[TheClimate.Vote] October 29, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*October 29, 2020*/

[Geo-engineering]
*As Climate Disasters Pile Up, a Radical Proposal Gains Traction*
The idea of modifying Earth's atmosphere to cool the planet, once seen 
as too risky to seriously consider, is attracting new money and attention.
- -
But as global warming continues, producing more destructive hurricanes, 
wildfires, floods and other disasters, some researchers and policy 
experts say that concerns about geoengineering should be outweighed by 
the imperative to better understand it, in case the consequences of 
climate change become so dire that the world can't wait for better 
solutions.

"We're facing an existential threat, and we need to look at all the 
options," said Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate 
Change Law at the Columbia Law School and editor of a book on the 
technology and its legal implications. "I liken geoengineering to 
chemotherapy for the planet: If all else is failing, you try it."...
- -
"The whole idea of the research we're doing," she said, "is to make sure 
you don't go out and inadvertently change things in a way that's going 
to cause damage."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/28/climate/climate-change-geoengineering.html


[McKibben opines]
*On Climate Change, We're Entirely Out of Margin*
By Bill McKibben - October 28, 2020

The U.S. government and the world have done far too little on climate 
change, and so now we must move far faster than is comfortable or 
convenient.
In 1959, when humans began measuring the carbon-dioxide concentration in 
the atmosphere, there was still some margin. That first instrument, set 
up on the side of Hawaii's Mauna Loa volcano, showed that the air 
contained about three hundred and fifteen parts per million of CO2, up 
from two hundred and eighty p.p.m. before the Industrial Revolution. 
Worrisome, but not yet critical. In 1988, when the nasa scientist James 
Hansen first alerted the public to the climate crisis, that number had 
grown to three hundred and fifty p.p.m., which we've since learned is 
about the upper safe limit. Even then, though, we had a little margin, 
at least of time: the full effects of the heating had not yet begun to 
manifest in ways that altered our lives. If we'd acted swiftly, we could 
have limited the damage dramatically.

We didn't, of course, and we have poured more carbon into the atmosphere 
since 1988 than in all the years before. The atmospheric concentration 
of CO2 has topped four hundred and fifteen p.p.m.--that's much too high, 
something that we know from a thousand indicators. Last week came the 
news that the Arctic is stubbornly refusing to refreeze at its normal 
rate as the long northern night descends. The second biggest fire in 
Colorado history has closed Rocky Mountain National Park. California is 
white-knuckling its way through yet another siege of high winds in a 
record fire season that refuses to end. Tropical Storm Zeta formed in 
the Gulf of Mexico--and the next big storm will take us deeper into the 
Greek alphabet than we've ever gone before. And that's just in the one 
per cent of the planet's surface that's covered by the continental 
United States. It's a lot worse in a lot of other places, because they 
lack the money that keeps us fairly resilient. In Vietnam this week, 
rainfall described as "extraordinarily out of the normal"--so heavy that 
"it far exceeded the government's midrange predictions of how climate 
change might increase precipitation in central Vietnam by the end of 
this century"--has left more than a hundred people dead. "Everywhere we 
look, homes, roads, and infrastructure have been submerged," the head of 
Vietnam's Red Cross said.

We are out of space in the atmosphere, and we are out of time on the 
clock. The U.S. government, and the world, have done far too little on 
climate change, and so now we must move far faster than is comfortable 
or convenient. Plenty of pundits treated it as a "gaffe" when, in the 
last Presidential debate, Joe Biden said that we would need to 
"transition" away from oil. But that's not a gaffe; it's just the 
mildest sort of truth-telling. Because we've wasted so much time, that 
transition has to be sharp, and it has to be global. We are capable of 
doing it--the rapid fall in the price of renewable energy means that, if 
we wanted to go all out, we could make rapid progress. But this is not 
an offer that will last forever; indeed, it won't last four more years.

