[TheClimate.Vote] January 28, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*January 28, 2021*/

[of course]
*Biden: 'We've waited too long to deal with this climate crisis'*
In a sharp 180-degree turn from the Trump administration, Joe Biden just 
began a briefing on what he is calling the White House’s “Climate Day”.

“We’ve waited too long to deal with this climate crisis,” he said, using 
a phrase Trump never used, preferring to call climate change a hoax or 
something dreamed up by Democrats and other mad liberals.

Biden just referred to “the existential threat of climate change, 
because it IS an existential threat”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2021/jan/27/joe-biden-donald-trump-impeachment-covid-coronavirus-climate-crisis-executive-orders-live-updates



[Follow the money]
*Rating agency S&P warns 13 oil and gas companies they risk downgrades 
as renewables pick up steam*
Firms including Woodside, Chevron, Shell and Exxon Mobil, told they 
could be downgraded within weeks
Rating agency S&P has warned 13 oil and gas companies, including the 
some of the world’s biggest, that it may downgrade them within weeks 
because of increasing competition from renewable energy.

On notice of a possible downgrade are Australia’s Woodside Petroleum as 
well as multinationals Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Imperial Oil, Royal Dutch 
Shell, Shell Energy North America, Canadian Natural Resources, 
ConocoPhillips and French group Total.

S&P said it was also considering downgrading four large Chinese 
producers – China Petrochemical Corp, China Petroleum & Chemical Corp, 
China National Offshore Oil Corp and CNOOC.

The rating agency said it had increased its risk rating for the entire 
oil and gas sector from “intermediate” to “moderately high” because due 
to the move away from fossil fuels, poor profitability and volatile prices.

It said it also had a negative outlook for two other big oil and gas 
companies, British multinational BP and Canadian group Suncor, but did 
not plan to immediately reassess their credit ratings...
- -
A lower credit rating can make it harder or more expensive for companies 
to borrow money. In particular, many fund managers will not invest in 
companies with a junk rating.

S&P’s move came after the world’s biggest funds manager, BlackRock, said 
it might dump shares in big greenhouse gas emitters in support of 
limiting global heating to 1.5C by 2050...
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jan/27/rating-agency-sp-warns-13-oil-and-gas-companies-they-risk-downgrades-as-renewables-pick-up-steam



[The Guardian]
*Climate crisis: world is at its hottest for at least 12,000 years – study*
Scientists say temperatures globally at highest level since start of 
human civilisation
Damian Carrington -  Environment editor

Wed 27 Jan 2021

The world’s continuously warming climate is revealed also in 
contemporary ice melt at glaciers, such as with this one in the Kenai 
mountains, Alaska
  The world’s continuously warming climate is revealed also in 
contemporary ice melt at glaciers, such as with this one in the Kenai 
mountains, Alaska (seen September 2019). Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
The planet is hotter now than it has been for at least 12,000 years, a 
period spanning the entire development of human civilisation, according 
to research.

Analysis of ocean surface temperatures shows human-driven climate change 
has put the world in “uncharted territory”, the scientists say. The 
planet may even be at its warmest for 125,000 years, although data on 
that far back is less certain.

The research, published in the journal Nature, reached these conclusions 
by solving a longstanding puzzle known as the “Holocene temperature 
conundrum”. Climate models have indicated continuous warming since the 
last ice age ended 12,000 years ago and the Holocene period began. But 
temperature estimates derived from fossil shells showed a peak of 
warming 6,000 years ago and then a cooling, until the industrial 
revolution sent carbon emissions soaring.

This conflict undermined confidence in the climate models and the shell 
data. But it was found that the shell data reflected only hotter summers 
and missed colder winters, and so was giving misleadingly high annual 
temperatures.

“We demonstrate that global average annual temperature has been rising 
over the last 12,000 years, contrary to previous results,” said Samantha 
Bova, at Rutgers University–New Brunswick in the US, who led the 
research. “This means that the modern, human-caused global warming 
period is accelerating a long-term increase in global temperatures, 
making today completely uncharted territory. It changes the baseline and 
emphasises just how critical it is to take our situation seriously.”

The world may be hotter now than any time since about 125,000 years ago, 
which was the last warm period between ice ages. However, scientists 
cannot be certain as there is less data relating to that time.

One study, published in 2017, suggested that global temperatures were 
last as high as today 115,000 years ago, but that was based on less data.
- -
Lijing Cheng, at the International Centre for Climate and Environment 
Sciences in Beijing, China, recently led a study that showed that in 
2020 the world’s oceans reached their hottest level yet in instrumental 
records dating back to the 1940s. More than 90% of global heating is 
taken up by the seas.

