[TheClimate.Vote] October 18, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Fri Oct 18 11:33:12 EDT 2019

/October 18, 2019/

[Bloomberg Environment]
*Documents Show Massachusetts AG Ready to File Climate Case Against Exxon*
Oct. 17, 2019
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey is poised to sue Exxon Mobil 
Corp. for allegedly deceiving consumers about the climate-warming 
impacts of fossil fuels.

According to documents obtained by Bloomberg Environment Oct. 17, the 
Democratic state lawyer on Oct. 10 notified Exxon that her office was 
ready to move forward with litigation it has threatened for more than 
three years...
- -
The Suffolk County case is Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Office of Attorney 
General, Mass. Super. Ct., No. 1684CV01888.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/documents-show-massachusetts-ag-ready-to-file-climate-case-against-exxon

- - -

[Trial starts Oct. 22 - expected to last three weeks]
*Exxon and Oil Sands Go on Trial in New York Climate Fraud Case*
The New York attorney general says Exxon used two sets of books and 
misled investors by downplaying the potential costs of carbon emissions.
By Nicholas Kusnetz
OCT 17, 2019
- - -
The allegations set forth by the attorney general are complex. But 
broadly speaking, Exxon is accused of deceiving investors by saying it 
was doing one thing, while in fact it was doing quite another. Central 
to the case is the charge that this deception hid risks from the 
company's shareholders and creditors by disclosing the proxy cost only, 
and not its "greenhouse gas cost." (The case was filed by Schneiderman's 
appointed successor, Barbara D. Underwood, and it will be tried by her 
successor, Attorney General Letitia James, who was elected in 2018.)...
- - -
Exxon's stock is still widely held by investment giants like Vanguard, 
and most Wall Street analysts give it a hold rating, rather than buy or 
sell. But these financial trends have led some of the industry's critics 
to warn that the company is facing a reckoning.

"Are they in trouble?" said Tom Sanzillo, financial director at the 
Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, which promotes a 
transition to sustainable energy. "It looks that way to us."

The weak performance of Exxon's stock has come without strict, 
widespread climate policies. The future will look even worse if and when 
nations adopt some form of carbon pricing or hard emissions cuts. That's 
when the "massive" costs that analysts in Alberta warned of would hit 
projects like Kearl and, if it ever goes forward, Aspen.

Sanzillo said the accounting practices the attorney general has zeroed 
in on, whether they're deemed to violate the law or not, are indicative 
of the larger problems the oil and gas industry and its investors are 
facing.

"The fossil fuel sector has really lost a financial rationale," he said. 
"It is now increasingly an industry that is resorting to things like 
this. Flouting the law, regulatory shenanigans, scientific distortion, 
you can go through the whole list. That occurs when a company's basic, 
fundamental financial model doesn't work anymore."
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16102019/exxon-oil-sands-trial-climate-change-fraud-new-york-rex-tillerson 

[National Geographic]
*Indigenous farming practices failing as climate change disrupts seasons*
Farmers around the world rely on millennia-old wisdom to guide their 
planting. Scrambled weather and seasons are forcing them into uncharted 
territory.
BY PETER SCHWARTZSTEIN - PUBLISHED OCTOBER 14, 2019

THE HOPI TRIBESMEN of northern Arizona are born meteorologists.

When snake weed blooms in the spring, they know they're in for bumper 
summer rains. When the desert stays largely barren, they prepare for 
drought. As far back as tribal lore goes, Hopi farmers have sustained 
themselves and their crops by diligently reading their arid mesa 
surroundings.

This summer, however, their millennia-old forecasting techniques failed 
them, and not for the first time in recent years. The weeds sprouted in 
great numbers in April. The usual rains in August did not come at all. 
Were it not for local grocery stores and the seed stockpiles they 
maintain in anticipation of the occasional bad year, many Hopi might 
well have gone hungry...
- -
"You can't go into a place and say: your traditional knowledge is not 
valid. You can't be adversarial since a lot of it is based on science," 
Stefanski says.

But if we're smart, we might even see this as something of an 
opportunity, farmers and meteorologists say. After all, indigenous 
forecasting relies on a careful reading of the natural landscape, 
something many societies appear to have lacked as environmental 
practices have deteriorated. If nothing else, we might learn something 
from many indigenous communities' fortitude.

