[TheClimate.Vote] November 19, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/November 19, 2019/

[Yale studies divergence]
*How Political Polarization Increased on the Green New Deal*
We are pleased to announce the publication of a new research article, 
"The development of partisan polarization on the Green New Deal" in the 
journal Nature Climate Change.

The Green New Deal, a proposed set of U.S. policies that seeks to 
address climate change, entered the political stage in early 2019 and 
continues to occupy the spotlight of the climate policy conversation. 
Our new article documents the dramatic changes in Americans' awareness 
of and support for the Green New Deal in just four months. For example, 
we found that Republicans who regularly watch Fox News became much less 
supportive of the Green New Deal...
- - -
Between December and April, the Green New Deal was discussed frequently 
on conservative media. For example, in the week of the March 26th Senate 
vote on the Green New Deal resolution, Fox News covered the Green New 
Deal more than did CNN and MSNBC combined.

Our study found that Republicans who are frequent Fox News watchers were 
more aware and less supportive of the Green New Deal, compared with 
Republicans who watch Fox News less frequently. Further analyses found 
that Republicans' frequency of viewing Fox News was a significant 
(negative) predictor of their support for the Green New Deal, even when 
controlling for alternative explanations such as education, age, 
mainstream news exposure, 2016 voter status, attitude toward socialism, 
and political ideology.
https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/how-political-polarization-increased-on-the-green-new-deal/
more at - 
https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/about/projects/climate-change-in-the-american-mind/
- - -
[Study Paper]
Published: 18 November 2019
*The development of partisan polarization over the Green New Deal*
Abstract

    In early 2019, a US climate change and economic renewal policy
    proposal called the Green New Deal (GND)1 rose from obscurity to
    national prominence in just four months. This situation created a
    natural field experiment in which to study the emergence of partisan
    polarization. Here, we report findings from two nationally
    representative surveys of registered US voters that measured
    familiarity with and support for the GND shortly before and after
    the issue entered the national spotlight. Initially, there was low
    public awareness of the GND but majority support for it across party
    lines. Four months later, voters had become much more familiar with
    the GND and partisan polarization had increased significantly due to
    a sharp decrease in support among Republicans. In fact, Republicans
    who had heard the most about the GND were the least likely to
    support it. In contrast, support for the GND remained high among
    Democrats, and did not vary substantially across degrees of
    familiarity. We also identify a likely mechanism: a 'Fox News
    effect'. That is, among Republicans, Fox News viewing was a
    significant predictor of both familiarity with the GND and
    opposition to it, even when controlling for alternative explanations.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0621-7


[opinion]
*Venice is drowning. It's a warning of what's to come.*
November 15, 2019 at 2:15 p.m. PST
VENICE HAS always been linked closely with the water that surrounds it. 
The city is thought to have been founded by refugees seeking protection 
from Germanic invaders by sheltering in the northwestern Adriatic Sea's 
islands and marshes. By the 12th century, the doge would annually drop a 
ring into the Adriatic to symbolically wed the sea. The Venetian 
merchant republic ruled the Mediterranean shipping trade for centuries, 
and the wealth it generated funded the construction of a glittering 
metropolis on piles driven into the city's lagoon.

But Venice is sinking, and the seas are rising -- and never before has 
the water seemed so close. Some 85 percent of the city flooded this week 
as the highest tidewaters in more than 50 years inundated its historic 
core. A viral video caught a man swimming through St. Mark's Square, 
site of the Doge's Palace, the city's iconic campanile and the 
11th-century St. Mark's Basilica. In its hundreds of years, the basilica 
has flooded only six times. Two of those times came in the past two years.

Venice's problems stem from more than just the audacity of those who 
built a major settlement on a shallow lagoon. The ground below the city 
is shifting as the aquifer below the lagoon depletes. Meanwhile, 
man-made climate change is boosting sea levels steadily and promoting 
extreme weather. Virginia's Hampton Roads, home to some of the United 
States' most important military installations, faces a similar dual 
threat of sinking land and rising seas, resulting in major flooding 
problems in naval drydocks and other critical infrastructure...
- - -
Saving Venice will take money, time and compromise. In substantial ways, 
the place will not be the same. Humanity must ask how many Venices it 
wants in the decades to come. For centuries, humans have built their 
civilization around water, under a certain set of climatic conditions, 
in anticipation of only the rare catastrophe. Unless humans make easier 
changes now to reduce global warming's risks, they will have harder 
choices in the future, in places ancient and new, in ways predictable 
and unexpected.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/venice-is-drowning-its-a-warning-of-whats-to-come/2019/11/15/bec0343a-071a-11ea-8292-c46ee8cb3dce_story.html?



