[TheClimate.Vote] September 24, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Tue Sep 24 07:31:51 EDT 2019
/September 24, 2019/
[dramatic video]
*Greta Thunberg to world leaders: 'How dare you? You have stolen my
dreams and my childhood'*
Published on Sep 23, 2019
Guardian News
'You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,'
climate activist Greta Thunberg has told world leaders at the 2019 UN
climate action summit in New York. In an emotionally charged speech, she
accused them of ignoring the science behind the climate crisis, saying:
'We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about
it money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth - how dare you?'
UN secretary general hails 'turning point' in climate crisis fight
[Auto generated transcript below:]
My message is that we'll be watching you
[Applause]
This is all wrong I shouldn't be up here
I should be back in school on the other
side of the ocean yet you all come to us
young people for hope how dare you you
have stolen my dreams in my childhood
with your empty words yet I'm one of the
lucky ones people are suffering people
are dying
entire ecosystems are collapsing we are
in the beginning of a mass extinction
and all you can talk about is money
and fairytales of eternal economic
growth, how dare you.
[Applause]
For more than 30 years the science has
been crystal-clear how dare you continue
to look away and come here saying that
you're doing enough when the politics
and solutions needed are still nowhere
in sight you say you hear us and that
you understand the urgency but no matter
how sad and angry I am I do not want to
believe that because if you really
understood the situation and still kept
on failing to act then you would be evil
and that I refuse to believe the popular
idea of cutting our emissions in half in
10 years only gives us a 50% chance of
staying below 1.5 degrees and the risk
of setting of irreversible chain
reactions beyond human control 50% may
be acceptable to you but those numbers
do not include tipping points most
feedback loops additional warming hidden
by toxic air pollution or the aspects of
equity and climate justice they also
rely on my generation sucking hundreds
of billions of tons of your co2 out of
the air with technologies that barely
exist so a 50% risk is simply not
acceptable to us we who have to live
with the consequences how dare you
pretend that this can be sold with just
business as usual and some technical
solutions with today's emissions levels
that remaining co2 budgets will be
entirely gone within less than 8 and a
half years there will not be any
solutions or plans presented in line
with these figures here today because
these numbers are too uncomfortable and
you are still not mature enough
to tell it like it is you are failing us
but the young people are starting to
understand your betrayal the eyes of all
future generations are upon you and if
you choose to fail us I say we will
never forgive you
[Applause]
We will not let you get away with this
right here right now is where we draw
the line the world is waking up and
change is coming whether you like it or not.
thank you
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMrtLsQbaok
[Legal action - children's rights are human rights]
*Thunberg and other youth activists announce lawsuit against UN -* live
archived
Streamed live Monday
Guardian News
Youth activists including Swedish teen Greta Thunberg announce lawsuit
against the United Nations over climate change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP1QsUlWsfA
[eyes to the future]
*130 banks holding USD 47 trillion in assets commit to climate action
and sustainability*
SIXDEGREES on 09/23/2019
IN A BOOST FOR CLIMATE ACTION AND SUSTAINABILITY, LEADING BANKS AND THE
UNITED NATIONS LAUNCHED THE PRINCIPLES FOR RESPONSIBLE BANKING.
In the Principles, launched one day ahead of the UN Climate Action
Summit in New York, banks commit to strategically align their business
with the goals of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the
Sustainable Development Goals, and massively scale up their contribution
to the achievement of both.
By signing up to the Principles, banks said they believe that "only in
an inclusive society founded on human dignity, equality and the
sustainable use of natural resources" can their clients, customers and
businesses thrive.
With global leaders coming together to share the actions they are taking
to attain the Sustainable Development Goals and address climate change
this week in New York, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at the
launch event, attended by the 130 Founding Signatories and over 45 of
their CEOs, that "the UN Principles for Responsible Banking are a guide
for the global banking industry to respond to, drive and benefit from a
sustainable development economy. The Principles create the
accountability that can realize responsibility, and the ambition that
can drive action."
The Principles are supported by a strong implementation framework that
defines clear accountabilities and requires each bank to set, publish
and work towards ambitious targets.
By creating a common framework that guides banks in growing their
business and reducing risks through supporting the economic and social
transformation required for a sustainable future, the Principles pave
the way for the transformation to a sustainable banking industry.
