summit takes place. This would
halt the Trump White House's attempt to withdraw from the Paris
agreement. EU leaders hope to strike a bargain with Beijing next
September, so efforts to cut emissions remain meaningful even without
the US. The Paris agreement has Mr Johnson facing one way on climate,
but Brexit has him facing the other way. He will have to choose, perhaps
symbolically by cracking down on City financing for dirty coal abroad.
The world is not short of ideas to realise climate goals. We urge and
encourage the prime minister to secure a global response that matches
the scale of the crisis.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/16/the-guardian-view-on-climate-change-diplomacy-is-boris-johnson-up-to-it
[Electric power and wildfires]
*California Rejects State's Largest Utility's Bankruptcy Plan*
Written by Brakkton Booker Dec. 14, 2019
California Gov. Gavin Newsom rejected a bankruptcy restructuring plan by
the state's largest utility, saying it "falls woefully short" of safety
standards mandated under state law.
The governor's criticisms come a week after Pacific Gas and Electric
announced a multibillion-dollar settlement proposal to pay victims of
several wildfires linked to the utility's faulty equipment.
Newsom's move complicates PG&E's efforts to both maintain control of its
operations and move quickly through bankruptcy proceedings. PG&E
declared bankruptcy in January, announcing it faced potential
liabilities of $30 billion.
In a letter to PG&E CEO William Johnson, Newsom said the utility's
restructuring plans "do not result in a reorganized company positioned
to provide safe, reliable and affordable service to its customers."
He added: "I believe the Amended Plan falls woefully short on the
requirements of AB 1054," referring to the recent California law
requiring big power companies to pay into a state fund to cover future
costs of wildfires caused by utility equipment.
PG&E announced a settlement agreement of more than $13 billion earlier
this month to cover all claims associated with several deadly fires in
recent years. In a Dec. 6 statement, PG&E said those fires include the
deadly 2018 Camp Fire, the 2017 Tubbs Fire, the 2016 Ghost Ship Fire and
2015 Butte Fire, which together destroyed thousands of homes and other
structures.
Newsom's approval of the restructuring plan is not required under state
law, as the Los Angeles Times points out, adding, "PG&E asked the
governor to weigh in after reaching a $13.5-billion settlement with
victims of some of California's worst wildfires on record last week."
Jennifer Robison, a spokesperson for PG&E, told the Los Angeles Times
that the company disagreed with the governor's assessment of the
restructuring plan, adding the utility would be working "diligently in
the coming days to resolve any issues that may arise."
The paper notes that the utility has until Tuesday to submit a revised
proposal.
The Sacramento Bee referred to the governor's letter as a "stunning
rebuke" that came just days after PG&E presumed it had reached a
settlement deal with lawyers representing "more than 70,000 wildfire
victims."
The paper added: "But the utility wasn't home free after all. Now it
will have to overhaul the proposal, and quickly."
Under a California law approved in July, a $21 billion insurance fund
was created to pay for new fire damages. But in order for PG&E to tap
into that fund, the utility has to wrap up Chapter 11 bankruptcy by June
30, 2020.
https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/npr/california-rejects-states-largest-utilitys-bankruptcy-plan
[Political media message]
Monday, December 16, 2019
by Common Dreams
*"Stop What You're Doing and Watch This": Intense Praise for
Apocalypse-Themed Climate 2020 Campaign Ad*
"It's a catastrophe of our own creation--but it doesn't have to end this
way," says Andrew Romanoff, a Democratic hopeful for U.S. Senate running
in Colorado.
by Andrea Germanos, staff writer
"Stop what you're doing and watch this--all the way through."
video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eyJevf-Blg
That was the reaction Monday from youth-led climate group Sunrise
Movement to a gripping new apocalypse-themed campaign ad rolled out by
Democrat Andrew Romanoff, who's running in Colorado's 2020 primary race
for U.S. Senate.
Entitled "Home," the four-minute video opens with an apocalyptic scene
in Colorado Springs in "the not-so-distant future" in which a family
appears to be taking shelter from the ravages of the climate crisis.
