[TheClimate.Vote] July 11, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Sat Jul 11 11:13:11 EDT 2020

/*July 11, 2020*/

[Audio with New Yorker from Bill McKibben]
*A Good Week for the Climate Movement*
July 9, 2020
Bill McKibben, an activist in the environmental movement for three 
decades, joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss whether the United States 
has hit a turning point in the battle against global warming.
https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/political-scene/a-good-week-for-the-climate-movement 

[Press release Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) ]

*Debt-Driven Dividends and Asset Fire Sales: New Briefing Details Latest 
Signs of Oil and Gas Industry's Decline*
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 9, 2020
Washington, DC--Amidst the ongoing pandemic crisis, the oil majors are 
racking up debt and selling off assets, in moves that aim to project 
stability but instead reveal the industry's increasing fragility. A new 
brief released today by the Center for International Environmental Law 
(CIEL) highlights the latest signals that the oil and gas industry is 
reaching its end game and is not a sound investment for private funds or 
taxpayer resources.

Pandemic Crisis, Systemic Decline: Additional Warnings Against Investing 
in Oil & Gas, Debt-Driven Dividends and Asset Fire Sales examines oil 
and gas companies' deepening debt, dwindling dividends, and decreasing 
assets as further evidence of the industry's collapse. It cautions that 
the petrochemical sector and plastics production, on which many oil and 
gas companies have staked their future growth, do not offer the industry 
a way out of its long-term decline.

"The game is up: Oil and gas companies can no longer mask their 
financial frailty," says Nikki Reisch, Director of CIEL's Climate & 
Energy Program and co-author of the brief. "Companies such as ExxonMobil 
and BP are racking up debt to maintain their payments to shareholders. 
At the same time, the oil majors are selling off and writing down their 
assets, reflecting a pressing need for cash flow today and growing 
skepticism about the value of fossil fuels tomorrow. The industry knows 
its future prospects are grim; so, too, should investors and policymakers."

"It's past time to recognize this industry is beyond recovery," says 
Steven Feit, Senior Attorney at CIEL and co-author of the brief. "The 
writing has been on the wall for a long time now, and the pandemic has 
made the signs that much more stark--investors should stay away from 
fossil fuel companies and policymakers must stop bailing them out. To 
continue to throw money at an industry that is not only causing 
environmental destruction but also facing economic decline is as 
imprudent as it is indefensible."
###
https://www.ciel.org/news/debt-driven-dividends-and-asset-fire-sales-new-briefing-details-latest-signs-of-oil-and-gas-industrys-decline/
- - -
[Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL)]
*Additional Warnings Against Investing in Oil & Gas: Debt-Driven 
Dividends & Asset Fire Sales (July 2020)*
*Key Findings:*
- For years, major oil and gas companies have attracted investors by 
paying them steady dividends. But the practice has masked the industry's 
financial frailty and inherent instability.
- Following a decade of declining profits exacerbated by the COVID-19 
pandemic, some oil majors, such as Shell, have slashed dividends, while 
others, including ExxonMobil and BP, are racking up debt to maintain 
their shareholder payments and sustain their image as sound investments.
- Oil and gas companies are also writing-down and selling off their 
assets at heavily discounted prices, in a move that reflects a desperate 
need for cash and growing skepticism about the future value of fossil fuels.
- Petrochemicals and the plastic they produce do not offer oil and gas 
companies a way out of their economic troubles. Dovetailing trends of 
lowered plastic resin prices, increased plastic regulation, and 
decreased capital spending threaten the fundamentals of the 
petrochemical industry, on which many oil and gas companies have staked 
their future growth.
- Dwindling dividends, deepening debt, and decreasing assets are just 
the latest evidence that the oil and gas industry is in an endgame that 
began well before COVID-19. Fiduciaries have a duty to re-evaluate the 
soundness of continued investments in a sector in longterm decline, and 
policymakers have a duty not to pour public funds into companies that 
are both economically unstable and environmentally destructive.
- The longer pension funds stay invested in fossil fuels despite stark 
warning signs about financial precarity and climate exposure, the more 
fiduciary risks accrue.
https://www.ciel.org/reports/debt-driven-dividends-asset-fire-sales/
- - -
[Read the full report]
*Pandemic Crisis, Systemic Decline*
*Additional Warnings Against Investing in Oil & Gas*
Debt-Driven Dividends & Asset Fire Sales
"One of the main ways major oil and
gas companies have attracted investors over the years has been by paying 
steady dividends to shareholders.
This practice has masked their financial frailty and the industry's 
inherent instability. For at least a decade,
those payouts have been propped up
not by strong earnings, but by a precarious combination of debt and 
asset sales"
https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Debt-Driven-Dividends-Asset-Fire-Sales.pdf

[smoke, cough, smoke, cough]
*Pandemic sidelines more than 1,000 incarcerated wildfire fighters in 
California*
Low-paid inmates have become a vital part of state's firefighting 
efforts, sparking concern over exploitation
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/10/california-wildfire-coronavirus-prison-incarcerated-firefighters

