[TheClimate.Vote] October 22, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Thu Oct 22 09:02:08 EDT 2020
/*October 22, 2020*/
[Mortgages]
*Climate change sways homebuying decisions, study finds*
https://www.bankrate.com/mortgages/climate-change-sways-homebuying-decisions/
- -
[Wharton School study]
*Neglected No More: Housing Markets, Mortgage Lending, and Sea Level Rise*
In this paper, we explore dynamic changes in the capitalization of sea
level rise (SLR) risk in housing and mortgage markets. Our results
suggest a disconnect in coastal Florida real estate: From 2013-2018,
home sales volumes in the most-SLR-exposed communities declined 16-20%
relative to less-SLR-exposed areas, even as their sale prices grew in
lockstep. Between 2018-2020, however, relative prices in these at-risk
markets finally declined by roughly 5% from their peak. Lender behavior
cannot reconcile these patterns, as we show that both all-cash and
mortgage-financed purchases have similarly contracted, with little
evidence of increases in loan denial or securitization. We propose a
demand-side explanation for our findings where prospective buyers have
become more pessimistic about climate change risk than prospective
sellers. The lead-lag relationship between transaction volumes and
prices in SLR-exposed markets is consistent with dynamics at the peak of
prior real estate bubbles.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w27930
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w27930/w27930.pdf
[OilPrice]
*The Big Oil Side Hustle: Where 'Renewable' Money Is Really Going*
Every time an oil and gas major announces a major foray into renewable
energy, the skeptics come out like clockwork and lambast the sector for
merely trying to burnish its green credentials.
Sometimes the criticism appears undeserved because the Oil Majors have
actually invested billions of dollars into the clean energy sector over
the past decade and have lined up plans to invest billions more in the
2020s.
But here's why the criticism sticks anyway: The most ambitious pledges
by Big Oil to pursue net-zero agendas have remained inconsistent or
half-hearted at best.
Let this sink in: In 2018, Big Oil spent less than 1% of its combined
budget on green energy projects...
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/The-Big-Oil-Side-Hustle-Where-Renewable-Money-Is-Really-Going.html
[8,000 laborers and engineers deployed for 3 months]
*Vietnam opens 450 MW solar plant*
Ho Chi Minh City-based construction company Trungnam Group said its army
of laborers took just 45 days to perform site clearance for a project
which took shape within 102 days...
more at -
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/10/15/vietnam-opens-450-mw-solar-plant/
[Dave Roberts provides updated overview of the technology and the promise]
*Geothermal energy is poised for a big breakout*
"An engineering problem that, when solved, solves energy."
Geothermal power is the perpetual also-ran of renewable energy, chugging
along in the background for decades, never quite breaking out of its
little niche, forever causing energy experts to say, "Oh, yeah,
geothermal ... what's up with that?"
Well, after approximately 15 years of reporting on energy, I finally
took the time to do a deep dive into geothermal and I am here to report:
This is a great time to start paying attention!...
- -
The ARPA-E project AltaRock Energy estimates that "just 0.1% of the heat
content of Earth could supply humanity's total energy needs for 2
million years." There's enough energy in the Earth's crust, just a few
miles down, to power all of human civilization for generations to come.
All we have to do is tap into it.
Tapping into it, though, turns out to be pretty tricky...
- -
Where hydrothermal resources are readily available, the advantages of
geothermal energy are well-understood. The global geothermal electricity
fleet has an average capacity factor -- time spent running relative to
maximum capacity -- of 74.5 percent, and newer plants often exceed 90
percent. Geothermal can provide always-on, baseload power; it is the
only renewable resource to do so.
As of the end of 2019, global installed geothermal electric capacity,
dispersed across 29 countries, reached 15.4 GW, with the US in the lead...
- -
Recent oil and gas technology innovations are going to turbocharge
geothermal, especially if policymakers can get their act together and
offer some support. There's a steep learning curve ahead and they're
just now accelerating into it, but the next decade is likely to be more
active for geothermal than the past four.
With an inexhaustible, dispatchable, flexible renewable energy source so
close to breaking through, the vision of a fully renewably powered world
seems less and less utopian, more and more tantalizingly within reach.
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/10/21/21515461/renewable-energy-geothermal-egs-ags-supercritical
[Weddell Sea is in the Antarctic]
*Depths of the Weddell Sea are warming five times faster than elsewhere*
Source: Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine
Research
Summary: Over the past three decades, the depths of the Antarctic
Weddell Sea have warmed five times faster than the rest of the ocean at
depths exceeding 2,000 meters.