In the famous story of the king who offered a reward to one of his 
advisers, the man asked for a single grain of wheat on the first square 
of a chessboard, and two on the next square, and four on the next, and, 
by the last doubling, he was due more wheat than would ever be grown on 
the planet. The climate is not changing exponentially--the accelerating 
linear growth in heating is bad enough--but the principle is the same. 
Long before you expect it, you run out of room. The entire climate 
debate has unfurled in real, living time--I was born the year after that 
first monitor went up on Mauna Loa. We think we always have time and 
space to change, but in this case we do not. If November 3rd doesn't 
mark the start of a mighty effort at transformation, subsequent November 
Tuesdays will be less important, not more--our leverage will shrink, our 
chance at really affecting the outcome will diminish. This is it. 
Climate change "is the No. 1 issue facing humanity, and it's the No. 1 
issue for me," Biden said in an interview on Saturday. With luck, we'll 
get a chance to find out if the second half of that statement is true. 
The first half is already clear.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/on-climate-change-were-entirely-out-of-margin



[from DeSmogBlog]
*The Koch Operatives Behind the Trump Energy Department's Renewables 
Research Censorship*
Ben Jervey | October 28, 2020
Two Trump Energy Department appointees with deep ties to Koch Industries 
and the Koch donor network have been burying reams of agency research 
that looks favorably on renewable energy, according to an in-depth 
investigation by Grist and InvestigateWest. Published October 26, the 
investigation reveals how the appointed high-ranking officials mandated 
political review of research, watered down reports, and slow-walked or 
shelved scientific findings and studies when they favored renewable 
deployment over continued reliance on fossil fuels.

Documents obtained by InvestigateWest reveal clear political 
interference in the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Energy 
Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), much of it coordinated by Dan 
Simmons, the office's Assistant Secretary, and Alex Fitzsimmons, the 
former Chief of Staff to Simmons. While the article notes the lobbying 
histories of DOE's top brass, Simmons and Fitzsimmons also have recent 
ties to the Koch network.

Daniel Simmons and Alex Fitzsimmons: Career Koch Cadets Leading Trump's 
Renewable Energy Office
Before being tapped by the Trump team to run lead on renewable energy 
policy, Simmons had a long career promoting fossil fuels, bashing 
renewables, and even calling for the elimination of the very office he 
was tapped to run.

 From 2008 until he took over EERE in 2017, Simmons worked at the 
Institute for Energy Research (IER), a free-market think tank that 
receives the majority of its funding from dark money groups associated 
with the Koch network and from oil refinery trade groups. Simmons was 
vice president of policy at IER and had the same title at IER's lobbying 
arm, the American Energy Alliance (AEA). In 2015, while Simmons was in 
charge of policy, AEA actually recommended that Congress eliminate EERE...
- -
Simmons' antagonism to renewable energy before he joined the DOE cannot 
be overstated.

As the utility industry watchdog Energy and Policy Institute has noted, 
he routinely traveled the country for IER and AEA to bash renewable 
portfolio standards, relying on inaccurate and cherry-picked data. 
Before joining IER, Simmons served as the director of the American 
Legislative Exchange Council's (ALEC) Natural Resources Task Force, 
where he "helped to write [ALEC's] anti-clean energy playbook." ALEC 
functions to connect state legislators with corporations and create mock 
legislation that serves as models for actual bills.

Simmons' prior employers share extremely close ties to petrochemical 
billionaire Charles Koch and the extensive Koch donor network.

The Institute for Energy Research was founded by Charles Koch himself 
and is currently run by the former top lobbyist for Koch Industries. The 
AEA and IER both receive funding from foundations in the Koch donor 
network, and the country's leading oil refiners trade group, the 
American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), gives three times 
more to AEA than it does to any other group.

The ties between ALEC and the Koch network are well documented, with the 
pro-business group receiving at least $3.3 million from Koch-controlled 
foundations and Koch Industries maintaining a longstanding and 
influential membership.

Before his time at ALEC, Simmons was also a fellow at the Mercatus 
Center at George Mason University, the prototype for Koch influence in 
academia, a research center which has been funded and controlled by 
Charles Koch and his associates since the 1980s.

