[TheClimate.Vote] November 10, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/November 10, 2019/

[destabilized climates can also mean cold]
*Air from Siberia to send temperatures plunging from Texas to New England*
National Weather Service says 200 records could fall
Snow expected into Veterans Day holiday
The front will bring January-like temperatures to some locations that 
are expected to be as much as 30F (17C) colder than normal for the time 
of year.
- - -
Donofrio said the leading edge of the system would bring some snow this 
weekend and on Monday, which is the Veterans Day holiday. Although the 
snow is expected to taper off on Monday, temperatures are forecast to 
keep falling.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/09/air-siberia-temperatures-cold-texas-new-england



[Make room for the Republican political solution]
*Senators announce bipartisan climate caucus: "We look a bit like 
Neanderthals"*
With most Americans now viewing climate change as a major threat, a 
group of senators announced the first bipartisan climate caucus to 
address the crisis. But the senators are short on specifics and seem to 
be taking small steps toward action, CBS News chief congressional 
correspondent Nancy Cordes reports.

Utah Senator Mitt Romney is one of four Republicans, three Democrats and 
one Independent who just joined the caucus. "We look a bit like 
Neanderthals," he said. "It's real. We've got to take action."

The caucus is the brainchild of Delaware Democrat Chris Coons and 
Indiana Republican Mike Braun. "My expectation is that we will start by 
listening," Coons said.

"I've got four kids," Braun said. "I took a poll among them, 'What do 
you think about this idea?' They love it."

It's a departure from the climate science skepticism the GOP has 
embraced in recent years. "There are still some Republican senators who 
think that cold winter weather is a sign that the climate isn't 
changing," Cordes said to the senators, referring to a common but 
mistaken assumption.

"Science is more and more clear, and I think people will either be 
convinced or not as time goes on," Romney said.

"I think many probably just were not willing to say it," said Braun. "To 
me, it's chemistry and physics, and I'm not going to deny that."...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-republican-senators-join-democrats-to-tackle-crisis-with-bipartisan-caucus/


[opinion on increasing rate of change]
*How Scientists Got Climate Change So Wrong*
Few thought it would arrive so quickly. Now we're facing consequences 
once viewed as fringe scenarios.
- - -
Had a scientist in the early 1990s suggested that within 25 years a 
single heat wave would measurably raise sea levels, at an estimated two 
one-hundredths of an inch, bake the Arctic and produce Sahara-like 
temperatures in Paris and Berlin, the prediction would have been 
dismissed as alarmist. But many worst-case scenarios from that time are 
now realities...
- - -
Were the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica to melt, sea levels 
would rise by an estimated 225 feet worldwide. Few expect that to happen 
anytime soon. But those ice sheets now look a lot more fragile than they 
did to the climate change panel in 1995, when it said that little change 
was expected over the next hundred years...
- -
As the seas rise, they are also warming at a pace unanticipated as 
recently as five years ago. This is very bad news. For one thing, a 
warmer ocean means more powerful storms, and die-offs of marine life, 
but it also suggests that the planet is more sensitive to increased 
carbon dioxide emissions than previously thought...
- - -
If the Trump administration has its way, even the revised worst-case 
scenarios may turn out to be too rosy. In late August, the 
administration announced a plan to roll back regulations intended to 
limit methane emissions resulting from oil and gas exploration, despite 
opposition from some of the largest companies subject to those 
regulations. More recently, its actions approached the surreal as the 
Justice Department opened an antitrust investigation into those auto 
companies that have agreed in principle to abide by higher gas mileage 
standards required by California. The administration also formally 
revoked a waiver allowing California to set stricter limits on tailpipe 
emissions than the federal government.

Even if scientists end up having lowballed their latest assessments of 
the consequences of the greenhouse gases we continue to emit into the 
atmosphere, their predictions are dire enough. But the Trump 
administration has made its posture toward climate change abundantly 
clear: Bring it on!

It's already here. And it is going to get worse. A lot worse.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/opinion/sunday/science-climate-change.html



[Showdown]
*As New York Takes Exxon to Court, Big Oil's Strategy Against Climate 
Lawsuits Is Slowly Unveiled*
By Dan Zegart
Last week, in a historic first, the former CEO of a major oil company 
took the witness stand in a New York City courtroom and spent four hours 
defending his company against charges that it misled investors about the 
potential impact of global warming on its viability as a business.