- -
In the article, they analyse an unprecedented oceanographic time series
from the Weddell Sea and show that the warming of the polar depths is
chiefly due to changed winds and currents above and in the Southern
Ocean. In addition, the experts warn that the warming of the Weddell Sea
could permanently weaken the overturning of tremendous water masses that
takes place there -- with far-reaching consequences for global ocean
circulation. Their study was just released on the online portal of the
Journal of Climate.
Over the past several decades, the world's oceans have absorbed more
than 90 percent of the heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse-gas
emissions, effectively slowing the rise in air temperatures around the
globe. In this regard, the Southern Ocean is pivotal. Though it only
accounts for 15 percent of the world's oceans in terms of area, because
of the overturning that takes place there, it absorbs roughly
three-fourths of the heat...
- -
Once the heat reaches the depths of the Weddell Sea, the major bottom
water currents distribute it to all ocean basins. "Our time series
confirms the pivotal role of the Southern Ocean and especially the
Weddell Sea in terms of storing heat in the depths of the world's
oceans," says Volker Strass. If the warming of the Weddell Sea continues
unchecked, he explains, it will have far-reaching consequences not only
for the massive ice shelves on the southern coast of the Weddell Sea,
which extend far out into the ocean, and as such, for sea-level rise in
the long term, but also for the conveyor belt of ocean circulation as a
whole.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201020105530.htm
[See changes]
*Declines in shellfish species on rocky seashores match climate-driven
changes*
Two decades of data from a study of Maine's Swan's Island document a
slow and steady dwindling of mussels, barnacles, and snails
Date: October 20, 2020
Source: University of Pennsylvania
Summary:
Mussels, barnacles, and snails are declining in the Gulf of Maine,
according to a new article by biologists. Their 20-year dataset reveals
that the populations' steady dwindling matches up with the effects of
climate change on the region.
- -
Using abundance data from 1997 to 2018, the researchers found that very
young mussels were in the sharpest free fall, declining almost 16% a
year, while the other four species were dwindling by 3 to 5% each year.
Over that time period, limpets, periwinkles, and dogwhelks declined in
total number by 50%, contractions the researchers describe as "sobering."
To get at the question of why, the researchers looked to data on ocean
temperature and chemistry. They found that the downward trajectory of
mussels and common periwinkles matched up with increasing summer ocean
temperatures collected from a nearby buoy...
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201020081737.htm
[No beach time for Halloween]
*What is vibrio? Deadly flesh-eating bacteria migrates to odd place in
Carolina waters*
It was a chilling discovery for scientists at the University of South
Carolina. After six months of sampling river water, it became clear that
the nasty germ, known as vibrio, had worked its way into a place not
known to harbor the bacteria.
video report https://www.thestate.com/news/local/article246473610.html
https://www.charlotteobserver.com/living/article246321470.html
- -
[source study from 2018]
*Impact of Climate Change on Vibrio vulnificus Abundance and Exposure Risk*
Abstract
Vibrio species are marine bacteria that occur in estuaries
worldwide; many are virulent human pathogens with high levels of
antibiotic resistance. The average annual incidence of all Vibrio
infections has increased by 41% between 1996 and 2005. V. vulnificus
(Vv), a species associated with shellfish and occurring in the US
Southeast, has ranges of temperature (16–33 C) and salinity (5–20
ppt) dependencies for optimal growth. Increased water temperatures
caused by atmospheric warming and increased salinity gradients
caused by sea level rise raise concerns for the effect of climate
change on the geographic range of Vv and the potential for increased
exposure risk. This research combined monthly field sampling,
laboratory analysis, and modeling to identify the current occurrence
of Vv in the Winyah Bay estuary (South Carolina, USA) and assess the
possible effects of climate change on future geographic range and
exposure risk in the estuary. Vv concentrations ranged from 0 to 58
colony forming units (CFU)/mL, salinities ranged from 0 to 28 ppt,
and temperature from 18 to 31 C. A significant empirical
relationship was found between Vv concentration and salinity and
temperature that fit well with published optimal ranges for growth
for these environmental parameters. These results, when coupled with
an existing model of future specific conductance, indicated that sea
level rise has a greater impact on exposure risk than temperature
increases in the estuary. Risk increased by as much as four times
compared to current conditions with the largest temporally
widespread increase at the most upriver site where currently there
is minimal risk.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6602088/
[Letter to the Chicago Sun Times]
*Climate change answer disqualifies Barrett for Supreme Court*
She replied it is a "very contentious matter of public debate," but
settled science is clear so she is either grossly uniformed or she lied.
By Letters to the Editor Oct 19, 2020
Amy Coney Barrett has forfeited her right to be on the U.S. Supreme
Court due to her convoluted answer to the simple question about climate
change.
The confirmation process is a sham in many ways. Because the outcome is
a forgone conclusion, it has ceased to be a deliberative process on
judicial philosophy. The senators make each question a political speech
and the candidate finds clever ways to say nothing - as an homage to her
mentor, Donald Trump.