"I just hope we can see the sunshine again one day," a young girl says.
The ad--the first of Romanoff's primary campaign--also features a clip
of former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, Romanoff's strongest opponent
in the Democratic contest. Hickenlooper is seen testifying before the
U.S. Senate in 2013 when he sat down beside representatives of
Halliburton to assure fracking's safety. In addition to footage of
recent climate disasters, the ad also features clips of Swedish teen
climate activist Greta Thunberg as well as Green New Deal champions like
Sunrise and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
Romanoff, a former state legislator, urges voters to seize this "once or
perhaps last in a lifetime chance to rescue the world we know" and act
on the climate crisis, which he calls "a catastrophe of our own making."
"We can choose a different path," says Romanoff.
Sunrise was just part of a large chorus of progressives singing the new
ad's praises Monday.
Journalist Shaun King said it "may be the most powerful campaign ad of
2019."
Climate activist Anna Jane Joyner declared it the "most powerful
political ad I've ever seen."
This "is the most powerful political ad about climate change I've ever
seen," said EndClimateSilence.org founder Dr. Genevieve Guenther. A "new
world is emerging, it just is."
"I have never ever seen anything like this before," said meteorologist
and journalist Eric Holthaus.
Romanoff's platform includes addressing the climate crisis by banning
fracking and switching to renewables to meet all electricity needs by
2035. His platform also calls for raising the minimum wage and supports
Medicare for All.
Hickenlooper and Romanoff are vying for the seat currently held by Sen.
Cory Gardner, a Republican. Gardner, for his part, called Romanoff's ad
"insane."
In the ad, Romanoff directly confronts those standing in the way of the
Green New Deal and other calls for bold action by saying, "Those who say
it cannot be done, should not interrupt those who are already doing it."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/12/16/stop-what-youre-doing-and-watch-intense-praise-apocalypse-themed-climate-2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eyJevf-Blg
[about time]
*Students at Prestigious Universities Rise Up Against Fossil Fuel
Money*BY Sharon Zhang, Truthout, December 16, 2019
When a university sells naming rights to something it owns -- a
building, venue, department, or lecture hall, for instance -- it's
largely selling two things: exposure, and the reputation of the
institution itself. So, when MIT recently sold the naming rights of the
lecture hall at the bottom of its Department of Earth, Atmospheric and
Planetary Sciences (EAPS) building, it was really selling, in part, the
legitimacy and objectivity of the university.
It sold those honors to oil giant Shell.
MIT will use Shell's $3 million donation to renovate the EAPS building,
ironically also known as the Green Building after philanthropists Cecil
and Ida Green. In exchange, the lecture hall, known previously as 54
-100, is slated to be called the Shell Auditorium.This renaming is part
of the greenwashing practices in which oil and gas corporations have
been engaging for decades, which are especially pernicious in higher
education. Companies like Shell, Chevron, BP and Exxon have spent
billions trying to convince not only the general public but also
government officials and academics that they are good faith actors; that
they can be objective about the climate; that they, too, can be a
significant part of a clean energy future. In the past three years
alone, according to InfluenceMap, five of the largest oil and gas
companies have spent $1 billion on lobbying and climate-related branding.
Fossil fuel corporations have launched large, visible greenwashing
efforts like lobbying Congress members and endless misleading
advertising campaigns. And, increasingly, they're pushing their
greenwashing into ever-smaller corners of supposedly objective
institutions like universities and the news media. Climate stories and
newsletters from influential publications like The Washington Post,
Politico, and Axios have been sponsored by the likes of Chevron and Exxon.
One lecture hall in one building at MIT may not seem like a big deal,
but it is part of fossil fuel corporations' much larger strategy to
project relevancy and acceptance in not only the climate field but also
the public sphere. Hundreds of STEM students, who might go on to study
the climate or pioneer new technology, would attend lecture two or three
times a week in the Shell auditorium. That adds up -- however
subconsciously.