- - -
"To transit to low-carbon and climate-resilient economies that support
the goals of the Paris Agreement requires an additional investment of at
least USD 60 trillion from now until 2050," said Christiana Figueres,
Convener, Mission 2020, who is credited as the architect of the Paris
Agreement in her role formerly as Executive Secretary of the UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change. "As the banking sector provides
over 90 per cent of the financing in developing countries and over two
thirds worldwide, the Principles are a crucial step towards meeting the
world's sustainable development financing requirements."
https://www.sixdegreesnews.org/archives/27365/130-banks-holding-usd-47-trillion-in-assets-commit-to-climate-action-and-sustainability
[Trending interest - long]
*Climate change: Did we just witness the beginning of the end of Big Oil?*
PUBLISHED SUN, SEP 22 2019
Eric Rosenbaum
*KEY POINTS*
The energy sector is notorious for booms and busts, but oil and gas
stocks' weighting in the S&P 500 has not been this low since as far back
as 1979.
Investors have lost faith in oil companies, but it is not yet clear
whether that is a permanent change caused by fear of increasing advances
made by renewable-energy sources like wind, solar and electric
batteries, or a temporary reluctance to invest caused by low oil prices.
Calling peak oil has been a fool's errand for over a century. When the
first U.S. oil bonanza began in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in the late
1850s many in the press were confident that it would be the beginning,
and the end, of the U.S. oil boom...
- -
Sam Margolin, managing director and senior analyst at Wolfe Research
covering energy sector stocks, said with some investors the oil industry
has become its own hurdle, and the general fear about where the world is
heading supersedes the need to be certain about a peak oil timeline.
"To the extent anyone says, 'I can't look at the sector because I have
no long-term confidence in oil as an energy source,' what is interesting
about those comments is that the time frame is not relevant. Someone
will say, 'Oil will be used in 10 years but I don't know about 20 or
50.' It is just at some point in the future it will be out of the mix,
and that's a hurdle to overcome, and there are investors like that. It's
not universal, and there are just as many people on the other side who
say the next shortage will come sooner than anyone expects."
One way to discount any correlation between the sector's S&P 500 decline
and general investor souring on energy is to focus on how big the
technology industry has become. As the weighting of the biggest U.S.
tech companies have grown and consumed more of the total market return,
other weightings decline.
Over the past five-year period, 30% of the S&P 500 return was generated
by the five biggest technology stocks -- Alphabet, Facebook, Apple,
Microsoft and Amazon...
- - -
"The rest of the market has been getting bigger and leaving energy
companies behind," Margolin said. "The market cap of Exxon Mobil is not
lower than it was 20 years ago. It is just that the rest of the market
has tripled."
The stock market weighting is not the only place where this shift from
energy to tech is evident. In 1982, when the Forbes 400 list was first
published, 89 of the 400 richest Americans had made their fortunes in
oil. By 2018, 59 of the Forbes 400 had made their fortunes in
technology, including six of the top 10, Bezos among them.
But oil has been down before, just never by this much in the S&P 500.
"This is not the first time oil prices have been in the $50-$60 range,
and yet the energy weighting is significantly less than it had been in
the past," said Stewart Glickman, energy analyst at CFRA. When oil was
trading between $50 and $60 during 2005 and 2006, the world was a
different place. "Now alternative energy is a threat. It is still not a
threat that renewables in a really significant way are taking over for
fossil fuels," he said, noting that the intermittent generation of solar
and wind and scaling of energy-storage solutions remain challenges. "But
people are worried," Glickman said. "They've lost the growth investors
even if they still have dividend investors."
"I don't dismiss it as much as other people might," said Nick Colas,
co-founder of DataTrek Research who worked in energy research earlier in
his career on Wall Street. "I remember the first oil shock [of the
1970s] vividly. People who were 50-plus retail investors with capital to
invest would be shocked to see where oil is in the S&P as a sector now.
It is just not as interesting a place to invest. ... Venture capital
money isn't going into carbon-based energy."
"Stocks that have really worked are the ones where there is consensus,"
Margolin said. "Everyone knows online transaction counts are going
higher, or streaming subscribers going higher. There is no consensus on
a positive direction for oil."
- - - -
But the conversation has changed.
"Peak oil used to be a conversation about supply running out, but now it
is about demand peaking," Parker said.
"In the future, exploration is largely redundant -- at least for the
purposes of adding resource -- even in a modest demand growth scenario,"
Wood Mackenzie analysts wrote in a recent report. "The world does not
have a supply problem. The world is awash with oil and the Majors know it."
The report went on: "The fundamental question is this: will industry
forecasts for sustained oil demand growth 'prevail' over scientific
warnings of the consequences of that growth? At this point, we simply
cannot know. But one thing is for certain -- neither companies nor
investors can afford to bet the farm on either outcome."
Carbon Tracker's Bond sees in the planned Saudi Aramco IPO, whose timing
has been thrown into question by last week's attack, the ultimate tell
that Peak Oil is here. "The largest oil IPO in history. At a time when
there are fears of peak oil demand," he said. "I don't think I need to
elaborate."
Though, roughly 160 years after Titusville, if anyone can stretch out
the oil era to its most-delayed possible end, it is Saudi Arabia.