[Flat-Land and Climate Change - video]
*Climate Change is Too Big for our Brains feat. Mike Rugnetta | Hot Mess *
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Pqp_8XLC6c


[superb video briefing on our current condition ]
*Climate Change Talks - Professor Kevin Anderson*
Oct 9, 2019
10000 Actions
Kevin Anderson (Professor of Energy and Climate Change in the School of 
Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering at the University of 
Manchester) shares the academic evidence behind the global climate 
crisis and what this means for city-regions like Greater Manchester.

The event took place on Friday 20th September 2019 to coincide with 
global events highlighting the climate emergency.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na1aHtv0OKI
- - -
Find out more about Kevin's work at http://www.kevinanderson.info and 
support the climate campaigning of Friends of the Earth Scotland at 
http://www.foe.scot/climate-action/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt5bobk5wpQ



[Bloomberg on the future of oil]
*Why Even Saudi Aramco Is Now Talking About 'Peak Oil'*
By Jessica Shankleman and Grant Smith | Bloomberg
November 17, 2019 at 12:30 a.m. PST
The world is turning its back on oil. But how quickly? Technological 
advances in renewable energy and electric cars, accelerated by the 
threat of climate change, could mean the world's thirst for petroleum 
tops out sooner than companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp. or Saudi 
Arabia's Aramco are banking on. "Peak oil" once signified the concern 
that supplies would someday run dry; today it means something very 
different.

*1. Why is oil's future in doubt?*
About 60% of oil is used in transportation, which is also where the 
biggest technical developments are occurring. The rapid rise of electric 
carmakers such as Tesla Inc. and China's BYD could be turbocharged by 
advances in related fields such as self-driving vehicles and 
ride-hailing apps, which make it possible for people to switch from 
owning cars to relying on rides from more efficient fleets. The 
culmination of these trends could transform how people travel and prompt 
more revisions to forecasts for when oil consumption will peak. Even 
Aramco, which used to downplay the prospect of peak oil demand, cited it 
as a risk factor in the prospectus for its 2019 initial public offering.

*2. Is the world running out of oil?*
No. The peak oil that's talked about today is quite different from the 
concept that emerged in the 1950s, when M. King Hubbert, a Royal Dutch 
Shell Plc geologist, predicted that U.S. oil production would crest in 
the 1970s and the world would physically run out of oil. That hasn't 
happened, and new discoveries and efficiency gains at existing fields 
mean oil supplies will abound for a long time to come. So the discussion 
has shifted to peak demand -- whether people will simply use less 
petroleum, and reserves that are considered valuable today will wind up 
being left in the ground.

*3. What do experts say about that?*
Forecasts for long-term oil demand have been coming down. The 
International Energy Agency, which advises countries on policies, now 
expects that consumption will hit a plateau around 2030 amid the use of 
more efficient car engines and electric vehicles. Renewable energy is 
taking off, electric companies are switching to cleaner-burning natural 
gas, and the cost of solar power has fallen 50% in a decade. That's 
upending the business model of utilities, which were designed to deliver 
fossil-fuel energy from large power plants to homes and businesses.
*
**4. Does it matter when oil peaks?*
Yes. To limit global warming to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 
degrees Fahrenheit) -- the target set by the United Nations-sponsored 
Paris climate change treaty -- the IEA predicts that demand for oil 
would need to peak in the next few years and then decline sharply. 
That's unlikely to happen: The agency's main demand scenario still sees 
oil use expanding until the end of the next decade.
*
**5. So when will demand for oil peak?*
There's a range of about 20 years between the earliest and latest 
predictions. The most aggressive ones are based on the rapid expansion 
of electric vehicles, energy efficiency improvements and policy changes 
to curb greenhouse gas emissions. That scenario led Equinor ASA and some 
forecasters to predict oil demand could peak as soon as the late 2020s. 
Ben van Beurden, Shell's chief executive, said in 2017 that if electric 
cars become really popular, the zenith could arrive in the next 15 
years. And legendary oil trader Andy Hall affirmed in November 2019 that 
the peak could come as soon as 2030.