Rex Tillerson, who led ExxonMobil from 2006 until the end of 2016 when 
he became U.S. secretary of state, was grilled by an attorney for the 
New York State attorney general for allegedly participating in a 
"longstanding fraudulent scheme" by Exxon to fool investors. More 
specifically, the company is charged with exaggerating the stringency of 
its financial safeguards in pricing risks from regulations restricting 
greenhouse gas emissions, according to the complaint filed last year in 
New York state court.

But Tillerson's appearance was just one of several recent watershed 
moments for efforts to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for its 
dominant role in causing climate change.
- - -
During the congressional hearing, the subcommittee chairman Democratic 
Congressman Jamie Raskin noted that the industry's tactics have changed 
over a period of decades. Many climate science deniers no longer claim 
global warming isn't happening, but question the human contribution, or 
point to the failure of giant emitters like China and India to curb 
their emissions, claiming that any progress in the U.S. is futile.

Although Massachusetts is taking aim at ExxonMobil for spending millions 
through at least 2009 to directly fund "fringe groups" challenging the 
scientific consensus on climate, Attorney General Healey's lawsuit is 
the first to dedicate a separate section to these new, more indirect 
tactics, noting that the fossil fuel industry now goes to great lengths 
to avoid the appearance of funding denial or obstructing progress.
- - -
Exxon is in the midst of an advertising campaign claiming that it has 
potential technical fixes to the damage its products continue to cause 
-- without ever mentioning the words "climate change." This includes 
everything from algae-based bio-fuels that could cut "emissions in half" 
to carbon capture and sequestration projects. All of which fit the 
narratives spun by Tillerson and Gunasekara of the industry as a 
workshop for solving climate change.
Meanwhile, back at the New York trial, which concluded November 7, the 
attorney general's case faces stiff headwinds.

Its small legal team has sometimes struggled against a highly skilled 
and experienced defense team from powerhouse corporate law firm Paul, 
Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, a leading financial law firm with 
over a thousand lawyers worldwide.

But criticism of the state's trial team needs to take into account the 
role of Barry Ostrager, the judge in the case.

To begin with, Judge Ostrager had to divest himself of $250,000 in Exxon 
stock in order to try it and scolded the attorney general's team for 
trying to have him removed from the case for that reason. Like most 
judges in the New York Supreme Court's Commercial Division, he is a 
former corporate lawyer. Aside from a clerk's position in federal court, 
Ostrager has held only one other job his entire career -- at the white 
shoe law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, where he specialized in 
representing insurers, appearing as lead trial counsel in more than a 
dozen major insurance coverage cases.

He has often shown an apparent bias for Exxon during the trial, 
frequently interrupting the attorney general's team in the middle of 
questioning, expressing impatience with their handling of witnesses, and 
threatening to close out the state's case early when they weren't ready 
with a witness.
- - -
Perhaps most significantly, Ostrager refused to allow the state to 
pursue the so-called "Wayne Tracker" emails. Wayne Tracker was an alias 
used by Tillerson for a private email account that was sometimes used to 
discuss climate-related subjects.

Exxon admitted it destroyed all Tracker emails prior to August 18, 2015, 
but claimed the deletions were unintentional, even though when deleted 
they were under subpoena, potentially making Exxon subject to various 
sanctions for spoliation of evidence. The state claimed the emails would 
have backed up charges that the company's top management and Tillerson 
himself planned the financial fraud alleged in the state's case.

Ostrager waved these concerns aside at a pre-trial hearing in October, 
and said he believed the deletions were accidental. "No harm, no foul," 
he said at the time.

As the New York case ended on November 7, Ostrager promised a decision 
within a month. For reasons having little to do with the case's merits, 
his ruling may mean less for the future of climate litigation than the 
clues Exxon has left as to how the industry may defend itself in the 
future -- both in the courtroom and outside it.
https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/11/08/new-york-exxon-trial-tillerson-oil-climate-lawsuits
- - -
[AOC shows her skill at the bar]
*Rep AOC Question line The Oil Industry's Efforts to Suppress the Truth 
about Climate Change*
https://youtu.be/g28LqkOs3AA



[One judge will rule]
*Did Exxon Mislead Investors About Climate-Related Risks? It's Now Up to 
a Judge to Decide.
*Closing arguments in the oil giant's investor fraud trial presented two 
competing narratives.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08112019/exxon-trial-closing-arguments-climate-investor-fraud-new-york-ostrager



