[TheClimate.Vote] April 1, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*April 1, 2020*/

[PBS video explains]
*Why Trump wants to relax automotive fuel efficiency standards now*
Mar 31, 2020
PBS NewsHour
The Trump administration wants to roll back another federal regulation 
intended to reduce global warming. Obama-era automobile fuel efficiency 
rules require U.S. vehicles to increase mileage standards by an average 
of 5 percent per year from 2021 through 2026. Tuesday's move would 
reduce the improvement threshold to 1.5 percent. The Washington Post's 
Juliet Eilperin joins John Yang to discuss.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPe7Y6HdkzQ


[Yale says]
*Aggressive action to address climate change could save the world $145 
trillion*
Climate solutions are expensive investments in the short run but will 
yield huge long-term savings, according to new research by Project Drawdown.

A respected research group, Project Drawdown, finds that deploying 
solutions consistent with meeting the Paris climate targets would cost 
tens of trillions of dollars globally. But crucially, those outlays 
would also yield long-term savings many times larger than the up-front 
costs.

The new 2020 Drawdown Review includes economic estimates of the capital 
costs to deploy each solution, net lifetime operation costs, and 
lifetime profits from the sale of products produced by the agricultural 
solutions. The key conclusion is that while the upfront costs are 
substantial - around $25 trillion globally - the resulting savings and 
profits are five to six times larger.

Project Drawdown is a nonprofit organization that evaluates climate 
solutions nations could deploy to reach the point where greenhouse gas 
levels in the atmosphere begin to decline (the threshold of carbon 
"drawdown"). Achieving drawdown will require phasing out the use of 
fossil fuels that add carbon and strengthening the natural sinks that 
absorb carbon. In 2017, the group published the New York Times 
bestselling book Drawdown, which described the 100 most substantive 
solutions to global warming based on a comprehensive scientific review 
by the project's research team.

The new Drawdown Review considers two potential pathways. Scenario 1 
envisions how climate solutions could be deployed to meet the Paris 
target of staying below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) 
hotter than pre-industrial temperatures, in which the point of carbon 
drawdown is reached in the mid-2060s. Scenario 2 is more ambitious, 
keeping global temperatures below the aspirational Paris target of 1.5 
degrees C (2.7 degrees F) by achieving carbon drawdown in the mid-2040s. 
In the more aggressive Scenario 2, global economic savings are $145 
trillion, with an additional $29 trillion in profits generated from the 
agricultural sector - the latter on its own offsetting the initial $28 
trillion capital costs. Both the Scenario 1 and 2 savings estimates are 
calculated over the life times of the solutions.

Better public health savings not factored in
Without even accounting for the many trillions of dollars saved by 
improving public health and avoiding climate damages, the researchers 
estimate that keeping global temperatures below the 1.5 degrees C target 
would result in a global net economic savings of $145 trillion.

In a few cases, the savings come almost immediately. For example, LEDs 
may cost more than the less efficient light bulbs they replace, but 
because they last so much longer, buying an LED is cheaper than 
repeatedly replacing equivalent shorter-lived bulbs. The Drawdown Review 
estimates that replacing older lighting technologies with LED bulbs 
would save $2 trillion dollars globally in capital costs, plus another 
$5 trillion in the long term as a result of improved energy efficiency.

Most of the other climate solutions in the Drawdown Review have 
significant capital costs that are more than offset by lifetime use 
savings and/or profits. Solar panels and wind turbines, for example, 
have much lower operation and maintenance costs than the fossil fuel 
power plants they replace. As a result, the Drawdown Review estimates 
that over their lifetimes, the onshore wind turbines and utility-scale 
solar panels deployed in Scenario 2 would save $8.5 trillion and $28 
trillion globally, respectively, along with another $13 trillion saved 
by distributed solar panels (e.g. installed on building roofs). Some of 
the other most cost-effective solutions include improving building 
insulation, which would save another $23 trillion by increasing energy 
efficiency, and electric cars, which would save $16 trillion by 
replacing less efficient gasoline-powered vehicles.

Much of the difference between the two Drawdown Review scenarios boils 
down to the speed at which wind and solar energy are deployed. In the 
more aggressive Scenario 2, onshore wind turbines and utility-scale 
photovoltaic panels are the two largest sources of reduced carbon 
emissions. This scenario envisions the share of global electricity from 
wind increasing sixfold, from 4.4% today to 27% by 2050, and solar farms 
exploding from just over 1% today to 25% in 2050. In Scenario 1, each 
would supply about 20% of global electricity by 2050.

No single 'silver bullet' solution to climate change
Some of the other top climate solutions in the Drawdown Review may come 
as a surprise to some. They include reducing food waste, improving 
health and education, eating plant-rich diets, refrigerant management, 
and tropical forest restoration...
- -
The diversity of the Project Drawdown solutions makes clear that there 
is no "silver bullet" to solve the climate crisis - only silver 
buckshot. Even the biggest individual solutions like onshore wind 
turbines contribute less than 10% to the overall carbon reductions in 
the Drawdown scenarios. That's why Drawdown evaluates 100 different 
solutions.

