[TheClimate.Vote] April 15, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*April 15, 2020*/

[NYTimes Opinion]
*Think This Pandemic Is Bad? We Have Another Crisis Coming*
Addressing climate change is a big-enough idea to revive the economy.

By Rhiana Gunn-Wright
Ms. Gunn-Wright is director of climate policy at the Roosevelt Institute.
- -
Leaders on both sides of the aisle have argued that folding policies to 
address climate and environmental injustice into coronavirus-related 
legislative packages would distract from efforts to provide immediate 
relief. But addressing climate change and environmental injustice will 
not diffuse efforts to address the virus and its economic fallout if we 
apply intersectional policies such as the Green New Deal. They are 
designed to address connected issues in a way that protects the most 
vulnerable while building a more just and sustainable economy...
- -
Some states have already begun to connect the coronavirus to climate 
action. New York, for example, passed the Accelerated Renewable Energy 
Growth and Community Benefit Act on April 3. The legislation comes on 
the heels of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act -- 
sometimes referred to as New York's Green New Deal. And if New York's 
response is any indication, none of this appears to have detracted from 
efforts to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Addressing climate change doesn't have to slow down the economic 
recovery, either. In fact, it can push it forward. No one knows the 
depth of the recession, but it is hard to see how we will put the 16 
million people who have filed for unemployment back to work without 
significant public investment.

If history is any indication, rebounding from an economic disruption 
this large requires an equally large spike in demand and production. 
Outside of war, climate change is the only issue large enough to provide 
such a spike. Now is the time to create policies that provide immediate 
relief to communities, such as federal assistance to transition homes 
and businesses to renewable energy; give "green" fiscal aid to states; 
and fuel economic recovery with the creation of federally funded green 
jobs. But none of this can happen so long as our leaders keep convincing 
themselves that the greatest country in the world cannot walk and chew 
gum at the same time.

A climate-focused economic recovery -- much less a coronavirus response 
that acknowledges the climate crisis -- could require a new Congress and 
a new president, a tall order in an America this divided. But maybe it 
is time to stop acting as though politics is a force of nature when we 
are facing actual and deadly forces of nature. It's past time to elect 
leaders who are fit to handle the crises we face, instead of hoping for 
problems small enough to fit the leaders we have.

The Americans I know would like to survive, even if it means our country 
has to evolve -- which many of us have been ready for long before the 
pandemic.
Rhiana Gunn-Wright (@rgunns) is the director of climate policy at the 
Roosevelt Institute.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/opinion/climate-change-covid-economy.html#commentsContainer



[notice the money flow]
*Big Banks Pull Financing, Prepare To Seize Assets From Collapsing Oil 
and Gas Industry*
The finances of the oil and gas industry are so dismal that the major 
banks that have funded the money-losing fracking boom are now exploring 
taking the unusual step of taking over the oil companies that cannot 
afford to pay back the banks' loans.

Reuters reported that banks are exploring the option of seizing oil 
company assets because the more traditional route of bankruptcy will 
result in huge losses for the banks -- while seizing assets and holding 
them until oil prices increase would likely minimize those losses.

Buddy Clark of law firm Haynes and Boone explained to Reuters that, 
"Banks can now believably wield the threat that they will foreclose on 
the company and its properties if they don't pay their loan back."

While banks seizing assets from borrowers who can't repay loans is 
common for industries like real estate -- especially residential real 
estate -- it is an unusual move for the oil and gas industry. Reuters 
reported that the last time it happened was during the oil price crash 
of the late 1980s. In the most recent oil price crash, when oil dropped 
from prices over $100 a barrel to $40 a barrel, there was a rash of 
bankruptcies, but the banks did not seize assets.

One difference now is that shale oil companies have continued to 
increase debt -- thanks to loans from the banks -- to the point where 
most of these companies are not viable with low oil prices. As one 
industry observer recently noted in The New York Times, "This is late 
'80s bad."

One new angle that didn't exist in the 1980s is a dramatic change in 
sentiment from parts of the investment community about the viability of 
the oil industry as an investment. Television investment advisor Jim 
Cramer of CNBC was saying oil stocks were in the "death knell phase" in 
January, before oil prices crashed to the current lows and the 
coronavirus had crushed global oil demand.

More recently, in a remarkable opinion piece for Seeking Alpha, Kirk 
Spano advised investors to get out of the industry now with a unique 
twist on why this was urgent:

"We are about to see a massive wave of shale oil bankruptcies by 
thieving executives who have borrowed against assets and paid themselves 
bonuses for years without regard to shareholder value."