Simmons tapped Alex Fitzsimmons to serve as his chief of staff when he 
took over EERE. The two had worked together at IER and AEA, where 
Fitzsimmons worked as the Manager of Policy and Public Affairs. In 
addition to managing "research, communications, and outreach" at IER and 
AEA, Fitzsimmons was also a "spokesman" and Communications Director for 
Fueling U.S. Forward, a pro-fossil fuels campaign exposed by DeSmog as 
being funded by Koch Industries. According to its website, Fueling U.S. 
Forward was "dedicated to educating the public about the value and 
potential of American energy, the vast majority of which comes from 
fossil fuels," before it shuttered in 2017.

Serving Koch's Interests by Stifling Clean Energy Research
According to the Grist/InvestigateWest investigation, written by 
journalist Peter Fairley, Simmons and Fitzsimmons created systems and 
workflow that deliberately buried any of the Office of Energy Efficiency 
and Renewable Energy's research that could be perceived as supportive of 
a transition to renewable energy resources.

"In all, the department has blocked reports for more than 40 clean 
energy studies," Fairley reported. "The department has replaced them 
with mere presentations, buried them in scientific journals that are not 
accessible to the public, or left them paralyzed within the agency, 
according to emails and documents obtained by InvestigateWest, as well 
as interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees at the 
Department of Energy, or DOE, and its national labs." ...
- -
One document obtained by InvestigateWest shows how Fitzsimmons 
established a system that enabled politically appointed officials to 
intervene and, if necessary, consult their superiors before politically 
sensitive reports went out. Researchers and scientists were ordered to 
designate certain studies -- including those that compared renewables to 
fossil fuel resources and those that projected future penetration of 
renewable energy supplies -- be flagged for review by Simmons and 
Fitzsimmons. The two could then block the findings or request that the 
scientists and researchers altered their results.

"There are dozens of reports languishing right now that can't be 
published," Stephen Capanna, a former director of strategic analysis for 
the Energy Department's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable 
Energy, told Grist. "This is a systemic issue."
https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/10/28/koch-simmons-fitzsimmons-trump-censor-renewable-energy-science



[a done deal - see why concern]
*More Than 70 Science and Climate Journalists Challenge Supreme Court 
Nomination of Amy Coney Barrett*
"Judge Coney Barrett has displayed a profound inability to understand 
the ecological crisis of our times, and in so doing she enables it."

By JUSTIN NOBEL & ANTONIA JUHASZ
The following op-ed has been signed by dozens of leading climate and 
science journalists, listed below:

    *We are science and climate journalists*. We are researchers and
    weavers of information, creating a fabric that explains the work of
    scientists who themselves are working to describe our natural world
    and universe. We are published in the nation's leading outlets, both
    large and small, including Scientific American, Nature, National
    Geographic, MIT Technology Review, The New York Times, The Wall
    Street Journal, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New Yorker
    and many more. Over decades of reporting on the threats and now
    deadly and devastating harms of worsening climate change, we have
    succeeded in at least one respect. The vast majority of the world's
    people, including those in the United States, not only acknowledge
    the scientific certainty of climate change, but also want action
    taken to address it.

    We have succeeded because the science is clear, despite there being
    a massive well-orchestrated effort of propaganda, lies, and denial
    by the world's largest fossil fuel corporations, including
    ExxonMobil and Koch Industries and fossil-fuel-backed institutes and
    think tanks. It is frightening that a Supreme Court nominee -- a
    position that is in essence one of the highest fact-checkers in the
    land -- has bought into the same propaganda we have worked so hard
    to dispel.

    And it is facts -- a word under repeated assault by the Trump
    administration, which nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett -- that are
    at issue here. "I'm certainly not a scientist…I've read things about
    climate change. I would not say I have firm views on it," Judge
    Coney Barrett told Sen. John Kennedy during the Senate confirmation
    hearings on October 13th.

    The next day, Sen. Richard Blumenthal asked Judge Coney Barrett if
    she believed "human beings cause global warming." She replied: "I
    don't think I am competent to opine on what causes global warming or
    not. I don't think that my views on global warming or climate change
    are relevant to the job I would do as a judge."

    When asked that same day by Sen. Kamala Harris if she accepts that
    "COVID-19 is infectious," Coney Barrett said yes. When asked if
    "smoking causes cancer," Coney Barrett said yes. But when asked if
    "climate change is happening, and is threatening the air we breathe
    and the water we drink," Judge Coney Barrett said that while the
    previous topics are "completely uncontroversial," climate change is
    instead, "a very contentious matter of public debate." She
    continued: "I will not express a view on a matter of public policy,
    especially one that is politically controversial because that's
    inconsistent with the judicial role, as I have explained."