MIT will use Shell's $3 million donation to renovate the EAPS building,
ironically also known as the Green Building.
"Probably the most obvious benefit" of the lecture hall renaming for
fossil fuel companies "is old fashioned greenwashing, the halo effect,"
says Geoffrey Supran, a science history researcher at Harvard.
"Basically, Shell and other companies [are] drawing legitimacy by
affiliation." This way, Supran says, the companies "leech off the
credibility and neutrality conferred by academia."
In buying space in universities and the media, fossil fuel companies are
buying social license -- the ongoing tacit approval from the public to
operate as they please. Shell actually directly addresses this on its
website: one of its "strategic ambitions" is "to sustain a strong
societal licence to operate and make a positive contribution to society
through our activities."
As more people begin to wake up to greenwashing, and with recent
attention from campaigns like Exxon Knew, the oil and gas industry has
been pushing back even harder against criticism, plastering advertising
all over social media. Fossil fuel companies have touted their
involvement and investments into renewable energy research at
institutions like MIT and featured sustainability plans prominently on
their websites.
"In reality, we know that the resources they're putting into clean
energy really pale in comparison to the budget that they continue to
pour into exploration and development of new projects," says Ortal
Ullman, climate and energy campaign organizer for the Union of Concerned
Scientists. "Even just going to Shell's Twitter feed -- if you didn't
know any better, you would think that these companies are companies
dedicated to finding climate solutions. And that's the real danger."
"If you didn't know any better, you would think that these are companies
dedicated to finding climate solutions. And that's the real danger."
In October, Shell tweeted, "Protecting a forest in the Scottish
Highlands offers a lifeline for an ancient ecosystem. It can also help
tackle climate change," accompanied by a link to an article about forest
preservation on its website. The company continually tweets about its
investments in renewable energy, and even co-opts climate communicators'
language on mitigating the climate crisis. "Immediate action and
partnership across sectors is needed to accelerate technology and
encourage public support for storing CO2 at scale," the corporation
tweeted in September, pushing carbon storage.
Even university researchers have been won over with greenwashing
efforts, to an extent, according to Supran. Researchers, he says,
especially those in the physical sciences who work strictly with data,
will often assume that they're immune to the bias of receiving industry
grants. But "studies in social psychology and in the history of tobacco
funding of health research tell us definitively that what these funding
relationships do is to create so-called subconscious biases," says Supran.
The fossil fuel industry, borrowing techniques from the tobacco industry
from decades ago, knows about these biases. They exploit them by funding
energy and climate research in a time when federal funding for science
is shrinking, which actually makes getting a grant from oil and gas
quite competitive. "Unbeknownst to most of us [researchers]," laments
Supran, "we're pawns in this public relations strategy."
Many higher education institutions are so thoroughly entangled with
these oil and gas corporations to the point where it's near-impossible
to extricate the two from each other. Fossil fuel executives sit on the
boards of some of these institutions, as the late David Koch did at MIT.
The companies sponsor entire energy research departments. People with
deep industry ties hold faculty positions, Supran has observed. The
extent of the funding from grants, donations and investments is never
revealed by private institutions, but the outsized financial and
personnel representation at all levels of these universities suggests
that the universities would be substantially impaired without it.
"We really view divestment as a tactic and climate justice as our goal."
Students and faculty, however, are fighting back against that notion.
The renaming of 54-100 has sparked two community conversations about the
influence of fossil fuels on MIT, which is unprecedented, says Deepa
Rao, a Ph.D. candidate in the EAPS department.
In November, Rao and fellow Ph.D. candidate Mara Freilich moderated a
teach-in to educate faculty, students and administrators on
greenwashing. There, Rao and Freilich discovered that "even some of the
people who have qualms about the donation were less informed about the
deep political history of disinformation" associated with greenwashing
than they'd thought, says Rao. The final decision on renaming, according
to Freilich, comes down to the MIT Corporation, which is the governing
board of trustees for the university. But department administrators told
Freilich and Rao that they are discussing reversing the decision, likely
in part due to the challenges raised by students and faculty.