The good news is that these studies show that climate solutions are 
investments with a high rate of return. And if the world makes those 
investments, the Paris targets could still be within reach.
https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/03/aggressive-action-to-address-climate-change-could-save-the-world-145-trillion/


[Human caused CO2 nicely explained in a brief video]
*"It's Us"*
Apr 9, 2012
Earth: The Operators' Manual
The chemistry of the added CO2 reveals its source: it's humans burning 
fossil fuels, and not volcanoes or the ocean.
https://youtu.be/-PrrTk6DqzE


[Opinion]
*This Land of Denial and Death*
Covid-19 and the dark side of American exceptionalism.
By Paul Krugman
- - -
About denial: Epidemiologists trying to get a handle on the coronavirus 
threat appear to have been caught off guard by the immediate 
politicization of their work, the claims that they were perpetrating a 
hoax designed to hurt Trump, or promote socialism, or something. But 
they should have expected that reaction, since climate scientists have 
faced the same accusations for years.

And while climate-change denial is a worldwide phenomenon, its epicenter 
is clearly here in America: Republicans are the world's only major 
climate-denialist party.
Nor is climate science the only thing they reject; not one of the 
candidates contending for the G.O.P.'s 2016 nomination was willing to 
endorse the theory of evolution.

What lies behind Republican science denial? The answer seems to be a 
combination of fealty to special interests and fealty to evangelical 
Christian leaders like Jerry Falwell Jr., who dismissed the coronavirus 
as a plot against Trump, then reopened his university despite health 
officials' warnings, and seems to have created his own personal viral 
hot spot.

The point, in any case, is that decades of science denial on multiple 
fronts set the stage for the virus denial that paralyzed U.S. policy 
during the crucial early weeks of the current pandemic.

About death: I still sometimes encounter people convinced that America 
has the world's highest life expectancy. After all, aren't we the 
world's greatest nation? In fact, we have the lowest life expectancy 
among advanced countries, and the gap has been steadily widening for 
decades.

This widening gap, in turn, surely reflects both America's unique lack 
of universal health insurance and its equally unique surge in "deaths of 
despair" -- deaths from drugs, alcohol and suicide -- among 
working-class whites who have seen economic opportunities disappear.

Is there a link between the hundreds of thousands of excess deaths we 
suffer every year compared with other rich countries and the tens of 
thousands of additional excess deaths we're about to suffer from the 
coronavirus? The answer is surely yes.

In particular, when we conduct a post-mortem on this pandemic -- a stock 
phrase that, in this case, isn't a metaphor -- we'll probably find that 
the same hostility to government that routinely undermines efforts to 
help Americans in need played a crucial role in slowing an effective 
response to the current crisis.
What about the larger picture? Is there a link between the uniquely 
American prevalence of science denial and America's uniquely high 
mortality? To be honest, I'm still trying to figure this out.

One possible story is that the U.S. political landscape gives special 
power to the anti-science religious right, which has lent its support to 
anti-government politicians. But I'm not sure whether this is the whole 
story, and the power of people like Falwell is itself a phenomenon that 
demands explanation.

In any case, the point is that while America is a great nation with a 
glorious history and much to be proud of -- I consider myself very much 
a patriot -- the rise of the hard right has, as I said, also turned it 
into a land of denial and death. This transformation has been taking 
place gradually over the past few decades; it's just that now we're 
watching the consequences on fast forward.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/opinion/republicans-science-coronavirus.html



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming  - April 1, 2009 *

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann takes it to House Minority Leader John Boehner 
(R-OH):

"But our winner, House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio.  We assume 
that when it comes to politicians and math there is going to be some 
lying.  But lying to the tune of 140 times the truth? Boehner's 
criticism of the Obama's proposals on cap and trade, making energy in 
this country as green as possible, includes this statement: 'anyone who 
has the audacity to flip on a light switch will be forced to pay higher 
energy bills thanks to this new tax increase, which will cost every 
American family up to $3,100 per year in higher energy prices.'

"That is true if your family is a large one, say 101 people. Boehner has 
taken a research study done two years ago at MIT on the affect of cap 
and trade on energy prices and he has lied about it. The number in the 
study was not up to $3,100 per family.  It was up to $31 per person.  
And even that would not kick in until 2015.

"So the average additional cost per family six years from now would be 
79 bucks, minus however much foreign gas prices would drop based on 
decreased demand, and minus the lowered health care, because of the 
cleaner atmosphere.  Thirty one bucks, 3,100 bucks, it's all the same to 
Congressman John "The Mathlete" Boehner, today's worst person in the world."
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/30012135/#.Uoq1MSeHPs0


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