[major changes]
*A 'regime shift' is happening in the Arctic Ocean, scientists say*
by Stanford University

Scientists at Stanford University have discovered a surprising shift in 
the Arctic Ocean. Exploding blooms of phytoplankton, the tiny algae at 
the base of a food web topped by whales and polar bears, have 
drastically altered the Arctic's ability to transform atmospheric carbon 
into living matter. Over the past decade, the surge has replaced sea ice 
loss as the biggest driver of changes in uptake of carbon dioxide by 
phytoplankton.
- -
Phytoplankton require light and nutrients to grow. But the availability 
and intermingling of these ingredients throughout the water column 
depend on complex factors. As a result, although Arctic researchers have 
observed phytoplankton blooms going into overdrive in recent decades, 
they have debated how long the boom might last and how high it may climb...
- - -
Phytoplankton are absorbing more carbon year after year as new nutrients 
come into this ocean. That was unexpected, and it has big ecological 
impacts."....
- - -
  By assembling a massive new collection of ocean color measurements for 
the Arctic Ocean and building new algorithms to estimate phytoplankton 
concentrations from them, the Stanford team uncovered evidence that 
continued increases in production may no longer be as limited by scarce 
nutrients as once suspected. "It's still early days, but it looks like 
now there is a shift to greater nutrient supply,...

The difficulty stems in part from a huge volume of incoming tea-colored 
river water, which carries dissolved organic matter that remote sensors 
mistake for chlorophyll. Additional complexity comes from the unusual 
ways in which phytoplankton have adapted to the Arctic's extremely low 
light. "When you use global satellite remote sensing algorithms in the 
Arctic Ocean, you end up with serious errors in your estimates," said Lewis.

Yet these remote-sensing data are essential for understanding long-term 
trends across an ocean basin in one of the world's most extreme 
environments, where a single direct measurement of NPP may require 24 
hours of round-the-clock work by a team of scientists aboard an 
icebreaker, Lewis said. She painstakingly curated sets of ocean color 
and NPP measurements, then used the compiled database to build 
algorithms tuned to the Arctic's unique conditions. Both the database 
and the algorithms are now available for public use.

The work helps to illuminate how climate change will shape the Arctic 
Ocean's future productivity, food supply and capacity to absorb carbon. 
"There's going to be winners and losers," Arrigo said. "A more 
productive Arctic means more food for lots of animals. But many animals 
that have adapted to live in a polar environment are finding life more 
difficult as the ice retreats."

Phytoplankton growth may also peak out of sync with the rest of the food 
web because ice is melting earlier in the year. Add to that the 
likelihood of more shipping traffic as Arctic waters open up, and the 
fact that the Arctic is simply too small to take much of a bite out of 
the world's greenhouse gas emissions. "It's taking in a lot more carbon 
than it used to take in," Arrigo said, "but it's not something we're 
going to be able to rely on to help us out of our climate problem."
https://phys.org/news/2020-07-regime-shift-arctic-ocean-scientists.html

[bias toward food or revenue?]
*Farmers' climate change conundrum: Low yields or revenue instability*
Climate change will leave some farmers with a difficult conundrum, 
according to a new study by researchers from Cornell University and 
Washington State University: Either risk more revenue volatility, or 
live with a more predictable decrease in crop yields.
As water shortages and higher temperatures drive down crop yields in 
regions that depend heavily on seasonal snow, the choice to use more 
drought-tolerant crop varieties comes at a cost, according to model 
projections detailed in the paper "Water Rights Shape Crop Yield and 
Revenue Volatility Tradeoff for Adaptation in Snow Dependent Systems," 
published June 10 in Nature Communications...
- -
"Typical and best-case annual yields are much higher," said Jennifer 
Adam, Berry Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Washington State 
University and co-author of the study. "But climate change still is 
likely to cause severe droughts where current water management 
institutions in the Yakima River Basin simply cannot provide enough 
water, and there are severe worst-case crop failures."

The researchers argue that the best outcomes for crop yield and revenue 
volatility must be through a simultaneous improvement in crop 
varieties--for example, by preserving agrobiodiversity--and in water 
systems, such as through improvements in water-governing institutions 
and infrastructure.

It is important to carefully capture a snow-dependent region's specific 
management constraints while being innovative with climate adaptation 
strategies, the researchers said.