[Beckwith will attend]
*Preparations for Madrid COP25 Climate Conference: A Plethora of 
Catastrophes to Present*
Paul Beckwith
As abrupt climate change accelerates and detrimental consequences to 
humanity notch upward, there is never a lack of material to present. I 
focus on what is happening, why, and what we can expect in the next 5 
years, 10 years, etc. As I prepare for presentations at Madrid's COP25, 
I have a huge number of colourful infographics, gifs, and papers to draw 
on. I discuss some here; if you come across something exceptional then 
please alert me in a comment with a link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uAkMurQNJU


[Deniers denial]
*Climate change deniers' new battle front attacked*
'Pernicious' campaign is unfair on well-meaning people who want to help 
– expert
Robin McKie -  Science editor - Sat 9 Nov 2019
The battle between climate change deniers and the environment movement 
has entered a new, pernicious phase. That is the stark warning of one of 
the world's leading climate experts, Michael Mann, director of the Earth 
System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University.

Mann told the Observer that although flat rejection of global warming 
was becoming increasingly hard to maintain in the face of mounting 
evidence, this did not mean climate change deniers were giving up the fight.

"First of all, there is an attempt being made by them to deflect 
attention away from finding policy solutions to global warming towards 
promoting individual behaviour changes that affect people's diets, 
travel choices and other personal behaviour," said Mann. "This is a 
deflection campaign and a lot of well-meaning people have been taken in 
by it."

Mann stressed that individual actions – eating less meat or avoiding air 
travel – were important in the battle against global warming. However, 
they should be seen as additional ways to combat global warming rather 
than as a substitute for policy reform.

"We should also be aware how the forces of denial are exploiting the 
lifestyle change movement to get their supporters to argue with each 
other. It takes pressure off attempts to regulate the fossil fuel 
industry. This approach is a softer form of denial and in many ways it 
is more pernicious."

Over the past 25 years Mann has played a key role in establishing that 
rising fossil fuel emissions and increasing levels of atmospheric carbon 
dioxide are heating the planet at a worrying rate. He was also involved 
in the 2009 Climategate affair in which thousands of emails – many to 
and from Mann – were hacked from the University of East Anglia's [UEA] 
Climate Research Unit. Climategate marks its 10th anniversary this 
month. At the time, deniers on both sides of the Atlantic claimed the 
emails from UEA showed climate scientists had been fiddling their data, 
claims that may have contributed towards delay in the implementation of 
measures to tackle climate change over the next decade, say observers.

Subsequent inquiries found no evidence of any misbehaviour by 
researchers, however. The denial machine lost a lot of its credibility 
as a result, added Mann, and there has been a gradual rise in public 
acceptance of the idea of global warming.

However, deniers have not given up their opposition to plans to curtail 
fossil fuel use and among their new tactics they have also tried to 
encourage "doomism", as Mann put it. "This is the idea that we are now 
so late in the game [in tackling global warming] that there is nothing 
that we can do about the problem," he added. "By promoting this doom and 
gloom attitude this leads people down a path of despair and hopelessness 
and finally inaction, which actually leads us to the same place as 
outright climate-change denialism."

This is the new climate war, said Mann, and it is just as dangerous as 
the old one which focused on outright denial of the science. This new 
approach has a veneer of credibility, he added. It seems reasonable to 
many people. And that makes it, to some extent, even more dangerous, 
Mann concluded.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/nov/09/doomism-new-tactic-fossil-fuel-lobby



[a little humor]
*Lewis Black | 11/2/19 San Diego CA: Recycling*
Lewis Black
Allison lives in California and does everything she can to be kind to 
the planet. She drives a Tesla, installed solar panels on her house, and 
is diligent about recycling. The problem? CVS receipts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGQ7XTL-z_U



*This Day in Climate History - November 10, 2014 - from D.R. Tucker*
The Boston Globe reports:

    "Professors at Boston-area colleges are adding their voices to a
    student-led movement that is pressing higher education institutions
    to shed investments in fossil fuel companies.

    "The growing faculty involvement has not only galvanized the effort
    with increased support but also added an important and unique
    perspective, activists say."

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/11/10/fuel-divestment-movement-grows-boston-campuses/uOKCKYo71b6QhMVaKmQQNK/story.html
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