    Judge Coney Barrett repeatedly refused to acknowledge the scientific
    certainty of climate change. This is an untenable position,
    particularly when the world's leading climate scholars warned in
    2018 that we have just 12 years to act to bring down global average
    temperature rise and avert the most dire predictions of the climate
    crisis.

    At the moment when the facts of the case were presented to her, this
    arbiter of justice freely chose to side with mistruths. Judge Coney
    Barrett's responses are factually inaccurate, scientifically
    unsound, and dangerous.

    How can Judge Coney Barrett rule on pending issues of climate change
    liability, regulation, finance, mitigation, equity, justice, and
    accountability if she fails to accept even the underlying premise of
    global warming? The answer is that she cannot.

    Judge Coney Barrett's ties to the fossil fuel industry have already
    proved problematic, forcing recusal from cases involving Shell Oil
    entities related to her father's work as a long-time attorney for
    the company. She may also need to recuse herself from future cases
    due to her father's former position as chairman of the Subcommittee
    on Exploration and Production Law of the American Petroleum
    Institute -- the nation's leading fossil fuel lobby.

    Climate change is already an increasingly dominant aspect of
    American life, and an issue of growing import in American law. On
    the Supreme Court docket is BP P.L.C v. Mayor and City Council of
    Baltimore -- a case that involves Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and
    other major oil companies, and could impact about a dozen U.S.
    states and localities suing Big Oil over its contribution to climate
    change.

    Judge Coney Barrett says, "I'm certainly not a scientist," but she
    does not need to be a scientist, rather she needs to have faith in
    science. Pope Francis, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, is an
    ardent supporter of action on climate change, releasing in 2015 the
    "Encyclical on Climate Change & Inequality: On Care for Our Common
    Home." The Pope embraces hard science in order to keep close to his
    faith.

    Judge Coney Barrett has displayed a profound inability to understand
    the ecological crisis of our times, and in so doing she enables it.
    Signed,