Cheng said the new research was useful and intriguing. It provided a 
method to correct temperature data from shells and could also enable 
scientists to work out how much heat the ocean absorbed before the 
industrial revolution, a factor little understood.

The level of carbon dioxide today is at its highest for about 4m years 
and is rising at the fastest rate for 66m years. Further rises in 
temperature and sea level are inevitable until greenhouse gas emissions 
are cut to net zero.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/27/climate-crisis-world-now-at-its-hottest-for-12000-years



[ethical question]
*Opinion: Federal agencies should disclose number of firefighters 
hospitalized with coronavirus*
AuthorBill GabbertPosted onJanuary 27, 
2021CategoriesUncategorizedTagscoronavirus, COVID-19, opinion, 
transparencyLeave a commenton Opinion: Federal agencies should disclose 
number of firefighters hospitalized with coronavirus
Will they also cover up vehicle accidents, tree strikes, and burnovers?

The U.S. Forest Service and the four land management agencies in the 
Department of the Interior have refused to disclose how many of their 
firefighting personnel have been hospitalized due to the coronavirus.

To their credit, the FS has provided the numbers that have tested 
positive throughout 2020, and as recently as January 19 spokesperson 
Stanton Florea told Wildfire Today that since the pandemic started 642 
have tested positive. Of those, 569 have recovered, Mr. Florea said, but 
74 have not yet fully recovered or returned to work as of January 19. 
But he said they did not know how many had been hospitalized.

I attempted to obtain similar information from the Department of the 
Interior, but after several days of delays, receiving no data, and the 
request being elevated to higher levels, spokesperson Richard Parker 
wrote in an email, “We respectfully decline to comment further on this 
topic at this time.”

Four land management agencies in the DOI employ fire personnel, Bureau 
of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Fish & Wildlife Service, 
and National Park Service.

There is no legitimate reason for the DOI or the Forest Service to be 
secretive about the effects of the pandemic on their firefighting 
personnel. If they refuse to say how many have been sickened by the 
coronavirus because of their jobs, what’s next? Will they cover up other 
injuries and fatalities, such as tree strikes, vehicle accidents or 
rollovers, broken femurs, concussions from rolling rocks? Will the 
Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center have to stop issuing reports about 
accidents which can provide learning opportunities? Or have they already?

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) does not 
prevent the agencies from releasing anonymized summary data that does 
not identify individuals. For example, anyone can go to the Centers for 
Disease Control website and get COVID statistics at the county level. 
Numbers available on a day by day chart include cases, deaths, percent 
positivity, and new hospital admissions (COVID). Below are the stats for 
Clay County, South Dakota which has fewer residents, 13,864, than there 
are wildland firefighters in the federal agencies. This does not invade 
anyone’s privacy or violate HIPPA.

It is not asking too much for the agencies that employ around 15,000 
firefighters to maintain and release the same information available for 
Clay County residents, few of whom are serving their country battling 
wildfires in a job that was already dangerous before the pandemic.

Firefighting is hazardous in the best of times. Refusing to disclose the 
number of infected or hospitalized fire personnel prevents these 
tactical athletes from making an assessment of the degree of additional 
risk they are in. Providing this life and death data is the least we can 
do to help fire personnel make decisions about risking their health … or 
not.

It is immoral and unethical to keep this information secret.

The upper levels of the BLM have been in turmoil for the last two years. 
During the entire Trump administration no BLM Director was confirmed, 
and 200 Washington office employees were told their jobs were being 
moved thousands of miles away to western states. The term “hollowed-out” 
has been used to describe the management of the agency. And in the 
Forest Service, 250 researchers in Washington quit after being faced 
with forced relocations according to Propublica.

Maybe under the new administration the cloud of secrecy over the effects 
of the coronavirus on forestry and range technicians will be lifted and 
transparency will become more normal.
https://wildfiretoday.com/2021/01/27/opinion-federal-agencies-should-disclose-number-of-firefighters-hospitalized-with-coronavirus/



[ethical food video]
*21st Century Eating: Ethical and Environmental Reasons for going 
Plant-Based*
Jan 27, 2010
Oxford Climate Society
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M061GIpzWd8



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - January 28, 1969 *

January 28, 1969: The notorious Santa Barbara, California oil spill 
takes place.

http://youtu.be/jqd_VTADHzM

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/06/30/3453277/oil-spill-heard-round-the-world/


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