When asked a clear "yes or no" scientific question about climate change,
she should have jumped at the chance to give a clear answer -- but she
did not. She replied that it is a "very contentious matter of public
debate." Settled science is clear and visible proof abounds -- so she is
either grossly uniformed or she lied.
Does she think that antibiotics cure infections, or is that a matter of
"public debate" as well?
Some Republicans deny climate science because their backers are in the
fossil fuel industry; Trump makes light of Covid 19 because it hurts his
re-election chances, but that doesn't change the facts. A basic
requirement for a candidate to the U. S. Supreme Court would be the
intelligence and reasoning power to base decisions on verifiable facts.
According to her testimony, Ms. Barrett is not such a person; she is a
political hack who does not qualify to be on the highest court.
Carol Kraines, Deerfield
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2020/10/19/21523180/amy-coney-barrett-climate-change-answer-supreme-court
- -
[DeSmogBlog]
*Amy Coney Barrett's Remarks on Climate Change Raise Alarm That a
Climate Denier Is About to Join the Supreme Court*
Dana Drugmand | October 14, 2020
. . .
The Federalist Society notably has ties to climate deniers and polluting
interests like Koch Industries and ExxonMobil. As DeSmog's database
profile on the Federalist Society notes, "the Society has consistently
published articles and hosted debates that frame investigations into
ExxonMobil and think tanks that question the existence of man-made
climate change as attacks on free speech. The group has also regularly
hosted talks by individuals who oppose the mainstream consensus on
manmade climate change including Willie Soon, Oren Cass, Steven Hayward,
and others."
Koch Foundations and Koch Industries have spent millions of dollars on
the Federalist Society, and ExxonMobil has contributed at least
$235,000. The Society is also part of a larger web of influence, fueled
by dark money from undisclosed donors, that aims to "capture" the
federal courts to serve the interests of Republican donors and corporate
interests, according to the Senate Democrats' "Captured Courts" report
from May...
https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/10/14/amy-coney-barrett-not-scientist-climate-denier-supreme-court-federalist-society#disqus_thread
- -
[The Nation magazine]
*What Amy Coney Barrett Means For the Climate*
Imagine any serious adult saying they don't know whether gravity is real.
https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/supreme-court-climate-barrett/
[an important book review from a 2019 title]
*Anointed with Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America*
...
Perhaps the greatest stronghold of "wildcat Christianity" was East
Texas, where oil was discovered just as the Great Depression took hold.
The oil boom that followed--the largest in American history--at once
inspired and helped promote what Dochuk describes as "end-times
urgency." The denizens of East Texas believed they were blessed with
oil, charged with using it to build God's kingdom on earth, and pressed
to do so quickly before the gifts that had been extended to them
disappeared. Independent oil producers operated a majority of wells in
the region throughout the 1930s. Church lots were littered with oil
derricks as ambitious oilmen sought to drill wherever they could, while
enterprising ministers dreamed of striking it rich; Dochuk describes a
congregation gathering to pray over a new well. The "rush to obtain
oil," he writes, "always worked according to earth's (and God's)
unknowable clock, with depletion (and Armageddon) an inevitability
lingering on the horizon." Their faith was undimmed even after the 1937
New London disaster, in which a gas explosion at a public school newly
built for the children of oil workers killed about 300 students. As one
religious leader put it in the aftermath, "These dear oil field people
can set the world an example for consecration, and they will." The
intense melding of political and religious ideas with economic interest
helped to make Texas one of the hotbeds of opposition to Roosevelt and
to New Deal liberalism in the years that followed the second World War.
At the same time, some U.S. oil executives continued to preach more
militant strands of Christian faith. One manager stationed at the
Rockefeller oil field in Saudi Arabia wrote that whenever his Muslim
workforce paused for prayer, he did too: "Each day when the Arabs take
time to pray, I take time to read a verse or two from the Bible." There
was a Christian "underground" at the company that was expressly
forbidden to proselytize among Muslims. Texas oilmen helped to build the
Christian right and to support fundamentalist colleges in the postwar
years. The manufacturer R. G. LeTourneau, who built heavy machinery used
by oil refiners, funded evangelical ministers, including Billy Graham
and Charles Fuller, while also championing the cause of free enterprise
inside the National Association of Manufacturers. LeTourneau used the
factory as a space to proselytize as well, holding lectures and chaplain
services to teach workers how technology and faith could rhyme--how
grades of steel, for example, mirrored Christian development. LeTourneau
went on to acquire land in Liberia and Peru that he would use to found
Christian communities organized around industrial development.
"Machinery in the hands of Christ-loving, twice-born men can help
[Peruvians] listen to the story of Jesus and His love," he said.