While DeSmog has commented on issues of potential industry fraud and 
executives paying themselves while the companies they ran lost money, it 
is a decided shift in sentiment when sites like SeekingAlpha are calling 
for investors to get out and then "sue the dirt out of the executives 
who have almost all broken fiduciary duties."

Which is why banks are now considering seizing the assets of the failed 
oil  companies -- it is a bad option for the banks but it is the best 
one left...
- -
more at - 
https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/04/13/big-banks-pulling-financing-oil-and-gas-industry



[brief video cartoon]
*Debunking Cranky Uncle on sea level rise**
*Apr 14, 2020
John Cook
A debunking of the "sea level rise is exaggerated" myth, using cartoons 
from the Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change book:
http://crankyuncle.com/book
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO-Il4i9iis



[VICE checks the opposition]
*Republicans Are Planning to Use Coronavirus to Gut Renewable Energy*
Conservative groups aligned with the oil industry hope to block any aid 
for the solar and wind industries, which have been decimated by the 
pandemic.
By Geoff Dembicki - Apr 13 2020
- - -
Ebell and others in the conservative movement are now looking ahead to 
the next battle: preventing wind and solar companies from getting tax 
credits and other incentives extended in "phase four" stimulus 
negotiations that could begin later this month. "We will oppose any 
attempt to provide long-term subsidies to any type of energy," Ebell 
told VICE. "We would oppose any of the Green New Deal provisions as 
well."...
- -
Now, more than ever, he said, the public needs to be paying close 
attention to the actions of polluters and their allies, especially as 
Congress begins debating the next round of COVID-19 stimulus. "When a 
crisis like this occurs, where there's a significant amount of 
confusion, mixed messages from government and generally less 
transparency around meetings, really big policy decisions are made very 
quickly behind closed doors," Collins said. This is the context, he 
said, where fossil fuel interests can "potentially secure some very 
significant wins."
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/k7ev53/republicans-are-planning-to-use-coronavirus-to-gut-renewable-energy



[Head in the sand; head in the mud]
*Will the next great pandemic come from the permafrost?*
As the Arctic warms, 'zombie' viruses and microbes are rising from the 
thawing ground. But infectious diseases migrating north could pose an 
even bigger threat to human and animal health
Jimmy Thomson Apr 10, 2020 6 min read
In November 2019, 50 scientists from around the world assembled at 
Herrenhausen Palace in Hannover, Germany, to talk through an emerging 
threat to public health: "zombie" viruses and microbes emerging from the 
thawing ground.

The frozen earth that covers much of the Arctic is home to growing 
microbial communities. For centuries, they had lain dormant, barely 
active or completely suspended, subsisting on minuscule pockets of water 
squeezed between the ice. With the Arctic warming at two to five times 
the global average, those pockets are becoming pools; rivulets, rivers; 
and puddles, ponds. The Arctic is waking up, and the microscopic 
organisms embedded in the land are coming back to life.

The scientists in Germany agreed the climate is warming and the 
permafrost is thawing. But they wanted to know what it all means for 
humans and the future of infectious disease.

"The impetus from the meeting was [determining] what's going to thaw out 
of the permafrost and kill us," says Susan Kutz, a professor of 
ecosystem public health at the University of Calgary and one of the 
scientists at the Hannover meeting.

'A gigantic reservoir of ancient microbes or viruses'
In a 2017 paper, a team of Belgian researchers describe the threats to 
human health from microbes that were previously frozen in permafrost.

"Over the past few years, there has been increasing evidence that the 
permafrost is a gigantic reservoir of ancient microbes or viruses that 
may come back to life if environmental conditions change and set them 
free again," the authors write.

The paper describes a separate study in which two viruses emerged from a 
single sample of 700-year-old caribou droppings. They were both able to 
be resurrected.

In 2014, scientists discovered a giant virus (a classification only 
discovered a decade earlier) frozen in a 30,000-year-old ice core. Like 
a scene out of a sci-fi movie, the scientists thawed it and watched it 
take over an amoeba.

The scientists concluded in a paper that their ability to resurrect the 
virus suggests that thawing permafrost -- as a result of global warming 
or industrial exploitation of circumpolar regions -- might pose a threat 
to human or animal health.

Evolutionary ecologist Ellen Decaestecker, who co-authored the 2017 
paper, says the increasing encroachment of people into natural areas 
worldwide is presenting new opportunities for health crises.