*6. Do all oil companies have the same view?*
No. Many see a peak around 2040. Others, including Exxon Mobil and 
Aramco, say their industry will enjoy decades of growth as it feeds the 
energy needs of the world's expanding middle class. But state-owned 
Saudi Aramco, citing external research from IHS Markit, also 
acknowledged the possibility of a peak within the next two decades in 
the prospectus for its IPO, which was expected to be the largest in 
history. OPEC, the cartel dominated by Middle East producers, projects 
that consumption will continue to increase for at least another two 
decades. And when the need for oil does peak, it's likely to plateau 
rather than fall steeply.

*7. Why such differences in forecasting?*
There's a lively debate about how rapidly electric vehicles will catch 
on. Falling costs for batteries could make them as affordable as 
internal combustion engine cars over the next 10 years, according to 
Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Meanwhile, some of the world's largest 
auto markets plan to phase out vehicles powered by fossil fuels to clean 
up dirty air. In 2017, India pledged that all new car sales there would 
be electric only by 2030, but has since lowered the target to 30%. China 
is aiming for 60% electric sales by 2035. France and the U.K. will ban 
the sale of diesel- and gasoline-fueled cars by 2040. The impact of the 
U.S. is a wild card because President Donald Trump is disrupting efforts 
to tackle global warming.

*8. What will become of oil companies?*
Many are speeding up efforts to diversify, investing more in natural gas 
and cleaner technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells. These companies 
also do huge business in non-energy uses of crude, turning it into 
chemicals used for everything from plastics to fertilizer. Still, peak 
oil has to be a concern, since it can take a decade or more for 
multibillion-dollar oil exploration projects to come to fruition. Oil 
companies risk losing $2.3 trillion in wasted investment if oil demand 
drops sooner than expected, according to a 2017 report from Carbon 
Tracker. That's a problem also sometimes called stranded assets.

*9. What will happen to car companies?*
They are furiously preparing for the shift. All of the new models 
launched by Volvo in 2019 were offered in electrified versions, while 
Volkswagen wants 25% of its sales to be electric by 2025. Daimler and 
BMW are aiming for 15% to 25% by 2025.

*10. What happens to countries that depend on oil revenue?*
That's a big unknown. Peak oil could cause political turmoil in 
so-called petro-states that rely on oil revenue to keep government 
finances afloat. Saudi Arabia is partially privatizing Aramco to help 
fund the diversification of its economy for the post-hydrocarbon age. 
Other petro-states, such as Russia, Venezuela and Nigeria, have yet to 
lay out their plans for a future after peak oil.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-even-saudi-aramco-is-now-talking-about-peak-oil/2019/11/15/d3401df0-07d1-11ea-ae28-7d1898012861_story.html


[extending intelligence]
*State Department Ignores Climate Change in the Indo-Pacific Region*
Indo-Pacific State Department By Marc Kodack

The U.S. State Department recently published an "implementation update" 
of its Indo-Pacific strategy, titled "A Free and Open Indo-Pacific: 
Advancing a Shared Vision." It provides a summary of the State 
Department's initiatives over the last two years - namely its' 
"diplomatic, economic, governance and security" actions to implement a 
whole-of-government strategy in the region. Ideally, it should 
complement the Department of Defense's Indo-Pacific Strategy Report. 
While the Pentagon report mentions climate change as a "transnational 
challenge" within its report, the State Department document includes no 
mention of climate change, despite severe consequences for the region, 
including as it relates to transboundary water issues, such as the 
Mekong River, which are creating tensions among multiple countries that 
share a river system.