Elsewhere, anti-fossil fuel students and faculty are also experiencing
wins. The protest by Harvard and Yale divestment campaigns at the
schools' rivalry football game, for instance, garnered wide media
attention. Faculty at Harvard have put forth a motion to vote on
divestment next year after devoting a meeting to discussing the matter.
Other universities, meanwhile, have been fully committing to divestment;
notably, in September, the University of California system announced
that it will cut fossil fuels from its $80 billion portfolio.
Undergraduate Caleb Schwartz, a representative of Harvard Divest, says
that, besides the issue of divestment itself, the campaign has shifted
conversations for the better around campus. "We really view divestment
as a tactic and climate justice as our goal," he says. When Harvard and
Yale students arranged their football game protest, Schwartz says they
originally had 150 protesters storm the field. But after seeing the
protest, over 350 spectators from the stands joined them. "We realized
that the movement is bigger than we thought," he said.
A big movement is what these universities need to confront the sprawling
presence of the fossil fuel industry in higher education, activists say.
MIT's renaming hardly even made mainstream national news, with small
mentions in The Guardian and Politico; such greenwashing has become
normalized. Hopefully, with the help of growing divestment campaigns and
climate activist groups, that won't be the case for long.
https://truthout.org/articles/students-at-prestigious-universities-rise-up-against-fossil-fuel-money/
[new satire book release]
*AOK v. Trumputini*
By Kenny Bruno
Folks, just in time for The Impeachment Season, I wrote a book about a
climate-denying fictional egomaniacal president named Donaldito
Trumputini and a young Latina activist named Alessandra Kickassio
overhears a perfect phone call and discovers that Trumputini lies and
bribes. That leads to impeachment hearings headed up by Rep. Max
Goldstein, a Jewish Atheist Socialist from Brooklyn and presided over by
Chief Justice Sofia Soto. There's Superstorm Exxon and an armed
confrontation between branches of government! If you want to know what
happens, read the book. Actually you can judge the book by its cover,
but go ahead and order, it's fun for whole family, especially if your
family likes creeping fascism and impeachment along with its climate
denialism. And it's only 8 bucks.
http://www.lulu.com/shop/kenny-bruno/aok-v-trumputini/paperback/product-24362294.html?fbclid=IwAR01KEcvOUYHAirNKsS3DFyI6TJtjFAndBYCUeZvS12xGqCb2TedZ-v6NEE
*This Day in Climate History - December 17, 2014 - from D.R. Tucker*
The New York Times reports:
"The Cuomo administration announced Wednesday that it would ban
hydraulic fracturing in New York State, ending years of uncertainty
by concluding that the controversial method of extracting gas from
deep underground could contaminate the state’s air and water and
pose inestimable public-health risks."
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/18/nyregion/cuomo-to-ban-fracking-in-new-york-state-citing-health-risks.html?mwrsm=Email
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/12/17/3604762/breaking-new-york-will-pursue-fracking-ban/
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/andrew-cuomo--im-not-a-scientist-374321731971
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/
/Archive of Daily Global Warming News
<https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/2017-October/date.html>
/
https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote
/To receive daily mailings - click to Subscribe
<mailto:subscribe at theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request>
to news digest./
*** Privacy and Security:*This is a text-only mailing that carries no
images which may originate from remote servers. Text-only messages
provide greater privacy to the receiver and sender.
By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain must be used for democratic
and election purposes and cannot be used for commercial purposes.
To subscribe, email: contact at theclimate.vote
<mailto:contact at theclimate.vote> with subject subscribe, To Unsubscribe,
subject: unsubscribe
Also you may subscribe/unsubscribe at
https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote
Links and headlines assembled and curated by Richard Pauli for
http://TheClimate.Vote <http://TheClimate.Vote/> delivering succinct
information for citizens and responsible governments of all levels. List
membership is confidential and records are scrupulously restricted to
this mailing list.
More information about the TheClimate.Vote
mailing list