"We are changing the environment very fast at this moment in terms of 
habitat fragmentation and climate change," she says, adding that people 
are also travelling more and more (or at least they were before COVID-19 
hit). "The chance that [an outbreak] happens as a result of the 
combination of these factors is quite high."

The viruses and microbes may also present another problem: they could 
contain the blueprints for resistance to antibiotics or other medicines. 
If given the chance, they could share that information with their modern 
relatives.

The world became aware of the infectious risk in the permafrost when an 
outbreak of anthrax occurred in the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia during 
the warm summer of 2016. Thousands of reindeer and a child died, while 
dozens of people were hospitalized with bacterial infections. Headlines 
blared that this was the start of a new wave of frozen diseases that 
would not only reawaken but infect and kill people.

The reality, as is often the case, is a little more nuanced.

A recently published paper suggests that a Russian anthrax vaccination 
program for reindeer that was halted in 2007 probably played a bigger 
role in the outbreak than a warm summer. The reindeer that died may have 
been the first cohort without the vaccination to be exposed to the 
bacterium, which can survive for hundreds of years in the soil.

While the permafrost theory shouldn't be discarded entirely, it "might 
be a bit oversimplified," says study lead author Karsten Hueffer, a 
veterinary microbiologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

But the risk of thawing permafrost runs deeper than the re-emergence of 
old diseases: a warmer Arctic brings brand new problems with it.

'Bigger fish to fry'
Zombie viruses make for attention-grabbing headlines. But for the people 
living in the Arctic, infectious diseases that come from more mundane 
sources could pose a much greater threat.

"I really think that with climate change, we probably have -- to put it 
flippantly -- bigger fish to fry here," Hueffer says.

Climate change and human intrusions are changing the landscape, opening 
up new ways for microbes to get around and infect animals and humans.

New roads, new mines and new drilling programs are bringing more people 
to the Arctic than ever before, just as the soil is beginning to offer a 
multitude of freshly virulent germs.

The same warming is inviting new species north -- some of which are 
hosts for pathogens that can infect humans. Drinking water straight out 
of Arctic streams and lakes, common practice in many places, is becoming 
more risky as beavers push farther into the North. Beavers are hosts to 
parasites like Giardia, which causes "beaver fever," a painful, 
diarrhea-inducing abdominal sickness. Mosquitoes carrying West Nile 
virus are being found farther and farther north as well. This is adding 
stress to the thinly spread medical systems of the North.

"I'm concerned about the fact that we don't understand -- and we very, 
very likely underestimate -- the effect of infectious disease on 
wildlife," Kutz says.

If wildlife is affected, humans can be affected, too. Diseases can jump 
from animals to humans and deplete animal food sources people rely on.

Almost every herd of caribou, for instance, is declining precipitously 
across North America. Kutz says the role infectious disease is playing 
in that decline may have been overlooked, and climate change is feeding 
the fire.

Meanwhile, the infrastructure used to transport sewage is built on 
rapidly thawing and heaving ground. Pipes can rupture and spill, causing 
outbreaks of waterborne diseases.

"The ways people have dealt with human waste may not now be 
appropriate," Hueffer says.

The final report of the meeting in Hannover hasn't been released yet. 
But the general consensus, according to Kutz, was that we don't need to 
worry about a disease as contagious and deadly as COVID-19 coming out of 
the permafrost based on what's been seen so far -- but there are other 
reasons to be concerned.

The thawing permafrost may be home to bacteria and viruses we haven't 
yet encountered -- or, troublingly, ones that we have encountered with 
disastrous results, such as the Spanish flu or smallpox -- but much of 
their DNA is in fragments, is adapted to infect other creatures or 
likely won't come into contact with humans.

The key, Kutz says, will be to watch the wildlife, and that's what she 
is doing: her lab works in collaboration with Indigenous harvesters 
across the Arctic to keep an eye on animal health.

"If you think about the wildlife, their noses are in the grass, they're 
digging in the dirt," she says. "They're the sentinels."
https://thenarwhal.ca/next-great-pandemic-permafrost/



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming  - April 15, 1988 *

April 15, 1988: In a speech at St. John's University in New York, 
Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore states (specifically in 
reference to the threat of nuclear weapons, though the statement 
certainly applies to *another* worldwide threat): "I believe that it is 
possible that future generations will look back on this election year of 
1988 and wonder with amazement how we could have let these problems go 
unattended for so long."

http://c-spanvideo.org/program/GoreCampa   (22:50--23:01)


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