"Otherwise, systems may unintentionally strike the wrong balance as they 
trade off improving average yields and farmers' revenue volatility," 
Reed said.
https://phys.org/news/2020-07-farmers-climate-conundrum-yields-revenue.html
- -
[source material Published: 10 July 2020]
*Water rights shape crop yield and revenue volatility tradeoffs for 
adaptation in snow dependent systems*
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17219-z

[Beckwith video talk - more lightning]
*Lightning Bolt Science and How Lightning will be Affected by Abrupt 
Climate System Change*
Jul 9, 2020
Paul Beckwith
In this 1st of a video series, I chat lightning science and on how 
lightning properties will change as rapid climate mayhem continues. In 
India alone, lightning has killed over 2,000 people each year since 
2005. The World Meteorological Organization just reported two new 
lightning world records: a cloud-to-cloud bolt traversed 709 km 
(previous record 321 km); a similar bolt lasted 16.73 seconds (previous 
record 7.74 sec). Amazingly, there was a thunderstorm in the high Arctic 
(85 degrees N) 500 km (300 miles) from the North Pole with some 
lightning directly over sea ice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izt4TAyNxbI

[5 min video - Potholer54]
*A short chronology of failed 'ice age' predictions*
Jul 9, 2020
potholer54
This is NOT a new video. I got lots of requests to re-post the final 
part of my video "Are we headed for a Grand Solar Minimum?" -- and 
complaints that the music was too loud -- so I have finally acquiesced 
and I'm posting it here as a stand-alone. Feel free to mirror, upload, 
tweet, share, whatever you want to do, as long as it's attributed to me 
and not edited or voiced over without permission.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6eswiI3KLc

[thoughtful essay]
*As pandemic strips away accumulated inertia of decades, 'After 
Coronavirus' may be a whole brave new world*
The coronavirus pandemic, like the World Wars, is a harbinger of 
revolutionary changes. It is accelerating the destruction of the old, 
and hastening the arrival of the new.
Samrat - July 09, 2020
Many years ago, I can't quite recall when, I saw a film called Groundhog 
Day. It is a fantasy comedy film in which the principal character gets 
stuck in a single day and cannot get out -- he goes to bed one ordinary 
night, and wakes up the next morning to find it's yesterday all over 
again. And again. And again. The film released in 1993. It has become 
uncomfortably real for a lot of people around the world in 2020. Our 
lives are now stuck in time, in a kind of Groundhog Day where every day 
feels like the previous one. If we're living a comedy, it is of a very 
dark kind.

It is now more than six months since the coronavirus pandemic began its 
global spread. During this time, we have gone from disbelief to panic to 
resignation, and some distance back again. Our daily lives have been 
upended. We no longer know when -- and if -- we will get our normal 
lives back. With the passage of time, many a new normal is gradually 
establishing itself. A return to the world Before Coronavirus will be 
difficult.

"Normal" is a function of habits, small and big...
- -
The coronavirus pandemic has stripped the world of many of its delusions 
and pretensions.

It has forced us to reckon with what is real and what is not, what 
matters and what does not. A lot -- work, education, leisure -- has been 
stripped down to essence. The essence of work never was in being the 
first to swipe in and the last to swipe out. The essence of education 
never really lay in physical presence in any classroom, as every student 
who has been mentally absent knows. The essential pleasure of watching a 
good movie is in watching the movie -- not in the overpriced popcorn. 
The essence of news is not in the newspaper.

In retrospect, we actually knew all of this. We just didn't act like we 
believed it. Our world moved and worked in old ways, from sheer inertia. 
The force of habit of millions of people, established over decades or 
centuries, kept things going as they had been before. Changes in ways of 
life over the past 150 years were breathtakingly fast by historical 
standards, but for the most part they were incremental, wrought by 
technology and often resisted by society. The pandemic, like the World 
Wars, is a harbinger of revolutionary changes. It is accelerating the 
destruction of the old, and hastening the arrival of the new.

Although it may seem to us, living in Groundhog Day, that the calendar 
itself has ceased to hold meaning and reality, the monotonous rhythms of 
billions of suspended daily lives hides the fact that the future is 
currently rushing into our lives at unprecedented speed.

Tomorrow may seem like yesterday, but After Coronavirus may be a whole 
brave new world.
https://www.firstpost.com/art-and-culture/as-pandemic-strips-away-accumulated-inertia-of-decades-after-coronavirus-may-be-a-whole-brave-new-world-8577131.html

[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - July 11, 1990 *
The Los Angeles Times observes that President George H. W. Bush seems to 
have dissociative identity disorder when it comes to climate:

"The tension is often explained as a dispute between Bush's 
strong-willed chief of staff, John H. Sununu, who is deeply suspicious 
of environmentalists, and his Environmental Protection Agency chief, 
William K. Reilly.

"That explanation, however, is an inaccurate characterization, 
Administration officials say. Although Reilly has advocated a stronger 
environmental policy, he has neither the clout nor the access to Bush to 
challenge Sununu, the officials say. In fact, Reilly has been 
conspicuous by his absence from the economic summit, virtually the only 
senior Administration official with an interest in the summit issues 
whom Bush left in Washington.

"Instead, the disputes within the Administration reflect Bush's own 
ambivalence about the issues. Throughout his Administration, he has been 
pulled in opposite directions on the environment, tugged between his 
desire to placate environmentally-conscious voters on the one side and 
his instinct to protect business people from government regulation on 
the other."

The Times also notes:

"Bush's top aides are unanimous in believing that the scientific 
evidence is shaky on all aspects of global warming--the problem's 
dimensions, its potential effects and its causes."
http://articles.latimes.com/1990-07-11/news/mn-224_1_global-warming-issue

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