    Bill McKibben, journalist and author, the Schumann Distinguished
    Scholar in environmental studies at Middlebury College
    Rebecca Solnit, author and journalist
    Sonia Shah, science journalist and author
    Jonathan Weiner, Pulitzer Prize winning author, science journalist,
    and professor at Columbia Journalism School
    Jeff Goodell, climate journalist and author of The Water Will Come
    Naomi Klein, journalist and author
    Michelle Nijhuis, science journalist and author
    Amy Westervelt, climate journalist
    Rachel Ramirez, environmental justice reporter
    Iris Crawford, climate justice journalist
    Anoa Changa, movement and environmental justice journalist
    Tiên Nguyễn, multimedia science journalist
    Eric Holthaus, meteorologist, climate journalist at The Phoenix
    Jenni Monet (Laguna Pueblo), climate affairs journalist and founder
    of Indigenously
    Nina Lakhani, environmental justice reporter
    Samir S. Patel, science journalist and editor
    Clinton Parks, freelance science writer
    Meehan Crist, writer in residence in biological sciences, Columbia
    University
    Elizabeth Rush, science writer, author of Rising: Dispatches from
    the New American Shore
    Anne McClintock, climate journalist, photographer and author,
    professor of environmental humanities and writing at Princeton
    University
    Ruth Hopkins (Oceti Sakowin, Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate), tribal
    attorney, Indigenous journalist
    Wade Roush, science and technology journalist and author
    Kim Stanley Robinson, New York Times bestselling author of climate
    science fiction, Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards
    Jason Mark, editor in chief, Sierra
    Kate Aronoff, climate journalist
    Richard Louv, journalist and author
    Heather Smith, science journalist
    Judith Lewis Mernit, California climate editor, Capital & Main
    Madeline Ostrander, climate journalist
    Julie Dermansky, multimedia environmental and social justice journalist
    Kenneth Brower, environmental journalist and author
    Alexander Zaitchik, science and political journalist and author
    Hillary M. Rosner, science journalist and scholar in residence,
    University of Colorado
    Wudan Yan, science journalist
    Debra Atlas, environmental journalist and author
    Rucha Chitnis, climate, environmental justice and human rights
    documentarian
    Drew Costley, environmental justice reporter
    Jonathan Thompson, environmental author and journalist
    Carol Clouse, environmental journalist
    Brian Kahn, climate journalist
    Geoff Dembicki, climate journalist and author
    Peter Fairley, energy and environment journalist
    Nicholas Cunningham, energy reporter
    Nina Berman, documentary photographer focusing on issues of climate
    and the environment, professor of journalism at Columbia University
    Michele C. Hollow, freelance journalist
    Ben Depp, documentary photographer, focusing on issues of climate
    and the environment
    Virginia Hanusik, climate photographer
    Philip Yam, science journalist and author
    Maura R. O'Connor, science journalist and author
    Chad J. Reich, audio and visual journalist covering energy and
    environment in rural communities
    Steve Ross, environmental writer/editor, former Columbia
    environmental reporting professor
    Starre Vartan, science journalist
    Michael Snyder, climate photographer
    Brandon Keim, science and nature journalist
    Tom Athanasiou, climate equity writer and researcher
    Hope Marcus, climate writer
    Jocelyn C. Zuckerman, freelance journalist
    Dana Drugmand, climate journalist
    Tom Molanphy, climate journalist
    Roxanne Szal, associate digital editor, Ms. Magazine
    Dashka Slater, author and climate reporter
    Jenn Emerling, documentary photographer, focusing on issues of
    climate and culture in the American West
    Christine Heinrichs, science writer and author
    Clayton Aldern, climate and environmental journalist
    Karen Savage, climate journalist
    Charlotte Dennett, author, investigative journalist, attorney
    Carly Berlin, environmental reporter
    Ben Ehrenreich, author and journalist
    Ibby Caputo, science journalist
    Lawrence Weschler, former New Yorker staff writer, environmental
    author, most recently with David Opdyke, of This Land: An Epic
    Postcard Mural on the Future of a Country in Ecological Peril.
    Justin Nobel, science journalist
    Antonia Juhasz, climate and energy journalist and author
    James Temple, climate and energy journalist
    Josie Glausiusz, science journalist
    Tina Gerhardt, climate journalist
    Amar Bhardwaj, former editor in chief of Consilience: The Journal of
    Sustainable Development
    Nano Riley, environmental historian, journalist
    Erin Biba, science journalist

more at - 
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/amy-coney-barrett-climate-journalists-challenge-supreme-court-nomination-1080453/



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - October 29, 2003 *
The New York Times reports:
*The Warming Is Global but the Legislating, in the U.S., Is All Local*
By Jennifer 8. Lee - Oct. 29, 2003
"Motivated by environmental and economic concerns, states have become 
the driving force in efforts to combat global warming even as mandatory 
programs on the federal level have largely stalled."
At least half of the states are addressing global warming, whether 
through legislation, lawsuits against the Bush administration or 
programs initiated by governors.

In the last three years, state legislatures have passed at least 29 
bills, usually with bipartisan support. The most contentious is 
California's 2002 law to set strict limits for new cars on emissions of 
carbon dioxide, the gas that scientists say has the greatest role in 
global warming.

While few of the state laws will have as much impact as California's, 
they are not merely symbolic. In addition to caps on emissions of gases 
like carbon dioxide that can cause the atmosphere to heat up like a 
greenhouse, they include registries to track such emissions, efforts to 
diversify fuel sources and the use of crops to capture carbon dioxide by 
taking it out of the atmosphere and into the ground...
- -
A number of states are trying to compel the federal government to move 
sooner rather than later. On Thursday, 12 states, including New York, 
with its Republican governor, and three cities sued the Environmental 
Protection Agency for its recent decision not to regulate greenhouse-gas 
pollutants under the Clean Air Act, a reversal of the agency's previous 
stance under the Clinton administration.

''Global warming cannot be solely addressed at the state level,'' said 
Tom Reilly, the Massachusetts attorney general. ''It's a problem that 
requires a federal approach.''
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/29/national/29CLIM.html


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