"The Saudis, along with the Russian and U.S. tight oil, these are the
lowest-cost barrels in the world and they will still be producing.
Canadian oil sands or frontier deepwater, or U.K. North Sea where there
are high operating costs, go first. That's where barrels first stay in
the ground," Parker said.
And that already has started to happen. Exxon Mobil and other major oil
companies including ConocoPhillips have had to write down existing
reserves in Canadian tar sands, which the companies say is done for
regulatory accounting purposes and can be reversed if prices rise, but
others argue the debooking of assets should be viewed as a long-term
read-through on demand.
An August report from BNP Paribas forecasts that oil will have to go as
law as $10 to be competitive with renewables in the electric car era.
While the U.S. oil boom in the shale is such a recent phenomenon that
analysts still struggle to understand exactly how much money these
companies can make in various price scenarios, and have trouble placing
too much faith in cost estimates offered by management, Saudi drilling
is the lowest-cost in the world.
That makes Parker certain of at least one thing when it comes to Saudi
Arabia and arguments over peak oil demand. "They will be going to the end."
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/22/climate-change-did-we-just-witness-beginning-of-end-of-big-oil.html
[science of clouds... a classic briefing from 2018]
*Guest post: Why clouds hold the key to better climate models*
Prof Ellie Highwood is professor of climate physics in the Department of
Meteorology at the University of Reading and president of the Royal
Meteorology Society.
As a climate modeller, I find clouds both breathtakingly beautiful and
infernally infuriating...
- - -
Clouds are fickle in both space and time - appearing, changing and
disappearing on timescales of minutes. This means accurately
representing them in models is one of the biggest challenges facing
climate scientists and the key to even more accurate projections.
Challenging clouds
One of the reasons that clouds are such a source of frustration to
climate modellers is that the processes affecting how clouds form, grow
and diminish happen on a vast range of scales - from sub-micrometer
cloud processes to cloud systems of thousands of kilometres in size.
Cloud microphysics modellers attempt to understand and simulate the
birth and growth of water droplets and ice crystals. To achieve this
they must model the dynamics and thermodynamics of individual cloud
droplets...
- -
Even if we could represent cloud formation and evolution processes
exactly in climate models - with the help of observations - clouds would
still be a challenge due to their sensitivity to changes in the
surrounding air mass - themselves influenced by changes in atmospheric
and oceanic circulations and radiative heating.
In fact, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's fifth
assessment report summarises (pdf), recent research suggests that many
of the cloud changes that are projected for warmer climates are actually
due to these large-scale circulation changes - and are less sensitive to
the details of the small-scale cloud processes that we approximate.
These changes include a rise in altitude of high clouds, a decrease in
mid- and high-level cloud cover, cloudy storm tracks shifting northwards
in mid-latitudes, and decreases in the amount of low-level cloud.
The overall effect of these cloud changes is expected to bring further
warming of the Earth's surface, most likely causing a positive feedback
loop that reinforces the warming caused by a strengthened greenhouse effect.
However, we can't be absolutely certain because different global models
from different modelling centres around the globe don't all project the
same changes in circulation pattern, and there are different
approximations used to represent the cloud processes themselves.
Intriguing and challenging
Climate scientists have come a long way when it comes to understanding
and modelling clouds, but there's progress to be made.
*So in summary, these are the things we know:*
Clouds cool the present day climate overall
We are now able to represent cloud processes much better in at least
some global climate models thanks to learning from much more
detailed models - and doing this improves results
Satellite observations of clouds have been helping to test our models
Projections of future cloud changes vary due to approximations of
cloud processes in the global models and differences in the future
large scale circulation patterns between models.
*And there are the things we could still do better:*
Many of the ways cloud at low altitudes form, evolve and dissolve
are not clearly understood and models do not appear to represent
them very well.
The more detailed cloud resolving models need to be run over larger
space and longer time domains to fully understand the benefits they
bring
Ice clouds have been less well studied and considered so far
We need to maximise the information we can get from current and
future satellite observations.
So it's no wonder that clouds remain one of the most intriguing and
challenging components of the climate system - and that's why I have
mixed feelings every time I fly through and above clouds. Even whilst I
am appreciating their beauty, I have this infuriating feeling that there
are still so many ways they can, and will, surprise us.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-why-clouds-hold-key-better-climate-models
*This Day in Climate History - September 24, 2007- from D.R. Tucker*
September 24, 2007: California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger addresses
the United Nations on his state's efforts to reduce carbon pollution.
http://www.climate-debate.com/arnold-schwarzenegger-address-to-the-united-nations-on-global-climate-change-r6.php
http://youtu.be/LnPNvIHqaRo
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/
/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