Still, by the early twenty-first century, the old certitudes were
running out. Oil independents with their strong ties to evangelical
Christianity believed that their fortunes were rising with Ronald
Reagan's election to the White House--but a glut in world oil markets
that led to falling prices in the 1980s put many out of business, never
to recover. Meanwhile, the oil giants no longer seemed able to promise
stable, peaceful economic development to the rest of the world. The
fragmentation of the Rockefeller dynasty was the most dramatic example.
"Most of the fourth Rockefeller generation have spent long years with
psychiatrists in their efforts to grapple with the money and the family,
the taint and the promise," pronounced one 1976 expose'. By the end of
the twentieth century, Steven Rockefeller, a professor of religion at
Middlebury College, had started to steer his family foundation toward
positions that would have horrified his great-great-great
grandfather--especially advocacy for environmental conservation...
- -
For all its ambition, complexity and rich detail, Anointed with Oil
leaves the reader with many questions about oil and American politics,
and also the relationship between material conditions and religious
faith. One problem has to do with the motives of the oilmen. Dochuk
portrays them as people for whom religious conviction and self-interest
were inextricably bound together. There is a real strength here: it
helps us to see the pursuit of oil as closely connected to the larger
cultural inheritance of the country. But at the same time, there seem to
have been few episodes when their Christianity was put to the test--when
they had to decide between acting in accord with faith and making the
most money possible. Given this, one wonders about the extent to which
their religiosity was cozily self-serving, justifying their
ruthlessness. The imperative of acquisition shaped Christianity, as much
as the other way around. Today, no doubt, this attitude helps keep
carbon burning, despite the consequences...
- -
Certainly the ideological similarities that link the present to the past
are important. But in some ways, the extreme importance of oil in
American society is profoundly new. A grossly disproportionate amount of
the oil ever consumed since the rise of the modern petroleum industry in
the 1860s has been burned in the past thirty years. For transport, food,
clothing, and the whole world of consumption that powers our economic
order, today we are dependent on oil in ways that are historically
unprecedented. The terrible consequences of this are growing clearer
year by year. Understanding the world created by the true believers
Dochuk chronicles requires exploring not only what they thought they
were doing, but also what they actually wrought.
When the oil independents of East Texas spoke of the apocalypse, they
did not have in mind the literal burning of the earth. The evangelical
commitment to oil has let loose a set of transformations that its most
devout did not anticipate. Anointed with Oil helps to clarify the twin
passions for wealth and Jesus that have brought us to our current
dependence on fossil fuels. But it also makes clear that to get beyond,
we will need to stop treating oil as a sacred liquid--to turn away from
the melodrama of religious faith, and to see our reliance on it with
clear-eyed realism as a matter of social and political choices. The
comments of one East Texan in the wake of the New London school tragedy
come to mind: "When you strike oil, you let loose Hades."
http://bostonreview.net/philosophy-religion/kim-phillips-fein-gospel-oil
- -
[buy the book $11.98 - remaindered]
*Anointed with Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America*
A groundbreaking new history of the United States, showing how Christian
faith and the pursuit of petroleum fueled America's rise to global power
and shaped today's political clashes
Anointed with Oil places religion and oil at the center of American
history. As prize-winning historian Darren Dochuk reveals, from the
earliest discovery of oil in America during the Civil War, citizens saw
oil as the nation's special blessing and its peculiar burden, the source
of its prophetic mission in the world. Over the century that followed
and down to the present day, the oil industry's leaders and its ordinary
workers together fundamentally transformed American religion, business,
and politics - boosting America's ascent as the preeminent global power,
giving shape to modern evangelical Christianity, fueling the rise of the
Republican Right, and setting the terms for today's political and
environmental debates.
Ranging from the Civil War to the present, from West Texas to Saudi
Arabia to the Alberta Tar Sands, and from oil-patch boomtowns to the
White House, this is a sweeping, magisterial book that transforms how we
understand our nation's history.
https://bookoutlet.com/Store/Details/9780465060863B
[A little musical entertainment- video]
*"What's Wrong With Listening to Scientists?"*
Lauren Mayer Comedy Songs
Even kids know that it was silly of Trump to criticize Biden for
'listening to the scientists' . . . maybe they'll have to explain it to
the GOP!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFS5-fiSTEc
[Aspirations of super luxury and power from GMC]
*The Hummer EV Is the Last Thing We Need*
https://earther.gizmodo.com/the-hummer-ev-is-the-last-thing-we-need-1845437668
[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - October 22, 1976 *
In the third and final presidential debate, President Ford and
Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter discuss the importance of
environmental protection. Carter reiterates his previously expressed
support for "cleaner" coal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CipT04S0bVE - (33:20--39:19)
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