The Pentagon strategy report seeks to achieve three regional objectives, 
including preparedness, partnerships, and promoting a networked region. 
It briefly mentions climate change twice, stating--"the Indo-Pacific 
region suffers regularly from natural disasters including monsoons, 
hurricanes, and floods to earthquakes and volcanic activity, as well as 
the negative consequences of climate change" and with respect to 
building capacity and resilience for Pacific Islands--"to address 
climate change and disaster response…" Other climate change effects that 
are of concern to the DoD for the region include its' effects on food 
production resulting in shortages, shifts in populations, either 
internally within a country or across international borders creating or 
exacerbating existing social and political conditions, and increases in 
public health crises, either post-disaster or from deteriorating 
environmental and living conditions.

While negative consequences of climate change are mentioned in the 
strategy report, none of these consequences have been incorporated into 
the State's Department's vision which is based on "free, fair, and 
reciprocal trade, open investment environments, good governance, and 
freedom of the seas." For example, climate change implications on 
transboundary water will be exacerbated as upstream water sources are 
reduced because of accelerated glacial melting or more intensive 
regional droughts that reduce surface water availability, which can in 
turn lead to increased groundwater extraction further reducing the 
connected surface waters. When climate change is combined with 
geo-political decisions and actions, such as dam building, disagreements 
with downstream neighbors may be intensified.

Over the last 10 years, the State Department has had an on-going effort, 
the Lower Mekong Initiative, which "builds the capacity of partner 
countries [Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam] in areas such 
as energy and water security, sustainable infrastructure, and regional 
institutions. Without incorporating climate change into this initiative, 
water security cannot be enhanced, particularly with "a spree of 
dam-building that concentrates control over downstream flows, plans to 
blast and dredge riverbeds…and a push by some to mold new rules to 
govern the river in ways that undermine existing institutions."

As a way to enhance State's current efforts in the region, the Center 
for Climate and Security has in the past recommended the creation of a 
Climate-Security Plan for the Asia-Pacific Region which would integrate 
defense, diplomacy, and development aspects of foreign policy - a 
recommendation supported by the former Commander of U.S. Pacific 
Command, Admiral Samuel J. Locklear, US Navy (Ret). The plan's 
activities would include expanding military-to-military and 
civilian-to-military engagements to address climate threats, increase 
strategic dialog on disaster risk reduction with multiple partners, 
broaden military exercises and security cooperation programs, and 
dedicate additional resources including investments/financing for 
climate adaptation projects, and personnel, such as the Joint Staff 
planning and operations sections.

More broadly than just the Asia-Pacific region, The Center for Climate 
and Security has recommended in its recently released Climate Security 
Plan for America that DoD, State and other federal agencies work 
together to create Regional Climate Security Plans to support defense, 
diplomacy, and development activities in all critical regions, e.g., 
Asia-Pacific, the Arctic, the Middle East, etc. Internally within the 
State Department, a Bureau of International Climate Security should be 
created, headed by an Assistance Secretary. The Secretary of State 
should "find innovative means of supporting strategic climate resilience 
investments…in regions of core strategic interest to the United States." 
The State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development 
should also create a Climate Security Conflict Prevention Framework that 
builds on existing efforts. The Framework would ensure "that efforts and 
investments designed to reduce the fragility of nations, and to 
anticipate, prevent and respond to conflict, are climate-proofed." These 
and other recommendations would inculcate a climate change mind-set 
throughout the State Department and its partner federal agencies.

Climate change will affect millions of people in the Asia-Pacific 
region. Transboundary water issues, such as changes in river flows 
influenced by climate change, will contribute to disruptions in local 
livelihoods and regional trade. It will become more difficult to 
maintain existing individual country and regional partnerships if 
tensions over water between one or more individual countries are 
increasing. Climate change will further inflame water-related tensions 
throughout the strategically important Indo-Pacific region to the U.S.
https://climateandsecurity.org/2019/11/18/state-department-ignores-climate-change-in-the-indo-pacific-region/


[West Coastal audio 1 hour]
*California Housing Crisis Podcast: Fires prompt doomsday predictions*
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-11-18/housing-crisis-podcast-california-farhad-manjoo-climate-change


*This Day in Climate History - November 19, 2010 - from D.R. Tucker*
In a Washington Post article, former Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) asks, 
"Can the party of Reagan accept the science of climate change?"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/18/AR2010111805451.html
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