"We've seen our crops die before, so we're prepared for the 
psychological impact of climate change," said Michael Kotutwa Johnson, 
the Hopi farmer. "We can handle it."
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/10/climate-change-killing-thousands-of-years-indigenous-wisdom/ 

- - -

[more from National Geographic]
*New seismic phenomenon discovered, named stormquakes*
The curious bursts of energy are born from massive storms and can 
radiate thousands of miles across continents.
BY MAYA WEI-HAAS
- - -
Similar to many scientific advances, stormquakes were discovered by 
accident. In summer 2018, Fan and his colleagues were developing a 
method to study what are known as very low frequency earthquakes. These 
are not the sudden, intense jolts we usually think of when a temblor 
unzips our planet's surface. Instead these tremors shake the surface in 
a low-frequency side-to-side warble at intensities below what humans can 
detect without instrumentation. Geologists can identify these events by 
the seismic waves they generate, picked up on sensitive instruments 
known as seismometers.
- - -
For one, the quakes came from regions with a broad continental shelf, an 
underwater section of a continent just off the coast that is relatively 
shallow. This likely allows the waves from stormquakes time to build up, 
Fan explains. Most wind-borne ocean waves generate signals at a 
frequency higher than the 20- to 50-second cycle of a stormquake. But a 
broad shelf gives the waves time to interact with each other, perhaps 
stretching into a longer, lower frequency wave.

Tempestuous temblors also seem to turn up only around ocean banks. These 
flattened underwater hills can focus the energy so that the pressure 
from the waves transfers to the ground to create the uniform burst of 
wiggles--similar to a hammer striking in the ocean, Fan says....
- - -
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/10/new-seismic-phenomenon-discovered-named-stormquakes/
- -
[Source document]
Geophysical Research Letters
*Stormquakes*
Wenyuan Fan...
First published: 14 October 2019 - https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL084217

Abstract
Seismic signals from ocean‐solid Earth interactions are ubiquitously
recorded on our planet. However, these wavefields are typically
incoherent in the time domain limiting their utilization for
understanding ocean dynamics or solid Earth properties. In contrast,
we find that during large storms such as hurricanes and Nor'easters
the interaction of long‐period ocean waves with shallow seafloor
features located near the edge of continental shelves, known as
ocean banks, excites coherent transcontinental Rayleigh wave packets
in the 20 to 50 s period band. These "stormquakes" migrate
coincident with the storms, but are effectively spatiotemporally
focused seismic point sources with equivalent earthquake magnitudes
that can be greater than 3.5. Stormquakes thus provide new coherent
sources to investigate Earth structure in locations that typically
lack both seismic instrumentation and earthquakes. Moreover, they
provide a new geophysical observable with high spatial and temporal
resolution with which to investigate ocean wave dynamics during
large storms.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2019GL084217

[Greta audio and text]
*Greta Thunberg condemns 'unlawful' police ban on Extinction Rebellion 
climate change protest*
- - -
'If standing up for humanity is against the rules then the rules must be 
broken,' says teenager
Greta Thunberg has called on Extinction Rebellion demonstrators to defy 
a police order banning them from protesting across London.

The climate change activist spoke out before the group won the go-ahead 
to take legal action over the order, which has been condemned by human 
rights groups as unlawful.

"If standing up against the climate and ecological breakdown and for 
humanity is against the rules then the rules must be broken," Ms 
Thunberg wrote on her Instagram account...
- - -
A government spokesman said: "The UK is already taking world-leading 
action to combat climate change as the first major economy to legislate 
to end our contribution to global warming entirely by 2050.

"While we share people's concerns about global warming, and respect the 
right to peaceful protest, it should not disrupt people's day-to-day lives."
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/greta-thunberg-extinction-rebellion-protests-police-ban-climate-change-london-a9158191.html

[Document resources from Climate Adaptation Knowledge Exchange]
*YOUR ONLINE ADAPTATION DESTINATION*
Welcome to the world's largest and most used source of climate 
adaptation case studies and resources. Share lessons, ideas, and 
opportunities with others in the field.
https://www.cakex.org/

*This Day in Climate History - October 18, 1983 - from D.R. Tucker*
In what would be one of her last "News Digest" broadcasts, NBC anchor 
Jessica Savitch mentions a recently released EPA report on the 
consequences of carbon pollution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w4pFNCzhTg
http://www.fuzzymemories.tv/#videoclip-3279
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2012/06/21/1101930/-A-Greenhouse-Effect-Warning-from-1983 

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